Our Young Man (28 page)

“I’ll grow you a big fat new one,” Guy said, smiling. “Can I help it if Vicente’s bonded with you and not with me? You’re nicer than me.”

Kevin slapped his hand in playful reproach.

“You never want to have sex now. I can see why monks fast—it keeps them celibate. You whimper in your sleep—must be the body protesting. You spend a lot of time in the bathroom at dinner. Were you throwing up your meal?” Guy hung his head. “Anyway, you’re my boyfriend.”

They decided to keep Vicente just out of kindness and because King Kong said she didn’t want him back in Lackawanna and the boy’s mother in Murcia was now bedridden.

Each time Guy took the bus over to see Andrés, the prisoner was happy to hear Vicente’s news and grateful to Guy. Andrés suggested that Guy send Vicente up to visit him one week in his place.

Guy agreed, but he thought he had to instruct Vicente not to mention Kevin. Vicente seemed astonished to discover his blood uncle, Andrés, from Columbia was a
maricón
, too. He hadn’t understood that before. A French maricón, normal. An American maricón, why not? To be expected. But a Columbian maricón, his mother’s brother—oh,
coño
, that wasn’t cool. American prisoner, yes, that was cool, but Latin maricón, no way. The boy seemed utterly lost and slept all the time, though Guy insisted he look for a job. He thought a job was important for the boy’s self-esteem. There was talk of his xeroxing and mailing and manning phones for Pierre-Georges—talk that came to nothing, partly because Pierre-Georges couldn’t be bothered. And Vicente was an eyesore. Guy bought him some new jeans and two cowboy shirts he liked for some reason, some underthings and a peacoat for the cold weather that was just around the corner. Vicente liked Kevin’s brother, Chris, because he was young and not all groomed and was out of shape and had a girl, he was not a maricón but normal, but Chris didn’t like him, he couldn’t be bothered, either. Vicente was vastly amused by the resemblance between the twins, but they thought his delight was boring and predictable, and neither Kevin nor Chris liked to have their interchangeability emphasized, since they were rapidly individuating, or so they hoped.

It was so odd being identical twins entering an urban maturity, which gave them so many opportunities for evolving independently. They each longed to be individuals, and yet they knew they shared a genetic fate, that they would have heart attacks during the same months twenty years from now and die the same year, but more subtly find the same weird jokes funny and unaccountably get depressed at the same time, even if they were separated by a thousand miles. It was odd, because one of them had decided he was straight and one gay, and these different orientations would lead them to have entirely different fates—and yet each would evaluate his experiences with the same lifted eyebrow or the same chuckle or stab of compassion. Chris, for all his much-vaunted heterosexuality, would cruise the same hot guy who’d catch Kevin’s eye, and the same girl would charm both brothers. Both brothers were turned on by Lucie. Perhaps because he was more “normal,” Chris would dress more eccentrically; he even entered a long period of Santa Fe excess, everything weighted down with turquoise, whereas Kevin, despite (or because of) the marginality of his sexuality, hewed close to the norm. It was kind of neat, almost as if they were leading two lives at once, a laboratory case of controlled variance, Manhattan variations on a theme by Ely. All Kevin had to do was observe Chris with his girl, see him holding her hand or protecting her head as he opened her umbrella, to have the same experience himself, to feel it, to feel it in his bones, in his solar plexus, to register it along his nerves. And if Kevin touched Guy’s shoulder and even kissed his neck, then Chris would smile, even pucker sympathetically, though he’d raise a hand instantly to wipe away the abominable sign of affection. Because they saw the point of the other’s actions and attractions, each felt he was playacting in producing and pursuing his own. How authentic could any impulse be if it also contained its opposite? And how resolute could any lifestyle choice be if it was based on neither nature nor nurture, just a whim? If Chris acted the macho too fiercely, they’d both crack up, just as Kevin’s efforts to primp, or act the proper hostess, reduced them both to tears of laughter. True, Chris had been born first, and during the first three months gurgled more and smiled less than his brother and had broken more toys. At two years, Chris had walked a week before Kevin and had hit him angrily over the head with a toy car, though he’d instantly looked bewildered and wailed. Kevin talked first. When they were allowed in grade school to dress differently, Kevin wore brighter colors—did that make him gay? Anyway, that was all family legend invented by parents who out of idle curiosity wanted to find differences between the boys while marveling at the way they mirrored each other. As in many families, the antics of the children were a constant floor show, a distraction from television, as absorbing as a fire in the fireplace, somewhere slim and darting for adult eyes immured in fat to go.

