Our Young Man

by Edmund White

  Jim’s house was eccentrically modern. As they walked up to it at nine-thirty that night, it looked like an old-fashioned view camera—just one small window, the lens, in the center of the facade framed by receding slatted squares, the bellows. Inside, it was all two steps up, one step down, track lighting, Memphis modular furniture, a small outdoor pool lit from within like a sapphire, big, gaudy, unframed abstractions on the wall, all seemingly by the same hand. Or were they just silk-screened batik fabric posing as paintings? The rooms flowed into one another. The guys had drinks on an orange molded plastic couch and pink beanbag chairs, then went to the long, narrow dining room table, with its tall black crystal helix candlesticks, glazed turquoise plates, and twelve matching chairs that looked made out of plasticized cobwebs or molded lace. The food was exotic but light, a salad of kiwis, orange sections, and fresh thyme, and two giant sea bass cooked in salt shells, served with black pasta made from squid ink. A few raspberries and crystallized mint leaves for dessert. Lots of cheap wine, both colors. Fat joints were passed and everyone spoke at once in strangulated voices. They were laughing uproariously at nothing. The handsome Frenchman felt, under the table, Guy’s knee bared by the navy blue perfectly tailored linen shorts, and even tried to wedge a hand up his pant leg toward his crotch, though Guy discreetly lifted the man’s hand and put it back in his lap, but patted it to be polite. They talked about Madonna, whom the others were bored with but whom Kevin hotly defended, though he worried he was talking too much.

  When they got home Guy was so stoned he didn’t even stop to think what Kevin might want but just pulled off his trousers and raped him, assuming he’d like that, and he was right, by some miracle, Kevin did like it. They didn’t even shower afterward, but fell asleep in each other’s arms, smelling of sex—or like horses, Kevin thought, smiling into the dark.

  The next day in the afternoon a uniformed chauffeur, for an event organized by Pierre-Georges, carried Guy’s luggage to a waiting speedboat, which conveyed him to a waiting limousine, which took him to the airport, where he boarded a waiting plane bound for Milan and runway shows for Versace and Armani. Kevin was at loose ends and already missed Guy, though he’d be back in a week. On the ferryboat to Sayville, Kevin looked at all these hung-over men in their bright pastel patterned clothes. Several of them had expensive-looking dogs and most of them looked much older and lined in the cold light of day than before. They weren’t all so young and intimidating as he’d thought, but they were tanned. One of the men from dinner last night sat beside him and asked how long he and Guy had been dating. Kevin was proud to be half of a couple, though he knew he shouldn’t trust Guy, such a liar. He could still feel his cock in his ass and took comfort in that. He and his twin had burritos together that evening, took a long walk, and had a thorough debriefing. He told Chris all about Fire Island, Guy’s beach house, all the spaceship houses on stilts, and how you couldn’t tell the brokers from the houseboys, how friendly everyone was, and how they all said hi just like the folks back in Ely. Kevin had already filled Chris in on all Guy’s lies, how he was really almost forty and had a crooked lover in the clink and how rich old men kept giving him houses, but Kevin didn’t like it that Chris was bringing this up now. That night, he jerked off twice in their bed and whispered, “Guy,” and molded his phantom back with his free hand. He sprayed himself with Guy’s toilet water and slept with his perfumed hand next to his nose.

  The next morning he slept in, and then around eleven-thirty the doorbell rang. It was the baron and Hans. Kevin was in just his underpants but immediately put on a long white dress shirt that belonged to Guy, far too big for him.

  “Oh, forgive us,” the baron said. “You were sleeping. You sleep a lot—like a dog when his master is away. I know it’s unforgivable in New York to just drop in, but we were walking by and I wanted Hans to see the house because we’re looking at one like it.”

  “Not at all,” Kevin said, which was something Guy said. “Guy’s in Milan.”

  “Still at it, is he, even at his age?” the baron said. “Though he looks the same.”

  “Come in,” Kevin said, worried about how you received a baron. “Please sit down. Would you like a glass of orange juice?”

  “Orange juice at noon? But go ahead, pour yourself one, you’re obviously longing for one,” and Kevin wondered how the baron knew.

