Lust

by Geoff Ryman

  Finally, his name was called.

  A different nurse ushered him through another door, and down a perfectly domestic corridor into what had once been a maid’s bedroom. It was tiny, without a window, and in it sat a bullfrog of a man. He sat behind another gilded table and did not bother to stand up.

  ‘Take a seat.’ He glanced at papers. ‘Mr Blasco.’ The voice was posh, the face overripe with too much old-fashioned drinking. He wore a shirt with blue stripes. His purple neck overflowed the top of his white collar. There was a signet ring on his little finger and patches of worn skin on the backs of his hands. ‘I’m Mr Fieldone. I’m a consultant with the Registry.’

  Michael assumed that Consultant meant something fairly medical. Mr Fieldone spoke like a man who had, at most, fifteen minutes to spare, while reading Michael’s papers, presumably for the first time, through half-moon spectacles.

  ‘There are marvellous new treatments for sexual difficulties. But, by law, I’m afraid we first have to ensure that there isn’t a previous medical condition that could cause problems. So I’m afraid there are some forms to go through.’

  The questions started bland and increased in impertinence. Did Michael get morning erections? Would he describe them as full erections? Could he indicate the angle those erections achieved. Forty-five degrees? Eighty degrees? Perhaps Michael would just like to indicate the angle with his hand?

  ‘Uh. I really don’t know.’ If only he had been brave. He wanted to say: I don’t normally have my mathematical instruments to hand when I have an erection.

  Did he ever experience erections while having sex? Did he have a regular partner? Do you have any other sexual partners? And how many of those do you have? Michael told him: about five per week. Mr Fieldone’s eyes boggled slightly. He smelled of Imperial Leather soap, and his hair plastered low over his head looked like it needed a wash.

  ‘Do you mind my asking if your partners are male or female?’

  ‘Both. Well, mostly men.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, flicking back over the document. ‘Yes. We see many people here, and we find that impotency often comes to homosexual men, particularly if they are a bit introverted or timid and can’t fully commit to anyone.’

  Michael felt something prickle in his cheeks.

  Mr Fieldone continued, ‘I would say that this looks like a psychological problem. I will be recommending you for a further physical exam, today if you like.’ Michael agreed. Was he supposed to say no?

  ‘It really is wonderful the breakthroughs of the last few years. There is a new drug called Sidenfil, which is quite effective. Now, the usual dosage is fifty milligrams, but such is the demand that we have only been able to procure – from America…’ he said this leaning forward, to emphasize the trouble, distance and expense of such an importation, ‘… treatments in dosages of one hundred milligrams. We will of course, cut these in half, professionally, and give them to you in four test dosages. Your first fee will cover the cost of this trial prescription and today’s interviews, tests and examinations and provision of results. If you decide that the treatment is for you, then a prescription of forty-two dosages will be available to you at a cost of £750. If you are in agreement with these terms, please sign here.’

  ‘What? Wait, just a moment.’ Michael’s mind raced to divide and subdivide.

  ‘Yes?’ rumbled the deep imperious voice, all the cream of privilege rising to the surface. An eyebrow was raised.

  ‘That’s £350 for two tablets.’

  ‘Including the work of three professionals.’

  Ah, so you’re the professionals being registered.

  ‘That means you’re selling me twenty-one tablets for £750.’

  As if the case were closed, the salesman tapped all papers into a neat whole. ‘I’m not selling you anything. By all means, take your time to consider, and we can file your questionnaire away?’ His voice rose as a question.

  This, thought Michael, is what it is. I knew what it was when I came here. They know I know what it is. The only question is: do I want to walk away from here with nothing, or do I want to walk out of here with Viagra?

  ‘I’m only signing for £350. Right?’

  ‘Only for the trial dosages, yes.’ He was unwilling to say the price again. The form was pushed back at Michael to sign. Michael signed.

  So he went to the doctor’s office. The doctor wore a white coat, but otherwise looked like an ebullient stick insect. He was thrilled by something. Perhaps it was the money he was making.

  ‘Hello! Good afternoon!’ he cried as Michael came in. The doctor seemed to float, his spectacles reflecting the dazzling light. Life, evidently, was marvellous for a man who owned his own clinic.

