Nude Men (6 page)

While she climbs up the stairs, I scramble to clean the filthiest things in the room, which almost always turn out to be my cat’s old vomited fur balls, lying in dried-out puddles of stomach fluid, like little orange sausages. There are usually about five of them, which I frantically pick up, sometimes even with my bare hands in the rush of it. I invariably miss one, which my mother invariably finds, and although I’m sure she knows exactly what it is, she goes down on her hands and knees, examines it from very close, and says, “What
is
that? It looks sad. Or dead. Is it a mouse? Oh, it must be your cat’s poopy. But no, it has no smell.” She then crawls over to the moldy, shriveled-up melon shells and shrunken avocado skins and, groaning, says, “Oh my God, I
can't
believe it, it stinks, it smells like the Antichrist... Etc.

Thank God the last visit happened two weeks ago, which means I should have about six weeks of peace before her next one.

When we talk on the phone, like tonight, she’s usually bearable and sticks mainly to asking me when we’ll see each other, although she does, naturally, lapse into a few criticisms of me and throws in some dull, nagging questions for free, like: “Have they promoted you yet?”

“How’s it going with the goody-goody?” (her pet name for Charlotte) “Have you cleaned your apartment?” But these are too negligible to dwell on.

T
he following day my muscles are hurting like hell. Good. The exercises are finally being felt. The maggot is dying. The Ugly Duckling is turning into a swan. But when I look in the mirror, Jeremy the maggot is still there. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. You may
think
that there are no changes, but that’s where you’re wrong. There are tremendous changes, changes your untrained eye may not detect but that the expert eye of a painter of nude men cannot fail to notice.

What’s this bullshit, Jeremy, what’s this bullshit? It doesn’t matter. It does not matter. Just do the exercises and don’t think.

And then I stop. I suddenly stop. I get a revelation. I realize that there is nothing in the world I can do between now and Saturday that will make a difference. And if I exercise too much I will have a very hard time posing, because my body will be in such pain.

I feel helpless and depressed. That night, I buy potato chips and take my cat to the tiny park near the river, three blocks from my apartment. In the park, I let Minou walk on the ground, on a leash. Then I put her on my lap and just sit there, on a bench. A man, slightly drunk, probably gay, and probably trying to pick me up, says, “Is that a little dog?”

“Yes,” I say, not wanting to arouse his interest by saying it’s a cat.

“What brand?” he asks.

I know perfectly well he means breed and is too drunk to know it.

“No brand,” I say. “He’s a street dog. A bastard.” '

“The best kind,” says the man, and walks away.

S
aturday afternoon I am taking a shower. It is three o’clock. At six I must be at Lady Henrietta’s apartment. My buzzer rings. “Who is it?” I ask.

“It’s Tommy.”

A minute later, he’s up the stairs, walking through my door. I am dripping wet, with a towel around my waist. I haven’t seen Tommy in a month, since before Christmas. He’s half American, half French, and he went to spend the holidays with his extremely rich family in France. He’s eighteen.

“I had a horrible Christmas” is the first thing he says. “Why?” I ask.

“My sister is a witch.”

“Witch as in bitch or as in fairy?”

“As in bitch.”

“That’s too bad.”

Tommy is one of my only friends. And I wouldn’t even call him a real friend, I don’t think. We are not equals. He’s way above me. I am certain the reason he likes me is that he thinks 0f me as his little curiosity.

We met in a cheese shop, where he started talking to me for no apparent reason. I was uncomfortable with him from the beginning. I felt he considered my choice of cheese dumb. I thought he was laughing, or snickering. In any case, he was smiling. I asked for some Brie. I said I wanted a piece that was very ripe. I pointed to the piece I wanted. It was plump, with the inside bulging out. And apparently Tommy found something funny in that. He started talking to me, saying this was the best cheese shop in the neighborhood, and such stuff. Then he asked me where I lived. But he’s not gay. He’s a playboy. Loves girls. Good-looking. He is very conscious of fashion and tries to dress in a manner considered cool, but he wears decorative pins on the crotch of his torn jeans, which is something I don’t like. What does he think he has under there?: Something very special? One of the pins has a buffalo on it. Another one has a bicycle under the words “Put some fun between your legs.” These little medals are like a crown for his dick.

