human and close. Even if it had come to nothing, he would have begun to grow up at seventeen.
I have a feeling Al can make no difference now to anything.
Michael came home from a day back at the university sitting final exams and telling students to turn off their mobile phones. He sat in his darkened sitting room and thought about Al. He crunched a Viagra like candy, and waited for his hour.
He was a little bit scared, and that was good. Being scared, Michael had realized, means you're learning. I can edit this like a film, Michael thought. I can cut to the chase.
The air swung back like a locker door, and Al stood revealed, naked and solemn. His eyes were frightened and serious. This was nothing like a body running away with itself on automatic erection. This was a needy seventeen-year-old who had made a decision that required him to show who he was.
'Come here,' said Michael. 'Sit next to me.'
Al came to the sitting-room sofa, and curled up like a baby, caching his nakedness and resting his head on Michael's lap. 'I missed you,' Al said. 'I missed you for a long time.' Al lay still, and closed his eyes with what looked like relief. 'You didn't get fat. You didn't get boring. You stayed Michael.'
Michael found he was able to lean all the way down to kiss the top of Al's head. 'What happened to you?' he asked.
Al said. 'I missed the train.'
'What does that mean?'
'Oh. It means I died.'
Michael's heart groaned. Not another one. Michael's heart was fed to bursting with this stuff. It was like the war, his gay generation's war. Why didn't it stop?
'How old?' Michael whispered.
'Twenty-one. One of the very first in London.' Al, still curled up, raised a hand as if volunteering. 'They didn't even know what it was.'
Michael had broken out into a sweat and he made a shrugging motion as if he were in harness.
Al's eyes glittered up at him. 'Why did you turn me down, Michael? I wanted to be with you.'
Michael said, 'Because I think that if I make a pass at someone, I'll kill them.'
The words popped out, like a pip squeezed from an orange under stress, hard and bitter and glossy. Michael ran a hand over his brow. The words, he realized, were true. Michael chuckled. It was a strange kind of laugh that bent him over in the middle.
'Now it looks like I kill people if I
Al was shaking his head. 'You didn't kill me.'
'Then why do I feel sick? Why does sex always make me scared?'
''Cause you're screwed up. We're both screwed up.' Al hung his head. 'I killed me, Michael. No one else did.'
Al reached up and played with Michael's long, curly hair. He leaned his forehead against Michael's as if in submission or final rest.
For the first time in his life, Michael's cock responded to emotion. Yes, it was also the Viagra, but the blood pushing into the opened veins of his penis was driven hard by a sense of farewell, of wishing someone did not have to go. It was the emotion you might have if your faithful lover was leaving for a month. Michael's heart yearned up through his penis.
Al could sense it. Something quickened in his eyes and he arched his back. He stretched his legs and opened up like a flower displaying its pistils. Michael's face slipped down the length of Al's trunk and kissed Al's penis and went further down to the neatly folded anus. The front of Michael's trousers had soaked through. His underwear was difficult to peel off. Al's legs went over his head, and Michael entered him and strained within him to reach further inside. All Michael saw was Al's eyes, and his delighted smile.
Michael lifted Al up, still joined to him, and carried him to the bedroom. He settled Al onto the edge of the mattress, and he kept standing and watching himself making love and that looked like a miracle in itself.
And the air whispered again. It seemed as if restitution had been pushed even further. It seemed suddenly that afternoon light was filtered through old-fashioned net curtains in a single window. Michael blinked at the illusion and it remained for a moment. They were back in a studio flat in Romford. He blinked again, and the room sighed with relief of tension, and collapsed back into its ordinary self, as both Michael and Al came together.
Al took his hand and rested it against his leg. 'It wouldn't have made any difference, Michael. It would have ended the same.' His dark pupils were holes that seemed to go on forever.
'I… I could let you stay here, Al.'
Al blinked.
'You stay here. You could live.'
His black eyes reflected little pin pricks of light, diamond-bright. There was no light in the room that was that bright. Al's mouth worked, as if he were about to say something.
Michael pressed home. 'Stay here and live with me.'
Al stroked Michael's forearm. He cleared his throat. 'Michael. There is a place without time. And we are there before we are born, and there after it. We are born with wonderful potential, and we live, and while we live, we fulfil it. Or not. In any case, when you die you are completed.'
The light in those dark depths was even brighter. 'I'm complete, Michael. That's my story now.'
'You're saying no.'
Al smiled sleepily. 'I can say yes or no to nothing. You can make me stay. For what it would be worth to you.'
Michael did not want to lose him just yet. He held him, and pressed his face against Al's brown firm chest. And felt love yearn out of him again.
Michael rolled the duvet over them both. Al spent most of the night curled like a baby. The sky greyed and for some reason the song of the garden's blackbirds was replaced by the cries of seagulls. Michael was both awake and asleep, his body unmoving as lead, and his mind dull. Michael thought to himself: all right then, go now.
In the morning Michael sat up in his big bed. Right, he thought, and stood out of bed alone. That is it. I am fed up with all this tragedy. Henry, he told the air. You were right. God dammit, I want to have some fun.
And, as if in answer, the curtains round the bed stirred.
That night, after work, Michael called up Bottles again.
Bottles showed up in her punk Egyptian phase this time, wearing a Tom of Finland T-shirt showing two men tweaking tits. She wore a leather glove with studs that was clenched around a bottle of champagne.
There was the elaborate ritual of Continental kissing. It had scared Michael once. Then he saw: we were poor suburban kids trying to be different, smarter, sharper, harder.
'You're looking so old,' she said. 'That's a compliment.'
'And you're looking so over the top. And that's a compliment too.'
She smiled in approval. You don't take any shit if you want to sit at the right table. 'I bought us a bottle,' she said with a swagger.
Michael led her into the dining room, where there were champagne glasses. 'Babe,' he said, expertly feigning a seventeen-year-old feigning sophistication. 'Tell me. Who should I screw next?'
'A woman,' she said and blew out smoke. 'A woman definitely. It's just so naff being trapped with one sex.'
'Well OK, but who? I've already slept with you. If you count as a woman, that is.' He opened the cabinet for glasses.
Her face started out mean and bitchy. 'If you ever sleep – get to sleep with me and I get to – oh bollocks!' She stamped her foot, and started to laugh at herself.
'The line you're looking for goes: if you do sleep with me and I ever hear of it, I shall be very, very annoyed.'
She nodded yes, yes, I screwed up.
'The implication is that my dick is so small you'd either be asleep or you wouldn't notice.'
'All right.'
Michael had another one at the ready. 'It's a wonderful old joke, I haven't heard it in
