Our Young Man

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.

“Yes, she was French but married a rich American, enfin, he was a soldier when they met, black—”

“Black? Cool!”

“But he made money later—”

“Doing what?”

“Barbecue,” Guy improvised wildly.

“Cool.”

“And they had no children. First he died—”

“From what?”

“Cholesterol.” Guy wasn’t sure that was fatal, but it sounded like something a black cook might get.

“Poor man. And what did she die from?”

“Malnourishment. Anorexia.” He felt on sure ground with this disease.

“How ironic!”

“Why ironic?”

“Her husband made barbecue.”

A shadowy image of a fat, sweating black man in a starched white chef’s toque crossed his imagination. “She was a vegetarian,” Guy blurted.

“This doesn’t look like an old person’s apartment. I mean, the brass lamps and chocolate-brown walls look so up-to-date.”

“Thanks,” Guy said weakly, “I’ve made a few improvements. Should we go out for dinner?”

They strolled over to Duff’s on Christopher Street and were seated in a booth under a big industrial lamp. They ordered a cheap bottle of white wine and two rare steaks with green beans, hold the potatoes. “A real model’s meal, right?”

“I guess,” Guy said.

“Can I be honest with you?”

Guy’s stomach clenched with fear. “Of course.”

“My brother thinks I’m too boring for a sharp guy like you.”

“You’re not boring — not as boring as I am. At least you’re doing advanced studies.”

“Just college. Everybody does college, and most college kids are dumb.”

“I didn’t go to college.”

“Why not?”

“My parents are aristocrats, a count and countess, and they wanted me to manage the family estates.” Guy resolved that he should write down all his lies in a locked diary and draw a timeline of this life he was inventing for himself.

“It’s never too late to go to school,” Kevin said. Guy smiled frostily.

He took off his own clothes as soon as they got in the door of his apartment. (He thought that would bypass any fumbling or the suggestion of seduction.) He went bare-assed into the kitchen to fetch them two glasses of water. When he came back, Kevin was stepping out of his jeans. He’d already untied his blue Top-Siders and now he was frowning slightly as he unbuttoned his shirt. He stood there in all his boyish beauty. He was wearing traditional Hanes underpants, which his mom had probably bought, six to a pack. Guy took the little erection slanting off to the right as a tribute. Did Kevin, inexperienced as he was, imagine that all gay men shed their clothes the minute they crossed the threshold?

He walked slowly over to Kevin, put their glasses on the coffee table, and folded him into his arms. Guy believed everything in sex should be done slowly so as not to scare the wildlife and to ensure his own natural grace and poise.

Kevin shuddered in his arms. Guy tried to re-create in his mind the delights and repulsions of a virgin’s first time, but he decided to be bold, firm, not a sensitive reed bending in the gusts of the boy’s desire and dismay. If they were both hesitant the whole thing would prove a fiasco.

Kevin’s skin was so cool it was almost clammy, especially the high, rubbery buttocks. They probed each other’s mouths with big, slippery tongues, eels flowing into and out of deep-sea grottoes, shrinking to enter, bloating once inside.

When he knelt to suck Kevin, he glanced up and caught him grimacing. “Are you okay?”

“You mean my wincing? I always do that when I’m jerking off. It’s pleasure — too painful. Is that too weird for you?” His way of submitting his behavior so innocently to Guy’s judgment was so guileless.

Guy thought, Pain as pleasure. He understood that. He licked the boy’s balls, raised high and taut in their hairless sac, and Kevin groaned a bit stagily. Then he shook all over, flinching like a splashed horse. The flinching seemed real, involuntary. Guy thought of a Thoroughbred, how his curried coat drank the light. Guy touched the boy’s fragile pink nipples — no reaction. His body hadn’t been thoroughly eroticized yet, which made Guy think of that Chinese model he’d slept with once, a guy he’d met in São Paulo, someone who wore his body like armor, which had made Guy irrationally conclude the Chinese weren’t sensual, weren’t good sex. They didn’t inhabit their bodies, Guy had decided on the basis of his sample of one.

Kevin fucked him. Guy guided the little hard penis into his body; Guy was lying on his stomach in order to afford Kevin the full plush glamour of his muscular buttocks. The boy didn’t seem to know how to thrust. He just lay couched on Guy’s bigger sleek body, this million-dollar body soaked for decades in costly unguents, and more or less wobbled in there for a very short time until he exploded.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kevin said. “I came in you. I wasn’t expecting it.”

“That’s fine,” Guy said, kissing him and then running toward the shower. “I wanted it. That was great,” he lied. He didn’t know if Kevin might be feeling guilty after his orgasm. (So many men did at first.) That’s why he didn’t linger in bed. But then again, he didn’t want to seem cold, so he called back, “Come take a shower with me,” and the boy almost ran to join him. They rotated in the narrow tub under the showerhead; whoever wasn’t under the water soaped up, stood with legs ajar to wash his own crack, took the blast full in the face, lifted his arms to clean his hairless pits. Kevin was already spotlessly clean except for the lubricant greasing the length of his little cock; he washed it. Then, their bodies warm from the water, they waltzed around so neither of them would get cold. In a few seconds Kevin was hard again and Guy filled his mouth with hot water and knelt to engulf him. The boy let out a groan and tried to lift Guy to his feet. “We should take turns. It’s only fair.”

“Only Princeton boys care about fairness,” Guy said. “That’s why they rub against each other. The Princeton rub.” He whispered, “You’re my stud, my mister,” and filled his mouth again and dipped back to his chore.

“How can I be your stud?” Even the word seemed to embarrass him.

Guy looked up, the water splashing on his face, his wet hair dripping over his eyes. “Bet you can come three times.”

“I came five times once. But it was jerking off. And it was pretty limp and watery at the end.”

Guy looked up admiringly.

After Kevin came, Guy rubbed him dry with a hotel-sized towel and wanted to say, “My little stud,” but censored himself. The “little” might not be appreciated. And post coitum the “stud” might rankle.

Guy put Kevin to bed and gave him the TV remote. Then he went back to the toilet, closed the door, and was oddly proud of how much semen Kevin had squirted into him. Of course, Kevin wasn’t Andrés, with all his barbaric beauty and gypsy passion, as thin and tortured as a Spanish Christ who’d climbed down from the cross, banished the god within, and resurrected the outer man.