He collapses on my bed and clasps his hands behind his head. “I like you, Jeremy,” he says. “I like you a lot. You’re very comfortable.”

But he’s not gay. He comes and talks to me when he has nothing better to do. He’s one of the only people I allow in my repulsive apartment. Even when he makes a comment on the filth, I don’t mind, because we come from two different planets, and his rare criticisms of my life have never hurt me.

I sit on a chair, still dripping wet, cold. He finally leaves.

I
t is 5:55 p.m. I arrive at her building. Her doorman rings her. When I step out of the elevator, the door to her apartment is wide open. I enter. There is no one in the large living room. There is an easel in the middle, with a big blank canvas, and tons of paint beside it. Behind the easel is a couch, covered with many pieces of long, colorful fabric. In a corner of the living room there is another couch, comfortable-looking, made out of parachute material, and next to that another couch, even more comfortable and luxurious, covered in beige suede. There are tables and curtains, thick curtains. The walls are covered with life-size paintings of beautiful nude men. I start getting more nervous, because I’m obviously nowhere near as beautiful as they are. On her coffee table there is a novel:
The Picture of Dorian Gray
, by Oscar Wilde. I’ve always meant to read it. Under the novel lies a large book of paintings:
Mirage,
by Boris Vallejo. Its cover has a painting of a beautiful naked woman with wings. I flip through the book and see many beautiful naked women. Some have wings, some have tails, some are half snakes, some are riding dragons, some are making love to naked devils, some are making love to naked men, some are making love to other naked women, some are warriors.

“Boris is the painter who has influenced me most,” says Lady Henrietta, standing in a doorway.

“I can see the similarities,” I say. “You both have a beautiful technique.”

“Thank you. I call it the ‘more beautiful than life’ style.”

“Indeed more beautiful than life.”

I had almost expected her to come out in a satin dressing gown or something, but no, she’s perfectly normally dressed.

“Please sit down,” she says.

I sit on the couch, and she goes to the kitchen. She comes back a moment later with herb tea. I drink the tea and sit there, tense, knowing that any minute now I will have to take off my clothes. I am resting my elbow on the arm of the sofa, and I am resting one of my front teeth against the cap of my Bic pen, which I happen to be holding, I don’t know why. I took it out of my pocket without thinking. I often do this when I’m tense. The tip of my tooth is lodged inside the little hole at the tip of the cap. The tooth is supporting the weight of my entire head. I guess it relieves tension because of the slight danger involved. The danger is that sometimes the pen slips and stabs your palate. And that’s what happens to me now. My pen slips and stabs me right behind my front teeth. Blood is invading my mouth, gushing out. I lick it up and swallow it as quickly as possible. I don’t want the blood to spread in front of my teeth and be visible to Lady Henrietta. If she sees my mouth suddenly full of blood, she’ll think I’m weird. I make a mental note never to rest my tooth against my pen again.

“Would you please take off your clothes,” she says.

Does she mean right now, right here? She gets up, walks over to a corner of the room, and pulls back a curtain, revealing a little changing room, exactly like a fitting room in a clothing store. I’m very nervous, but I don’t want to seem like a chicken, so I walk to the fitting room and step inside. She pulls the curtain closed. There is an odd-looking mirror on the wall. It is very wide but very low. I can see myself only from the waist down. I undress. When I see the reflection of my naked stomach, penis, and legs, I want to change my mind. I feel very handicapped and awkward, not being able to see the top half of my body, so I lie down on the floor, on my side, to see myself full length one last time before revealing myself to Lady Henrietta.

“Are you okay in there?” she asks.

