He stood up.
He felt the cold, cup-shaped American doorknob.
Michael listened as the door clicked open.
I'll finally, finally know what a cock is like in my mouth. I'll finally know what your cock is like. I don't want it from anyone other than you.
Can you hear me, Dad; can you hear my feet on the carpet? Have you lain awake all night, thinking of me? Are you sitting up with a start, thinking, is that Mike? You'll say, naw, he's just going to the john. He doesn't even know what's going on. Mike's innocent.
Well, I'm not innocent, Dad. I know what I'm doing. I'm doing it for both of us. We don't need to be afraid. We don't need to tell anyone what we've done. We can live together, father and son. You'll know when I touch you. You'll know when we kiss. I've just got to do this. I'll bust wide open if I don't.
The door hangs open. I can smell you. I can hear you breathe.
I stand over you. How do I do this? You look so sealed in the sheet, all wrapped around, how do I peel it? Do I just land next to you? Will my weight hurt you? I'm not so little now, as I used to be. Do I just lie down on the edge of the bed and kiss you?
Dad, help me, I don't know what to do.
Maybe you'll just keep on sleeping. Maybe you'll never know. Maybe I'll just touch you, hold you and you won't notice. You'll think it was just a dream, something not real, something that happened another time, another place.
No harm done.
So Michael sits down on the floor and feels the rough fur of the carpet on his bare ass, and he reaches in under the sheet, and goes up the cool soft thigh and feels the tip of his father's big-headed penis and takes it firmly in his grasp.
Everything is still for a minute. Then Michael moves his hand around it, over it, to feel its sleeping shape. At last, I'm touching you; I'm holding it. It feels just like I always imagined, big and small, swollen and soft. Sweet. It feels sweet. It feels like it is meant for expressing love.
Suddenly, his father's eyes snap open and glare into his.
There is no confusion, no awakening befuddlement. His father's eyes are hawk-like, angry, watchful, and they stare into Michael's face. It is as if they are made of ice, at sea, and glow faintly in the dark.
'Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you doing?'
And his father scuttles back from him.
Sergeant Blasco crowds himself against the back of the bed. 'What are you doing, Michael?'
He lunges sideways, fumbles with the neck of the lamp, and switches it on. Michael sees the eyes again, and thinks, oh fuck, oh no. Something seems to be sucking his stomach out through his ass.
Michael knows instantly, with horrible, shrivelling certainty, what the situation is. He was wrong, he had been wrong about it all. But his mouth, and another part of his brain, carry on, try to make the situation change, by a miracle, by sympathetic magic.
'I was trying to make it easy for you.' Michael feels skinny, like a concentration-camp victim, naked with ribs showing through, and he is nervously biting both the tip of his index finger and thumb.
'Trying to make what easy for me, Michael?' His father has pulled up a sheet over his loins. He jerks it higher, to cover his tits.
Michael starts to blub, he can't say it because to say it, and see the reaction would be the final end of the dream.
'You were stroking my dick, Michael!'
His father has gone relentless, professional. He is trained to seek out problems and hound them. 'Make what easy for me, Michael?'
Michael blubs it out now, as a confession, an admission of error with no hope of making anything right. 'To make love.'
His father thinks he hasn't heard right. 'To make love? Is that what you said? Is that what you said to me, Michael?'
Michael nods, knowing his whole face has gone as bleary as semen, all tears and spit.
'Jesus Christ.' His father digs his fingers into his hair, and his hair stays upright. 'What, you wanted to fuck me?'
It wasn't like that; it didn't feel like that. It was love. 'No,' Michael whines in an utterly bereft voice.
'Suck my dick, or what?'
Michael can only make a noise. All Michael can do is haul in enough air and force it through the glue to say, 'I love you.'
His father strides forward on the bed, towering over Michael, big enough to snap him in half, his bare shoulders still beautiful. 'You're a faggot. You're a fucking little faggot and you touched me. You touched me.'
His father is now striking at Michael's chest with just the tips of his fingers like a goose attacking with its beak. 'You
And his father pushes him to the floor. Michael hits his head on the edge of the open doorway. His legs lift up and his smooth bottom and smoochy little anus are visible, and this drives his father crazy, as if his son were doing this deliberately to lure him.
'Get out of here, get out of my room, you fucking faggot! You fucking fairy!'
His father starts to kick him, in the butt, on the back of his legs.
Michael can't talk. 'Dad. Stop,' he tries to say, but it comes out as a bubble of something. He rolls over onto all fours and tries to crawl.
That sticks his bare hairless ass in the air, like a porno photo of a dame in a fuck magazine.
'Just get the fuck away from me.' His father doesn't exactly kick him, more like pushes him with his foot. Michael falls forward and friction-burns his elbow on the rug.
'Go on, get out!'
Michael scurries forward on all fours. He manages to run mostly on his feet, except for the odd, steadying fist on the carpet. He scuttles into his room and closes the door. He waits, fearfully.
Michael begins fully to understand what has happened. The dream has collapsed. He won't be studying at UCSD. He will never live in any house in San Diego or Carlsbad, at least with Dad. There won't be a garden. There won't be skiing in Aspen or a walk along the John Muir Trail. He won't become an American citizen. He will never be Michael Louis Oliveira Blasco. He'll go back to England. Will he ever see his father again? Maybe yes, after many years, after all this wears away.
Michael tries to think of something sensible to do. He does realize that his nakedness infuriates his father. He starts to dress. In the condo hallway, there is blood on the white carpet. That will stain, he thinks dully. He pulls on underwear, jeans, T-shirt, gets a towel from the bathroom and drenches it under the tap.
He kneels and starts scrubbing the carpet. At first the stain reminds him of the skids on his own elbows. But as he scrubs, the stain spreads, and the thought comes, it will never come out, never, never. And then it looks just like what has happened, a terrible bloodied wound that will mean the carpet is never the same.
'Never, never, never,' he says and he scrubs and then he breaks down. His hands go too weak to hold the towel. They rise up helplessly and waver like the necks of swans in a mating dance, and he sobs and chokes.
And his father walks out of the bedroom. His father has dressed now, and he looks at Michael with hatred and disgust.
'Don't look at me like that!' Michael wails.
His father has come to do something else. He walks into Michael's room. Michael trails after him.
'What is this?' His father holds up a book of
'What's this? Batman. A guy in leotards. What have you brought in my house? Huh? You fucking fruit! Were you looking at me? Were you looking at me in the showers? Huh. Huh? Were you looking at my men? Did you come every day into the changing room just to watch the men?'
