Lust

by Geoff Ryman

  ‘So far back it goes outside.’

  Yes, well, it was possible that being copied induced mild brain damage. Michael gave him instructions. ‘Stand up and walk away towards the alley between the two brick walls. If there’s no one there, disappear.’

  The Cherub stood up and more tamely than a Labrador walked towards his own oblivion.

  Well Phil, Michael thought: there is one element you left out of pornography. Power. In pornography, you have the power to make people behave. Michael began to wonder how good this thing might be for what he still had to call his soul.

  Michael’s father had been a Marine. There was a plaque somewhere in Camp Pendleton that bore his name and a gravestone somewhere in Orange County that Michael had never seen. In America, everyone went to church, especially in the military. Every Sunday, he and his father would go to a bare and unvarnished Catholic church. Michael ate wafers, drank wine, and learned about sin, and then in the afternoon played touch football on the beach. The exposure was enough to make him feel regretful rather than indoctrinated.

  Michael watched Tony’s retreating back, wearing only a T-shirt on an icy spring day. The Cherub entered the funnel of brick between two high walls. There was a whisper in his head, and Michael knew the Cherub was gone.

  So, he thought. I’ve learned I can’t call up just anyone. It could be that I can’t call up women. Or maybe I can only call up copies of people I’ve actually met. He stood up to go.

  Or, it could be that they have to be alive. I’ll have to go on asking question after question.

  He left the green and the trees. Traffic and black brick made him feel English. God made him feel American. Michael would shift between American and English selves and accents without realizing it. His English self went back to work.

  His American self thought of his messengers, how they came and went. Angels, Michael decided. Until I know them better, I will call them Angels.

  Can Angels be dead?

  When Michael was ten years old, he was sent to spend the summer with his father for the first time. He had cried alone in the airplane with his ticket pinned to his little grey dress jacket. He had to change in Chicago and everything looked like a Dirty Harry movie. Bleached blonde women wore denim suits and chewed gum and talked like gangsters’ molls.

  Michael knew his Dad was going to meet him at LA International. He arrived exhausted and trying not to cry and he looked at all the waiting people and he saw this huge man who looked like Burt Reynolds and wore a uniform. He carried a big sign with Michael’s name on it.

  ‘Hiya Mikey, howya doin’?’ the man said in a mingled mouthful of words and chewing gum. He wore mirror shades.

  Michael forgot to say anything. He gaped. This was his father? His father looked like something out of a movie too.

  He chuckled. ‘Come on, guy, we’ll get you home.’ Dad scooped up Michael’s bag and threw it over his shoulder. Michael dragged his feet, walking behind. His father chuckled again, leaned over, and simply picked Michael up whole. His big arm folded into a kind of chair and Michael fell asleep being carried, his face resting warm against his father’s chest.

  After that, every two years Michael lived for the summer near San Diego with his Dad.

  He loved it. Southern California is the perfect place in which to do nothing. Indeed, everything is so far apart, and it takes so long to drive anywhere, that it is very difficult to do anything other than nothing. You call it going to the beach.

  On the beach at twelve years old, Michael felt he was immortal. He would take the big green bus out of Camp Pendleton, past the Rialto cinema with its delectable range of kung fu and horror movies. He would reach the cliffside park and the earthen cliffs of Oceanside, California. Once there, he would throw himself in front of a few waves and call it body surfing. Then he could do nothing but lie on his back for three hours, toasting. This was before skin cancer was invented. He went from lobster-red to California-brown in less than two weeks. His bright grin beamed from his newly darkened face – he felt like something from an American situation comedy: the young teenager part.

  Resting on the beach, the idea came to him, that he could stay in America and become American. He could do it. After all, his father was American. He could stay in the sunshine with the movies and the skateboards and the long hikes in hills that Camp Pendleton protected from development.

  The thought made something inside him flutter with fear. The part of him that fluttered spoke with an all-purpose London accent that was another layer of self. His mother spoke with a Sheffield bluntness. Michael felt himself stretched. Michael felt himself in danger of being torn.

  ‘Whatcha do today?’ his Dad would ask. Dad was trying to get to know his son. He had abandoned England and his wife when Michael was three.

