We ate and talked. The salad was sophisticated and subtle in flavor, a gourmet dish; I was eating with a knife and fork again – I eat very adeptly, like a European, and I am proud of it.
To a stranger, of course, we looked like two pederasts, although he behaved very respectably except for stroking my hand. Several old ladies were obviously shocked, and on our banquette we felt as if we were on stage, sitting in a crossfire of stares. As a poet I enjoyed shocking these old ladies. I love attention of any sort. I was in my element.
Raymond began telling me about the death of his fifteen-year-old son. The boy had smashed up on a motorcycle, which he had bought without his father's knowledge. "He was in school in Boston, and I had no control over the purchase," Raymond said with a sigh. "After his death I went to Boston and saw the man who had sold him the motorcycle. He was black, and he said to me, 'Sir, you have my deepest sympathy in your grief. If I'd known this would happen, I never would have sold the boy the motorcycle, I would have demanded that he get his father's permission.' A very good man, that black," Raymond said.
Trying to distract him from his sad memories, I asked about his ex-wife. He brightened up – this was obviously a topic of interest to him.
"Women are much coarser than men, although that's the reverse of generally received opinion. They're greedy, egoistic, and repulsive. I hadn't had anything to do with them in ever so long, but recently I went to Washington and after an interval of many years, happened to fuck some woman. And you know, she struck me as dirty, although she was a very pretty thirty-five-year-old, feminine and clean. Their very physiology, their menstruation, harbors dirt. – Kirill told me that you loved your wife very much, and that she's a very pretty woman. You're still suffering now, of course, but you can't imagine how lucky you are that you escaped from her, you'll realize it later. A man's love is much more solid, and often a couple will spend their whole lives together." Here he sighed and took a sip of vodka. He was pensive a little while.
"True, such love is encountered more and more rarely nowadays. Before, twenty or thirty years ago, homosexuals lived very differently. The young lived with the old, learned from them; this is noble, when a young man and an old one love each other and live together. A young man often needs backing, the support of a mature, experienced mind. This was a good tradition. Unfortunately, it's very different now. The young prefer to live with the young now, and all that comes of it is bestial fucking. What can one young man learn from another…? There aren't any solid couples now, they keep switching partners." He sighed again.
Then he went on. "I like you. But I've been having a romance with Sebastian for a month now. I met him at a restaurant; we have special restaurants where women don't come, you know, only men like me. I was sitting with a whole group, and he was with a group too. I noticed him right off, he was sitting in a corner and being very enigmatic. He, Sebastian, took the first step – he sent me a glass of champagne, I replied with a bottle. I thought at first that he liked my friend, a handsome young Italian. No, it turned out he liked me, the old one. He came over to our table to introduce himself. That's how we met.
"He loves me very much," Raymond went on. "And he has a very good cock. Do you think I'm being vulgar? No, the subject is love, after all, and in love this matters – he has a very good cock. Yet he doesn't arouse me, and when I kissed you at the door last night, my cock stood up right away…"
In response to so frank an outpouring, I cut a morsel of avocado with exaggerated care, then laid down my knife and fork and picked up my glass, took a drink, and swished the ice cubes in the vodka.
Raymond did not notice my embarrassment.
He went on, "Sebastian had a terrible tragedy, you know. He was close to suicide. He had lived for six years with a certain man, I don't want to mention his name, he's a famous man, very, very rich. Sebastian loved him and never left his side the whole six years. They went to Europe together, traveled around the world on a yacht. And suddenly this man fell in love with someone else. Sebastian didn't recover for a year. He tells me that if I leave him he won't survive it. He treats me very well, he gives me gifts – he gave me this ring, and perhaps you saw the huge vase in the living room, he gave me that too.
"Yesterday, you noticed, he was a bit gloomy. A deal of his fell through, there was big money involved," Raymond went on. "Sebastian wanted to sell, but couldn't, some beakers that had belonged to a King George, I don't remember which one; he's very upset. He loves his work at the gallery, on the whole, but he gets very tired. He comes to me to make love, but he's apt to fall asleep from fatigue; I kiss him, trying to wake him up, I want sex, but he gets tired at work. Besides, he has to do a lot of driving, and it's a long ride for him to my place from work. We'd like to make our home together, but his work prevents it. The difficulty is that while men like us aren't persecuted in this country, it still wouldn't be a good idea for his rich clients, especially the women, to find out he's a pederast. They'd probably stop buying from him at the gallery. Not all of them, perhaps, but many. That's why we can't make our home together – inevitably, rumors would reach them. But for economic reasons too, it would be more convenient to live together. He's – oh, not stingy, but you know, thrifty, which is good, because I spend money too freely. He says we could eat at home sometimes, he likes to cook. I used to be able to afford a lot in my job, my restaurant expenses were paid by the company too, I enjoyed great privileges, I was a friend and partner to my boss. Now that my friend and partner has died – we created the business together – I no longer have such great privileges. The financial constraints irritate me. I'm used to living on a grand scale.
"What do you think?" He turned to me suddenly, breaking off his monologue. "Does Sebastian really love me, as he says? I often tell him, 'You're young, I'm old, why do you love me?' He answers that I am his love.
"I don't know what to do," Raymond went on pensively. "I like him, but as I told you – you made my cock stand right up, he doesn't make it happen that way, yet he says he loves me. Can I believe him? What do you think?" He looked at me expectantly.
"I don't know," I said. What else could I say.
"I'm afraid to fall in love," Raymond said. "By now I'm the wrong age. I'm afraid to fall in love. And then if I'm deserted, it will be a tragedy. I don't want suffering. I'm afraid to fall in love."
He looked at me expectantly and stroked my hand with his fingers, red hairs sticking up here and there from under his rings. His hand was heavy. Dully, as if in a dream, I looked at that hand. I understood that he wanted to know whether I would love him if he left Luis. He was asking for guarantees. What guarantees could I give him? I had no way of knowing. He was nice, but it was hard for me to tell whether I had any sexual affinity for him. I would be able to tell only after making love with him.
"Advise me what to do," he said.
"He probably does love you," I said, half lying, just for the sake of something to say. I wanted to be honest with him, as with the whole world; I couldn't tell him, "Desert Luis, I will love you devotedly and tenderly." I didn't know that I would. Moreover, I was suddenly struck by the thought, He's seeking love, care, and kindness, but I seek the very same thing – that's why I'm sitting with him, I came for love, care, and kindness. But how can we part? I was distraught. If I'm supposed to give him love, I don't want to – I don't, that's all. I want to be loved, otherwise I don't need any of it. In return for his loving me, if he does, I will come to love him later. I know myself, that's the way it will be. But to begin with, let him love me.
Then we walked away from this potentially explosive moment. We didn't walk away – we crawled away with difficulty. He asked me about my life in Moscow, and I patiently told the same story that I had had to tell maybe a hundred times, here in America, to polite but basically indifferent people. I repeated it all to him, only he was not indifferent. He was choosing me.