Lenny Bruce

Lost Inside My Life

Copyright © 2021 by Lenny Bruce

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

First edition

Editing by Talo Segura

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Contents

1. Acknowledgement

2. 1. Marco

3. 2. Patrol Leader

4. 3. My Father

5. 4. The Journey

6. 5. Paoletto

7. 6. Return

8. 7. Days

9. 8. The Journey of Life

10. Epilogue

Acknowledgement

Translated from the original Italian by Lenny Bruce, revised by Talo Segura.

Thanks to Talo Segura for showing me how little I knew about English.

1

Marco

Long before, before everything happened, Marco had been my Patrol Leader in the Scouts. And I was almost in love with him.

He called me one lunchtime. That time during the day for the unhappy reunion of my family, or what was left of it. Three months had passed, only three months, and an eternity of silence.

At that time of the day, my mother and I, punctual without any reason, spent a long moment together. The time necessary to swallow the food with acceptable calm. We simply acknowledged the other’s presence, but rarely looked into each other’s eyes. It was far easier to concentrate on listening carefully to the noise the cutlery made against the plates, while the chewed food went down, where it would be digested.

A sentence, a few words, would have broken that vow of silence which we had never made, and the deafening noise would no longer have stunned us. But neither I, nor she, both still intensely upset, intimidated by what had happened, said anything other than the words strictly necessary to avert any rudeness.

That day, it was the phone that made a noise, a loud clangor.

I whispered something and got up. Trying to tiptoe, afraid of making a noise, touching the walls, the furniture, anything.

Then I listened to Marco, the sound of his voice, serene, cheerful, comforting.

“Come and see me,” he said, “I need to talk to you. Come to the Section, tonight…”

The Section was how everyone, since forever, had called the Scout Troop’s place.

“Are you still in the Scouts?” I asked him, smiling, as if he could see me.

I liked listening to him. Usually his voice calmed me down and helped me detach myself from my thoughts. I knew only too well that he still wore the Scout uniform, the shorts, badges, the foulard. He would never leave the Association, but I asked him anyway. Because I liked the sound of his voice.

“Don’t be silly, you know very well I’m still in the Scouts. And you also know that this year I’m Scoutmaster. I told you. Remember? Don’t get smart with me!” his voice told me he too was smiling.

“I wouldn’t!” I said, knowing he was joking and struggling to grin.

He was teasing, and I was trying to maintain a composed tone to my voice. My face, on the other hand, remained frozen for a long time, unable to contract the muscles that had just made me smile. A lost habit. I had almost forgotten how to smile.

“Listen…I am calling you because tonight I would like to…” he hesitated. Then he corrected himself, “that is…I would like you to come to the Troop meeting. Tonight! At seven o’clock, as always. Tonight! Remember? Can you do this for me? We’re always there. Will you come? Please!” He was suddenly agitated, which for Marco was not normal.

“Marco, why do you want me to come… and tonight? Why should I, Marco? Try telling me, please!”

“Because I need to talk to you!”

I was suspicious. Perhaps he wanted to ask a favor. Whatever it was, it was definitely something I couldn’t do. I could not go back there. I hoped he would explain himself, then and there, over the phone. I waited, desperate, because what he was asking me was too difficult for me to do.

“I need to talk to you… in person!” he insisted. “I have something to propose. Will you come? Please?”

Was he begging me?

“Marco, you haven’t called me in ages.” I was trying to defend myself, more alarmed than annoyed. “I haven’t heard from you for months. And you want me to meet you. At the Section. Where I haven’t set foot, in three years. In fact, it’s been three years since I’ve been anywhere near there! Perhaps you also remember why I don’t go there anymore? You know why, Marco. You should know! And tonight, you want me to come there just because you have to talk to me? What have you got to tell me? Tell me now! Come on!”

It was the tension that made me rude. I was in trouble. The emotion, the idea of going back to those places, it took my breath away.

“I need your help,” he finally said. “And if I ask you, it’s because you’re the only one who can do me this favor. Will you come?”

His voice, far from being tense, had become even sweeter. Evoking in me other times and another happiness. That tone brought me back to my adolescence, which was not so far away and yet it was over, completely over, buried under piles of life and bad experiences.

“Maybe!” I said. I hung up nervously, without adding anything else, or listening to the quiet thanks. Polite, as he was, Marco had certainly murmured that word, even into the mute handset.

Quiet and polite, that was his way of imposing himself. I had that thought for the thousandth time in my life. And I did not say goodbye to him, nor did I tell him how much I missed them all, how happy and excited and scared I was to go back there.

Why didn’t I refuse? Why go? Why not stay away? Perhaps, because for one evening I had the chance to think about something other than books and exams, or the silences. The melancholy with which my mother and I populated our days. It wouldn’t hurt me. There was little time left until school finished. When my teachers would ask me to show the fruit of my work. My attention was focused exclusively on my examinations, on what I would write and say on those occasions, to be evaluated and judged. Written and oral exams. I had to show something of myself that was not my real thoughts if I wanted to get top marks. And I was obliged to do so.

Then, after that moment, beyond the finish line, there would be nothing left.

***

In those months of my life, there had been nothing but damned exams. When I didn’t fantasize about the tests that awaited me, a sort of fatal appointment, it was the image of my mother which occupied my mind. Her slow fading grief worried me. Or I thought about my father, how he was before, and then at the end, when I had looked at him for the last time, when he was alive. Because as a dead man, he was no longer here. He was only a bag of skin stretched over bones. His bones were the only part of his body that the disease had not ravaged or wilted.

