Lust

by Geoff Ryman

  When Michael was ten his Dad was Senior Drill at boot camp in San Diego. Staff Sergeant Blasco spent his days barking orders at intimidated new recruits. Michael sometimes watched from the back of the drill hall. ‘Tiger! Tiger! Kill, kill!’ the recruits would bellow in unison.

  ‘We break ’em down to build ’em up,’ his father said once, on the drive back home. Michael’s first two experimental weeks in America were spent in the top floor of a duplex near San Diego airport. ‘You see, Mikey, if there ever is a war then those guys won’t have time to think. We don’t want them to think. We want them to do. So we have to rehearse everything so much that they just do it automatically. That’s why we do all that animal stuff. I don’t want you to be embarrassed by it. All that animal imagery is real important to the psychology.’

  Michael sat looking at the billboards on the roadside, feeling pale and weedy.

  His father wanted high spirits. ‘So what animal are you, Mikey?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably a chicken.’

  ‘Oh, man. We gotta do something about that.’

  Sometimes Staff Sergeant Blasco was more like a Mom. He’d say Mike was looking kinda pale. Was he getting out? He was looking thin; maybe he’d like to stop and get something to eat? He’d slap Michael’s back to get an idea of its fleshiness. Didn’t Mike’s Mom feed him anything?

  ‘We gotta get you out on that beach. What sport you doing these days, Mikey?’

  Michael dreaded that question. Just the question alone made him feel cold and shivery and skinny. ‘Um … snooker? That’s something like billiards.’ California sunlight made Michael squint.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ his father would say, without commitment. ‘Snooker sounds cool. Listen, I know you have a lot of studying to do in England, but now that you’re here, maybe you’d like to join in with some of the stuff that’s going on in San Diego. I know you don’t play basketball or any of that stuff, but there’s a sailing club, tennis. All kinds of stuff. Some of the NCOs have set up a kind of sports club for the kids in the camp. Maybe you should check it out.’

  When Michael came back at twelve, his Dad had just been promoted from Staff Sergeant to Gunney. He worked in Camp Pendleton and so they lived in camp accommodation, a regulation bungalow with a regulation yard.

  Dad would have the guys in to watch the game, or he would host a staff barbecue, or there would be a sailing club annual accounts meeting. Marines with wives from Manila or Topeka would mingle in a tiny condo without a single book to talk a mix of baseball statistics, camp politics, shopping tips and the latest model cars.

  Sometimes they talked movies. An old guy, somebody’s granddad, asked Michael, ‘Have you seen that movie Poseidon Adventure yet?’

  ‘I thought it could have been better,’ said Michael. ‘I thought the ship turning upside down would be magic, but it wasn’t.’

  ‘Huh, huh, I love that accent of yours, Michael. Hey Louis, your kid talks better than you do!’

  ‘Don’t I know it!’ Louis shouted through the open back door. He was grilling hot dogs on the barbecue.

  Michael was still trying to talk movies. ‘I really like Planet of the Apes movies.’

  ‘Yeah, my grandson loves those too.’

  ‘He gets it all from his mother. She’s English!’ Louis called back, dumping chicken wings onto a plate and family history at the same time. His calf muscles looked like drumsticks, brown and sinewy.

  The old man asked, ‘You live in England most of the time, Michael?’

  ‘Yes sir.’ That ‘sir’ was American.

  ‘So you think you’ll probably be coming over here to live?’ The old man’s eyes narrowed and his mouth went thin from expectation.

  This was a trope. The little kid from England was now supposed to say oh yes, I want to live in America more than anything because there are beaches here and job opportunities and liberty and the Constitution and you can go to football games.

  Michael was English enough to resist being bullied into unwarranted enthusiasm. ‘I might come here, I haven’t really thought about it.’

  Michael had recently found himself corralled into the camp’s 4th of July pageant. He had to stand up on a stage in a hall and recite: ‘Hello, my name’s Michael. I’m from England and I want to know more about the Declaration of Independence.’ At least the kid from Chile got to ask about Daniel Boone.

  The old man took Michael seriously. ‘The schools here are real good if you’re thinking of going to university. Good colleges around here too.’

