He left the green and the trees. Traffic and black brick made him feel English. God made him feel American. Michael would shift between American and English selves and accents without realizing it. His English self went back to work.
His American self thought of his messengers, how they came and went. Angels, Michael decided. Until I know them better, I will call them Angels.
Can Angels be dead?
When Michael was ten years old, he was sent to spend the summer with his father for the first time. He had cried alone in the airplane with his ticket pinned to his little grey dress jacket. He had to change in Chicago and everything looked like a Dirty Harry movie. Bleached blonde women wore denim suits and chewed gum and talked like gangsters' molls.
Michael knew his Dad was going to meet him at LA International. He arrived exhausted and trying not to cry and he looked at all the waiting people and he saw this huge man who looked like Burt Reynolds and wore a uniform. He carried a big sign with Michael's name on it.
'Hiya Mikey, howya doin'?' the man said in a mingled mouthful of words and chewing gum. He wore mirror shades.
Michael forgot to say anything. He gaped. This was his father? His father looked like something out of a movie too.
He chuckled. 'Come on, guy, we'll get you home.' Dad scooped up Michael's bag and threw it over his shoulder. Michael dragged his feet, walking behind. His father chuckled again, leaned over, and simply picked Michael up whole. His big arm folded into a kind of chair and Michael fell asleep being carried, his face resting warm against his father's chest.
After that, every two years Michael lived for the summer near San Diego with his Dad.
He loved it. Southern California is the perfect place in which to do nothing. Indeed, everything is so far apart, and it takes so long to drive anywhere, that it is very difficult to do anything other than nothing. You call it going to the beach.
On the beach at twelve years old, Michael felt he was immortal. He would take the big green bus out of Camp Pendleton, past the Rialto cinema with its delectable range of kung fu and horror movies. He would reach the cliffside park and the earthen cliffs of Oceanside, California. Once there, he would throw himself in front of a few waves and call it body surfing. Then he could do nothing but lie on his back for three hours, toasting. This was before skin cancer was invented. He went from lobster-red to California-brown in less than two weeks. His bright grin beamed from his newly darkened face – he felt like something from an American situation comedy: the young teenager part.
Resting on the beach, the idea came to him, that he could stay in America and become American. He could do it. After all, his father was American. He could stay in the sunshine with the movies and the skateboards and the long hikes in hills that Camp Pendleton protected from development.
The thought made something inside him flutter with fear. The part of him that fluttered spoke with an all-purpose London accent that was another layer of self. His mother spoke with a Sheffield bluntness. Michael felt himself stretched. Michael felt himself in danger of being torn.
'Whatcha do today?' his Dad would ask. Dad was trying to get to know his son. He had abandoned England and his wife when Michael was three.
'Went to the beach,' Michael said proudly.
'D'ja meet any girls?'
Michael did not say: Dad, I'm only twelve and um… but I have noticed that I'm not even looking at girls yet.
What he said was, 'No, Dad.' And he hung his head, feeling ashamed.
'Listen, there's a guy at work runs Little League. You wouldn't want to try your hand at baseball, would you?' His Dad looked hopeful, and made a swinging motion.
His father would have been shocked to discover that Michael didn't like sports. He didn't know then that he had a son who did nothing except cram for exams, and who now more than anything else just wanted to luxuriate on the beach or watch American TV.
American television was a miracle. There were about ten channels, so many that it made sense to flick round them until you found something you wanted.
What Michael found, luxuriating at 5.30 every Saturday afternoon, were old Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller. In the very first, Tarzan tore off Jane's clothes and threw her naked into a river. She swam deeper and deeper into the river, a glowing white against the darkness, shadows both covering and hinting at her nipples, her pubes.
His father called, 'Mike? Mikey? You wanna come outside and pitch a few balls?' Both father and son were exercising their American accents as if they were stiff muscles before a game.
Michael was staring bug-eyed at a naked woman.
Part of the luxury of California was having a TV of your own, in your own bedroom, to do what you liked.
'I can't Dad, it's time for the Tarzan movie.'
How many movie stars get officially called something as friendly as Johnny? How many of them are Olympic athletes who wear loincloths that let you see their naked haunches, thigh to stomach? How many of them are beautiful with a reassuring lopsided, chip-toothed face, and a high, light voice?
Under Michael's tan and athletic frame, his young and genuinely feminine heart would sit entranced by what his father thought were adventure movies.
'Mikey? We could go to the movies later if you wanna.' His father was big and athletic too, but his face was glum and disappointed. His son had been away all afternoon and they had only Saturdays and Sundays to do stuff together.
'Dad, I really want to watch this, OK?'
'OK, son. See ya later,' his Dad said. He left punching his baseball mitt. Michael felt bad. Michael had not meant to hurt his father's feelings. Michael's eyes were suspiciously heavy with deep feelings he had no name for. 'Dad. Why dontcha watch it with me? Dad?' He heard the back door slam.
His father had a rival.
Michael knew, even at twelve, what the MGM executives had known all along: they were selling a love story. A love story that promised, and delivered, a beautiful naked man. Michael's young heart would soar through the trees alongside Johnny Weissmuller. He dreamed of leaving the world behind, of living like a Boy Scout in a treehouse with a man as dumb and reliable and graceful as a horse. He dreamed of slipping the loincloth aside to see what lay underneath it. At twelve, that was as far as the dream went.
His father eventually nagged his son into joining a baseball team. It played on Sundays, which left Saturday for Tarzan and, in fact, gave Dad even less time with his son.
Summer wore on. Johnny got old. The series left MGM and went downmarket to RKO. It lost Jane and its love story. It gained Amazons in bikinis and cut-price Nazis. Johnny was no longer a sex symbol. He was a star of B-movies for kids. He got fat. A fat Tarzan is a great sadness. His last movie in the series, Tarzan and the Mermaids, was made in 1948, filmed in Mexico with beautiful Mexicans standing in for some kind of lost but completely unconvincing African tribe. Any one of the men could have made a more suitable Tarzan, except of course that Tarzan was supposed to be Anglo. Weissmuller was Romanian. He had been born near Timisoara and his real first name was Jonas.
Michael stayed in California long enough to see that sad ending and to experience something of a lover's sense of loss and longing as a partner ages.
Johnny Weissmuller died in Mexico in 1984, when Michael was 24 years old. Michael remembered reading about his death in the newspaper and thinking, Johnny Weissmuller? 1984? It was Michael's moment for realizing that we spend more of our lives being old than young.
In Michael's days of California sunlight, saltwater spray and young Americans in shorts, there had lived in that same state, an old bronzed man. He looked a little bit like a balloon from which the air had leaked. That man would have been able to tune in every Saturday at 5.30 as well, to see his sleek and catlike younger self pad lissomely through a studio jungle.