Edmund White - Our Young Man

“Are you mad?” Guy said. “Maybe when I owe some real estate tax in March we can split it. It’s only a few hundred dollars. But you’re my husband.” And the word “husband,” which Guy pronounced with an ambiguous smile, so thrilled Andrés that he had to unbend his sudden erection that was folded uncomfortably in his pale-blue shorts under his jeans. He bullied Guy into the bedroom and then gently smoothed him out on the bed like a paper dolly. He tugged their trousers off without unbuttoning them — they were both that skinny. In his haste he spilled some of Guy’s pocket change on the floor. He didn’t even bother to unbutton their shirts, and reached up to pinch his nipple. Nothing excited Guy more — he joked that his tits were his primary sexual organ — but he’d forbidden Andrés to inflict that sweet torture on him for fear his nipples would become grotesquely enlarged and he’d no longer be fit for bathing suit modeling. No tit-pinching, no long, bruising kisses — the merchandise had to be respected.

Never had Andrés been more ardent. Something about the word “husband” had roused him to new heights of ecstasy. Guy felt for the first time that he was understanding the meaning of each kiss, each hug, each thrust; it was as if in a dream he’d suddenly mastered sign language and could read it effortlessly, fluently. After they both climaxed, first Guy, then Andrés, they lay side by side, panting. Andrés got up and staggered a second and went into the bathroom. His ass looked boyish and white and unimportant under his dark shirt. He wiped them down with a wet washcloth. He almost swooned beside Guy. They turned on their sides facing each other. Guy just hoped Andrés wouldn’t be caught by the police — it was a serious offense, wasn’t it. Jail time?

“I like it that we both look alike, thin and hairy and tall, except you have these cute little ears”—he touched them—“and that perfect skin.”

Guy laughed. “And I’m ten years older.”

Startled, Andrés propped himself up on an elbow and said, “You’re kidding.”

“I’m thirty-eight. Look. I’ll show you my passport.”

“I always assumed you were six years younger than me.”

“As Pierre-Georges would say, professionally I’m twenty-three. But chronologically I’m thirty-eight.”

“I’ve always seen you as a little brother, someone I had to protect.”

“Let’s go on pretending. I like that role.”

“It’s crazy, how do you do it?”

“Genes, I guess. My brother Robert is another Dorian Gray, though my mother looks her age. Maybe I’ll be struck by a coup de vieux .” He sang the Beatles’ line, “‘Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?’ and when I look it?”

“I’ll always love you,” Andrés blurted out. And Guy looked at him with a sad smile, as if doubting and believing at the same time this eternal pledge.

“Anyway, it’s all an illusion,” Guy said. “Here you can see crow’s feet.” He pointed to his eyes. “And here my chin line is giving way no matter how many isometrics I do or how many sticks of gum I chew in private. And my nose is getting bigger every year, though luckily I was born with little jug ears. But the secret of looking young is always darting about, never staring at a fixed point, being the first to leap up and fetch the milk.” He was very proud of the word “fetch,” which had no equivalent in French. Lately they’d begun to speak mostly English to each other. Guy had no Spanish and Andrés’s French was rusty. Besides, Americans resented foreign languages being spoken around them. Americans thought foreigners were like impertinent kids speaking pig latin to mock their elders.

“No,” Andrés said, “it’s your face! Nothing to do with being constantly in motion, though you do that, too, my little hummingbird. Your face is just so perfect and unlined and beautiful.”

“ Autant que ça dure . As long as it lasts.”

“You’re just gloomy because your father died.”

“When a father dies, the son sees himself approaching the edge of the cliff: Next!”

“You always make everything into a general principle,” Andrés said, teasing him, looking at how the black hairs on Guy’s legs grew darker and denser as they approached his crotch and started to swirl as if being drawn into a vortex. They were such strong legs, strong like a bow strung with powerful muscles. Andrés could feel himself growing hard again and was afraid of annoying Guy with the persistence of desire — maybe Guy was too old to go at it multiple times! Andrés lay on his stomach to hide his erection but propped himself on his elbows so his bald spot wouldn’t be right under Guy’s nose.

“We Frenchies are just like that,” Guy said, smiling. Guy buried his face in his hands, then lowered them slowly, as if peeking at Andrés: “Are you shocked that I’m so old?”

Andrés just rolled over on his side, revealing his erection.

“Very eloquent,” Guy said. They made love again. The phone rang and rang. “Why doesn’t the service pick up?” They took turns fucking each other. To Guy they enjoyed an almost oneiric freedom with each other, something he’d never known, which had nothing to do with role-playing and everything to do with abandon.

When Guy phoned his service the operator said a Mr. Fred had called and was back in St. Vincent’s. Guy showered and dressed rapidly and walked over to the hospital. Guy faintly resented these constant emergencies, as if Fred had designed them to trap Guy into seeing him more frequently. He stopped by the front desk to ask which was Fred’s room and zigzagged down the polished marble corridors to the elevator in the far southeast corner. His irritation melted away and he realized that all along it had been anxiety about what he’d find in Fred’s room.

St. Vincent’s had more cases of AIDS than any hospital in America, Guy had heard. Now he was walking past so many rooms housing cadaverous men on drips, it was as if Auschwitz victims were being resuscitated. Some seemed unsalvageable. They were like those concentration camp prisoners whom other inmates called “Muselmanns” because they just rocked back and forth, their eyes vacant, waiting for the end.

Fred wasn’t one of those. He must have been given some sort of upper because he chattered incessantly and licked his dry lips. He winced under Guy’s light touch when Guy bent down toward the bed. He was squinting — could he see Guy? Surely he must recognize his distinctive cologne. There were two other visitors when Guy arrived, cronies, childhood friends from Brooklyn, two old, portly men with liver spots on their hands and wattles under their chins. Fred would probably look like them if he hadn’t had the spots blowtorched off his hands and a surgical lift of his chin. But how much more natural and comfortable these men seemed, with their hands folded over their bellies and their lived-in faces. Jews, Guy thought, and wondered why he’d never met any of Fred’s childhood friends before, out on Fire Island. He’d heard that Jews were good family men who didn’t drink or gamble or play with boys. Was Fred a tragic exception?

Fred made the introductions and the visitors gave him a limp handshake and tilted their faces in attitudes of suspicious inspection, as if Guy with his youth and startling good looks were the very embodiment of the Christian Gay Plague.

Guy said, “What’s wrong with you now? You don’t look sick.”

“I’m blind. CMV in the eyes.”

“How horrible. Are they curing it?”

“That’s why I have the drip,” Fred said wearily. “They’re going to implant a pellet directly into my eyes with Something-Acyclovir in it. But it’s irreversible.” He looked tired. Guy wondered how long his friends had been here.