Lust

Tarzan tasted like one of your mother’s friends. He had that perfumed, powdery, clotted smell of face paint. Tarzan smiled and pressed Michael to him, rather as if he were Cheetah at the end of the film. Michael had to coax him out of the loincloth. Tarzan had no conception that it could be removed. He looked as surprised as Michael when it slipped aside to reveal handsome, Catholically uncircumcised genitals from which every trace of pubic hair had also been shaved. MGM couldn’t have pubic hair leaking out over the edge of the loincloth.

And, having stripped Johnny/Tarzan, Michael discovered that, like his twelve-year-old self, he wanted to do nothing else.

So he lay next to Tarzan and was cradled. Protected like Jane by the Hays Code, Michael wallowed in the bed as Tarzan prodded him, tickled him, and examined his feet. He sniffed his chin.

As Michael lay there in his arms he wondered. Is this all I wanted all along? With all those other men? Just to be held, stroked and cuddled? Perhaps it is simply that I never wanted real sex at all.

In which case it is possible that I never grew up.

And he could choose to accept that. He could decide to stay a child. Who was anyone to tell him his sexuality was wrong? If this is what he really wanted, he could stay here, warm and sheltered. If this was some new sexual home, why leave it? Michael stroked the smooth firm backs of Tarzan’s arms.

‘Pee pee,’ said Tarzan. He stood up and discovered with wonder that the toilet flushed. He roared at the gushing of clear water, knelt and began to drink from it, lapping like a lion. He looked up in delight.

It was nearly 2:00 PM. Time to go. Tarzan had no concept of time or work, and tried to keep Michael with him, holding his arm, stroking it. In the end, Michael had to disperse him.

He didn’t want to see Tarzan dissolve like a TV channel. Michael simply turned away and heard something like a gust of wind, and felt a sudden hollowness in the room behind him. Every trace of jungle was gone, including the smell of Max Factor.

At reception, he coughed and asked like an out-of-town guest about local restaurants. Tomorrow morning he would check out and pay his bill as if he had spent the night there.

Michael walked back through Archbishop’s Park. It was a dull grey English spring, stark with no leaves on the trees. He thought of Tarzan’s body, its pre-pubescent smoothness, of his tenderness and the caresses. The main sensation in the pit of his stomach was fear, as if he were still taking that first trip to California.

Circumstances meant that an unexpected question was answered next.

Can I make them do it when I’m not there? (#ulink_c552b880-1de7-55a0-ac73-00e502e4077e)

‘We’ve got an invitation,’ Philip said, opening their post. ‘It’s from Zoltan Caparthi,’ he said. ‘You know, the glass artist? The one who does those fabulous piss-takes of beauty contests? He’s invited us. Well, you me and whoever else we want to bring. He said everybody’s lover has a lover, and they must come too. Do you want to come? Can you bring someone interesting?’

‘Oh,’ said Michael, ‘I think so.’

‘I’ll meet you there,’ said Phil. ‘With mine.’

The house had a name: the Looking Glass. A sign said so, in a cluster of mirrors and neon and preserved feather boas high up, out of the reach of vandals. The walls were painted mauve covered with mirror stars along the top.

Michael arrived alone and rang the bell with a shiver of mingled anticipation and inadequacy. He held a John Lewis shopping bag full of his costume.

The door was opened by a young man dressed like Carmen Miranda. A Salvador Dali moustache was painted on his upper lip.

‘Hello, I’m Billy, welcome!’

Billy kissed him on the cheek and ushered him in. There was a kind of combination office, kitchen and reception area, covered in cork with photographs pinned to the walls. There was no one else. Michael had come on time, and was the first to arrive. ‘You want to change?’ Billy asked.

‘Yes indeed,’ said Michael, feeling dowdy. ‘I’m … I’m …’ He tried to think of the formula: somebody’s amputated other half. He showed the invitation.

Billy completed the sentence. ‘You’re one of the optional extras. So am I. I’m the son of the woman who keeps Zoltan’s books. You and I will have more fun than all these old slags because it’s all new to us. Now. I want your drink ready when you come out looking fabulous. What do you fancy?’

Michael was scared of being boring so he said, ‘A margarita.’

‘I meant herbal tea,’ said Billy.

Michael smiled at himself. ‘I don’t know anything about herbal tea. Choose the nicest.’

Billy smiled too. ‘The nicest for the nicest,’ he said.

Michael went into the bathroom as himself and came out with Tarzan. He wore Tarzan, Tarzan was his costume. Weissmüller loomed over him, loose-limbed, brown, sprawling, barefoot. Michael wore a concealing leopard skin that crossed his chest and hid his belly, as if he were plump. If anyone asked he would say he had come as Boy.

Billy looked a bit confused. ‘Two herbal teas, then.’

‘Yes, thank you.’

Tarzan approved. ‘Tea good. Tea come from jungle.’

‘This is … uh … Johnny,’ Michael explained.

‘Hello Johnny.’ Billy was young enough that a beautiful body was nothing special. But he kept glancing back towards the front door. How did this person get in?

‘Woman pretty,’ said Tarzan. ‘Nice moustache.’

There was a broad staircase leading upstairs. The host must have heard voices, for suddenly he descended. He was a huge man, big in every direction, with a pregnant potbelly and a devilish goatee. He wore a sari, and from out of his back, four extra blue papier-mâché arms.

Tarzan drew his hunting knife.

‘Hello, hello, and welcome. I am Zoltan … and you?’ He extended a hand towards the knife. He had style.

‘Tarzan. Boy,’ growled Johnny, hand on knife. Zoltan’s smile thinned somewhat.

‘Well, I am Kali. For the evening.’ Hungarian was the lightest possible seasoning in the thick soup of his Oxbridge accent.

Michael said who he was and his name seemed to evaporate even as he said it. He didn’t hear it himself. Tarzan was engaged in a traditional movie-monkey greeting, making Cheetah-like noises and sniffing Zoltan’s extra blue arms.

‘Will your friend keep this up all evening?’

‘Day and night,’ said Michael.

‘You’ve sought help for him, I hope.’

Michael said without thinking, ‘No, I love him just the way he is.’

‘There are some trees upstairs,’ said Zoltan, speaking to Tarzan as if to an idiot. ‘Figs. On the trees. You’ll like figs.’ He turned back to Michael. ‘Harry is the gardener, you’ll have to talk to him not me. Perhaps your friend would like to swing in them.’

It was a cue. Michael said thank you, and walked upstairs without his host, both of them grateful to be spared more conversation.

The room was full of mythology and mirrors: a sphinx in gold foil with turquoise eyebrows, or a fourteen-foot-high statue of Liz, portraits of the famous on mirrors so you could see yourself as them. Much of it was beautiful. Michael wished he had managed to stay the distance with Zoltan, this far at least. He would have liked to know more about the glass buddhas, the holographic eyes. One whole wall was clear glass, and beyond it, huge-leafed plants.

‘What a fantastic place,’ he said and sipped tea. Fancy Philip knowing someone who lived in a place like this. Michael wondered what other places Philip had visited without him. What else, indeed, did he not know about Philip?

Tarzan was unimpressed. ‘Crazy place,’ he said. ‘Boy go. Tarzan go.’

Why, wondered Michael, am I always playing somebody’s father, or somebody’s son?