  Hans perched on the edge of the couch, his hands hanging down between his spread legs. He had on a tight green short-sleeved shirt with its golden Brooks Brothers sheep insignia, incongruous, really, for such a tough guy, though it did flatter his biceps. The baron sat beside him and put a possessive hand on Hans’s knee.

  “Glass of water? Or I can make some coffee,” Kevin piped.

  “You’re most gracious,” the baron said. “We’ll be gone in a second, we’ll fly like the Dutchman so you can finish your toilette.” And Kevin ran a hand through his hair, wondering if it was sticking up. He realized his legs with their fine hair like glints of gold looked good under the voluminous shirt, as did his small shapely feet, which he’d drawn up under his body to one side as if he were the White Rock girl. He was very aware of Hans’s eyes scanning him, assessing him; Hans was probably wondering what he could do to him.

  The baron turned to Hans and said in a professional, consulting voice, as if they were alone, “Notice the high ceilings and the moldings and the fireplace and the harmonious proportions. And all the sunlight. I’m sure our place is the same, these houses were all built at the same time.”

  Hans was too masculine, too imposing and sadistic for these domestic details, and it was beneath his dignity to do anything but nod curtly. His woodenness suited the baron just fine, who smiled contentedly.

  Since Hans didn’t want to engage in talking real estate, the baron turned malicious out of ennui and addressed Kevin. “Perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but do you and Guy indulge in sadomasochism? I ask because he liked to inflict pain on me, however ineptly. I introduced him to these exquisite pleasures, but I wondered if the seeds I’d planted had sprouted. I’m sort of the Johnny Appleseed of pain. Has he hurt you?”

  “I’m not sure I want to talk about my private life,” Kevin said; then, realizing that sounded feminine and middle-class, and feeling reckless, he added, “No, but I like to hurt him.”

  Suddenly Hans looked up now, thoroughly interested and appraising Kevin with an insider’s eye. “Oh-hoh!” the baron crowed. “I see. No wonder Guy is so attached to you. Nothing is more attachant than sadism,” and the baron smiled with courteous complicity at Hans and then, generously, took in little Kevin as an honorary sadist. Smiling back, Kevin felt stupid and on the wrong foot. After his surprise guests left, Kevin called his twin. He told him everything, how the baron really was a decadent European noble and how he, Kevin, had lied and pretended to be a sort of mini-sadist because he disliked the baron’s assumption that he was the passive one. For the first time he felt uneasy about confiding so much in Chris. He’d thought there never would be a day when he’d want to keep a secret from Chris.

  Talking long-distance to Italy the next day at noon, Kevin told Guy about the baron’s and Hans’s visit. “Are you really a sadist?” Kevin asked.

  “That’s just his sick fantasy,” Guy said. “He hires skinny, balding guys with big dicks to beat him up.” Guy told Kevin of his unforgivable faux pas in asking Édouard, “Ça va, Monsieur le Baron?” And how that had terminated their relationship. “I guess the antique dealer has already been replaced.”

  “So what are you doing over there?” Kevin asked, introducing a less controversial topic.

  “For work? I guess they think I could be Italian, so I’ve been doing a commercial for pasta, but of course my dialogue has to be dubbed, though I mouth the words. But people like working with me, why not? I’m a friendly guy,” he said with a laugh. “On the runway I’ve had to model these really tacky clothes, all black lace and gold lamé and thigh-high boots, they look so cheap, but Versace likes me and next ye
ar he wants an exclusive, that means I don’t work for anyone else but he pays me five, no, six times my current rate. He had me open the show and close it. You’d think I’d be indifferent, but it gave me a huge adrenaline rush. Coming out, all those people looking up at you, all those cameras flashing, knowing that the whole world will be watching. It all seemed like a dream. It must be like being in war, you don’t remember what you did or how you did it. You’re all alone on the runway, then backstage, three or four people are pulling at you getting you dressed in your next ensemble. Then I’ve done some print work where I’m just atmosphere.”

  “Atmosphere?”

  “That’s what we call it when you’re just the guy in the background, helping the girl out of the car or pouring her wine, one of the crowd, soft-focus.”

  “And you still get paid a lot for that?”

  “I do, because my agent over here is Élite, not a lot, but I work every day, I’m not complaining.”