  Michael’s father shouted from the kitchen, ‘Mike’s the only guy in the family with any brains. What was that exam you took, Mikey? The elevensomething? Well, anyway, it’s like he’s a straight-A student.’

  ‘Is that so?’ the old man intoned. He didn’t have that much time for grades.

  Something in Michael wanted to twist the knife. ‘Actually, I can’t live in California. I’m allergic to sunlight.’

  ‘Allergic to sunlight.’ The old man cast a look back over his shoulder in case this was new to Michael’s father. ‘What are the symptoms, Mike?’

  ‘I go this strange shade of brown all over.’ It was a joke. It was a joke about Britain, you know, we never see the sun, so we don’t know about tanning. Unfortunately Michael had committed a breach of etiquette. You never tell a conservative American a joke without first signalling and confirming that what will follow is a caprice meant only to amuse.

  The grandfather leaned forward, serious and concerned. ‘I mean strange how?’

  ‘Dead weird. I mean, where the sun doesn’t hit, like under my shorts, it stays white, and you can see the line where the brown stops.’

  The old guy blinked in confusion. ‘But does it interfere with your activities? Sports, going to the beach, community work?’

  ‘Oh it doesn’t hurt or anything.’

  ‘Well. How does it differ from a tan?’

  ‘Tan?’ Michael said, rounding his vowels to Terry-Thomas proportions, ‘Whot’s a tan?’

  A shivering nervous laugh, and the old man’s steepled hands moved towards the thin little smile. ‘Oh. Ha-ha, I getcha.’ There was a long uncomfortable pause and he fought his way to his feet. ‘I’m going to go and see about those wieners.’

  Michael felt pity then; the poor old guy had only been trying to be nice. He felt sorry for himself too: now he would have to talk baseball statistics.

  He could at least talk to American adults. American kids seemed to Michael to be unbelievably obnoxious. It was like someone had granted them Asshole Licences that weren’t revoked until they were twenty-five. Well, at least the sons of Marines commanded to play team sports. They shouted a lot and could be quite funny, unlike their cautious, thin-lipped, watchful parents. But the humour was loud, often cruel, and consisted of set phrases that Michael simply didn’t understand.

  ‘Big man he got money in his hand. Hey big man, whoo-hoo!’

  They roared with laughter.

  ‘Hey, he’s got a man-tan, man!’

  Michael could even begin to join in. He listened to the radio, he watched TV, he tried to understand. A local DJ had an ID that rumbled ‘The Big Man’. But most of it remained mysterious. Maybe it all came from going to Oceanside High School together, stuff they made up. In any case he was irredeemably out of it. And as Michael played baseball, basketball, volleyball, tennis, etc, only when he came to California, i.e. every two years, he was hardly going to win respect on the field.

  One of the kids asked in disbelief, ‘Are you really Sergeant Blasco’s son?’ The kid was big, blond, lean and spotty. Despite expensive dental work his face looked like someone had bashed it in with a spade. Aggressively, he drove the hardball into his own mitt, breaking in a new glove.

  Michael had to concur. ‘Yes. Hard to believe, huh?’ He squinted into the sun, sitting on the bench, dreading his turn at bat.

  ‘You got it. It must be something to do with how they raise ’em in England.’

  As the summer wore on,
it got worse. The accent was an easy target. Americans couldn’t hear the difference between posh and Romford-Sheffield and didn’t want to.

  ‘I say, old man, just how did you get to be such a discord?’

  ‘Ooh rather.’

  ‘Spastic, I believe the term is.’

  ‘Hey, Spaz, can you get your poop in the pan, yet?’

  At twelve Michael had no defence against this. He was small and pale. Without even trying to, he lost his native accent in a protective camouflage of likes, you knows, sos and I means. It worked; Americans regard their accent as a symptom of strength and virtue. They assumed Michael had wised up. Then Michael went home.

  * * *

  At fourteen, it was different yet again. Michael’s father had moved into an Oceanside condo that looked like something from Cape Cod. It was made of wood and was painted white and blue. It had security gates and was on the clifftops right over the beach.

