The Buddha of Suburbia

by Hanif Kureishi

  ‘Ah, same, same,’ he said with satisfaction, pointing down at his penis. He knew I liked this subject; and as it was the only thing he could show off about we both got pleasure from the exchange.

  ‘I have been in more positions than most men. I’m thinking of composing a manual. I like it very much from behind with the woman on her knees as if I am riding high a horse like John Wayne.’

  ‘Doesn’t Jamila object to that kind of thing?’ I asked, observing him carefully and wondering how I’d portray the crippled arm. ‘Prostitution and so on?’

  ‘You’ve hit the nail exactly on the nose! At first they condemned me as a completely wrong man, a male exploiter pig –’

  ‘No!’

  ‘And for a few days I had to be exclusively masturbating twice a day. Shinko wanted to give up this game and become a gardener and all.’

  ‘D’you think she’d be a good gardener?’

  He shrugged. ‘She has nimble fingers with weeds. But thank Christ Almighty in heaven, they realized Shinko was exploiting me. I was the victim and all, so it was soon back to business as usual.’ Then Changez took my arm and looked into my eyes. He became unhappy. What a sentimental creature he was. ‘Can I tell you something?’ He looked into the distance – through the window and into the next-door neighbour’s kitchen. ‘We laugh at one or two things about my character, yes, but I’ll tell you a not-laughing matter. I’d give up every position I’ve ever been in for five minutes to kiss my wife on her lips.’

  Wife? What wife? My mind slid around at his words; until I remembered. I was always forgetting he was married to Jamila. ‘Your wife still won’t touch you, eh?’

  He shook his head sadly and gulped. ‘And you and she? Stuffing regularly?’

  ‘No, no, for God’s sake, Bubble, not since the time you watched us. It wouldn’t be the same without you there.’

  He grunted. ‘So she’s getting it absolutely nowhere at all?’

  ‘Nowhere, man.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Yes. Women aren’t like us. They don’t have to have it all the time. They only want it if they like the guy. For us it doesn’t matter who it is.’

  But he didn’t appear to be listening to my observations on the psychology of romance. He just turned and looked at me with great fire and determination, and these were not qualities that God had rained down upon him. He smashed his good fist down on the table and cried, ‘I’ll make her like me! I know I will, one day!’

  ‘Changez,’ I said seriously, ‘please don’t count on it. I’ve known Jamila all my life. Don’t you see, she may never change towards you,’

  ‘I do count on it! Otherwise my life is terminated. I will top myself off!’

  ‘That’s up to you but –’

  ‘Of course I will do it. I will cut my throat.’

  ‘What with?’

  ‘A prick!’

  He threw his cup and plate to the floor, pushed himself up and started to pace about the room. Usually his duff arm remained still and at his side, a useless trunk. But now, protruding from the folded-back sleeve of the pink dressing-gown, it stuck out in front of him and waved from side to side. Changez seemed to have become another person, reacting out of real pain rather than the ironic self-deprecation with which he usually regarded his strange life. When he looked at me, at his friend, it was with contempt, even as I strained on, trying to help the fat bastard.

  ‘Changez, there are other women in the world. Maybe I can introduce you to some actresses – if you lose weight. I know dozens of them, and some of them are real luscious. They love screwing. Some of them want to help the black people and the Third World. They’re the ones for you. I’ll introduce.’

  ‘You’re a little English, with a yellowish face like the devil. The number of morals you have equals none! I have my wife. I love her and she will love me. I will wait until the day of dooms for her to –’

  ‘That may be a long time.’

  ‘I want her in my arms!’

  ‘That’s all I’m talking about, the time. And in the mean time you could be –’

  ‘Fuck-all. I’m doing fuck-all until I get her. And one other matter. You can’t be using my character in your acting business. No, no, no, definitely. And if you try and steal me I can’t see how we can be friends to talk to each other again! Promise?’

  I became frantic. What was this – censorship? ‘Promise? You cunt! I can’t fucking promise anything now! What are you talking about?’ But it was like shouting at a rock. Something in him had solidified against me.

  ‘You entered my wife,’ he said. ‘Now promise you won’t enter me by the back door and portray me in your play.’