Exactly at the moment Kevin started losing patience with Guy, Chris was tiring of his girlfriend, and both accepted the coincidence as natural. Were they both following the same trajectory, or did the ambivalent feelings of one permit the other to voice his own doubts? Or were they being drawn irresistibly back to each other? Were they fated to end up together? These parallel developments, no matter how mysteriously related, had never surprised them, just as when one of them had a sore throat he automatically handed a lozenge to the other.

“Guy is so predictable,” Kevin complained.

“Dumb, just go ahead and say it. Most people are dumber than we are but—treats you nice—gives you money.”

“That kid—Vince—annoying.”

“Back off,” Chris said. “Not your responsibility.”

“Guy—whatta flake.”

Soon their out-loud shorthand comments were exhausted and the dialogue went underground as they each arrived at subterranean insights together. They were sitting next to each other on a stoop and their silent conversation erupted in half smiles, a shared widening of the eyes, a shoulder bump, a gasp of understanding.

“Really?” one of them said after five minutes of apparent silence. The other nodded.

Their father’s brother, a dapper man they scarcely knew because he lived in far-off Minneapolis, where he was a florist, came to New York for the first time in his life. He stayed in a drab, expensive hotel for businessmen across from Penn Station. He was traveling alone (he’d never married, for some reason), but he had a long list of Broadway shows he intended to see. He seemed disappointed that his attractive nephews knew nothing about the stars, the directors, or even the names of all these musicals, some of which had already been playing for two or three years. Back in Minnesota, he’d pictured them as taking in a show nightly and then dining at Sardi’s or sipping a cocktail at the Rainbow Room, but they drew a blank at the mention of these eateries, just as they’d never heard of Mama Leone’s or the Carnegie Deli. Chris explained he got a nosebleed if he went north of Fourteenth Street, and Kevin, who seemed marginally more sophisticated, said he thought most Broadway shows were tacky and overmiked, or so he’d heard.

Uncle Phil had obviously come to town with thousands of dollars and wanted to live it up every night—steakhouses but also charming, out-of-the-way Greenwich Village bistros that only insiders knew about. The twins only dimly remembered him from family reunions and a cousin’s wedding, where Uncle Phil had done the flowers, all glads, baby’s breath, and birds-of-paradise, with lots of eucalyptus leaves, which made their mother sneeze. He wore an unusual amount of cologne for a Midwestern man of his generation and his breath was always sweetened with Sen-Sen. He was talkative and upbeat, which the boys found preferable to their parents’ dourness, though tiring.

One night Kevin had gone with Phil to see
Cats
, which was impressive for its special effects if not for its imperceptible plot and generic music; afterward, Phil, exhilarated by the show, wanted to go to what he’d read was a trendy show-business restaurant, Joe Allen’s, where the walls were lined with posters of shows that had flopped.

“I really, really like your friend Guy. So handsome!” Uncle Phil said. “I saw him years ago in a Pepsi commercial. It was a yard party, looked so typically American, I had no idea he was French. He looked like just one more cute college kid—gee, that must have been twenty years ago. I’d just moved to the Twin Cities—yeah, twenty years ago.”

“It’s remarkable how young he still looks, isn’t it?” Kevin said. He found talk about Guy’s eternal youth as boring as talk about how closely he resembled Chris; those were the two great “tropes” of their lives, as he’d learned to say at Columbia.

“Yeah, but your parents don’t like the idea that you’re living with a rich, older man and he’s paying all the bills. That’s not my view. I’m a little more sophisticated, but they’re worried about exploitation.”

“Who’s exploiting whom? Am I because I’m the gold digger, or is he because I’m half his age and he’s made me his sex slave?”

“Why, he is, of course. Your parents wish you’d find a nice guy your own age, white, possibly, a college student, someone who pays his own way, an American, I mean. Guy is a perfectly nice guy, if a bit irritable—”

“That’s the cocaine talking,“ Kevin said, tucking into his pecan pie. Around Guy he didn’t order dessert; it was as though he were gobbling in front of Muslims during Ramadan.

“Cocaine? Oh, dear—it’s worse than I thought.”