I did not realize my foot was sticking out from under the curtain. There is a space between the bottom of the curtain and the floor, and she is looking at me under the curtain, and I am looking at her, and she can see me lying down.

“Why are you on the floor?” she asks, very nicely. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I’m feeling fine,” I say, still lapping up the blood and wishing she’d stop watching me. “I was looking at myself in your strange half mirror. Is there any reason why it is so low?”

“I’m sorry if it bothers you. I feel it relaxes men not to look at their top half. The top half is where they can see their anxiety. And it’s not just in their face, it’s in the position of their shoulders, the way their arms hang. It’s bad for the nerves to see your own anxiety.”

Well, maybe I’m strange and different from every other man, but personally, I believe it’s my bottom half that makes me most nervous.

I decide I have no choice. I can’t back out, no matter what.

I’m just about to emerge, when Lady Henrietta says, “Would it make you feel better if another model came and posed next to you?”

“No,” I answer, and pull back the curtain.

I don’t take my eyes off her as I step out, so I can see her reaction to my naked body. Will she look down? That is the question. Or will she keep her eyes on mine? She does look down, but so casually and rapidly that it makes me feel even less uncomfortable than if she had not looked down at all, which would have suggested she was using all her willpower to resist the temptation of looking at my thingy, which would have brought more attention to it. She acts perfectly normal, makes no strange expression, doesn’t even raise an eyebrow, which surprises me a little but is great.

She leads me to the couch behind the easel and asks me to lie down in the most comfortable position I can find. I must say, she looks and acts very professional.

She starts painting, and she makes me talk about my life, and she talks about her life. I am amazed at how comfortable she is able to make me feel. I like her more and more because of it. Next to her is a tray of small marzipan pigs and rabbits, which she nibbles on while she paints. After an hour or so, she puts a big sheet over the canvas and says she is finished for today.

“Can I see it?” I ask.

“No,” she answers. “Never until it is completely done and dry.”

She tells me that I am a very good model and asks if I would mind coming over and posing again. I eagerly agree. We set a date.

“By the way,” I say, “how should I call you? Lady Henrietta, or Henrietta, or Lady?”

“Henrietta is fine. Do you know why I call myself Lady Henrietta?”

“No.”

“Have you ever read
The Picture of Dorian Gray?”

“No.”

“Well, you should. It’s my bible. There is a character in there, Lord Henry, who is in a certain sense my god. I admire his philosophies of life. I decided to take the liberty of making myself the female version of his character. He is Lord Henry. I am Lady Henrietta.”

I leave, on great terms with her and very happy and in love. The next appointment is in five days. The moment I step out of her building I run to the nearest bookstore and buy
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
I read it that evening, and I am puzzled. Lord Henry is not a particularly admirable character. Some might even call him mildly evil: a meek devil. His chief sin is manipulation for the sake of manipulation. I must admit that his ideas about life are amusing in their extreme cynicism, but I don’t understand. I did not detect any similarities between Lord Henry and Lady Henrietta. Perhaps similarities will soon surface, in which case I will not be overly disappointed, because the evil in question is rather more like spice than like, let’s say, poison or acid.

I
suppose my elephant wish did not come true. I suppose I’m not the most beautiful man Henrietta has ever seen. Though maybe I am. She did nothing to indicate that I definitely was not. As for her falling in love with me, there’s no way to tell if that part of my wish came true. It probably didn’t. I must stay pessimistic, for my own good. Some people might even call it realistic, though that’s not nice.

I don’t go on a diet, as I did before, and I don’t exercise. I think Lady Henrietta is great because she accepts me as I am. For five days, I’m so happy. But there’s one thing that puzzles me. I know that no portrait of me could ever be in
Play girl.
I am simply not good-looking enough. I wonder why she chose me and why she needs a portrait of me. I fantasize that maybe it’s for her own pleasure. Maybe it’s to keep for herself. But I doubt it.