'I say, old man, just how did you get to be such a discord?'
'Ooh rather.'
'Spastic, I believe the term is.'
'Hey, Spaz, can you get your poop in the pan, yet?'
At twelve Michael had no defence against this. He was small and pale. Without even trying to, he lost his native accent in a protective camouflage of likes, you knows, sos and I means, It worked; Americans regard their accent as a symptom of strength and virtue. They assumed Michael had wised up. Then Michael went home.
At fourteen, it was different yet again. Michael's father had moved into an Oceanside condo that looked like something from Cape Cod. It was made of wood and was painted white and blue. It had security gates and was on the clifftops right over the beach.
His father was proud of being so adult. 'I could have stayed at the camp, but you see guys who do that and they don't get into the property market til it's too late. Do you like it, Mikey?'
Instead of playing on a team, Michael ran cross country with his father. Michael would meet him every day after work at the camp. This filled his father's heart with pride and companionship. Michael heard his father on the phone. 'Sorry, sir, but unless it's urgent, I always run with my boy at five pm. Yes, sir, from England. He's just here for the summer. Well, he beats his old man now, sir.'
They used the showers at the camp. Marines with the bodies of young bulls would stroll idly past, stark naked. They would murmur politely, 'Good afternoon, Sarge.' It was as if beautiful horses had learned how to talk.
'Afternoon, Clancy. This is my son, Mike.'
'Hey, guy, how's it going?'
'Real good,' said Mike, monkeying about with his accent. Acting the butch little American helped control Michael's eyes. They kept veering downwards, like World War One aircraft. The bobbing heads of the circumcised cocks were framed with girdles of muscle found elsewhere only on classical statuary. Michael felt something like awe, a yearning for both attainment and possession. He still could not quite focus on it as lust.
Michael and his father would run out of the camp, down the hill to the harbour and from there to Oceanside Beach. As they ran his father talked, between breaths: in, out, in, talk, in, out, in, talk. He ran barefoot, making scrunching noises in the wet sand that formed the commas and punctuation of his speech.
'Forty-three past… I think… we'll do it… one hour twenty… easy.'
'Yeah.'
'Y'getting good, Mike.'
'Thanks.'
'You thought of going serious?'
'Sometimes.'
'Could get you a coach.'
'Maybe.'
'There's a military academy in Carlsbad.'
'I know.'
They get real good SAT scores… good school.'
'Uh huh.'
'You could go there… do this every day.'
Michael turned and there was this big tough guy like Clint Eastwood only for real, and he was beaming, face shiny and oiled with sweat. The gloss on his face reflected sand, sunlight, blue sky, sea, just like his huge mirror shades. He was beaming at Michael.
'So how 'bout it?'
It's hard to keep your voice soft, to make it communicate that you're deeply touched, when you are breathing to fuel a run, and your voice rattles each time your feet thump down onto the sand.
'I'll uh… think about it, OK, Dad?'
That was all Louis wanted. His chest seemed to expand and he looked out on the beach as if he had suddenly inherited it.
'We could getcha running real good.'
They would shower together, and all of his father's body was gleaming with sweat – the broad back with two bands of muscle either side of the spine, the dimpled shoulder blades, and the arms as curvaceous as a woman's body. That was Michael's favourite moment. His father would dive into the showers as if they were waterfalls in the desert. He would rub his face and hands and torso. His father loved the water cold.
Afterwards, he and Michael would go to Cafe 101, which served old-fashioned greasy spoon food: huge hamburgers, peach pie, meatloaf and breakfast all day. That would be their supper: no frozen peas, no boiled spinach, no wet new potatoes.
The whole condo smelled of men. It smelled of his father's fellow officers who piled in after a game of football on the beach, and then stayed to watch the fight away from their wives. The bags of potato chips and empty beer cans would be there the next morning.
It smelled of his father. Dad left his laundry until the basket was full. He lost track of what sheets were washed and which ones were not. Each night after their ritual good nights – Good night, Mike, see ya in the morning, guy. OK Dad, see ya – Michael would settle into a bed that smelled of his father. It smelled of aftershave, thin acrid sweat, talcum powder and liniment for his sprain. The sheets steamed pheromones, for his father had been spending his nights alone too.
One night Michael deliberately touched his father's hand. It was after all their male things – after their run, after the showers, after their meatloaf and gravy, and milkshakes and cherry pie
a la mode.
It was after the chores were done – the moving, oiling, tool cleaning and boiler checks. They were putting up new racks in the garage. Michael passed a drill bit in such a way that he could stroke the palm and fingers of his father's hand. His father's hand was surprisingly soft and smooth. It was like it was made out of tiny satin pillows that someone had warmed by sitting on them.
That night Michael masturbated for the first time. His friend Ali had told him about it. You keep stroking until it shoots out stuff. For some reason, it had never occurred to him to try. Just this once, he promised himself. He felt male, full and swaggering with maleness, he had spent the day being male. He had no real idea what would happen.
He just kept stoking himself. It didn't go very hard, but then he didn't really know how hard it should get. What he was not remotely expecting was orgasm. It was as if he were on some kind of donkey cart with no brakes, steering wheel or anything to drive or control it. He watched helplessly as it rolled down a hill. There was a terrible sense of acceleration, of going faster and faster, higher and higher, and as if in crash, a sudden loss of all control, and a tumbling fall.
Michael lay stunned and messy and embarrassed. He would have to wash. He didn't know there would be so much of the stuff, or that it seemed to crawl everywhere as if it had a life of its own. I'll get the sheets dirty, and Dad'll know, Michael thought.
He pushed his pj bottoms down with his elbows and kicked them off. He didn't want to touch anything with his hands. The doorknob became an obstacle: it would not turn between his two elbows. He gave up and used his hands, but they were too slick with semen to turn it. Would he have to call his Dad? He decided to sacrifice a sock. He stuck his hand into it like a glove puppet and managed to open the door. Padding out quickly to the bathroom, he kept his pj top hanging low. He washed his hands for ten minutes, and then the sink and the taps several times. Then he snapped his pj bottoms back on.
He felt abused. Orgasm had come as a thumping physical shock that left him a bit weak in the stomach and knees. It was as though something that was not himself had temporarily taken over his body. It made him feel a bit soiled, a bit guilty. He told himself: I only did it to see what it was like, and I won't have to do it again now.
Michael wanted to talk to his Dad. He could tell his Dad about it and his Dad could tell him what to expect from sex. His Dad would be good about it, no shock or outrage.
Michael stood outside his father's open bedroom door. His father left the door open in case Michael needed him. If Michael stood in the doorway, his father would say: 'Mike? Is there something wrong?' Michael stood and waited. He could hear his father breathe, a delicate hissing sound that reminded Michael of baby rabbits. He could smell his father's breath too; sometimes it was stale, mostly after he'd overdone the exercise and hadn't drunk enough water. The sense of his father's physical presence was overwhelming.
Michael wanted to sleep next to his father. He wanted to curl up beside him, and smell the big bear-like smell and be cuddled. He wanted to have long conversations about life, and about the future, and what it was to be an adult. He even wanted to smell his father's breath.
He waited, but there was no invitation, and he wasn't brave enough to invade. He could talk about it in the morning if he still needed to.
So Michael crept back into bed, still breathing in the scent of his father, and pulled the pillow round and hugged it from the side, as if it were his father's torso, and a great heaviness, a stillness settled over him, like liquid lead was oozing out of every pore. He had a dream about melting, as if he were wax.
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.