by Edmund White
Andrés at first scowled and looked grumpy, as if he were going to object to something, but then in spite of himself he burst into a big grin and lost ten years. He shook his head as if in disbelief and said, “I love you. So much. It hurts.”
“I love you, too, Andrés.”
He asked Guy to put $500 in his account so that he could buy junk food at the canteen.
“What’s your day like?” Guy asked.
“Always the same. I’m awake by five. Which is early, since on the weekends we’re allowed to watch TV well after midnight, and reveille’s at six. Then there’s exercise in the yard. I’ve been doing pull-ups—look.” He made a muscle, and the sudden movement caused both guards’ eyes to swivel in their direction, then drift away.
“We have hours and hours alone. Some guys are studying the law, trying to get a retrial.” Andrés looked at his hands and said in a softer voice, “I’ve been reading the Bible.”
“Why?”
Andrés ruffled his feathers and said, “Why not?” Then he added, “But I can’t understand that fuckin’ old-ass English. Maybe you could bring me a Spanish Bible. What’s wrong with these muthafuckers, why ain’t their English up-to-date?”
Andrés had never sworn before, not in English, though in Spanish it had always been puta, and coño, as with all young South Americans. He must be learning a new way to speak English from his cellmates.
He looked at Guy and said, “If you don’t love me I’ll kill you.”
Suddenly all Guy’s alarms went off. “But I do love you,” in a little voice he’d never heard before out of his own mouth, shallow and childish. “I’ve never loved anyone so much,” and Guy couldn’t help noticing Andrés’s thick cock flexing again inside his taut orange trousers, an autonomic response to the desire tormenting his features.
“Sure?”
“I’m absolutely sure.”
“I saw you checking out that hairy-chested gorilla over there. Would you like some of that?”
“Andrés, don’t drive us both crazy. I haven’t touched anyone since you went away.”
“But you’d like to. I know you,” Andrés said, and Guy thought guiltily of Kevin, his hairless torso and little pink cock and tiny untried nipples.
“Is the food here edible?”
“It’s okay. On weekends we even have barbecue. Too many starches. I don’t want to get fat. Are there some dynamite new men in your gym? Probably Pierre-Georges is fixing you up with some studs—he must be happy I’m behind bars. No class, no money, no connections—that’s me. Does he say that or just think it? He must be happy to distract you with some young stallion in his stable. Is that how you stay so fresh and young, drinking the sperm of teenage males?”
“Come on, Andrés. Let’s say kind things to each other, loving things—”
“Or what? You won’t come back?” Andrés looked at the tip of his shoe, which he flexed. “You hold all the cards here.”
“Is it boring here? Dangerous? Infuriating?”
“Check, check, and check.” For some reason Andrés suddenly inspected the nails on his right hand. “It’s okay here, once they break your spirit. God, you’re beautiful when you smile like that!”
“Th-thanks.”
“Has everyone always been in love with you? Of course they have, who am I kidding? What did they say about Helen of Troy? That her face launched a thousand ships? That’s you, you’re that beautiful. A thousand ships. There’s no one even close to you around here. Maybe in Manhattan there are two or three.”
“I’m no longer young,” Guy said.
He thought how boring this visit was. The truth was he and Andrés had nothing in common except their life together. (“Don’t forget to buy the wine! Oh, and some bread.”) Just as they spoke an imperfect English together, which wasn’t the mother tongue of either of them, in the same way sex and the dailiness of daily life were what they had in common, though it wasn’t what either of them was most proficient at. Maybe sex was Andrés’s strong suit. Yes, he was good at that.
Andrés had once accused him of liking him only for sex. At the time, Guy had thought that wasn’t fair; it was Andrés who always nudged him when they were watching a game show in the afternoon and indicated with a toss of his head that they should repair to the bedroom for sex. It was Andrés who wanted to fuck first thing in the morning (he’d show his morning wood, which to be funny he’d call in Spanish his madera): Guy had started getting up half an hour early so he’d be clean and his teeth brushed, which made him feel like a woman, not an altogether unpleasant fantasy. Andrés was the one with the constant erection that had to be addressed several times a day; his hard-on was their metronome, sometimes their tyrant. Guy thought he was always accommodating it, but he liked the feeling of being that desired (a womanly feeling, too, he supposed). Now they couldn’t touch, though they could drink each other in with their eyes, and Andrés could slouch in his chair so that his erection was big and visible. Guy would just have to stretch his hand out—but that was no more permissible than Orpheus looking back at Eurydice. Strictly forbidden.
