Guy thought of the Greek word <i>agon</i>, wasn’t it at once an athletic contest and a style of suffering, an agony? - Edmund White

Although Guy was thirty-five he was still working as a model, and certain of his more ironic and cultured friends called him, as the dying Proust had been called by Colette, ‘our young man.

You’re universally liked because you’re such a black hole in space. You don’t have any real traits. You’re sympa, at least as much as a narcissist can be, but that means nothing. You’re beautiful and everybody projects onto you what they’re looking for, which is easy to do since you don’t stand for anything definite. You’re a black hole in space.

He thought to himself, I’ll never be this perfect again, an idea that made him sad.