Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel by Peter Cameron Read Free Book Online Page A

saw me he got up and went into his office, closing his door. I knew my mother had arrived because the temperature had dropped about twenty degrees. Among my mother’s many interesting but misguided notions was the idea that keeping the gallery chilled like a meat locker would be good for business. This idea was the result of taking seriously an article she had read in the Style section of the Times , which maintained that, based upon a recent survey of the temperature of various emporia in New York City, a venue’s exclusivity was in direct inverse proportion to its temperature: Bergdorf Goodman’s 63°; Kmart 75°.
    And so I put on the sweater I kept handy for such chilly times as these. I assumed my position behind the counter and looked at the computer monitor, which displayed the gallery’s home page. John always returns to this page after he’s been surfing, and I don’t think he realizes that just by pressing the BACK key I can see what sites he’s been visiting. They are usually a very interesting mix of the esoteric and the pornographic. After a few clicks I found myself at Gent4Gent.com, “where quality men find other quality men.” I clicked back one more window and found what I assumed was John’s profile, as there was a photograph of him standing on the deck of a beach house in an obscenely (yet flatteringly) tight-fitting bathing suit. His profile was titled “Black Narcissus” and read as follows: GBM, 33, 5’10”, 175. Successful, educated, cultured. Handsome, fit, hot. Looking for smart and funny men interested in sex and semantics. Likes: Paul Smith, Paul Cézanne, Paul Bowles. Dislikes: Starbucks, Star Jones, Star Wars. Up for discourse, dates, debauchery.
    This relentlessly alliterative profile was followed by a long list of favorites: book, movie, leisure activity, country, etc., etc. At the bottom was a section where one described one’s perfect partner. John’s dream man was white, 26–35 years old, had a college degree or higher, made at least $50,000/year, was between 5’7” and 6’7” and between 140 and 240 pounds, smooth (but not shaved), “gym-fit,” liked the arts, baseball, sex, tolerated cats, dogs, and birds, did not smoke but drank “socially,” and used drugs “sparingly, if at all,” practiced safe sex “always,” lived in Manhattan, was spiritual but not religious, Democratic, vegetarian, versatile, and uncut.
    Because there was nothing else to do, and because it was free to join Gent4Gent (although you had to pay for “premium services”), I created and posted a profile for John’s perfect partner. I felt a little like the guy who created Frankenstein, for the creature I devised did seem potentially monstrous: a 30-year-old hunky blond (6’, 190) who worked in the Contemporary Art Department of Sotheby’s, was half-French and half-American (I had a feeling John was a Francophile), had graduated from Stanford and done postgraduate work at the Sorbonne, had two Maine coon cats (“Peretti” and “Bugatti”), loved the Yankees and New York City Ballet, lived in Chelsea, and had an 8” uncut cock.
    About fifteen minutes later two people, a middle-aged man and woman, entered the gallery. They ignored me and walked around the garbage cans in that crablike shuffle that people use to maneuver around a gallery. They peered intently at every garbage can and spoke softly and incessantly in German. After they had examined them all, they approached the desk. They looked rich and glamorous in a Germans-visiting-galleries kind of way. The man was wearing a fawn-colored suede jacket over a brown Comme des Garcons T-shirt; the woman wore a Marimekko sundress (backward) and espadrilles. They both wore sunglasses.
    “What is the name of this artist who made the garbage?” the woman asked. I couldn’t tell if she was using the word garbage for identification purposes or judgmentally.
    “He has no name,” I said.
    “He has no name?”
    “Yes,” I said. “He has no