“Is everyone always so friendly and in such a good mood?” Kevin asked. He felt strange being so pale, but he’d dutifully applied sunscreen all over.
“They’re drunk now,” Guy said, “and optimistic, but they will soon be squabbling over household expenses and hoping they’ll find love later in the Meat Rack. They’ll be arguing. ‘Why did you buy that expensive leg of lamb?’ And they become especially cross at the beginning of September when they realize the season is over and they’ve danced their tushes off and fucked a lot in the bushes, but, hey, they haven’t bagged a beau for the winter and they’ve maxed out their credit cards.”
Kevin laughed and put an arm around Guy and said, “I didn’t know you knew all those words.”
“Out here I’ve heard them often enough,” Guy said. Because of oncoming traffic on the boardwalk, Kevin had to fall back and follow Guy, which allowed him to take a long look at Guy’s ass pistoning away inside his clinging Speedo. Kevin felt his dick getting hard and he looked away, embarrassed.
They encountered a sunburned man of fifty in cargo shorts, with a red belly and hairless torso and Play-Doh features, thick lips and a bulbous nose and one eye permanently half closed. He was with three sleek youngsters, each more muscular and handsome than the next.
“Hey, Jim,” Guy said, stopping to kiss the man on just one cheek as they did out here. “Jim, Kevin,” he said, and the man shook Kevin’s hand and introduced his “bravos,” as Kevin thought of them because he saw them as a Renaissance escort of tough guys.
“Guy,” Jim said. “You and—Kevin, is it?—should come to dinner tonight.”
Guy looked at Kevin, who nodded. “Great,” Guy said. “What time?”
“Oh, anytime. Nine? Ten? You remember where the house is? And Guy, I was so sorry to hear about Fred. This AIDS, it’s not funny anymore. Fred was such a sweetheart!” And they all went their separate ways, but one dark bravo, who must have been French, murmured to Guy, “
À ce soir
.”
A moment later Jim had doubled back and said, “You’re not vegetarians, are you?”
Guy laughed and said, “No, we’re French.” And Kevin liked that and said in his best Minnesota accent, “Yeah, we’re French as hell.” And they all three laughed.
“Are all these guys out here hustlers or porn stars?” Kevin asked. “They’re so gorgeous.”
“No, they only look that way. They’re all lawyers or surgeons but as beautiful as gigolos.”
Kevin swept out the house and washed down the counters, then went nude for a late afternoon swim in the pool. They walked to the Botel for tea dance and Kevin was amazed there were so many men dancing in swimsuits, “all gorgeous,” he said. They drank big blue cocktails called Blue Whales. “What makes them blue?” Kevin asked. “Are my questions too dumb?”
“Not at all, sweetheart. Blue curaçao, whatever that is.”
All eyes were on them as they leaned against the railing around the deck or danced nonchalantly to the deafening music—or rather, everyone looked away the instant Kevin glanced at them, but if he caught their eye by surprise they were staring at them as if they were movie stars or royalty. Guy’s cheekbones were more prominent than everyone else’s, his hair more expertly cut, his muscles more compact and defined, his waist more dramatically sinewy, his toenails more beautifully buffed; if you studied the others, they had leathery tans or coarse features or they had bulked up grotesquely from the waist up but their legs were skinny or their smiles were tarnished or their torsos were thick. Only Guy was perfect, Kevin thought. Only he looked both masculine and refined.
Jim’s house was eccentrically modern. As they walked up to it at nine-thirty that night, it looked like an old-fashioned view camera—just one small window, the lens, in the center of the facade framed by receding slatted squares, the bellows. Inside, it was all two steps up, one step down, track lighting, Memphis modular furniture, a small outdoor pool lit from within like a sapphire, big, gaudy, unframed abstractions on the wall, all seemingly by the same hand. Or were they just silk-screened batik fabric posing as paintings? The rooms flowed into one another. The guys had drinks on an orange molded plastic couch and pink beanbag chairs, then went to the long, narrow dining room table, with its tall black crystal helix candlesticks, glazed turquoise plates, and twelve matching chairs that looked made out of plasticized cobwebs or molded lace. The food was exotic but light, a salad of kiwis, orange sections, and fresh thyme, and two giant sea bass cooked in salt shells, served with black pasta made from squid ink. A few raspberries and crystallized mint leaves for dessert. Lots of cheap wine, both colors. Fat joints were passed and everyone spoke at once in strangulated voices. They were laughing uproariously at nothing. The handsome Frenchman felt, under the table, Guy’s knee bared by the navy blue perfectly tailored linen shorts, and even tried to wedge a hand up his pant leg toward his crotch, though Guy discreetly lifted the man’s hand and put it back in his lap, but patted it to be polite. They talked about Madonna, whom the others were bored with but whom Kevin hotly defended, though he worried he was talking too much.