Before dawn Guy woke up to an exquisite pain, an inner plundering that his dream tried to make sense of (a hand was reaching for his heart), then he woke up and realized the boy was fucking him again and simultaneously reaching around and jerking Guy off. They both came at the same moment.

Guy’s strategy was to make the boy into the active partner based on the notion that with his small dick and youth he would seldom be cast in that role and that it would build up his confidence. He knew most experienced gays would find such a policy counterintuitive; they all said the way to a man’s heart was through his asshole. But Pierre-Georges had told him otherwise, that men might style themselves as passive at first because it was easier to take it than give it, but that as a young man became self-assured in a relationship he became more assertive — the return of the repressed. So that both male partners in a couple end up as tops and look for the occasional bottom to fuck.

Perhaps it wasn’t that systematic, but Guy trusted his instincts, and after a week together Kevin was walking with a new swagger and even swatting Guy on the butt the minute they turned a corner. Because Kevin thought of Guy as more sophisticated and five or six years older, more the New Yorker, he let Guy decide when they’d go to the gym or what movie they’d see. They usually ate at a diner because it was quick and cheap and Kevin, if left to his own devices, could live on cheeseburgers and fries. He wanted, however, to have cheekbones like Guy, those knuckles about to burst through the taut sheet, and so he docilely ordered the salad and Diet Coke but then rewarded himself with a slice of cherry cheesecake, a taste for which was a New York acquisition, just as he could order now a poppy-seed bagel with lox and a “schmear” (salmon and cream cheese) — and he never gained an ounce.

His legs were meaty enough to remind Guy he was a man, but each segment of his six-pack when he sat up was the width of a beer can and he was so thin his stomach almost touched his backbone, and he had three muscles on his side under his armpit, “obliques” (the gym teacher had called them) that looked like finger-paint daubs or streaked commas or fingers holding his core as if it were a glass of milk. When he turned on his stomach, his spine and ribs looked like a trilobite fossil.

Kevin had bought a Walkman and was obsessed with Madonna and U2 and New Order. He spoke often about his “music” and defended it as if Guy were challenging it. His music was his one article of faith, the sole fatherland he pledged allegiance to. He’d sit there with his black earphones on and nod his head rhythmically, mouthing the words. He knew all the words and for him they were canonical. He would often cite them to Guy as if they expressed superior wisdom. Guy never doubted their gravity or timelessness and that seemed to pacify Kevin, who would tense up in advance, spoiling for a fight. Otherwise he was docility itself, always good-humored and smiling, almost too affectionate. Guy found his affection oppressive, as if he were a joyful lapdog circling around his feet and yipping and biting excitedly, impeding his progress. Indifference and mystery were more appealing. A little distance let your partner’s imagination and tenderness expand to fill the space between you and him, give your mind and emotions permission to work, to yearn. Hankering might constitute an attachment in Buddhism, but in love it was a virtue, one that was constructive, that allowed you to build and articulate the very object of your affection. Whether the Buddhists were right or wrong — that love itself was always disappointing — was a matter of indifference to Guy. Love was his vocation, though he’d inspired more love than he’d experienced. He was like one of those legendary Hollywood actresses who drove men mad with desire and yet felt nothing themselves, who became old, fat, gap-toothed, and right-wing after years of being synonymous with the bikini and Saint-Tropez, say. Guy knew that the baron and Fred and Andrés had all loved him and that even now Andrés might be beating off in his lonely cell and whispering, “Guy,” as he came, afraid that he’d rock the bunk bed and wake the brute below.

Thoughts of Andrés made him sick with guilt but also glowed beckoningly like the idea of a Liberty Bond that was accruing interest and that someday he’d be able to cash in.

When he went out walking in the evening with Kevin, the boy wrapped his arm around Guy’s waist, the way Latin men did with their women. They’d stroll very slowly. Guy wondered what people were thinking as they passed. That Guy was a child molester who’d hypnotized his victim? That Kevin was mentally ill and the only person he trusted was his uncle, and that the patient was lavishing on Guy all the affection he should be distributing over several people? Guy had once seen an overgrown, amorous, curly-haired bar mitzvah boy kissing his little balding father in the same way, as if all the youngster’s budding sexual energy and affection were centered on this one unlikely person whom he cherished like a lover. Kevin was like that — a bar mitzvah boy utterly enraptured with his father.

One day, whether by design or accident, they ran into Kevin’s twin, Chris, who was with the gum-snapping girl he was dating. Kevin seemed all the leaner beside his twin. And prouder—his date was more beautiful than his brother’s. They all filed into the corner bar, which was strangely dark. The girl, Betty, was surprisingly quick and clever. She was a native New Yorker, she said, “conceived in the Village and born in Queens,” and she had the disabused savviness to prove it. She paused for a second and let her eyes roam before launching into an “original” observation, like an opera singer who composes herself before starting the famous coloratura aria. She seemed acutely conscious that Guy and Kevin were a couple, and she was at pains to show she was so familiar with homos as to be bored by them, even while she was faintly satirical at their expense. “What are you boys up to?” she said, giving an audible wink. “Out for a cruise?”

Guy, with all the generosity of the beautiful, found Betty amusing and turned his killer smile on her. Impertinently she asked, “Do you dye your eyelashes black, or have you tattooed them black? It’s rare to see eyelashes that black — but I must say it does wonders for your eyes.”

“Nothing like that,” Guy said, unoffended. “They’re just that way. Girls tattoo their eyebrows but not their eyelashes — that would be too dangerous.” Betty winked at Chris, as if this were a little lie they’d dissect and relish later.

Two minutes after they’d finished their beers, Kevin hustled Guy out of there. Chris seemed surprised by the decisiveness on his brother’s part.

On the street Kevin said, “I’m sick of staying home every night. Let’s go to the Roxy and dance.”

“Great idea,” Guy said, pleased by Kevin’s assertiveness but vexed by the prospect of disco dancing. They couldn’t arrive there before two in the morning. They’d have to snort a little blow to get their energy up, though Kevin was too budget-conscious to do it all night, thank God.

