Edmund White - Our Young Man

“No, I haven’t,” Guy said simply. “No one could ever replace you in my heart.” He wondered if that sounded sincere.

“Oh, really?” Andrés asked bitterly. “Why is that? Even if there was a nice Parisian town house in the deal or a penthouse overlooking the Champs de Mars?”

“I never schemed to get a house. Anyway, I have enough real estate.”

“But you have a weakness for rich old men.”

“I only have a weakness for a young Colombian who gets an erection the minute he sees me.”

Andrés at first scowled and looked grumpy, as if he were going to object to something, but then in spite of himself he burst into a big grin and lost ten years. He shook his head as if in disbelief and said, “I love you. So much. It hurts.”

“I love you, too, Andrés.”

He asked Guy to put $500 in his account so that he could buy junk food at the canteen.

“What’s your day like?” Guy asked.

“Always the same. I’m awake by five. Which is early, since on the weekends we’re allowed to watch TV well after midnight, and reveille’s at six. Then there’s exercise in the yard. I’ve been doing pull-ups — look.” He made a muscle, and the sudden movement caused both guards’ eyes to swivel in their direction, then drift away.

“We have hours and hours alone. Some guys are studying the law, trying to get a retrial.” Andrés looked at his hands and said in a softer voice, “I’ve been reading the Bible.”

“Why?”

Andrés ruffled his feathers and said, “Why not?” Then he added, “But I can’t understand that fuckin’ old-ass English. Maybe you could bring me a Spanish Bible. What’s wrong with these muthafuckers, why ain’t their English up-to-date?”

Andrés had never sworn before, not in English, though in Spanish it had always been puta , and coño , as with all young South Americans. He must be learning a new way to speak English from his cellmates.

He looked at Guy and said, “If you don’t love me I’ll kill you.”

Suddenly all Guy’s alarms went off. “But I do love you,” in a little voice he’d never heard before out of his own mouth, shallow and childish. “I’ve never loved anyone so much,” and Guy couldn’t help noticing Andrés’s thick cock flexing again inside his taut orange trousers, an autonomic response to the desire tormenting his features.

“Sure?”

“I’m absolutely sure.”

“I saw you checking out that hairy-chested gorilla over there. Would you like some of that?”

“Andrés, don’t drive us both crazy. I haven’t touched anyone since you went away.”

“But you’d like to. I know you,” Andrés said, and Guy thought guiltily of Kevin, his hairless torso and little pink cock and tiny untried nipples.

“Is the food here edible?”

“It’s okay. On weekends we even have barbecue. Too many starches. I don’t want to get fat. Are there some dynamite new men in your gym? Probably Pierre-Georges is fixing you up with some studs — he must be happy I’m behind bars. No class, no money, no connections — that’s me. Does he say that or just think it? He must be happy to distract you with some young stallion in his stable. Is that how you stay so fresh and young, drinking the sperm of teenage males?”

“Come on, Andrés. Let’s say kind things to each other, loving things—”

“Or what? You won’t come back?” Andrés looked at the tip of his shoe, which he flexed. “You hold all the cards here.”

“Is it boring here? Dangerous? Infuriating?”

“Check, check, and check.” For some reason Andrés suddenly inspected the nails on his right hand. “It’s okay here, once they break your spirit. God, you’re beautiful when you smile like that!”

“Th-thanks.”

“Has everyone always been in love with you? Of course they have, who am I kidding? What did they say about Helen of Troy? That her face launched a thousand ships? That’s you, you’re that beautiful. A thousand ships. There’s no one even close to you around here. Maybe in Manhattan there are two or three.”

“I’m no longer young,” Guy said.

He thought how boring this visit was. The truth was he and Andrés had nothing in common except their life together. (“Don’t forget to buy the wine! Oh, and some bread.”) Just as they spoke an imperfect English together, which wasn’t the mother tongue of either of them, in the same way sex and the dailiness of daily life were what they had in common, though it wasn’t what either of them was most proficient at. Maybe sex was Andrés’s strong suit. Yes, he was good at that.

Andrés had once accused him of liking him only for sex. At the time, Guy had thought that wasn’t fair; it was Andrés who always nudged him when they were watching a game show in the afternoon and indicated with a toss of his head that they should repair to the bedroom for sex. It was Andrés who wanted to fuck first thing in the morning (he’d show his morning wood, which to be funny he’d call in Spanish his madera ): Guy had started getting up half an hour early so he’d be clean and his teeth brushed, which made him feel like a woman, not an altogether unpleasant fantasy. Andrés was the one with the constant erection that had to be addressed several times a day; his hard-on was their metronome, sometimes their tyrant. Guy thought he was always accommodating it, but he liked the feeling of being that desired (a womanly feeling, too, he supposed). Now they couldn’t touch, though they could drink each other in with their eyes, and Andrés could slouch in his chair so that his erection was big and visible. Guy would just have to stretch his hand out — but that was no more permissible than Orpheus looking back at Eurydice. Strictly forbidden.

Guy could remember Andrés’s back so clearly — the broad shoulders straining to be broader, the ass-cheeks just unmolded from the curved baking pan, indented at the sides, the crack looking so innocent and boyish — and, most glorious of all, the silky indentation of his spine, slicing his back in two, luminous as a prayer, an infolding of light.

Their time was up! Oh, it was so heartbreaking leaving Andrés there, so unfair, with his unsatisfied madera and his aristocratic hands, so pale next to the brutal orange of his uniform, and on his face a lost, devastated look.

Guy made an appointment to take the AIDS test as he’d promised Fred. He went back to St. Vincent’s at the right time, sat with some other glum single men with expensive haircuts and tight jeans. His name was called, he went into the male nurse’s cubicle, and rolled up his sleeve. The nurse smelled of cigarettes and the new cologne by Perry Ellis, the only good American scent. Poor Perry, everyone said he had AIDS, half his face was paralyzed during his last runway show and he nearly swooned. His partner was also about to go, both of them under fifty.

The nurse put a red rubber tourniquet around his bicep and looked at the form he’d filled out. “There’s a mistake here, it says you were born in 1945, but that should be 1965.”

“No,” Guy said, smiling, “’45 is right.”

“What is your secret, girl? Surgery?”

“Good genes, I guess. Moisturizer.”

“I use Indigo Body Butter, but I don’t look like you, darlin’.”

“Try Retin-A,” Guy said.

“Retinal?”

Guy picked up a pencil and scribbled with it in the air. The nurse slipped a prescription pad under his hand and Guy wrote a word.

“Retin-A? I never heard of that. Is that some Swiss monkey gland or sheep bladder? Do you also sleep twelve hours a night in a walk-in refrigerator?”

“Yes. I do,” Guy said, and the nurse hummed an emphatic, “Un-hum.” Suddenly serious, he said gravely, “Make a fist.” He then tapped Guy’s arm and the back of his hand in several places. “It’s good you’re no heroin addict; I can’t find no good veins.” Suddenly he stabbed Guy, who looked away.