  The doctor explained, yet again, the necessity for a medical exam. There would need to be blood tests. ‘You could have a Shunt. A Venus Shunt.’ It had evidently been a rather celebratory lunch – his ‘s’ sounds slurred as if on ice. ‘An erection is made of blood and a Venus Shunt is a sort of short circuit. Lower your trousers please.’

  A refreshingly cool jelly was applied thickly all over Michael’s cock. It was rather like a prelude to something else.

  ‘It helps conduct the sound,’ explained the doctor. It did seem as if he was taking longer than necessary, applying the gel. His eyes gleamed. Perhaps he just enjoyed his work.

  Being examined by the doctor was rather like being abducted by aliens. Something like a microphone that had won a Design Week award was run up and down Michael’s penis. Tiny speakers connected to the computer produced a throbbing, shushing sound. This made the doctor giggle.

  ‘Sounds like the music my son listens to,’ he said. He was definitely drunk, and he was stroking Michael’s cock in a friendly, offhand way. ‘No. Nothing wrong there. Hear it?’ Michael wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be listening for. ‘The blood is circulating beautifully!’ He gave Michael’s bare thigh an enthusiastic slap. ‘Nothing wrong there.’

  Michael discovered that once he had had a faint little hope. The little hope was that his impotence had a physical cause. Like a limb lost in a car accident, it could not then be blamed on him. Michael felt ashamed. ‘The Consultant seemed reasonably sure it was psychological.’

  ‘Oh him,’ said the doctor. ‘He’s just a sales person.’

  Michael knew exactly how to take this. ‘Then what is he doing telling people that homosexuals tend to be impotent?’

  ‘Oh Good heavens, did he say that? I am sorry, I’ll have a word. You know how it is: everyone wants to partake of the mystique of medicine.’

  He began to write something on Michael’s papers, and then began to giggle. ‘Poor old Far-Fars. Hmm hmm hmm. He never got over old Squeers.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Michael asked.

  The doctor waved his hand, the joke beyond explanation. ‘Something that happened to him at school. Never got over it. Poor old Far-Fars.’

  ‘You knew him at school?’

  Michael suddenly saw: some old sozzled hack had been given a non-job by old school chums.

  The doctor became suddenly serious. ‘What we’re going to do now, Mr Blasco, is give you a blood test. We don’t do that here, that’s done for us by another clinic, excellent, the Fair-borough, just down the road. This will determine if you have diabetes and should also confirm you’re not taking any other medicines that could cause problems.’

  ‘You’ve already signed the prescription,’ said Michael. ‘What happens if it turns out I have diabetes?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll refund the cost of the test dosage.’

  ‘But…’ Michael had to chuckle. ‘Should you really be signing a prescription before you know that it’s safe?’

  The professional leaned back. How can spectacles look as if they are grinning smugly? Oh come on, they seemed to say, we know what’s going on here. This is a deal. You want it, we got it. ‘We find most of our patients don’t want to wait. They come back here and find the prescription is ready for them. If they fail t
he tests, then of course, we don’t give them the drugs, and they only pay for the examination.’ He paused airily and then asked, ‘What’s your line of work, Mr Blasco?’

  Michael told him: a biologist.

  ‘Ah,’ the doctor said. ‘A fellow professional.’ He gained a conspiratorial air. ‘Do you work for industry?’

  ‘I’m an academic. We’re funded by a research council.’

  ‘Academic. And you’re funded by government. Twice. That’s clever of you.’

  ‘A lot of private-sector research is funded in the same way.’

  ‘Well. I’m glad that this current government is doing something for industry.’ He was pissed and didn’t care a bit if Michael might not be a Tory.

  ‘Well,’ said Michael. ‘This current government lets you sell Viagra.’ It was the first time during the entire process that anyone had called the drug by its brand name.

  ‘And,’ chuckled the doctor, ‘keep its value inflated by keeping it off the National Health. But then ask yourself, Mr Blasco, why should the taxpayer pay for that? When you are perfectly capable of paying for it yourself?’

