Our Young Man (18 page)

“You don’t meet many of those. Maybe you do in New York. We just moved here a week ago. We just moved here from Ely, Minnesota. I’m Kevin. My brother’s Chris.”

“I’ve never heard of Ely.”

“It’s just a small town in the north of Minnesota, near the Canadian border. It’s where people get outfitted for canoe and camping trips into the Quetico-Superior country, which is on the Canadian side.”

“Sounds cold.”

“It is!” Kevin exclaimed excitedly, as if to encourage what might be a string of lucky guesses. When one of the other men working out looked up and frowned at the offending chitchat, Kevin blushed again, though pink, not red, this time. Social chatter not connected with working out was looked at askance, as in a library.

“Right now it’s thirty-seven degrees in Ely. That’s what my mom said. We’re outfitters, right in the heart of town on Camp Street,” he whispered, looking around nervously.

“Are you foreigners, too? You don’t look American.”

“Oh, we’re Norwegian heritage. We went to Norwegian camp every summer. We can speak Norwegian, sort of. My sister married a real Norwegian ice hockey player and lives in Oslo now.”

“You look Norwegian.”

“You mean dumb?”

“Not at all, blond. Clean. Very clean.”

Kevin got that confused look in his eye again, but he braved it out with a bigger smile, determined to be in on the joke, if that’s what it was, at his own expense. “You mean clean as in boring?”

“Not at all,” Guy protested. “Just because I’m French doesn’t mean I’m nasty. I mean clean-handsome. Here, wanna do another set?”

“Okay.” Kevin stretched out on the board and lifted the barbell and did ten more repetitions, though he slowed down for the last two and out of exhaustion let the bar drift to the left. Guy moved in tighter in case he needed to help him. Kevin looked up Guy’s shorts.

After Guy did his set, Kevin whispered, “We’re the only young guys in here, did you notice?”

So he thinks I’m young
, Guy thought, relieved.

They sat in the sauna for five minutes and then took their showers. Kevin had a high, hairless butt of a lunar whiteness; there was no trace of hair, not even in the crack. His penis was small, nested in the merest excuse of a pubic bush. His torso was scarily childish, which prompted Guy to ask, “How old are you guys?”

“In June we’ll be nineteen.”

They decided to grab a cup of coffee together in the restaurant on the ground floor, where an old man was patiently mopping the linoleum, filling the air with the nostril-tickling smell of Lysol. The waitress, hair high and peroxided, asked with a steel-drilling accent, “What can I get you boys?” and Guy liked her for including him as one of the boys and absolving him of being a child molester.

“So what do you do, Guy?”

“I’m a model.”

“Like in a fashion model?”

“Exactly.”

“Cool. Somebody wanted to photograph Chris and me for some fashion shoot, but in the nude, which Chris didn’t want to do. I’m gay but he’s not.”

“How strange. I thought you’d both be straight or both gay.”

“Well, we’ve both experimented with boys and girls, and
yes
, we have slept together, but only a few times, twice, actually, but Chris has decided he’s really straight and I think I’m really gay.”

American straightforwardness still astounded Guy. A European could take years to get there, but it just popped out of this Minnesota mouth with the lips like Froot Loops and the teeth like Chiclets. It was all so simple, so innocent, but Guy didn’t despise it, he could see Kevin was very pure.

“Don’t you know for sure if you’re gay? Haven’t you tried it with lots of fellows?”

Again the bloodbath blush. “I’m a virgin,” Kevin said, in a small, strangled voice, and Guy thought, irrationally,
Of course, that’s why his dick is so small and his ass so rubbery
, but that stupid theory evaporated in the first warmth of reflection. “Except fooling around with my brother those two times.”

“I see,” Guy said, stalling for time, wondering what he could say that would be appropriate and maybe consoling, though perhaps consolation wasn’t what was called for. “You were right not to do any nude shots.”

“Why?”

“Real models, professional models, don’t pose in the nude.” And Guy remembered how his own nude photos had ended in
Blueboy
all those years ago.

“Oh, really? Why not?”

“Swimsuit ads, possibly, maybe underwear, but not total nudity. It just lowers your prestige, I guess, your mystery.”

“Do you think I have some model potential?”

“It’s no fun. It’s not a good career for men. Maybe twelve men in the whole United States make as much as one hundred sixty thousand a year.”

