by Geoff Ryman
It would not roll up again. He had to pull it off as a whole, turn it inside out, and try to slip it back on like a pair of stockings. Chris lay dazed and luxurious with waiting passivity.
‘Whew,’ said Michael, his poor little willy wet and limp, as if sweaty from too much work.
Chris was covered with golden fur. It was very soft to the touch, and masked his anus which, considering the beauty of most sphincters, served only to increase its allure. ‘Please,’ said Chris, once, sincerely. He loved being fucked. Once Michael was inside him, Chris moved his buttocks quickly back and forth, controlling the speed and depth of the thrust. Then he turned himself over onto his back, and raised his legs, his blue eyes yearning a simple request. Michael could do that, too, from the front. He could look into Chris’s eyes. He could kiss him. He could arch his back and kiss Chris’s nipples.
Michael could not come. Viagra had given him the means, but not the ends. Chris did not mind. It was half past midnight before Chris finally allowed himself to come, and Michael, out of a mingling of motives, pretended to come at the same time as well. He faked an orgasm. And then Chris curled up next to him, and placed his face against Michael’s chest and talked.
The pub was Chris’s whole world. The only time the job got a bit rough was after a match and people had to wait for a train. You had to get a bit tough with them then. The worst was when staff started filching drinks; it took away all your profit. It was such a thoughtless thing to do. At the end of the day, it was their jobs on the line as well. Finally you had to fire them; there was no alternative. That’s why he preferred hiring women, older women, you know: they were just more reliable.
Chris wanted to be unburdened. He shared an ex-council flat with another guy. They weren’t lovers or anything. The guy kept taking things from the fridge, which meant Chris got home late and found there was nothing to eat. Michael felt for him and kissed his forehead. Chris looked up, pleased and surprised, and they kissed again, tasting tongues. They paused a moment, and then Chris decided.
‘I’d like to stay, but I prefer my own bed. Do you mind?’
They got dressed modestly again, backs turned towards each other. Michael still needed to pull on his socks when Chris said, ‘Well, that’s it then.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s my card. You can ring me at work, if you like.’ His expression was unusual for a man in his thirties. It was hopeful. He gave a shrug, as if to say, if you don’t, you don’t. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and something awkward like you have a beautiful cock.
Michael’s big heavy door slammed grumpily shut, as if annoyed to be woken up in the middle of the night. The corridor outside had been newly carpeted. Michael couldn’t hear the retreating footsteps. Michael pondered the meaning of that business card.
First time lucky, he thought.
The number of times Michael had brought men back: how often had any of them left an address? What a difference Viagra makes, eh? Chris liked being fucked and I could fuck him. That’s a big difference. Chris had confused the Viagra for genuine sexual interest, perhaps even personal interest.
Chris was nice in a way that did not engage Michael. Michael suspected that he was boring. Chris would want cuddles and blockbuster videos on the telly in front of the sofa and would have even less to say about Michael’s work than Philip.
But Chris had left a business card. A business card meant trust. It meant that he thought you could ring back and not be an embarrassment. He might even be slightly proud of you ringing back. The middle-aged women he so enjoyed working with might guess, and raise an eyebrow. ‘He seemed rather nice,’ they might say, wishing Chris well. A steadily maintained smile and a flick of the eyebrow could more or less reply: well yes, actually, he is rather nice. Guess my luck must have changed.
Has it, Chris?
Did Michael really want an affair with a bar manager on Euston Road? Michael could have a love affair with the young Rock Hudson, or Steve Reeves who played Hercules, or Henry James. Did Michael really want that everyday ordinariness: the quick hug, the bland well-meant concern. Hiya, how did it go today?
Do you like him, Michael?
Michael heard the very quiet sound of the battery-operated clock on the bedside table. He didn’t know.
Viagra was like impotency. You didn’t know where it stopped and you began. If Michael had really been able to fuck someone for hours, it would mean something. It would mean that the heart and body were both engaged. Chris had a right not to be misled. He had dilated like his arse; opened up and welcomed and taken a risk. Michael couldn’t trust his body to tell him anything. All he could do was take a gamble, a flutter the English called it, a flutter of wings, of the pulse, of the heart.
