Geoff Ryman - Lust Or No Harm Done

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From Publishers Weekly
"Reality's got a hole in it." That's what runs through Michael Blasco's head when he discovers that he has the uncanny ability to bring his fantasies to life in this wacky, inspired third novel by Ryman (Was). The 38-year-old gay protagonist is a government scientist experimenting on baby chicks and has a flat in London 's West End with Phil, his passionless boyfriend. While seething on a subway platform, he imagines the beefy trainer at his gym stripping naked right in front of him-and poof-it happens! Terrified at first, Michael quickly regains his composure and wills into action a series of characters like Tarzan and cartoon diva Taffy Duck; narcissistically, he also conjures a copy of himself. His reunion with a long-lost high school sweetheart nicknamed Bottles proves to be touching and funny, but his meeting with Mark, a victim of AIDS, turns sad when Mark rebuffs his plea to revive him. In an effort to inject passion into his stagnant relationship, Michael "calls up" a younger version of Phil paired with a younger version of himself. When this scheme backfires, he returns to the anonymous "speedy, functional sex" that has long sustained him. A night out with feisty Billie Holiday, passionate sex with Picasso and dalliances with Lawrence of Arabia on Viagra reinvigorate him and make for some funny, titillating reading, but as Michael's notebook of his wild adventures begins to overflow, the story's whimsical tone changes, revealing more of his true character as well as some particularly troublesome personal problems. Among them is a disturbing boyhood fixation on his father, which mutates into a wincingly unnerving incestuous sequence. Ryman's "careful-what-you-wish-for" message is artfully packaged in this quirky, offbeat, entertaining novel.
"Inventive… a risky, highly imaginative addition to a unique and valuable boody of work." – Kirkus
"Ryman's 'careful-what-you-wish-for' message is artfully packaged in this quirkyy, off-beat, entertaining novel." – Publishers Weekly
***
David, a young scientist investigating what happens to the brain during the process of learning, suddenly finds himself the subject of a bizarre experiment. On the way home from the lab one night he spies Tony, a fitness instructor from his gym, on the same platform waiting for the tube. David's had an obsession with Tony for weeks, but Tony's barely noticed him at all. Until now. When David imagines the man naked, an extraordinary thing happens: Tony strips there and then on the platform and offers himself in front of all onlookers. Horrified, David flees. But back at his flat, Tony reappears, as if by magic. And disappears, when David wishes him away. And reappears when he calls him back. David can conjure up anyone, from any time, and he does: Billie Holliday, Johnny Weismuller, Daffy Duck, Picasso, Sophia Loren, even his younger self. Mad with lust and losing all scientific objectivity, he runs the gamut of his fantasies until, sated and morally bankrupt, he's forced to confront himself. It is not a pretty sight.

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I said it was like standing on the edge of a black hole.

Heaven collapses into a point, where gravity can no longer work, because there is no space, and time cannot work because there is no expansion. Our eternal lives happen in something like a black hole. Mind you, only like a black hole.

Why not use the same mathematics to describe it and see what happens?

Michael went even more physically restive. He did a little jump in place. Does neurophysics exist? Did I just make that up, or did I read it somewhere? And if I did make it up, I could really be on to something, I mean I could, I could do that, I could take all that mathematical work, and just see what happens. And I wouldn't have to cut up any chickens to do it. I could just go ahead and do it, and if I was wrong, then that's great too, a negative result is still a result, we've still learned something.

Suddenly the train was too small and too slow. All he had to read was a John Grisham novel, and he wanted to throw it out of the train, or chuck it into the steam furnace like the boat in Around the World in Eighty Days. They burned everything on it for fuel. Get me home, get me to my computer, now!

And don't tell me it's not empirical. I've been there, buddy, I died to get there, and I saw it, and I'll know it when I see it again, described in numbers.

Michael settled back in his chair and slapped his own thigh. Outside, light rain was falling, like stars on grey farm outbuildings with tin roofs, pulled down by gravity, gravity which he had read in one paper could be described mathematically in the fifth dimension as electricity. The rain fell and dried and was exhaled as vapour. As a child he thought that was how the earth breathed. He loved the idea, the vapour going up like his own breath on a cold day, and turning into mountains of steam in the sky. The perfection of the system. It was perfect, the world was perfect, life was perfect, this rain and those farm buildings, ancient but with new roofs, were perfect.

Gravity twists reality out of nothingness, what physics calls quantum vacuum.

Is that what made his Angels?

