by David Stukas
“You’re joking.”
“No, it’s true. The e-mail said not to panic or tell anyone about it.”
“So what are we mere mortals supposed to do?” I asked. If Michael’s spending weren’t so carefully watched by his tightfisted mother, I’d like to sell Michael some swampland in Florida.
“The e-mail said to get a lot of snacks to get through the crisis.”
I couldn’t believe Michael fell for this kind of stuff all the time. “So I can survive the coming apocalypse if I have enough Fritos on hand?”
“I guess so,” Michael consented.
“OK, Michael. Do you think you can come down to earth for a few hours and meet me outside my apartment in half an hour?”
“Oh, yes, the shopping. Be sure and bring plenty of cash. Looking good doesn’t come cheap.”
“The count got a joint credit card for me. He says I can charge as much as I want.”
“Perfect,” replied Michael. “I’ll see you soon.”
I hung up the phone, called the count, and arranged to meet him for dinner that night. He said he had a lot of business to attend to and felt it was a good idea for me to spend some time with Michael.
Before I knew it, I was in a cab with Michael, heading toward the tony shopping enclave of upper Madison Avenue.
Michael pulled out a sheaf of paper and shuffled through it, saying, “I’ve given the matter of bringing you into the twentieth century some thought.”
“Not quite enough, Michael,” I responded. “It’s the twenty-first century.”
“When did that happen?” Michael asked with a straight face. Obviously, someone had failed to brief him on this fact.
“A few years ago.”
“Really? I guess I have to stop writing checks with the wrong year on them. Anyway, I’ve compiled a list of things we should focus on to get you to look like you actually live in New York.”
“I do live in New York, Michael.”
“Yes, but your clothes say Midwest. Your L.L. Bean wardrobe might be considered fashionable down on the farm in Iowa where you grew up . . .” Michael started.
“Michigan,” I corrected him.
“Michigan, Iowa . . . does it matter?”
I was going to remind Michael that I thought Michigan was more progressive than Iowa, then realized he was probably right. There wasn’t a lot of plausibility in crowing about the superiority of Detroit over Des Moines, so I chose to say nothing.
“I buy my clothes right here in New York. I’m sorry if they’re not the latest thing.”
“And there’s another thing,” he said, shaking a finger at me. “You’re always apologizing for everything you do. Look at me. You never hear an apology coming out of my mouth.”
“You can afford to act that way. You have money and you can get away with murder because of it.”
“Robert, it doesn’t take money. You just have to learn to stand up for yourself. Tonight, you and I are going to a seminar that would do you a world of good,” he said, thrusting a pamphlet into my face.
“Getting in Touch with Your Inner Asshole is not something I’m in the mood for tonight. Or any night. Oh God, Michael! This is a seminar by that obnoxious asshole, George Baker. Why would you go to something like that?” I said, completely disgusted.
“It makes perfect sense to me. I know that occasionally I can be an asshole. I would think you’d be proud I admit to being an asshole. It’s a big step in self-awareness.”
“No seminar. Now, Michael—where are we going first?”
“Well, I thought our first stop should be to get you some glasses.”
“My eyes are perfectly fine. I don’t need glasses.”
“Oh, Robert, no one is using glasses to see anymore. You’re supposed to wear them to look smart.”
“I am smart.”
“There are some incredibly stupid people in New York and Los Angeles who have discovered they look smarter because they wear glasses they don’t need. If they didn’t wear a pair of some completely hip and trendy glasses, no one would take them seriously. I can’t tell you how many people have confided in me that their careers took off once they got glasses.”
Once again, I was stunned. “Michael, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I bet you wouldn’t say that if you had glasses,” Michael replied, not realizing what he’d just said. But then again, he never did, including the time he stated that if Russia and the Soviet Union would just stop fighting, the world would be a much more peaceful place.
“Robert, how many times has your face graced the pages of Vanity Fair and Details?”
“None.”
