Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

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 tilings he knew he needed to find out, somebody who could give him anti-dork 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.

And this time, at sixteen, Michael recognized the undertow, that pulling, for what it was.

'So how's the cross country going, Mike?'

'They need me. They want me.' Michael slipped into this new self as if it were a body stocking.

'Good man!' His father slapped his knee.

'So, like I'm in real serious training now.'

'Sounds good to me.' His father was being laid back, changing gears like he was playing ping pong.

'So like, I really need someone to run with and stuff.'

'Well, I was kinda planning on doing what we were doing the last time you were here.' His father was looking out the window, at the distant billboards, as if they were passing women. 'If that's OK with you.'

'Do a beach run every day.'

'If that'll do the trick. I don't know.' Finally Joe Cool looked back around at his son. 'It depends on what you want to do. We may be looking at getting you some professional coaching.'

Michael was brisk. 'I'd rather run with you, Dad.'

'Well maybe. But you gotta consider how far you want to take this thing and how well you want to do it.'

'Maybe we could do both. I was… uh… kinda thinking…' Michael seemed to be hurling towards some kind of decision; the sensation was not unlike the acceleration towards orgasm. He suddenly sharply knew what he wanted. He could see it, there was no doubt. A couple of hundred still images flickered in his brain: them in the apartment together, at the beach together, chores together, breakfasts together.

'I'm thinking I might go to school here, you know, college, and um, work on my running, you know, maybe be on the team while I study.'

This had never been discussed with his mother. Michael had just invented it. He was betraying his mother to talk in this way, to make this offer without her knowledge.

Michael pressed on, like a car careening zigzag across a roadway. 'I was thinking it could be UC San Diego. Um. I don't think it would be fair to make Mom pay and all.'

'No, no, no,' his father said and seemed to have to stand up in the front seat, like he was having to break hard, in an emergency. Michael was perfectly aware that he was offering his father the thing he most wanted in the world.

'So. I was kinda thinking I could, like, you know, live with you.'

His father was not looking at billboards any more. His father was looking straight ahead. 'You'd have to make sure UCSD was good in your subject.'

'Yeah.'

'Maybe we could drop into the school now. It's on our way.'

Michael nodded slowly, surely, as if this were something considered and serious. That would be good.

The Chiclets chewing gum stopped clicking. His father's jaw clenched, and then he swallowed. 'I would like that a whole bunch,' he said, and then he turned and looked at Michael, and nodded, and smiled a strained, tight smile. His eyes were impossible to read behind the mirror shades. All Michael saw in them was his own reflection.

They stopped at UCSD and wasted an hour. Michael's flight had got in at 3.30 pm, and it was late to show up on a huge campus and expect to find somebody to answer their questions. It took them fifteen minutes to find out where they were supposed to park, and another twenty to find the registrar's office. A woman behind the counter spent another ten minutes showing them on a map where the Sciences Administration Building was. The office would close at five.

This was not his father's world. Dad looked like a truck driver, ill at ease and dusty. The woman behind the counter was stylish, black, and thin like the Duchess of Windsor. Her hair was pulled back and her earrings folded into themselves in stylish swirls. 'And you sir, are you enrolling in a class too?' she asked.

'No, that's my son,' said the Marine. He had a high-school diploma. He was proud, pleased to be taken for twenty, and insulted all at the same time.

'Uh huh, OK,' she said, processing information at high speed as the clock hands spun. She passed Michael booklets and forms.

In the car roaring back to the camp his father asked, 'What does your mother say about this?'

Michael felt the first uncomfortable lurch. 'I haven't really said anything about it. In fact it's all been kind of a spur-of-the moment thing. In fact, I just decided right now at the airport, when I saw you again. I just knew it was what I wanted to do.'

'Uh huh.' His father nodded, and the face gripped itself. Out from under the mirror shades, some water started to creep. 'Well, you know you gotta talk to your Mom about it.' His voice was rough and slurred.

Michael felt the second uncomfortable lurch. He didn't want it to mean this much to his Dad; his Dad was supposed to be unapproachable, like a fortress.

His father coughed to clear his throat. He started to talk exactly as if he were running, short of breath, gasping. 'And, we'll need to get you a driver's licence. And you know, find out about a qual… oh, shit.'

His father flicked the black stick and the car made a bink, bink, bink noise and it eased over to the side, his father carefully looking behind. It went onto the paved shoulder and stopped. His father jerked on the handbrake, and rested his head against the steering wheel.

'Sorry, son, sorry.' His father's voice sounded like it was glued with drying saliva.

'Dad? Dad?' Michael was worried.

'I'm sorry I fucked up your life. I'm sorry I left your Mom, she's a great lady, and she sure as hell deserved better than me. I did the best I could. But I messed up.' He sighed and gathered breath and turned. 'And look at you. You're big and smart, you grew up so well, and it's nothing to do with me. But I'm going to make sure that you're not disappointed in me.'

'Disappointed? In you?' Michael was incredulous.

'Ah, what the hell.' His father suddenly sounded normal. He took off the mirror shades. The action made him look older and more fragile, like the skin around his eyes was crepe paper and could tear. He wiped it with the heels of his hands. 'What say we go get ourselves a burger at the 101?'

'Right on!' said Michael. And they slapped hands.

The brute fact was that Michael had fallen in love with his father. It was a romantic and sexual attachment. Michael wanted to marry him.

There is only one word for love and it blurs many dividing lines. There was nothing in his father's manner that could signal to someone who was in the first full flood of love that he did not want the same thing. His father's face softened and went tender as they planned when Michael would move in with him. He evidently, despite everything he said, wanted Michael to be with him as quickly as possible. He offered to move closer to USCD, to buy a house instead of a condo, asked Michael if he wanted a separate place with a face haunted and shadowy and sad. His father's face opened up like a sunflower when Michael said, no, no, the whole point was to live together.