“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.
9
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.
Kevin was the first to wake up. “You’re back early. Concorde?”
“Yes. You two look so great together.” Guy felt torn between lust and jealousy.
“We went out last night dancing at the Roxy and didn’t get home till dawn. If I’d known you were flying the Concorde …”
“It was all very last-minute. You know fashion people — hurry up and wait.” If Guy were cheekier he would lie down in the midst of this flowery bower.
Their voices had awakened Chris, who smiled weakly and waved, looked grumpy, adjusted himself, ran into the bathroom, and dressed quickly. A moment later he was gone, his hair all scrunched to one side.
“Why does he have a burr up his ass?”
“He’s just jealous,” Kevin said. Guy wondered why jealous if Chris was so straight, and why was he dancing in a gay club? Chris was barely out the door before Kevin clawed off Guy’s clothes. Afterward, he said to Kevin, while holding him in his arms, what he’d rehearsed so many times, “Baby?”
“Yes, Daddy?” Kevin was holding him and hadn’t yet pulled out.
“What if we each got a discreet tattoo?”
Kevin thought for a moment about this proposal, more jarring than anything he’d anticipated: A model with a tattoo? Weren’t tattoos forever? Did people like them ever get them? Weren’t they something white trash had? “Pardon?” he said.
Guy pulled free, sat up on the towel he’d spread out, and looked Kevin in the eye. Guy worried that he looked strange with his sprayed-on tan just on his face and hands from his last job for sunglasses. (Didn’t they say they wanted an exclusive? How much would that pay? For how many days? Would Élite work all that out with Pierre-Georges? Would the client shoot in New York? Did that young Italian photographer, Giorgio, ever work in New York?) “I’m sorry, I’m still half in Milan, worrying about work.”
“Poor guy,” Kevin said, stroking his face and worrying about Guy’s unrelieved erection now shrinking to half-mast.
“I thought we could get tiny number eights behind our earlobes.”
“Why that number?”
“If it’s on its side, it’s the symbol for infinity and could stand for our eternal love.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet,” Kevin said, and pecked him on the lips. Quite the commitment, Kevin thought, smiling. “How did you even know that?” he asked, astonished that Guy knew so many things he didn’t; must be his French background.
And indeed Guy explained he’d read about it in a story but he couldn’t remember whose. It probably was a French author’s, a man was in love with a nun and managed to have the infinity symbol projected on the convent lawn just outside her window.
“That’s so romantic,” Kevin said with a frown. “Wouldn’t it be dangerous? I mean, if it got infected?”
Guy made a clucking sound of dismissal and Kevin felt about as daring as a grandmother. “Yeah,” Guy said, “they might have to amputate our heads.”
Kevin said, “That wouldn’t affect me in the least,” though secretly he thought he and Chris were smarter than Guy. They both did well in trig, whereas Guy could barely add. He felt startled, even offended, when Guy knew things he didn’t. Though superior knowledge was only natural in a sophisticated man who’d traveled the world’s capitals for two decades and who liked to read, Guy’s occasional pockets of esoteric knowledge were still disturbing to Kevin, who didn’t want to think of all those years before they’d met or all the conversations Guy might be having now without Kevin, some shared laugh of camaraderie with another runway model backstage as they both wore protective cloth coats over their white alpaca suits, so easy to soil, so likely to shed.
“I guess that would mean we really were married,” Kevin said. “It would be a statement of some sort, that this time it’s for keeps.”
“Of course it’s for keeps,” Guy said. What if Kevin ever met Andrés and saw that he had the same tattoo? Guy could foresee a disaster like that, but the one thing he counted on was that, even if his whole world exploded, he’d always be able to attract new people, maybe of not the same caliber, but good enough. He’d once gotten drunk with a handsome flight attendant who’d said, “The good thing and the bad thing about being a steward is that you never have to make anything work with a guy, because you’re always flying off and meeting new guys.” Being an international model was like that; even in Milan he’d met two other models who’d fancied him. He liked models — they were so clean. Everyone said they were shallow, but he thought it depended. He knew one, that black guy with the Afro he’d met in Chicago, who’d gotten a Ph.D. in something.
“But won’t a facial tattoo be a problem for a model?” Kevin asked.
“Pierre-Georges was right. I need a new look. Anyway, I’m going to grow my hair long to cover my ears — and I have such dumb ears.”
“Aw, they’re cute!”
“And I’m going to stop shaving every day. I’ll have some stubble. I saw a model in Milan with stubble and it was very chic. Everyone was fascinated.” He thought for a moment, picturing his new look. “Ultra-masculine. I’ll start wearing punk, masculine clothes to go-sees. Lots of leather. Safety pins. If that works I’ll push my hair back on one side and show my tattoo. Enough with the Gentleman’s Quarterly look. Models are so square.”
“Who will tattoo us? Does it hurt? It will be so strange to have something … permanent … making me different from Chris. I mean, a mustache, okay, or five pounds, a haircut, but a brand on your flesh?”
“A brand? Let’s not be melodramatic. I think they give you an anesthetic. I’ll find a clean, artistic tattoo artist. It’s becoming far more common.”
“Really? I don’t want to look like a scumbag. We used to say you should never have anything on your body that you couldn’t cover up with long sleeves before a judge.”
“Did you, now? In Ely?” Guy said with just the right combination, he hoped, of ridicule and condescension.