Our Young Man

by Edmund White

  “Toad?” Finally Guy deduced he meant a crapaud: That was probably said out of envy and jealousy.

  “Be careful of him,” the gymnast added. “He likes violent sex; you don’t want those pretty nipples stretched out. He’s also into fisting. Actually, he’s the slave, I think.”

  For once Pierre-Georges, whose instinct was to frown whenever Guy suggested an idea, smiled instead. “A baron? A yacht?” he asked, reassured they weren’t that far from Saint-Tropez after all.

  Guy had braced himself for a scary intimate lunch, but the yacht was flourishing with young hangers-on and the baron was only intermittently visible, fully dressed in captain’s whites. Guy thought he must be a clever seducer and was determined to imitate him when he was old—to bait the hook with lots of shiny lures. Walt was very much in evidence, making sure the bong was circulating, that the icy daiquiris were replenished, and the hot blue cheese pastries were being passed around, as well as the crudités with the delicious crab claws.

  Walt asked in a whisper, “Which of these boys do you fancy the most?”

  Guy shrugged but Walt persevered. “Seriously,” he said.

  Guy had spent so much time rejecting even the most handsome Americans that now it was difficult for him to pick someone. He was the one everyone else pursued; he was the commodity, not the consumer. But when Walt asked a third time, Guy murmured in a strangled voice, “That little blond in the neon-blue swimsuit.”

  “Jacky? He’s the biggest slut on the island and a major masochist. He’s always being chained to an abandoned refrigerator in the Meat Rack and we have to send someone at dawn to free him. Not that he’s ever anything but cheerful, whistling all the time. He’s a wannabe deejay.”

  So, Guy thought, the baron does like violent sex and surrounds himself with cheerful slaves—and Guy looked to see if Jacky’s nipples were deformed, and they did look sort of large and chewed-on, like cold gristle. But hold on, Guy said to himself. If the baron is a masochist himself, then why would he entertain another masochist? I suppose he wants someone cute to attract other sadists.

  There were lots of women present—well, three. They were a bit coarse, but the men paid court to them, as if gay men had been cut off from women for so long they reverted right away to their high school sissy-boy gallantry.

  After Guy’s second daiquiri the baron emerged from the cabin. Guy had closed his eyes for the moment against the sun, and when he opened them there was Édouard in the captain’s chair next to his deck chair. “You must be careful that perfect skin of yours doesn’t burn,” he said. “I could put some sunscreen on your back if you liked,” and he held up a little tube from Kiehl’s.

  “That’s extremely kind of you, but my friend Pierre-Georges has already coated me like a roast chicken in soft butter.”

  The baron didn’t laugh, which made Guy feel uncomfortable. He sipped his third drink, which he’d vowed not to touch.

  Édouard seemed so somehow honored by Guy’s friendship that he began to give all-male dinners for him—one in a three-story ferryboat that cruised up the Hudson at sunset with a hundred guests served by handsome waiters in short-shorts and orange work boots and black T-shirts silkscreened with the baron’s coat of arms in silver. Édouard was careful to toast Guy, the guest of honor. Otherwise he didn’t pester him. The ship didn’t turn around and return to the Battery until midnight; by then many of the boys had paired off and mounted to the top, darkened deck. Guy stayed below chatting with two of his new friends. In America everyone called the merest acquaintance a “friend”—Guy had taken up the habit. It made him feel better about not having any real friends.

  At another dinner, equally large and lavish, they were served again by the boys in micro-shorts and orange work boots, but this time their midriffs were exposed. Guy’s mother was in town and she was the only woman present among a hundred A-list homosexuals, who were all courtly to her, though Guy got tired of translating their inanities: “Gee, oh, wow, it’s really neat to meet Guy’s mom,” to which his mother said anxiously to her son, “What did he say? What did he say? Oh. Tell him it’s a true honor to meet one of my son’s colleagues.”

  “What did she say? Seriously, what did she say?”

  At least the baron was unctuous with her and spoke to her his most ancien régime French; Guy’s mother, in her neck-twisting, unsmiling way, was distinctly flirting with Édouard, though that was imperceptible to anyone not in her immediate family. She drank too many foamy grasshoppers and seemed not to register she was the only woman present; at least she didn’t comment on it when Guy led her back to her midtown hotel, the Warwick, which they both pronounced in the American, not the English way.