“I want to show you off,” Kevin said.

Two days later Guy took the bus again to Andrés’s prison. He lied to Kevin that he was posing at LaGuardia for a German skiwear catalogue all day.

Andrés was in a dark mood and it took Guy a minute to realize he was consumed with jealousy. Suddenly he said, “I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“I think we should get identical tattoos.”

“Really?”

“Facial tattoos.”

“But I have to work,” Guy said.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil your precious asset.” Guy thought Andrés’s English was much more idiomatic than in his pre-prison past; he must be sitting around gabbing all day with his American cellmate. Even his accent was more ghetto.

“How could a facial tattoo go unnoticed?” Guy asked.

“Behind your earlobe. Just a small number eight.”

Guy thought immediately of Kevin, who’d be sure to notice and descend into a paroxysm of rage. Maybe that was Andrés’s idea — to mark his property with his brand. “What does the eight stand for?”

Andrés touched his fly, for all the world like a rapper. “Don’t you remember? It’s when we met — February eighth? But it’s also the symbol for infinity if it’s turned on its side. That’s how long our love will last — infinitely. At least mine for you.”

Guy smiled and said, “Okay, okay.”

Andrés suddenly seemed more alert. “You’ll do it?”

“Sure,” Guy said, thinking he could always think up an excuse later. “But how will you get a tattoo in prison?”

“Not a problem, my man,” he muttered. “It’s cool.” Andrés sounded more and more like a very low-class thug, and that alarmed and excited Guy. He’d always been passionate — would he be more so now? Would his dick be even bigger and blacker? Would he smell even more like saffron and olive oil in which chopped shallots were sizzling? “Oh, baby,” Andrés said, “would you do that for me?” And Guy thought he had that mellow, late-night romantic voice of a black disc jockey talking about his “African queen.” “Would you really do that for me, baby?”

Guy realized Andrés had never called him “baby” before, nor had he ever spoken in this crooning baritone. Suddenly Guy was jealous thinking about his Afro-American rival, and he said, “You never talk about your cellmate. Is he here now? Can you point him out? Subtly.”

“Why?”

“Because you sound different. Is he your lover?”

Andrés shut down. His anger (or was it his embarrassment?) became such a heavy charge that it shorted him out, with only a few bright noisy sparks to express his total outage. “You’re the one with the lover!” Andrés shouted, getting up out of his chair and causing the guards to come striding quickly toward them.

“Is everything cool, here?” a thick-chested black guard asked. “Are you boys playing nicely? Staying cool, Andy?”

Guy thought the intonation sounded familiar. “We’re cool,” Andrés said sullenly, and sat back down. His chin dropped to his chest.

Of course, Guy thought. The black guard got the Colombian beauty. He won’t let anyone else near that prime beef. That’s the voice Andrés is imitating.

But then Andrés was telling him he had joined a Puerto Rican gang in prison. “It’s so good to be speaking Spanish again, even if it’s their funny kind of Spanish. Here you have to choose the black gang or the P.R. gang. I feel sorry for these Wall Street cats. They don’t have no gang.”

“Are you sure the eight isn’t just the name of your Spanish gang? Ocho? And you want to make it sound like our symbol so I won’t get jealous?”

“Baby …” Andrés said with such a hurt, reproachful look that Guy immediately backed off. He leaned in to kiss Andrés on the cheek, but Andrés shrank away and looked around nervously. “I told them you be my cousin.”

“I’ve seen other people in here kissing.”

“Not guys.”

“Not even cousins?”

Andrés smiled and said, “Get outta here.”

Guy noticed the stretched orange fabric crotch: no hard-on this time. Maybe only a crooning black voice excited him now.

Kevin insisted they go up to the hot-tarred roof of their brownstone to “lay out,” as he put it. While there, they fraternized with a friendly young couple of chubs, Mr. and Mrs. Something Polish to whom Guy had rented out the top floor. They were newlyweds and so much in love they couldn’t keep their paws off each other. He was in pest control, he said, and she was a baker, which meant she had to get up at four in the morning. She worked for the French baker down the street and brought home very American carrot cupcakes onto which she had piped orange and green frosting.

They were always leaving a baguette on Guy’s doorstep or a cherry cheesecake, once she’d discovered that was Kevin’s favorite. With the coldhearted discipline of a farmer drowning kittens, Guy systematically sprayed the baked goods with detergent so they’d be inedible. “You’re incredibly sweet, Dorothy,” Guy overheard Kevin say on the landing, “but we’re models and we can’t indulge,” he wailed. Guy would never have said anything: He didn’t want people to think of them as Martians.

Pierre-Georges came by and treated Kevin frostily. He kept speaking to Guy in French, using the most difficult argot (pieu for “bed” and tignasse for “hair”) just in case Kevin had picked up ordinary French in school.

“Speak in English,” Guy said.

“Honestly, I don’t mind, you guys can knock yourselves out with your French. Honestly. I’ll just read a magazine.”

Guy knew that Pierre-Georges would take Kevin’s politeness as a form of wimpiness (mièverie). Pierre-Georges had been warned not to say anything that would give away Guy’s real age.

That night in bed Kevin confessed that when he was twelve he’d gotten his hands on a copy of Blueboy. And he’d jerked off to a guy named Ralph. “And he looked just like you, but of course he couldn’t have been, because that was seven years ago. But I swear he looked just like you! It’s weird! Same little jug ears, same eyes exactly the same shape, same small hands, same …”—here he lowered his voice—“dick.”

Oh, no, Guy thought, of all the pictures that might have surfaced and imprinted him, it had to be mine, the one that sneaky American photographer talked me into and swore never to show anyone.

“But it looks just the way you do now,” and Kevin sheepishly brought out from under the mattress a dog-eared copy of Blueboy, the pages limp from use and stiff with semen. “Doesn’t it?” And he held the picture up and thrust it into Guy’s face. “Or am I crazy or what?”

“There is a resemblance.”

“If you only knew how much cum that photo cost me! Gallons and gallons.”

