Edmund White - Our Young Man

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Kevin said. “I came in you. I wasn’t expecting it.”

“That’s fine,” Guy said, kissing him and then running toward the shower. “I wanted it. That was great,” he lied. He didn’t know if Kevin might be feeling guilty after his orgasm. (So many men did at first.) That’s why he didn’t linger in bed. But then again, he didn’t want to seem cold, so he called back, “Come take a shower with me,” and the boy almost ran to join him. They rotated in the narrow tub under the showerhead; whoever wasn’t under the water soaped up, stood with legs ajar to wash his own crack, took the blast full in the face, lifted his arms to clean his hairless pits. Kevin was already spotlessly clean except for the lubricant greasing the length of his little cock; he washed it. Then, their bodies warm from the water, they waltzed around so neither of them would get cold. In a few seconds Kevin was hard again and Guy filled his mouth with hot water and knelt to engulf him. The boy let out a groan and tried to lift Guy to his feet. “We should take turns. It’s only fair.”

“Only Princeton boys care about fairness,” Guy said. “That’s why they rub against each other. The Princeton rub.” He whispered, “You’re my stud, my mister,” and filled his mouth again and dipped back to his chore.

“How can I be your stud?” Even the word seemed to embarrass him.

Guy looked up, the water splashing on his face, his wet hair dripping over his eyes. “Bet you can come three times.”

“I came five times once. But it was jerking off. And it was pretty limp and watery at the end.”

Guy looked up admiringly.

After Kevin came, Guy rubbed him dry with a hotel-sized towel and wanted to say, “My little stud,” but censored himself. The “little” might not be appreciated. And post coitum the “stud” might rankle.

Guy put Kevin to bed and gave him the TV remote. Then he went back to the toilet, closed the door, and was oddly proud of how much semen Kevin had squirted into him. Of course, Kevin wasn’t Andrés, with all his barbaric beauty and gypsy passion, as thin and tortured as a Spanish Christ who’d climbed down from the cross, banished the god within, and resurrected the outer man.

Before dawn Guy woke up to an exquisite pain, an inner plundering that his dream tried to make sense of (a hand was reaching for his heart), then he woke up and realized the boy was fucking him again and simultaneously reaching around and jerking Guy off. They both came at the same moment.

Guy’s strategy was to make the boy into the active partner based on the notion that with his small dick and youth he would seldom be cast in that role and that it would build up his confidence. He knew most experienced gays would find such a policy counterintuitive; they all said the way to a man’s heart was through his asshole. But Pierre-Georges had told him otherwise, that men might style themselves as passive at first because it was easier to take it than give it, but that as a young man became self-assured in a relationship he became more assertive — the return of the repressed. So that both male partners in a couple end up as tops and look for the occasional bottom to fuck.

Perhaps it wasn’t that systematic, but Guy trusted his instincts, and after a week together Kevin was walking with a new swagger and even swatting Guy on the butt the minute they turned a corner. Because Kevin thought of Guy as more sophisticated and five or six years older, more the New Yorker, he let Guy decide when they’d go to the gym or what movie they’d see. They usually ate at a diner because it was quick and cheap and Kevin, if left to his own devices, could live on cheeseburgers and fries. He wanted, however, to have cheekbones like Guy, those knuckles about to burst through the taut sheet, and so he docilely ordered the salad and Diet Coke but then rewarded himself with a slice of cherry cheesecake, a taste for which was a New York acquisition, just as he could order now a poppy-seed bagel with lox and a “schmear” (salmon and cream cheese) — and he never gained an ounce.

His legs were meaty enough to remind Guy he was a man, but each segment of his six-pack when he sat up was the width of a beer can and he was so thin his stomach almost touched his backbone, and he had three muscles on his side under his armpit, “obliques” (the gym teacher had called them) that looked like finger-paint daubs or streaked commas or fingers holding his core as if it were a glass of milk. When he turned on his stomach, his spine and ribs looked like a trilobite fossil.

Kevin had bought a Walkman and was obsessed with Madonna and U2 and New Order. He spoke often about his “music” and defended it as if Guy were challenging it. His music was his one article of faith, the sole fatherland he pledged allegiance to. He’d sit there with his black earphones on and nod his head rhythmically, mouthing the words. He knew all the words and for him they were canonical. He would often cite them to Guy as if they expressed superior wisdom. Guy never doubted their gravity or timelessness and that seemed to pacify Kevin, who would tense up in advance, spoiling for a fight. Otherwise he was docility itself, always good-humored and smiling, almost too affectionate. Guy found his affection oppressive, as if he were a joyful lapdog circling around his feet and yipping and biting excitedly, impeding his progress. Indifference and mystery were more appealing. A little distance let your partner’s imagination and tenderness expand to fill the space between you and him, give your mind and emotions permission to work, to yearn . Hankering might constitute an attachment in Buddhism, but in love it was a virtue, one that was constructive, that allowed you to build and articulate the very object of your affection. Whether the Buddhists were right or wrong — that love itself was always disappointing — was a matter of indifference to Guy. Love was his vocation, though he’d inspired more love than he’d experienced. He was like one of those legendary Hollywood actresses who drove men mad with desire and yet felt nothing themselves, who became old, fat, gap-toothed, and right-wing after years of being synonymous with the bikini and Saint-Tropez, say. Guy knew that the baron and Fred and Andrés had all loved him and that even now Andrés might be beating off in his lonely cell and whispering, “Guy,” as he came, afraid that he’d rock the bunk bed and wake the brute below.

Thoughts of Andrés made him sick with guilt but also glowed beckoningly like the idea of a Liberty Bond that was accruing interest and that someday he’d be able to cash in.

When he went out walking in the evening with Kevin, the boy wrapped his arm around Guy’s waist, the way Latin men did with their women. They’d stroll very slowly. Guy wondered what people were thinking as they passed. That Guy was a child molester who’d hypnotized his victim? That Kevin was mentally ill and the only person he trusted was his uncle, and that the patient was lavishing on Guy all the affection he should be distributing over several people? Guy had once seen an overgrown, amorous, curly-haired bar mitzvah boy kissing his little balding father in the same way, as if all the youngster’s budding sexual energy and affection were centered on this one unlikely person whom he cherished like a lover. Kevin was like that — a bar mitzvah boy utterly enraptured with his father.

One day, whether by design or accident, they ran into Kevin’s twin, Chris, who was with the gum-snapping girl he was dating. Kevin seemed all the leaner beside his twin. And prouder— his date was more beautiful than his brother’s. They all filed into the corner bar, which was strangely dark. The girl, Betty, was surprisingly quick and clever. She was a native New Yorker, she said, “conceived in the Village and born in Queens,” and she had the disabused savviness to prove it. She paused for a second and let her eyes roam before launching into an “original” observation, like an opera singer who composes herself before starting the famous coloratura aria. She seemed acutely conscious that Guy and Kevin were a couple, and she was at pains to show she was so familiar with homos as to be bored by them, even while she was faintly satirical at their expense. “What are you boys up to?” she said, giving an audible wink. “Out for a cruise?”