"Wait a minute, wait a minute." I hold my hands up in front of me. "If you think for one second I'd share Chloe-Chloe Byrnes-with that pipsqueak... oh baby, spare me."

"Who said you're sharing anybody, Victor?" someone asks.

"What does that mean?"

"Who said it was your idea?" David asks. "Who said you were happy about it?"

"How can I not be happy about something that's not happening?" I glare.

"We're just telling you what's out on the street."

"What street? What street do you live on, David?"

"Uh... Ludlow."

"Uh... Ludlow," I mimic without trying.

"Victor, how can we believe you about anything?" Rick asks. "You say you weren't at the CK show, but there you were. Now you say you're not involved in a heavy menage with Baxter and Chloe, yet word around town-"

"What else have you f**king heard?" I snap, waving a light meter out of my face. "I dare you, come on, I dare you."

"That you're f**king Alison Poole?" David shrugs.

I just stare for a couple seconds. "Enough, enough. I'm not seeing Alison Poole."

"The straight face is impressive, dude."

"I'm gonna ignore that because I don't fight with girls," I tell David. "Besides, that's a dangerous rumor for you to spread. Dangerous for her. Dangerous for me. Dangerous for-"

"Just go with it, Victor," David sighs. "Like I really even care."

"You'll be folding twenty-dollar sweaters at the Gap soon enough anyway," I mutter.

"My little minnows," Didier calls out. "It's time."

"Say, shouldn't David have like some beach moss or some kind of sand covering his face?"

"Okay, Victor," Didier calls out from behind the camera. "I'm looking at you like you're naked, baby."

"Didier?" one of the twins says. "I am naked."

"I'm looking at you like you're naked, Victor, and you love it." A longish pause while Didier studies the twin, then he decides something. "Make me chase you."

"Uh, Didier?" I call out. "I'm Victor."

"Dance around and yell `pussy.'"

"Pussy," we all mumble.

"Louder!" Didier shouts.

"Pussy!"

"Louder!"

"Pussy!"

"Fantastic yet not so good."

Speedos after Bermudas, baseball caps are positioned backward, lollipops are handed out, Urge Overkill is played, Didier hides the Polaroid, then sells it to the highest bidder lurking in the shadows, who writes a check for it with a quill pen. One of the boys has an anxiety attack and another drinks too much Taittinger and admits he's from Appalachia, which causes someone to call out for a Klonopin. Didier insist we cup our balls and finally incorporates the camera crew from "Fashion File" into the photo shoot and then everyone except me and the guy who fainted go off for an early lunch at a new spot in SoHo called Regulation.

23

Moving fast through autumn light up the stairs toward the offices at the top of the club, Rollerblades slung over my shoulder, a camera crew on the third floor from (unfortunately) VH 1 interviewing power-florist Robert Isabell and the way everyone dresses makes you realize that lime and Campbell's-soup orange are the most conspicuous new colors of the season and ultra-lounge music from the band I, Swinger floats around through the air like confetti saying "it's spring" and "time to come dancing" and violets and tulips and dandelions are everywhere and the whole enterprise is shaping up into everything one wants: cool without trying. In the office photos of pecs and tanned abs and thighs and bone-white butts are plastered over an entire wall along with an occasional face-everyone from Joel West to Hurley Thompson to Marky Mark to Justin Lazard to Kirk Cameron (for god's sake) to Freedom Williams to body parts that could or could not be mine-here in JD and Beau's inner sanctum, and though it seems like I'm tearing down Joey Lawrence 8 x 10s on a daily basis, they're always replaced, all the guys so similar-looking it's getting tougher and tougher to tell them apart. Eleven publicists will work this party tonight. I bitch to Beau about croutons for seven minutes. Finally JD walks in with E-mail printouts, hundreds of faxes, nineteen requests for interviews.

"Has my agent called?" I ask.

"What do you think?" JD snorts, and then, "Agent for what?"

"Loved that piece you wrote for Young Homo, JD," I tell him, going over the newly revised 10:45 guest list.