  “Are you partying every night?”

  “No, that’s where I feel my age, and I don’t have fun if I don’t do some coke. If I do coke I’m depressed the next day.” Guy thought it was such a relief now to be able to talk with Kevin about his age.

  “Daddy no do blow,” Kevin said in baby talk, and they both laughed. Thousands of miles apart, and Kevin started to get hard. Maybe it was the word “daddy,” even tossed off as a joke, or maybe it was just imagining laughing in his arms. Kevin had a perfectly nice father back in Minnesota who’d always been affectionate enough, but still Kevin liked fucking Daddy-Guy, how perverted was that?

  “Hope you’re not fucking too many cute guys,” Kevin said, then added, “Daddy,” to indicate he was just playacting and not really jealous.

  “No, I’m just thinking of my baby boy,” Guy said, and now Kevin really did have an erection. Kevin had heard of men who kept their boys in diapers and playpens and showed them cartoons all day and fed them Gerber’s—but that was sick, he didn’t want to go that far, yet it was exciting, maybe just the thought of regressing or giving up or being held in Daddy’s arms.

  9.

  Guy flew in early, since the client had paid for a ticket on the Concorde. (You could get a deal for a first-class seat on a jet going over and a Concorde seat coming back.) When he let himself in at nine in the morning, he did so silently and discovered Kevin and Chris asleep. They were together, entwined, those two identical faces, both of them in matching Jockey shorts and nothing else, identical small erections, morning wood, their hands and feet so small, elegant, matching, their blond Norwegian heads pressed together, both of them with open mouths and ruby lips.

  Kevin was the first to wake up. “You’re back early. Concorde?”

  “Yes. You two look so great together.” Guy felt torn between lust and jealousy.

  “We went out last night dancing at the Roxy and didn’t get home till dawn. If I’d known you were flying the Concorde …”

  “It was all very last-minute. You know fashion people—hurry up and wait.” If Guy were cheekier he would lie down in the midst of this flowery bower.

  Their voices had awakened Chris, who smiled weakly and waved, looked grumpy, adjusted himself, ran into the bathroom, and dressed quickly. A moment later he was gone, his hair all scrunched to one side.

  “Why does he have a burr up his ass?”

  “He’s just jealous,” Kevin said. Guy wondered why jealous if Chris was so straight, and why was he dancing in a gay club? Chris was barely out the door before Kevin clawed off Guy’s clothes. Afterward, he said to Kevin, while holding him in his arms, what he’d rehearsed so many times, “Baby?”

  “Yes, Daddy?” Kevin was holding him and hadn’t yet pulled out.

  “What if we each got a discreet tattoo?”

  Kevin thought for a moment about this proposal, more jarring than anything he’d anticipated: A model with a tattoo? Weren’t tattoos forever? Did people like them ever get them? Weren’t they something white trash had? “Pardon?” he said.

  Guy pulled free, sat up on the towel he’d spread out, and looked Kevin in the eye. Guy worried that he looked strange with his sprayed-on tan just on his face and hands from his last job for sunglasses. (Didn’t they say they wanted an exclusive? How much would that pay? For how many days? Would Élite work all that out with Pierre-Georges? Would the client shoot in New York? Did that young Italian photographer, Giorgio, ever work in New York?) “I’m sorry, I’m still half in Milan, worrying about work.”

  “Poor guy,” Kevin said, stroking his face and worrying about Guy’s unrelieved erection now shrinking to half-mast.

  “I thought we could get tiny number eights behind our earlobes.”

  “Why that number?”

  “If it’s on its side, it’s the symbol for infinity and could stand for our eternal love.”

  “Aw, that’s so sweet,” Kevin said, and pecked him on the lips. Quite the commitment, Kevin thought, smiling. “How did you even know that?” he asked, astonished that Guy knew so many things he didn’t; must be his French background.

  And indeed Guy explained he’d read about it in a story but he couldn’t remember whose. It probably was a French author’s, a man was in love with a nun and managed to have the infinity symbol projected on the convent lawn just outside her window.

  “That’s so romantic,” Kevin said with a frown. “Wouldn’t it be dangerous? I mean, if it got infected?”