  It was all about money. Most people worked mostly for money. So why did it feel wrong that doctors should? Michael got his tablets. The nurses in the front office continued their conversation about the new tax-free savings accounts.

  I suppose, Michael thought, I want other people to have a calling. Since I do not.

  He got home and examined his prescription. The pills, of course, were not cut in half, professionally or otherwise.

  Does Viagra work?

  Michael tried it on Lawrence of Arabia and it did.

  Michael had seen a television documentary years before about Lawrence and his sexual habits. He read the opening of Seven Pillars of Wisdom and wondered how there could be any controversy at all about it. The second page says clearly that he and the Arab warriors made love, supposedly because no clean women were to be had.

  Michael found the passage about the Turkish commandant. Lawrence was quite clear there too. Violated and beaten, Lawrence discovered his taste for pain and humiliation. Michael focussed on an old photograph. Lawrence was wearing long white robes and had narrowed his eyes against the sunlight. He looked young, salty, tiny and beautiful.

  Michael took his first Viagra and called Lawrence up direct from the Transjordan. Lawrence arrived and blinked. Michael had not expected Lawrence’s eyes. They were as stilling as ice and the same colour and they fixed on Michael and were full of doubt. Lawrence was creased from too much sun, but otherwise, he had the face of a ruthlessly honest, difficult teenager. His long Arab robe was stained yellow. Michael smelled dust and eau de cologne.

  Lawrence stood dazed for a moment. He stared at the huge blank staring eye of the television and then strode to the window and looked out over the street. The parked cars were lined up, the morning’s light shower drying on their hoods. Lawrence was slim and precisely placed, leaning sideways, his legs akimbo in the way a dancer’s might be askew for effect. He held one forearm straight up, clenching the wrist with his other hand. Michael would have called him squiggly, which meant tiny and effeminate, if the gesture had not also given Lawrence the air of a warrior.

  Michael coughed. ‘Would you like to use the shower?’

  Lawrence bowed once and said in a light voice, ‘That would be pleasant. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  Without any kind of ceremony, Lawrence began to disrobe. He calmly released and then folded his headdress over the arm of Michael’s sofa bed. When Michael returned with a clean towel, Lawrence was nude, waiting patiently, holding his wrist again. His stomach was the flattest, hardest, most ribbed with muscle that Michael had ever seen. He could see the striations of the muscles through his skin.

  Michael indicated the way to the bathroom and showed Lawrence how the shower worked.

  ‘It has a pump?’ Lawrence asked.

  ‘Yeah, I guess so. There’s a switch you have to turn on, only I leave it on all the time.’

  ‘Water,’ said Lawrence in a slightly wondering voice.

  He made Michael feel graceless. Michael was never prepared for his creations to be more powerful than he was. And yet he should be prepared for it; they somehow were; as if they used him as a filter to strain their impurities. Thinking of the neighbours and what he hoped was to come he pulled the curtains shut. And finally, he picked up the blue and white paper that enfolded his Viagra and finally read its small blue print. The instructions said: take one hour before intercourse. Michael was going to have to engage Lawrence of Arabia in an hour’s conversation.

  Lawrence re-entered the room, moving without sound, without even disturbing the air. He was unashamed of his nakedness and was slightly erect, perhaps because his relative vulnerability excited him.

  ‘So,’ Lawrence asked, and began towelling himself vigorously as if to chafe away a layer of skin. He still smelled of sweat. ‘What year is it?’

  Michael told him.

  ‘Is there a state of Israel?’

  ‘Yes.’ Michael felt awkward standing, but somehow unwilling to sit on the sofa.

  ‘What has it done to the Arabs?’

  ‘Moved them to one side. Integrated some of them into the state of Israel. Fought wars with the others.’

  Lawrence rubbed; streaks of pink abrasion began to appear on his milk-white legs. ‘Two great people destroyed. The last breath of British imperialism.’

  Lawrence shook his head and sat down on Michael’s living-room carpet with the abruptness of a wolf. He looked at Michael and Michael saw that yes, the blue-grey eyes were those of a wolf, in a boyish scholar’s face, prematurely aged.

