Edmund White - Our Young Man

“There is a resemblance.”

“If you only knew how much cum that photo cost me! Gallons and gallons.”

Kevin blushed, not one of his deep, cranberry blushes, but a hawthorn-pink one. “I used to fantasize I’d call up the Blueboy offices in Miami and I’d ask for the art director, his name is printed here, Gabriel Sanchez, and I’d say I was calling on behalf of Ralph’s mother who was dying, and I had to have Ralph’s telephone number immediately. But then I thought that probably wasn’t even his real name. And maybe Blueboy didn’t even deal with him directly. The photo is credited to Big One Studio. They probably just sold it to Blueboy .”

Kevin lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes. In the slanting evening light coming through the window and against the crisp white pillowcase he looked even more tanned. Suddenly his eyes snapped open. “And go figure, now I have a Ralph all of my own, my very own Ralph.”

Guy smiled. “You make me sound like a Ralph Doll.”

Kevin laughed. “You’re my little Ralph Doll.” He unbuttoned Guy’s shirt. “And I can dress you in any outfit I like or undress you completely.” His small fingers undid the buttons of Guy’s 501s and he tugged his jeans down. “And I can bend my Ralph Doll in any position I like.” He rolled Guy over onto his side, folded the upper knee up, and straightened the lower leg, pushed his upper shoulder to the mattress, and then wriggled out of his own underpants, releasing his hard cock. A moment later he was fucking Guy, holding him by the sharp pelvis bones and pulling him back onto his dick. “Do you like that, Ralph?”

“Yes. I. Do,” Guy said in a robot voice. “Very. Much,” he said in staccato bursts.

“This is too weird, but I like it,” Kevin said. The heat of the afternoon made him sweat, which matted his hair down on his forehead, as Guy noticed when he looked back. Guy wondered if he could tell Kevin to thrust a bit more, but no, that would sap his confidence. Better show him how it was done when it was Guy’s turn. The boy just rocked like a Roto-Rooter and came with a terrible war whoop.

“My little Ralph,” Kevin whispered into Guy’s ear. It was the first time he was amorous after he came, and Guy took that as progress. Nor did Kevin go, “Ew-w,” when he pulled his penis out and it was brown and smelly, and that, too, Guy considered a rite de passage .

Guy invited Kevin to the Spanish restaurant on the corner. The baron was there with a big muscular German named Hans whose head was shaved and who had a silver stud through his right eyebrow. He was wearing black Doc Martens and skinny jeans and a bicycle chain instead of a belt. “I thought I might see you here, Guy, in our old neighborhood. What a lovely companion you have — Kevin? So honored to meet you. This is Hans — he’s East German, so his English isn’t very good. But he’s good at lots of other things.”

Guy felt intensely uncomfortable standing there. He thought, If I shouted “Fire!” and pulled Kevin away, I might save the day, but that won’t happen . Guy felt he was walking toward a fatal accident.

“I hear our old friend died and left you yet another house.” He looked at Guy from head to toe. “How do you do it? You don’t look a day older than you did all those years ago. Gene therapy? The sperm of infant lads?” (And his glance took in Kevin.) “And don’t tell me you got rid of that virile Colombian.”

“He’s in prison — for forgery.”

“Poor thing.” Édouard didn’t want to know any more about what was unpleasant. Once more a complete survey of Guy’s person. “They really should exhibit you at the Smithsonian as one of the wonders of the age. How many years ago did I meet you?”

“I rarely think about the past,” Guy said coldly.

“Quite right, too, when you have such a promising present,” and this with another head-to-toe look at Kevin. “Guy, you look just as fresh as the day I met you.”

“Thank you,” Guy said. Guy was looking at Hans’s big, lumpy crotch; everything about him — his wide stance, his direct stare, his bald, missile-shaped head — spelled Big Cock.

“And how is our house? Comfortable?”

“Yes. As always. You and Hans must come by someday for drinks.”

“Definitely,” piped Kevin politely. “You’re always welcome.”

“What a dear child,” the baron said with a mocking smile, and he actually patted Kevin on the cheek with his gem-studded, age-spotted hand. “Don’t let him lead you astray, my child. He’s such a wicked man, woof!” and the baron pretended to shiver with delight.

After they sat down they both studied their menus, and finally Guy said, “You don’t even want to know.”

“I feel I don’t know you at all.”

“Don’t you think what we have is real and solid?”

Kevin looked at him with tears in his eyes. “I want to believe that. Jesus, I want to. But how can I trust you? I don’t know what to think now.”

This was the first time Guy had heard Kevin say “Jesus” and the way he said it sounded like a genuine cry from the heart. Guy thought that if he lost Kevin, at least he’d have had one perfect month from him, and what did you ever have with another person anyway? Certainly not much more. And breaking up with him would simplify his life. He wouldn’t have to lie anymore to Andrés.

But he’d miss the little guy, his sweetness, his good humor, his devotion to his silly music, his warm perfect body, his amateur lovemaking, the sperm of an infant lad.

“Do you think it’s worth it, working through all this mess?” Guy asked.

Kevin looked startled. “What! You’re breaking up with me? I love you, Guy. You’re my sweetheart. I’d marry you if I could. You don’t doubt that?”

Guy reached across the table and squeezed Kevin’s hand, which felt feverish.

“First of all,” Kevin said, “who was that man?”

“He’s a Belgian baron. He’s called Édouard and he’s the one who gave me the house.”

“So there was no aunt, no black GI?”

“No.”

“Were you the baron’s lover?”

“I slept with him once. He was in love with me.”

“How old are you really?”

“Going on forty. That photo of Ralph you have — that’s me when I was twenty.”

“Really? It is? How do you do it?”

“I don’t do anything.”

“Seriously, how do you stay so young? You look the same as Ralph did. You haven’t changed at all.”

“I have. I have hair now in my ears. The flesh around my fingers is loose, wobbly — see, yours fits tight, like a good glove, mine is creased and shiny and baggy. And my elbows are dry and scaly. My nose is too big — a nose keeps growing with the years. Luckily I was born with small ears. You are just a bit shorter than me but weigh twenty pounds less without looking cadaverous. Only real young people can do that. You have duvet —fuzz — on your cheeks that lights up in the cross light.”

“So you’re really Ralph?”

Guy told him the whole story of how the American photographer back in Paris had tricked him into posing nude and then sold the picture to Blueboy .

“And so you’re a much bigger supermodel than you let on? And not an aristocrat?”

Guy gave him a rundown on his entire career, from meeting Pierre-Georges at the Café Flore to doing runway work for Pierre Cardin to coming to the States and meeting Bruce Weber in 1980 (“He changed my life”) and eventually posing for Calvin Klein and Abercrombie & Fitch.

“And who is the virile Colombian he mentioned?”

Guy said, “He’s called Andrés and he’s in prison.” Guy explained that he’d been arrested for forgery.