Our Young Man

by Edmund White

  They sat down to a big porterhouse steak, creamed spinach, and a quart of sour red wine, all topped off with a brandy alexander pie in a graham cracker crust. Their “romantic table” was positioned under a dusty chandelier missing lusters. The whole place felt dirty, greasy. Guy had swilled three Rusty Nails over shaved ice and then willingly, drunkenly presented Fred with his asshole, with a full-sized replica of the David in the corner, apparently carved out of soap, its penis no more erect than Fred’s. But what Fred lacked in turgidity he made up for in passionate utterance. “I’m the luckiest man in the world,” he mumbled into Guy’s crotch.

  It was all over in five minutes and Guy was drunk enough to sleep through Fred’s scary-sounding roller-coaster snores—his chain-saw breathing, then his disturbingly long silences and his sudden, panicked gasps.

  They woke up early and Guy hurried to take his shower and dress before Fred began with another blowjob, this one with halitosis. In fact, Guy hurried off to the breakfast nook with its goblin-and-leprechaun motif for a first cup of coffee and a squishy croissant. Fred looked reproachful and slightly uncertain.

  They saw three more houses before heading back to New York; Fred decided to rent a new house right on the beach—a cool $60,000 for the four-month season. Guy said, “I’m sure you could buy a house somewhere for that sum.”

  “But it wouldn’t be the Pines,” Fred pointed out, “and no one would visit. Not even you.”

  Guy was impressed by his take-charge attitude; he hadn’t seen that side before.

  3.

  Fred bought the house after they’d road-tested it for the summer. Guy, following Pierre-Georges’s advice, hadn’t put out to Fred once after that one drunken night, and Guy’s indifference or coldness, though he was always scrupulously polite, had brought Fred to his knees. Maybe Fred was so much in love because he was used to women caving before his assaults, in particular starlets and cute unpaid interns, but Guy was a man, French, well paid, not striving to get into the movies. Guy was an A-list gay, young, buffed, a head-turner, everything Fred wanted to be. Although Guy didn’t do drugs very often, most of the youngsters hanging around their pool did, and when stoned they weren’t exactly interesting but strangely tender and considerate. It was as if these beautiful, fit boys, usually so wary and disdainful, suddenly shed a constricting shell when they were stoned and became both vulnerable and expansive, capable of looking with humanity and genuine curiosity at a much older man, normally a pariah. A couple of times some A-listers, who were high, had even started making out with Fred, but he didn’t dare go all the way with them in case that would suggest to Guy that he, Fred, wasn’t single-minded in his devotion.

  Pierre-Georges had researched Fred and called up with a full report: “First of all, Hampton isn’t his real last name. It’s Gershowitz. Before he became a movie producer he owned a chain of shoe stores in malls up and down the East Coast. His wife is the daughter of the smoked salmon king of the Bronx. He’s made forty-seven movies. He’s declared bankruptcy twice. That’s all I could find.”

  In the morning Fred would get up early, shave, and shower, and slip into bed beside Guy; the young man would permit that much. Fred would then force himself to go on long walks to Water Island with his red setter, Sandy. Anything rather than to lie with a hard-on wide awake beside Guy. A gay friend of Fred’s from college days, someone he’d never known well but now confided in when they re-met on Fire Island, asked him after he recounted the whole saga with Guy, “But what do you love about him? What’s so great about him except he’s handsome, and French, and sought after?”

  They walked in silence for a minute along the beach, both of them sort of boxy and chunky in their loose trunks, but handsome, with worn, seasoned faces. “You know what I think?” the guy, who was named Vito, said. “I think you’re having problems coming out. I’ve seen that before.”

  “No, I’m not. I’ve left Ceil, the kids are furious with me—”

  “Yeah, but a lot of guys, when they’re coming out, keep clinging to the first man in their lives, the more unavailable the better. That way they can say to themselves two things—’It’s not that I’m gay, it’s just that I love Guy,’ and the other thing, ‘Oh, if only Guy loved me I’d be gay, but he doesn’t.’”