When they got home Guy was so stoned he didn’t even stop to think what Kevin might want but just pulled off his trousers and raped him, assuming he’d like that, and he was right, by some miracle, Kevin did like it. They didn’t even shower afterward, but fell asleep in each other’s arms, smelling of sex—or like horses, Kevin thought, smiling into the dark.
The next day in the afternoon a uniformed chauffeur, for an event organized by Pierre-Georges, carried Guy’s luggage to a waiting speedboat, which conveyed him to a waiting limousine, which took him to the airport, where he boarded a waiting plane bound for Milan and runway shows for Versace and Armani. Kevin was at loose ends and already missed Guy, though he’d be back in a week. On the ferryboat to Sayville, Kevin looked at all these hung-over men in their bright pastel patterned clothes. Several of them had expensive-looking dogs and most of them looked much older and lined in the cold light of day than before. They weren’t all so young and intimidating as he’d thought, but they were tanned. One of the men from dinner last night sat beside him and asked how long he and Guy had been dating. Kevin was proud to be half of a couple, though he knew he shouldn’t trust Guy, such a liar. He could still feel his cock in his ass and took comfort in that. He and his twin had burritos together that evening, took a long walk, and had a thorough debriefing. He told Chris all about Fire Island, Guy’s beach house, all the spaceship houses on stilts, and how you couldn’t tell the brokers from the houseboys, how friendly everyone was, and how they all said hi just like the folks back in Ely. Kevin had already filled Chris in on all Guy’s lies, how he was really almost forty and had a crooked lover in the clink and how rich old men kept giving him houses, but Kevin didn’t like it that Chris was bringing this up now. That night, he jerked off twice in their bed and whispered, “Guy,” and molded his phantom back with his free hand. He sprayed himself with Guy’s toilet water and slept with his perfumed hand next to his nose.
The next morning he slept in, and then around eleven-thirty the doorbell rang. It was the baron and Hans. Kevin was in just his underpants but immediately put on a long white dress shirt that belonged to Guy, far too big for him.
“Oh, forgive us,” the baron said. “You were sleeping. You sleep a lot—like a dog when his master is away. I know it’s unforgivable in New York to just drop in, but we were walking by and I wanted Hans to see the house because we’re looking at one like it.”
“Not at all,” Kevin said, which was something Guy said. “Guy’s in Milan.”
“Still at it, is he, even at his age?” the baron said. “Though he looks the same.”
“Come in,” Kevin said, worried about how you received a baron. “Please sit down. Would you like a glass of orange juice?”
“Orange juice at noon? But go ahead, pour yourself one, you’re obviously longing for one,” and Kevin wondered how the baron knew.
Hans perched on the edge of the couch, his hands hanging down between his spread legs. He had on a tight green short-sleeved shirt with its golden Brooks Brothers sheep insignia, incongruous, really, for such a tough guy, though it did flatter his biceps. The baron sat beside him and put a possessive hand on Hans’s knee.
“Glass of water? Or I can make some coffee,” Kevin piped.
“You’re most gracious,” the baron said. “We’ll be gone in a second, we’ll fly like the Dutchman so you can finish your toilette.” And Kevin ran a hand through his hair, wondering if it was sticking up. He realized his legs with their fine hair like glints of gold looked good under the voluminous shirt, as did his small shapely feet, which he’d drawn up under his body to one side as if he were the White Rock girl. He was very aware of Hans’s eyes scanning him, assessing him; Hans was probably wondering what he could do to him.
The baron turned to Hans and said in a professional, consulting voice, as if they were alone, “Notice the high ceilings and the moldings and the fireplace and the harmonious proportions. And all the sunlight. I’m sure our place is the same, these houses were all built at the same time.”
Hans was too masculine, too imposing and sadistic for these domestic details, and it was beneath his dignity to do anything but nod curtly. His woodenness suited the baron just fine, who smiled contentedly.