He could call Chris’s work now and leave a message. It would be there when he arrived in the morning.
Quick, Michael, before you lose the card and it drifts out of existence as surely as if it had come from an Angel.
‘Hello, you’ve reached the Milliner’s Arms, thirty-seven Euston Road. There’s nobody here right now, but if you’d like to leave a message…’ Chris’s voice.
We’ll get back to you.
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
‘Hi. Um, this is a message for Chris, from Michael. Your card was not wasted. Can you call me at…’
They went to a movie together.
It was an American blockbuster, with a soundtrack of wailing Irish pipes. Halfway through it, the American heroine got real and danced a jig with down-home Irish, who were just so authentic, because they were poor and unselfconscious.
Chris was outraged. ‘It’s the bloody Americans being more Irish than the Irish again. Why do they always show us like that, like we’re all fucking Leprechauns and can’t go to the supermarket without dancing a jig.’
They went to a Pizza Express and Michael confirmed that Chris was a man without ambition. He talked about fridge freezers and plumbing. He talked about his Mum moving in with his sister. Michael’s heart went out to him, because he knew that this was a man who wanted to set up a home with someone.
Chris probably saw that. ‘I thought I might like to go to India, when I’ve saved up enough,’ he said, a gesture towards the exotic. He still looked hopeful. Michael wanted to say something clever and a bit acid like, ‘Travel narrows the mind.’
There was an awkwardness in the conversation where the laughs should have been. Unambitious people want comfort and fun: a bit of a laugh. Michael didn’t do bits of laughs. Maybe I’m the boring one, he thought. He dredged deep to find something amusing to say.
He came up with his nest of stories about the Sacramento River delta: his hilarious boating holiday with his Dad. The story got interrupted because Chris wanted to know more about shopping malls and California dope. The story got going again, and Michael told him how they had boated off and forgot the dog on a country dock. Chris failed to see any humour. ‘The poor thing,’ he said.
‘Wait a second. We came back, and saw a pooch running up and down the dock. And Dad said, Gosh, that looks just like Peaches the Pooch and I said Dad, that is Peaches the Pooch.’
‘She was desperate, then, wasn’t she?’
‘Yeah, well, there was this sorta moment when we both realized what had happened. I stuck my head out of the cabin and called Peaches, thinking she’d be on deck, but it was the pooch on the dock that barked at me.’
Chris tutted and shook his head. ‘Awww,’ he said.
Michael persevered. He and Dad had dropped anchor out in the middle of the river. The next morning was the lowest tide of the year. They woke up to find themselves miles from land on a mud flat that reached the horizon. The boat was sinking in it. It leaned to one side and the kitchen cupboard sprang open, and all these tins spilled out and rolled all over the place like bowling balls.
‘Anyway Peaches started running round and round the deck, and we couldn’t figure out why. And suddenly I said, Dad, she needs to go for a walk!’
‘Well, she was a poor little thing then, wasn’t she? W
hy take her with you on a houseboat? Couldn’t you have left her with friends?’
Michael relented. ‘You know, most people find this story funny. I don’t know many funny stories, and this is my effort to, like, be amusing.’
‘Thank you,’ said Chris perfectly seriously.
Michael took a deep breath. ‘Yeah. You’re welcome. Anyway, the dog can’t take it any more and suddenly she just jumps off the deck and jumps into the marsh. And she disappears. She just completely sinks into the mud.’
Chris covered his mouth. ‘Oh my God, what did you do?’
Michael was still waiting for laughs. ‘I jumped in after her. And I sank too.’
Bubbles of marsh gas had tickled his feet and smelled like farts. Michael reached into the ooze and pulled poor Peaches out. They both emerged stinking with no way to wash. Chris reacted as if Michael was describing a friend’s death from cancer.