Kevin blushed, not one of his deep, cranberry blushes, but a hawthorn-pink one. “I used to fantasize I’d call up the Blueboy offices in Miami and I’d ask for the art director, his name is printed here, Gabriel Sanchez, and I’d say I was calling on behalf of Ralph’s mother who was dying, and I had to have Ralph’s telephone number immediately. But then I thought that probably wasn’t even his real name. And maybe Blueboy didn’t even deal with him directly. The photo is credited to Big One Studio. They probably just sold it to Blueboy.”

Kevin lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes. In the slanting evening light coming through the window and against the crisp white pillowcase he looked even more tanned. Suddenly his eyes snapped open. “And go figure, now I have a Ralph all of my own, my very own Ralph.”

Guy smiled. “You make me sound like a Ralph Doll.”

Kevin laughed. “You’re my little Ralph Doll.” He unbuttoned Guy’s shirt. “And I can dress you in any outfit I like or undress you completely.” His small fingers undid the buttons of Guy’s 501s and he tugged his jeans down. “And I can bend my Ralph Doll in any position I like.” He rolled Guy over onto his side, folded the upper knee up, and straightened the lower leg, pushed his upper shoulder to the mattress, and then wriggled out of his own underpants, releasing his hard cock. A moment later he was fucking Guy, holding him by the sharp pelvis bones and pulling him back onto his dick. “Do you like that, Ralph?”

“Yes. I. Do,” Guy said in a robot voice. “Very. Much,” he said in staccato bursts.

“This is too weird, but I like it,” Kevin said. The heat of the afternoon made him sweat, which matted his hair down on his forehead, as Guy noticed when he looked back. Guy wondered if he could tell Kevin to thrust a bit more, but no, that would sap his confidence. Better show him how it was done when it was Guy’s turn. The boy just rocked like a Roto-Rooter and came with a terrible war whoop.

“My little Ralph,” Kevin whispered into Guy’s ear. It was the first time he was amorous after he came, and Guy took that as progress. Nor did Kevin go, “Ew-w,” when he pulled his penis out and it was brown and smelly, and that, too, Guy considered a rite de passage.

Guy invited Kevin to the Spanish restaurant on the corner. The baron was there with a big muscular German named Hans whose head was shaved and who had a silver stud through his right eyebrow. He was wearing black Doc Martens and skinny jeans and a bicycle chain instead of a belt. “I thought I might see you here, Guy, in our old neighborhood. What a lovely companion you have — Kevin? So honored to meet you. This is Hans — he’s East German, so his English isn’t very good. But he’s good at lots of other things.”

Guy felt intensely uncomfortable standing there. He thought, If I shouted “Fire!” and pulled Kevin away, I might save the day, but that won’t happen. Guy felt he was walking toward a fatal accident.

“I hear our old friend died and left you yet another house.” He looked at Guy from head to toe. “How do you do it? You don’t look a day older than you did all those years ago. Gene therapy? The sperm of infant lads?” (And his glance took in Kevin.) “And don’t tell me you got rid of that virile Colombian.”

“He’s in prison — for forgery.”

“Poor thing.” Édouard didn’t want to know any more about what was unpleasant. Once more a complete survey of Guy’s person. “They really should exhibit you at the Smithsonian as one of the wonders of the age. How many years ago did I meet you?”

“I rarely think about the past,” Guy said coldly.

“Quite right, too, when you have such a promising present,” and this with another head-to-toe look at Kevin. “Guy, you look just as fresh as the day I met you.”

“Thank you,” Guy said. Guy was looking at Hans’s big, lumpy crotch; everything about him — his wide stance, his direct stare, his bald, missile-shaped head — spelled Big Cock.

“And how is our house? Comfortable?”

“Yes. As always. You and Hans must come by someday for drinks.”

“Definitely,” piped Kevin politely. “You’re always welcome.”

“What a dear child,” the baron said with a mocking smile, and he actually patted Kevin on the cheek with his gem-studded, age-spotted hand. “Don’t let him lead you astray, my child. He’s such a wicked man, woof!” and the baron pretended to shiver with delight.

After they sat down they both studied their menus, and finally Guy said, “You don’t even want to know.”

“I feel I don’t know you at all.”

“Don’t you think what we have is real and solid?”

Kevin looked at him with tears in his eyes. “I want to believe that. Jesus, I want to. But how can I trust you? I don’t know what to think now.”

This was the first time Guy had heard Kevin say “Jesus” and the way he said it sounded like a genuine cry from the heart. Guy thought that if he lost Kevin, at least he’d have had one perfect month from him, and what did you ever have with another person anyway? Certainly not much more. And breaking up with him would simplify his life. He wouldn’t have to lie anymore to Andrés.

But he’d miss the little guy, his sweetness, his good humor, his devotion to his silly music, his warm perfect body, his amateur lovemaking, the sperm of an infant lad.

“Do you think it’s worth it, working through all this mess?” Guy asked.

Kevin looked startled. “What! You’re breaking up with me? I love you, Guy. You’re my sweetheart. I’d marry you if I could. You don’t doubt that?”

Guy reached across the table and squeezed Kevin’s hand, which felt feverish.

“First of all,” Kevin said, “who was that man?”

“He’s a Belgian baron. He’s called Édouard and he’s the one who gave me the house.”

“So there was no aunt, no black GI?”

“No.”

“Were you the baron’s lover?”

“I slept with him once. He was in love with me.”

“How old are you really?”

“Going on forty. That photo of Ralph you have — that’s me when I was twenty.”

“Really? It is? How do you do it?”

“I don’t do anything.”

“Seriously, how do you stay so young? You look the same as Ralph did. You haven’t changed at all.”

“I have. I have hair now in my ears. The flesh around my fingers is loose, wobbly — see, yours fits tight, like a good glove, mine is creased and shiny and baggy. And my elbows are dry and scaly. My nose is too big — a nose keeps growing with the years. Luckily I was born with small ears. You are just a bit shorter than me but weigh twenty pounds less without looking cadaverous. Only real young people can do that. You have duvet—fuzz — on your cheeks that lights up in the cross light.”

“So you’re really Ralph?”

Guy told him the whole story of how the American photographer back in Paris had tricked him into posing nude and then sold the picture to Blueboy.

“And so you’re a much bigger supermodel than you let on? And not an aristocrat?”

