by Edmund White
Austin gloried in George’s youth—his thick blond hair which he could pull in great handfuls, his sweet breath, clear eyes, coltish ways, quirky intelligence (though he wasn’t at all educated). George was a creature of nothing but instincts, and he could become angry and flushed over nothing at all. Frustrated because George had decided to be faithful to poor old Pierre-Henri, Austin would tease George: “Darling your phone message in French is rather elegant, but then when you give it the second time in English—my dear! Are you a cockney?”
“But I can talk posh if I want, me mum’s frightfully posh,” George would say, and tears would spring into his eyes. He was a very sensitive, slightly crazy boy whose father had been murdered—or had he committed suicide? George was vague about it. George could cry if a friend teased him but beat up two men who tried to rob him on the métro and forget to mention it until the cut on his cheek and his bleeding knuckles drew Austin’s attention. He was quite routinely paranoid and was convinced strangers were discussing—and acquaintances plotting against—him. He hung out with macho gym instructors from around town and got drunk with them in an Irish pub and picked up girls in their presence—he probably would have beat up fags if it had come to that. He was afraid to be seen by one of these guys on the street with Austin, so Austin cooked for him at home. He always arrived with idiotic gifts for Austin—bad chocolates tasting of powdered cocoa and emulsifiers, a ceramic Loch Ness monster in three curving sections, stuffed animals with silk bows, once even a barometer set into a pressed plastic anchor. Greeting cards of hearts, flowers and Cupids arrived in the mail every day.
Austin invited George to come along with Peter and him to Key West. He explained that Peter was very ill and had some dementia and would be dead in a month or so in all probability. “I want you to help me make him happy, to cheer him up, to drive the car, to laugh a lot—but above all to help me out with the shopping. This trip must be perfect.”
At the chaotic Miami airport they met a skinny, trembling Peter dressed in new clothes his mother must have bought him but which had already become two sizes too large. Retrieving everyone’s luggage and finding the bus to ferry them to the car-rental agency—all that took time and effort and the responsibility fell entirely on Austin, since George had never been to America before and Peter was in a benign haze. But George drove well and the January sun wasn’t too hot and the two-lane highway through the Keys never got bogged down too much in traffic.
The house they’d rented was big, cool and quiet and had been built in the middle of the last century. It had a giant tree in the back yard which was so stalwart it squeezed every last bit of sunlight out and its falling leaves had paved the garden, but the house lived under its reassuring tutelary presence. A small Abyssinian Baptist church was next door and its few members, all old, flung open the doors whenever they congregated and wailed to the accompaniment of an organ, tambourine and drums. When their preacher talked his voice was scarcely audible from their back porch, but when the little orchestra and the half-dozen quavery voices lurched into song, then their sweet, gay sounds floated around the seated, smiling, silent Peter and Austin.
Not around George. No sooner had he arrived in Key West than he began popping No-Doz and drinking vast quantities of beer. He seemed determined not to consecrate a single valuable moment to sleeping. All his fears of being considered gay had vanished the moment he’d arrived in the New World—along with his vows of fidelity to Pierre-Henri. If he’d ever made such vows in the first place.
Handsome men in their forties and fifties were casually dropping by for him; George had met them at the 801 Bar on Duval Street. George was never at home. He came stumbling in at three a.m., angry and cursing, stomping up the stairs in his boots. If Austin asked him to buy some orange juice or bread, he’d be sure to forget. Once he came back before dawn, danced alone to a very loud Phil Collins CD, then stormed out and drove away. The car was never around, so Austin either walked or called the same bicycle-powered carriage he’d hired for Julien; the cheerful cyclist with the prodigious buttocks and strong legs remembered Austin but was too discreet to ask him what had happened to Julien. Perhaps he thought Austin was someone whose profession called for him to accompany the dying.
Austin apologized to Peter for having invited George along. “You can’t believe how sweet and shy he is back in France. I thought he’d be a nice addition, Peter. I had no idea there’d be this appalling transformation. He’s surly, tempestuous, randy, not even grateful for the airline ticket.”
Peter said, “He’s certainly the belle of the ball. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Maybe he’ll settle down.”
Austin said, “Oh, Peter, I love you so much. But it seems like every time I try to do something for you I screw it up.” Austin remembered the disastrous trip to the Yucatán. “I’m always inviting along some impossible, angry guy.”
Peter smiled. He was lying in a sleigh bed under an old patchwork quilt. The dry light was filtered by heavy, brown wood blinds. Austin had put small, old-fashioned roses beside Peter’s bed; their petals felt as soft as Peter’s hand in his. Drowsily, Peter said, “It’s not your fault, Austin, if all these guys are in love with you.”
“In love—whatever—” Austin sputtered.
“No, they are. We all are. We’re all jealous and possessive.” Peter had trouble staying awake since the burning pain in his feet, caused by the unrelenting neuropathy, required that he take painkillers round the clock.