  ‘Went to the beach,’ Michael said proudly.

  ‘D’ja meet any girls?’

  Michael did not say: Dad, I’m only twelve and um … but I have noticed that I’m not even looking at girls yet.

  What he said was, ‘No, Dad.’ And he hung his head, feeling ashamed.

  ‘Listen, there’s a guy at work runs Little League. You wouldn’t want to try your hand at baseball, would you?’ His Dad looked hopeful, and made a swinging motion.

  His father would have been shocked to discover that Michael didn’t like sports. He didn’t know then that he had a son who did nothing except cram for exams, and who now more than anything else just wanted to luxuriate on the beach or watch American TV.

  American television was a miracle. There were about ten channels, so many that it made sense to flick round them until you found something you wanted.

  What Michael found, luxuriating at 5.30 every Saturday afternoon, were old Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmüller. In the very first, Tarzan tore off Jane’s clothes and threw her naked into a river. She swam deeper and deeper into the river, a glowing white against the darkness, shadows both covering and hinting at her nipples, her pubes.

  His father called, ‘Mike? Mikey? You wanna come outside and pitch a few balls?’ Both father and son were exercising their American accents as if they were stiff muscles before a game.

  Michael was staring bug-eyed at a naked woman.

  Part of the luxury of California was having a TV of your own, in your own bedroom, to do what you liked.

  ‘I can’t Dad, it’s time for the Tarzan movie.’

  How many movie stars get officially called something as friendly as Johnny? How many of them are Olympic athletes who wear loincloths that let you see their naked haunches, thigh to stomach? How many of them are beautiful with a reassuring lopsided, chip-toothed face, and a high, light voice?

  Under Michael’s tan and athletic frame, his young and genuinely feminine heart would sit entranced by what his father thought were adventure movies.

  ‘Mikey? We could go to the movies later if you wanna.’ His father was big and athletic too, but his face was glum and disappointed. His son had been away all afternoon and they had only Saturdays and Sundays to do stuff together.

  ‘Dad, I really want to watch this, OK?’

  ‘OK, son. See ya later,’ his Dad said. He left punching his baseball mitt. Michael felt bad. Michael had not meant to hurt his father’s feelings. Michael’s eyes were suspiciously heavy with deep feelings he had no name for. ‘Dad. Why dontcha watch it with me? Dad?’ He heard the back door slam.

  His father had a rival.

  Michael knew, even at twelve, what the MGM executives had known all along: they were selling a love story. A love story that promised, and delivered, a beautiful naked man. Michael’s young heart would soar through the trees alongside Johnny Weissmüller. He dreamed of leaving the world behind, of living like a Boy Scout in a treehouse with a man as dumb and reliable and graceful as a horse. He dreamed of slipping the loincloth aside to see what lay underneath it. At twelve, that was as far as the dream went.

  His father eventually nagged his son into joining a baseball team. It played on
Sundays, which left Saturday for Tarzan and, in fact, gave Dad even less time with his son.

  Summer wore on. Johnny got old. The series left MGM and went downmarket to RKO. It lost Jane and its love story. It gained Amazons in bikinis and cut-price Nazis. Johnny was no longer a sex symbol. He was a star of B-movies for kids. He got fat. A fat Tarzan is a great sadness. His last movie in the series, Tarzan and the Mermaids, was made in 1948, filmed in Mexico with beautiful Mexicans standing in for some kind of lost but completely unconvincing African tribe. Any one of the men could have made a more suitable Tarzan, except of course that Tarzan was supposed to be Anglo. Weissmüller was Romanian. He had been born near Timisoara and his real first name was Jonas.

  Michael stayed in California long enough to see that sad ending and to experience something of a lover’s sense of loss and longing as a partner ages.

  Johnny Weissmüller died in Mexico in 1984, when Michael was 24 years old. Michael remembered reading about his death in the newspaper and thinking, Johnny Weissmüller? 1984? It was Michael’s moment for realizing that we spend more of our lives being old than young.

  In Michael’s days of California sunlight, saltwater spray and young Americans in shorts, there had lived in that same state, an old bronzed man. He looked a little bit like a balloon from which the air had leaked. That man would have been able to tune in every Saturday at 5.30 as well, to see his sleek and catlike younger self pad lissomely through a studio jungle.