“And how many times have I been in there?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
“I’ll tell you, because I keep count in a scrapbook. Exactly fifty-seven times as of this month. Now, do I know what I’m talking about?”
I had to admit, Michael knew what he was doing. Gallery openings, fashion shows, product launches—like a gay pig at a fashionable trough, Michael was there feeding voraciously. Like most people in attendance, he didn’t give a damn about whatever event was being toasted. He just wanted to be there. And he was. To his credit, he did give generously. Being an heir apparent to a herpes-ointment fortune and having a family foundation behind him provided him with the deep pockets necessary to buy admiration in a city like New York. And fortunately for Michael, so many people were selling cheaply.
As the cab sailed down Madison Avenue, I began to wonder if I was doing the right thing. Was I pretending to be someone I was not? The count fell in love with me for what I was, and I feared that after a day with Michael, I wouldn’t recognize myself. Like a fool, I voiced this concern to Michael.
“What do you mean you’re afraid you might become a different person?” Michael said, with a mixture of puzzlement and horror. “I would think you’d welcome that opportunity with open arms. Now don’t take this personally, but your life is dull and you’re so tight assed, your butt probably squeaks when you take a dump! What I’m attempting to do is to make you into the sort of person everyone wants. You know, someone like me,” Michael finished as we pulled up in front of the eyeglass store.
I relented. “OK, Michael, I’ll go get eyeglasses.”
The decision to ignore my better instincts and follow Michael’s advice wasn’t enough for Michael.
“and?”
“OK, I’ll listen to everything you say from now on,” I yielded.
“Good! You’ll thank me for it.”
We pulled up in front of the store on Madison Avenue and 65th Street, just high enough up from the tacky shops that now lined the once-fabled Fifth Avenue, yet not so high up Madison that it would disenfranchise the international set that clung to the East 50s.
The store not only intimidated passersby, but the doorman who stood guard on the sidewalk helped further convey the idea that only the foolishly rich should pass. In keeping with Michael’s discovery that eyeglasses now indicated intelligence, the name of the store left nothing to chance: Eye-Q.
Once inside, we were pounced upon by our consultant, Celestine, who ushered us to a consultation booth (a desk to you and me) where she sat opposite us and stared intently not into my face, but Michael’s.
I swear to God, this is what she said: “You look like you could really use some help. Don’t worry, I’ll get you a pair of glasses that will raise your visible IQ at least a hundred points.”
Not bad, considering that with Michael, she was starting with negative numbers.
She continued, “What you have is an ovoid face with a square jaw line. It denotes strength, but to convey a higher sense of intellectual capacity, I’m thinking of frames that break up the vertical nature of your face and create a sense of stability.”
Celestine was obviously unaware of the world around her, including the fact that Michael’s natural good looks were anything but. His jaw had been deliberately broken and reconstructed, his dick implant
ed, his teeth capped, his lips injected, and his nipples “curtailed”—they were too large, he once told me. The expenditure was well worth it, I guess. Michael’s dark, dyed hair, square jaw, and muscular body never failed to turn heads wherever he went. Michael was even the requisite male model height: six-feet-one. I suspected he was probably born shorter and had femur extensions added sometime during his teenage years.
“Excuse me, Celestine,” Michael interrupted, “my friend Robert is the one who needs help.”
“Oh,” she said, letting fly the tiniest bat squeak of trepidation that perhaps with me, she had bitten off more than she could chew.
Michael attempted to distance himself from me, signaling to our face consultant that I was a friend, but not someone he would normally associate with. “Robert is going to marry this German count and he needs to be the hippest thing in Germany. I want every guy in Amsterdam and Berlin to think Robert is smart.”
I didn’t even bother to correct Michael that Amsterdam was in Holland, since it would lead to a protracted discussion of geography that would leave Michael insisting Brussels was a country.
“Why, isn’t that a coincidence!” Celestine exclaimed. “We had a count in here this morning. He came in for some tinted contacts.”
