Our Young Man (21 page)

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?”