  ‘Sit next to me,’ Lawrence said, kindly. He looked utterly at home on the desert-coloured carpet.

  Michael did, stiffly.

  ‘I had a wonderful death. Don’t you think? Still young on a motorcycle.’

  Michael smiled at the pride. ‘It is something of a prototype.’

  ‘I hope that doesn’t mean people imitate it!’

  ‘No. But live fast, die young, James Dean, that kind of thing is around, but not really because of you.’

  Lawrence’s head dipped in frustration. ‘My entire life was spent trying to avoid power.’

  His skinny body, the slightly awkward way it moved – oh, God, it reminded Michael of Phil. The pubes were shaved like an Arab’s. Like a young boy just come into puberty. How many people does this man contain?

  ‘Why avoid power?’

  The grey eyes looked up, undeniable. ‘Because I could have destroyed the world. I had it in me.’

  From nowhere there was a yellow, rolled-up cigarette, lit and smelling of hashish. ‘And because wisdom does not lie in power. You must have the potential for power, but use the power for different things. I wanted to be wise. I failed of course. I wanted to be a poet and a warrior and an historian.’ The face closed slightly with tension. ‘Do people still read my book?’

  Michael did not have the heart to tell him that he had read only parts of it and thought it was horribly overwritten. ‘It’s everywhere. Though, to tell you the truth, most people see the movie.’

  Lawrence closed his eyes and went very still. ‘They made a film,’ he said, as if in dread.

  ‘I’ve got it on video; do you want to see it?’

  ‘No!’ said fiercely. ‘Thank you,’ said gently. ‘It was kind of you to offer. I can imagine that the movie is very romantic. For those of us who understand English, the verb to romance means to lie.’

  Hospitality, Michael thought, Arab hospitality. He had difficulty fighting his way to his knees. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Tea would be lovely, thank you,’ said Lawrence and rewarded him with the most beautiful of smiles under the most doubtful of eyes.

  Lawrence made Michael feel lonely. Michael asked him, ‘Come and talk to me while I make it?’

  Lawrence slid to his feet, as if gravity worked in reverse for him. H
e padded behind Michael into the kitchen.

  Michael asked, ‘Is tea all right? Are you hungry?’

  ‘I try to be independent of food,’ said Lawrence smiling, grasping his wrist again.

  Michael was cursing his ignorance. It wasn’t that he had only skimmed The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He realized he knew nothing of the history. There must be a thousand questions that an educated person could ask Lawrence of Arabia. Michael had only one.

  ‘Is it true that you had many Arab lovers?’

  ‘No,’ replied Lawrence. ‘I had very few.’

  ‘Is it true that your book is dedicated…’

  ‘Yes.’ Lawrence cut him off with a single, perfectly timed downward nod of the head. ‘We all have a love of our life.’

  Michael lowered his eyes and lapsed into a podgy English miserablism. ‘I wish I did.’

  ‘Tuh,’ said Lawrence, a kind of chuckle, dismissive but affectionate. He leaned against the archway into the kitchen. He looked like a teenage girl, a bold Italian gamine, leaning against the village fountain. ‘You may just have met him,’ he said lightly, his eyes hooded, his smile teasing. He was naked, but clothed in something other. It was Michael who was embarrassed.

  Michael clattered the teapot and cups onto a tray, and carried it rattling into the sitting room. They sat down on the carpet again, and Lawrence imperceptibly took over the serving of the tea.

  Lawrence passed Michael a cup. It went out like a heartfelt gesture. ‘What the Arabs taught me is that eloquence, even when overwrought or extravagant as some of their verse appears to be in translation, has a shape, an architecture that carries its own meaning.’ Lawrence placed the teapot and sugar bowl on the carpet in a pattern as formed as a cuneiform wordsign from Nineveh. ‘This shapeliness is mirrored in their calligraphy, in which the writing becomes a dance. The strange effect of all this is that in practice, and I mean the practice of love, their sexual cues are verbal. Ours are visual, related usually to looks. Theirs are veiled physically, but naked verbally. They say things such as, “Love exists to grow a new part of the soul, as my love for you has done. So even in Paradise, there will be part of my soul called Lawrence.”’