March 31, 2013 |
Julian makes a lucrative living as a high-class escort to older women in the Los Angeles area. He lures them in with his immaculate style. His Giorgio Armani tailoring. His Giorgio Armani sunglasses, which he never takes off. They add an air of mystery to him. Draw his unsuspecting admirers to him like moths to a flame. Every lady who has ever invited him to cross their threshold has believed that she is the chosen one. Special. The one who will get him to remove the fine, handcrafted tortoiseshell frames from his face. Hell, they even place bets on it in the hotel lobby. And each devotee of his mesmerising beauty has been wrong. No one will ever find out the true colour of his eyes. They speculate, jeez, they’ve even written about them in Paris Match – blue, brown, green, or a pool of turquoise with a speck of brown in the left eye, because that would really suit the colour of his hair and go so well with his tan? – but no one knows. They can see his stare is piercing. They can feel his eyes follow them across a room, hold their gaze as they talk, but they cannot make out the only thing they want to know. Really, though, it’s the lenses that lead to the speculation: they graduate in hue, from a murky aubergine to a pale grey, so depending on the light, his eyes can be whatever you want them to be. And that’s where his appeal lies. They all understand that they can never have him. Like Black Beauty he’ll never let himself be tamed. But still they hope. They all believe that only they have seen his true self through the graduated lens of his Armani sunglasses, but they haven’t. That’s just the light playing tricks on their eyes. Those lenses are impenetrable. That’s the thing with fine Italian craftsmanship, the kind Mr Armani deals in. You go into the boutique, tell them what you want, in this case a rounded frame in amber tortoiseshell, complete with a graduated yet impenetrable lens, and you get it. You’re happy. Not only does it look good but you’ve a nice side business in all those bets your admirers place on what the colour of your eyes is. It really is the only reason you’ll never tell. Their hard-earned cash is paying for your Armani.
by Natalie Dembinska