That evening I decided to go to Marco’s, because maybe, I thought, it wouldn’t hurt me to get distracted. As long as I didn’t regret it because I hadn’t forgotten everything that had happened. It was one of the things I could not afford to ignore, along with many more serious things. First, it meant meeting certain people, a different sort of person, the companions of some of my many trips.

Up to that time of my life, I had done many trips, but those were all ‘induced’ trips. Only two had been important to me. True, physical. The first, in the summer two years before, when I had visited Amsterdam. The other, the following summer, when I went to London.

All those other trips were nothing but an escape from reality. The product of drugs of various kinds capable of altering my psychophysical balance, as my father would have said, pushing me to uncontrolled reactions.

My father was a heart surgeon.

For the last year and a half, I was absolutely forbidden to meet those persons who had passed me my first joints and then introduced me to LSD and other substances. I was also prevented from seeing the person who had held my arm, while someone, whose name I had tried to forget, injected my first and last dose of heroin.

That was a particular prohibition because it was irrevocable and absolute. Stated by my father. And he was dead.

That veto could never be set aside as might have happened, but not now that my father was dead. It had instead a value which fixed it as irrevocable for me and would have been sacred, if I believed in something that could make it so. But I didn’t believe in anything, not anymore.

However, in those very days, looking at the commitment with which I was studying, at my fury, at my anger, I understood how those efforts were the childish attempt to deceive an already predefined destiny.

With my high school graduation (#1), my nightmares, the real ones, would have reached me and I would have not been able to escape them. On that summer morning, which I hoped would arrive as soon as possible, I would have said goodbye to my examiners. I would have been free from the thought of exams. And the diversion granted by the study would have been over and I would have returned prisoner of my obsessions.

***

Marco and I had continued to see each other, even after I left the Scouts three years ago. We would meet up, although it would be more accurate to say it was he who was always the one looking for me, and I let him find me. Occasionally, it was the other way around, and I was the one who wanted to see him. Mostly, I agreed to see him, because when we met, Marco did not ask me any questions, nor did I have to talk to him about myself. It was as though our meetings took place in a faraway place and to get there I had to deprive myself of those other experiences, the ones I would not tell him about. Everything was so sad. At those times I felt more sad than usual, but also happy in a melancholic way, because Marco was there and talking to me.

In the places we chose for our appointments, the noise of the world outside arrived filtered through the discretion with which that boy knew how to conceal his every action. I think it was me who wanted us not to talk about us, because if I had allowed him to, he would certainly have told me about himself. I thought I didn’t care to know about him, or I was afraid he might tell me things I wouldn’t want to know. What was important, however, was not having to tell him about me. He sensed those things, he knew, reading them in my face. We always talked of other things.

Anyway, we were still close enough for him to contact me and ask me to visit him. Whatever was going on in his head it would be good for me at least to hear what it was.

That day, the odd thing which frightened me and made me nervous, being almost rude to him, was that he wanted to meet at the Section. And he knew I wouldn’t like that. Not that we had ever talked about it, but it was one of those things two friends don’t need to tell each other, in order that one would know about the other.

Despite everything I would still go there.

I would probably see some friendly faces again, but certainly also someone I didn’t really want to see again. It was dangerous for my balance, but I decided, for that evening I would risk it. It was crazy, but the decision was induced by the emptiness my life held in those months, and in the last few years.

When you have nothing at all in your heart, I thought, you don’t risk losing it.

I was wrong and what was worse, having decided to go, I knew exactly how wrong I was.

***

I arrived at the Section at seven o’clock, the time every night the boys met up. The Scouts’ headquarters was in a wide, side street, which was quiet enough for them to play football without having to worry about cars.

Inside was a long, spacious room, the tall, vaulted walls forming large arches, each painted a different color. The colors matched the different Patrols, and on the walls hung various objects, real trophies to inspire the imagination of the kids. When I too was a boy.

I stopped at the door, inside there was the usual animation. I trembled with emotion, closed my eyes, and breathed in the unmistakable smell of that room. A mixture of paint, dampness, leather, waterproofing liquid for the tents, grease for the boots, and the odor of the boys. A perfume that I once had, then inevitably lost, along with many other things.

Marco came to meet me at the door. He was genuinely happy.

“You really came. I didn’t think I would convince you so easily. But that’s good, because otherwise I would have continued haunting you with my phone calls!”

What could I say to him? That, that night, I was going to rehearse my suicide.

“Do you have plans for the summer?” he asked me immediately, without preamble, smiling, as always. “I mean for after your exams. Before you go to your grandparents, you know?”

He never talked a lot, but always with the same warm and flat, comfortable voice. For me it had always been reassuring. I had almost forgotten his tone and listening to it once more made me inexplicably happy. He had also remembered my grandparents, in Vienna. He thought my mother and I would return there. My mother and I, a vacation, as if nothing had happened.

Then it struck me, that my life didn’t have to end that evening, or that month, but I had a chance to continue. Maybe? So, I set my intentions aside and decided to contemplate my possible suicide another time. Maybe later in the summer. First, I would listen to what Marco wanted to ask me.

“I haven’t thought about it yet,” I answered, while distractedly watching the boys move and jump the same way I had done three years earlier. “I don’t know yet the date of the oral exam. Who knows how it’s going to turn out?”

“Coming from you, it doesn’t make sense,” he said, laughing. Not even considering that kind of excuse. “I’m sure you’ll get top marks. Listen…” he took my hands and squeezed them, as if to give more strength to his proposal. “I just wanted to ask you if you would like to come with us to camp!”