  Édouard told Pierre-Georges over the lunch he’d invited him to at the Côte Basque that he would give anything, pay anything, to sleep with Guy just one night. Of course, he realized Guy might be shocked by the baron’s bodily disarray; Édouard was under no illusion about how unpresentable he’d become. Very few men of his generation could undrape becomingly, and he knew he wasn’t one of them. Since Guy seemed to fancy Jacky, the boy could be introduced into the repast to make it more palatable.

  The whole conversation, which excited Pierre-Georges as much as it made him uncomfortable, since he had no polite precedent for such an exchange, was duly reported to Guy. “I suggested you had your heart set on a sky-blue Mercedes convertible but that garage fees made contemplating the purchase of a car unimaginable, given that a parking space in Manhattan was as dear as an apartment in Paris.”

  “You just sold my immortal soul for a car and a parking lot without consulting me?” Guy wailed. Everything was rushing by. It seemed to him his life limped along and then went into unexpected spurts.

  “I’m consulting you now. Did I do wrong? A Mercedes is fairly expensive.”

  Guy sipped his Diet Coke. At last he said sullenly, “No.”

  “What?”

  “I said no, you did nothing wrong. What did he say?”

  “Édouard just blinked and smiled. I suggested you had a saint’s day coming up. Then we spoke of other things. Your career. He offered that Zoli is a personal friend and he could make an introduction.”

  “But you’re my agent,” Guy objected. He looked out the window at the gingko tree. It was July, but the summer evenings weren’t as long as they were in Paris.

  “He could be your agent and I could be your manager. Zoli’s the top agent for men.”

  Guy worried that he’d have to give Zoli his statistics to be printed next to a new head shot—and would he give his real age: thirty? People said he looked twenty—maybe he’d say he was twenty-two, though Zoli was no fool and might call him on it. A little research would turn up all those French ads from ten years ago; of course, Guy could always say that had been a look-alike older brother, now selling sports equipment in a shop in Épinal.

  Guy was groomed by Didier Malige, who Pierre-Georges said was the world’s most exclusive hairdresser. New hair and a new facial regime by Mario Badeau and a new photo set by Bruce Weber—that might get him higher fees and stretch his image across the skies during what must surely be his sunset years.

  As for the baron, he was kind and respectful and usually interesting and full of fun projects. For his parties he usually annexed Guy’s guest list. He was always seated fully clothed and never exposed people to his terrible old body. He was always surrounded by the cutest young boys who would sit on the floor at his feet while he draped his puffy, jeweled hands over their shoulders—but innocently, innocently, as a grandfather might. The kids were like expensive borzoi snuggled against him. Walt was always around filling glasses, passing joints, putting on new party tapes. Walt always had the latest fashion icon in tow—he brought Christie Brinkley and Gia Carangi by and the makeup wizard Way Bandy. Gia complained there were no girls present—she was bi and preferred girls. But she also talked about her latest boyfriend: “He doesn’t love me, not really. Would you believe he flew me to Milan business class?” Seeing
the blank stares, she added, “And not first class.” Walt made everything function smoothly. He hired the caterers, took everyone off to dance at Doubles in a stretch, remembered who was a vegetarian and who was a pescetarian. (Guy had the usual French impatience with picky eaters.)

  Although they laughed freely and jostled each other playfully, most of the other male models had nothing in common and were easily bored. Most of them were living with a woman, usually another model. Several were athletes and tennis champs or went in for boxing or motorbiking or were ranked high by the International Ski Federation in the slalom and alpine categories. Several were swimming stars. Even if they were aristocrats who had gone to Le Rosey, the exclusive Swiss boarding school, they knew all the words to Donna Summer’s hit “Once Upon a Time.” Some of the guys were somebodies—Alain Delon’s son (born and brought up in Beverly Hills) or Barry Goldwater’s grandson—but some of them were uncultured thugs, raised in Brooklyn’s “Ravioli Alley” and sporting a tattoo or two, bad teeth, and a thick Brooklyn accent. How much did that Brooklyn guy work? Guy wondered. He’d heard there was an agency called Funny Faces. Maybe they represented him. One guy was the national swimming champion of Spain and had an earring, a shaved chest, and fluffy armpits.

