Lust Or No Harm Done

by Geoff Ryman

  And you are strong and you are physical and you are sensual and you are loving, and what you see is what you get – a woman with liquor on her breath. You want a nice girl. But you don't want a Catholic-ridden, uneducated, old-fashioned Mexican girl, and you don't want a slut of an Anglo, and you won't get the kind of girls your brothers marry. Their wives came from good homes, spoke Spanish with an American accent, cooked chicken in chocolate sauce, and went on to higher degrees.

  The English girl from Sheffield had seemed a perfect way out. She had red hair, and a kind, long, fragile face that was ordinary and kinda classy at the same time. She was all agog with Louis for all the wrong reasons. He was a way out for her too.

  God, the things Michael's mother gave away without realizing. She really didn't understand that a Marine Sergeant would not have a lot of money. The upholstering of American life is very difficult for a Brit to read. An American can have a house in some exotic-sounding California town and it can have a swimming pool, but that does not mean he is rich. His brother may be a lawyer, but that does not mean, as it assuredly does in Britain, that he is likely to be from the top social drawer.

  His mother's sexuality had betrayed her spirited but fearful self. She married for love, but she didn't really want to live as someone with a Spanish surname five thousand miles away. If she had been braver and less tough, if she had moved to Southern California with her handsome husband, she might have been happy.

  Instead, she insisted her husband stay in England. It was not her way to clean house and pretend to be all glamorous. She relaxed into being a housewife and began to look dowdy. There was no way he was going to quit the Marines, and in any event, what was he supposed to do in England? He had no hold on English culture, English life, English power. So he went back and she did not.

  In a curious way, a woman with a child does not need love as badly as a man who has no wife and not much social standing. A man like that might need love more. Maybe a man from a big, loving Latin family would inherit a great and unused capacity for love.

  And suddenly there is his son, his English son, a bit stuck-up, a bit weedy, kind of a bookworm, but you know? That kind of makes his old man proud of him. It makes his old man think: I can help make somebody who turns out that different from me. And I can tell my own mother, hey Mom, I didn't let you down. I didn't become no lawyer like my brother, and I got divorced, but I did one good thing in my life. I made my Michael. And you know Mom, my Michael wants to live with me. This guy could go to Oxford, he could talk with the children of aristocrats, hey, he doesn't even like Southern California. But my son wants to live with me.

  All that summer, Michael and Louis made their plans.

  Michael would pass his GCSEs in June the next year, and then spend six months studying to take the SAT test. Then Michael would apply for a dual passport. He began to sign his full name: Michael Louis Oliveira Blasco.

  Using his Latin name made Michael feel wobbly inside, as if he had changed his name to join his father, as if indeed they had in some way merged identities. It felt as if he were going public, as if he were promising someone never to love anyone else. He would repeat that new name to himself over and over in a whisper.

  Thoughts of his father drove out thoughts of anyone else. The beaches of California are not short of handsome men wearing little clothing. They had no power to turn Michael Louis Oliveira Blasco's head or heart. The magic of naming echoed what had happened in biological fact. Michael's ego had melted down and merged with someone else's. He had married his father.

  Mi macho, como te amo.

  There was nothing else in Michael's life for over a month. Love made him numb. He and his Dad came back from a movie and a slightly beery dinner. It was eleven at night – eight in the morning in England. Michael rang home and finally told his mother of his decision, and then took everything one step further.

  His father had drunk a bit too much. He couldn't handle drink that well. He was a bit woozy and his black eyes swam with love. Michael wanted to kiss him. Instead, he took his hand and said, 'Dad. I've decided. I'm not going to go back to England.'

  His father's eyes dimmed. 'What do you mean?'

  'I'm going to stay here. At the end of this summer? I'll finish high school in Oceanside.'

  'Oh man.' His father let Michael's hand drop. He covered his head with both hands. 'Man, oh man.' He swayed as if under a burden. 'You can't treat your mother like that, Mike. You're too old to give in to emotion like that. You got to do the right thing.' The words were laboured, like he was remembering lines from a John Wayne script. 'You got to go back home to your mother and we'll do this thing the right way.'

  His face looked blue-white and blotchy.

  'It's what I want to do.'

  Isn't that what you want?

  His father sniffed and moved away from him, took a swig from the bottle and as if he had heard Michael's unspoken question, shook his head, no.

  Michael went to bed a bit drunk, and slept well enough until about 5 am, when he suddenly was awake, wide awake, with the truth as clear as if it were squatting on his chest.

  I love my own father like I should be loving someone my own age.

  Michael, Michael, what do you think you're doing? There is no one else in the world doing this, there isn't even any name for what you are doing. You are out there, man, you are way, way out there.

  What are you doing to your mother? She's the one who's actually been there all your life, she's the one who's done all the paying. Now, just when you're growing up and she's getting old, you want to take off and leave her.

  And you want… there really was almost no way to say it. You want your father. You want to settle in with your Dad and you want…

  Though he's a Catholic he was born semi-circumcised so the head of his dick always shows and it's always clean and before I sleep and when I wake up I think of the head of that cock in my mouth. It's all I want.

