Homo Odyssey by Brent Meersman

Author:Brent Meersman
Language: deu
Format: epub
Publisher: Gmünder
Published: 2018-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Michael

ARCHANGEL

Los Angeles, USA

I was doing a favor for an old friend in Cape Town. He had plunged into an all-consuming, passionate infatuation for a much younger boy, Michael, whom he described as his archangel.

Michael was a 22-year-old club kid from a dysfunctional home, troubled, recreationally addicted to MDMA, a drifter, or to put it more kindly, a dreamer. My friend still cherished a pathological Wildean weakness for cruel and thoughtless youth, whereas I had learned early on that young men with any ambitions to make their mark upon the world, pursue life with an aggressive self-centered interest, for which you will be sacrificed the moment a choice has to be made.

Perhaps then it was for the best that my friend, George, with an absolute belief in this protégé’s genius, and blinded to all his patent faults by being made to feel young and loved again, had selflessly packed Michael off to faraway Los Angeles, all expenses paid, so the kid could make his dreams come true in Hollywood. George had absolute faith Michael would return a star. In an ethos of cynical, mutually exploitative love between moneyed men and pretty boys, which was so much a part of the gay club scene, my friend’s amour fou for his Narcissus and his magnanimous act, seemed vaguely beautiful. For this reason alone, I agreed to check up on the boy while I was in transit from Tokyo, and to report back to his patron.

The utterly unreliable Michael, to my great surprise, was waiting for me at the airport exactly as arranged by email a week before.

He was tall, skinny as an Indonesian shadow puppet, with a bulging Adam’s apple the size of his nose, a scrawny neck on top of which rotated a head with bulbous eyes and scraggly blond hair, thinning prematurely. Or as George saw him, a svelte physique, vast amethyst eyes swept with lashes, and a languorous smile.

As instructed, the first thing I did was to point my camera at him and take his picture. Michael, being an unashamed Footlight Fanny, immediately sprang into performance mode, professionally working the camera, swimming in his own reflection, and before I knew it, I had shot off a dozen pictures, the airport arrivals hall transformed into a photoshoot, and I into Paparazzo.

A little crowd had assembled around us, scratching their heads to figure out who this celebrity was; this was LA after all and Michael was saying loudly, “Sorry darlings, no autographs today, sorry, sorry.”

On his high-heeled boots and stalk-like legs, he speedily made for the exit, me tripping behind him.

Michael was blessed with ample natural charm, ironically quite obscured by my good friend’s amorist, often artificial and frilly theatrical praises. He was euphoric at seeing a face from home. “I thought I’d take you for a spin around the city. What time is your flight?” He spoke with a pronounced Eastern Cape accent, the genuine root sound of all South African English accents.

The flight was later that night, but I did not trust Michael to get me back on time.

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