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Authors: Louis Auchincloss
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had no real part or interest, and from whom he felt compelled to hide tastes that at the very least would have invited their pitying disapproval. And it only made things worse that whenever he did run into one of them, he would be greeted enthusiastically with cries of "Marvin, where have you been? Why do we never see you? Come to dinner! Yes, anytime, do!"
What kept him there, when his analysis was finished, was the Korean youth he met at a Village party and with whom he became deeply involved. It was indeed the love affair of his life. He finally induced Hai Kwan to move into his brownstone, though he took care to set him up in a separate garden apartment so he would look like an ordinary tenant. He would gladly have taken him to Italy and lodged them both in a Venetian palazzo, but Kwan loved New York, where all his friends were, and Marvin at last gave him a gallery of his own, where he sold, with some success, Korean art.
Marvin had always dreaded Cynthia's finding out about his love life, but when she didâand it didn't take long before the peculiar position of Kwan in his household became known to herâit was almost worse than he had thought. Her easy handling of the situation showed the amused scorn beneath her seeming tolerance. "Put him in a white coat," she advised her brother. "And then nobody'll mind."
Even so, his life might have worked out had Kwan remained faithful to him. Marvin might have been able to give their relationship, even in his censorious heart, some of the dignity of a marriage, might even have seen it achieve a kind of acceptance in his old world. But Kwan liked boys, and as Marvin visibly aged, he had no idea of confining his nights to his patron. I should make it clear that Kwan was not a bad fellow at allâI met him a couple of times when Marvin asked me to his house. But however devoted he was to Marvinâand he never left himâhe made it clear that both of them were free to form other intimacies. Their relationship became a platonic one; Kwan became Marvin's "family."
Which left Marvin to seek sexual gratification elsewhere, and he took eventually to the streets. The partners whom he found were not like their Italian counterparts; they were tougher and more mercenary and often didn't even pretend to enjoy what they were doing. As Marvin's life became more sordid, his compulsion to shield it from his old connections became even more obsessive. He was soon almost a complete recluse, and except when he appeared in art galleries or auction houses to add to his collection, he virtually disappeared from the world. His sexual preoccupation had come to encase his entire existence, as a skin cancer can cover a whole face.
The sense he must have felt of being mercilessly encircled by quixotically hostile gods who had picked him as their victim for no explicable reason may have been like the one expressed by Racine's tragic heroine in
Phèdre:
Wretch that I am, how can I live, how face
The sacred sun, great elder of my race?
My grandsire was, of all the gods, most high:
My forebears fill the world and all the sky.
Where can I hide? For Hades' night I yearn.
No, there my father holds the dreadful urn.
He died in his fifties, an early victim of AIDS. His sister Cynthia, who was with him at the end, told me of his last grimly humorous mood. "Plenty of people regard this terrible disease as God's punishment of the wicked," he murmured to her. "Of course, it's no such thing. It's his judgment of me."
He finally recognized that his was a very special case. He was too intelligent not to. He saw that he had seen himself as the victim of a Calvinist god. Perhaps that was all that a Calvinist god was good for.
Lady Kate
I DON'T KNOW whether or not it's a national mood of nostalgia, brought on by this seemingly endless economic depression that started on that fatal October day of 1929ânow four years backâbut my friend at the corner bookstore on Madison Avenue, who claims to
What kept him there, when his analysis was finished, was the Korean youth he met at a Village party and with whom he became deeply involved. It was indeed the love affair of his life. He finally induced Hai Kwan to move into his brownstone, though he took care to set him up in a separate garden apartment so he would look like an ordinary tenant. He would gladly have taken him to Italy and lodged them both in a Venetian palazzo, but Kwan loved New York, where all his friends were, and Marvin at last gave him a gallery of his own, where he sold, with some success, Korean art.
Marvin had always dreaded Cynthia's finding out about his love life, but when she didâand it didn't take long before the peculiar position of Kwan in his household became known to herâit was almost worse than he had thought. Her easy handling of the situation showed the amused scorn beneath her seeming tolerance. "Put him in a white coat," she advised her brother. "And then nobody'll mind."
Even so, his life might have worked out had Kwan remained faithful to him. Marvin might have been able to give their relationship, even in his censorious heart, some of the dignity of a marriage, might even have seen it achieve a kind of acceptance in his old world. But Kwan liked boys, and as Marvin visibly aged, he had no idea of confining his nights to his patron. I should make it clear that Kwan was not a bad fellow at allâI met him a couple of times when Marvin asked me to his house. But however devoted he was to Marvinâand he never left himâhe made it clear that both of them were free to form other intimacies. Their relationship became a platonic one; Kwan became Marvin's "family."
Which left Marvin to seek sexual gratification elsewhere, and he took eventually to the streets. The partners whom he found were not like their Italian counterparts; they were tougher and more mercenary and often didn't even pretend to enjoy what they were doing. As Marvin's life became more sordid, his compulsion to shield it from his old connections became even more obsessive. He was soon almost a complete recluse, and except when he appeared in art galleries or auction houses to add to his collection, he virtually disappeared from the world. His sexual preoccupation had come to encase his entire existence, as a skin cancer can cover a whole face.
The sense he must have felt of being mercilessly encircled by quixotically hostile gods who had picked him as their victim for no explicable reason may have been like the one expressed by Racine's tragic heroine in
Phèdre:
Wretch that I am, how can I live, how face
The sacred sun, great elder of my race?
My grandsire was, of all the gods, most high:
My forebears fill the world and all the sky.
Where can I hide? For Hades' night I yearn.
No, there my father holds the dreadful urn.
He died in his fifties, an early victim of AIDS. His sister Cynthia, who was with him at the end, told me of his last grimly humorous mood. "Plenty of people regard this terrible disease as God's punishment of the wicked," he murmured to her. "Of course, it's no such thing. It's his judgment of me."
He finally recognized that his was a very special case. He was too intelligent not to. He saw that he had seen himself as the victim of a Calvinist god. Perhaps that was all that a Calvinist god was good for.
Lady Kate
I DON'T KNOW whether or not it's a national mood of nostalgia, brought on by this seemingly endless economic depression that started on that fatal October day of 1929ânow four years backâbut my friend at the corner bookstore on Madison Avenue, who claims to
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