"Ian McDonald - Some Strange Desire" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

so, so, huge, could have been secret for so long."
"It has several thousand years of pedigree as a working relationship," I say.
"As long there have been tesh, there have been ul-goi. And our mutual need for
secrecy from the goi."
"Goi?"
"Humans." I wave a lace-gloved hand at the rain-wet people huddling along
Holborn. "Those. The ignorant mass."
"And tesh?"
I draw a circle on the misted-up quarter-light, bisect it with a curving
S-shape. Yin and yang. Male and female in one. From time before time the symbol
of the tesh.
"And ul-goi?"
"Those who can only achieve sexual satisfaction with a tesh."
The word seems to release him. He closes his eyes for a reckless moment, sighs.
"It's funny. No, it's not funny, it's tragic, it's frightening. It's only
recently I've found where it started. When I was a kid I read this comic, the
Eagle or the Lion or the Victor. There was one story, one scene, where this
skindiver is trying to find out who's been sabotaging North Sea drilling rigs
and the bad guys catch him and tie him to the leg of the rig until his air runs
out. That was where it started for me, with the guy in the rubber suit tied and
helpless, with death inevitable. It was such an anti-climax when he got rescued
in the next issue. I used to fantasize about wetsuits. I must have been Jacques
Cousteau's number one fan." He laughs. Beneath folding umbrellas, girls in
Sixties-revival PVC rain-coats and Gerry-Anderson-puppet hairdos dart between
the slowly grinding cars, giggling and swearing at the drivers.
"You don't know what it is at that age. But it was a major motivation in my
childhood: tight clothing. Superheroes, of course, were a real turn-on. I
remember one, where the Mighty Thor was being turned into a tree. Jesus! I
nearly creamed myself. I was addicted to downhill skiing. If there was ever
anything in the Sunday color supplements about downhill skiing, or ballet, I
would cut it out, sneak it up to my room and stare at it under the sheets by the
light from my electric blanket switch.
"Jane Fonda was, like, the answer to my prayers. I used to borrow my sister's
leotard and tights and dress up, just to feel that head-to-toeness. Sometimes...
sometimes, when the evenings were dark, I'd pass on late-night shopping with the
family so I could dress up, nip over the back fence onto our local sports field
and walk about. Just walk about. It was good, but it wasn't enough. There was
something in there, in my head, that wanted something more but couldn't tell me
what it was.
"When I was about seventeen I discovered sex shops. The number of times I would
just walk past because I never had the nerve to push that door and go in. Then
one day I decided it couldn't be any harder going in than just walking past. It
was like Wonderland. I spent the fifty pounds I'd been saving in one pig-out.
There was one magazine, Mr. S.M... I'd never seen anything like it before, I
didn't know people could do that sort of thing to each other. Then, after I'd
read them all twenty, fifty, a hundred times, I realized it wasn't doing it
anymore. I bought new mags, but they were the same: there were things going on
in my head that were far, far more exciting than what was going on in those
photographs. In my best fantasies, there were things like no one had ever
thought of before."