If so, his mind, reaching into eternity, can twist his dead father back into being. What does it mean that he can twist those different selves so far that he can slip into another life? It means there are parallel universes. Universes you can stub your toe on and have a black toenail the next day. And parallel selves, with parallel flesh you can touch?

So gravity is thought? How can a black hole make anything?

And Michael jumped up yet again.

Well, because we know that matter going into black holes is ultimately ejected again as new creation, white holes.

So, I can take those equations too, for white holes, and see if they tell me how my real self can make Angels.

I can account for this, I know I can. I can account for the rain. I can account for the yearning between stars. Somewhere there in all that process is yearning between people as well.

Michael took a taxi from the station, an extravagance to slice through the rain, to get home. He ran up his stairs unwinding his scarf, and threw it and his coat onto the sofa, and took down his Stephen Hawking and his Daniel Dennett. He did a search on Amazon and ordered books. He began to think about how he could organize his days, teaching, marking papers, researching at night, like Einstein in the Patent Office. He would be invisible, unknown, effective. He felt fulfilled, abundant, forgiving. He had an answer to the question: What do I do next?

Michael made himself a cup of soup. Sipping it, he looked at his Picassos, which seemed to rise up in colours like a flock of parrots. The rain had stopped, and sunlight pierced the layers of skyscrapers to glow on his wall. And Michael felt a sudden sense of joy.

It could be of course that the miracle had been sent to teach him about the universe. It could be that it had come to help him understand God, or duplicate God's experience of creation. But it seemed to him now that the miracle had simply come so he could finally learn to enjoy himself. That was what fun was: liking your destiny.

Over the next three days, Michael called back Mustapha the Afghani engineer and they made the love they should have made the first time. He remembered Rabindrath, who permed his hair and who worked in college administration. At one time Michael had been so drawn to him that he would deliberately walk into Rabindrath to feel the warmth of his body and the wiriness of his arms through his cotton shirt.

Michael remembered Stavros the Greek who delivered the post and lifted weights. In mid-winter he wore black T-shirts to show off his musculature. But it was his sweet, slightly dreamy smile that Michael had liked so much.

In fact Michael, who had once found difficulty thinking of someone he fancied, was suddenly shocked by how many beautiful people there were in the world. There were his students, whom university protocols said he must not touch. They rained down onto his bed, sweet and young and at their best, no longer calculating grades or hoping to avoid paying fees until they were sure of an A. In the magic space of the miracle, he and students became what they were in fact: equals. His beautiful body did its work and Michael did not even allow himself the thought: I'm cured. Everything had become light and easy and floating, as if they all had the bones of birds.

There was the boy behind the till at Tesco, whom Michael had once found almost unbearably beautiful. His beauty was not unbearable now because of that equality. Michael was up to it. The boy from Tesco liked being tickled and roared with delighted laughter on Michael's bed. He recombed Michael's hair with gel into a kind of cross between James Dean and Christian Bale. Michael combed it again to save it after the boy had gone, and realized he would comb it that way from now on.

Other kinds of fear disappeared. There was the braindamaged boy Michael had met at a dinner party years before. His name was Robin. Robin had reached out to Michael and tried to take his hand and fumbled with it. 'I can't say things,' he said. 'I want to touch you.' Robin had offered up his hands that were helpless to hold. His slurry voice and his numb sideways lips had put off the younger Michael. Michael welcomed him now and was rewarded. In bed Robin was ruined, muscular, twisted, lithe.

Michael wanted to photograph them but knew that was futile. He wanted to sketch them but he couldn't draw.

Then Michael called up an actor who had once stayed in the same house during the Edinburgh Festival. They had gone to bed with each other, and it hadn't worked, and Michael had moped for weeks. Michael had him back now. His name was Stephen, and he began a dance around Michael's bed. It was an odd, looping thing he had learned in some other country, somewhere like Bulgaria. After Stephen was gone, Michael found he could imitate it. He could make his belly and heavy feet move like Stephen's.

Michael found he could recreate Stavros's dim smile and loping stride. He found he could light a cigarette one-handed like Nick. He could make his face and hands move like his brain-damaged lover. Among all his strengths, Michael's greatest talent would be of use only to him: he could remember people in his body. He would remember all of them.

A Christmas card came late from Philip. It was a photograph of one of his paintings, pasted on a white card.

It was a portrait of Henry and was resolutely free from technical innovation. It was just Henry, with hair in his eyes, looking sweet. His gaze was directly back at the viewer, appraising.

On the back was a note in Philip's newly elegant handwriting.

And so I relax and become a traditionalist. It's more fun just getting on with the painting. Isn't Henry beautiful? We have decided to go our separate ways. We're still friends though.

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