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 healthy, gay, still good-looking, and single, in Sheffield, in England at the age of 38.

'That looks great, Mum.'

'Don't be daft.' Michael kissed her cheek. 'You haven't shaved,' she complained. 'You're not washed.'

'After, Mum, after.' He sang along with the carol in a false and booming voice.

His mum sniffed. 'Roll over Pavarotti and tell Demis Roussos the news.' She held up food on thick white plates. 'You sit there. Go on, these plates are hot.'

'May the Lord make us truly thankful,' Michael said, finishing Grace before he had begun it. He tucked in.

After breakfast, looking in the bathroom mirror, Michael was satisfied. Dammit, I am good-looking. I really am. I look my age, that's all. It was as his Mum had said: intelligent, hardworking, kind. But also, he had to admit, kinda chewy, kinda chunky. Michael, just believe it. You're sexy, OK?

He looked back at his own flushed, still olive face, with its stubble and expression of slightly dazed delight. You're in the best place. You're in the best me.

They opened their presents. Mum's was a hand-written note. This is a new PC and Internet connection, it promised. She gave him new shirts and tie clips. 'Every time I see you, your tie's blown back over your shoulder,' Mum said.

They sipped sherry and ate Christmas cake, and about noon her friends called, all ladies of her age, all interested enough in Michael. He felt chipper. 'My last project's finished more or less,' he told them. 'I'll think of something else to do.'

On Boxing Day they went to PC World and he got a deal so good he was jealous of his mum: laptop, printer, Microsoft Office and five other bits of software including an encyclopaedia for eight hundred pounds. He took AOL because of its supposedly simpler operation, found its browser didn't let you increase the typesize easily and spent the day with his mother who tutted and felt stupid because she didn't get it. It was late at night when finally she sent an e-mail to his home address. 'And how do I send you an answer again? And how do I find it when I want it?'

He left the next day, a simple hug and a kiss.

She said, patting his shoulder, 'If you do move again, you know, change countries or the like, try to remember to let me know.'

'I will Mum, I promise.'

And not long afterwards, Michael found himself settled in on the train. The weather was changeable, turning between sun and rain. Outside the windows, the sky seemed lower and the world got smaller, lost in drizzle. It was a grey and indistinct world. Maybe that's why he felt fear and misgiving close in over him. He thought of the dirty Camden flat awaiting him, cold and dark. He thought of his project.

What, really, do I do next? The thought of going back to teaching filled him with dismay. It's just daily life, Michael; it's like that for everybody. He would finish revising the article, and it would end like this: chicks don't make new pathways to see and interpret light. They are born with them.