“What do you think the possibility is of that happening?” Michael asked.
“Almost never. I can’t say we’ve ever had a count in here. Especially a German one,” Celestine remarked.
I decided to take a shot in the dark. “Celestine, what was the name of this German count?”
“Uh, a Siegfreid von . . . Schmidt. Siegfreid von Schmidt,” she reported happily.
“Wow,” Michael jumped in. “That’s the guy Robert is going to marry. Or live with, anyway.”
“Well, he seemed like a real nice guy. Very intelligent. I could tell by the shape of his face. I couldn’t see his eyes to discern his facial IQ because of the sunglasses.”
“Yes, he says he’s been wearing them for almost twenty years now.”
“Well, you must be a very lucky guy,” Celestine continued. “To have a rich, dashing lover who wants to sweep you off to Germany. Well,” Celestine said, changing direction, “let’s get you a pair of glasses that will have them drooling on the palace floor.”
An hour and one thousand seven hundred dollars later, I walked out of the store with a pair of glasses I would never wear again, but would hold in reserve should I need to wow ’em in Berlin.
Our next stop was the Gucci store. I wanted to walk (and save the cab fare—why, in God’s name, why?), but Michael insisted in taking a cab because “It’s like twenty blocks, and besides, you can’t be seen walking up to Gucci.” Michael wanted to make sure every dime of money that could go into Tom Ford’s pocket did. I guess Michael was hoping stories of his lavish spending would somehow get back to Tom, causing him to fall in love instantly with Michael.
The moment we walked in the door, the salespeople descended on Michael, figuring I was the ugly one with the money and the ability to buy the pretty boyfriend.
Once the salespeople discovered I was the one to be fitted, they helped me buy armloads of clothes, all of them designed to make the wearer feel conspicuous and uncomfortable. After Gucci, it was off to Vladimir, where I was to get a haircut that would erase twenty-odd years of Midwestern plainness and vault me into the international limelight.
Vladimir, a hair burner of dubious Russian heritage, spoke for close to an hour explaining his theory of his plan of attack on my skull, sprinkled with bits of vicious gossip about people I’ve never heard of, then ran what seemed to be a chrome-plated miniature lawnmower over my skull in a matter of seconds that left no more than a quarter-inch burr all around my head. Thanks to Vladimir, I was about to embark for Germany and I looked like a skinhead. Too bad I didn’t think of buying a hat at Gucci.
From Vladimir, we went for lunch at Cafe Vicuña, a contemptuous little restaurant on East 64th Street.
After leaving bag after bag of clothing at the front desk, we were ushered in and given a booth in a dark corner overlooking the entire dining room. This was Michael’s favorite table, since it allowed him to watch everyone without being seen.
Michael ordered a fussy little salad and I followed suit. Then a realization struck me: I had carte blanche from the count, literally, so I stopped feeling guilty and ordered a bottle of champagne. I was celebrating, so why not?
As I looked around the room at all the elegantly dressed people wearing expensive jewelry, carrying unimaginably expensive handbags, and having hairstyles obviously not created by Vladimir, I began to realize how much I was beginning to like this new life of mine. In fact, I began to entertain feelings that I’d do just about anything to protect my lifestyle. Would I lie? Maybe a little white one now and then (oh, Count, no, I don’t know what happened to your priceless Sevres porcelain clock that once belonged to Louis the XVI—I mean, why would you think I would be practicing my backhand indoors?) Would I steal? (Count, I just felt the gold bullion would be safer in my Swiss bank account.)
After all, Michael had pulled every stunt known to man in order to stoke the furnaces that powered his haute faggot lifestyle. This line of justification led me to consider the ultimate question: Would money turn a little boy from the Midwest into a calculating murderer?
For the first time in my life, I was glad my Catholic guilt kicked in. Murder? Me? Out of the question. Well . . .
I scanned the room again, and my eyes fell on none other than the count himself—with another man.
