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.

All right, thought Michael. I'm up to this. I'm more than up to this. From nowhere, by magic, he called up a small table with an ashtray, and a glass and a bottle of wine from 60 years ago.

The Angel's mouth made a quick downward turn. Michael had succeeded in giving Pablo Picasso a moment's pause.

Michael told Picasso, 'Please use the ashtray.' Michael pressed his advantage. 'You are a copy of a masterpiece,' he told the Angel. 'I am the student who has copied you.'

Picasso had already recovered. He sniffed and poured himself a glass of wine. He had a private little smile, and his eyes said, be wary, student, I am more than a match for you.

Michael got the preliminaries out of the way. 'Are you willing to make love with a man?'

Picasso flicked ash into the tray. 'I would do so if I wanted to destroy him. Though I am not a destroyer. Unlike you, I am a creator, not a copier. Ultimately, I have no time for destruction.'

'Except perhaps for making sure than no exhibitor would show Gilot's work after she left you?'

Picasso kept smiling undisturbed. 'Is that what she said? Has it occurred to you that she was exhibited only because of me? And perhaps her work is not all that good?'

They were negotiating. 'Might it interest you to find out how I am able to raise the dead?'

Picasso sipped his wine. 'It interests me to be alive again. And relatively young.'

He lowered his gaze at Michael, like a bull lowering his head to charge. He took a contemplative sup from his cigarette, his eyes appraising Michael. Then he ground out the cigarette, stood, walked across the room and grabbed hold of Michael's face. He pushed Michael's lips out of shape, into a parody of a Boucher mouth, and he shook Michael's jaws.

'I fuck you. You never touch me as a woman, ever.'

Picasso relinquished Michael's mouth, but kept a hand hovering as if to slap him.

'That's all the same to me,' said Michael.

The hand was lowered and it unbuttoned the front of Picasso's trousers, and Picasso indicated what he wanted Michael to do. The tiny brown penis was erect, straight up and hard against his belly, as it was almost every time Michael saw it. Michael knelt and swallowed. Picasso kept drinking his wine. The penis was spicy; it reminded Michael of nutmeg, in its colour and scent.

Picasso grew tired of standing. 'It's late, we go to bed now,' said Picasso, patting Michael affectionately on the top of his head.

Picasso claimed Michael's side of the bed and snatched up the newspapers, and began to read, lips moving, eyes burning through them.

'Je ne peux pas lire l'anglais facilement. Traduisez,' he demanded, pushing the papers at Michael.

So Michael found himself reading laboriously through British politics in bad French.

'So there was a socialist revolution in Britain ?'

'Of a kind. They unelected it thirty-five years later.'

'Tuh. That is why English medicine for warts does not work. They have never had a real revolution. I hate England. The stupidest things about my work are all written in English. My friends translate them for me. I'm tired.'

Without asking, Picasso nipped sideways and turned off the light. Quick as blinking, it was dark, and Picasso had somehow enveloped Michael in his tiny arms, thick short legs. Picasso twisted Michael's head around and kissed him with a passion that bewildered Michael. This was a man who basically preferred women. His breath was heavy and scented with cloves and he sucked in Michael's spittle. Before Michael could quite adjust to being so swept up, he was hoisted onto all fours and found himself, with no preliminaries – cream or tentative, gentle penetration – being fucked.