  His father was proud of being so adult. ‘I could have stayed at the camp, but you see guys who do that and they don’t get into the property market til it’s too late. Do you like it, Mikey?’

  Instead of playing on a team, Michael ran cross country with his father. Michael would meet him every day after work at the camp. This filled his father’s heart with pride and companionship. Michael heard his father on the phone. ‘Sorry, sir, but unless it’s urgent, I always run with my boy at five PM. Yes, sir, from England. He’s just here for the summer. Well, he beats his old man now, sir.’

  They used the showers at the camp. Marines with the bodies of young bulls would stroll idly past, stark naked. They would murmur politely, ‘Good afternoon, Sarge.’ It was as if beautiful horses had learned how to talk.

  ‘Afternoon, Clancy. This is my son, Mike.’

  ‘Hey, guy, how’s it going?’

  ‘Real good,’ said Mike, monkeying about with his accent. Acting the butch little American helped control Michael’s eyes. They kept veering downwards, like World War One aircraft. The bobbing heads of the circumcised cocks were framed with girdles of muscle found elsewhere only on classical statuary. Michael felt something like awe, a yearning for both attainment and possession. He still could not quite focus on it as lust.

  Michael and his father would run out of the camp, down the hill to the harbour and from there to Oceanside Beach. As they ran his father talked, between breaths: in, out, in, talk, in, out, in, talk. He ran barefoot, making scrunching noises in the wet sand that formed the commas and punctuation of his speech.

  ‘Forty-three past … I think … we’ll do it … one hour twenty … easy.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Y’getting good, Mike.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You thought of going serious?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Could get you a coach.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘There’s a military academy in Carlsbad.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They get real good SAT scores … good school.’

  ‘Uh huh.’

  ‘You could go there … do this every day.’

  Michael turned and there was this big tough guy like Clint Eastwood only for real, and he was beaming, face shiny and oiled with sweat. The gloss on his face reflected sand, sunlight, blue sky, sea, just like his huge mirror shades. He was beaming at Michael.

  ‘So how ’bout it?’

  It’s hard to keep your voice soft, to make it communicate that you’re deeply touched, when you are breathing to fuel a run, and your voice rattles each time your feet thump down onto the sand.

  ‘I’ll uh … think about it, OK, Dad?’

  That was all Louis wanted. His chest seemed to expand and he looked out on the beach as if he had suddenly inherited it.

  ‘We could getcha running real good.’

  They would shower together, and all of his father’s body was gleaming with sweat – the broad back with two bands of muscle either side of the spine, the dimpled shoulder blades, and the arms as curvaceous as a woman’s body. That was Michael’s favourite moment. His father would dive into the showers as if they were waterfalls in the desert. He would rub his face and hands and torso. His father loved the water cold.

  Afterwards, he and Michael would go to Café 101, which served old-fashioned greasy spoon food: huge hamburgers, peach pie, meatloaf and breakfast all day. That would be their supper: no frozen peas, no boiled spinach, no wet new potatoes.

  The whole condo smelled of men. It smelled of his father’s fellow officers who piled in after a game of football on the beach, and then stayed to watch the fight away from their wives. The bags of potato chips and empty beer cans would be there the next morning.

  It smelled of his father. Dad left his laundry until the basket was full. He lost track of what sheets were washed and which ones were not. Each night after their ritual good nights – Good night, Mike, see ya in the morning, guy. OK Dad, see ya – Michael would settle into a bed that smelled of his father. It smelled of aftershave, thin acrid sweat, talcum powder and liniment for his sprain. The sheets steamed pheromones, for his father had been spending his nights alone too.

  One night Michael deliberately touched his father’s hand. It was after all their male things – after their run, after the showers, after their meatloaf and gravy, and milkshakes and cherry pie à la mode. It was after the chores were done – the moving, oiling, tool cleaning and boiler checks. They were putting up new racks in the garage. Michael passed a drill bit in such a way that he could stroke the palm and fingers of his father’s hand. His father’s hand was surprisingly soft and smooth. It was like it was made out of tiny satin pillows that someone had warmed by sitting on them.

