Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Philip was sloshing water on plates, keeping his back towards him. Michael had to stretch round him to put the cups on the draining board.

'Phil? Listen, Phil, I need to talk to someone. I-I-I need just to talk.' Michael needed to have Phil around, even if it was mostly in principle, even if he mostly saw Phil when he came in late and surly.

Distracted, Phil fired a jet of water into a cup that shot back out, over his shirt.

'So. So. When will you be back?'

Very abruptly, Philip stopped. He put the cup down on the kitchen counter and pushed past Michael back into the sitting room.

'Will you talk to me?' Michael demanded.

Phil stopped, sagged, and turned back. He pinched his nose and closed his eyes. 'I won't be back, Michael. It hasn't worked, it isn't working, it won't work in the future.' Miserable, he began to weep. 'So I'm going. I mean, I'm leaving you.'

Michael started to babble.

'Buh buh buh buh, but doesn't the whole idea of it hit you? I mean you could use it in your work. I know you couldn't photograph them, but you could talk to them, fascinating people, old movie stars, whatever, and you could paint them, you could do new portraits of them.'

'What are you talking about?' Phil was gazing at Michael in something approaching horror.

'It could be a real opportunity for you, you know, the paintings will stay, at least we could try, right?' Michael stood, as if naked, looking hopeful. He saw it now. He needed to be more involved with Philip's work.

Phil's head was shaking as if in disbelief. 'You're crazy,' he said, and swung away. He went into the bedroom and pulled a suitcase out from under the bed.

'Phil? You can talk to them Phil. Philip, Philip, please Philip, don't go.'

Philip paused and left the suitcase open on the floor. He fled to the cupboard and, quivering, pulled on a jacket. 'I'll come back for my things when you're at work,' he said, moving back out into the corridor.

Michael pursued him. 'Philip, please listen. I told you because I can't believe it myself and I need someone to talk to about it. Philip, it's real, OK? It's real, it's weird and can be quite strange and that's why I need someone.'

Philip was at the door. His hand was on the doorknob and he looked directly at Michael. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Sorry, but I really can't help this.' His eyes had the utter ruthlessness of someone no longer in love.

'Philip, please don't go!'

Pity and disgust mingled in Phil's eyes and all he could do was shake his head goodbye. Henry joined him, slipping around Michael. They went into the echoing corridor beyond and Michael wailed after them.

'Philip! Phil-lip! Please! Come back!'

He heard the footsteps spiral down the staircase and the thump of the front door as it closed itself.

Michael kept talking to himself, quietly, under his breath. 'Phil. Please. Don't leave me alone. Phil-hil-lip. Pleeeeeeeeese.' His voice, constrained, wheedled like a rusty hinge. His legs folded under him and he dropped onto the floor of the hallway.

It was silent. The silence grew. The silence would continue. It was the silence of an apartment with only one person in it.

Maybe he'll come back. Maybe he'll get bored and come back.

Maybe he won't.

What do you want him for anyway? He was a pain in the ass.

I love him; I'll miss him.

You should have taken better care of him, then.

He should have taken better care of me.

Why did I tell him? Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Who wants a miracle for a boyfriend? Things could have kept on just as they were; he was happy enough to have Henry on the side. Why did you do it? You only scared him off.

Who does he fancy? Ben Affleck, that's right, you should have shown him Ben Affleck, not those naff Castros from that naff soap, you should have said see, isn't this wild, fun, stylish, invite your gallery friends, you little social-climbing shit, you little Mr Trendy, you stupid untalented little fraud.

Don't blame him.

What do I blame, then?

Michael's knees hurt. He propped himself against the hall table and stood up. He walked back into the sitting room, still full of sunlight.

He looked at the carpet; it was the colour of sand, like a desert. The room would now have two phases: with Philip and after Philip. What was left? A few stains on the carpet from the early days when they still had parties here and wine was sloshed. There was the painting Philip did of Michael, looking stolid and holy. What else, indelibly, was due to Philip?

Almost nothing. Not the furniture, not the curtains, not the books on the shelves. Maybe that was part of the trouble.

A crawling loneliness spread out from Michael's stomach all the way to his fingers. He was alone. Alone because Philip had left, alone because he had been singled out.

He was a target for God's special attention. God had sent the miracle and the miracle had driven away the nearest thing Michael had to love. Who would have thought miracles felt so terrible? You could feel them break the universe. You could feel them break you.

Michael sat down on the sofa and it smelled of Henry. 'Why are you doing this to me?' he asked the sunlight. 'What did I do wrong? What am I supposed to learn?'

Learn that I'm impotent? Learn that I'm so scared of Aids that I won't kiss anyone? I knew that. Am I supposed to learn that sex is just an excuse to keep love away? Why would anyone avoid love? What's so painful about love?

What is so very painful about being ditched after thirteen years for a young man so beautiful that you'd have done the same thing yourself, so you can't even feel morally superior? Why would anyone mind that?

What's so painful about being bonded in your bones to someone who has to leave you to begin to breathe? What's so painful about opening up your entire life to someone, only to find that your life is rotten inside and both of you hate it?

And, once you learn that, what are you supposed to do with it?

The answer, it appeared, was nothing.

And, oh God, he had started his life with Phil so full of hope and trust and love. It had seemed as if his life had suddenly come right.

If you're gay and not very good at sex, people don't ring back. Nice people, handsome intelligent kind people who made you laugh don't ring back. You stop even asking for addresses, stop asking people back to the flat. You do it there, in the sauna, in the park. You do it with most of your clothes on and if you finish first, you get the hell out of there. And you tell yourself it's male sex instinct; you tell yourself it's gay culture. And you remember afresh all over again each time when they realize, pumping away at you, that your dick is not going to react.

Then, at 26, Michael had met Phil, and suddenly, none of that mattered.

'Show me,' Michael asked the air.

There was the sound of a key in the front door, and excited voices in the hall, and the clunking as the heavy fireproofed panels shut.

Phil's breathy voice said, 'But this is fantastic! This is it? This is our flat?'

'Yup,' someone said. A smooth pleasant voice with a what… Australian?… accent.

'My God,' chuckled Phil. His voice hadn't changed.

Philip stuck his head into the sitting room, and looked around goggle-eyed.

Was that really Phil? He looked almost skeletal, with a rockabilly haircut and jeans that swelled out at the thighs and closed at the ankles. He had huge brown eyes and bat ears and was still covered in spots. His hands darted up like startled sparrows. This young Phil had a body language that was as delicious and as comic as Charlie Chaplin's.

'Gosh,' he said. 'I'll finally be able to have dinner parties.'

This Philip's face and body were different, the soul was different. This was a nice, young, innocent, frightened guy who had only just left home and who needed Michael for all these reasons. It was the younger Philip whom Michael loved and who was now no more.