Guy gave him a rundown on his entire career, from meeting Pierre-Georges at the Café Flore to doing runway work for Pierre Cardin to coming to the States and meeting Bruce Weber in 1980 (“He changed my life”) and eventually posing for Calvin Klein and Abercrombie & Fitch.

“And who is the virile Colombian he mentioned?”

Guy said, “He’s called Andrés and he’s in prison.” Guy explained that he’d been arrested for forgery.

“Do you mean that if he weren’t in prison you’d still be with him and not with me? Am I his temporary replacement?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Guy said. “Don’t even think like that.”

“And who was that man who died that the baron mentioned? Where is the house he gave you?”

“His name was Fred. He died of AIDS. He left me his house on Fire Island.”

“Did you lie about that, too? Are you infected by AIDS? And me? Am I going to get it and die?”

“No, no,” Guy said, and he explained that he had just tested negative and he could show Kevin the results. “There’s no reason for you to believe me, I know. My word is worthless. But I do have the document. If you’re really as inexperienced as you say, then there’s no reason to worry.”

“I’ve always told you the truth,” Kevin blurted out. A second later they both realized what a heavy condemnation lay in those spontaneous words.

“Unlike me,” Guy said. “I’m a terrible person.” He expected Kevin to contradict him, but when he didn’t, Guy sank another foot into the mud.

It must have been eight-thirty on a July night but it was still light out, warm and windless. Neither of them was hungry, so they stirred their green paella around on their plates, paid, and left. On the way out Guy nodded to the baron.

As if by a prearranged agreement, they sat on the stoop to their building and looked out on the uninteresting street. At last Kevin said, as if responding to a question, “Were you ever going to come clean with me?”

“About what?” Guy wasn’t sure what “come clean” meant.

“About how you came to own this house, about how you have a Latin lover, about your unemployed father, about how you’re fifteen years older than you said — oh, forget it.”

“I don’t know,” Guy said, “I don’t know when I would have told you. I was afraid of losing you.”

A moment went by, and a mother and her preteen daughter walked past. When they were out of earshot Kevin said, “At least that sounded honest.”

That night they made love for a long time and for the first time Guy fucked Kevin. Guy spent a long time rimming him and then put a lubricated finger up there.

“I’ve wanted this for such a long time,” Kevin said.

“Me, too.”

“I’m not sure it’s clean.”

“So what?” Guy asked. “You must tell me if it hurts. I don’t have to use a condom, do I?”

“Of course not,” Kevin murmured, and perhaps thought better of it. Could he trust Guy? “No,” he said. “We’re married. We’re faithful.”

Kevin’s words were like a vote of confidence. Guy inched his way into the boy’s ass while studying his face (pain as pleasure). It was the most wonderful feeling, muscular velvet, an intimacy only a virgin could grant, or so he said to himself for the moment, just to make it all the more exciting. He was taking Kevin’s cherry! The words made him harder and made him feel privileged, masterful, married. He thought how many men would pay unlimited amounts to have this inaugurating experience with this boy. He didn’t want to feel like a middle-aged pedophile, he didn’t even want to think all this would make a good porn film. He wanted every thrust, every second, to be laden with tenderness, a salute from him to Kevin, a deep recognition. He wanted Kevin to like what was being done to him, to push back for another joyous millimeter of penetration. He didn’t want him to label it Guy’s First Fuck or Kevin’s First Time. He didn’t want the idea and the label to crowd out the sensation or to sharpen it; he wanted it to be pure sex, undramatized.

Guy took a long time. He thought that way Kevin would get used to it, stop fearing it, realize how pleasurable it was. Guy reached around and stroked his hard cock: Good, he was still erect. He’d lose his erection if he was in pain, wouldn’t he? Guy whispered in his ear, “I love you.” How many times he’d wanted to say that. The words thrilled both of them and Kevin trembled all over as he had the very first time they’d kissed, and again Guy thought of him as a skittish colt. He strummed his ribs as if he were playing a harp. “Am I hurting you?” Guy asked.

“It feels really neat!” Kevin said, which prompted Guy to lie on top of him, pull out, balance his weight on his outstretched hands, then plunge deeper and faster into him. Kevin seemed to give in to him, to stop acting and to start uttering a high-pitched little call Guy had never heard before. Kevin experimented with spreading his legs, pulling his buttocks wider open, nibbling Guy’s hands, clenching his rectum. “Just lie still,” Guy murmured, and Kevin did. Guy felt the last locks opening. He couldn’t resist glancing up at their reflection in the mirror. They looked good. Now the light coming through the windows was rich and grainy with shadow and discretion. Their individuality had been airbrushed out and they were just two charcoal smudges, one covering the other. Suddenly nothing in the world seemed to Guy more glamorous than homosexuality, as romantic as heady white gardenias nested in polished green leaves. “Can I come in you?”

“What?” Kevin asked, arching his back and looking over his nacreous shoulder.

“Can I come in you?”

“God, yes!” and Guy pressed his whole body into Kevin and shuddered.

Kevin was breathing heavily. When his breath evened out, Guy pulled out and wiped himself with a tissue from a box on the night table.

Kevin propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Guy intently, seriously, with those dark circles of weariness under his eyes, so touching in a kid. He started to cry and Guy kissed away his tears. At last Kevin said, “That’s dangerous, fucking me. Are you ready for me to fall in love with you forevermore?”

A little fatuously, Guy said, “So you liked that?” and Kevin nodded solemnly, which sobered Guy enough to say, “Yes, I’m ready for your love. Give me all you’ve got.”

They kissed each other languorously again and, suddenly rousing himself, Guy slapped him on the ass and said, “Okay, okay. Your turn.”

For a second bewildered, Kevin said, “You want me to fuck you?”

“Yes, dummy.”

Kevin lubricated Guy with a sticky finger, then entered him; they were both lying on their sides. Guy advanced his upper knee and crooked it and rotated it upward, the Ralph position. Kevin had learned through imitation how to thrust; he already knew that Guy’s G-spots were his ears and nipples, though he’d been warned to go easy on the nipples lest they become enlarged. Guy liked the idea that Kevin’s ass was full of his come and that tribal physics would make it seep through his loins and spurt through his little cock.