Just as Julien had had his Koran to hold and look through, puzzling over the different hands and styles of calligraphy as well as the passages penned in red (the Prophet’s utterances, no doubt), in the same way Peter had a book of consolation and wisdom his priest had given him. His mind was too clouded to absorb much that he read, but he took comfort from the feel of the little book in his hand while he dozed.
Peter no longer drank liquor or cruised, he didn’t even follow the soap operas now, though he’d sit in front of the TV as a quiet way of keeping Austin company. He’d move the food Austin would prepare around on the plate a bit, smile and say, “It’s very good. I’m just not too hungry after that big lunch, Aussie.”
Austin slept just across the hall from Peter and came to his side several times during the night. Sometimes he’d just stand there in the doorway and look at him.
One day an old man who’d been born on Key West invited them all out to an island he owned. He was very attentive to Peter and though he was himself more than seventy gave his sturdy arm to his guest when he got into his powerboat. They rode south over the spanking surf for nearly an hour; Peter whispered into Austin’s ear, “It’s great!” They sped past several deserted islands of white sand and curving palms that were rising out of a matrix of mangrove tree roots. Big white cirrus clouds with gray bellies rolled slowly along the horizon as if they were galleons on their way out. The gray was the stone ballast that would be replaced by bullion for the trip back to Spain—golden tomorrow at dawn. A skipper and a single crew member in crisp white uniforms maneuvered the boat and served them drinks. When they pulled up to the dock, a maid and a butler were on hand to help them out and to receive the food hampers they had brought over from Key West.
The host gave Peter and Austin a tour of the island in a dune buggy; it was the only vehicle on the island and Peter was terribly pleased because everything reminded him of Fantasy Island, one of his favorite TV shows. The host had done all this a hundred times before and advanced and backed up his dune buggy with well-calibrated expertise. Then they returned to the house, which was built high on concrete stilts to resist powerful winds and waves. Upstairs, the rooms themselves had no glass windows, just louvers that could be opened on all sides so that a hurricane would blow right through.
Before lunch they all went swimming. George had skipped the dune-buggy ride, perhaps to avoid Peter and Austin. Several other old men in their seventies had arrived (their boat was tied to the dock) and they were all in swim
suits following George. The water stayed shallow for hundreds of yards out to sea; even after walking twenty minutes it still hadn’t come above waist height. At least not above George’s small, muscled waist and long legs. To the degree he looked goofy in clothes, with his broken glasses mended with plumber’s tape and his crinkly black tracksuit and huge running shoes with the neon insets, to the same extent he was beautiful in a swimsuit, electric blue stretched over his small, hard buttocks, his back an inverted pyramid soaring out of his waist to shoulders that remained supple despite their breadth and musculature. He was big, yes, but he was also still a boy, turning to splash his retinue of admirers, who hadn’t been so insolently treated by a kid in half a century: they were in bliss.
Every bleary, clouding eye was trained on that electric-blue suit, the massive neck and thick blond hair, the small flexible waist and, when George turned, the flash of a smile as white as edelweiss.
Later that afternoon, when they were all back in Key West, George went off with a little Englishman he’d met during the afternoon on the private island. The Englishman phoned Austin to say, “Thanks for giving me such a big present! My dear, I haven’t had sex in ten years—well worth waiting for, I’d say.”
Peter had been happy, too. Once he would have had all these men at his feet. Now he was just a fragile old man himself, tiptoeing into the warm, salty water, but he’d smiled while the others laughed and seemed to follow the conversation, though perhaps all he was doing was producing social smiles and frowns and raised eyebrows to indicate astonishment; social reflexes were all that remained.
And a great sweetness toward Austin. As they were sitting on the beach, digging their toes into the sand, Peter said, “You’ve gone through so much with Jules—”
“Julien.”
“—Oops!—that I just didn’t think you should have to be with another sick person.”
“But, darling,” Austin said, holding Peter’s hand, “you’re not just a sick person, you’re my own beloved, someone I’ve known for fifteen years and lived with through so many things.”
“Remember that perfect lunch in Paris at the Bagatelle? I was still cute and healthy and it was a perfect day—all those prize roses named after duchesses. And our lovely, complicated lunch under an umbrella.”
“I have lots of pictures of that day,” Austin said.
“But let’s not live in the past,” Peter said, “not when we’re here in Paradise, it really is just like Fantasy Island, too bad you never saw that TV show.”
As Austin thought back to that day at the Bagatelle he realized he’d already forgotten many details—had it been cool or warm? What had they eaten? Oh, he was even beginning to forget all the things he’d lived through with Julien, although he’d been dead less than a year. He could scarcely picture his face or hear the sound of his voice. Patty said she had a long recording he’d left on her answering machine, but she seemed reluctant to make a copy of it. If Austin was forgetting Julien it wasn’t at the normal rate of attrition. No, healing nature was erasing all those painful memory banks, stripping them empty.
George remained irritating to the very end of the trip; as Austin drove them back up the Keys, George sat in the back seat, so exhausted and grumpy from a hangover that he refused to say a word to them. He wouldn’t even look at the scenery, which in any event he’d already taken in on the way down. He slept most of the way.