  I was defeated. What could I say? ‘OK, OK, I promise not to enter you,’ I said half-heartedly.

  ‘You love to belittle me, you love to laugh at me and call me a git to the side of my face. One day you will be laughing out of the other side of your neck with me. You will keep your promise?’

  I nodded. I went.

  I cycled like a maniac to Eleanor’s flat. I had to discuss the situation with her. First I’d lost Anwar and now I was losing Changez. Without him my whole career would fall apart. Who else could I base my character on? I didn’t know any other ‘black’ people. Pyke would sack me.

  When I went into the hall of the house Heater was coming out. He blocked my way like a mountain of rags, and every time I tried to dodge around him I bumped into his stinking bulk.

  ‘Christ, man, what are you doing, Heater?’

  ‘She’s got the dog,’ he said. ‘Off you run, little boy.’

  ‘What fucking dog? A hot dog? Get out of the way, you bastard, she and I have business to attend to.’

  ‘The black dog, she’s got. Depression. So – not today, thank you. Come back another time.’

  But I was too small and quick for Heater. I nipped past him, under his fetid arm, gave him a shove and was in Eleanor’s place like a flash, locking the door behind me. I could hear him cussing me down behind the door.

  ‘Go and clean dog turds from the street with your tongue, you working-class cunt!’ I shouted.

  I took in Eleanor’s room, not recognizing it at first. There were clothes everywhere. The ironing-board was in the middle of the room and Eleanor, naked, was ironing a pile of clothes. As she pressed down hard with the iron, as if trying to force it through the board, she wept, and her tears fell on the clothes.

  ‘Eleanor, what’s the matter? Tell me, please. Has your agent rung with bad news?’

  I went to her. Her dry lips moved, but she didn’t want to talk. She went on moving the iron across the same patch of shirt. When she lifted the face of the iron I felt she wanted to place it on herself, on the back of her hand or arm. She was half mad.

  I disconnected the iron and put my leather jacket over her shoulders. I asked her once more what the matter was, but she just shook her head, flinging her tears over me. I gave up asking stupid questions, and led her into the bedroom and put her to bed. She lay back and shut her eyes. I held her hand and sat there, looking around at the clothes flung about, the make-up and hairspray and lacquered boxes on the dresser, the silk cushion from Thailand with an elephant on it, the piles of books on the floor. On the table beside the bed was a gold-framed photograph of a black man in his mid-thirties, wearing a dark polo-neck sweater. He had short hair, looked athletic and was very handsome. I guessed that the picture had been taken four or five years ago.

  I felt Eleanor wanted me there, not to say anything, but just not to go away. So as she went off to sleep, I settled down for a serious think about Changez. Eleanor I would consider later; at the moment there was nothing I could do.

  If I defied Changez, if I started work on a character based on him, if I used the bastard, it meant that I was untrustworthy, a liar. But if I didn’t use him it meant I had fuck-all to take to the group after the ‘me-as-Anwar’ fiasco. As I sat there I began to recognize that this was one of the first times in my life I’d been aware of havi
ng a moral dilemma. Before, I’d done exactly what I wanted; desire was my guide and I was inhibited by nothing but fear. But now, at the beginning of my twenties, something was growing in me. Just as my body had changed at puberty, now I was developing a sense of guilt, a sense not only of how I appeared to others, but of how I appeared to myself, especially in violating self-imposed prohibitions. Perhaps no one would know I’d based my character in the play on Changez; perhaps, later, Changez himself wouldn’t mind, would be flattered. But I would always know what I had done, that I had chosen to be a liar, to deceive a friend, to use someone. What should I do? I had no idea. I ran over it again and again and could find no way out.

  I looked at Eleanor to make sure she was sleeping. I thought I’d sneak off home and get Eva to do me some stir-fried vegetables in her wok. Build myself up. But when I stood up Eleanor was watching me, and she was smiling slightly, too.

  ‘Hey, I’m glad you’re here.’

  ‘But I was planning on going and leaving you to sleep.’

  ‘No, don’t do that, darling.’