Afterward, Kevin balanced his head on his open hand, lying on his side, and beamed into Guy’s face, smiled and smiled, wondering. Guy could feel and smell his warm breath, smelling like coffee, a fine stream of air on his cheek.

“What am I going to do with you?” Kevin said, shaking his head. “My little Ralph.”

Bright and early the next day, Fred’s lawyer, Marty, phoned. He said that Fred’s sons, the attorney and the podiatrist, had been driving him crazy. (Guy noticed that lawyers called each other “attorneys,” just as doctors referred to each other as “physicians,” as if the normal word weren’t sufficiently reverential.) “So, those little schnorrers are indignant their dad gave you the house, the lion’s share of the estate, and they want to contest it in court. I told them they’d lose the fifty thousand Fred willed them if they contested — and they might get nothing. I told them they didn’t have a very strong case, that I’d been there and could testify they hadn’t bothered to visit their father more than once, that they’d taken Ceil’s side in the divorce, that they’d treated their father’s new lifestyle with contempt, that you’d been there every day. Of course, they started howling that you’d infected Fred and killed him.”

“I had the test last week,” Guy said, “and I was negative.”

“That’s great news! Would you be willing to show that report in court, if it came to that?”

“Why not?”

“Could you xerox it and send me a copy?”

“Sure.”

“I told them I was their father’s oldest friend from Brooklyn days, grade school days, good ol’ Theodore Herschl days, and that I knew Fred was fed up with Ceil and the boys and that he’d known real happiness with you, and I’d say as much to the presiding magistrate, who’s another ol’ Herschl boy. Now, if I have a copy of your health report, their whole case will fall apart, though that Howie is an underemployed lawyer and could keep this thing going on for years. I hate to think of that house on Fire Island sitting empty and you missing out on those big summer rentals. The bastards … you better be prepared for a long, drawn-out fight we may lose. The courts have been favoring the relatives over the lovers, the gay lovers, the fegalas. You might as well be going out there to use the house yourself. Sort of establish a presence. And enjoy!”

Pierre-Georges came by for Guy’s signature on a contract. “It’s for a horrible American fragrance. Why can’t Americans come up with something that smells good, that has woodsy notes or lemon? Don’t they have noses?”

“Noses?” Kevin asked. “What’s a nose, sir?”

Guy saw Pierre-Georges bridle at the word “sir” and its suggestion of an age difference. Of course there was a considerable age difference, but fashionistas didn’t want to acknowledge it. They were young forever, and that’s what the all-night dancing and cocaine was all about, though in the long run the drugs and the late nights only made them look older, more desiccated.

Pierre-Georges was just back from Paris. He’d flown on the Concorde that very morning and sat next to an old German baroness who owned her own bank and smelled bad; he’d left at ten and arrived in New York two hours earlier. He was full of Paris gossip and was wearing a new floaty black jacket by Yamamoto and baggy gray trousers by Kenzo, more culottes than trousers. He looked silly. Guy thought he must warn Kevin not to call people in fashion “sir.” His faux pas wasn’t as serious as Guy’s had been when he’d called Édouard “Monsieur le Baron” when Édouard had been posing as an unruly dog in need of discipline; nevertheless, fashion people worried about losing their looks. Kenzo’s clothes looked ageless because he’d brought his whole team of Japanese seamstresses and stylistes to Paris and they had their own way of assembling clothes. And Pierre-Georges, in wearing Kenzo, was obviously up to date, though Kenzo had been around for a decade already and his women’s wear was much more adventurous than his boxy, conservative men’s line.

“You look very chic,” Guy said. “Is that Kenzo?” That was as meaningless in their world as saying hello.

“Of course it is,” Pierre-Georges snapped, pouring himself a glass of Perrier from the fridge. “I’m through with all those Hugo Boss suits, with their silk pochettes and solid silk ties and lace-up polished shoes. I’m sick of the rich banker look. I’m going geisha.”

“Well, it’s very chic,” Guy said.

“Which is more than I can say for you, with your dull Ralph Lauren slacks and tassel loafers and baggy Brooks button-down shirts. I mean, please, this isn’t 1950! We’re almost through the eighties and men are falling so far behind women. Women are in their Arlésienne Christian Lacroix, so gay, so cheerful, and bright, and their beautiful Paloma jewelry, and here we are in Brooks Brothers. You say you’re a fashion model, but look at you! So boring! Since you’re so old and you’ve been around so long, you’ve accumulated all these clothes, but you’re not running a museum. I know, let’s clean out your whole closet and give it to Good Volunté—Goodwill, that’s what they call it.

“And then you should develop a new look all your own. With attention to detail. You must have exquisite detail. Refined detail. Look at your heels. Run-down. And you’re going out like that! You must inspire designers, not just cover your back against the sun or rain. You are a fashion model. That means you yourself must be inspirational to couturiers. I know there aren’t any good ones over here. But what if you ran into Karl Lagerfeld dressed as you are now? He comes over here a lot. Everyone in Paris is dressing now! The jewels: Now that they see Mitterrand isn’t going to ruin them, that he’s the capitalists’ best friend, they’ve brought all their jewels out of hiding. Marie-Hélène tried New York but she hated it, all those dull businessmen, no amusing actors or writers, and all those CEOs in bed by ten o’clock? Karl has decided accessories are the important things. I saw him and a boy from his entourage at Le Palace, so chic, I danced with Jimmy Sommerville, and Roland Barthes wrote an essay about it before he was run over, poor dear, though he had the most extraordinary hair growing out of his nose! It must have been four inches long. He never recovered from his mother’s death. Anyway, Karl’s boy had on the most miraculous silver belt with interlocking eighteenth century heads complete with wigs, he said he got them off his andirons, you know he has that chateau now and lives as if he were in a Mozart opera. Karl himself I thought was carrying a purse, but, my dear, it was a book! Les Liaison Dangereuses, in a first edition. Oh, so chic, reading at a disco! And of course he had his fan and monocle and his hair in a ponytail, but he should lose weight. He’s wearing a sort of blouson by Yamamoto, but all his boys are wonderfully thin and they’re all wearing silver, long, heavy necklaces with the head of Medusa, such bad luck, or ravishing gypsy bracelets all up one arm, very thin jingly bracelets. Keiser Karl had on a silver brooch, art moderne, I’d say, his mother’s, I think, with an emerald the size of a quail egg, of course not art deco, he auctioned off all that, including the Ruhlmann desks and the things from Jeanne Lanvin’s house, he can’t abide that now, such a restless spirit, such a genius! I told one of his mignons that I liked his silk vest and he said, can you believe it, ‘I’m so glad you like it. I’ve ordered it in twelve colors.”’