  “That’s a low blow,” Fred said, scuffing his feet in the sand, hoping the abrasion might wear away the calluses on his heels. He wasn’t really paying attention, but he didn’t like the sound of Guy not being in love with him. Guy was so “binding,” to use a word his shrink had introduced only last week, precisely because he was so mysterious. Maybe that was just the famous French discretion, the don’t-ask-don’t-tell of those fellows. (Guy had mentioned that.)

  Fred looked over at Vito. He didn’t like to be seen with an old guy—okay, someone his own age, but Fred had just lost twenty years with all his surgery, yet if he hung out with Vito people might start noticing his leathery elbows and his too-perfect replacement teeth. No one was up yet, however, at this hour. They had the beach to themselves and Fred felt safe.

  “But what’s so great about Guy?” Vito persisted.

  “He’s fresh, young, unspoiled. He makes me feel young.”

  “You look older with that face-lift and tummy tuck and those skinny legs and those hair plugs and that harsh black dye.”

  “Do you think you look so great, with that bald head and big belly? It’s hard to believe you’re the same age as I am. Guy couldn’t believe it when I told him. You’ve really let yourself go.”

  “Personally, I like a face that’s not so lifted it can’t still smile. A natural man’s face. Guy’s just humoring you—he’s a gold digger.”

  Fred thought about what he loved in Guy. Guy was beautiful. Guy was classy. Guy was sophisticated. Guy was kind.

  Was he bright, inquisitive? Guy could speak two languages and he’d lived here—what did he say?—only two years, and for someone in his early twenties he’d really boned up on old pop songs and old movies, though, like most foreigners, Fred guessed, Guy didn’t know anything about old TV shows except Colombo, which they saw in France, for some reason.

  Was he really a gold digger? He made a fortune out of modeling. He didn’t need anyone else’s money.

  When it came down to it, Fred had to admit he liked being seen with Guy, and Guy always leaned on his shoulder in public and whispered in his ear—well, it was nice to have some arm candy like Guy around. It was good for his image. Whereas a companion like Vito was bad for business—it was like an old whore walking an old dog, it led to invidious comparisons.

  Fred suddenly announced he was going to jog and he took off running with his dog down the beach. What if some early riser in one of these houses had been watching them through binoculars?

  Guy liked Fred around because his presence meant he wasn’t tempted to sleep with any of these hot boys hanging around the pool. This new gay cancer was dangerous—four more of Guy’s friends were dying. Guy didn’t want to sleep with Fred, though he didn’t mind if Fred slipped in beside him in bed for an hour at dawn. One time he’d awakened at midnight to see Fred with a flashlight looking at Guy’s cock. Guy was sleeping on his stomach as he usually did. Fred was pushing the mattress down at Guy’s crotch level and kneeling and studying his penis in the soft light. Guy shouted and sat upright and ordered Fred out. They never discussed it and it never happened again, but Fred was sheepish and silent for a day and he bought four bottles of Cristal for the boys around the pool.

  When he told Pierre-Georges about it that afternoon during their daily phone call, Pierre-Georges said he found that “disgusting.”

  After Labor Day, Guy was due to go to Paris and Milan for work. Fred was sad, especially since he’d not been able to secure a trip with him or plans of any sort to be together. Guy was also beginning to see a young man, Andrés, who was a Ph.D. student of thirty at Rutgers, a Colombian he’d met on the beach. Andrés was hanging around the pool for hours and often stayed for lunch or dinner. Fred had hir
ed a full-time Sri Lankan cook named Nili, who lived in the maid’s room with his wife and four small children. The family stayed out of the way, though they probably had the run of the house when no one was around. They were all a bit too servile for Fire Island, but at least they no longer bowed or performed that namaste thing.

  Guy and Andrés spent hours by the pool or on the couch looking through expensive art books Guy had bought for Andrés. He was getting a doctorate in art history, something to do with that fraud Dalí. Andrés had a soft breathy way of talking. They seemed smitten with each other, and more than once Fred had seen a big erection in Andrés’s green Speedo as he stared at Guy. Fred had never suggested Guy take a vow of chastity or fidelity; he didn’t need to. He knew Guy was scared shitless of this gay cancer thing as long as it lasted, maybe another year. Fred knew that if Guy hadn’t been so bored by the Hamptons he would have never dared to come back to Fire Island.

