Best-Kept Boy in the World (3 page)

Lying down on banquette in clubs, he fell asleep on
so many occasions that he became known as “The Beautiful Sleeping
Beauty.” Michael roused him once, telling him he couldn’t do that
in a public place.

“Since you have turned my bedroom into a nightclub,”
Denny responded, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t turn your nightclub
into a bedroom.”
³⁷

From one imperious waiter who made it clear that he
was not appreciative of Denny’s style, Denny ordered “a glass of
sperm.”
³⁸

All nights ended in Denny’s bedroom. Denny kissed
Michael’s throat: “From now on, baby, my heart murmurs only for
you.”
³⁹
Michael again and again kissed “the scorpion
tattooed in his groin.”
⁴⁰
In his diary, the love-struck
teenager, so high on Denny, wrote: “Tonight the nearness of the
remotest star taught me the possibility of
everything
.”
⁴¹

Michael may have felt he was living in Eden, but it
was an Eden with at least one additional inhabitant. Each weekend,
the two were joined by Denny’s lover, Gerard, a sixteen-year-old
boy he had met on a beach in Brittany. Gerard, with “his fresh
salty skin,” as Michael described him, “damp mouth and cumulus
clouds of black curls tumbling into his wide, violet, conqueror’s
eyes,”
⁴²
Gerard who, Denny believed—and this is what
first attracted him to the teenager—had a body identical to his
own, Gerard, a fisherman’s son, adapted easily to this strange new
world, dressing up in the suits Peter had bought for Denny, which
were handmade by the tailor who worked for the Duke of Windsor,
getting high on the cocaine Denny gave him, learning to flick open
a Fabergé cigarette case with all the aplomb of a gentleman.

There were times Michael wasn’t sure if he was in
love with Denny, with Gerard, or both. One afternoon, while Denny
slept, he took Gerard swimming at the Bains de Ligny on the Seine.
When Denny learned how the two teenagers had spent the afternoon,
he exploded: “That place is for boy-whores and people who like
boy-whores,” he shouted at Michael, “and since you are both it’s no
wonder that you go there. But it’s not for Gerard, who is so
innocent!”
⁴³

Peter returned to Paris in November to check on
Denny and found that nothing had changed at 44 Rue du Bac while he
was away, and now, for the first time, the landlord was pressing
him to get Denny out of the apartment; the other residents of the
building were complaining about him—the late night noise from the
apartment, the obvious use of drugs, teenage boys who came and went
at all hours. Peter ran away from the problem, going to New York
City for the winter, hoping the landlord would put pressure on
Denny and force him out of the apartment, saving him from the
confrontation he dreaded.

Gerard was not the only crack in Michael’s Eden. One
evening, Michael entertained Jean Connolly, Cyril’s wife, taking
her to some of the clubs, finding her to be, as did Denny,
“wonderful company, especially during the first stops on our
endlessly exploitative club crawls,”
⁴⁴
and then
returning to 44 Rue du Bac at dawn so that she could visit with
Denny. There they found Denny lying naked on the bathroom floor, “a
hypodermic syringe hanging from his bleeding arm like a picador’s
dart from a bull’s neck.”
⁴⁵
This was the first time
Michael realized that his idol was using heroin. Afraid to summon
help, Michael and Jean, quite drunk themselves, began pouring
glasses of cold water over Denny, who at last came to, none the
worse for wear. He dressed and shared a drink with them before she
left.

Now even Denny seemed to realize that his life and
drug habit were out of control. What was it all about? Who was he?
How had this life ever happened? As the object of others’ desire,
he was an image, a fantasy that wasn’t him but merely a reflection,
someone they thought they saw. To others, he was everything. To
him, they hardly existed. They wanted him, they wanted to be with
him, they wanted to be him. Why, he wondered. Why? Why would anyone
want to be me? What was it that made him so desirable? What they
thought they saw today, would they still see tomorrow? The next
day? Would he still embody their dreams next week? Although he
looked like one, he knew he wasn’t a god. Exactly what was it
others were seeing? Had he become the reflection or was he still
himself? Who was that?

“HOW DOES ONE MANAGE TO GET KEPT?”

How had it all begun?

There are just two glimpses of Denny’s childhood
growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, but both especially
revealing.

