Edmund White - Our Young Man

“Do you mean that if he weren’t in prison you’d still be with him and not with me? Am I his temporary replacement?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Guy said. “Don’t even think like that.”

“And who was that man who died that the baron mentioned? Where is the house he gave you?”

“His name was Fred. He died of AIDS. He left me his house on Fire Island.”

“Did you lie about that, too? Are you infected by AIDS? And me? Am I going to get it and die?”

“No, no,” Guy said, and he explained that he had just tested negative and he could show Kevin the results. “There’s no reason for you to believe me, I know. My word is worthless. But I do have the document. If you’re really as inexperienced as you say, then there’s no reason to worry.”

“ I’ve always told you the truth,” Kevin blurted out. A second later they both realized what a heavy condemnation lay in those spontaneous words.

“Unlike me,” Guy said. “I’m a terrible person.” He expected Kevin to contradict him, but when he didn’t, Guy sank another foot into the mud.

It must have been eight-thirty on a July night but it was still light out, warm and windless. Neither of them was hungry, so they stirred their green paella around on their plates, paid, and left. On the way out Guy nodded to the baron.

As if by a prearranged agreement, they sat on the stoop to their building and looked out on the uninteresting street. At last Kevin said, as if responding to a question, “Were you ever going to come clean with me?”

“About what?” Guy wasn’t sure what “come clean” meant.

“About how you came to own this house, about how you have a Latin lover, about your unemployed father, about how you’re fifteen years older than you said — oh, forget it.”

“I don’t know,” Guy said, “I don’t know when I would have told you. I was afraid of losing you.”

A moment went by, and a mother and her preteen daughter walked past. When they were out of earshot Kevin said, “At least that sounded honest.”

That night they made love for a long time and for the first time Guy fucked Kevin. Guy spent a long time rimming him and then put a lubricated finger up there.

“I’ve wanted this for such a long time,” Kevin said.

“Me, too.”

“I’m not sure it’s clean.”

“So what?” Guy asked. “You must tell me if it hurts. I don’t have to use a condom, do I?”

“Of course not,” Kevin murmured, and perhaps thought better of it. Could he trust Guy? “No,” he said. “We’re married. We’re faithful.”

Kevin’s words were like a vote of confidence. Guy inched his way into the boy’s ass while studying his face (pain as pleasure). It was the most wonderful feeling, muscular velvet, an intimacy only a virgin could grant, or so he said to himself for the moment, just to make it all the more exciting. He was taking Kevin’s cherry! The words made him harder and made him feel privileged, masterful, married. He thought how many men would pay unlimited amounts to have this inaugurating experience with this boy. He didn’t want to feel like a middle-aged pedophile, he didn’t even want to think all this would make a good porn film. He wanted every thrust, every second, to be laden with tenderness, a salute from him to Kevin, a deep recognition. He wanted Kevin to like what was being done to him, to push back for another joyous millimeter of penetration. He didn’t want him to label it Guy’s First Fuck or Kevin’s First Time. He didn’t want the idea and the label to crowd out the sensation or to sharpen it; he wanted it to be pure sex, undramatized.

Guy took a long time. He thought that way Kevin would get used to it, stop fearing it, realize how pleasurable it was. Guy reached around and stroked his hard cock: Good, he was still erect. He’d lose his erection if he was in pain, wouldn’t he? Guy whispered in his ear, “I love you.” How many times he’d wanted to say that. The words thrilled both of them and Kevin trembled all over as he had the very first time they’d kissed, and again Guy thought of him as a skittish colt. He strummed his ribs as if he were playing a harp. “Am I hurting you?” Guy asked.

“It feels really neat!” Kevin said, which prompted Guy to lie on top of him, pull out, balance his weight on his outstretched hands, then plunge deeper and faster into him. Kevin seemed to give in to him, to stop acting and to start uttering a high-pitched little call Guy had never heard before. Kevin experimented with spreading his legs, pulling his buttocks wider open, nibbling Guy’s hands, clenching his rectum. “Just lie still,” Guy murmured, and Kevin did. Guy felt the last locks opening. He couldn’t resist glancing up at their reflection in the mirror. They looked good. Now the light coming through the windows was rich and grainy with shadow and discretion. Their individuality had been airbrushed out and they were just two charcoal smudges, one covering the other. Suddenly nothing in the world seemed to Guy more glamorous than homosexuality, as romantic as heady white gardenias nested in polished green leaves. “Can I come in you?”

“What?” Kevin asked, arching his back and looking over his nacreous shoulder.

“Can I come in you?”

“God, yes!” and Guy pressed his whole body into Kevin and shuddered.

Kevin was breathing heavily. When his breath evened out, Guy pulled out and wiped himself with a tissue from a box on the night table.

Kevin propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Guy intently, seriously, with those dark circles of weariness under his eyes, so touching in a kid. He started to cry and Guy kissed away his tears. At last Kevin said, “That’s dangerous, fucking me. Are you ready for me to fall in love with you forevermore?”

A little fatuously, Guy said, “So you liked that?” and Kevin nodded solemnly, which sobered Guy enough to say, “Yes, I’m ready for your love. Give me all you’ve got.”

They kissed each other languorously again and, suddenly rousing himself, Guy slapped him on the ass and said, “Okay, okay. Your turn.”

For a second bewildered, Kevin said, “You want me to fuck you?”

“Yes, dummy.”

Kevin lubricated Guy with a sticky finger, then entered him; they were both lying on their sides. Guy advanced his upper knee and crooked it and rotated it upward, the Ralph position. Kevin had learned through imitation how to thrust; he already knew that Guy’s G-spots were his ears and nipples, though he’d been warned to go easy on the nipples lest they become enlarged. Guy liked the idea that Kevin’s ass was full of his come and that tribal physics would make it seep through his loins and spurt through his little cock.

Afterward, Kevin balanced his head on his open hand, lying on his side, and beamed into Guy’s face, smiled and smiled, wondering. Guy could feel and smell his warm breath, smelling like coffee, a fine stream of air on his cheek.

“What am I going to do with you?” Kevin said, shaking his head. “My little Ralph.”

Bright and early the next day, Fred’s lawyer, Marty, phoned. He said that Fred’s sons, the attorney and the podiatrist, had been driving him crazy. (Guy noticed that lawyers called each other “attorneys,” just as doctors referred to each other as “physicians,” as if the normal word weren’t sufficiently reverential.) “So, those little schnorrers are indignant their dad gave you the house, the lion’s share of the estate, and they want to contest it in court. I told them they’d lose the fifty thousand Fred willed them if they contested — and they might get nothing. I told them they didn’t have a very strong case, that I’d been there and could testify they hadn’t bothered to visit their father more than once, that they’d taken Ceil’s side in the divorce, that they’d treated their father’s new lifestyle with contempt, that you’d been there every day. Of course, they started howling that you’d infected Fred and killed him.”