“Excuse me, what’s a nose?” Kevin repeated with a big smile. Guy winced. He’d never seen Pierre-Georges so revved up, virtually hysterical. Maybe it was the excitement of Paris or the Concorde, but it seemed like cocaine.

“A nose!” Pierre-Georges shouted. “Un Nez. The man who creates new perfumes.”

“Oh, I get it, like he’s a nose because he smells—”

“Are you retarded?” Pierre-Georges said, staring the boy down. “He’s a little retarded, no?” he said, addressing Guy.

“I guess when it comes to fashion,” Kevin said, smiling again, imagining he could conquer this Parisian viper with homegrown charm, “I am sort of retarded.”

“Obviously,” Pierre-Georges snarled without a moment’s hesitation, giving a sweeping glance at Kevin’s jeans and checked shirt and sneakers. “Who made your clothes — FAO Schwarz?” naming the children’s toy store.

Kevin laughed at that one, interpreting it incorrectly as a friendly if deadpan jibe. “That’s a good one, Pierre,” he said, imagining that was his given name and that Georges must be his last name. “You’ve been in the business for years and years.” Pierre-Georges cast his eyes to heaven. “Would you say I have any potential as a model?” Kevin had boldly put himself in the line of fire, something American parents taught their children to do.

“My dear, you have a certain naïf fraicheur, most appealing in bed, I’m sure, especially in the satanic embrace of an old master like this one”—and he jerked his head toward Guy—“but you’re too short for the runway, and for print you don’t have that je ne sais what that makes us dream, fantasize, that evokes the opera or silent movie stars or impossibly decadent aristocrats, enfin, you look like an American farmer, an uncultured pig farmer”—Pierre-Georges actually shuddered—“but lacking, how do I say? The necessary virility. Guy has told me you and your twin have very small verges, penises, which seems tragic for nature to have made the same mistake twice, I mention that only—”

“I never said that!” Guy sputtered. “I would never say that.”

“Enfin, you said his sex is touching, which means small, no?”

“It means large,” Guy said.

Now Pierre-Georges looked directly at Kevin. “You and your brother are identical? Maybe I could find something, Italians love blonds, they love wholesome, maybe because they themselves are so devious, so oily.”

Looking shattered by the discussion of his penis size but still resolutely smiling, unshaken in his belief in affability, Kevin said, “My brother isn’t really gay and he doesn’t want to be a model.”

“That’s all that was missing. But I’m not really concerned with these taxonomic distinctions,” Pierre-Georges said loftily. “I just thought L’Uomo Vogue might be amused by blond twins, but if you’re not interested …”

“Oh, I’m very interested, but Chris doesn’t even look that much like me now. He’s put on weight—”

Pierre-Georges shrank back in horror. “Another retarded,” he said, “destroying his youth.” And with that, he was out the door without so much as a peck on Guy’s cheek.

“Now, that’s what you call a vicious French queen. I never discussed your penis size—”

“Bet you did,” Kevin said, “at the beginning. I’ve heard the way gay guys talk at the gym. Nothing’s sacred. Not even my poor little penis.”

“Your penis is fine, I worship it.” And Guy fell to his knees and started nuzzling his crotch until Kevin pulled him to his feet.

“Chris told me I shouldn’t trust you, and he was right, but I love you anyway.”

Kevin brooded about his modeling prospects and all Guy’s lies, and more than once Guy overheard him talking on the phone with Chris in their strange shorthand punctuated with giggles. Guy gathered from Kevin’s end of the conversation that it must not be too flattering, since he lowered his voice whenever Guy entered the room. Yet Kevin, whenever he walked past Guy, couldn’t resist kissing him on the neck. It excited Guy that Kevin, when he wanted to make love, would perch beside him, say sweet things, and begin to touch him amorously; Guy figured that must be what girls expected, to be “warmed up,” and that Kevin’s experience must be entirely with girls.

They went out to Fire Island for a long weekend, as the lawyer had suggested. Kevin had never been there before and was impressed by everything — the ferryboat traversing the bay, all these suntanned, muscled men in baseball caps, pastel shorts, and silver necklaces carrying boxloads of red geraniums, the distant sound of the surf pounding on the Atlantic beach invisible just over the dunes, all these grown-ups pulling little red wagons over the raised wooden walkways, the tranquil regard of an unfrightened deer and her fawn in the sandy brush just a hand’s breadth away from the main path, the fantastical torqued shapes of the stylish houses mounted on unpainted stilts (“There’s Calvin Klein’s house, there’s Tommy Tune’s”), the absence of cars, and the sudden burst of cackling from unseen men already hard at drinks around a pool just behind that weathered wood fence, the extraordinary friendliness of everyone saying hello. At first Kevin suspected Guy must have slept with half these guys, but then he figured out everyone must be stoned or mellow — and that the walkways here were far more friendly than the streets of Manhattan.

At last they reached Guy’s house. He felt a bit like an intruder putting the key in the gate to the outer wall. Inside, the pool, filled and glittering, awaited them. Someone must be maintaining it, it looked clean, and water was bubbling at one end. It smelled of chlorine.

Inside, the house reeked of mildew and garbage. Flimsy aluminum beach chairs were stacked in the living room. Guy flung open the sliding glass doors after first lifting the obstructing one-by-twos in the metal floor doorframes.

Kevin was flabbergasted by how big and sunny and baronial the house was. Guy was checking that the lights worked and that the water could be turned on in the bathroom. Everything was functioning, and Guy wondered how the house had weathered the harsh winter without the pipes bursting. Was there a caretaker? Who was paying for the utilities? Could it be an automatic monthly deduction?