Deeply moved by an article he had read in
Time
magazine about a German film director who had killed
two horses to capture their death on film, Denny wrote a letter to
Time
which appeared in the June 21, 1926 issue:

Sirs:

I am but twelve years old, but I always have, and
always will, detest any being (or fiend, as Subscriber Marlborough
put the German, Schwarz) who would for the sake of anything, make
life miserable for any dumb beast or animal. When I read the
article on “Horses” [TIME, May 31, GERMANY] where the German moving
picture producer, Schwarz, sprung a trap under two horses to make
them tumble down the cliff onto the rocks below for the sake of
making moving pictures of their agony, I felt as one would if
someone would suddenly tell you that a certain man had tortured
every baby in the world to his death. I felt like writing to TIME
and telling to TIME how I felt, but I said to myself “TIME has no
place for little boys” and I dropped the subject, but when I read
the letter of Karl Busch [TIME, June 7, LETTERS] [Busch had opined
in his letter that Americans seemed “unable to appreciate the
artistic honesty of director Schwarz”] I could not restrain. I say
“Let Busch have his own opinion, everyone has, but it is my opinion
that not many will agree with Mr. Busch.

DENHAM FOUTS

Jacksonville, Fla.

For a twelve-year-old boy to be reading
Time
in 1926 was remarkable enough; for that twelve year old to be moved
to compose and send a letter of that maturity says so much, both
about Denny’s intelligence and about his compassion. The boy who
felt so strongly about two horses being killed for the benefit of a
film is the same man walking along a Santa Monica beach eighteen
years later in December of 1944, where happening upon a seagull
with a broken wing, he amputated the wing to make the bird more
comfortable.

The other glimpse of his boyhood is just as
revealing. Denny was raised in a family of moderate means but
imbued with the old Southern aristocratic tradition, with all that
implied about adherence to custom, traditions, conservative
thought. Denny’s paternal grandfather was vice president of a
railroad, his maternal grandfather founded the Atlantic National
Bank and the Timuquana County Club. Denny’s father, Edwin Louis
Fouts, graduated from Yale in 1910, worked in his father-in-law’s
bank in Boca Grande, then moved the family to Jacksonville where he
was employed at the Florida Broom Company and later started Fouts
Manufacturing, an asbestos awning business, but never quite
measuring up to his father’s high expectations for him.

Denny’s love of thumbing his nose at tradition, of
doing whatever he pleased, surfaced in his teenage years. An essay
he wrote for his school newspaper, a strident defense of socialism,
may well have been the least of the infractions which got this
teenager—who had “screwed my beautiful brother” outdoors under the
stars—expelled from high school. This was not the sort of son
parents would want to have around their daughter, Ellen, a year
younger than Denny, and their son, Frederic, four years younger
than Denny, if alternatives were available. Denny’s father asked
his uncle, who was president of Safeway Supermarket Stores, to find
a job for his wayward son in Washington, D.C.

Not much more was happening in Washington in 1933
for an intelligent, restless, hormonally supercharged nineteen year
old than in Jacksonville, and after a few months Denny had made his
way to Manhattan, found a job in those bleak Depression days as a
General Foods stock boy bagging groceries and wrapping packages,
and shared a small apartment 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 his attentive
student, “you must never use that word—‘kept.’ Think of something
you want to do that takes money to learn. Then ask someone for help
and guidance. You’ll get much more money that way than by coming at
it straight on.”
²

Denny was a quick study. He was perfecting the art
of opening doors with his looks, and, with his charm and
intelligence, was mingling easily with the city’s upper crust. It
wasn’t long before the handsome, suddenly sophisticated twenty year
old from a middle-class background in Jacksonville was accompanying
a German baron to Europe.

Denny still had much to learn. In Berlin, he and the
baron fought, Denny packed and started hitchhiking to Venice. On
his way, the chauffeured limousine of an old Greek shipping magnate
pulled over, picked him up, and headed on to Venice where they
boarded the tycoon’s yacht. Again Denny hadn’t yet mastered all the
rules of engagement and fell in love with one of the sailors on the
yacht. After the two of them stole as much money as they could,
several thousand dollars, they jumped ship and took a suite at the
Quisisana Hotel on Capri. The sailor left when the money ran out,
while Denny continued each evening to dress for dinner in his new
formal wear, hoping to be seen. When at last it became apparent
that he could not pay his bills at the Quisisana, the police were
summoned and Denny was escorted through the lobby.

It was at that very moment that Evan Morgan, the
last Lord Tredegar, walking through the lobby with his wife,
trailed by a retinue of retainers, spotted Denny and commanded the
authorities: “Unhand that handsome youth, he is
mine.”
³