Best-Kept Boy in the World Read Online Free Page A

with an acquaintance.
    It was there, in New York City, that Denny first
awakened to his extraordinary powers. He experienced the surprise,
then intoxication, of having all heads turn his way whenever he
walked into Jimmie Daniels nightclub in Harlem, one of his favorite
haunts. Walking along a city street, people stopped and stared.
Wherever he went, everyone was gazing at him, watching him,
listening to whatever he said, flattering him, fussing over him,
following him, doting on him. Even though he had achieved nothing,
he commanded every room he entered. Everyone seemed flustered when
first introduced to him and looked at him with an intensity both
frightening and affirming. And after those first long looks he
would begin receiving invitations to bars, to dinners, to Broadway
shows, to opening night parties, personal tours of museums,
weekends at vacation homes, trips to Europe. Wherever he was taken,
he was always treated. A heady experience for a teenager from the
sticks who had known only rejection, of being expelled from school,
thrown out by his family, who had the most menial job, no higher
education, no family connections. Suddenly, artists, musicians,
actors, producers, executives, diplomats, royalty, were his
friends. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, for nothing he had done
or said, he was the center of attention, center stage. And loving
it.
    Perhaps everyone is born with some certain gift. It
may be the ability to pitch a ball, to carry a tune, it may be a
feel for numbers, a gift of persuasion. Some may sense early on,
intuitively, what their gift is, others may spend a lifetime trying
to find it. Denny was bright enough to begin putting the pieces
together: he realized he was blessed with a special magnetism, that
his appearance drew people to him so that they enjoyed talking with
him and being with him and buying him whatever he wanted.
    How could he capitalize on this unique gift? How
could he cooperate in whatever fantasy people saw in him that gave
him such power over them? Could he become the embodiment of their
desire? Was there a way to find a wealthy patron, someone who would
worship him and see it as their mission to take care of him, and
not only take care of him, but to support him in the style he was
encountering as he moved around the highest reaches of New York
society? Denny had no interest in being a hustler. By the way so
many people were responding to his looks, to his love potion that
drew them to him, he knew instinctively that he had what it took to
be well kept. And he very quickly was becoming partial to all the
best money could buy. But how did one go about finding a proper
celebrant—benefactor?
    Through his roommate who worked in a Manhattan
bookstore, Denny met best-selling author Glenway Wescott who
frequented the shop. Thirty-three-year-old Wescott, who had
traveled widely and been part of the young generation of
expatriates living in Europe after the First World War, knew just
about every poet, writer and artist of his day, and at that time,
for winning the prestigious Harper Prize with the publication in
1927 of his novel The Grandmother , was himself as famous as
Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He projected a
worldliness and the understanding of an older friend who could look
deep into Denny’s soul and know just what he was thinking. Denny
had snagged his first celebrity and found his first mentor.
    It was the spring of 1934. Denny, Wescott
remembered, “would call on me—I was living on Murray Hill—whenever
he was hungry or felt like asking questions about how to get on in
the world, which I would answer, all purely
Socratic.” 1
    Wescott warmed to the topic and this Socratic
dialogue went on for a number of sessions.
    “Now, Glenway,” Denny would say in his deep
seductive Southern drawl, “you know everything. I want you to tell
me: how does one manage to get kept?”
    Wescott found his naiveté amusing. He laughed.
    “To begin with,” he explained to