In Issey Miyake there was a creased greywhite dress with goldleaf and silverleaf applique. This dress was only wearable once.
‘I’d love to see that on you!’ said polysexual Nana to Moshe. And she was being honest. She was not teasing him. She loved the idea of Moshe in a dress. It would be, according to Nana, the sexiest thing.
Unfortunately, Moshe did not think it would be the sexiest thing. He was thinking much more about toilets than transvestites. He needed a toilet a lot. And this was making him distracted.
Suddenly theological, Moshe was musing on the cardinal sin of pride. He mused on the difference between pride and vanity. He could see the point of monasteries. He imagined a Moshe tonsured and robed, weeding a kitchen garden. He would grow cabbages. He would grow carrots. He did not think Issey Miyake had branched out into root vegetables.
They wandered, a zigzag, Moshe steering them out.
13
Let me return briefly to Henderson and Stacey.
For Henderson, the most entrancing moment in their romance was a surprise visit to London Zoo, when Stacey saw a giraffe for the very first time. That was his joyful romantic memory. But Stacey, on the other hand, does not remember much of the London Zoo visit. This is because she got her period that day and was too embarrassed to tell Henderson, given the early stage of their relationship. Having had a previous boyfriend who was revolted by menstruation, she did not know how Henderson might take it. Instead, Stacey remembers much more clearly and fondly the first night she found a small pencilled note from Henderson, in very shaky handwriting, concealed under her duvet. The writing was shaky because Henderson had written it in pencil using the pillow as a support. The note explained how much he loved her.
Romances are complicated. They involve more than one person. This means that every detail can be ambiguous. And I quite like that idea.
For instance, Moshe’s favourite moment was, obviously, not their trip to Savile Row. Moshe’s favourite memory was not the shopping. It was a blow job. It was a blow job administered when his penis was tight inside a strawberry flavoured and tinted condom.
14
One morning, bleary Moshe ventured down under the duvet. Inside the duvet it smelled. It smelled of sleepy farting hot and coital bodies. Nana was snuffling. She was dreaming of technicolor animals. They felt rubbery — but they were furry — when they nuzzled her and loved her.
Dreaming was not Moshe’s business. His treat was to wake her, slowly, so she was half dreaming but happy — as he, so slowly, moved her legs apart. He moved them apart just enough so he could reach with his short and fuzzy tongue. And then he only breathed so she wasn’t unsettled or woken. He breathed and breathed on her and watched as she slowly stretched, sleepy, still. Then he ingratiated his tongue. He pushed it and let it gently slide. She almost tasted of sweat. He could smell his breath. He tried not to smell his breath. The light was damped down pinkish on the inside from new sun.
Moshe with two fingers opened out her labia. The wrinkles were spotted with an odd, a sticky, a white, a what was it, ricotta?
This was not a romance. It was not a romantic romance. I said that.
Moshe was not disgusted. It was just that he preferred not to carry on. He had lost his taste for it. Unfortunately, this was just when Nana woke up. She said, ‘What you, wha sweetheart?’ ‘Your cunt’s strange,’ said Moshe. ‘Something’s odd with your cunt.’ He was not always tactful, Moshe. Nana pushed a finger round her labia. She brought it back and examined it. She sniffed it. ‘It’s thrush,’ she said, ‘it’s just thrush.’ And then she was embarrassed. She didn’t know why, but that’s the way it was. She was embarrassed.
Nana did not need to be embarrassed. I do not think thrush is embarrassing. It is certainly not embarrassing for the girl. Almost all girls get vaginal yeast infections from time to time. Yeast germs often grow in the vagina without causing infection. An infection occurs when the yeast overgrows. This only happens when the normal health of the vagina is disrupted. And we all know how the health of a vagina gets disrupted. Boys disrupt it.
No, it was much more embarrassing for Moshe. How else would the health of Nana’s vagina be disrupted, except by Moshe’s penis? And he knew that. ‘In women with recurrent vaginal thrush,’ say the manuals, ‘it is often worth their partner using some treatment at the same time as them, as the infection may affect him without symptoms, and be causing reinfection.’ This is a polite way of pointing out that it is normally the boy who is to blame.
But by that evening, Moshe was not feeling remorse. I am sorry, but he was not feeling apologetic. He was happy. That evening, Moshe was treated to an erotics of nostalgia. He was allowed to see the gorgeousness of women’s diagrams. Inside the packet of Nana’s Canesten Once pessary — ‘inserted at night so the cream can work whilst (“whilst”! grinned Moshe, adoring the posh vocabulary) you sleep’ — was a leaflet of instructions. And Nana let Moshe announce the procedure to her, spread with the plastic equipment on the bed.
It was a perfect diagram. Against a skyblue background, like a TV-studio diorama, reclined a cross-section view of a woman, her limbs outlined with muddy green. The diagram included the clump of her belly. And all the squashy curves and lines, with arrows pointing modestly but precisely to Bladder, Womb, Vagina, Rectum. It was not a body that had ever changed. It was all the information Moshe needed. And Moshe read his lines. ‘Carefully put the applicator as deep as is comfortable into the vagina.’ He delighted in the sedate parenthesis, secreting so much pleasure. ‘(This is easiest when lying on your back with your knees bent up.)’ So Nana bent them, for her concerned gynaecologist. ‘Holding the applicator in place, slowly press the plunger until it stops so that the pre-measured dose of cream is deposited into the vagina. Remove the applicator. Dispose of the applicator in a safe place, out of the reach of children.’
She pushed the applicator in, like a porn star. It shortened, then the cream popped. ‘You may observe a chalky residue,’ added Moshe, gravely. ‘This does not mean the treatment has not worked.’
Why was this Moshe’s favourite moment in the romance? It was his favourite moment because, however thrushed and inviolable, Nana wanted to enjoy herself. Self-conscious of her body and its ways, she had made her decision. She wanted to be the fantasy girl. Her fantasy was being a fantasy. All through the medical rigmarole she had been eyeing up the multipack of flavoured condoms she had bought that lunchtime at Boots with the Canesten. Condoms were her new idea of keeping herself occasionally more clean. And she was in her Topshop gingham, its flappy checks and pinkness. She kneeled over to Moshe sprawling. Then she dressed his cock. She made him taste of strawberry.
This was Nana the little girl. And Moshe was her lollipop.
It was a romance. OK, in a way it was a romance. Romance, after all, is in the editing.
15
I do not want you to assume that I disapprove of Moshe. Not at all. I am not judging him. There are very few boys, I am sure, who have not given their girlfriends thrush. There are very few boys who have not sexually transmitted at least one disease. It can happen to all of us. It happened, for example, to Chairman Mao.
Perhaps you are surprised at this. Perhaps you are thinking ‘Chairman Mao? The great Communist leader and thinker? The author of the lyrical works A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire and Be Concerned with the WellBeing of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Work? No, not Chairman Mao.’ But, honestly, it is true. I am not making this up. You can find evidence in the memoirs of Mao’s personal physician, Dr Zhisui Li.