Our Young Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mario Badeau and a new photo set by Bruce Weber—that might get him higher fees and stretch his image across the skies during what must surely be his sunset years.
    As for the baron, he was kind and respectful and usually interesting and full of fun projects. For his parties he usually annexed Guy’s guest list. He was always seated fully clothed and never exposed people to his terrible old body. He was always surrounded by the cutest young boys who would sit on the floor at his feet while he draped his puffy, jeweled hands over their shoulders—but innocently, innocently, as a grandfather might. The kids were like expensive borzoi snuggled against him. Walt was always around filling glasses, passing joints, putting on new party tapes. Walt always had the latest fashion icon in tow—he brought Christie Brinkley and Gia Carangi by and the makeup wizard Way Bandy. Gia complained there were no girls present—she was bi and preferred girls. But she also talked about her latest boyfriend: “He doesn’t love me, not really. Would you believe he flew me to Milan business class?” Seeing the blank stares, she added, “And not first class.” Walt made everything function smoothly. He hired the caterers, took everyone off to dance at Doubles in a stretch, remembered who was a vegetarian and who was a pescetarian. (Guy had the usual French impatience with picky eaters.)
    Although they laughed freely and jostled each other playfully, most of the other male models had nothing in common and were easily bored. Most of them were living with a woman, usually another model. Several were athletes and tennis champs or went in for boxing or motorbiking or were ranked high by the International Ski Federation in the slalom and alpine categories. Several were swimming stars. Even if they were aristocrats who had gone to Le Rosey, the exclusive Swiss boarding school, they knew all the words to Donna Summer’s hit “Once Upon a Time.” Some of the guys were somebodies—Alain Delon’s son (born and brought up in Beverly Hills) or Barry Goldwater’s grandson—but some of them were uncultured thugs, raised in Brooklyn’s “Ravioli Alley” and sporting a tattoo or two, bad teeth, and a thick Brooklyn accent. How much did that Brooklyn guy work? Guy wondered. He’d heard there was an agency called Funny Faces. Maybe they represented him. One guy was the national swimming champion of Spain and had an earring, a shaved chest, and fluffy armpits.
    Most of them were interested in the Japanese chanting sort of Buddhism, maybe because it was hopeful and optimistic and was an exotic alternative to Christianity, which was contaminated with overfamiliarity and gloom. Buddhism sounded austere and nonproselytizing and kind of cerebral, but in fact this popular cult kind, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, was one in which you chanted for a Cadillac or a go-see. You didn’t have to meditate, just chant. It was very materialistic but the men who did it claimed it settled their minds, brought inner peace … lots of things. It was really cool how you could kneel in front of your own portable altar and say Nam-myoho-renge-kyo for hours every night instead of snorting coke or drunk-dialing. And it was fun to have a brass gong you struck every time you chanted Nam-myoho-renge-kyo three times, though the lotus position, granted, was hell on the knees.
    Guy never opened up to the other models he worked with but he liked to joke with them. They had been discovered by Bruce Weber playing college football or mowing lawns. Guy only pretended to like girls, though he was very close to one girl, a makeup artist most recently from Ohio, or was it Iowa; she was the sweetest girl alive, an orphan who’d lived in one foster home after another. Her name was Lucie and she was close to forty but slender and she always wore black tights and her sort of kinky hair pulled back in a pigtail held in a pink rubber band and she looked really young but tired, as if she’d been awake for