“Cocaine’s not dangerous!” Kevin said too loud, eliciting smiles of agreement from neighboring tables. He added in a softer but more pedantic voice, “All the studies show it’s not addictive. It just sharpens your mind and makes you want to work more—that’s why it’s called the yuppie’s drug of choice. It’s not really a drug, it’s related to Novocain. It numbs you.” He thought he’d add a shocking gay note for his uncle’s benefit: “That’s why guys who have trouble getting fucked sprinkle it on their assholes. It numbs the pain.”

Uncle Phil looked both amused and troubled by this confidence and said with a little smile, “That may well be. I guess I’m just being too Lutheran about it.”

“My parents would be even happier if I moved back to Ely and married a girl.”

“As a matter of fact, your mom says you used to be sweet on a girl in your class back home—Sally Gunn. The school beauty. Blue eyes, the straight nose of a Greek goddess, big tits, skinny hips like a boy. As you know, her dad is the other big outfitter in Ely—”

“And if we got married it would be a dynastic consolidation,” Kevin added grimly.

“Well …”

“There’s only one little problem. I’m gay. I like men.”

“You know, your mother has kept up with Sally and they get together for drinks at the Log Cabin.”

“That smelly old bar? Smells like kerosene and old beer. I didn’t think women went in there.”

“Anyway, it turns out they’ve discussed your being gay.”

“Wait—my mother and my old girlfriend have discussed my sexuality?”

“I didn’t know it was a secret.”

Kevin sipped his decaf. “Well, it’s not,” he mumbled. “But still!”

“So Sally said she’d always known you were gay and that didn’t bother her, in fact she preferred it because she hates sex and she always thought you were a perfect gentleman because you didn’t want to feel up her tits all the time like the other guys and you were a good dancer, as good as her, and you let her drive you both around in her little MG.”

“So we’re to have an arranged, sexless marriage, consolidating our family businesses? Nifty.”

Phil smiled brightly. “Do you really think so?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m in love with Guy.”

“No wonder,” Phil was quick to chime in. “He’s a historic beauty.”

“What’s your type?” Kevin asked bluntly, tired of pretending Phil was safely in the closet and not liking the sound of “historic.”

Uncle Phil blushed their famous Norwegian blush and said, “All kinds.”

“Very ecumenical, “ Kevin said, dubious. “Younger?”

“Yes.”

“Much younger?”

“Yes, strangely enough.”

“It’s not that strange. Blond?”

“Yes.”

“Butch? Aggressive?”

Phil whispered, “Yes.”

Kevin thought he should stop his interrogation before Phil made an awkward declaration of love.

After a moment’s silence, Phil said, “So what should I tell your parents?”

“That Guy is an upstanding, mature, responsible man who fucks me good.”

Phil exclaimed, “I can’t say that!”

“No, you can’t. Just tell them you liked Guy and that we’re both negative and faithful. That’s what parents worry about. Really worry about. AIDS. And I understand it.”

Kevin turned out to be a brilliant student—imaginative, punctual with his assignments, analytical and skeptical, a nonstop reader, endlessly curious and diplomatic with his fellow students—and especially with his professors. He picked up right away that he might have the right looks (Nordic) to be a career diplomat; a standard Midwestern accent that needed to be placed farther back in the throat and made softer and less nasal; an unexceptionable pedigree (no Nazis or criminals or rabble-rousers hanging from the family tree and no controversial tycoons or scientists, either); ambitious but not pushy, earnest at the right serious moments but otherwise a mild American joker, always laughing. His was an obliging politeness that never shaded off into obsequiousness, a mental precision that never turned pedantic. He had all the virtues and, because of his generic, small-town family background, no entangling alliances with politicians, lobbyists, plutocrats, or radicals. On the other hand, he was a bit too far out of the closet, untraveled, a monoglot, naïvely trusting, as friendly as a family pet. And he had the usual defect of a twin: excessive unguarded loyalty and transparence to his brother. Would he be able to keep a secret from Chris?

His adviser, Dr. Blumenstein, warned him that these were some of the questions the Foreign Service and the FBI would be eventually asking about him and his suitability to serve. Blumenstein hoped Kevin would eventually apply to Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs if he did well in his courses and Graduate Record Exams. He hoped Kevin as an undergrad would take a broad range of courses from political geography to Arabic to Asian studies in the next few years. Any interest in learning to speak Hmong? Urdu? Pity. Of the usual languages, Spanish was crucial. Kevin realized, didn’t he, that the Foreign Service could be extremely dangerous and that his first postings would be in Third World countries deprived of creature comforts? He really should consider Urdu, if for no other reason than to be able to read Hafez in the original.