Lust Or No Harm Done

by Geoff Ryman

  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 the 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. Inte
grated 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. He 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." '

  'Someone said that to you?' asked Michael in wonder. Doh. Lawrence 's eyes were filmed over. His voice was slightly rougher when he said, 'You can sit closer to me, if that is your desire.'

  Michael understood that this was an act of kindness, to understand and to do all of the work. Michael smiled at himself, to acknowledge that he was behind in the game. Feeling thick-arsed, Michael snailed himself in heaving stages six inches nearer to Lawrence.

  'You have never suffered physically,' judged Lawrence.

  Michael shook his head, no.

  'I always made myself suffer physically, so that I would be enduring when I most needed to be. I would do without food or sleep or water. I would walk barefoot miles over rocks, so that I would disdain the physical.'

  Michael was puzzling his way through the words. 'It's true. The worst I've had is a sprained ankle.'

  The heat and the dust and starvation all burn away illusion. The body is an illusion.'

  Michael was beginning to fall in love.

  Lawrence looked at him, fiercely. 'I have never,' he said, 'allowed myself to achieve a sexual climax.'

  Michael was beginning to fall out of love. Lawrence of Arabia was barking mad.

  Then Lawrence of Arabia pulled Michael to him. The arms were still hot from sunlight. The wolf eyes blazed with a demand. They were insisting. They were insisting on something that was only somewhat like sex.

  'Be my desert,' Lawrence demanded. 'Be my sunlight. Burn me.'

  Michael looked at his watch. 'I have to keep you talking for twenty more minutes.'

  'Is this a spiritual exercise?' Lawrence asked, hungry to be told that yes, it was a deliberate act of withholding, a reining in.

  'No. No, it's a medical one.' Michael's Viagra hour was not over. He checked for any of the side effects: flushed cheeks, a slight sense of palpitation in the hands and heart.

  'Is the condition chronic?'

  'Ah. Yes, actually, it is.'

  'Then you do know pain,' said Lawrence, his voice sinking several octaves lower. 'Are you in pain now?' The thought seemed to entice Lawrence. He began to stroke Michael's temples.

  'I am beginning to get a mild headache.' That was a side effect too. Gosh, Viagra was fun. Michael couldn't wait for the splintered blue plates in his vision, either, especially the ones with zigzag flashing edges.

  'Then I bind myself to that vow also,' announced Lawrence, and sat back.

  Then he announced, 'To be really alive, you have to be prepared to die.'

  Michael thought: if Viagra can work against this, it can work against anything.

  They spent the next twenty minutes discussing pottery shards. Lawrence loved his subject, Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, and the excavation of Nineveh. 'It is a tonic against romance, to read the tablets. They are all contracts, the equivalent of shopping lists.' They finished the tea. Lawrence nodded and then turned and stretched himself out, face down on the carpet. He saw Michael's belt and asked to be struck with it. 'There is to be no indulgence,' he said. 'Use the end with the buckle. There should never be any shirking of the worst.'

  Michael had never thought of sex as a trial of endurance. 'Um. Are you sure this is necessary?'


  'It stops me becoming effeminate,' said Lawrence.

  Oh no it doesn't, thought Michael.

  The perfect buttocks wobbled. Without any fuss, no trumpets, or even any particular sensation, it was simply noticeable that Michael's penis was erect. His temples thumped with an increased flow of blood, and his thumbs felt curiously weak as they held the belt. Something was shivery and loose, not in his body, but in his mind.

  Michael struck the buttocks, and they tensed. 'Is that enough?' he asked. Lawrence shook his head, no. 'Harder,' he said once. Michael struck again until the buttocks reddened and something like anger rose up in him.

  Michael held down Lawrence 's tiny arms and pushed him down flat and mounted him, definitively. Lawrence had an ugly anus, lumpy and twisted shut several times, rolling over itself. Michael forced himself through the resistance of the sphincter. Lawrence did not react. The cock pumped as if all by itself, and Lawrence looked grim as if enduring something dreadful. Michael kept pumping and pumping, and the idea came to him: perhaps science had freed him after all, given him back to himself.

  But he didn't come.

  Finally, he just stopped.

  'You withheld,' said Lawrence. 'So did I. ' He lay still as if broken. Michael slid back from him, and tried to coax him to roll over, to speak to him. Like a wounded child, Lawrence cast off Michael's hands.

  'I have allowed you to violate the integrity of my body,' he said, and buried his face.

  Michael felt like an unwanted guest at a wedding. He wanted to bring back the beauty of an hour before. 'Would you like some more tea?'

  'I want some clean fresh air,' said Lawrence, angrily, to the carpet.

  The hashish cigarette still smouldered on the fake wood tray. He's burnt my tray, Michael thought and then remembered. He can burn nothing; he's an Angel.

  He's powerless. Michael looked at the unmoving body.

  OK. He's from another age. All of this was inconceivably dirty and evil. Denial became all mixed up with the thing you desired. Denial made you able to ride in the desert with the Arabs. It made you tough. It meant that when you and they made love, you both understood each other's shame and guilt. They could respect and admire your shame and guilt as they admired your prowess. You are quintessential, Lawrence; you are genuinely warlike, as the English are. You are loyal and hard and self-sacrificing, and you regard militarism with its uniforms and flags and shouting and terrible music as irredeemably foolish.