  Most of them were interested in the Japanese chanting sort of Buddhism, maybe because it was hopeful and optimistic and was an exotic alternative to Christianity, which was contaminated with overfamiliarity and gloom. Buddhism sounded austere and nonproselytizing and kind of cerebral, but in fact this popular cult kind, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, was one in which you chanted for a Cadillac or a go-see. You didn’t have to meditate, just chant. It was very materialistic but the men who did it claimed it settled their minds, brought inner peace … lots of things. It was really cool how you could kneel in front of your own portable altar and say Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for hours every night instead of snorting coke or drunk-dialing. And it was fun to have a brass gong you struck every time you chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo three times, though the lotus position, granted, was hell on the knees.

  Guy never opened up to the other models he worked with but he liked to joke with them. They had been discovered by Bruce Weber playing college football or mowing lawns. Guy only pretended to like girls, though he was very close to one girl, a makeup artist most recently from Ohio, or was it Iowa; she was the sweetest girl alive, an orphan who’d lived in one foster home after another. Her name was Lucie and she was close to forty but slender and she always wore black tights and her sort of kinky hair pulled back in a pigtail held in a pink rubber band and she looked really young but tired, as if she’d been awake for two nights. Actually the truth was the opposite: She slept too much and said she loved sleeping more than anything, curled up with her two stuffed lions. She usually wore a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up. Her hands were big and clean and mannish. She had very large, full breasts, which were only visible when she stripped down to a gray T-shirt. She wore no bra. She was very sexy in her full-figured way, though she didn’t play the woman card. She wore no makeup except white lip gloss. She was all business and she always carried her fishing-tackle box loaded with eye shadow, eye crayons to cancel dark circles, pressed powders to contour and sculpt the face, a liquid foundation, lip gloss, highlighters, mascara, lipsticks, rouges, cold cream, and an astringent makeup remover to be followed by a soothing moisturizer.

  Lucie had been born in Normandy. Her father was a black American soldier and her mother a Vietnamese refugee. Lucie didn’t look Asian. The French orphanage had had an approved list of girls’ names and they went through it systematically; Lucie had been her turn. Maybe the orphanage and foster homes were what had made her so independent, self-sustaining. Although she’d lived in America since she was eighteen (she had an American passport), she had the French way of only complaining about little things (the heat) and passing over the big things (beatings, hunger). She spoke French fluently but with a beguiling American accent (her r was atypical and her u more an oo). Pierre-Georges thought she was a bore, but he only approved of people who could help him.

  Guy met Lucie on a set and she did his makeup in a minute, mainly powdering away that confoundedly shiny nose (only the left side).

  She told him she liked his tiny jug ears, his intense eyes, his hollow cheeks and full upper lip, his hairy chest poking up above his T-shirt, and his ineradicable trace of a mustache, no matter how many times a day he shaved. His eyebrows were just two straight dashes and his hairline was low on his forehead. His nose was straight and seemed to be the prolongation of a frown, though he’d disciplined himself never to frown. Pierre-Georges told him not to stand around with his mouth open but his lips were so full they were hard to compress. Pierre-Georges said that full lips like Belmondo’s were sensual when the person was young but grotesque when the person aged; he might consider having them surgically thinned. Lucie said that was crazy and she didn’t know why, but Guy’s strangely assorted features definitely “worked.” (She used the English word.) Lucie seemed like a real friend—observant, loyal, tender.

  There was something melancholy, veiled, wounded about Lucie. Guy just knew her childhood had been tragic but he didn’t dare quiz her about it. He felt that once she started to unburden herself they’d never be able to push all her woes back in again. She liked to eat unbuttered popcorn with Guy and watch television in her bare feet; she stayed over twice and hugged him in bed but seemed to expect nothing more. Guy would go to Studio with Lucie. Or he’d take a model he’d just met on a shoot. It was fun to sweep in past that line of clamoring New Jersey kids with their horrible haircuts and tacky Saturday Night Fever clothes. (“I know Steve.”) It was fun to dance under the giant spoon lifting cocaine to a silver nostril. He was now surer of his dancing. The waiters were striking—and often were hired by Zoli or Click as tomorrow’s models. The biggest thrill was when Steve invited one upstairs to the VIP lounge. It was exhilarating to be among the in-crowd along with Lisa, Halston, and Andy. Guy didn’t really like to get high, no more than Andy did; he noticed Andy was always taping people or taking Polaroids of them as a way of avoiding talk or even contact. Maybe it was Guy’s altar-boy childhood or his petit bourgeois fear of ending up broke, but he liked being in control and he feared jeopardizing his looks. Dancing was good exercise but the drugs that fueled it surely took their toll, though people said coke was harmless and not at all addictive.

