Edmund White - Our Young Man

“Oh, we’re Norwegian heritage. We went to Norwegian camp every summer. We can speak Norwegian, sort of. My sister married a real Norwegian ice hockey player and lives in Oslo now.”

“You look Norwegian.”

“You mean dumb?”

“Not at all, blond. Clean. Very clean.”

Kevin got that confused look in his eye again, but he braved it out with a bigger smile, determined to be in on the joke, if that’s what it was, at his own expense. “You mean clean as in boring?”

“Not at all,” Guy protested. “Just because I’m French doesn’t mean I’m nasty. I mean clean-handsome. Here, wanna do another set?”

“Okay.” Kevin stretched out on the board and lifted the barbell and did ten more repetitions, though he slowed down for the last two and out of exhaustion let the bar drift to the left. Guy moved in tighter in case he needed to help him. Kevin looked up Guy’s shorts.

After Guy did his set, Kevin whispered, “We’re the only young guys in here, did you notice?”

So he thinks I’m young , Guy thought, relieved.

They sat in the sauna for five minutes and then took their showers. Kevin had a high, hairless butt of a lunar whiteness; there was no trace of hair, not even in the crack. His penis was small, nested in the merest excuse of a pubic bush. His torso was scarily childish, which prompted Guy to ask, “How old are you guys?”

“In June we’ll be nineteen.”

They decided to grab a cup of coffee together in the restaurant on the ground floor, where an old man was patiently mopping the linoleum, filling the air with the nostril-tickling smell of Lysol. The waitress, hair high and peroxided, asked with a steel-drilling accent, “What can I get you boys?” and Guy liked her for including him as one of the boys and absolving him of being a child molester.

“So what do you do, Guy?”

“I’m a model.”

“Like in a fashion model?”

“Exactly.”

“Cool. Somebody wanted to photograph Chris and me for some fashion shoot, but in the nude, which Chris didn’t want to do. I’m gay but he’s not.”

“How strange. I thought you’d both be straight or both gay.”

“Well, we’ve both experimented with boys and girls, and yes , we have slept together, but only a few times, twice, actually, but Chris has decided he’s really straight and I think I’m really gay.”

American straightforwardness still astounded Guy. A European could take years to get there, but it just popped out of this Minnesota mouth with the lips like Froot Loops and the teeth like Chiclets. It was all so simple, so innocent, but Guy didn’t despise it, he could see Kevin was very pure.

“Don’t you know for sure if you’re gay? Haven’t you tried it with lots of fellows?”

Again the bloodbath blush. “I’m a virgin,” Kevin said, in a small, strangled voice, and Guy thought, irrationally, Of course, that’s why his dick is so small and his ass so rubbery , but that stupid theory evaporated in the first warmth of reflection. “Except fooling around with my brother those two times.”

“I see,” Guy said, stalling for time, wondering what he could say that would be appropriate and maybe consoling, though perhaps consolation wasn’t what was called for. “You were right not to do any nude shots.”

“Why?”

“Real models, professional models, don’t pose in the nude.” And Guy remembered how his own nude photos had ended in Blueboy all those years ago.

“Oh, really? Why not?”

“Swimsuit ads, possibly, maybe underwear, but not total nudity. It just lowers your prestige, I guess, your mystery.”

“Do you think I have some model potential?”

“It’s no fun. It’s not a good career for men. Maybe twelve men in the whole United States make as much as one hundred sixty thousand a year.”

“Do you think I’m handsome enough?”

“It doesn’t really have to do with looks. It’s whether you’re photogenic.”

“Am I photogenic?”

“We won’t know till you put together your portfolio.” Guy had found young guys were more hypnotized by an authority if he wasn’t entirely “supportive”; his reluctance to enthuse paralleled his own self-doubts. “But everyone treats models like you’re beef, like meat, interchangeable. They try to pay you with clothes, not money. It’s the girls who count, because it’s women who buy clothes and beauty products. They’re paid ten times more than us. And most of the population thinks we’re all gay, though most male models are straight.” Guy sighed. “It’s endless.” He cocked his head to one side. “You’re a little short. You have to be at least six feet tall, a size-forty jacket, a fifteen-inch neck. You have to fit into the clothes. Maybe for catalogue work they can pin the clothes here and there to fit, but for runway or fashion or editorial work you have to be a perfect size. The models are hired because the clothes fit them. You can’t be five-foot-eleven.”

“Do you think I have a good face?”

Guy whispered, “Angelic. Your jaw is a little strong, but that could be your trademark. I’d draw a little cleft into your chin to emphasize it.”

“You can do whatever you like to me.”

Guy hadn’t been openly flirting and was taken aback by the kid’s sudden flying of a white flag. “But you’ve really got to want it,” Guy warned. “You’ve got to pound the pavement for six months and accept rejection. It’s hard to be rejected. New York is all about rejection. They’re so fucking rude, photographers, art directors, casting agents. The client is the worst of all. Secretly they resent us for doing nothing and getting rich. That’s what they think. We don’t do anything in their eyes.”

Kevin scanned Guy’s face. “With those cheekbones I could get rich, I’ll bet.”

They made a date to work out together the same time the next day. Kevin’s brother, Chris, could barely look Guy in the eye, and he quickly absented himself to exercise on the other side of the gym.

“Did I say something wrong?” Guy asked.

“Naw, he’s doing legs and squats today.”

“Does he need us to spot him? Squats can be dangerous.”

“He’s wearing a belt.” After reflecting a moment, Kevin said, “He wants to give us a little space.” After another pause he said, “He might be jealous.” Another set, and Kevin added, “He’s probably worried you might want to have a three-way. You’d be surprised how many men have that fantasy, to be Lucky Pierre between identical twins.”

“Gross,” Guy said, ashamed that he’d had that fantasy himself.

“Guys are freaky. And like I said, Chris thinks he’s more straight.”

Over coffee downstairs, Guy said, “It must be strange to be identical twins. If you have to make a big decision in your life, is he the one you call automatically?”

“He’s my best friend. Our mother used to dress us alike. We had a private language till we were eight and then a school psychologist told our mom that she must stop us from doing that, otherwise we’d never socialize with the other kids.”

“Was the psychologist right?”

“Yep. Now we can’t even remember it — it just evaporated, except ‘weepie’ was our word for ‘basketball.’ That’s all we can remember. And I called him ‘old cock’ and he called me ‘big cock,’ though our cocks of course are identical and small.”

Guy said, “If you slept with your brother, you’re not really a virgin.” Embarrassed by his own coarse remark, he asked, “Do you have shared experiences, nonverbal ones?”

Kevin said, “Oh, yeah! Like once he got socked in the stomach and I was miles away and doubled over with pain. We don’t need more than a word to make the other one crack up over some remembered joke. Or if someone says something asinine, Chris will just poke his cheek with his tongue and we’re both weeping with laughter.”