“Do you think I’m handsome enough?”

“It doesn’t really have to do with looks. It’s whether you’re photogenic.”

“Am I photogenic?”

“We won’t know till you put together your portfolio.” Guy had found young guys were more hypnotized by an authority if he wasn’t entirely “supportive”; his reluctance to enthuse paralleled his own self-doubts. “But everyone treats models like you’re beef, like meat, interchangeable. They try to pay you with clothes, not money. It’s the girls who count, because it’s women who buy clothes and beauty products. They’re paid ten times more than us. And most of the population thinks we’re all gay, though most male models are straight.” Guy sighed. “It’s endless.” He cocked his head to one side. “You’re a little short. You have to be at least six feet tall, a size-forty jacket, a fifteen-inch neck. You have to fit into the clothes. Maybe for catalogue work they can pin the clothes here and there to fit, but for runway or fashion or editorial work you have to be a perfect size. The models are hired because the clothes fit them. You can’t be five-foot-eleven.”

“Do you think I have a good face?”

Guy whispered, “Angelic. Your jaw is a little strong, but that could be your trademark. I’d draw a little cleft into your chin to emphasize it.”

“You can do whatever you like to me.”

Guy hadn’t been openly flirting and was taken aback by the kid’s sudden flying of a white flag. “But you’ve really got to want it,” Guy warned. “You’ve got to pound the pavement for six months and accept rejection. It’s hard to be rejected. New York is all about rejection. They’re so fucking rude, photographers, art directors, casting agents. The client is the worst of all. Secretly they resent us for doing nothing and getting rich. That’s what they think. We don’t do anything in their eyes.”

Kevin scanned Guy’s face. “With those cheekbones I could get rich, I’ll bet.”

They made a date to work out together the same time the next day. Kevin’s brother, Chris, could barely look Guy in the eye, and he quickly absented himself to exercise on the other side of the gym.

“Did I say something wrong?” Guy asked.

“Naw, he’s doing legs and squats today.”

“Does he need us to spot him? Squats can be dangerous.”

“He’s wearing a belt.” After reflecting a moment, Kevin said, “He wants to give us a little space.” After another pause he said, “He might be jealous.” Another set, and Kevin added, “He’s probably worried you might want to have a three-way. You’d be surprised how many men have that fantasy, to be Lucky Pierre between identical twins.”

“Gross,” Guy said, ashamed that he’d had that fantasy himself.

“Guys are freaky. And like I said, Chris thinks he’s more straight.”

Over coffee downstairs, Guy said, “It must be strange to be identical twins. If you have to make a big decision in your life, is he the one you call automatically?”

“He’s my best friend. Our mother used to dress us alike. We had a private language till we were eight and then a school psychologist told our mom that she must stop us from doing that, otherwise we’d never socialize with the other kids.”

“Was the psychologist right?”

“Yep. Now we can’t even remember it—it just evaporated, except ‘weepie’ was our word for ‘basketball.’ That’s all we can remember. And I called him ‘old cock’ and he called me ‘big cock,’ though our cocks of course are identical and small.”

Guy said, “If you slept with your brother, you’re not really a virgin.” Embarrassed by his own coarse remark, he asked, “Do you have shared experiences, nonverbal ones?”

Kevin said, “Oh, yeah! Like once he got socked in the stomach and I was miles away and doubled over with pain. We don’t need more than a word to make the other one crack up over some remembered joke. Or if someone says something asinine, Chris will just poke his cheek with his tongue and we’re both weeping with laughter.”

When they were about to pay at the cash register, Kevin said, “Don’t look now, but that old guy in the corner bugs the shit out of me. He’s always cruising me, and I’m sorry, but I hate old trolls.”

Guy glanced rapidly at the troll and said, “But Kevin, that man’s not old. He couldn’t be more than thirty.”

“He gives me the creeps. I guess I’m weird, but I’ve never even kissed anyone over twenty-five. By the way, Chris thinks you’re older than we are.”

Guy said, “I’m certainly older than you. I’m twenty-five. Too old to kiss?”

“Gee, I’m surprised,” Kevin said. “I told Chris I thought you were more like twenty-two.”