  Maybe it was enough for him to remember the days when he had been a sex symbol, and it was possible that he could go on to be a real movie star. Maybe it was enough to have been the lover of Lupe Velez, the Mexican Spitfire, to have acted with Maureen O’Sullivan, to have people still call you Tarzan … once they recognized you. Maybe it was enough for him that he had won five Olympic gold medals and set 67 world records. In the encyclopaedias, it was those he was most remembered for, rather than a mere acting career. After all, sport is not fiction, is it? But Michael, even as an adult, would remember him for the heartbreaking climax of Tarzan’s New York Adventure, when he leapt off the Brooklyn Bridge to almost certain death, yodelling backwards, for Jane, for Boy, for the jungle life.

  Lust requires restitution. Even more frequently than love, lust goes unrequited.

  Hypothesis: I can call up anyone that

  • I want sexually (confirmed)

  • Who is alive or dead (not confirmed)

  Method: Try to call up someone I fancy who is dead and note result.

  The Chez Nous Hotel near Vauxhall Bridge Road is a French franchise operation. To an Englishman, it looks Scandinavian: clean, spacious, bland and smelling faintly of the mildest possible cheese. Being near Vauxhall Bridge and south of the River Thames, it is actually nowhere, and no one wants to stay there. Even at lunchtime, its brasserie is empty. Michael could eat there in perfect anonymity, and go upstairs alone without the slightest fear of being seen by anyone he knew. How, otherwise, would you explain booking a room 500 yards from where you worked? He could enter his room at 12.30 PM in complete assurance that it would be comfortable, clean and looking exactly as it would look in Luxembourg or Shepherds Bush.

  Michael sat on a bed so perfect it looked as if no one had ever slept in it. As this was the Chez Nous Vauxhall, it was perfectly possible that no one ever had. He disliked crumpling the mottled blue duvet. His breath came fast and shallow. He asked for his boyhood love.

  As naturally as a light breeze through eucalyptus trees, Johnny Weissmüller was sitting next to him. Unlike most movie stars, he was bigger than Michael expected – huge, broad and smooth, wearing only the loincloth. A flop of silky brown hair tumbled into his eyes. He stared intently at Michael, half in fear, one hand on his knife.

  ‘Tarzan,’ he said, jabbing at his breasts.

  ‘I’m Michael.’

  ‘Tarzan. Mikey,’ Weissmüller said, prodding Michael so hard that for a moment Michael thought he would fall backwards out of a tree. ‘Mikey. Tarzan.’

  Tarzan looked baffled by desire. Desire was something new that he had never felt. He leaned closer to Michael and sniffed his face.

  ‘Mikey smell like flower.’

  Tarzan smelt of Max Factor.

  Michael said, ‘That’s my aftershave.’

  ‘What shave?’

  Michael stroked his smooth cheek. ‘You know, shave. Beard.’

  Tarzan looked even more baffled. He rubbed Michael’s face and looked puzzled.

  ‘Bee-arr-ddd,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah beard, you know, shave. You don’t shave?’

  Tarzan scowled. He rubbed his own perfect chin. ‘How Tarzan shave? No razors.’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess I never thought about that. Yeah. Howcum Tarzan doesn’t have a beard?’

  ‘Not monkey,’ said Tarzan, and grinned.

  They hovered about six inches apart. Michael wanted to kiss him, except that Tarzan was covered in tan body make-up, head to toe. It would leave marks on Michael’s shirt.

  ‘Uh. Johnny. Could you drop the Tarzan talk? It’s a little bit creepy. I want you, not Tarzan.’

  Tarzan got that look of idiot firmness he got when mistaking the motives of white hunters. ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Mikey want Tarzan.’

  Tarzan was shaved all over. Everywhere Michael touched him there were little pinpricks of body hair, like mustard on ham. Michael leaned forward and tried to kiss him and Tarzan ducked away.

  ‘It goes like this,’ said Michael and brought their lips together.