So, this was his request. And it was a challenge. I should have expected such a demand. Actually, there were a few things he could have asked me to do, but this was the riskiest one for me and, in a way, also for him, because he was in charge of the Scout Troop.

“No way…” I began turning away, trying to leave the place.

“Wait, I need help…please!” he said, and I stopped in my tracks. “We need help…there will certainly be only two of us, instead of three and we are looking for someone who can take care of the practical things. Only what Tonio and I will not be able to deal with. Do you remember Tonio? Now he is the Assistant Scoutmaster.”

“Yes!” I said at once, “I remember him…”

Tonio was one of those people I had almost forgotten, and without regret. I had no good or bad reason to remember him. I needed to try hard to recall what he looked like, but once I caught a glimpse of him at the back of the large room, I recognized him.

So, this is what Marco wanted.

His request surprised me. I found it difficult to agree to. In our sporadic encounters he never talked about anything like this. Now, I was reading in his eyes and in his heart that he wanted, hoped, it was time for me to come back from my protracted journey without end.

He wanted me with him in the Scouts. If it was a dream for him, and it certainly was, that desire was just as unreachable as it was inviting. He had always hoped to persuade me to return to normality, to his idea of balance. And therefore, the Scouts indeed represented normality. Now that I was, in a sense, more presentable, respectable again, no longer looking after my father who had died, Marco could conclude the difficult task he had attributed to himself.

But it wasn’t only that, it would have been unfair to think so. He genuinely cared about me. I had suffered and still suffered, he knew it and wanted to help me, but this wasn’t the medicine I needed. Not at all. And Marco did not imagine what that was, that I was sure of. If he had known, he certainly would never have called me.

To avoid paying attention to all the thoughts that were bouncing around in my brain, I imagined myself at the camp. It would be a terrible mess, tiring and dirty. It would also be risky, because I would have a lot of guys around me and that was another one of the topics I didn’t want to think about.

It wasn’t difficult to realize that camping was not for me. The person I was, who I had become, was no longer appropriate for a Scout Camp. Not at all.

I was painstakingly trying to figure out how to reject Marco’s proposal without offending him. Then, just as I was about to tell him, I saw this boy through the door. I recognized him immediately, he was not someone you would forget.

It was for him that I was there.

Had he not appeared at that moment, I would have gone back to my sadness and let myself be overwhelmed by it.

Paoletto was standing in the doorway.

So, instead of thanking Marco for considering me and begging him to excuse me because I could not accept his proposal, I replied in the opposite way to how I had intended. I spoke with an enthusiasm that was absolutely unknown to me. My brain stopped working and my heart expressed itself. It screamed, with all the strength it had, for fear that its voice would not be heard.

“Do you really want me to come to the camp?” My poor heart said, “Do you honestly think I can come back with you again?” I heard myself say. While my brain felt horrified and was helpless.

Marco looked at me intrigued because I was repeating his own words.

“That’s just what I’m asking you!” he said, still looking at me rather oddly.

“I will come wherever you want, do whatever you want.” My heart was speaking for me, leaving my brain in shock.

“Ok!” Now Marco was speechless.

“But there are some things…” I told him. “I no longer think like all of you. You know what I mean,” I was regaining a little control of my words, trying to make my head start thinking.

“It’s not a problem,” he concluded. “I’m just asking for your practical help. You’ll have to be a sort of Quartermaster and if you don’t want to do certain things, no one will care. In short, if you don’t come to Mass, no one will worry about your soul. Anyway, I think a camp would do you good!”

He said this and left, before I could think it over, leaving me in the middle of the room, a bit dazed. Then I felt myself grasped from behind, hugged, squeezed, held with warmth and true affection.

It was Paoletto.

“What are you doing here?” he cried. “Have you come to sign up again?”

We hadn’t spoken for so long, since he was still a child and I was pretending to be a man. Now he was a grown boy, as tall as me, and I knew that I loved him. I had always loved him. I had never stopped loving him, not for a moment.

I ran these thoughts through my head and wondered if I shouldn’t run away. But I couldn’t. He was there, holding me tight, and I loved him. The emotion made me catch my breath. But I couldn’t do anything about it. That was just how it was. The way it was meant to be.

“He can be the new Assistant Scoutmaster,” Marco shouted from afar, seeing us together, “and maybe he will come to camp with us. He hasn’t decided yet. Try to convince him, please, Paoletto!”

“Really?” asked Paoletto, with the same sweet voice. That voice I had forgotten. Then he hugged me again, more tightly, if that was possible. He murmured in my ear “I’m happy! You, asshole… I’m happy. You will come? Won’t you? Please…”

He didn’t wait for me to reply but slipped away to the corner owned by the Panthers’ Patrol. I didn’t know, not for sure, but he was their leader. Before he let me go he squeezed me tight and shook his head.

I had said nothing, not even daring a breath. Suddenly I gulped in air. I should have left. I wish I could have. If I had disappeared, they probably wouldn’t have bothered looking for me. Marco would simply have thought the Scout camp was not for me anymore. And Paoletto, once again, he would have wondered what had happened and then he would have forgotten me, maybe never giving me another thought.

Instead, I stayed rooted to the spot, listening as Marco was trying to explain more about my job at the camp. All the time I was thinking about Paoletto. Who he had become now, after three years.

Although in the past I was particularly good at denying reality to myself, that evening I had no difficulty in admitting the truth. My conscience and me. We knew perfectly well I had gone to the Section to see Paoletto again, knowing I would find him there.