Guy became worried that Kevin might ask around the fashion world and find out he was nearly forty, so he said, “By the way, I haven’t been working much as a model, so I’m looking for a job as a waiter or a sales clerk.” Guy wasn’t sure a
vendeur
was called a “sales clerk.” He didn’t want Kevin to think of him as a rich forty-year-old model with two houses, but rather as a poor kid like himself just starting out.

“That really surprises me. I’m sure I’ve seen you in ads and commercials.”

“Nope,” Guy said. “Just one peanuts commercial two years ago.”

“Excellent,” Kevin said, using the new vogue word.

Kevin began almost instantly to treat Guy with a suggestion of tenderness and less admiration. For him, perhaps, Guy was no longer a successful grown-up but another beginner struggling to survive. He was easier for Kevin to care about—and Kevin insisted they split the check for coffee and cherry pie right down the middle.

For the first time, as they left the coffee shop Kevin put his arm around Guy’s waist. It occurred to Guy that Kevin might be active in bed. He was startled by the boy’s friendly gesture. He must be lonely, Guy thought.

The next morning when Guy swung by to see Fred, he wasn’t there and his plants and flowers and get-well cards had all been cleared out and the bed was freshly made. The room was in a sort of twilight, lit only by the hall light coming through the door. Had they taken him to the emergency room? Stripped of its colorful ornaments, the room looked smaller, like a cell, and the narrow bed with its crisp sheets and hospital corners looked like one of those restraining cots used for lethal injections.

Blinded by tears and confused, Guy stumbled out into the hallway and saw one of his favorite nurses, the Seventh-Day Adventist with her carefully braided hair. “Oh, honey,” she said, opening her arms. He let her hold him, though she was so much shorter and stouter. “Your poor Mr. Fred passed during the night about three
A.M.
I was the one who discovered him. He may have had a heart attack. He looked startled and was almost sitting up. He eyes buggin’ out and his mouth open. Those vulture sons were here by eight and put all his belongings in a big black plastic garbage bag. They were gone by eight-thirty after they made sure there were no checked valuables.”

“Valuables?”

“Watch, ring, that sort of thing. They did cry a little. And then they were squabblin’ with each other. You were his real son.”

That thought made Guy cry again, and the nurse, who smelled of vanilla extract dabbed right out of the bottle, held him again in her short arms. “You’re skinny, boy,” she said.

Fred had been such a strong personality, so full of noise and vulgarity and longing, that his abrupt absence left a roaring vacuum behind, the sort you see in a movie when the villain punctures the shell of the airplane and the passengers are all sucked out into the freezing stratosphere. Guy kept thinking he should do something for Fred, that there was some ritual he was neglecting or some form to fill out. But there was nothing to do. No duties.

He went to the Elephant and Castle downstairs, though it was too early to eat and the waiters were just tying on aprons, and the grill, he was told, would take twenty minutes to heat up. There were no other customers. The windows were sparkling clean. The waiter brought him a cup of coffee as an act of mercy.

Suddenly the day seemed so vacant, great empty lots of time laid out before him like fields planted in the same crop. He didn’t know what to do with himself and went to the gym to work out halfheartedly. For some reason he looked at everyone yearningly, including the least likely men, even the owner’s brother, that big straight blowhard who drank a pint of bull’s blood a day and, crippled with gout, had to be handed up the stairs. Grief made Guy masochistic and he could imagine shrinking and living in that brute’s crotch, his only exercise crossing from one small ball to the other. (He’d seen them, and steroids had made them peasized.) He felt so lonely. With Fred gone and Andrés in prison. Nothing was as lonely as the gym, with its averted glances, its surround of reproachful mirrors, its weights cast aside like broken manacles.

He took the Greyhound bus ninety minutes to Otisville, the minimum-security federal prison. It looked like a junior high in the middle of a lot. He was shocked by how small and peaceful it looked—small and without walls. A dozen passengers from New York had gotten off with him; they were all women, mostly black and Hispanic—some the mothers or elderly wives of prisoners, others possibly their adult children or younger wives, two with Muslim headscarves, all with packages in their hands. He wished he’d talked to the forty-something woman sitting next to him, with her mobcap of shiny black hair, straightened and varnished, and her pretty dress and clear lip gloss. He might have received some clues from her as to what to expect. He’d called ahead and his name was on the list, which the fat female guard in her bulging trousers pronounced
Guy
as in “gigh” to rhyme with “sigh.”