  Tarzan tasted like one of your mother’s friends. He had that perfumed, powdery, clotted smell of face paint. Tarzan smiled and pressed Michael to him, rather as if he were Cheetah at the end of the film. Michael had to coax him out of the loincloth. Tarzan had no conception that it could be removed. He looked as surprised as Michael when it slipped aside to reveal handsome, Catholically uncircumcised genitals from which every trace of pubic hair had also been shaved. MGM couldn’t have pubic hair leaking out over the edge of the loincloth.

  And, having stripped Johnny/Tarzan, Michael discovered that, like his twelve-year-old self, he wanted to do nothing else.

  So he lay next to Tarzan and was cradled. Protected like Jane by the Hays Code, Michael wallowed in the bed as Tarzan prodded him, tickled him, and examined his feet. He sniffed his chin.

  As Michael lay there in his arms he wondered. Is this all I wanted all along? With all those other men? Just to be held, stroked and cuddled? Perhaps it is simply that I never wanted real sex at all.

  In which case it is possible that I never grew up.

  And he could choose to accept that. He could decide to stay a child. Who was anyone to tell him his sexuality was wrong? If this is what he really wanted, he could stay here, warm and sheltered. If this was some new sexual home, why leave it? Michael stroked the smooth firm backs of Tarzan’s arms.

  ‘Pee pee,’ said Tarzan. He stood up and discovered with wonder that the toilet flushed. He roared at the gushing of clear water, knelt and began to drink from it, lapping like a lion. He looked up in delight.

  It was nearly 2:00 PM. Time to go. Tarzan had no concept of time or work, and tried to keep Michael with him, holding his arm, stroking it. In the end, Michael had to disperse him.

  He didn’t want to see Tarzan dissolve like a TV channel. Michael simply turned away and heard something like a gust of wind, and felt a sudden hollowness in the room behind him. Every trace of jungle was gone, including the smell of Max Factor.

  At reception, he coughed and asked like an out-of-town guest about local restaurants. Tomorrow morning he would check out and pay his bill as if he had spent the night there.

  Michael walked back through Archbishop’s Park. It was a dull grey English spring, stark with no leaves on the trees. He thought of Tarzan’s body, its pre-pubescent smoothness, of his tenderness and the caresses. The main sensation in the pit of his stomach was fear, as if he were still taking that first trip to California.

  Circumstances
meant that an unexpected question was answered next.

  Can I make them do it when I’m not there?

  ‘We’ve got an invitation,’ Philip said, opening their post. ‘It’s from Zoltan Caparthi,’ he said. ‘You know, the glass artist? The one who does those fabulous piss-takes of beauty contests? He’s invited us. Well, you me and whoever else we want to bring. He said everybody’s lover has a lover, and they must come too. Do you want to come? Can you bring someone interesting?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Michael, ‘I think so.’

  ‘I’ll meet you there,’ said Phil. ‘With mine.’

  The house had a name: the Looking Glass. A sign said so, in a cluster of mirrors and neon and preserved feather boas high up, out of the reach of vandals. The walls were painted mauve covered with mirror stars along the top.

  Michael arrived alone and rang the bell with a shiver of mingled anticipation and inadequacy. He held a John Lewis shopping bag full of his costume.

  The door was opened by a young man dressed like Carmen Miranda. A Salvador Dali moustache was painted on his upper lip.

  ‘Hello, I’m Billy, welcome!’

  Billy kissed him on the cheek and ushered him in. There was a kind of combination office, kitchen and reception area, covered in cork with photographs pinned to the walls. There was no one else. Michael had come on time, and was the first to arrive. ‘You want to change?’ Billy asked.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ said Michael, feeling dowdy. ‘I’m … I’m…’ He tried to think of the formula: somebody’s amputated other half. He showed the invitation.

  Billy completed the sentence. ‘You’re one of the optional extras. So am I. I’m the son of the woman who keeps Zoltan’s books. You and I will have more fun than all these old slags because it’s all new to us. Now. I want your drink ready when you come out looking fabulous. What do you fancy?’

  Michael was scared of being boring so he said, ‘A margarita.’

  ‘I meant herbal tea,’ said Billy.

  Michael smiled at himself. ‘I don’t know anything about herbal tea. Choose the nicest.’