lad, with wide shoulders and lines of muscle on his forearm. His black eyes are fixed directly on
whoever is taking the photograph and they are wide with delight. His face is nut brown, like an
Indian's, and his smile is blue-white in contrast. His black hair has reddish-brown streaks from
constant sunlight. Sunlight glints all around him on the slick, brown water and onto his face,
which is indisputably happy.
If you look closely, the nose isn't broken.
By the time that photograph had been developed and posted back to England, it was winter. That
summer Michael on the Sacramento River was already history. Michael remembered opening the
envelope. There was no letter inside from his father, just photographs, that photograph.
It should have been the moment when Michael learned to love himself. Like every teenager he
had been gawky and spotty. It should have been the moment he left doubt behind, and finally
accepted that he was beautiful.
Instead, all Michael could do was regret. The beauty, he felt, was a mask. He'd been hiding
behind it. It was better now, being ugly. It was closer to the truth. Michael made himself ugly.
The photograph was the last thing he ever had from his father. He knew what his father was
saying: this is who you could have been.
Everything changed without Michael noticing at the time. In the summer, he had been determined
to be a vet. Now he was a scientist, who experimented on animals.
The summer Michael had enjoyed acting; had been in a drama class for fun, and took the lead
role in all the plays. He had a way of conjuring up old ladies, terrified spivs and policemen out of
his own body.
In winter, Michael seemed dispossessed of his own body.
This made him mostly harmless. Women liked him; his students liked him. He always kept a
distance from them. It was not that he was afraid of women or students, exactly. He was afraid of
how he became around them. He knew he could be waywardly funny, exact, truthful. But then
something would happen, and power would withdraw from Michael like the tide. Beached and
helpless, he would fumble and make mistakes and let himself down. He would forget things, like
appointments or his glasses. Uncomfortable, he would grin and grin and grin.
Michael was impotent. If this were symptom or cause he could not distinguish. He didn't care.
Impotency meant that only the most brutal and depersonalized of sexual episodes were safe
enough for him. Only parks or toilets or saunas could hide him.
If his partners had no idea who he was, how could they hurt him? If they could hardly see him in
the dark and didn't know his name, there could be no embarrassment when he didn't get it up.
They didn't care if Michael got it up. They were too terrified of police to notice and too desperate
to come quickly. It all stayed hidden and detached.
But it relieved the pressure. It relieved the pressure of living with someone who gave him no
sexual satisfaction. It relieved a kind of erotic itch, which he could never satisfy, and had not
been satisfied for more than twenty years. Michael was 38 and his very skin crawled with lust.
A quick jerk off in a car park, a slap on the ass in bushes in a park provided cessation and a
masturbatory climax but no satisfaction. So he would have to go back again, to a sauna or a
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