Since Hans didn’t want to engage in talking real estate, the baron turned malicious out of ennui and addressed Kevin. “Perhaps I shouldn’t ask, but do you and Guy indulge in sadomasochism? I ask because he liked to inflict pain on me, however ineptly. I introduced him to these exquisite pleasures, but I wondered if the seeds I’d planted had sprouted. I’m sort of the Johnny Appleseed of pain. Has he hurt you?”
“I’m not sure I want to talk about my private life,” Kevin said; then, realizing that sounded feminine and middle-class, and feeling reckless, he added, “No, but I like to hurt him.”
Suddenly Hans looked up now, thoroughly interested and appraising Kevin with an insider’s eye. “Oh-hoh!” the baron crowed. “I see. No wonder Guy is so attached to you. Nothing is more
attachant
than sadism,” and the baron smiled with courteous complicity at Hans and then, generously, took in little Kevin as an honorary sadist. Smiling back, Kevin felt stupid and on the wrong foot. After his surprise guests left, Kevin called his twin. He told him everything, how the baron really was a decadent European noble and how he, Kevin, had lied and pretended to be a sort of mini-sadist because he disliked the baron’s assumption that he was the passive one. For the first time he felt uneasy about confiding so much in Chris. He’d thought there never would be a day when he’d want to keep a secret from Chris.
Talking long-distance to Italy the next day at noon, Kevin told Guy about the baron’s and Hans’s visit. “Are you really a sadist?” Kevin asked.
“That’s just his sick fantasy,” Guy said. “He hires skinny, balding guys with big dicks to beat him up.” Guy told Kevin of his unforgivable faux pas in asking Édouard, “
Ça va, Monsieur le Baron
?” And how that had terminated their relationship. “I guess the antique dealer has already been replaced.”
“So what are you doing over there?” Kevin asked, introducing a less controversial topic.
“For work? I guess they think I could be Italian, so I’ve been doing a commercial for pasta, but of course my dialogue has to be dubbed, though I mouth the words. But people like working with me, why not? I’m a friendly guy,” he said with a laugh. “On the runway I’ve had to model these really tacky clothes, all black lace and gold lamé and thigh-high boots, they look so cheap, but Versace likes me and next year he wants an exclusive, that means I don’t work for anyone else but he pays me five, no, six times my current rate. He had me open the show and close it. You’d think I’d be indifferent, but it gave me a huge adrenaline rush. Coming out, all those people looking up at you, all those cameras flashing, knowing that the whole world will be watching. It all seemed like a dream. It must be like being in war, you don’t remember what you did or how you did it. You’re all alone on the runway, then backstage, three or four people are pulling at you getting you dressed in your next ensemble. Then I’ve done some print work where I’m just atmosphere.”
“Atmosphere?”
“That’s what we call it when you’re just the guy in the background, helping the girl out of the car or pouring her wine, one of the crowd, soft-focus.”
“And you still get paid a lot for that?”
“I do, because my agent over here is Élite, not a lot, but I work every day, I’m not complaining.”
“Are you partying every night?”
“No, that’s where I feel my age, and I don’t have fun if I don’t do some coke. If I do coke I’m depressed the next day.” Guy thought it was such a relief now to be able to talk with Kevin about his age.
“Daddy no do blow,” Kevin said in baby talk, and they both laughed. Thousands of miles apart, and Kevin started to get hard. Maybe it was the word “daddy,” even tossed off as a joke, or maybe it was just imagining laughing in his arms. Kevin had a perfectly nice father back in Minnesota who’d always been affectionate enough, but still Kevin liked fucking Daddy-Guy, how perverted was that?
“Hope you’re not fucking too many cute guys,” Kevin said, then added, “Daddy,” to indicate he was just playacting and not really jealous.
“No, I’m just thinking of my baby boy,” Guy said, and now Kevin really did have an erection. Kevin had heard of men who kept their boys in diapers and playpens and showed them cartoons all day and fed them Gerber’s—but that was sick, he didn’t want to go that far, yet it was exciting, maybe just the thought of regressing or giving up or being held in Daddy’s arms.
Guy flew in early, since the client had paid for a ticket on the Concorde. (You could get a deal for a first-class seat on a jet going over and a Concorde seat coming back.) When he let himself in at nine in the morning, he did so silently and discovered Kevin and Chris asleep. They were together, entwined, those two identical faces, both of them in matching Jockey shorts and nothing else, identical small erections, morning wood, their hands and feet so small, elegant, matching, their blond Norwegian heads pressed together, both of them with open mouths and ruby lips.