‘Anyway, Dad said you’re not coming onto my boat. I mean we smelled like a sewer. And so we climbed into the dinghy and just sat there.’
‘Oh, it sounds disgusting,’ said Chris.
‘Actually, I still find it kind of funny.’
‘Oh.’
‘I was telling it as a joke.’
‘Were you? I was thinking it didn’t sound too funny at the time, being banished by your Dad.’
‘I wasn’t being banished. I mean, I couldn’t go on board, that was all.’
‘Sorry.’
So much for telling jokes.
‘Actually, I was bloody angry,’ said Michael.
And that made Chris laugh. ‘I’d have fucking laid one on him.’
‘Oh no you wouldn’t. Not if you saw my Dad. My Dad was a really big guy. In fact, he was a Marine, which is why we lived where we lived near Camp Pendleton. No, he was a really big man.’
‘He sounds fanciable, your father. Do you think you could introduce us?’
And Michael heard himself say, ‘I did fancy him, actually.’
Yup. There you go. Chris’s face froze.
Michael kept on like it was a funny story. It was some kind of revenge for the funny story. Part of Chris made him angry. ‘Well, I didn’t see him a lot; he never felt like my father and he was built like, whatever, and he was really handsome, and competent, and smart and I just fell in love … and one night … I made a pass at him.’
Chris went rather still. ‘What did he do?’
Michael smiled. ‘He went berserk. He rang my Mom.’
Chris saw the humour. He chuckled. ‘That sounds awful. That sounds beyond awful.’
Michael didn’t. ‘It was a laugh riot.’
‘I’m … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, but it does sound like some kind of living end.’
‘That and more. I’m impotent, Chris. Last night was a fake. It was a pill, it was Viagra.’
Chris looked suddenly dark. ‘It still seemed pretty good.’
There was something else he needed to see.
‘Do you want to see my father? Do you want to see how good-looking he really was?’
Chris began to look troubled, he sulked a bit; his hot date had turned out to be a flake. ‘You have a photograph?’
‘More than that. Turn and look at the men’s room door, and in a second, he’ll come through it, wearing nothing but those swimming trunks he wore all that summer boating holiday. Turn around, Chris. Look. Now.’
The doors swung open, and out came a man wearing surfer shorts. The shorts were blue with a half-inch band of white around every edge. He was tall and square at the same time, with shoulders like volleyballs, and a bare chest that seemed to support breasts, and a collarbone that was parallel to the floor, stretching his trunk wide. He had a face a bit like a more thickset, Latin Gregory Peck, decent, almost wise. The eyes were absolutely black, darker even than Michael’s. The crew cut was savage, unflattering. The thighs and calves were a particular feature; this was a big man who could sprint.
Marine Staff Sergeant Louis Blasco. Eventually made Master Sergeant, the last two years Michael knew him.
Staff Sergeant Blasco paused, looked confused, as if he’d lost his way. Drugs, you would think. A man wearing nothing but swimming trunks stumbles out of a toilet and looks confused. Conversation in the restaurant settled in a hush like the surf on Oceanside Beach.
OK, Dad. Michael toyed with the idea of making his father drop his shorts. To avenge himself. So that big uncircumcised American head could show itself. So Michael could see it again.
Michael said, ‘He’s dead now, actually.’
He made his father march quickly out of the restaurant.
* * *
Back home, Michael called up Henry. His Angel sat at the foot of the bed.
‘Henry, it didn’t work.’
‘What happened?’
‘The same thing that always happens. I sent him away. I’ve spent all my life sending people away. I told him something I’ve never told anyone else.’
‘Ah,’ said Henry and sat back.
‘It just came bubbling out of me. I was mad at him, and I just suddenly heard myself say it.’
‘What did you say to him, Michael?’
Michael felt a rush, as if he were in aeroplane, and it was taking off. ‘I told him something about my father.’
‘Something you’ve never told anyone else?’ Henry took hold of Michael’s hand and coaxed him by rubbing it.
Michael just nodded. He let go of his breath. He’d been holding it without realizing.
