Edmund White - Our Young Man

Guy, with all the generosity of the beautiful, found Betty amusing and turned his killer smile on her. Impertinently she asked, “Do you dye your eyelashes black, or have you tattooed them black? It’s rare to see eyelashes that black — but I must say it does wonders for your eyes.”

“Nothing like that,” Guy said, unoffended. “They’re just that way. Girls tattoo their eyebrows but not their eyelashes — that would be too dangerous.” Betty winked at Chris, as if this were a little lie they’d dissect and relish later.

Two minutes after they’d finished their beers, Kevin hustled Guy out of there. Chris seemed surprised by the decisiveness on his brother’s part.

On the street Kevin said, “I’m sick of staying home every night. Let’s go to the Roxy and dance.”

“Great idea,” Guy said, pleased by Kevin’s assertiveness but vexed by the prospect of disco dancing. They couldn’t arrive there before two in the morning. They’d have to snort a little blow to get their energy up, though Kevin was too budget-conscious to do it all night, thank God.

“I want to show you off,” Kevin said.

Two days later Guy took the bus again to Andrés’s prison. He lied to Kevin that he was posing at LaGuardia for a German skiwear catalogue all day.

Andrés was in a dark mood and it took Guy a minute to realize he was consumed with jealousy. Suddenly he said, “I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“I think we should get identical tattoos.”

“Really?”

“Facial tattoos.”

“But I have to work,” Guy said.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil your precious asset.” Guy thought Andrés’s English was much more idiomatic than in his pre-prison past; he must be sitting around gabbing all day with his American cellmate. Even his accent was more ghetto.

“How could a facial tattoo go unnoticed?” Guy asked.

“Behind your earlobe. Just a small number eight.”

Guy thought immediately of Kevin, who’d be sure to notice and descend into a paroxysm of rage. Maybe that was Andrés’s idea — to mark his property with his brand. “What does the eight stand for?”

Andrés touched his fly, for all the world like a rapper. “Don’t you remember? It’s when we met — February eighth? But it’s also the symbol for infinity if it’s turned on its side. That’s how long our love will last — infinitely. At least mine for you.”

Guy smiled and said, “Okay, okay.”

Andrés suddenly seemed more alert. “You’ll do it?”

“Sure,” Guy said, thinking he could always think up an excuse later. “But how will you get a tattoo in prison?”

“Not a problem, my man,” he muttered. “It’s cool.” Andrés sounded more and more like a very low-class thug, and that alarmed and excited Guy. He’d always been passionate — would he be more so now? Would his dick be even bigger and blacker? Would he smell even more like saffron and olive oil in which chopped shallots were sizzling? “Oh, baby,” Andrés said, “would you do that for me?” And Guy thought he had that mellow, late-night romantic voice of a black disc jockey talking about his “African queen.” “Would you really do that for me, baby?”

Guy realized Andrés had never called him “baby” before, nor had he ever spoken in this crooning baritone. Suddenly Guy was jealous thinking about his Afro-American rival, and he said, “You never talk about your cellmate. Is he here now? Can you point him out? Subtly.”

“Why?”

“Because you sound different. Is he your lover?”

Andrés shut down. His anger (or was it his embarrassment?) became such a heavy charge that it shorted him out, with only a few bright noisy sparks to express his total outage. “You’re the one with the lover!” Andrés shouted, getting up out of his chair and causing the guards to come striding quickly toward them.

“Is everything cool, here?” a thick-chested black guard asked. “Are you boys playing nicely? Staying cool, Andy?”

Guy thought the intonation sounded familiar. “We’re cool,” Andrés said sullenly, and sat back down. His chin dropped to his chest.

Of course , Guy thought. The black guard got the Colombian beauty. He won’t let anyone else near that prime beef. That’s the voice Andrés is imitating.

But then Andrés was telling him he had joined a Puerto Rican gang in prison. “It’s so good to be speaking Spanish again, even if it’s their funny kind of Spanish. Here you have to choose the black gang or the P.R. gang. I feel sorry for these Wall Street cats. They don’t have no gang.”

“Are you sure the eight isn’t just the name of your Spanish gang? Ocho? And you want to make it sound like our symbol so I won’t get jealous?”

“ Baby …” Andrés said with such a hurt, reproachful look that Guy immediately backed off. He leaned in to kiss Andrés on the cheek, but Andrés shrank away and looked around nervously. “I told them you be my cousin.”

“I’ve seen other people in here kissing.”

“Not guys.”

“Not even cousins?”

Andrés smiled and said, “Get outta here.”

Guy noticed the stretched orange fabric crotch: no hard-on this time. Maybe only a crooning black voice excited him now.

Kevin insisted they go up to the hot-tarred roof of their brownstone to “lay out,” as he put it. While there, they fraternized with a friendly young couple of chubs, Mr. and Mrs. Something Polish to whom Guy had rented out the top floor. They were newlyweds and so much in love they couldn’t keep their paws off each other. He was in pest control, he said, and she was a baker, which meant she had to get up at four in the morning. She worked for the French baker down the street and brought home very American carrot cupcakes onto which she had piped orange and green frosting.

They were always leaving a baguette on Guy’s doorstep or a cherry cheesecake, once she’d discovered that was Kevin’s favorite. With the coldhearted discipline of a farmer drowning kittens, Guy systematically sprayed the baked goods with detergent so they’d be inedible. “You’re incredibly sweet, Dorothy,” Guy overheard Kevin say on the landing, “but we’re models and we can’t indulge,” he wailed. Guy would never have said anything: He didn’t want people to think of them as Martians.

Pierre-Georges came by and treated Kevin frostily. He kept speaking to Guy in French, using the most difficult argot ( pieu for “bed” and tignasse for “hair”) just in case Kevin had picked up ordinary French in school.

“Speak in English,” Guy said.

“Honestly, I don’t mind, you guys can knock yourselves out with your French. Honestly. I’ll just read a magazine.”

Guy knew that Pierre-Georges would take Kevin’s politeness as a form of wimpiness ( mièverie ). Pierre-Georges had been warned not to say anything that would give away Guy’s real age.

That night in bed Kevin confessed that when he was twelve he’d gotten his hands on a copy of Blueboy . And he’d jerked off to a guy named Ralph. “And he looked just like you, but of course he couldn’t have been, because that was seven years ago. But I swear he looked just like you! It’s weird! Same little jug ears, same eyes exactly the same shape, same small hands, same …”—here he lowered his voice—“dick.”

Oh, no , Guy thought, of all the pictures that might have surfaced and imprinted him, it had to be mine, the one that sneaky American photographer talked me into and swore never to show anyone .

“But it looks just the way you do now,” and Kevin sheepishly brought out from under the mattress a dog-eared copy of Blueboy , the pages limp from use and stiff with semen. “Doesn’t it?” And he held the picture up and thrust it into Guy’s face. “Or am I crazy or what?”