And when he noticed my presence, he ran to greet me. He had held me, and his embrace was full of affection. No resentment, nor the contempt that I should have deserved.

I stayed at the Section and attended the meeting, at once and somewhat courageously ignoring all the reasons why I had abandoned the Scouts only three years earlier. My so called ideological problems had evidently never been important, they disappeared. As did my incompatibility with religion, which was the best garment I had dressed myself up in.

That evening I was almost able to forget the real reasons behind my escape. When the boys gathered for prayers at the end of the meeting I did not burst out laughing or crying, as I had feared. I mechanically made the sign of the cross and almost prayed. A thing which came to remind me of my father, the way he was before everything that had happened to us. And then all the words of the prayers came back to me, all of them. The words that I had been trying to forget for three years came to mind, like I only recited them yesterday.

While gathered there in a circle, as was the Scouts’ custom, first talking, then praying, Paoletto looked at me and I looked at him. We smiled and then laughed openly, one to the other, and that was bliss for me. I felt that my soul was healing, or at least it was the beginning of the process.

When the meeting drew to an end, all my courage deserted me. I ran off, to avoid having to give answers I wasn’t prepared to explain. But, I would go to the camp, I was happy to go, even if it meant doing things contrary to my way of thinking, if I still thought that was true.

As I arrived home, rather than being disturbed and worried about what I had done, I felt soothed by the events. Something which my mother became aware of, which prompted her to ask why I was so happy. She would not often speak, it was a rare occasion when she would emerge from her self-imposed isolation, where she had shut herself away, cut off from everyone. I tried communicating to her a part of the serenity which I thought I had found that evening. Reassured that I had not renewed any old and dangerous past friendships, she did what she always did, and recoiled, withdrawing back to her hiding place.

The following night I went to the Scouts again, so as to be with Paoletto. It was as if those three years had not passed by it was like it was only yesterday, and I buried my head in the hard work of preparations. I was happy to have my thoughts occupied with different matters. These new tasks appeased me, and I could see Paoletto every evening, enjoy his affection and sincerity. I never thought about being the one who betrayed him.

For years I had tried to get to grips with the inherent dangers which might be hidden within any new friendship. Reuniting with Paoletto and the others was like a miracle medicine, it’s effects spilt over into my studies releasing the hitherto need to be buried within books.

My exams went very well, and I received top marks, as everyone expected. The day the results were known, we left for camp. It was in the Alps somewhere, a place with a French sounding name.

***

I was fifteen years and three months old when I left the Scouts, it was in August, after my fifth camp. At seven I had joined the Cubs and stayed until I was ten, when I moved up to the Scouts, and found Marco. He was two years older than me, and I liked him straight off. Partly because we were in the same Patrol, we lived in the same area, and our families knew each other. Years before, it was his mother who convinced mine that I should join the Cubs.

Marco was a quiet boy. As children we had often played together. I was an only child, as was he. I was always looking for a playmate, and although older, he had always been available and happy to share his time and his toys with me.

When I was much younger, I had this big teddy bear. It was made of an extraordinarily soft material and its eyes, and the expression on its face, just begged to be hugged. Which I did all the time. For a while, we were inseparable. I understand now how that teddy was a substitute for the little dog that my parents never wanted to give me, or even a kitten to pet, from fear of catching some disease, or perhaps the trouble of looking after it.

That sort of infatuation lasted only a few months, until my mother decreed that Pilù was too dirty for me to take him to bed with me. One day she made him disappear, trying to replace him with another teddy bear that, of course, only heightened the loss, and my nostalgia for him.

After a while I forgot Pilù, but I think I remembered him when I met Marco. For me he was like Pilù, smooth and soft. Not that as a six or seven year old I could understand those things, but his hair, the way he dressed, his voice, his behavior, were absolutely free of roughness and everything about him conveyed serenity and softness to me.

When we found ourselves in the Scout Troop together, Marco was immediately very affectionate, confirming in the Scouts, in an environment with lots of older boys, the friendship that already existed between us. And I repaid him with my devotion, proud that an older boy, he was already thirteen years old, was interested in an annoying little squirt such as me.

Every evening, at a quarter to seven he would pass in front of my gate. I would already be outside waiting for him. Together we would walk and run, chatting, and joking, until we reached the Section. We did this for three years, and during this time our friendship deepened. I was also growing up and became less exasperating.

It was only natural that Marco became my confidant. I had other friends who were my peers, usually schoolmates and playmates, or those who were the same age as me in the Scouts. But Marco was the person I used to turn to when I wanted someone to explain something to me. I had no older brothers or sisters, so it was quite natural that I confided in him, sharing all my doubts.

Joining the Scouts, much more than with the Cubs, I learned to live in a world that was no longer the secluded reality of my family. It was a different world even to life at school, which had never involved me enough for me to consider it important. Instead, the Section became my cosmos, my universe, and my school of life. Marco was my master in that world, my guide through an unknown country which I had to explore and know in order to survive and grow.

Every night in that hall there was one especially important game we played, which was learning life. A game which often continued on Sundays, with excursions out of town, in some woodlands, where we had other activities and goals. And then there was summer camp, which almost took the role of a final exam. At that time none of us imagined playing a role so close to real life.

