Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

Chris looked suddenly dark. 'It still seemed pretty good.'

There was something else he needed to see.

'Do you want to see my father? Do you want to see how good-looking he really was?'

Chris began to look troubled, he sulked a bit; his hot date had turned out to be a flake. 'You have a photograph?'

'More than that. Turn and look at the men's room door, and in a second, he'll come through it, wearing nothing but those swimming trunks he wore all that summer boating holiday. Turn around, Chris. Look. Now.'

The doors swung open, and out came a man wearing surfer shorts. The shorts were blue with a half-inch band of white around every edge. He was tall and square at the same time, with shoulders like volleyballs, and a bare chest that seemed to support breasts, and a collarbone that was parallel to the floor, stretching his trunk wide. He had a face a bit like a more thickset, Latin Gregory Peck, decent, almost wise. The eyes were absolutely black, darker even than Michael's. The crew cut was savage, unflattering. The thighs and calves were a particular feature; this was a big man who could sprint.

Marine Staff Sergeant Louis Blasco. Eventually made Master Sergeant, the last two years Michael knew him.

Staff Sergeant Blasco paused, looked confused, as if he'd lost his way. Drugs, you would think. A man wearing nothing but swimming trunks stumbles out of a toilet and looks confused. Conversation in the restaurant settled in a hush like the surf on Oceanside Beach.

OK, Dad. Michael toyed with the idea of making his father drop his shorts. To avenge himself. So that big uncircumcised American head could show itself. So Michael could see it again.

Michael said, 'He's dead now, actually.'

He made his father march quickly out of the restaurant.

Back home, Michael called up Henry. His Angel sat at the foot of the bed.

'Henry, it didn't work.'

'What happened?'

'The same thing that always happens. I sent him away. I've spent all my life sending people away. I told him something I've never told anyone else.'

'Ah,' said Henry and sat back.

'It just came bubbling out of me. I was mad at him, and I just suddenly heard myself say it.'

'What did you say to him, Michael?'

Michael felt a rush, as if he were in aeroplane, and it was taking off. 'I told him something about my father.'

'Something you've never told anyone else?' Henry took hold of Michael's hand and coaxed him by rubbing it.

Michael just nodded. He let go of his breath. He'd been holding it without realizing.

'Maybe the time's finally come. Why don't you tell me?' the Angel asked.

So, finally, Michael did.

What's eating Michael Blasco?

At twelve years old, Michael believed in love. He believed that love was the natural state. If you were out of love, then through a kind of natural gravity you would roll back into it. Michael believed that some day he would roll home.

Home was probably Romford, though Mum still sounded like she was from Sheffield. Michael was a mystery to his mother. His underwear was going crisp and no one had ever told Mum about wet dreams. She accused him of masturbation, and knocked on the door of the toilet when he read comics, demanding 'What are you doing in there?' Michael's puberty had been more traumatic for her than for him.

Michael's visits to California became an escape to another world of beaches and palm trees. Coming back every two years was like visiting another self. This self was called Mikey or when he got older, Mike. Mike had his own room, which was full of things, neat things his Dad had bought him, boy things. They were just where he left them: well almost. His Dad had maybe moved the boy things forward to kind of emphasize them – the baseball glove, the Swiss Army knife, the bicycle-repair tools.

Michael would come back at twelve or fourteen, to find all of Mikey's old things there. He could sit up late at night and read his old X Men comics. Sometimes there was a sense of homecoming. Hiya, how ya doing, his California self would say, perking up after two years without being used. Sometimes Michael would settle into Mike as if he were a sofa. Other times he was a bit frosty with his old self. At sixteen, his lip curled. X Men? You're still into X Men, oh God, they're terrible.

Michael would play his old records. His first love had been Mark Bolan and T-Rex and then, glistering with make-up, dear old Bowie.

This could cause some tension with his father. Dad thought rock music was socially destructive. He had few records himself. Staff Sergeant Blasco owned The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. In a strange convoluted way, this was to do with his Latin background. The Blasco family had been in California for 100 years and were thoroughly Americanized. That meant the Catholic League of Decency, and that meant Family Entertainment. At ten, at twelve, Michael heard and learned to love Camelot and Mary Poppins.

While other twelve-year-old kids were buying Grand Funk Railroad, Michael was seeking out the Original Cast Recording of Cinderella.

Michael played Cinderella year in, year out, at twelve, at fourteen, even at sixteen. Maybe it was the link with England. Or maybe it was identification. In 1957, Julie Andrews had been twenty-two, the same age as Elvis Presley. Polished, operatic, old-fashioned she may have been, but everything she did crackled with a youthful energy that made Michael bounce. It was a feminine energy, something he could identify with. And this Cinderella was like him, stuck powerless and dreaming in a family that didn't quite work.

There was one song, about sitting in your own little corner and dreaming of adventure, and that was what Michael was doing. There was magic, and Michael always loved magic. Cinderella insisted on it: impossible things happened every day.

And there was the soppy song about love, which Michael was ashamed of loving back. It was a song of disbelief, that the one we love is so beautiful.

Every year his father would greet him at the airport with a great bear hug. 'Hey, Mikey, how's it going?'

'Fine, thanks Dad.'

Michael would be pressed up against the T-shirted pectorals and surrounded by the melon-like arms. Michael would look up to see something like his own face, as he wanted to be.

His father had a thick neck: it went straight down from his ears. His square jaw never seemed to need shaving. Mirror shades, laconically rotating chewing gum and a brutal crew cut all added up to the desired image. This was one tough hombre.

Michael would be both agog and dismayed, buffeted by alternative breakers of admiration and self-denigration. How could he ever hope to match his father?

Dad looked like someone who starred in police thrillers. He wore grey T-shirts with AFL logos. The tops of his father's bare feet were always coated in sand from surfing, jogging or volleyball. Michael's Dad played basketball with the Latino kids on the beach; he jogged from the camp to the power station beyond Carlsbad and back; he played touch football nearly incessantly. Every part of his body from his cheekbones to his feet was bronzed, lean, rounded, veined and gritty. He looked like Michael's more popular older brother.

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.'