They had trouble finding the Budget car rental lot in Miami and Austin was worried Peter would miss his plane back to Boston. At last they figured out where they were going and Austin stuffed Peter on the airport bus with careful instructions: “You’re getting off at American. Can you remember American? And just check your bag in at the curb side.”
In the confusion Austin didn’t let himself think that this would be the last time he’d be seeing Peter. There was time only for a hasty peck. George was sullen; he just waved vaguely in Peter’s direction.
Austin was in a white fury against George. They didn’t speak the whole time they registered for their flight and ate lunch at the terminal.
At last Austin broke the silence: “I’ve never been so shocked by anyone’s behavior as by yours. It’s not as if we’re lovers. We’re friends and I paid for you to come over to help me out as a friend with a dying lover, the dearest person in my life whom I’ll never see again, but all you did was whore around the island—”
“I didn’t!”
“That Englishman called to thank me for such a big gift, as if I’d put you up to it. No, don’t lie, George, I know you were a whore, but why not, that’s none of my business, but the only reason I invited you along, frankly, was to be a cheerful, decorative presence for Peter and to help out with the cooking and shopping and to drive us around, but you disappeared for days on end with the car, I didn’t even have a way to transport poor Peter, and when you did make an appearance it was only as a pit stop to change clothes and head off to a new assignation. Well, I don’t like cruel, selfish people, and it will be a cold day in hell before I see you again once we’re back in Paris.”
“Forgive me, Austin, it was the No-Doz and the beers—it was stronger than me, I guess I was jealous.”
“Jealous of a poor dying man while you hold all the cards, beauty, youth and health? That’s absurd!”
They didn’t speak again, but once they were seated on the plane next to each other and they’d taken off, George began to sob silently. He cried and cried and then fell asleep on Austin’s shoulder. Here was this big blond giant, his face blotched and red, spreading the splendor of his hair across Austin’s shoulder, his huge hand with its sportsman’s calluses pressed to Austin’s chest in the dark as the other passengers watched the movie or slept.
EDMUND WHITE
Edmund White was born in Cincinnati in 1940. He has taught literature and creative writing at Yale, Johns Hopkins, New York University, and Columbia; was a full professor of English at Brown; and served as executive director of the New York Institute for the Humanities. In 1983 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Award for Literature from the National Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1993 he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Genet: A Biography. He teaches at Princeton University and lives in New York City.
www.edmundwhite.com
Books by Edmund White
Fiction
The Married Man
The Farewell Symphony
Skinned Alive
The Beautiful Room Is Empty
The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (with Adam Mars-Jones)
Caracole
A Boy’s Own Story
Nocturnes for the King of Naples
Forgetting Elena
Nonfiction
Our Paris: Sketches from Memory (with Hubert Sorin)
The Burning Library
Genet: A Biography
The Joy of Gay Sex (with Dr. Charles Silverstein)
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America
Marcel Proust
ALSO BY EDMUND WHITE
THE BEAUTIFUL ROOM IS EMPTY
When the narrator of White’s poised yet scalding autobiographical novel first embarks on his sexual odyssey, it is the 1950s, and America is “a big gray country of families on drowsy holiday.” That country has no room for a scholarly teenager with guilty but insatiable stirrings toward other men. Yet even as he launches himself into the arena of homosexual eros, White’s protagonist is also finding his way into the larger world. Moving from a Midwestern college to the Stonewall Tavern on the night of the first gay uprising—and populated by eloquent queens, butch poseurs, and a fearfully incompetent shrink—The Beautiful Room is Empty conflates the acts of coming out and coming of age.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75540-1
THE FAREWELL SYMPHONY
In The Farewell
Symphony, Edmund White creates a novel of opulent sensuality and manifold sorrows that is at once the story of a writer’s education and an elegy for the gay world that flourished between Stonewall and the present. White’s narrator is that world’s survivor and its eulogist. As he marks the six-month anniversary of his lover’s death from AIDS, he leads the reader back on a thirty-year journey of memory and desire. From the 1960s to the 1990s, from Parisian salons to the dunes of Fire Island, and from evenings of brilliant conversation to nights of unfettered sex in the basement clubs of the West Village, The Farewell Symphony commemorates lust and friendship, the beautiful dead and their prematurely aged mourners.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75476-3
THE BURNING LIBRARY
Twenty-five years of Edmund White’s nonfiction writings are collected in this volume of exhilarating wit, acuity, and candor—a book that is at once a living record of the author’s intellectual development and a chronicle of gay politics, sexuality, literature, and culture from Stonewall to the age of AIDS. The Burning Library includes such groundbreaking essays as “The Gay Philosopher,” “Sexual Culture,” “Out of the Closet, on to the Bookshelf,” and “The Personal Is Political: Queer Fiction and Criticism”—works that redefine sexuality, identity, and friendship in the light of gay experience and desire. Alongside them are brilliantly subversive appreciations of cultural icons as diverse as Truman Capote and Cormac McCarthy, Robert Mapplethorpe and the singer formerly known as Prince. The resulting volume confirms White’s reputation as a thinker of formidable intelligence and prophetic audacity.