Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Ebru's face softened and she leaned forward. 'Oh, it is a beautiful story.'

Hugh whispered, 'Her name was Constanza Regina de Alencar Vrena. She was from Brazil, but she had an Italian father and she was a business major. So, I went to her class and introduced myself.'

Hugh mimed it. 'Constanza? Hello, my name is Hugh McPherson and you don't know me, but I would like to ask you out.'

Ebru's grin opened wide. 'You did that? You asked her out? Oh, but this is very romantic'

Hugh's smile veered sideways and his eyes turned inward. 'She couldn't speak English. She couldn't understand what I said. She'd been telling jokes in Portuguese.'

'What did she do?'

'She smiled sweetly and walked away.' Something strange was happening in Hugh's face. It was becoming beautiful: the fresh skin, the black hair. Tenderness suffused it. He looked at Michael. 'That is what I would do. I would use it to make restitution. For all the opportunities that I missed.'

The men I slept with, did they make a difference?

In his youth, Michael had imagined that he would be a traveller, visiting India, China and the Andaman Islands. Thailand was as near to it as he ever got. Mark knew a Thai art dealer who stayed in Michael's flat, and who returned the favour.

Michael went to Thailand in 1985, and spent the entire trip in an agony of unfulfilled desire. The Thais were sleek and smooth and friendly, but he turned them all down. He and the rest of the world were terrified of Aids.

Bangkok was not. The Thai friend took him to see shows where naked boys danced: some were slim and effeminate; others looked like samurai. They sat on Michael's lap wearing nothing but dressing gowns and jockstraps. He bought them drinks, and under the cover of their dressing gowns, they flipped their erect genitals out of the jockstraps and used the heads of their penises to give Michael's bare arms butterfly kisses. He still turned them down. His Thai friend shook his head in disbelief. Michael saw some of the other Europeans at the bar: outrageous air stewards who were going upstairs with one boy after another, or ugly Europeans whose faces seemed puffed out with disgust or greed. This, Michael thought, would be a terrifically easy place to get ill.

He went to the far north, to the Mekong and the borders with Laos where tourism ended. The Communist municipalities blared propaganda from loudspeakers across the calm river. Michael walked along its banks, and heard Blondie coming from a Buddhist temple, as if competing with the Communists. On tiptoe he peered in through a window and saw fifty Buddhist monks in training, all in their teens, bopping to 'Call Me'.

He walked on, until an uninviting soldier with a gun waved him back. When he passed the temple again, the same monks were all lounging on the river bank, sitting on upside-down, beached boats. They were young, bored and falling out of orange robes with unfulfilled desire. Their naked shoulders had the colour and gloss of polished wooden floors.

'Parlez-vous francais?' one of them called.

Michael did his best. It is a heart-stopping thing suddenly to be surrounded by admiring young men.

'Vous etes riches?' the young monk demanded.

They all laughed and giggled, and adjusted their dress.

No, he said, I am not rich, I am a scientist. This was a mistake. The boys veered away from any possibility of being kept by a rich Westerner. Suddenly they wanted Michael for his mind. They had only the dimmest idea of what a scientist did. Michael tried to explain: something about the brain. They all nodded in respect and looked a bit ashamed.

' Je suis pecheur,' said the one who spoke, his smile dim with shame. He was a fisherman.

'Vous parlez le francais beaucoup plus mieux que mot'

The smile widened. 'Je suis vietnamois. Tous les vietnamois parlent le francais. Je suis refugie.'

The boy explained shyly: his father had worked in the French embassy in Hanoi. He was not allowed to move more than a mile from the town.

The boys were interested in Michael and so demanded what in the West would be considered personal details. Was he married? No? Oh, that is sad, children work for you. Do you have a girlfriend? Michael lied and said many: he had many girlfriends. The boys all cooed and laughed.

One boy kept pressing questions on Michael: did he live in a big apartment? Did he have many clothes? Did he drive an ambulance? The boy was very pretty indeed and paler than the others, with a rounder face. Ethnic Chinese, Michael decided.

'Voo lee voo dang see?' the soft boy asked. 'Noo avong ung fate.'

Michael didn't understand. The fisherman explained. 'Une fete. Avec la musique. Il veut que vous allez danser avec nous.'

The boys all demanded it in unison. They made it clear that it would be an enormous privilege to dance disco with a real Westerner. Michael could also see that some of them were telling jokes about his height and girth and hairiness. They would see Westerners as big, clumsy, slow and indelicate. He very nearly said no, out of humility.

But he loved dancing. In fact it would be easier to dance with the boys than to talk with them. 'Ce n'est pas une probleme avec vos maitres?'

'Non. C'est educatif! Nous dansons avec un savant d'angleterre!'

So Michael bopped to Michael Jackson. It was the most enormous, innocent fun. Michel danced a reel and a jig, which made them roar with laughter. Each of the boys in turn did something silly to make him feel at home. Some of them made goofy demon faces; a big thick-bodied youth nipped onto his hands and walked on them; one of them moonwalked.

And then the little ethnic Chinese began a traditional Thai dance. There was no mistaking the hand gestures; the covering of the face, the alluring postures, the hands held out to ward off unwelcome advances. He was miming a female part. The boys chuckled but Michael saw them looking sideways to gauge his reaction.

The boy tripped up to Michael and, fully in character, made some kind of declaration or assertion. Suddenly sick in his belly, Michael knew that something was being offered, something he wanted. He pretended not to understand. Befuddled, he turned to his Vietnamese host.

'C'est une danse. Une mise-en-scene.' The Vietnamese started to laugh. He caught the eyes of his fellows, and slapped his hands together and turned away, grinning.

No harm came. The little Chinese seemed in no way offended or embarrassed, nor were any of the boys. They went on doing their party tricks, until an adult arrived.

The masters pretended to be horrified that the boys had imposed upon the gentleman, and insisted that they must not bother him any longer with foolish things. The boys protested that this was a scientist from London. So the maitre honoured Michael with Nescafe. Michael was seated on a naugahyde sofa in a concrete office with a tin roof that served more as an oven than a shelter. He used a tissue like a windscreen wiper on his forehead as sweat drummed down. He tried to piece together a serious conversation with the master, whose French was for the most part incomprehensible. Was it not true that science was now confirming the teachings of the Buddha?

When it was polite, Michael stood up to say goodbye and asked if he might say goodbye to the boys. The master's smile explained: not possible; boys at prayer. Michael walked past the long, cool stone chamber and peered in on tiptoe. It was empty. Michael marvelled at the courage and beauty of the Chinese boy.

So, now, in his London flat, Michael made a restitution. He put on his old copy of Thriller and called all the monks up into his sitting room. The air moved like there was a bonfire. Suddenly, there was an orange swirl like flame and his room was full of young men in loose orange robes, bouncing as if made of coiled springs.