Although, after studying social studies for the first time, I imagined that we were like a small state, the Section, divided into regions or provinces, which were the Patrols. That state had a government, with leaders, the adults, the wisest. And each province, each Patrol, was ruled by the oldest of the group, or in his absence by the one that was closest to him in age. After studying medieval history, it occurred to me, that perhaps the Patrols were like fiefdoms. Small states that were constantly at war, with battles, conflicts, and confrontations, with each other. Whether a soccer match or a contest to determine who had best painted their own corner of the Section. We played that game, happy to be part of it, yet equally unaware that we were.

After two years and two camps, Marco became my Patrol Leader, something which increased, if it were possible, my devotion to him.

One evening in October, a few months before my thirteenth birthday, on the way home, I found the courage to ask him something. It was an idea that had been bouncing around in my head for too long and had upset the peaceful flow of my days.

School had recently resumed, as had the activities of the Scout Troop. This kept us very busy, yet not enough to completely forget some little things that were happening, which although I explained the changes to myself, I could not ignore them. Then two comrades of mine told me a story which highlighted all this.

They had found themselves alone in the house of one of them and had started to do things together. I had an idea about what they were going to say, and I didn’t even want to listen to it. Yet, I couldn’t run away, once I understood what it was about, I was captured, stuck in the chair listening to their story, it was too interesting to pass over.

That summer, my body had changed. Something more than the whisper of hairs which graced my face, my balls were sprouting faint curly hair. My dick took on a mind of its own, which I could neither understand nor control. All of this both intrigued and embarrassed me.

It was what those two were talking about, ignoring all the other changes, their attention was focused on conspiratorially whispering the word ‘cock’, which caused me to blush and I wanted to stop listening. To listen to them talking was more than I could cope with, that’s what I told myself, but it wasn’t true, because I didn’t move, instead captivated by their bragging.

I knew something about my physical development, but I had no practical knowledge of the matter. As my father was a doctor, the library at home was very well stocked on such a subject and I had done my research in secret from my parents. I understood and recognized what was happening to me, but the idea that I could take pleasure in these changes had not yet touched me. If I had come across any such explanation, it must have escaped me.

Those two schoolmates, on the other hand, even though they lacked my scientific knowledge, were endowed with an impudence that did not belong to me, nor would ever be mine. They had had an experience in which the existence of pleasure had been revealed to them and obviously they were boasting about it with me. Perhaps they were making up a good part of the story. I knew it, but it was all so compelling that I listened to what they were saying and convinced myself it was true.

Their words enraptured me, while they laughed roughly and described what they had done the previous afternoon at home. First, they were excited to tell each other stories about non-existent girls and conquests they had never made, then they pulled out their already hard dicks, or cocks. Then they got the idea to have a competition. They wanted to measure them to determine who had the longest. When with the ruler in hand they had established which of the two was the most gifted, the winner had demanded payment of a pledge that consisted in being able to freely touch the other.

The groping had caused such excitement that together they had ‘jizzed’, and here my understanding had faltered. Even though they had explained to me that the practical effect had been getting wet and dirty with semen.

I had listened with my mouth open and had also naively asked who had won the race. Those two were much smarter than me and invited me that very afternoon to their house of to find out for myself. Horrified, I ran off, hearing the laughter of my two uninhibited companions behind me.

I was upset, even though I knew that most of the story had been made up for my benefit, to brag about their physical maturity. And because those two just wanted me to participate in their fun. In any case, the episode had made me terribly curious to know more.

So, after a few days spent wondering if I could do it too. If it wasn’t a serious sin towards that God who, at the time, I thought was intent on spying on everyone to be able to judge them in due time. Or if it wasn’t dangerous for my health, as we kids whispered among ourselves. After nights spent in confusion, assaulted by all sorts of doubts, not least the terrifying idea of having to tell my confessor about my sinful actions. Unable to reach a solution, I decided to ask the advice of my Patrol Leader who was also my advisor and my confidant, and although I had not yet understood it, the master of my heart.

“Marco, can I ask you something?”

We were walking home, like every night, on our way back from the Section. Surely the right moment to ask him my question.

I didn’t wait for his assent but continued with the question I had meticulously prepared. But as I started, my courage faltered, though somehow I found extra strength, because by now I had to know, and Marco was the only one whom I trusted.

“Two of my schoolmates told me that… some things can be done… that… they do certain things…” I said hastily and gasping. Then I took a deep breath and finally said the word I was so scared of, “I am talking about, masturbation. What do you think? Do you think it is a bad thing? Is it a sin?” I inquired, fearfully.

He didn’t answer immediately, he kept quiet and kept walking, so much so that I was afraid I had offended him with my words. His silence bewildered me, and I was about to apologize for having annoyed him when he finally spoke. Not with his usual calm voice.

“What exactly do you know?” he asked, with a kind of trembling in those few words.

Although I was terribly embarrassed, I found the courage to speak up, and pitched in with my scientific knowledge on the subject. I called everything by its name, even though many issues were not clear to me from a practical point of view, having not yet tried anything myself, for fear of who knows what consequences.

Listening to me, I think he was blushing. I am not sure, but perhaps the frankness of my words had embarrassed him.

“It’s not a bad thing and it’s not a sin,” he said decisively, “but one shouldn’t exaggerate.”

“Exaggerate what?”

“In doing what we are talking about… I mean, you ought not to do it too often.” Before I could ask him again what on earth you had to do so sparingly, Marco must have read my mind, and helped me avoid dying of shame. “You’ve never done it, have you?”

I shook my head, almost sorry to be a problem.

“Then you don’t know how to… masturbate!”

“No! Yes! My classmates told me at school…I know a little bit!”

“And you want me to explain it better to you?”