  She patted the bed. ‘Get in, Karim.’ I was so pleased to see her looking cheerful that I obeyed instantly, getting in beside her, pulling up the covers and resting my head on the pillow next to her. ‘Karim, you little idiot, take off your shoes and the rest of your clothes.’

  She started to laugh as I pulled off my jeans, but before I’d got any further than my knees she was nibbling my cock, long before any of the foreplay which, as I’d been informed by the numerous sex manuals I’d devoured for years, was essential to celestial love-making. But then, Eleanor would do such things, I thought, as I lay there enjoying it. There was extremity in her soul. In certain states she might do anything. As it was, she always did whatever occurred to her, which was, admittedly, not difficult for someone in her position, coming from a background where the risk of failure was minimal; in fact, you had to work hard to fail in her world.

  That’s how it began, our sex life. And I was stunned by it; I’d never had such strong emotional and physical feeling before. I wanted to tell everyone that such regular live-fire through the veins was possible; for surely, if they knew of it, they’d be doing it all the time. What intoxication! During rehearsal, when I looked at her wearing a long blue and white skirt, sitting in a chair with her bare feet up on the seat, pressing the swathes of cloth down between her legs – and I told her to wear no underwear – my mouth flooded in anticipation. I’d get an erection and would have to flee the improvisation for the toilet, where I’d wank, thinking of her. When my smiles revealed that this was what I was doing, she’d join me. We began to think that all business buildings should have comfortable facilities, with flowers and music, for masturbation and love-making.

  Physically, Eleanor wasn’t coy like me; she didn’t conceal desire; there was no shame. At any time she’d take my hand and lay it on her breasts, pressing my fingers around the nipple, which I rolled and pinched. Or she’d pull up her T-shirt and offer me her tit to suck, forcing it into my mouth with her fingers. Or she pushed my hand up her skirt, wanting to be touched. Sometimes we snorted coke, speed, or swallowed hash, and I stripped Eleanor on the sofa, pulling off each piece of clothing until she was naked, with her legs apart, while I was dressed. Eleanor was also the first person to illustrate the magic qualities of language during sex. Her whispers stole my breath away: she required a fucking, a stuffing, a sucking, a slapping, in this, that or the other way. Sex was different each time. It had a different pace, there were new caresses, kisses which lasted an hour, sudden copulations in odd places – behind garages or in trains – where we’d simply pull down our clothes. At other times sex lasted aeons, when I’d lie with my head between her legs lapping her cunt and rimming her as she held herself open for me with her fingers.

  There were occasions when I looked at Eleanor and felt such love – her face and entire being seemed luminous – that I couldn’t bear the strength of it and had to turn away. I didn’t want to feel this deeply: the disturbance, the possession. Sex I loved; like drugs, it was play, headiness. I’d grown up with kids who taught me that sex was disgusting. It was smells, smut, embarrassment and horse laughs. But love was too powerful for me. Love swam right into the body, into the valves, muscles and bloodstream, while sex, the prick, was always outside. I did want then, in a part of myself, to dirty the love I felt, or, somehow, to extract it from the body.

  I needn’t have worried. My love was souring already. I was terrified Eleanor would tell me she had fallen for someone else, or would declare she was bored with me. Or I wasn’t good enough for her. The usual.

  Fear entered my life. It entered my work. In the suburbs there had been few things that seemed more petty than the fear everyone had of their neighbour’s opinion. It was why my mother could never hang out the washing in the garden without combing her hair. I didn’t give a shit about what those people thought; but now it was essential to me that Pyke and Tracey and the other others liked my acting. My status in the group was not high now, and I felt discouraged. I didn’t even talk to Eva about what I was doing.

  At night, at home, I was working on Changez’s shambolic walk and crippled hand, and on the accent, which I knew would sound, to white ears, bizarre, funny and characteristic of India. I’d worked out a story for the Changez character (now called Tariq), eagerly arriving at Heathrow with his gnat-ridden suitcase, having been informed in Bombay by a race-track acquaintance that you merely had to whisper the word ‘undress’ in England and white women would start slipping out of their underwear.

