Edmund White - Our Young Man

It turned out this Fred was a very nice man, not a Belgian, not even linked to the baron’s brewery, like all the others, but a film producer from Hollywood who invited Guy out to dinner. They went to Casey’s, a place in the Village, all candles and mirrors, which Guy had walked past a million times but never entered, though it was only four blocks away from where he lived. After the cold douche of the baron’s reception (he hadn’t even said goodbye as Guy was being ushered out in the general stampede), this Fred’s kindness and obvious interest and openness was a balm. Guy felt he’d been slapped in the face and looked at the mirror almost expecting a red hand mark on his cheek, but no, his skin was perfect. Never had Guy been insulted like that, but was the baron, he wondered, freezing him out for his thoughtless kindness? Would he give Guy a second chance? Maybe he was just provoking Guy, hoping to be punished later. (Guy had heard masochists were good at needling their tops.)

At first Guy didn’t say much, nor did he have to. Fred wasn’t exactly a braggart, but he was quick to fill Guy in on his life and work.

“Where are you from?” He’d learned that was the standard question in America, not an impertinence, as it would be in France.

“Oregon.”

“What kind of films do you make?”

“Blaxploitation.”

“Pardon?”

“Movies for black audiences.”

“Oh,” Guy said, losing interest.

“It’s mostly for export. Not something we’d go see, but they love it in Accra.”

“What are they about?”

“Get whitey.”

“Who’s Weddy?”

“Where are you from?”

“Paris.”

“What brings you to these shores?”

“Work. I’m a model.”

“Hands? You have beautiful hands.” Fred smiled.

Guy looked at his hands as if he’d forgotten them. “Oh, really? Do you like my hands?” Did he say hands because he couldn’t think of anything else nice to say? Then he was afraid of thinking like an airhead model and asked, “How do you know Édouard?”

“We have the same taste in boys,” Fred said, lifting his eyebrows significantly.

“You met in some dungeon?”

“Oh, no, I’m a romantic. I like to kiss. I’m looking for a partner.”

“A business partner? For a new African film?” Guy wasn’t paying attention — there were too many mirrors.

“No, a partner in love. A life partner. Someone to share my life with. You see, I just came out.”

“Really? What did you do … before?” The unfamiliarity of the topic made him focus for a minute and to raise his hand to his forehead to block out his own multiplied reflections. He couldn’t concentrate in front of so many mirrors.

“I was married. Three kids. You won’t believe this, but two grandchildren,” and he pulled out his wallet to show their pictures.

Guy didn’t like children but he smiled, not with tenderness at the pictures but out of politeness. “Was it a hard transition?” Guy asked sympathetically. His main course, which Americans for some reason called an entrée, arrived; it was beef Wellington, rare and in a crust that for once wasn’t soggy. He vowed to eat only half of it.

“Coming out?” Fred was tucking into his dish, which was flounder stuffed with crabmeat and shrimp — Guy should have taken that, it would have been lighter. Oh, well, nothing but yogurt for lunch tomorrow. Damn, there was his reflection again. He looked very young in candlelight, he thought, though he usually blew candles out, they hurt his eyes. Like all Frenchmen he preferred a well-lit restaurant and no background music.

“Yes, it was agonizing, but it had to be done.” Fred made it sound like pulling an infected tooth.

Guy realized with a start it was his turn to say something. “Was your wife very hurt?”

“Ceil?” Wasn’t a seal an animal, a phoque ? But then Guy realized it must be short for Celia. “Angry? Livid. Ceil had thought for years she must not be desirable, that was why I was shunning her, but when she realized I was gay from the get-go, boy, was she pissed, I’d condemned her to a loveless marriage, ruining the best years of her life.”

“But you gave her children — and grandchildren,” Guy reminded him, “and probably a nice house.”

“A showplace. But she has that famished look of a woman that hasn’t been touched in years — you know the look.”

Guy wasn’t sure he did know the look.

Fred said, “And to come out at sixty-three — okay, sixty-six — is no joke. If you’re a romantic and looking for love.” Fred expected Guy to say something — but what?

Guy pointed out, “There are plenty of other available gay men in their sixties.”

“Nah,” Fred said, and actually shuddered as if he’d seen a ghost. “Older guys have too much emotional baggage. They’ve already lived their lives. I’m only just starting out on mine. I want another youngster, if that makes sense.”

“Perfectly,” Guy said, though he didn’t quite understand.

“A young, handsome guy — a masculine, muscular one. Masc-musc , as we say in L.A.”

Guy wondered if he qualified, though he wasn’t at all attracted to Fred. The minute someone announces a casting call , Guy thought ruefully, I always wonder if I’ll get the part .

Fred was on his third martini. “All my life I’ve been staring at those guys, wanting them, never daring to talk to them, volunteering to coach Little League—”

Little League. Oh, dear , Guy thought, isn’t that children?

“Going down to the beach and staring at the surfers. Say, we’ve got to get you out to L.A. for some screen tests.”

“Aren’t I the wrong color for your films?”

Fred laughed. “Put a little slap on you. Seriously, I’m coproducing a wonderful art-house movie about a schizophrenic who falls for an anorexic.”

“Schizophrenic? So you thought of me?”

“I can’t stop thinking of you,” Fred said in a lower, sexy voice. “No, the schizophrenic’s confidant, a pastry chef.”

“And this pastry chef is French?”

“Why not? We need some textures.”

“Do you have a director?”

Fred sat up in his chair. “We haven’t signed anyone yet, but this is such a high-end property we’re talking to some of the European and experimental guys in the business.”

“I’m not sure I’m much of an actor.” Guy flashed on his recent debacle in the dungeon.

After dinner Fred invited Guy up to his place in a new building overlooking Washington Square.

“I thought you lived in Los Angeles.”

“I’m bicoastal,” Fred said suggestively. “Nah, I was born in Brooklyn. I need New York the way a fish needs air.”

Guy tried to work that one out.

The apartment, which was a dusty neglected penthouse with dead plants and a view of the graffiti-covered Washington Square arch and the seething, dangerous park beyond it, was glitzy-Oriental, with three gilt life-sized statues of the meditating Buddha at the entrance, low black-lacquered tables with pagoda trim, blood-red silk couches with heavy tassel pulls, a spotlit abstraction that some decorator had obviously chosen for the color, a terrazzo floor with glitter buried into it delineating — oh, a dragon lounging on the Great Wall of China. “I’m a sort of Buddhist myself,” Guy said, to be agreeable in case the décor was an expression of Fred’s beliefs rather then his tastes.

“This is something Ceil concocted with that pansy decorator of hers — I’m going to clear it all out and put in something simple and modern and classic, maybe with a Pompeian motif or a Moorish.”

“Don’t be too hasty,” Guy advised.

“Maybe I’ll go all antique. Édouard has that handsome young antique dealer he’s so crazy about. What a body that kid has! Gr-r-r …” and he made the sound of an angry dog, which reminded Guy uncomfortably of Édouard’s excesses.