Guy could remember Andrés’s back so clearly—the broad shoulders straining to be broader, the ass-cheeks just unmolded from the curved baking pan, indented at the sides, the crack looking so innocent and boyish—and, most glorious of all, the silky indentation of his spine, slicing his back in two, luminous as a prayer, an infolding of light.
Their time was up! Oh, it was so heartbreaking leaving Andrés there, so unfair, with his unsatisfied madera and his aristocratic hands, so pale next to the brutal orange of his uniform, and on his face a lost, devastated look.
Guy made an appointment to take the AIDS test as he’d promised Fred. He went back to St. Vincent’s at the right time, sat with some other glum single men with expensive haircuts and tight jeans. His name was called, he went into the male nurse’s cubicle, and rolled up his sleeve. The nurse smelled of cigarettes and the new cologne by Perry Ellis, the only good American scent. Poor Perry, everyone said he had AIDS, half his face was paralyzed during his last runway show and he nearly swooned. His partner was also about to go, both of them under fifty.
The nurse put a red rubber tourniquet around his bicep and looked at the form he’d filled out. “There’s a mistake here, it says you were born in 1945, but that should be 1965.”
“No,” Guy said, smiling, “’45 is right.”
“What is your secret, girl? Surgery?”
“Good genes, I guess. Moisturizer.”
“I use Indigo Body Butter, but I don’t look like you, darlin’.”
“Try Retin-A,” Guy said.
“Retinal?”
Guy picked up a pencil and scribbled with it in the air. The nurse slipped a prescription pad under his hand and Guy wrote a word.
“Retin-A? I never heard of that. Is that some Swiss monkey gland or sheep bladder? Do you also sleep twelve hours a night in a walk-in refrigerator?”
“Yes. I do,” Guy said, and the nurse hummed an emphatic, “Un-hum.” Suddenly serious, he said gravely, “Make a fist.” He then tapped Guy’s arm and the back of his hand in several places. “It’s good you’re no heroin addict; I can’t find no good veins.” Suddenly he stabbed Guy, who looked away.
The results were available a day later. That night Guy meditated (which he never did, which he didn’t believe in, which he scarcely knew how to do), and he asked his body if it was infected and if it was going to die right away. It said (but this didn’t make any sense), No. I’m not infected and I’m going to live a long time. Guy couldn’t tell anyone about this, it was too superstitious and silly, but for some reason he felt reassured, though he didn’t believe in it and he wasn’t even sure what had happened.
Nevertheless, he went to St. Vincent’s with a mixture of confidence and fatalism. He wished he’d never entered into all of this. There was nothing to do anyway if you were ill. He recognized that everyone liked him because he was handsome. Would they all go away if he was dying (and it was a fat
al disease)? If he was Auschwitz-thin and covered with black spots? Pierre-Georges would drop him slowly but surely, if he could no longer work. The baron might send him a basket of fruit, Kevin would be horrified. Fred was gone and Andrés locked up. Only Lucie would stay faithful. Women were the loyal ones, he thought wearily.
An intern in a blue uniform and expensive shoes and a Swatch made a fuss about setting Guy down in his cubicle. He glanced at the report and then he looked Guy in the eye and said with a slow smile, “I have good news. You’re negative. I’m not supposed to blurt it out; I’m supposed to talk first about safe sex and condom use, but hey, we’re both grown-ups, right? But for God’s sake, keep up the good work.” And then, looking flirtatiously up through his eyelashes, the intern said, “You must be one of the few tops in the Village.”
“Not always, I’m more versatile,” Guy said. The intern’s smile evaporated.
“Are you new at this?”
“At what?” Guy asked.
“Same-sex practices?”
