“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.
Would Kevin be looking for a wife with social graces, endless patience, and few prejudices, preferably a private income? That was the sort of wife/hostess an ambassador needed.
Kevin smiled and took his courage in his hands. He said, “There aren’t any young ladies in my future.”
“Are you a Minorite? An Athenian? A Uranian?”
Kevin had never heard these euphemisms before, but he could guess at their meaning from the leer in Blumenstein’s eye and his unusually wet, prolonged smile. The boy said, “Yes.” He figured his adviser wouldn’t know these strange words unless he himself was an initiate.
“You’ll find,” Blumenstein said, lighting his pipe, “that the Foreign Service is full of Friends of Dorothy, though most of them are, as the Italians say, insospettabile.”
Kevin, despite his sunny nature, made few friends at school. He didn’t want any classmates dropping in unexpectedly. Guy wouldn’t like that. Guy didn’t really approve of casual American ways. One time Chris had gone uninvited into the kitchen and stared into the fridge. “I’m hungry! Looks like you guys never snack.” Eventually he found an unopened package of prosciutto, which he gobbled down, cursing that he had to peel off the individual pieces of paper. Guy was outraged and said, “What if that had been an essential ingredient of our dinner? How dare he ransack our refrigerator like that?”