  It wasn’t that he exactly lied about his age, and with real friends like Lucie he’d freely admit how old he was, but in the business he was coy or actively dishonest. No one wanted a middle-aged French fag kissing the girl in a Kellogg’s commercial.

  One September day, Guy’s saint’s day, the baron gave him an intimate dinner party in his East Sixtieth Street apartment—and a small beribboned white box containing the keys to a Mercedes 450SEL. Guy gave him a peck on the cheek, which was the most demonstrative he’d ever permitted himself to be with the baron. He wondered when Édouard would try to collect his pound of flesh. He noticed that Jacky was present and was wearing a white shirt nearly opened to the navel with puffy pirate sleeves. Walt was always hovering in the background, organizing the waitstaff.

  Saint Guy of Anderlecht was the tenth-century Belgian saint of animals, stables, workhorses, and bachelors, and Édouard had as the centerpiece of his immaculate table a white faience crèche in Saint Guy’s honor, the exquisite figurines placed on a mirror as if they were drowning in a placid pool. Everyone was a model or might as well have been, so there were several salads, three vegetables, a sliver of fish on every plate, and unsweetened raspberries, no bread, though as a Frenchman Guy found it hard to eat without a baguette slice as a scooper. Vintage champagne was served throughout. The models kept leaning over the centerpiece so they could check themselves out in the mirror, Guy noticed. Édouard made several jokes about Saint Guy being the bachelor’s saint. Walt passed a joint.

  Guy was ordinarily paranoid in company; was it because he didn’t feel at ease in English and was a
fraid he’d missed an allusion to Charlie’s Angels or The Brady Bunch? These Americans thought their TV series and their pop singers were universal and eternal. When they talked about them they got big moist eyes like Bambi. Of course they’d never heard of Dalida or Véronique Sanson. Tonight he thought he should get high, just in case they all ended up in bed. The more he smoked, the more his fantasies were unleashed, as if he were rubbing the magic lantern with every toke. He looked at Jacky with an almost uncontrollable desire. (He was afraid that he, Guy, might at any moment fall to his knees and crawl across the room and bury his head in Jacky’s lap.) Jacky looked so desirable, with his full purple lips and ash-blond crew cut which begged to be brushed with an affectionate hand and turned to wheat or silver. The muscles in his neck stood out. Although there were dark circles under his eyes, he looked unbearably young—how did he do that? Wasn’t Jacky what Americans called the “bottom,” indicated by the keys he wore clipped to the right side of his white painter’s pants? Maybe Jacky was like Pierre-Georges, who wanted his bed partners to be grizzly brutes, not the pretty boys he liked only as arm candy. There was Pierre-Georges, over there on the love seat, speaking French to Lucie and looking bored. She’d put on a pretty party dress for the occasion, cut so low he could see she was, unusually, wearing a bustier laced with pink ribbon; she had on silver-threaded blue bas résille stockings. Now she got up to leave.

  “I have a six A.M. call tomorrow,” she said. “Top of the newly finished Citicorp Building for Italian Bazaar. I’m working for Von Wangenheim.”

  He stood and kissed her on both cheeks. He knew she was really leaving out of discretion; she was the only woman still present. “Thanks for the gift,” he said. She’d brought him a used hardcover of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which he’d always meant to read. She’d told him that she chanted and it had brought her the job for Vogue Patterns, which had the world’s most daring editorial pages. Lucie had painted a Japanese model’s face pale green and dressed her in a skin-colored, sleazy vintage ball gown she and Guy had found in a secondhand store on Greenwich Avenue. It had started a revolution, the sick look.