“Not particularly,” Guy said, a bit shocked at the man’s impertinence, although he admitted to himself he’d find the situation intriguing if the nurse was better-looking.
Guy said, “No, I must be just very lucky.”
The man said, “We recommend you know the name of everyone you sleep with and limit the number of your partners.” That made sense to Guy, kind of.
He was vastly relieved and he remembered his stupid “meditation” when his body had made its own prognostication. Ridiculous! he thought, though he had a new respect for the augury.
In the bright, fragile spring day, all blue and crystal, which felt as if it might shatter at any moment in the rising warmth like ice gloving a branch, each evergreen needle inside vivid and distinct, he sauntered forth, walking all the way over to the Hudson. He never took a walk without a destination but now he was powered by his relief at being negative.
He thought, I must settle down with and be faithful to a virgin boy, and he thought immediately of Kevin. He thought of Kevin’s pure white body, tinged with pink, like new snow at dawn. He could hear the ice melting above Ely, Minnesota, with its loud gunshot reports as it broke loose and cracked in the sunlight. He thought of that little penis like a cherub on its cloudlet of pubic hair, those lips the color of raspberry sherbet, that white butt, perched high and inviolate.
8.
“Are you single?” Kevin asked in his clear high choirboy voice as soon as he’d finished another set.
“Yes,” Guy said, knowing he’d betrayed Andrés with a monosyllable, poor Andrés languishing in that junior high school of a prison, a silly place denuded of thick sweating walls, tiny barred fragments of light, unoiled dungeon doors. No, it didn’t have the dignity of imprisonment, it was a ludicrous space for warehousing tax evaders and corporate scoundrels.
He wondered if Andrés jerked off seven times a day or ten, thinking about him. Or did he already have a warmer bruder, someone who’d give him a helping hand? Why couldn’t the Colombian government get him extradited? Guy thought he should be bankrolling an appeals process, though the lawyer had said to him, “This isn’t a banana republic. You can’t pull strings in America, pay off an official, lean on your cousin. It’s not like France or Spain—those banana republics. You just have to wait your turn like everyone else. It will only work against you if you try to jump the queue.”
Guy repeated this to Pierre-Georges, who said loftily, “We don’t have bananas in France.”
“No, I’m single,” Guy repeated, “which sounds funny to say to an identical twin. You’re never single.”
“Yes, I am,” Kevin protested. “Chris weighs five more pounds than me—guess that’s his straight side. He met a girl on the stoop outside our building and he’s spending nights with her. I guess I should be all jealous and possessive, but I’m not. I’m relieved.”
“Would you spend the night with me?” Guy asked.
Again the bucket of blood immersed in the pint of milk: a blush.
“Sure.” Pause. “When do you want me?”
“Tonight? Are you free tonight? We could grab a bite and watch some TV and go to bed.”
“I don’t know if I should eat something before we fuck—wouldn’t it get messy down there?”
Guy laughed and said, “Shit is the best lubricant.”
“Eww-w-w.”
“Anyway, who knows, you might be the pitcher and I the catcher.”
“Huh?”
“You might be the plus and I the minus.”
“You’d permit that?” Kevin asked, wide-eyed.
“You sure like to get down to basics. In France we prefer the unsaid, the non-dit. More romantic, we think.”
“I guess you got me typed as a Norwegian oaf.”
“We’ll just play it by ear.”
The idea of improvisation seemed to make Kevin even more anxious. They agreed to meet at seven-thirty. Feeling traitorous, Guy set about hiding all the pictures of Andrés. He just wanted one happy night with this perfect boy. His lies would surface eventually: his age; his commitment to Andrés; even his success as a model and his relative wealth. But he was desperate to make this happen, one rapturous night with Kevin. He could already hear the boy’s tearful accusations. Guy thought this was the moment to pluck the pear, when it was still streaked with green and was woody, before it turned to brown mush, all sweet and runny. Somehow it seemed less reprehensible to be a connoisseur of the fruit vert than simply a traitor to his imprisoned lover. Guy saw himself as a horny man who felt that every moment of his improbable youth might be his last.
