Our Young Man

Free Our Young Man by Edmund White Page B

Book: Our Young Man by Edmund White Read Free Book Online
Authors: Edmund White
Tags: Fiction, Literary
offer. (He chose bison grass, whatever that was.) “So tell me—gosh, you’re handsome! What’s the secret of being a successful male model, other than being fabulously good-looking?”
    Guy decided to ignore the compliment and to answer the question seriously. “It’s like acting—knowing how you look to other people.” He’d thought about this and talked about it with Lucie. “Most people can’t see themselves from the camera’s—or the audience’s—point of view. They just do what feels natural. They don’t know how they look, how they’re coming across.”
    “For example?” Anglo-Saxons , Guy thought, always want examples. So lowering. They’re incapable of thinking abstractly .
    “Bad actors, if they want to look anxious, wave their arms a lot, which feels right but looks absurd.”
    “And models?”
    “You might hold up your hand to suggest protest or resistance, but an open hand thrust forward is the size of a head—it feels right but it looks wrong. A hand should never be seen except in profile.”
    “How interesting,” Fred said, looking uninterested. He wants to talk only about his love for me. “Go on.”
    “A model selling a new typewriter might look directly at the camera, especially if he’s been told he has beautiful eyes.”
    “You have beautiful eyes,” Fred said sadly, possibly anticipating Guy’s indifference.
    “But a model, if he’s selling a product, should look at it , never the camera.” Suddenly Guy felt shocked by the childish insistence in his voice and disheartened by how trivial the knowledge of his “craft” sounded. For different reasons both men were sad, and they lapsed into silence.
    Suddenly Fred brightened and said, “You know, that house on Fire Island you keep mentioning?”
    “That I’m chanting for,” Guy corrected, smiling.
    “I think we should go out there this Sunday now that it’s getting warmer. I’ve lined up a real estate agent who could show us some houses.” Fred smiled. “I wouldn’t want you to chant in vain. We can stay over Sunday night.”
    When Guy told Pierre-Georges that night his news over the phone, Pierre-Georges exclaimed, “You see! I’ve always claimed you get more if you’re a man by not putting out. Women succeed by sleeping with men, but men do better by not sleeping with them.”
    “Have you always said that?” Guy said, teasing him. “I’ve never done anything through calculation. I just chant.”
    “She just chants—Little Miss Innocent.”
    “It would be nice to have a house right on the beach. Wake up at noon, pull back the blackout curtains, open the glass doors, cross the dunes … just wear a smile and a Jantzen.”
    “That dates you!”
    “You’re right. I wish we could just wash our brains clean of everything from the past. What are you eating?”
    “White beans and sardines and chervil.”
    “I love that! But it’s better with red peppercorns.”
    Lucie came by to show off her new burnt-orange sweater, which stretched attractively across her tits and looked like a radiant mango against her light brown skin. She twirled around to show it off but she was so little an exhibitionist that she ran out of steam after a half turn and deflated self-consciously onto the couch.
    “Look, I’ve only got ten minutes,” Guy said, “before I go off for a Banana Republic go-see way uptown, but I want to talk about something with you. Then I have a Bacardi rum shoot midtown.”
    “Fine,” she said. “Tell me.” He was never this serious and she felt flattered and hoped to be worthy of his confidence.
    “This chanting thing is sort of creepy.”
    “How so?” She chanted, too, and always defended Buddhism.
    “Just for fun, I was chanting for a beach house in the Pines, and now this old guy seems to want to offer me one.”
    “Bravo!”
    “Do you think I’m just a big whore?”
    “None of us is getting any younger.” She reoriented herself and said, “Americans are always so cheap. They

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