Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done» — ознакомительный отрывок электронной книги совершенно бесплатно, а после прочтения отрывка купить полную версию. В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Жанр: Современная проза, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Lust Or No Harm Done: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Lust Or No Harm Done»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

From Publishers Weekly
"Reality's got a hole in it." That's what runs through Michael Blasco's head when he discovers that he has the uncanny ability to bring his fantasies to life in this wacky, inspired third novel by Ryman (Was). The 38-year-old gay protagonist is a government scientist experimenting on baby chicks and has a flat in London 's West End with Phil, his passionless boyfriend. While seething on a subway platform, he imagines the beefy trainer at his gym stripping naked right in front of him-and poof-it happens! Terrified at first, Michael quickly regains his composure and wills into action a series of characters like Tarzan and cartoon diva Taffy Duck; narcissistically, he also conjures a copy of himself. His reunion with a long-lost high school sweetheart nicknamed Bottles proves to be touching and funny, but his meeting with Mark, a victim of AIDS, turns sad when Mark rebuffs his plea to revive him. In an effort to inject passion into his stagnant relationship, Michael "calls up" a younger version of Phil paired with a younger version of himself. When this scheme backfires, he returns to the anonymous "speedy, functional sex" that has long sustained him. A night out with feisty Billie Holiday, passionate sex with Picasso and dalliances with Lawrence of Arabia on Viagra reinvigorate him and make for some funny, titillating reading, but as Michael's notebook of his wild adventures begins to overflow, the story's whimsical tone changes, revealing more of his true character as well as some particularly troublesome personal problems. Among them is a disturbing boyhood fixation on his father, which mutates into a wincingly unnerving incestuous sequence. Ryman's "careful-what-you-wish-for" message is artfully packaged in this quirky, offbeat, entertaining novel.
"Inventive… a risky, highly imaginative addition to a unique and valuable boody of work." – Kirkus
"Ryman's 'careful-what-you-wish-for' message is artfully packaged in this quirkyy, off-beat, entertaining novel." – Publishers Weekly
***
David, a young scientist investigating what happens to the brain during the process of learning, suddenly finds himself the subject of a bizarre experiment. On the way home from the lab one night he spies Tony, a fitness instructor from his gym, on the same platform waiting for the tube. David's had an obsession with Tony for weeks, but Tony's barely noticed him at all. Until now. When David imagines the man naked, an extraordinary thing happens: Tony strips there and then on the platform and offers himself in front of all onlookers. Horrified, David flees. But back at his flat, Tony reappears, as if by magic. And disappears, when David wishes him away. And reappears when he calls him back. David can conjure up anyone, from any time, and he does: Billie Holliday, Johnny Weismuller, Daffy Duck, Picasso, Sophia Loren, even his younger self. Mad with lust and losing all scientific objectivity, he runs the gamut of his fantasies until, sated and morally bankrupt, he's forced to confront himself. It is not a pretty sight.

Lust Or No Harm Done — читать онлайн ознакомительный отрывок

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Lust Or No Harm Done», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Michael stayed in California long enough to see that sad ending and to experience something of a lover's sense of loss and longing as a partner ages.

Johnny Weissmuller died in Mexico in 1984, when Michael was 24 years old. Michael remembered reading about his death in the newspaper and thinking, Johnny Weissmuller? 1984? It was Michael's moment for realizing that we spend more of our lives being old than young.

In Michael's days of California sunlight, saltwater spray and young Americans in shorts, there had lived in that same state, an old bronzed man. He looked a little bit like a balloon from which the air had leaked. That man would have been able to tune in every Saturday at 5.30 as well, to see his sleek and catlike younger self pad lissomely through a studio jungle.

Maybe it was enough for him to remember the days when he had been a sex symbol, and it was possible that he could go on to be a real movie star. Maybe it was enough to have been the lover of Lupe Velez, the Mexican Spitfire, to have acted with Maureen O'Sullivan, to have people still call you Tarzan… once they recognized you. Maybe it was enough for him that he had won five Olympic gold medals and set 67 world records. In the encyclopaedias, it was those he was most remembered for, rather than a mere acting career. After all, sport is not fiction, is it? But Michael, even as an adult, would remember him for the heartbreaking climax of Tarzan's New York Adventure, when he leapt off the Brooklyn Bridge to almost certain death, yodelling backwards, for Jane, for Boy, for the jungle life.

Lust requires restitution. Even more frequently than love, lust goes unrequited.

Hypothesis: I can call up anyone that

• I want sexually (confirmed)

Who is alive or dead (not confirmed)

Method: Try to call up someone I fancy who is dead and note result.

The Chez Nous Hotel near Vauxhall Bridge Road is a French franchise operation. To an Englishman, it looks Scandinavian: clean, spacious, bland and smelling faintly of the mildest possible cheese. Being near Vauxhall Bridge and south of the River Thames, it is actually nowhere, and no one wants to stay there. Even at lunchtime, its brasserie is empty. Michael could eat there in perfect anonymity, and go upstairs alone without the slightest fear of being seen by anyone he knew. How, otherwise, would you explain booking a room 500 yards from where you worked? He could enter his room at 12.30 pm in complete assurance that it would be comfortable, clean and looking exactly as it would look in Luxembourg or Shepherds Bush.