  What could Fred do to secure his future with Guy? If he bought the house, they would at least have that in common, and Guy wouldn’t be able to exclude him, Fred, from a place he’d paid for. But he couldn’t really afford it, not if he was going to produce that new hip-hop film in the coming year. And then Ceil was taking him to the cleaners. He didn’t want to be forced to declare bankruptcy again. Fred could sell the New York apartment and rent a studio, but that didn’t make sense. Guy might despise him if he saw how abject or poor he’d become. Why buy a showplace on the beach for a kid you’ve only fucked once?

  He watched Guy and Andrés flirting with each other from deck chairs around the pool, Andrés’s green Speedo always filled with an erection no matter how lofty the talk about surrealism might get to be. They were both dark and hairy, though Guy had those small intense eyes like bullet holes drilled through a sheet and Andrés had large green eyes and a smile that was beguiling but slightly tarnished and a dime-sized bald spot. Andrés, though Colombian, could speak some French (his parents were both profs in Medillín and his mother taught French and Italian), and when they were murmuring together they leaned in to each other until their bodies almost touched.

  The Elvis Presley look-alike thug stopped by for a free drink. His body was white and hairless and out of shape, but he had an unusual degree of confidence and he zeroed right in on Fred. His name was Gerritt, for some unlikely reason, and he sat next to Fred on the deck and began to feel himself up in his canary-yellow bikini. Fred’s eyes kept darting back and forth from Guy and Andrés on the other side of the pool, laughing together with obscene complacency, and the rapidly growing anaconda in Gerritt’s bikini. Gerritt said, “Neat tattoo,” but then he realized he was staring at burst blue veins on Fred’s arm and looked away. Gerritt sipped a doobie that some hanger-on had assembled and leaned in and whispered with his gin-soaked breath, “I’d fuck you for two hundred bucks.” Fred didn’t say anything, but he just wipered his hand in a signal suggesting erasure or “not for me.” He was offended that Gerritt assumed he had to pay for it. Gerritt got up out of the deck chair with some difficulty and stumbled off drunkenly with not so much as a “so long,” headed for the Meat Rack, no doubt, and an afternoon freebie with a young size queen. (What was the saying, there were two kinds of gays—size queens and liars?) Fred couldn’t help reflecting that he could get laid cheap with any of these fellows around the pool—cheap or gratis, since several of them wanted to be in the movies.

  That night Fred got sloppy drunk on vodka and tonic and headed for the Meat Rack. He loved (as one loves slow, sad music) the sound of the surf pounding on the sand, the feel of the salty wind blowing through his clothes, and the look of men darting through the low bushes and pausing to glance back. Fred guessed he must look good in his tight jeans and plain white T-shirt, which turned his new pectorals into bluish, glowing dry-ice mounds. He was in such despair as he mentally pictured Guy and Andrés nodding and laughing together, Andrés shamelessly displaying the bend sinister of his hard-on. And then that Gerritt insinuating that Fred was so obviously a john!

  Fred was drunk and stumbling through the sand down unmarked little paths. Next thing he knew, he was in the big warm embrace of a giant in a scratchy wool shirt who put a yard of tongue down Fred’s throat, and then they were groping each other. Fred needed his hands and kisses but worried they might belong to a B-list man past his prime, but then the man turned him around and inserted a wet finger followed by a slick prick into his ass. A few thrusts later and the man had squirted, heaved a sigh, pulled out, and disappeared into the brush.

  Fred sobered and had the panicky thought: I’ve just signed up for a death sentence in exchange for five dirty minutes in the dark with a stranger who wasn’t even hung.

  The next day Fred felt lonely, humiliated, and deeply repentant. Although Guy didn’t know anything about his visit to the Meat Rack, Fred was as guilt-ridden as if his foolish submission had been thoroughly documented on film. Without thinking it out, he made an appointment with the real estate agent. As he walked to his office at the harbor on a late August day that was sultry and windless, past houses that for the moment were for the most part deserted (it was Wednesday and the garbage was smelling foul in the heat—it wouldn’t be collected till Friday), he wondered if this was a terrible idea. He couldn’t really afford it and his flushed face burned with shame and anxiety.

  It was all over in five minutes. He bought the house and wrote out a check for a down payment of $250,000.