  If there were objections to my portrayal I would walk out of the rehearsal room and go home. Thus, in a spirit of bloody-minded defiance I prepared to perform my Tariq for the group. On the day, in that room by the river, the group sat in a half-circle to watch me. I tried not to look at Tracey, who sat leaning forward concentratedly. Richard and Jon sat back without expression. Eleanor smiled encouragingly at me. Pyke nodded, note-book on his knee; Louise Lawrence had her writing pad and five sharp pencils at the ready. And Carol sat in the lotus position, putting her head back and stretching unconcernedly.

  When I finished there was silence. Everybody seemed to be waiting for someone else to speak. I looked around the faces: Eleanor was amused but Tracey had an objection coming on. Her arm was half-raised. I would have to leave. It was the thing I most dreaded, but I’d made up my mind. But somehow Pyke saw this coming too. He pointed at Louise, instructing her to start writing.

  ‘There it is,’ Pyke said. ‘Tariq comes to England, meets an English journalist on the plane – played by Eleanor, no, by Carol. This is real quality, upper-class crumpet. He is briefly among the upper classes because of her, which gives us another area to examine! Girls fall for him all over the place because of his weakness and need to be mothered. So. We have class, race, fucking and farce. What more could you want as an evening’s entertainment?’

  Tracey’s face was well and truly shut. I wanted to kiss Pyke.

  ‘Well done,’ he said to me.

  Mostly the actors adored Matthew. After all, he was a complex, attractive man, and they owed him a bagful. Naturally, I was as sycophantic towards Pyke as the others, but underneath I was sceptical and liked to keep my distance. I put this scepticism down to my South London origins, where it was felt that anyone who had an artistic attitude – anyone, that is, who’d read more than fifty books, or could pronounce Mallarmé correctly or tell the difference between Camembert and Brie – was basically a charlatan, snob or fool.

  I really wasn’t too intimate with Pyke until one day my bike chain snapped and he started to drive me back from rehearsals in his sports car, a black machine with black leather seats which shot you along on your back about three inches above the surface of the road. There was a clear view of the sky through the open roof. This module had speakers in the doors to crash the Doors and anything by Jefferson Airplane over you. In the privacy of his own car Pyke liked to ruminate on sex at such length and in such detail
that I felt that the telling of these stories was an integrally erotic aspect of the serious promiscuous life. Or perhaps it was because I’d been sexualized by Eleanor. Maybe my skin, eyes and body-tone shone with carnal awareness, teasing out sensual thoughts in others.

  One of the first things Pyke said, the introduction to his character as it were, when we first began to talk, was this. ‘When I was nineteen, Karim, I swore to dedicate myself to two things: to becoming a brilliant director and to sleeping with as many women as I could.’

  I was surprised to find him naïve enough to boast of such desires. But, looking straight ahead of him as he drove, he talked of his hobbies: attending orgies and New York fuck-clubs; and of the pleasure of finding unusual locations for the usual act, and unusual people to perform it with.

  For Marlene and Matthew, who were created by the 1960s and had the money and facilities to live out their fantasies in the 1970s, sex was both recreational and informative. ‘We get to meet such interesting people,’ Pyke said. ‘Where else but in a New York fuck-club would you get to meet a hairdresser from Wisconsin?’

  Marlene was the same. She was fucking a Labour MP and passing on to her dialectical friends gossip and information about the House of Commons and the rank machinations of the Labour Party.

  One of Pyke’s most recent adventures was with a policewoman, the fascination of which didn’t lie in the woman’s character – there was little of that – but in the uniform; and predominantly in the functioning of the Filth, the details of which she recounted to Pyke after fellatio. But Pyke was tiring of what he described as his ‘legal period’. ‘I’m on the look-out for a scientist – an astronomer or nuclear physicist. I feel too arts-based intellectually.’

  With their poking into life’s odd corners, Pyke and Marlene seemed to me to be more like intrepid journalists than swimmers in the sensual. Their desire to snuggle up to real life betrayed a basic separation from it. And their obsession with how the world worked just seemed another form of self-obsession. Not that I informed Pyke of this analysis: I merely listened with flared ears and panting lungs. I wanted to get closer to him. I was excited. The world was opening out. I’d never met anyone like this before.