Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

'You'll need a car. We could let you have this one. What do I need a car for? Or would you rather have the Jeep? Your choice.'

Dad got excited planning joint trips. 'I never took you to Aspen. I can't believe that. I took all those bimbos, and I never took you! Yosemite, Alaska. There's the John Muir Trail.' As long as the length of the trail would be with Louis Blasco, Michael wouldn't mind.

'That'll be fabulous!' said Michael.

His father laughed. 'We'll take a tent, get in the Jeep and just take off!' His father's hand soared like an aeroplane. 'Or, there's the Sacramento Delta. Man, it's the size of the Mississippi and nobody goes there. Get us a houseboat? Just the two of us?' His father's eyes shone with love.

Michael could understand it now. Now he knew that his father had needed tenderness. You can train your mind to kill if a silhouette of a soldier flips up out of the corner of your eye. You can become adept at breaking the spirit of kids who are only a few years older than your broken-spirited son. You can do that, and it will only make the need for tenderness worse.

You drive home alone from Camp Pendleton every Thanksgiving and Christmas to be with a big established Latin family who all went to university except you. You have no one of your own to love except your son, who is gone for two years at a time. You don't have a grey suit; you don't talk like your lawyer brother. When you are out of uniform people think you are an illegal immigrant, which is why certain white women fuck you. You drive home through Oceanside, California, which is full of floozies. There are sixteen-year-old drug-addicted whores who hang out in the back of gas stations just off the I-5. There are clubs with neon signs that look like they're from the 1950s, with cartoons of women dressed in swimsuits with tails and cat ears, all in pink. You can buy some women, or seduce others because you are Latin, smoother than most and built like a tank. And that's what they want you for. Either that or the 50, or 90 or 100 bucks.

And you are strong and you are physical and you are sensual and you are loving, and what you see is what you get – a woman with liquor on her breath. You want a nice girl. But you don't want a Catholic-ridden, uneducated, old-fashioned Mexican girl, and you don't want a slut of an Anglo, and you won't get the kind of girls your brothers marry. Their wives came from good homes, spoke Spanish with an American accent, cooked chicken in chocolate sauce, and went on to higher degrees.

The English girl from Sheffield had seemed a perfect way out. She had red hair, and a kind, long, fragile face that was ordinary and kinda classy at the same time. She was all agog with Louis for all the wrong reasons. He was a way out for her too.

God, the things Michael's mother gave away without realizing. She really didn't understand that a Marine Sergeant would not have a lot of money. The upholstering of American life is very difficult for a Brit to read. An American can have a house in some exotic-sounding California town and it can have a swimming pool, but that does not mean he is rich. His brother may be a lawyer, but that does not mean, as it assuredly does in Britain, that he is likely to be from the top social drawer.

His mother's sexuality had betrayed her spirited but fearful self. She married for love, but she didn't really want to live as someone with a Spanish surname five thousand miles away. If she had been braver and less tough, if she had moved to Southern California with her handsome husband, she might have been happy.

Instead, she insisted her husband stay in England. It was not her way to clean house and pretend to be all glamorous. She relaxed into being a housewife and began to look dowdy. There was no way he was going to quit the Marines, and in any event, what was he supposed to do in England? He had no hold on English culture, English life, English power. So he went back and she did not.

In a curious way, a woman with a child does not need love as badly as a man who has no wife and not much social standing. A man like that might need love more. Maybe a man from a big, loving Latin family would inherit a great and unused capacity for love.

And suddenly there is his son, his English son, a bit stuck-up, a bit weedy, kind of a bookworm, but you know? That kind of makes his old man proud of him. It makes his old man think: I can help make somebody who turns out that different from me. And I can tell my own mother, hey Mom, I didn't let you down. I didn't become no lawyer like my brother, and I got divorced, but I did one good thing in my life. I made my Michael. And you know Mom, my Michael wants to live with me. This guy could go to Oxford, he could talk with the children of aristocrats, hey, he doesn't even like Southern California. But my son wants to live with me.

All that summer, Michael and Louis made their plans.

Michael would pass his GCSEs in June the next year, and then spend six months studying to take the SAT test. Then Michael would apply for a dual passport. He began to sign his full name: Michael Louis Oliveira Blasco.

Using his Latin name made Michael feel wobbly inside, as if he had changed his name to join his father, as if indeed they had in some way merged identities. It felt as if he were going public, as if he were promising someone never to love anyone else. He would repeat that new name to himself over and over in a whisper.

Thoughts of his father drove out thoughts of anyone else. The beaches of California are not short of handsome men wearing little clothing. They had no power to turn Michael Louis Oliveira Blasco's head or heart. The magic of naming echoed what had happened in biological fact. Michael's ego had melted down and merged with someone else's. He had married his father.

Mi macho, como te amo .

There was nothing else in Michael's life for over a month. Love made him numb. He and his Dad came back from a movie and a slightly beery dinner. It was eleven at night – eight in the morning in England. Michael rang home and finally told his mother of his decision, and then took everything one step further.

His father had drunk a bit too much. He couldn't handle drink that well. He was a bit woozy and his black eyes swam with love. Michael wanted to kiss him. Instead, he took his hand and said, 'Dad. I've decided. I'm not going to go back to England.'

His father's eyes dimmed. 'What do you mean?'

'I'm going to stay here. At the end of this summer? I'll finish high school in Oceanside.'

'Oh man.' His father let Michael's hand drop. He covered his head with both hands. 'Man, oh man.' He swayed as if under a burden. 'You can't treat your mother like that, Mike. You're too old to give in to emotion like that. You got to do the right thing.' The words were laboured, like he was remembering lines from a John Wayne script. 'You got to go back home to your mother and we'll do this thing the right way.'

His face looked blue-white and blotchy.

'It's what I want to do.'

Isn't that what you want?

His father sniffed and moved away from him, took a swig from the bottle and as if he had heard Michael's unspoken question, shook his head, no.

Michael went to bed a bit drunk, and slept well enough until about 5 am, when he suddenly was awake, wide awake, with the truth as clear as if it were squatting on his chest.

I love my own father like I should be loving someone my own age.

Michael, Michael, what do you think you're doing? There is no one else in the world doing this, there isn't even any name for what you are doing. You are out there, man, you are way, way out there.

What are you doing to your mother? She's the one who's actually been there all your life, she's the one who's done all the paying. Now, just when you're growing up and she's getting old, you want to take off and leave her.