  Just as Guy was about to leave the Pines (Andrés had decided to go along for the ride to JFK) and was handing Fred the key to the rented house, Fred squeezed his hand shut around the key and said, “Now it’s yours.”

  “What is?” Guy asked with a sweet, dazed smile; he was mildly confused, but his smile anticipated an as-yet-unspecified happy surprise.

  “The house is yours for next summer. I bought it.”

  “You did? You’re not joking?” The uniformed chauffeur had come for Guy’s bags. They’d walk to the harbor, take a waiting boat to the waiting limousine.

  “I’ve never been more serious,” Fred said. “I hope we’ll have many a happy summer here together,” he added. “I bought it yesterday.”

  Guy grabbed him by the neck and gazed into his eyes for a second.

  Fred said in a low voice, “I hope you’ll invite me out once in a while.”

  Guy said, “Silly.” He never knew if that word was a good translation for stupide, just as he never knew if naughty meant mauvais. He’d once made Americans laugh when he had said, “Hitler was naughty.” Andrés was standing off to one side, his head lowered deferentially, as if Guy were receiving a benediction from Signor Fred, their venerable host.

  Guy held Fred’s head between his hands and kissed him on the lips, no tongue: The $2.2 million kiss, Fred thought bitterly. A second later, Andrés, slender and elegant and very tanned in a crisp white shirt, open at the neck and the sleeves rolled back, hurried off down the boardwalk behind the uniformed chauffeur and beside Guy, who looked back and blew a kiss.

  The next few days Fred was in a state of anguish over Guy. Had Andrés flown off with him to Paris? These grad students seemed so idle, and Andrés was always resting. Once Fred had tried to fill in his résumé in his mind and noticed a blank of a whole year. “What did you do in 1982?” he asked. Andrés replied innocently, “I rested.”

  And then Fred obsessed over the risky sex he’d had in the bushes. He kept feeling the glands in his neck and under his arms and looking for telltale brown patches on his legs. There was no test for gay cancer and no treatment. Oh, what a fool he’d been! No wonder Guy was so puritanical; you couldn’t trust anyone, least of all a sleazeball in the bushes.

  He couldn’t think of anyone he could discuss his twin obsessions with, Guy and GRID, other than the baron. They had dinner in the baron’s library, where his new lover the antique dealer had installed a tapestry of a bewigged king on horseback pointing gleefully to a distant city on the banks of a river—“in honor of a peace treaty,” Édouard exp
lained vaguely. The room, which Fred remembered as white and sterile but spacious, now seemed crowded with heavy window treatments, potted palms, lots of bric-a-brac, spotlit oil paintings of smiling despots, and even a fire, though it was only late September and still warm out.

  “Guess your new lover is responsible for all this?” Fred asked, making a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Classy.”

  “Yes, Will has worked miracles,” Édouard said with a timid smile.

  “Guess you have all the luck with the young boys—first Guy and now Will.”

  “Boys!” Édouard said, guffawing into his sole amandine. (Even the plates looked old and crazed and stained, Louis somebody.) “Guy’s no boy! Walt snooped around and found some pictures of Guy in French Vogue going back to the early seventies. We figured out he must be nearly forty if he’s a day.”

  “But he looks so young.”

  “He must have a terrible painting in the attic.”

  But Fred was too appalled to laugh. He felt someone had socked him in the stomach. He began to sweat and breathe faster, as if he might panic any moment. He’d been fooled, made to look a fool. Panic or maybe vomit. No one pulled the wool over his eyes. He was the cynic, the skeptic, he was fraud-proof. And yet, and yet, he’d been completely hoodwinked. And all that money! He’d spent so much money on Guy, the house—and all for a forty-year-old man who must clip the hair in his nose or yank it out and set off a fit of sneezing. A middle-aged man who’s probably down to jerking off every other day. A weary man of forty who’s already seen everything come around twice, who let me fuck him that once in a hole where whole armies of men have doubtless passed. What a pretentious queen, pretending to be fresh and naïve, whereas he’s long past his sell-by date. I could have been investing all this time and energy and money in a real kid who might have fallen for me, who wouldn’t have known how to work me so expertly. Kids are emotional and reckless, whereas a man of forty is cold and calculating. I’ve been duped.