‘Maybe the time’s finally come. Why don’t you tell me?’ the Angel asked.
So, finally, Michael did.
What’s eating Michael Blasco?
At twelve years old, Michael believed in love. He believed that love was the natural state. If you were out of love, then through a kind of natural gravity you would roll back into it. Michael believed that some day he would roll home.
Home was probably Romford, though Mum still sounded like she was from Sheffield. Michael was a mystery to his mother. His underwear was going crisp and no one had ever told Mum about wet dreams. She accused him of masturbation, and knocked on the door of the toilet when he read comics, demanding ‘What are you doing in there?’ Michael’s puberty had been more traumatic for her than for him.
Michael’s visits to California became an escape to another world of beaches and palm trees. Coming back every two years was like visiting another self. This self was called Mikey or when he got older, Mike. Mike had his own room, which was full of things, neat things his Dad had bought him, boy things. They were just where he left them: well almost. His Dad had maybe moved the boy things forward to kind of emphasize them – the baseball glove, the Swiss Army knife, the bicycle-repair tools.
Michael would come back at twelve or fourteen, to find all of Mikey’s old things there. He could sit up late at night and read his old X Men comics. Sometimes there was a sense of homecoming. Hiya, how ya doing, his California self would say, perking up after two years without being used. Sometimes Michael would settle into Mike as if he were a sofa. Other times he was a bit frosty with his old self. At sixteen, his lip curled. X Men? You’re still into X Men, oh God, they’re terrible.
Michael would play his old records. His first love had been Mark Bolan and T-Rex and then, glistering with make-up, dear old Bowie.
This could cause some tension with his father. Dad thought rock music was socially destructive. He had few records himself. Staff Sergeant Blasco owned The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. In a strange convoluted way, this was to do with his Latin background. The Blasco family had been in California for 100 years and were thoroughly Americanized. That meant the Catholic League of Decency, and that meant Family Entertainment. At ten, at twelve, Michael heard and learned to love Camelot and Mary Poppins.
While other twelve-year-old kids were buying Grand Funk Railroad, Michael was seeking out the Original Cast Recording of Cinderella.
Michael played Cinderella year in, year out, at twelve, at fourt
een, even at sixteen. Maybe it was the link with England. Or maybe it was identification. In 1957, Julie Andrews had been twenty-two, the same age as Elvis Presley. Polished, operatic, old-fashioned she may have been, but everything she did crackled with a youthful energy that made Michael bounce. It was a feminine energy, something he could identify with. And this Cinderella was like him, stuck powerless and dreaming in a family that didn’t quite work.
There was one song, about sitting in your own little corner and dreaming of adventure, and that was what Michael was doing. There was magic, and Michael always loved magic. Cinderella insisted on it: impossible things happened every day.
And there was the soppy song about love, which Michael was ashamed of loving back. It was a song of disbelief, that the one we love is so beautiful.
Every year his father would greet him at the airport with a great bear hug. ‘Hey, Mikey, how’s it going?’
‘Fine, thanks Dad.’
Michael would be pressed up against the T-shirted pectorals and surrounded by the melon-like arms. Michael would look up to see something like his own face, as he wanted to be.
His father had a thick neck: it went straight down from his ears. His square jaw never seemed to need shaving. Mirror shades, laconically rotating chewing gum and a brutal crew cut all added up to the desired image. This was one tough hombre.
Michael would be both agog and dismayed, buffeted by alternative breakers of admiration and self-denigration. How could he ever hope to match his father?
Dad looked like someone who starred in police thrillers. He wore grey T-shirts with AFL logos. The tops of his father’s bare feet were always coated in sand from surfing, jogging or volleyball. Michael’s Dad played basketball with the Latino kids on the beach; he jogged from the camp to the power station beyond Carlsbad and back; he played touch football nearly incessantly. Every part of his body from his cheekbones to his feet was bronzed, lean, rounded, veined and gritty. He looked like Michael’s more popular older brother.