Guy took their bag into the bedroom and opened those sliding glass doors, too, and verified that there were sheets on the bed and towels in the bathroom. Everything felt slightly damp. He could hear Kevin in the living room, carrying the folding chairs out to the pool and setting them up. A cool breath was sluicing now all through the house and the smell of brine had replaced the odor of rot.

Kevin came into the bedroom with an astonished smile and said, “This place is palatial. I can’t believe it all belongs to you.”

“Not yet, exactly. Fred’s sons are contesting the will.”

“But didn’t this Fred leave it to you?”

“Poor boy, you’re so new to gay life, you don’t realize we don’t have any rights. The family almost always wins, no matter how shitty they were to their relative.”

Kevin came up to Guy and took him in his arms. “Does it make you sad”—he nodded at an old jockstrap and sneakers in the open closet on the floor—“to see Fred’s things? Stuff he left behind because he was sure he’d be coming back?”

Guy kissed him, then stepped away and held him at arm’s length. “You do have an old soul. You’re so kind. So sweet. So emotionally intelligent. How did you guess what I was feeling?”

“I could see the stuff on the floor and it was too old and stained to be yours and I could imagine what you must be thinking,”

A moment later they were naked and lying on the bed. Guy couldn’t get enough of Kevin and kept kissing him as if he wanted to drink his blood. “I want you in me,” Guy said. A moment later Kevin had entered him, and Guy could smell the tuna fish sandwiches they’d eaten on the ferry over. This time Guy didn’t want to take his turn. Nor did he want Kevin to pull out of him. They spooned, although the sea wind was almost too cold. They kept snuggling closer and closer to stay warm; Kevin ran his hands over Guy’s body.

“Do you know anyone out here?”

“Not that I could call at ten in the morning to chat. But you’ll see. It’s very tribal. Everyone dancing all night and eventually at dawn heading out to the dunes to have sex. But it’s so beautiful here, with the surf and the houses on the shore—”

“Will we go out there for sex?”

“I only want to be with you,” Guy said. “But if you’re bored with me …”

“What?”

“Well, you’re so inexperienced I don’t want to deprive you, just so you come back to Daddy. But to insure our health, maybe it would be best if we were faithful for the duration. I’m sure AIDS will be over next year.”

The word “daddy” made Kevin hard. Or maybe it was the idea of a fidelity pact.

“I want to fuck my daddy again,” Kevin said, and did.

They showered — the water came out at first in dirty cold bursts but then ran clear and hot — and put on shorts and T’s and sneakers and pulled a red wagon to the grocery. On the way everyone said hello, and one group of five stopped in their tracks and watched Guy and Kevin go by. Kevin looked back, but Guy sauntered on, pulling his noisy wagon over the bumpy boards. Kevin could hear the words “models” and “stuck-up” and he was pleased they had said “models” plural.

“Is everyone always so friendly and in such a good mood?” Kevin asked. He felt strange being so pale, but he’d dutifully applied sunscreen all over.

“They’re drunk now,” Guy said, “and optimistic, but they will soon be squabbling over household expenses and hoping they’ll find love later in the Meat Rack. They’ll be arguing. ‘Why did you buy that expensive leg of lamb?’ And they become especially cross at the beginning of September when they realize the season is over and they’ve danced their tushes off and fucked a lot in the bushes, but, hey, they haven’t bagged a beau for the winter and they’ve maxed out their credit cards.”

Kevin laughed and put an arm around Guy and said, “I didn’t know you knew all those words.”

“Out here I’ve heard them often enough,” Guy said. Because of oncoming traffic on the boardwalk, Kevin had to fall back and follow Guy, which allowed him to take a long look at Guy’s ass pistoning away inside his clinging Speedo. Kevin felt his dick getting hard and he looked away, embarrassed.

They encountered a sunburned man of fifty in cargo shorts, with a red belly and hairless torso and Play-Doh features, thick lips and a bulbous nose and one eye permanently half closed. He was with three sleek youngsters, each more muscular and handsome than the next.

“Hey, Jim,” Guy said, stopping to kiss the man on just one cheek as they did out here. “Jim, Kevin,” he said, and the man shook Kevin’s hand and introduced his “bravos,” as Kevin thought of them because he saw them as a Renaissance escort of tough guys.

“Guy,” Jim said. “You and — Kevin, is it? — should come to dinner tonight.”

Guy looked at Kevin, who nodded. “Great,” Guy said. “What time?”

“Oh, anytime. Nine? Ten? You remember where the house is? And Guy, I was so sorry to hear about Fred. This AIDS, it’s not funny anymore. Fred was such a sweetheart!” And they all went their separate ways, but one dark bravo, who must have been French, murmured to Guy, “À ce soir.”

A moment later Jim had doubled back and said, “You’re not vegetarians, are you?”

Guy laughed and said, “No, we’re French.” And Kevin liked that and said in his best Minnesota accent, “Yeah, we’re French as hell.” And they all three laughed.

“Are all these guys out here hustlers or porn stars?” Kevin asked. “They’re so gorgeous.”

“No, they only look that way. They’re all lawyers or surgeons but as beautiful as gigolos.”

Kevin swept out the house and washed down the counters, then went nude for a late afternoon swim in the pool. They walked to the Botel for tea dance and Kevin was amazed there were so many men dancing in swimsuits, “all gorgeous,” he said. They drank big blue cocktails called Blue Whales. “What makes them blue?” Kevin asked. “Are my questions too dumb?”

“Not at all, sweetheart. Blue curaçao, whatever that is.”

All eyes were on them as they leaned against the railing around the deck or danced nonchalantly to the deafening music — or rather, everyone looked away the instant Kevin glanced at them, but if he caught their eye by surprise they were staring at them as if they were movie stars or royalty. Guy’s cheekbones were more prominent than everyone else’s, his hair more expertly cut, his muscles more compact and defined, his waist more dramatically sinewy, his toenails more beautifully buffed; if you studied the others, they had leathery tans or coarse features or they had bulked up grotesquely from the waist up but their legs were skinny or their smiles were tarnished or their torsos were thick. Only Guy was perfect, Kevin thought. Only he looked both masculine and refined.

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 year 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.