“Don’t look now,” Michael muttered out of the corner of his mouth, “but I think the count is pulling a fast one on you, Robert. He’s sitting over there next to the flower arrangement with a good-looking guy.”
Good-looking wasn’t quite the word I would have used. Stunning was more like it. His suit was impeccable. His close-cropped, golden-blond hair (not dyed) and immaculately kept, pointy goatee were impeccable. Even his gestures and his posture seemed purposeful and calculated. Yet, in marked contrast was his rosy baby face, which made him seem natural and carefree. His demeanor said “trust me,” but you sensed that this guy could be formidable.
“Yes, Michael, I see him. And why do you assume he’s cheating on me all of a sudden? A gay man can have lunch with another man and it doesn’t mean they’re having an affair.”
“Oh, yes it does! When I want to cheat on a boyfriend, I do lunch with my trick in case the boyfriend walks in and sees me. Then I can tell him I’m having lunch with a business partner. Let’s go over and say hi so we can find out what the count is up to.”
“Michael, please, don’t go over there,” I pleaded, grabbing onto his Gucci sport jacket so tightly, Michael gave me one of those don’t-you-dare-put-a-crease-in-this-jacket looks. “I don’t pry in the count’s affairs—bad choice of words—personal business. I trust him and he trusts me.”
“Robert, the reason he trusts you is because you couldn’t bag a man if he were brought to you in chains. That reminds me, would you help me to remember to call Matt around three today? I have some props I want him to bring on our date tonight.”
“Michael, do you really need all those toys in order to have sex?” I said, trying to set Michael straight, not that anything could—set him straight, that is.
“I usually add a toy here and there to spice things up. But I’ve really needed to pull out the big items lately. Ever since you started dating the count, my dates have gone from fantastic to the kind you used to have.”
“That bad?” I inquired.
“It’s almost as if you switched your karma with mine. Or you put a Polish curse on me!”
“Lithuanian, Michael. I’m Lithuanian.”
“Well, I don’t know what you did, but I have to get my sex life back on track.”
“Do you ever think about anything besides sex?”
“Robert, you’re always trying to point out things that make me look shallow and one-dimensional. I think about other things.�
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“Such as?”
“The economy,” Michael retorted.
“The economy?” I asked, completely mystified.
“Well, buying things and my inheritance,” he stated with complete sincerity. “And keeping up my looks. But can we get back to the count? If you want to stick your head in the sand and hide from the awful truth, we’ll just sit here and watch the count and his friend for a while. But I’ll lay odds that this guy is some kind of royal trick.”
We ate our meal, but our attentions were focused on the count and his lunch partner. Michael was looking for any sign or clue that the count’s intentions were anything but wholesome. Me too, but I didn’t tell Michael that.
The count was obviously discussing something of great importance with his friend, since he looked straight at him the entire time, never letting himself be distracted by the passersby. Occasionally, he leaned toward his partner as if what he was saying couldn’t be overheard.
“Sure looks suspicious to me,” Michael interjected, trying to rattle the cage of my insecure mind. “If it’s not some affair he’s discussing, then it’s probably some dirty family business thing.”
“For a guy whose family owns controlling interest in a pharmaceutical concern, I wouldn’t be flinging mud if I were you.”
“Why, Stark Pharmaceuticals is one of the cleanest corporations I know. It’s just that Mike Wallace from 60 Minutes is trying to raise his career by dogging my family’s business all the time. I mean, look, after the breast implant thing, we gave those women a lifetime supply of Wonder Bras to make up for our product’s failure. What more do they want?”
“Michael, you should run as the next Republican candidate for president. They need a callous and uncaring person to head the ticket, and I think you’d be just right.”
“Let’s get back to the count, could we please? Listen, I know I can seem self-centered at times,” Michael said as I choked on my champagne, “but I feel very protective of you. And I think the count is having some pee-pee on the side.”
