In particular, Baldwin focuses on the relationships that Jacques and Guillaume two wealthy, older gay men have with attractive young men who need financial support. These relationships, Baldwin suggests, have very little to do with love, since both parties are primarily interested in getting what they want from each other.
For instance, David and Giovanni manipulate Jacques and Guillaume by flirting with them for money and food, while Jacques and Guillaume manipulate David and Giovanni by incentivizing this behavior in the first place.
This eventually leads Giovanni to kill Guillaume. Through this violent outcome, Baldwin shows that wielding financial and sexual power over a person often has disastrous results, and that mutually-exploitative relationships are inherently dangerous because one party inevitably has more influence than the other.
At first, the kind of relationships that David and Giovanni have with people like Jacques and Guillaume seem relatively harmless. When Giovanni first meets Guillaume in a movie theater, the older man tries to corner him into going out with him by making up a story that puts Giovanni in a vulnerable position.
This, in turn, enables him to find a job, since Guillaume hires him to work as a server in his bar. Because Giovanni and David are apparently so comfortable with using sex appeal to manipulate Guillaume and Jacques for money, it seems that the four men have a mutually-exploitative relationship.
