Lust Or No Harm Done

the same primary school.

Every morning there would be a harassed routine of cornflakes and bathrooms and shoelaces. His Mum couldn't afford a car, so they took the bus and walked into the playground together.

Michael was in some danger of being bullied when he was smaller. Once, a gang of older boys surrounded him and started pushing him. Michael looked up and saw his mother turn and walk back into the school, clasping her hands in front of her. Michael understood and was even grateful: he would have to cope with this himself. So he pushed back.

Michael's good grades were regarded with suspicion. His minor misbehaviours were abruptly punished to avoid any accusation of favouritism. One teacher, Mrs Podryska, who didn't like his mother, was not about to do Michael any favours. 'And did you do this homework yourself, Michael?' she asked in a loud, clear voice in front of the rest of the class. Michael still remembered Mrs Podryska's pleased little smile.

Saturdays were spent on domestic chores. His mother would hum to herself all morning, polishing furniture and asking Michael to give her a hand with the vacuuming. After that she would take Michael with her to the supermarket to help carry the bags. Then Michael would have his homework to do, and she would sit through it with him. 'Come on now, Michael, you know how to divide numbers. And no, you don't use your calculator, you use your head.' Blanched with exhaustion, she might watch the television, or talk to her sister or her mum on the telephone.

On Sunday, after breakfast, they would go and visit Granny Hobart. Gran lived in a self-contained flat for old people in Royston where Michael could watch the TV quietly and again help with the washing-up. Sometimes, for a treat, they would go to the cinema together, at 3.00 pm. Again they would take the bus, and it would be full of giggling gangs of independent kids who had escaped their mums.

The quiet time for both of them was Sunday morning. On Sunday morning they had a big breakfast together: bacon and eggs and toast and jam. They would go through the Sunday papers, scrunching toast.

That was how, at nine years old, Michael first saw a photograph of Pablo Picasso.

By tradition, Michael saw the colour supplement first. He turned a page, and there was a picture of an old man in tight briefs. The old man had planted his fists high on either side of his chest, which was puffed out as if he were a muscleman. He stood on a beach and in the background people wore funny masks, all bright colours. The old man's head looked like a bullet, the eyes were dark and staring, merry and challenging at the same time, as if he would head-butt you for a joke.

Michael, even at nine, was forced to acknowledge that something happened when he looked at that photograph. He skimmed the rest of the magazine but kept turning back to it surreptitiously. Michael knew it was somehow wrong that it was a man, and somehow even worse that it was an old man: but he wanted to keep the picture.

His Mum stood up abruptly from the table. 'You won't forget to wash up now, will you love.' Michael's breath went icy. Mum usually took the supplement into the toilet with her.

'I'm still reading this, Mum,' he said.

She wasn't bothered. 'I'll take the Arts instead.' When she was out of the room, Michael quietly tore the page out of the magazine. He didn't want his mother to know it even existed.

For the next few weeks, while his mother did the laundry, or rang up about the broken Hoover, or shouted at him to get ready for school, Michael hid in his room and looked at his secret photograph. It was embarrassing, something you couldn't talk about. Michael wanted to dance on that beach, be part of the parade with umbrellas and people in masks. He wanted to be enveloped and hugged in those brown arms. He wanted to see what was inside the briefs.

Michael was not the only one. Many people lusted after Pablo Picasso, even at a time of life when most men are age-spotted ghosts of their former sexual selves. How can a photograph convey that? It was as if it were something that wafted around Picasso, a miasma of power that seeped even onto film. Michael at nine would look at the photograph, and duck away coyly. Coyly, he would look again.

At nine, his father's absence was like a grey mist everywhere. Michael eyed men in the street: is my father like him? A big breezy Romford guy would stroll past wearing a football scarf and Michael would think: I'd like to have him for a father.

Michael wanted to sit on Picasso's lap, and snuggle up against that old chest and be held in those arms, and feel those bare legs under him.

Sitting on his bed before school looking at the photograph, Michael realized: this is how men look at photos of women. This is how girls look at pictures of Bobby Sherman or the Monkees. I feel about men the way I'm supposed to feel about women. I'm the wrong way round. I'm queer.

This was a shocking thing to realize at nine in 1969. You could be called Big Girl's Blouse or Poof. Everyone knew what poofs were and they were horrible, and everybody laughed at them all the time. And he was one of them. He was a poof. That scared him. He was what he was not supposed to be, and Michael was otherwise a good little boy. He put the photograph away and then somehow, without meaning to, lost it.

Michael forgot about Picasso. The next year he went to California and he found his dream beach and his dream father. A-levels and university left him little time for art.

It was Mark, the rugby-playing art dealer, who finally kick-started Michael's interest in Picasso. 'I once popped in to a little exhibition of his work in the Camargue,' Mark told him. 'It was seeing them all together, actually, that did it for me. There was one whole wall of them, painting after painting in the most beautiful colours, and you began to realize the fantastic productivity of the man.'

Late in life, Michael read the biographies, and those demanding, sullen eyes began to work their way into him. The young Picasso was not handsome. Unlike the unambitious, famous people are often not more beautiful in youth. The young Picasso had a fat face, flat greasy hair and a double chin. His expression was disgruntled, and he was bundled in scarves against the cold. He looked older than he would in his forties.

In his forties, Picasso posed as a boxer. His short arms and legs were rounded enough to imitate muscles. He wore baggy briefs that revealed his thighs and chest. The cloth was jammed up into his crotch, as if to show off his dick. Which was surprising as objectively speaking, he had hardly any dick at all. His body at forty, when most men are grizzling all over with greying fur, was as smooth as a girl's. His expression was serious, and his eyes obviously black.

Thirty years later, Michael sat and sipped his mother's sherry. From nowhere, like a bubble rising up from the floor of the sea came a single word.

Picasso.

Before he had time to ask, the air of his flat welled up in ripples like muddy water.

In Michael's sitting room was the most sexually powerful man of his time.

Picasso was tiny, with a round, demanding face, blunt nose and black eyes that seemed to pop out of his head. He was already balding, which in his case simply confirmed his masculine state. A thick woollen jacket was thrown over both shoulders, and the sleeves were left empty. The effect was curiously feminine.

Picasso ignored Michael. He sauntered in a semi-circle around the sitting room, his face curdling with bored disapproval. He sucked on a cigarette, then blew out the smoke.

'Personne ne vit la,' he said.

Michael dragged out his schoolboy French, kicking and screaming. 'Moi, j'habite ici.'

Picasso turned a shameless gaze towards him. 'Vous? Vous etes une personne?'

You? You are a person?

Michael had the power of creation, however, and was growing used to it. 'Oui Je vous ai cree.'

Picasso looked genuinely bored. 'Moi,' he said and let the word rest a moment. 'Je me suis cree.'

Picasso was still scanning the room. His eyes flickered at Philip's portrait of Michael, as if it gave him an attack of the vapours.

'Mon Dieu,' Picasso murmured. 'Ca a l'air d'avoir etre frit dans de l'huile d'olive.' It looks like it's been fried in olive oil. Like an athletic teenager Picasso spun around and flung himself sprawling onto the sofa. 'Du vin, s'il vous plait', he said, as if to a waiter.