  You have to stop it, Michael. This is crazy. Go on home at the end of summer and get over it. That's all he wants. Go home and let the whole idea of living with him in America dissolve.

  What are you going to tell him? Are you going to say, Dad I'm a faggot and I'm in love with you and I want to live with you like a pair of hairdressers? No, you're not going say that, so what the fuck are you going to say?

  You're going to say, Dad, I've changed my mind, I don't want to live with a dumb Marine. I'll say I've decided that English universities are better.

  He'll pretend that's OK, OK with him, and he'll cough to clear his throat instead of crying, and he'll put on those mirror shades so I can't see his eyes, and when he drives he'll thump the steering wheel hard for no reason.

  Real great, Michael. Superb. Either way, you're going to hurt him. Aw shit, what have you done?

  It was a long time to stay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Michael was not strong. He slipped back into reverie. He imagined that Louis was not his father at all, and that they had gone backpacking in the wilds, washing in lakes, and holding each other at night. He imagined them making love, imagining trailing his face down his father's body. He masturbated, imagining making love to him, and mopped up with the tissues he now kept by the bed. He fooled himself with imaginings. He went to sleep and woke up, lulled and soothed, with the feeling that it would all be OK somehow.

  Michael walked out to the kitchen later, in his Y-fronts with a morning hard-on.

  'Man, you look like I feel,' said Dad, a remark open to interpretation. He reached for the coffee-pot. 'You're like me, you can't wake up without caffeine.'

  Flawless, unchanging California sunshine came through the windows. It would be another beautiful day, with Oceanside ten degrees cooler than anywhere else.

  Michael couldn't even remember why he had been so concerned.

  His Dad went to work, and Michael lay on the bed and masturbated again, dreaming of him. The dream this time was more direct: they were still father and son, but no one knew anything. They lived together
as partners, they slept in the same bed and Michael swung his bag of books into the car every morning and drove off to UC San Diego. It took people years to realize what was going on. They were shocked at first, Mom, Michael's uncles, but when they saw it was love, they got used to it. They grew to understand. It was the image of sleeping all night, his face cushioned on his father's breast, that made Michael come.

  Then he got up and looked at the curriculum covered by the SAT test, and made a list of American textbooks and thought of joining summer school. And after that there would be nothing to do except loll on the beach all day dreaming of his father. And he would go to the camp, and see his father in the nude, and run with his father and dream with his father of the life they both wanted to build together.

  Driven mad by the imperatives of love, Michael became sure his father wanted the same thing.

  As they started the run, Dad slapped Michael's butt. He looked at Michael in the shower and said, 'Man, what do you call that thing? Is that a dick? It looks like it belongs on a horse, man!' His father walked on the pier with an arm on Michael's shoulder. He hugged him as they watched television on the sofa.

  The liquid looks of love, the hugs, the sudden rufflings of his hair, the kisses sometimes even on the mouth, thrilled Michael, and warmed his heart, and made him dream, and convinced him that they were, in everything but consummation, lovers.

  Michael did not imagine, even in his daydreams, that they would proceed immediately to sex. Sex would emerge almost as an afterthought, almost as a by-product of complete intimacy. They would share meals, share showers, share food, share beds, and at some quiet moment, foreheads touching, they would proceed to make love.

  Michael dreamed of the moment that his father would finally say something. He imagined it in some detail. His father would begin quietly, shy. It would be no easy thing for a Marine to admit that he – and he would look down, smiling – that he loved Michael. He knew such a thing was a bit unusual but he had seen something in Michael's eyes, something that at first he wanted not to see.

  Michael was romancing.

  He began to be sure, from his father's eyes. He was sure from the totally comfortable way that he would sometimes break into terrible campfire songs that he loved him too. His father was too shy to say so. His father had always been so masculine; so conventional. It would be hard for anyone to accept, let alone a conservative man whose utterly traditional American values were underpinned with an equally unforgiving Catholicism.

  The thought came: you have to help him, Michael. You can't leave him in doubt. It'll be easier for you, Michael: you're from the younger generation. And then it will be in the open. And then it will happen.

  Michael began to rehearse how he would do it. He would sit and start a serious, adult conversation. Dad, he would say, let's be honest about this… what's happening. Let's just say it. Dad, you and I well… we are…

  Every time, imagination faltered. Every time the words, the magically correct words, would not formulate themselves. The right words were like the Loch Ness monster, expected, believed in, but swimming in the depths.

  Michael convinced himself that it was his duty to make the situation clear.

  And all the while love grew stronger. Michael would deliberately make his bed with his father's old sheets. Night after night, he would breathe him in. Michael would take his father's underwear, his swimsuits, anything personal and touched by him. He would take the swimsuit to bed with him and press it up against his face. Or he would wear his father's underpants, to feel his genitals cradled where his father's had been cradled. He would wear them secretly all through the day, as he drove to UCSD library to see what a university science course really expected you to know. It was as if he could feel himself cupped by his father, held.