I would like you to show me, I thought, without being able to say it. It would have been inconceivable, even though it was the thing I most desired in the world at that moment.

“Yes… only if you wish,” I murmured, at the height of embarrassment and excitement.

“Try to find yourself a quiet place,” he began. “You have to be alone, because it is better that way,” he added, disappointing my expectations. “Then make yourself comfortable.”

Despite everything, I listened, captured by his words. This was a life lesson. Not the one I would have liked, but always a precious lesson, and I don’t know how many people have received it from someone like Marco. He managed his response with balance and prudence. I would certainly have preferred direct practice, but perhaps it would have been too much to expect.

He spoke with a trembling voice. Now I know, excitement choked him, but at that moment I thought he was just embarrassed.

“Take your thing in your hand and if it isn’t hard, it will get hard right away. It gets hard, doesn’t it?”

My heart skipped a beat. I thought that was a secret. Not a deformity, as some of my schoolmates believed, but I was convinced that that aspect of my body should be hidden. It was out of bounds to anyone but me. Now I believe that singular idea was the culmination of my naivety and was the best proof of it. I blushed and nodded in discomfort. I also stopped while he kept walking.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he encouraged me. “It’s normal that it happens if you see something you like. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yes! I think so…” My throat was dry, and my tongue stuck to my palate.

What was he talking about? Something I liked? What was it I liked? Most of all, I liked him. And also, some of my schoolmates, some of the boys in the Scouts, but most of all I liked him.

“Then move your hand as you are touching yourself. You will see that you will immediately understand how to do it! Then a beautiful thing will happen to you. You will feel strange. This strong and unfortunately short feeling is called orgasm! But don’t be frightened! You’ll see, it’s beautiful!” he concluded with a cracked voice.

“I think I get it… perhaps!”

When he left me, as usual in front of my house, neither of us had the courage to look at each other. However, that evening he had said something which had granted me salvation, allowing me to grow up knowing this particular aspect of my development was nothing to be ashamed of. At least not right away, because I wasn’t ashamed of it until other things happened later.

“I do it too!” he reassured me. “And… another thing that perhaps you would like to know. I said so in confession. Only once, but that priest… turned very red.”

We laughed together.

“Then I thought, this matter was something personal, strictly personal, and I probably shouldn’t talk about it anymore with a priest. After all, they say it’s a sin. I don’t think it is, because if God has given us hands and that thing… you know… then… in short…”

And that’s where he stopped. Maybe he was telling me too much and preferred to say no more.

“So, anyway. Listen… If you want to talk about it with me, you can. Whenever you want. With you I don’t feel ashamed! And you don’t have to be ashamed either! Never! Do you understand?”

That is what he told me, and knowing someone like him, who was older than me, had the same problems and was willing to help me, consoled me greatly.

When I went inside, I tried to be alone as soon as possible. Hastily, I put into practice all Marco’s suggestions. The result amazed me. Pushing me to try again immediately to obtain the same feelings. The idea of trying a third time, I ignored, because I remembered my friend’s recommendations about moderation.

That day Marco had given me something more, in addition to our strong friendship. He had created a new complicity in our relationship, something almost physical. I started to experience a strange feeling whenever I was close to him. I began to touch him. I didn’t miss any chance I had. He too was attracted by me, but in a different and certainly more conscious way. However, we never found the courage to speak about this new dimension to our friendship. We lived it, and we were happy in our own way.

Sometimes I looked for him, only to discover that he was already staring at me. He would often caress me, touching me with his soft hands. It was a touch so different from that of my mother. The only touch I had known before. When he touched me, I felt a similar affection.

***

When those caresses, their nature masked to us, revealed themselves for what they were, everything ended. Marco never mentioned what had happened, and I placed those moments, which I had not completely understood, in the limbo of things lived or seen like a dream. They were real, only sometimes you think to yourself you only dreamed it. When finally, I understood, it was too late for me, for Marco, for everyone.

It happened the following summer during a night at camp filled with heavy rain, lightning, and thunder. We had been asleep for a couple of hours, tucked into our sleeping bags, when the thunderstorm hit. It reached a force we had never seen before, although there had been rainy days. Wind and water swept the campsite, where we had raised our pole for the flag. It was the creaking of that pole swaying in the wind, that woke me.

When you are accustomed to sleeping in a tent and have experienced an intense day of camp, you certainly do not wake up with the sound of rain beating on the rainfly, thunder rumbling, or the flash of lightning. I was there, deeply asleep like everyone else, when a sort of insistent crunching tore me from the deep sleep of tiredness. As I slowly woke up, I distinguished that sound from all the other noises. The wind driven rain, the rustling of the leaves of the birch trees that surrounded the meadow, the thunder that echoed in the valley. Finally, I isolated the noise, that even in my sleep, had attracted my attention. The creaking of the flagpole.

It was not normal, I reasoned, that it made so much noise. It had to be very windy for it to tilt so much that it had to moan like that. The insistence of the noise and the idea that it was strange and unusual woke me up completely. I decided to look outside. With some effort I pulled one arm out from my sleeping bag, knowing it would be cold to get up, a thought I dismissed. I put my hand on the floor and felt it was wet (#2). The tent was completely flooded, the water almost reaching the level of the cots we were sleeping on.

“Marco, there’s water in the tent. Marco, we’re flooded!” I shouted.

They all woke up, someone lit a flashlight, and we could see that we were easily palm deep in water.

“We can’t stay here,” Marco said, as always calm and quiet. “Come on boys, we have to leave. Get your shoes and windbreakers and sleeping bags. Don’t let them get wet. Let’s go. We have to reach the haystack.”

