Lust by Geoff Ryman

Author:Geoff Ryman [Ryman, Geoff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007401079
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2001-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

What’s eating Michael Blasco?

At twelve years old, Michael believed in love. He believed that love was the natural state. If you were out of love, then through a kind of natural gravity you would roll back into it. Michael believed that some day he would roll home.

Home was probably Romford, though Mum still sounded like she was from Sheffield. Michael was a mystery to his mother. His underwear was going crisp and no one had ever told Mum about wet dreams. She accused him of masturbation, and knocked on the door of the toilet when he read comics, demanding ‘What are you doing in there?’ Michael’s puberty had been more traumatic for her than for him.

Michael’s visits to California became an escape to another world of beaches and palm trees. Coming back every two years was like visiting another self. This self was called Mikey or when he got older, Mike. Mike had his own room, which was full of things, neat things his Dad had bought him, boy things. They were just where he left them: well almost. His Dad had maybe moved the boy things forward to kind of emphasize them – the baseball glove, the Swiss Army knife, the bicycle-repair tools.

Michael would come back at twelve or fourteen, to find all of Mikey’s old things there. He could sit up late at night and read his old X Men comics. Sometimes there was a sense of homecoming. Hiya, how ya doing, his California self would say, perking up after two years without being used. Sometimes Michael would settle into Mike as if he were a sofa. Other times he was a bit frosty with his old self. At sixteen, his lip curled. X Men? You’re still into X Men, oh God, they’re terrible.

Michael would play his old records. His first love had been Mark Bolan and T-Rex and then, glistering with make-up, dear old Bowie.

This could cause some tension with his father. Dad thought rock music was socially destructive. He had few records himself. Staff Sergeant Blasco owned The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. In a strange convoluted way, this was to do with his Latin background. The Blasco family had been in California for 100 years and were thoroughly Americanized. That meant the Catholic League of Decency, and that meant Family Entertainment. At ten, at twelve, Michael heard and learned to love Camelot and Mary Poppins.

While other twelve-year-old kids were buying Grand Funk Railroad, Michael was seeking out the Original Cast Recording of Cinderella.

Michael played Cinderella year in, year out, at twelve, at fourteen, even at sixteen. Maybe it was the link with England. Or maybe it was identification. In 1957, Julie Andrews had been twenty-two, the same age as Elvis Presley. Polished, operatic, old-fashioned she may have been, but everything she did crackled with a youthful energy that made Michael bounce. It was a feminine energy, something he could identify with. And this Cinderella was like him, stuck powerless and dreaming in a family that didn’t quite work.

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