  By the end of those two months, everything about his father, from his name to his eyes, to his hands and feet, to the spreckles of his urine on the toilet seat, to his dirty knives and forks, to his hairs in the hair brush, to old photographs of him when he was Michael's age, to his letterman's jacket, to his tight jeans, to his loose shorts, to his white running socks, to the warmth he left behind him on the sofa, to his footprints in the sand and the imprint of sand on the bum of his wet swimming shorts, to the sand that fell from his feet when he dried them on the landing of the condo – everything about him made Michael feel loose and shivery, could moisten the tip of his penis.

  It became, simply, an overwhelming, instinctual imperative. Michael needed his father to penetrate him, to leave his seed.

  Every time his father laughed, every time he lightly touched Michael, every time he wrestled with him out of sheer high spirits and physical boisterousness, intertwining arms and necks and legs, Michael became more convinced.

  His father wanted it too.

  Why couldn't either of them say anything?

  You're old, Dad; you come from a religious background. You're a big bad Marine, Dad. All of that makes it hard for you. I'll make it easy.

  The words fail because they just say it, and that makes it sound weird and strange and it's not. It's just love. So why use words?

  All I need to do is come to you, Dad. All I need to do is lie next to you and kiss you, and we will be together.

  Michael, why are you such a coward? Michael, you know it's up to you. You can't just lie here night after night, dreaming of him, hearing him in the next room, seeing him day in day out, seeing him naked, seeing the way he looks at you. Michael you must, Michael you have to. Just do it, Michael. Just be honest.

  So finally, a week before he was due to go back home, on 7 September 1976 at 2.00 am, having lain awake for four hours, Michael finally said to himself, That's it. I can't stand this. This has to end. It has to end now. He kicked off the covers.

  Do it, Michael.

  He stood up.

  I'm actually doing this.

  He felt the cold, cup-shaped American doorknob.

  I'm going to touch you there. I'll know what it's like.

  Michael listened as the door clicked open.

  I'll finally, finally know what a cock is like in my mouth. I'll finally know what your cock is like. I don't want it from anyone other than you.

  Can you hear me, Dad; can you hear my feet on the carpet? Have you lain awake all night, thinking of me? Are you sitting up with a start, thinking, is that Mike? You'll say, naw, he's just going to the john. He doesn't even know what's going on. Mike's innocent.

  Well, I'm not innocent, Dad. I know what I'm doing. I'm doing it for both of us. We don't need to be afraid. We don't need to tell anyone what we've done. We can live together, father and son. You'll know when I touch you. You'll know when we kiss. I've just got to do this. I'll bust wide open if I don't.

  The door hangs open. I can smell you. I can hear you breathe.

  I stand over you. How do I do this? You look so sealed in the sheet, all wrapped around, how do I peel it? Do I just land next to you? Will my weight hurt you? I'm not so little now, as I used to be. Do I just lie down on the edge of the bed and kiss you?

  Dad, help me, I don't know what to do.

  Maybe you'll just keep on sleeping. Maybe you'll never know. Maybe I'll just touch you, hold you and you won't notice. You'll think it was just a dream, something not real, something that happened another time, another place.

  No harm done.

  So Michael sits down on the floor and feels the rough fur of the carpet on his bare ass, and he reaches in under the sheet, and goes up the cool soft thigh and feels the tip of his father's big-headed penis and takes it firmly in his grasp.

  Everything is still for a minute. Then Michael moves his hand around it, over it, to feel its sleeping shape. At last, I'm touching you; I'm holding it. It feels just like I always imagined, big and small, swollen and soft. Sweet. It feels sweet. It feels like it is meant for expressing love.

  Suddenly, his father's eyes snap open and glare into his.

  There is no confusion, no awakening befuddlement. His fath
er's eyes are hawk-like, angry, watchful, and they stare into Michael's face. It is as if they are made of ice, at sea, and glow faintly in the dark.

  'Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you doing?'

  And his father scuttles back from him.

  Sergeant Blasco crowds himself against the back of the bed. 'What are you doing, Michael?'

  He lunges sideways, fumbles with the neck of the lamp, and switches it on. Michael sees the eyes again, and thinks, oh fuck, oh no. Something seems to be sucking his stomach out through his ass.

  Michael knows instantly, with horrible, shrivelling certainty, what the situation is. He was wrong, he had been wrong about it all. But his mouth, and another part of his brain, carry on, try to make the situation change, by a miracle, by sympathetic magic.

  'I was trying to make it easy for you.' Michael feels skinny, like a concentration-camp victim, naked with ribs showing through, and he is nervously biting both the tip of his index finger and thumb.

  'Trying to make what easy for me, Michael?' His father has pulled up a sheet over his loins. He jerks it higher, to cover his tits.

  Michael starts to blub, he can't say it because to say it, and see the reaction would be the final end of the dream.

  'You were stroking my dick, Michael!'

  His father has gone relentless, professional. He is trained to seek out problems and hound them. 'Make what easy for me, Michael?'

  Michael blubs it out now, as a confession, an admission of error with no hope of making anything right. 'To make love.'

  His father thinks he hasn't heard right. 'To make love? Is that what you said? Is that what you said to me, Michael?'

  Michael nods, knowing his whole face has gone as bleary as semen, all tears and spit.