This was the order of our Patrol Leader. Someone was already crying, frightened. I was shivering from the cold and fear. The storm had not lessened at all and thunder was rumbling nearby.

My knowledge of natural sciences suggested something to me at the wrong time. When it would have scared me the most. And that was that if the thunder is very strong, the lightning fell very close.

This was what terrified me. Marco shook me, reminding me of my duties, amongst which was to look after those younger than me. The little ones of course were much more frightened than me and could not find their boots or windbreakers in the panic.

All things considered, we were able to get ready quite quickly. Marco was already out and even our leaders had woken up hearing our shouting. The Panther Patrol tent was the only one to have flooded. We noticed it only then, we had planted the tent in the middle of a sort of drainage channel for the water that was coming down the slope.

It was still raining hard, and the sky was lit up by lightning so frequent that the torchlight was useless. Even the thunder was almost continuous, which combined with the sound of the water, made it almost impossible to hear what we were trying to say to each other. And so, we all screamed together. Some to tell us what to do. Some trying to explain why it was taking so long to do it.

We moved towards the haystack that was in the middle of a clearing and not far from where we were camped. We had to pass underneath a group of tall, leafy trees, so dense that they were impenetrable to rain and the flashes of lightning. After a few steps, I suddenly found myself in the dark. I felt two of the little ones moving next to me, but I no longer felt the presence of Marco or the others.

There were six of us in the Patrol. Besides Marco and me, there was Tonio, the Assistant Patrol Leader, another boy of my age and then the two younger ones, one of whom was at his first camp. If, as it seemed, we were left alone, I being the oldest had the responsibility for the other two. In short, I was not allowed to cry, which I felt like doing.

I was only thirteen years old, and in a forest, in the dark, at night. There was a storm raging all around and I was deafened by the sound of thunder. I thought I had every right to cry. Terror could have overwhelmed me had I not remembered that I was a Scout. If you are a Scout and someone needs your help, you can’t cry until later. This I had been told so many times, that at that moment it seemed natural to regain my calm. I got closer to the two little ones who were trembling with fear and tried to help them.

“Guys, the haystack is in that direction.” I heard myself say with a voice that could not be mine, as calm as it was. It seemed that Marco was speaking through me. “Now, let’s try to go there quickly! Marco and the others are coming! I can hear them behind us…” That was not true, but there was no need for them to know.

And I hoped I wasn’t wrong, both on the direction we were taking and on the fact that soon I could get rid of my responsibility and vent my fear, which was taking on proportions I had never experienced before.

We had the sleeping bags with us that we were trying to keep dry. When we reached the edge of the wood and were about to leave the protection of the trees, I breathed a sigh of relief. Our shelter was no more than a hundred meters from us, in the middle of the clearing. And it had just been illuminated by the sudden flash of lightning.

“Let’s make a run for it!” I proposed, hoping that no one would fall or twist an ankle.

We ran, as if we were being chased by a pack of wolves. And those must have been our thoughts because we stopped only after climbing to the second floor of the haystack. None of us had the courage to look outside to see if the others had followed us. We sat against the back wall, bundled up as we were in our windbreakers, still clutching our sleeping bags as if they were a lifesaver.

Fortunately, Marco arrived immediately afterwards, together with the others.

“Spend the night here,” the Scoutmaster told us. He had come to make sure we were all safe. “Your tent is full of water. We can move it tomorrow.”

So, we started looking around to decide how to settle down. We had to sleep on the ground because we had not brought our cots with us. At the moment of laying out my sleeping bag, I had the unwelcome surprise of finding it soaking wet. It must have happened when I got up, unaware that our tent was flooded. It was unusable, even as a blanket.

That was when Marco said I could sleep with him, in his sleeping bag. I immediately accepted and after a few comments and jokes from the others about it being a small double bed, we slipped in together. We tried to coordinate our movements so as not to suffocate, since Marco was already big enough at fifteen and I was not small for my age.

The excitement of the adventure calmed down as soon as Marco turned off his flashlight. Almost everyone plunged into the sleep of tiredness and relief from the fear we had experienced. Marco and I, on the other hand, did not fall asleep.

We had lived our friendship a little bit exclusively in an always open way within the Scout Troop. There had been jokes about the fact that we always arrived together and that every night we went home at the same time. Sometimes the others would say we were engaged, but no one had ever gone beyond a few jokes, nor would there be any reason to. No one could have thought otherwise, not in those years, not among us at our age.

This was the first and only time that something different happened. Something beautiful, scary, and extraordinary occurred, but none of the others noticed it.

Maybe I would have been more comfortable if I had slept with one of the youngsters. Marco though, had wanted me with him. I was thinking about that while trying to fall asleep and that definitely stopped me sleeping.

“Pass an arm under me. As if you’re hugging me,” he whispered in my ear.

Instead of following his instruction, even if that would have been a good position to fit together inside that sack which was damn tight. I asked him, “Do you want me to hug you?”

“Yes!” was his immediate, whispered answer.

And he held me tight. He did it in a way that seemed strange to me. Not as if he were trying to settle in, but more to adhere to me. This didn’t frighten me, rather I felt a sense of happiness when I found myself in this position. My heart felt like it had accelerated its beating. I also felt Marco’s emotion.

Our cheeks touched each other, then he moved his head back to look at me. We couldn’t talk or see each other. We had only the simple language of our bodies and tactile perception. Perhaps, if we could have explained ourselves in words, or seen each other’s faces, nothing would have happened. Instead, the darkness was total and the only noise we heard, other than the rain and thunder, now further away, was our breathing. It was cold, and being so close, was not unpleasant.

