Khorsandi - Nina is Not OK

When your dad dies when youre only nine, everything you fuck up after that ends up being because your dad died

Nina Swansons poor dad gets the blame for a lot of things, from her exam results to her turning up smashed in her Communications class.

Ninas drunken exploits are the stuff of college legend. And if she sometimes wakes up with little memory of what happened the night before, her friends are all too happy to fill in the blanks.

But then one dark Sunday morning, even her friends cant help piece together Saturday night. All Nina feels is a deep sense of shame and that something very bad has happened to her

Shappi Khorsandi is one of the countrys finest comedians, having launched herself back in 2006 with her sell-out Edinburgh show, Asylum Speaker.

Shappis career has taken her to all corners of the globe and she has appeared on countless TV & Radio shows including Live At The Apollo, 8 Out Of 10 Cats, Have I Got News For You, QI, The Graham Norton Show and Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. She is the author of the bestselling childhood memoir, A Beginners Guide To Acting English, which tells the story of how her family was forced to flee Iran and gain asylum in the UK.

She is currently the president of the British Humanist Association. Nina Is Not Ok is her first novel.

A BEGINNERS GUIDE TO ACTING ENGLISH

For Andrew:

Keep travelling with me.

The burly bouncer was holding me by the scruff of the neck. I always thought that was a figure of speech, but he had my scruff in his hand and was marching me towards the exit.

An hour before, Id flirted with this man and hed let me, Zoe and Beth into the club with our dodgy IDs. Now I was being frog marched by him. I held my head up high the way the very drunk do when they are trying not to seem very drunk.

I stumbled, of course. He put one hand under my arm to steady me. I was yanked up and dragged towards the exit like a haughty marionette. This was ungainly. No amount of front could hide from the other clubbers that I was being booted out.

Wed been drinking before we got there. Its loads cheaper if you get drunk at home. Wed had some wine me and Beth as we got ourselves ready. Beth had lent me her crazy, black minidress with crucifixes on it. It was gothy (Beth is a not-quite-committed Goth: a Demi-Goth) but had this scrunchy middle bit that somehow made my waist look tiny.

Zoe had also come over with a bottle of vodka and wed had shots. Zoe had just come back from holiday and looked even more gorgeous than usual with her hair all tousled and sun-kissed. It sounds mad but with a tan she looks even taller.

Its Zoe who gets us into clubs, past the queues. Girls that look like Zoe never have to wait in line for anything. The bouncers come and get her, then me and Beth scuttle alongside her to the front. No door Nazi has ever said no to me and Beth when Zoe has been with us.

Shes smoking hot but has absolutely no sense of humour. I mean she doesnt get jokes. Ever. Beth cracks me up all the time and Zoe just smiles like were both mad. She doesnt see what were laughing at, and just goes, What are you two on?! Shes nice, though, never an arsehole to anyone.

Beth wondered if Zoe was a snob at first she goes to our college but we only really got to know her last summer when we all worked at Pizza Paradise but shes not a snob, shes sound; shes just not silly like we are. Zoe reads a lot and isnt a div like girls as pretty as her can be. Me and Beth have a theory that girls who are really pretty are often dull. They get attention without having to develop a personality. Weve been friends, me and Beth, since we were ten.

We were all nicely tipsy by the time we got to the Boulevard. It was our last night out before term started on Monday and we wanted to make the most of it.

The reason I was thrown out was fairly clear. It was definitely something to do with me unzipping that blokes fly by the bar and burying my head in his lap.

Im not even a slag. Ive only ever shagged Jamie White and I was his first too, so not slagginess at all from either side.

Nina! Beth had said. That guy over there wont stop looking at you.

He was gorgeous. No doubt about that. He looked like a Benny Boy.

The boys from St Benedicts never usually looked at girls like me. They liked cool, tall, blonde girls like Zoe who dont say much and flick their hair. Im short and have got crazy curly hair. Its long and never behaves unless I spend hours straightening it. Im not ugly, Im alright looking. My dad was half-Moroccan so Ive got olive skin and big Arab eyes but my mums thin English lips and my Auntie Jeanies ski-slope nose. On a good day, Im Pocahontas; on a bad day most days Im a cavewoman.

This guy was tall, good-looking, with dark eyes and sexy, floppy indie-band hair. Guys who dont have the confidence to go for Zoe tend to go for me. Im a fairly decent plan B. This guy definitely had confidence, but Zoe had nipped to the loo. I had to nab him before she came back.

I downed my Southern Comfort and Coke. He came over, or did I go over? Dont know. Someone went over to someone and then I dont remember what we said or did but the next moment we were in a dark corner, on a velvety sofa, and I was fumbling with his fly.

I had only given a handful of blow jobs before, mostly to Jamie White, my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Jamie had left after his A level results and gone to live in Hong Kong for a year with his dad. Hed promised hed write to me every day but Id heard nothing for over two weeks. After Id called and left a million messages and spent HUGE amounts of time crying to Beth, hed messaged, eventually, saying hed met another girl out there called Marcia. This had been pretty devastating and so out of the blue. Wed planned a whole future together. I was having issues accepting the break up, apparently.

Id sent him endless emails. In one Id call him a total bastard for five pages; in the next Id send him seven pages of how much I loved him, how he was my hero and begging him to call me and get back with me. Id texted him endless lists of what I missed about him.

I miss stuff about you that you dont even know I loved about you!

1. The way you texted me in the mornings to tell me stop hitting snooze.
2. Your Superman pants.
3. Your radish and tuna melts.
4. How sweet you always were with your mum when I am always ratty to mine.
5. The way you wrote down each book you lent people and demanded they give it back exactly two weeks later because if they havent read it by then they can sod off.
6. The way you always said when WE have kids, when WE go travelling, when WE become famous writers.

And on and on and on to nothing, no replies. Silence. Then hed posted pictures of them together on Facebook.

Beth had said, Well, thats a kick in the cunt. But it hadnt been like that. It had been like a thousand kicks in the cunt and a giant fist around my heart, squeezing until it burst, again and again and again.

Theyd been on a balcony on some fancy lit-up building. Shes American. Shes skinny with long, dead-straight blonde hair, and pretty. Not madly pretty, just normal pretty.

Id stared at the picture. How could he love her more than he loved me? How is that possible? Hed always said that I was his exotic, dusky Arab beauty, even though I cant speak Arabic and have never been to Morocco.