  Guy made a clucking sound of dismissal and Kevin felt about as daring as a grandmother. “Yeah,” Guy said, “they might have to amputate our heads.”

  Kevin said, “That wouldn’t affect me in the least,” though secretly he thought he and Chris were smarter than Guy. They both did well in trig, whereas Guy could barely add. He felt startled, even offended, when Guy knew things he didn’t. Though superior knowledge was only natural in a sophisticated man who’d traveled the world’s capitals for two decades and who liked to read, Guy’s occasional pockets of esoteric knowledge were still disturbing to Kevin, who didn’t want to think of all those years before they’d met or all the conversations Guy might be having now without Kevin, some shared laugh of camaraderie with another runway model backstage as they both wore protective cloth coats over their white alpaca suits, so easy to soil, so likely to shed.

  “I guess that would mean we really were married,” Kevin said. “It would be a statement of some sort, that this time it’s for keeps.”

  “Of course it’s for keeps,” Guy said. What if Kevin ever met Andrés and saw that he had the same tattoo? Guy could foresee a disaster like that, but the one thing he counted on was that, even if his whole world exploded, he’d always be able to attract new people, maybe of not the same caliber, but good enough. He’d once gotten drunk with a handsome flight attendant who’d said, “The good thing and the bad thing about being a steward is that you never have to make anything work with a guy, because you’re always flying off and meeting new guys.” Being an international model was like that; even in Milan he’d met two other models who’d fancied him. He liked models—they were so clean. Everyone said they were shallow, but he thought it depended. He knew one, that black guy with the Afro he’d met in Chicago, who’d gotten a Ph.D. in something.

  “But won’t a facial tattoo be a problem for a model?” Kevin asked.

  “Pierre-Georges was right. I need a new look. Anyway, I’m going to grow my hair long to cover my ears—and I have such dumb ears.”

  “Aw, they’re cute!”

  “And I’m going to stop shaving every day. I’ll have some stubble. I saw a model in Milan with stubble and it was very chic. Everyone was fascinated.” He thought for a moment, picturing his new look. “Ultra-masculine. I’ll start wearing punk, masculine clothes to go-sees. Lots of leather. Safety pins. If that works I’ll push my hair back on one side and show my tattoo. Enough with the Gentleman’s Quarterly look. Models are so square.”

  “Who will tattoo us? Does it hurt? It will be so strange to have something … perman
ent … making me different from Chris. I mean, a mustache, okay, or five pounds, a haircut, but a brand on your flesh?”

  “A brand? Let’s not be melodramatic. I think they give you an anesthetic. I’ll find a clean, artistic tattoo artist. It’s becoming far more common.”

  “Really? I don’t want to look like a scumbag. We used to say you should never have anything on your body that you couldn’t cover up with long sleeves before a judge.”

  “Did you, now? In Ely?” Guy said with just the right combination, he hoped, of ridicule and condescension.

  Not wishing to be vexed with Guy, Kevin kissed him and said,“I don’t want to look like a convict.”

  Guy had an attack of vertigo at the mention of the word “convict.” He went pale and said, “It must be late for me. Eleven. Let’s go eat something.”

  “I’m going to cook something. A mushroom risotto.”

  Where on earth did he learn to make that? Guy wondered. Rice sounded fattening, but he thought he’d eat only two spoonfuls. He was disciplined enough to do that, and if he ate three he’d vomit his entire lunch. That was a promise he made himself.

  Lucie knew the name of an aesthetic tattoo artist. They made an appointment and went to a dirty little parlor in Chinatown, a third-floor walk-up, smelling of roach spray and Kools. The man, a wizened ex-sailor with sleeves of faded tattoos on both arms, looked like Popeye. All he lacked were a corncob pipe and a can of spinach. It took a hastily drawn sketch to convince him they wanted matching eights behind their left ears, tiny and no colors, visible only behind the lobe.

  “I might just as well make them in lemon juice,” the man said mournfully. “But I get it. I’ve had timid gentlemen like you two before. Sure, I can do it. Guess you guys are special pals?” and he set to work on Guy first. His needles looked dirty, and Guy worried he might get the AIDS or hepatitis from them, but he didn’t dare show any qualms, lest Kevin back down.