The Beauty of Men Never Dies: An Autobiographical Novel

Mr. P.

26 Mr. P. Just so you don’t think that I am some kind of hopeless old fart with a hopeless crush on some Latin American fifty years my junior, I want you to know I actually do have a kind of boyfriend who just arrived out of the blue in Paris. Mr. P., Mr. Peter. I had met Peter some time ago when he was writing music for a show a friend of mine had written and was producing. What do I remember about Peter? He was younger. Had dark hair. There was a sort of eager air about him. That was all. Peter then moved to Germany. Although he was American he had been born there. He spoke fluent German. He had then been on television as a child in Italy and also spoke fluent Italian. All these things I learned later. Peter called me and said he wanted to meet me in Paris. I never say no to anything unless I really can’t do it. I was coming from Paris after being in London seeing another man I have been hanging around with for the past seven years or so. I was almost in love with this man and probably would have undergone one of those newfangled gay marriages with him if he had wanted to. Grant. Grant Radke. Shorter than I am but that wasn’t it. Somehow it wasn’t gelling. I was distracted by Fenil. And Peter’s coming to Paris was very incidental. I put him on the folding couch in the sitting room. We went to dinner with friends. I learned that he is extremely well educated. Knows a great deal about art and history and literature and often embarks all alone on a weekend just to visit some old town he has heard about. He is very sensitive to the atmosphere of old cities. I don’t think I thought 27 Mr. P. much about Peter and was surprised the last night he was visiting when he said, “Don’t you feel all alone in that great big bed of yours? I could join you.” I explained that I was trying to sort out what was going on with Grant Radke and didn’t like the idea of sleeping with one man when I was still involved with another one. Although “involved” would be pushing it a little bit when it came to Grant. Actually, I didn’t find Peter sexually attractive. Then the next morning as I passed through the sitting room en route to the bathroom, he was pulling on a T-shirt or pulling off his pajamas and I noticed his legs. Great. Great thighs. And I remembered that he was a fencer. And suddenly I found I was interested in Peter. The downside of Peter is that he and I stand at opposite ends of the spectrum politically. He is very concerned about Communism. I explain that, except for Cuba, this political direction has pretty well faded. Mentally he seems to be somewhere in the late 1930s. The things he is very concerned about largely aren’t very important in the chaotic world of international moneymaking that is churning around us right now. I always find that when people are overly concerned with the affairs of the world they are not concerned enough about their own personal affairs. Peter is in his early forties. Because he was born in Germany, he has a German passport, a decent job, a decent income, but his dreams of working in theater aren’t going much of anywhere. He likes me because I’m tall and blond and am not particularly intimidated by the world. I don’t agree with Peter at all about his political views but don’t argue with him. I have learned that much at least. When he starts on a rant, I just hold two fingers up in front of me in the sign of the cross, as though exorcizing a vampire, and he stops. Anyway, the next time I went back to Paris, Grant Radke was history and Peter arrived from Germany, and we went to bed together and this has now been going on for a number of years. Three? Four? He likes the mountains. I like the shore. He likes eating meat. A lot of it. I don’t want to eat anything I am not willing to kill. Which pretty much leaves fish. He is a very conservative dresser. I am...