Edmund White - Our Young Man

The results were available a day later. That night Guy meditated (which he never did, which he didn’t believe in, which he scarcely knew how to do), and he asked his body if it was infected and if it was going to die right away. It said (but this didn’t make any sense), No. I’m not infected and I’m going to live a long time . Guy couldn’t tell anyone about this, it was too superstitious and silly, but for some reason he felt reassured, though he didn’t believe in it and he wasn’t even sure what had happened.

Nevertheless, he went to St. Vincent’s with a mixture of confidence and fatalism. He wished he’d never entered into all of this. There was nothing to do anyway if you were ill. He recognized that everyone liked him because he was handsome. Would they all go away if he was dying (and it was a fatal disease)? If he was Auschwitz-thin and covered with black spots? Pierre-Georges would drop him slowly but surely, if he could no longer work. The baron might send him a basket of fruit, Kevin would be horrified. Fred was gone and Andrés locked up. Only Lucie would stay faithful. Women were the loyal ones, he thought wearily.

An intern in a blue uniform and expensive shoes and a Swatch made a fuss about setting Guy down in his cubicle. He glanced at the report and then he looked Guy in the eye and said with a slow smile, “I have good news. You’re negative. I’m not supposed to blurt it out; I’m supposed to talk first about safe sex and condom use, but hey, we’re both grown-ups, right? But for God’s sake, keep up the good work.” And then, looking flirtatiously up through his eyelashes, the intern said, “You must be one of the few tops in the Village.”

“Not always, I’m more versatile,” Guy said. The intern’s smile evaporated.

“Are you new at this?”

“At what?” Guy asked.

“Same-sex practices?”

“Not particularly,” Guy said, a bit shocked at the man’s impertinence, although he admitted to himself he’d find the situation intriguing if the nurse was better-looking.

Guy said, “No, I must be just very lucky.”

The man said, “We recommend you know the name of everyone you sleep with and limit the number of your partners.” That made sense to Guy, kind of.

He was vastly relieved and he remembered his stupid “meditation” when his body had made its own prognostication. Ridiculous! he thought, though he had a new respect for the augury.

In the bright, fragile spring day, all blue and crystal, which felt as if it might shatter at any moment in the rising warmth like ice gloving a branch, each evergreen needle inside vivid and distinct, he sauntered forth, walking all the way over to the Hudson. He never took a walk without a destination but now he was powered by his relief at being negative.

He thought, I must settle down with and be faithful to a virgin boy , and he thought immediately of Kevin. He thought of Kevin’s pure white body, tinged with pink, like new snow at dawn. He could hear the ice melting above Ely, Minnesota, with its loud gunshot reports as it broke loose and cracked in the sunlight. He thought of that little penis like a cherub on its cloudlet of pubic hair, those lips the color of raspberry sherbet, that white butt, perched high and inviolate.

“Are you single?” Kevin asked in his clear high choirboy voice as soon as he’d finished another set.

“Yes,” Guy said, knowing he’d betrayed Andrés with a monosyllable, poor Andrés languishing in that junior high school of a prison, a silly place denuded of thick sweating walls, tiny barred fragments of light, unoiled dungeon doors. No, it didn’t have the dignity of imprisonment, it was a ludicrous space for warehousing tax evaders and corporate scoundrels.

He wondered if Andrés jerked off seven times a day or ten, thinking about him. Or did he already have a warmer bruder, someone who’d give him a helping hand? Why couldn’t the Colombian government get him extradited? Guy thought he should be bankrolling an appeals process, though the lawyer had said to him, “This isn’t a banana republic. You can’t pull strings in America, pay off an official, lean on your cousin. It’s not like France or Spain — those banana republics. You just have to wait your turn like everyone else. It will only work against you if you try to jump the queue.”

Guy repeated this to Pierre-Georges, who said loftily, “We don’t have bananas in France.”

“No, I’m single,” Guy repeated, “which sounds funny to say to an identical twin. You’re never single.”

“Yes, I am,” Kevin protested. “Chris weighs five more pounds than me — guess that’s his straight side. He met a girl on the stoop outside our building and he’s spending nights with her. I guess I should be all jealous and possessive, but I’m not. I’m relieved.”

“Would you spend the night with me?” Guy asked.

Again the bucket of blood immersed in the pint of milk: a blush.

“Sure.” Pause. “When do you want me?”

“Tonight? Are you free tonight? We could grab a bite and watch some TV and go to bed.”

“I don’t know if I should eat something before we fuck — wouldn’t it get messy down there?”

Guy laughed and said, “Shit is the best lubricant.”

“Eww-w-w.”

“Anyway, who knows, you might be the pitcher and I the catcher.”

“Huh?”

“You might be the plus and I the minus.”

“You’d permit that?” Kevin asked, wide-eyed.

“You sure like to get down to basics. In France we prefer the unsaid, the non-dit . More romantic, we think.”

“I guess you got me typed as a Norwegian oaf.”

“We’ll just play it by ear.”

The idea of improvisation seemed to make Kevin even more anxious. They agreed to meet at seven-thirty. Feeling traitorous, Guy set about hiding all the pictures of Andrés. He just wanted one happy night with this perfect boy. His lies would surface eventually: his age; his commitment to Andrés; even his success as a model and his relative wealth. But he was desperate to make this happen, one rapturous night with Kevin. He could already hear the boy’s tearful accusations. Guy thought this was the moment to pluck the pear, when it was still streaked with green and was woody, before it turned to brown mush, all sweet and runny. Somehow it seemed less reprehensible to be a connoisseur of the fruit vert than simply a traitor to his imprisoned lover. Guy saw himself as a horny man who felt that every moment of his improbable youth might be his last.

When he looked back over his life he realized his twenty-sixth birthday had been the hardest because he thought he was no longer young, could no longer pass for a student, not even a grad student. So many of his classmates were getting married, starting businesses, buying houses, fathering children. Then at thirty he’d blown a farewell kiss to his years as a desirable man — but still his extraordinary looks had lingered on.

Not that he’d done anything unusual or disciplined to stay young. Well, maybe a little, but no surgery. He’d cut out bread and desserts, though he couldn’t forgo a daily glass of fattening orange juice. He had a facial every weekday from a very unglamorous Korean woman who worked on Twenty-sixth and Broadway. He used Retin-A on the nights he was alone. He worked out, but only three times a week and only for an hour. He preferred low weights and high reps because he was aiming for definition and didn’t want to bulk up. He’d had electrolysis on his torso. He did facial isometrics after he shaved. He didn’t tan and he applied sunscreen every morning. His hair was expensively styled and feathered and lightened and he held it in place with Tenax. He thinned his eyebrows. If he watched TV alone he made himself do fifty sit-ups every half hour. He’d stopped smoking and only drank two glasses of wine at dinner. People said white wine gave you headaches but he preferred it because it didn’t discolor your teeth. He had his teeth cleaned once a month. Now that he was nearly forty he had to yank out nose and ear hairs and shave his neck since gray hair might grow there. His clothes were always dark and thinning and unnoticeable. No jewelry. No facial hair. If he gained five pounds he’d make a big pot of vegetable soup and eat nothing else for a week. He applied Rogaine regularly to his scalp, though his hair was still thick.