  That night Michael masturbated for the first time. His friend Ali had told him about it. You keep stroking until it shoots out stuff. For some reason, it had never occurred to him to try. Just this once, he promised himself. He felt male, full and swaggering with maleness, he had spent the day being male. He had no real idea what would happen.

  He just kept stoking himself. It didn’t go very hard, but then he didn’t really know how hard it should get. What he was not remotely expecting was orgasm. It was as if he were on some kind of donkey cart with no brakes, steering wheel or anything to drive or control it. He watched helplessly as it rolled down a hill. There was a terrible sense of acceleration, of going faster and faster, higher and higher, and as if in crash, a sudden loss of all control, and a tumbling fall.

  Michael lay stunned and messy and embarrassed. He would have to wash. He didn’t know there would be so much of the stuff, or that it seemed to crawl everywhere as if it had a life of its own. I’ll get the sheets dirty, and Dad’ll know, Michael thought.

  He pushed his pj bottoms down with his elbows and kicked them off. He didn’t want to touch anything with his hands. The doorknob became an obstacle: it would not turn between his two elbows. He gave up and used his hands, but they were too slick with semen to turn it. Would he have to call his Dad? He decided to sacrifice a sock. He stuck his hand into it like a glove puppet and managed to open the door. Padding out quickly to the bathroom, he kept his pj top hanging low. He washed his hands for ten minutes, and then the sink and the taps several times. Then he snapped his pj bottoms back on.

  He felt abused. Orgasm had come as a thumping physical shock that left him a bit weak in the stomach and knees. It was as though something that was not himself had temporarily taken over his body. It made him feel a bit soiled, a bit guilty. He told himself: I only did it to see what it was like, and I won’t have to do it again now.

  Michael wanted to talk to his Dad. He could tell his Dad about it and his Dad could tell him what to expect from sex. His Dad would be good about it, no shock or outrage.

  Michael stood outside his father’s open bedroom door. His father left the door open in case Michael needed him. If Michael stood in the doorway, his father would say: ‘Mike? Is there something wrong?’ Michael stood and waited. He could hear his father breathe, a
delicate hissing sound that reminded Michael of baby rabbits. He could smell his father’s breath too; sometimes it was stale, mostly after he’d overdone the exercise and hadn’t drunk enough water. The sense of his father’s physical presence was overwhelming.

  Michael wanted to sleep next to his father. He wanted to curl up beside him, and smell the big bear-like smell and be cuddled. He wanted to have long conversations about life, and about the future, and what it was to be an adult. He even wanted to smell his father’s breath.

  He waited, but there was no invitation, and he wasn’t brave enough to invade. He could talk about it in the morning if he still needed to.

  So Michael crept back into bed, still breathing in the scent of his father, and pulled the pillow round and hugged it from the side, as if it were his father’s torso, and a great heaviness, a stillness settled over him, like liquid lead was oozing out of every pore. He had a dream about melting, as if he were wax.

  * * *

  When Michael returned at sixteen, it was altogether different.

  First off Michael flew on his own from LA International to San Diego. He had to find his own way across the huge airport to a domestic departure lounge. He had to carry his own bags onto the runway, and leave them on the cart beside the tiny aeroplane while the guy tagged them for him. Doing all of it unaided made Michael feel he had glimpsed what it was like to be an adult. It also meant that his father thought he was old enough to handle all that.

  This time, Michael and his father were the same height. ‘Hey, Mike, you’ve grown up, guy!’ They hugged in a guy kind of way and patted each other on the back. His father had the same battery of teeth, the same shaved head. Ultraviolet radiation may have creased the face a little bit more, but that only wreathed the smile more. Michael pulled back to look at him and was stunned again.

  Everything about his father pulled at his heart. If Michael had seen his father for the first time in a restaurant, he wouldn’t be able to take his eyes off him. If he had wanted a guy for a friend, somebody who could teach him about all the things he knew he needed to find out, somebody who could give him antidork lessons without making him feel like one, it would be his father. If he wanted a companion, someone to share a house with, it would be his Dad. He wanted to spend his life with him.