When he looked back over his life he realized his twenty-sixth birthday had been the hardest because he thought he was no longer young, could no longer pass for a student, not even a grad student. So many of his classmates were getting married, starting businesses, buying houses, fathering children. Then at thirty he’d blown a farewell kiss to his years as a desirable man—but still his extraordinary looks had lingered on.
Not that he’d done anything unusual or disciplined to stay young. Well, maybe a little, but no surgery. He’d cut out bread and desserts, though he couldn’t forgo a daily glass of fattening orange juice. He had a facial every weekday from a very unglamorous Korean woman who worked on Twenty-sixth and Broadway. He used Retin-A on the nights he was alone. He worked out, but only three times a week and only for an hour. He preferred low weights and high reps because he was aiming for definition and didn’t want to bulk up. He’d had electrolysis on his torso. He did facial isometrics after he shaved. He didn’t tan and he applied sunscreen every morning. His hair was expensively styled and feathered and lightened and he held it in place with Tenax. He thinned his eyebrows. If he watched TV alone he made himself do fifty sit-ups every half hour. He’d stopped smoking and only drank two glasses of wine at dinner. People said white wine gave you headaches but he preferred it because it didn’t discolor your teeth. He had his teeth cleaned once a month. Now that he was nearly forty he had to yank out nose and ear hairs and shave his neck since gray hair might grow there. His clothes were always dark and thinning and unnoticeable. No jewelry. No facial hair. If he gained five pounds he’d make a big pot of vegetable soup and eat nothing else for a week. He applied Rogaine regularly to his scalp, though his hair was still thick.
More importantly, he’d trained himself not to be nostalgic, not to recognize pop songs or movies or TV series from other decades, to greet names (even French names) from the sixties or seventies with a look of incomprehension, even bewilderment. For him the threshold of the recognizable was years later, 1980. Whereas other people relaxed into squalid orgies of smiling over their memories, a warm self-indulgence of conjuring up the past not in all its dullness or pain but in a sentimental form, he remained aloof, untouched, strategically uncomprehending. They were all false anyway, these memories, protecting people against the harsh truth. He hated the past. He had suffered as an adolescent from frustration, in his twenties from insecurities
(how long could this career of his go on?), and in his thirties from disillusionment (how long must this career of his go on?). Now at nearly forty he could start up all over again. He’d been handed this miracle, eternal youth.
In a world of shiny consumer goods, he was the shiniest one of all. If someone else would have said that to him, it would have enraged him, but he had to admit it was true. He was a product, artfully wrapped, refrigerated like expensive chocolates; he’d been in stock, however, way past his shelf life. They’d have to slash the price in half in order to get the item to move.
Was he being predatory and deceitful to Kevin? Certainly deceitful; he’d said he was twenty-five. Predatory, not really. He hadn’t seduced the boy except by the cool distance he’d maintained and by the natural appeal of his looks and accent and profession. And his barely perceptible friendliness. He wasn’t really a catch—soiled goods, maybe a bit vapid, no longer fresh—but a provincial of nineteen might think he was a rare find, confuse the cleverness he’d picked up from his milieu with a personal acuity.
Kevin rang his bell precisely at seven-thirty and Guy buzzed him up.
“Wow! This place is a palace,” Kevin exclaimed, looking around. He appeared absurdly young, a mere tot, with his freshly pressed shirt and perfect sparkling smile. With his gelled hair and his minty, toothpaste mouth when Guy kissed him, a mere peck, and his cheap straight-boy cologne (was it Mennen’s?), he looked so incorrigibly young that Guy feared going out with him—bad for business, he’d look worn by contrast, faux jeune.
“Yes, isn’t it great?” Guy said. “My aunt left it to me in her will. It’s too fancy for a guy like me and might give people the wrong idea …”
“Was your aunt American? I’m sorry she died,” and Kevin lowered his eyes in routine respect. So Minnesota! Guy thought, though he knew next to nothing about Midwesterners and was only now slowly modeling a wax effigy of the type in his imagination, but he was sure it was a region of pure streams, big skies, and artless boys with good manners and odorless crotches.