Michael sat on a bed so perfect it looked as if no one had ever slept in it. As this was the Chez Nous Vauxhall, it was perfectly possible that no one ever had. He disliked crumpling the mottled blue duvet. His breath came fast and shallow. He asked for his boyhood love.

As naturally as a light breeze through eucalyptus trees, Johnny Weissmuller was sitting next to him. Unlike most movie stars, he was bigger than Michael expected – huge, broad and smooth, wearing only the loincloth. A flop of silky brown hair tumbled into his eyes. He stared intently at Michael, half in fear, one hand on his knife.

'Tarzan,' he said, jabbing at his breasts.

'I'm Michael.'

'Tarzan. Mikey,' Weissmuller said, prodding Michael so hard that for a moment Michael thought he would fall backwards out of a tree. 'Mikey. Tarzan.'

Tarzan looked baffled by desire. Desire was something new that he had never felt. He leaned closer to Michael and sniffed his face.

'Mikey smell like flower.'

Tarzan smelt of Max Factor.

Michael said, 'That's my aftershave.'

'What shave?'

Michael stroked his smooth cheek. 'You know, shave. Beard.'

Tarzan looked even more baffled. He rubbed Michael's face and looked puzzled.

'Bee-arr-ddd,' he said.

'Yeah beard, you know, shave. You don't shave?'

Tarzan scowled. He rubbed his own perfect chin. 'How Tarzan shave? No razors.'

'I don't know. I guess I never thought about that. Yeah. Howcum Tarzan doesn't have a beard?'

'Not monkey,' said Tarzan, and grinned.

They hovered about six inches apart. Michael wanted to kiss him, except that Tarzan was covered in tan body make-up, head to toe. It would leave marks on Michael's shirt.

'Uh. Johnny. Could you drop the Tarzan talk? It's a little bit creepy. I want you, not Tarzan.'

Tarzan got that look of idiot firmness he got when mistaking the motives of white hunters. 'No,' he said firmly. 'Mikey want Tarzan.'

Tarzan was shaved all over. Everywhere Michael touched him there were little pinpricks of body hair, like mustard on ham. Michael leaned forward and tried to kiss him and Tarzan ducked away.

'It goes like this,' said Michael and brought their lips together.

Tarzan tasted like one of your mother's friends. He had that perfumed, powdery, clotted smell of face paint. Tarzan smiled and pressed Michael to him, rather as if he were Cheetah at the end of the film. Michael had to coax him out of the loincloth. Tarzan had no conception that it could be removed. He looked as surprised as Michael when it slipped aside to reveal handsome, Catholically uncircumcised genitals from which every trace of pubic hair had also been shaved. MGM couldn't have pubic hair leaking out over the edge of the loincloth.

And, having stripped Johnny/Tarzan, Michael discovered that, like his twelve-year-old self, he wanted to do nothing else.

So he lay next to Tarzan and was cradled. Protected like Jane by the Hays Code, Michael wallowed in the bed as Tarzan prodded him, tickled him, and examined his feet. He sniffed his chin.

As Michael lay there in his arms he wondered. Is this all I wanted all along? With all those other men? Just to be held, stroked and cuddled? Perhaps it is simply that I never wanted real sex at all.

In which case it is possible that I never grew up.

And he could choose to accept that. He could decide to stay a child. Who was anyone to tell him his sexuality was wrong? If this is what he really wanted, he could stay here, warm and sheltered. If this was some new sexual home, why leave it? Michael stroked the smooth firm backs of Tarzan's arms.

'Pee pee,' said Tarzan. He stood up and discovered with wonder that the toilet flushed. He roared at the gushing of clear water, knelt and began to drink from it, lapping like a lion. He looked up in delight.

It was nearly 2:00 pm. Time to go. Tarzan had no concept of time or work, and tried to keep Michael with him, holding his arm, stroking it. In the end, Michael had to disperse him.

He didn't want to see Tarzan dissolve like a TV channel. Michael simply turned away and heard something like a gust of wind, and felt a sudden hollowness in the room behind him. Every trace of jungle was gone, including the smell of Max Factor.

At reception, he coughed and asked like an out-of-town guest about local restaurants. Tomorrow morning he would check out and pay his bill as if he had spent the night there.

Michael walked back through Archbishop's Park. It was a dull grey English spring, stark with no leaves on the trees. He thought of Tarzan's body, its pre-pubescent smoothness, of his tenderness and the caresses. The main sensation in the pit of his stomach was fear, as if he were still taking that first trip to California.

Circumstances meant that an unexpected question was answered next.

Can I make them do it when I'm not there?

'We've got an invitation,' Philip said, opening their post. 'It's from Zoltan Caparthi,' he said. 'You know, the glass artist? The one who does those fabulous piss-takes of beauty contests? He's invited us. Well, you me and whoever else we want to bring. He said everybody's lover has a lover, and they must come too. Do you want to come? Can you bring someone interesting?'

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Lust Or No Harm Done»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Lust Or No Harm Done» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «Lust Or No Harm Done»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Lust Or No Harm Done» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x