Edmund White - Our Young Man

“Is it permanent?”

“Yes, I’m blind,” Fred said bitterly. “Great for a film producer.”

One of the guests had brought Fred a murder mystery, not even a new copy, which he suggested might be a good property for Fred to develop. “You could get your friend to read it to you.”

“Just because you finally got around to reading a book, Marty, is no reason to turn it into a fuckin’ movie.”

“It’s a sort of a Cagney film,” Marty said defensively.

“Great. How long has he been dead? Nah, I probably won’t be making any more films. I certainly won’t spend my last days listening to Mickey Spillane. Keats, maybe, or Tolstoy. Or James Michener. Something classy.”

Guy was reeling from news of the diagnosis. “You’re really blind? You can’t see me?”

“I’m blind!” Fred shouted, then he paused and smiled. “But I can remember every detail of your face. Sit here,” he said, patting the bed, “so I can read your face like Braille.”

Guy was embarrassed in front of the other men; he was a fegala , wasn’t that what they were thinking, a gentile and a faggot and the angel of death. But he couldn’t deny poor Fred anything, so he perched on the edge of the bed and lifted Fred’s hands to his face, and Fred’s hands roamed ravenously over his perfect features and even thundered over his ears. It was too much of a display of affection for the visitors; they stood and bade farewell. “Thank God these nudniks are gone, real schnorrers, always wanting something. That Marty always was a putz.”

“Speak English,” Guy said, laughing.

Fred’s fingers, tasting of rubbing alcohol, traced his teeth and his lips, even caged his fluttering eyelids for a second. Guy thought of fireflies.

“My darling boy,” Fred said. “My beauty.”

“Since you’ve gotten sick,” Guy said to be nice, “you look thinner and twenty years younger.”

“I do?” Fred asked eagerly.

“Yes,” Guy said, wondering how far he could go, “you look like that A-list gay you’ve always wanted to be.” Tears sprang to Guy’s eyes; luckily Fred couldn’t see them.

“Perfect, and I can’t even look in the mirror.” He paused. “I don’t want you to think you gave it to me. I went out to the Meat Rack last summer and got fucked.”

“Without a rubber?”

“Yes, goddamn it, without a rubber.”

“Just one time?”

“You’re meshuga,” Fred said, “with your multiple exposures, just one time you can get infected. I’m the living proof; that’s the only time I ever bottomed.”

Guy suddenly wondered if Andrés was clean. Was he faithful? That’s why Guy thought he must always be available sexually for him — and passionate — or else he’d look elsewhere for that necessary fifth orgasm a day. Was he using his studio to trick?

Fred, as if reading Guy’s mind, asked, “How’s Andrew?”

Guy said, “He’s fine. Do you want to sleep? Should I leave, or should I sit over here and read a book while you nap? Tell me. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Stay. Stay. Do you have a book?”

“I’ll step out and buy the paper and get a coffee and come back in half an hour. Do you want something from the outside world?”

“Nothing, some wintergreen gum. Promise you’ll come back?”

“I promise.”

“That Marty! You could read the fuckin’ Mickey Spillane.”

Guy felt exhausted when he left Fred and walked past all those somber, silent men in their identical rooms — young, he supposed, but looking ancient, with their gaunt faces and their open mouths. He wanted to flee — he wished he could shoot a commercial in Tahiti, someplace sunny and distant from all this.

The rooms were identical but filled with grief and disease, flowers and stuffed animals and ranks of get-well cards.

People kept saying, “AIDS is not a death sentence,” and they spoke of fighting it, but that was all nonsense; American puritans acted as if everything were just a matter of willpower. It did kill its victims, one after another, relentlessly. If Fred’s indiscretion was in the Meat Rack, then that must mean he was infected after he fucked Guy last spring; that was a relief — although all this effort to pin down the exact occasion was futile and silly. No one knew precisely how it was transmitted and it seemed everyone, men and women, straight and gay, was vulnerable.

Guy got a phone call from Andrés one morning in February at nine A.M. His studio had been raided by the cops and the FBI and he was being retained at a federal prison, and they’d confiscated all his forgeries and were holding them as evidence. Two of his dealers in New York had also been rounded up in the same sweep. Guy wondered if he himself was a person of interest. He called Pierre-Georges.

“I wonder why Andrés was taking such risks?” Guy asked.

“He thought he needed more money to keep up with you. He told me so. What a careless guy, getting caught like that. And he’s a risk queen — he used to have a motorcycle. These young men always get killed. The best source for organ transplants. Don’t they call them ‘donor cycles’?”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was worried about money?” Guy asked, annoyed with the callous chatter.

“As your manager I didn’t want to see you lavishing a fortune on that Andrés. I know you don’t care about money, but someday — someday soon — you’ll be grateful to me. And by the way, make sure your friend Fred transfers to you the title of ‘Petticoat Junction.’” (That was Pierre-Georges’s nickname for their Fire Island house.)

“Please don’t bring that up. I’ve got to help Andrés. That’s the thing.”

“He was caught red-handed,” Pierre-Georges said, interrupting. “He’ll be in prison and released in six or seven years and deported for good. In prison he’ll be raped, a pretty boy like him, and he’ll catch AIDS. And die. Be a realist.”

Guy said, “You’re insufferable,” and hung up on Pierre-Georges, who immediately called back and said, “I’ll find you the best lawyer.”

At last Guy muttered, “Thank you.”

True to his word, Pierre-Georges found a lawyer later in the day whom Guy rushed to Midtown to see, wearing a new blue silk suit. (Guy preferred the French word, costume , since it was explicit about clothes as playacting.)

The lawyer, an old Hungarian whose fingers were yellow from nicotine and who had four original Magrittes on the wall, explained that Dalí’s case was complicated, that nearly half the prints attributed to him were fake. “There are new prints that Dalí never made, then there are reprints that are adaptations of real Dalí paintings, then there are new fake prints added to authentic editions, then there facsimiles with forged signatures, and finally there are fake copies of real prints.” The man smiled and made Guy an espresso on a machine he had next to his desk. He was a chain smoker. His office was on Fifth Avenue and had big windows that looked out across the street to the Forty-second Street library. “It’s all a mess, especially because the master himself signed a hundred thousand blank sheets of paper. He was already gaga, but his greedy wife …” It was snowing, and Guy imagined the bronze library lions were shivering.

“Can we post bail for poor Andrés?”

“It might be very high because he’s a foreigner who could flee.”

“That’s okay.”

“Why would he do these forgeries?”

Guy thought the man was a sophisticated European and could deal with the truth. “Money. He’s my … boyfriend and felt he had to keep up. I earn a lot. I’m a model.” The man nodded his head in mock obeisance, which irritated Guy, who was quick to add, “It’s a very brief career.”