'How long do you think you can stay married to your father?'
'Oh. I'd say until about six months after you graduate. And then everyone starts to ask when's Michael moving into a place of his own? People start to say: has Michael got a girlfriend? People start to say: Louis, are you seeing anybody? They start asking each other: have you ever seen Louis with a woman? Are you sure that's his son?'
The other Michael was looking at the TV as if the film were still showing. 'That's about it. Plus.'
'It's that plus I can't imagine.'
'Plus it fucks you up. Fucks you both up. You start saying to yourself every time you fuck and every time you don't fuck: this is my father. There is a word for this. The word is incest. It's supposed to be wrong.' This Michael punches the pillow. 'And you start to look at guys your own age. And he starts to think, it would be a lot healthier if you split up, if he found someone else too. He says that to you. You cry, because it's true. And because, goddammit, you don't want anyone else. Who could ever compete with your Dad?'
Michael asked, 'Did he start to drink?'
The other Michael just nodded. He sighed raggedly. 'And how.'
'Lose his job?'
Just a quick nod, yes. 'He had to have dental work.' Whatever that meant. 'He got all fat. You'd find him in the hall in the morning, and he'd shat himself. He'd get drunk and yell things. One day I just got in the car and started driving.'
'Bad scene.'
This Michael chuckled and shuddered at once.
'But you got out.'
A kind of cough. 'Not really, no. No, I wouldn't say that.'
'How come?'
'Let your father fuck you for seven years and find out.'
Michael coughed. 'I never did. I tried. I never did.'
Michael the Angel said, 'You end up in LA, you hit the bars and declare open season on your ass.' He shrugged. 'It was the 1980s. I got sick.'
'Michael, love. Is there somebody there?' It was his mother, calling from the spare bedroom.
Michael's heart stopped. He looked about the room. This was California; she shouldn't be there.
The other Michael answered, shouting towards the bedrooms. 'It's OK, Mom. I'm just talking to myself.' He leaned towards Michael. Michael could see the shape of his skull. 'She came over to take care of me. She's a nice lady.'
'She is,' murmured Michael. 'Look. I don't want her to see me.'
The patient's eyes said: she'd love to see you. You're healthy.
'See you around,' said Michael.
'You hope not,' said the other Michael. He flicked the film back on. Gene Tierney sat in a casino that was in circles like a circus.
'What year is it?' Michael asked.
'1995. Early.'
Before the three-drug treatment. Michael felt sick. He walked unsteadily back to the California bedroom.
His father was in bed waiting for him, but there were strands of muscle down his neck, and his pectorals sagged like an old woman's dugs and were thicketed with snow-white hair. His face had collapsed.
'Everything all right, Mikey?' he asked in a phlegmy, quavering voice.
'Sure Dad.'
'I love you, baby.' His father's age-spotted hand clasped his. 'I thought you'd gone away.' The voice trailed off with relief from panic.
And it could have been this too, me at 38 and him… how old? Michael started counting and got up to 70 and stopped.
There was nowhere else to go. Michael lay down next to him. His father smelled now of dentures and catheters and the ending up of things.
Get out; go away, Michael told the apparition. Leave me alone, we never would have ended up here, it would have been terrible, sick, sad.
Michael looked back.
And in the bed, there was himself. Himself at 38 now as he was.
'Welcome home,' his self said, and held open his arms.
Michael could see that he was beautiful, and he could see his body was beautiful.
The Angel smiled shyly and rolled up and over and pulled open his cheeks, and the fur crinkled apart to show the oddly innocent-looking croissant of an orifice. Michael leaned forward to kiss this lower mouth. It was like having a foot massage – an unloved part of the body responded with delight to unexpected tenderness. Michael both gave the kiss and felt it.
Michael was surprised how feminine his body looked with its hips spread wide, and the back arched. This only made him love it more, so he stretched forward and kissed the back of his own neck, which he had never really been able to see before. It was the youngest part of his body. It looked sixteen years old, even now.
His unreliable cock was now buoyant as if floating in salt water. Michael pushed forward but against anal resistance, it missed and swept up the crease between the buttocks.
Michael felt his own penis between his cheeks, and he felt his Angel feeling himself feeling that. He seemed to stand between two mirrors and feel himself reflected off into infinity.
Michael pushed forward again, and felt himself sheathed and entered at the same time. There was an enfolding tenderness and warmth, and superimposed on it, a sudden cramp as the valve of the anus was forced to work in the wrong direction. 'Relax, relax,' both of them whispered. The pain subsided.
The Angel settled down flat on the bed with Michael inside him and suddenly there arrived that most exciting moment of all, when a man welcomes you so deeply that his anus opens wide. The Angel turned around and Michael saw his own face flushed and happy. I'm beautiful, Michael thought.
After a time, the Angel said, 'I want to see you come.' They bounced their way around, slightly awkwardly on the bed, and the Angel nestled his face on Michael's tummy. Michael stroked himself and felt the familiar rise, like a voice heading for its high note.
But he came before it reached high C. There was a jet of semen that shot up onto his shoulder. And then the pitch was reached, and he shot outwards again, this time in lashings like cream over his other face.
'Oh,' said his other self, who felt it too, who was surprised as well. 'Oh, that's spectacular.' Michael kept on flowing like a fountain. It poured down over his hand, an opalescent sheen, as if it were liquid ice. He seemed to be settling back, the walls of his penis accordioning shut in wrinkles, when it suddenly tossed its head like a lion to roar one final time, taking Michael by surprise, one final flinging of come up in an arch over his body.
And both of them laughed, as if in relief. His other self swam his hand through a pool of semen, spreading it luxuriously up and over Michael's belly. For some reason it was funny. For some reason Michael laughed and laughed.
The joke was this.
He was a sexual being. He always had been. He had always been an especially sexual being, with especial sexual power. And that was why, paradoxically, he had been impotent.
It just struck him as funny, that's all. Both of them lay chuckling for a while. And they did it again.
What do I do next?
The next morning, there was no doubt at all which of his many selves Michael wanted to be.
It was Christmas Day and the air was full of the sound of 'Joy to the World', of breakfast sizzling downstairs, and of his mother humming along. The stairwell walls were lavender, the carpet a kind of ribboned purple-grey and white, the stair banisters a glossy orange. Britain in the 1990s, with thick grey bacon and eggs that had been fried in so much fat your mum tipped the pan so it would bubble over the yolks and cook them from above. There were baked beans and fried bread.
There is destiny. Destiny is how you shape your potential. Like fantasy, it's a kind of self. Here Michael was