I lay my head in the hollow of his neck and grazed him with my lips. It wasn’t a kiss. I wouldn’t know how to do that. I was seeking more intimacy. The smell of his skin was intoxicating. And Marco responded. He caressed my shoulder and slid his trembling hands along my body. We were wearing the tracksuits we used at the camp as pajamas. My curiosity was stronger than my shyness or modesty. We were pressed tightly together, and I felt him hard against my belly, it seemed too big to be what I knew.

Gathering my boldness, I sought for it with my hand. Marco moved a little. I didn’t know if it was to move away or to leave me space. I can’t say, I never understood it. I never asked him. But we were both excited. I caressed him. Encouraged by my movements, he also touched me.

He took the initiative. He managed to slide down my tracksuit bottom and briefs. He slipped out of his own clothes and we were skin to skin, the heat I felt against me was fatal. I could no longer control myself, I was enjoying it so much. A moan escaped me, and Marco kissed me on the lips to shut me up. As he continued squeezing and kissing me, I felt him moving against me. Then I felt him jerk and a wetness on my belly and he calmed down. We were kissing, and it was a real kiss, the first one of my life.

A flash of lightning momentarily lit the sky, another storm was approaching.

A few years later, I studied a poet who described a night of storms and love. Something similar had happened to us and it was all cloaked in innocence. In me embracing him and in Marco touching me there was affection, friendship, and an infinite sweetness, until sleep overtook us.

We were the first to wake up, because even if we loved each other, two in that sleeping bag was still a tight fit. Marco shook me gently.

“Hey… sleepyhead, it’s morning already. We have to get up,” he murmured.

We got dressed, without saying anything to each other. If I had not found on me and noticed on Marco the unmistakable signs of our excitement, I would have thought it a dream. But it was real.

Marco didn’t talk about that night again, he went back to being the affectionate friend he had always been. In the days that followed I regarded him with doting glances that served to remind him of that night and those emotions, which maybe we might live again. But I realized his eyes escaped those same expressions, and he certainly regretted what we had done.

He never caressed me again and he never touched me again in the same way, but what had happened had not been a dream.

When sometime later, thinking back to that night, I decided to do what I did and become what I became, it happened because I did not have Marco’s strength or the hypocrisy to avoid reality and convince myself I had dreamed it all.

(1) Italian High School Final Exams are called Maturity Exams. The school the main character attends is called Liceo Classico (literally Classical Lyceum). Its educational curriculum spans over five years, when students are generally about 14 to 19 years of age. The study of ancient languages (Latin and Ancient Greek) and their literature are compulsory.

(2) At the time, the seventies, tents may have not built-in groundsheets. That was sadly the case.

2

Patrol Leader

Paoletto entered my life at the moment Marco left.

Marco had reached the age when you leave the Scouts’ Troop to become a Rover, Paoletto was of the age that allowed him to enter the Troop, leaving the Cubs. The two events coincided, something which left me little time to evolve from being the disciple to taking on the role of mentor.

It just happened and was both fascinating and also appalling.

Each year, in early autumn, when the activities of the Scout Group resumed, a special ceremony was celebrated. It literally was a rite of passage. There were always seven or eight eleven year old Cubs entering the Scouts’ Troop and as many fifteen year old boys leaving the Troop to become Rovers. For this celebration, as well as to mark getting together again after the summer break, on the last Sunday of September or the first Sunday of October, the whole group decamped to a wood not far from the city. There were boys and girls, from seven to thirty years old and even older.

I already knew about Paoletto because of the oddity of his story. But although our families lived quite close to one another I had never met him. I don’t remember ever seeing him, I only knew his family history. A tragedy had happened. It seemed that he lived with his grandmother, because his mother had died in childbirth and his father no longer wanted to take care of him, or that was what I recall hearing.

That’s the kind of story that circulates among families who know each other.

Stories that get told and re-told, even if the events might be seven or eight years old since they actually happened. Everyone knew, remembered, and talked about it from time to time.

However, Paoletto’s story was this. His mother died a few days after the birth and his father went to live in the house of his mother, Paoletto’s grandmother Luigia, who was already a widow. In the house also lived another son who was then little more than twenty years old, Uncle Giulio. For all purposes, Grandma Luigia became Paoletto’s mother.

Three years later Paoletto’s father decided to remarry, and Grandma Luigia understood she would soon lose the exclusive affection of her beloved grandson, of whom she was evidently very fond. An affection reciprocated by Paoletto, who despite being only three years old, did not want even to be touched by this other woman who was about to become his new mother. Even as a child, Paoletto always had a strong will.

When, on the return from honeymoon, the time came to change homes and go to live with his father and stepmother, Paoletto fell ill. He was normally a healthy child, but the fever attacked him the night after the move to the new house and did not leave him even after a week had passed.

Grandma Luigia decided to make a last desperate attempt to save her child and while she was alone in the new house, she wrapped Paoletto in a blanket and took him back to her home. She put him in the bed where he had always been used to sleeping and waited for the miracle that would certainly happen. She was so sure of it that she was not discouraged even when the child was taken back with the chills. She did not call the doctor. She waited for hours. She never left the cradle. She stared at that feverish little body and prayed.

Uncle Giulio found them much later, when he returned home, both asleep. The grandmother was a little bit sore from the uncomfortable position and shivering from the cold since she had forgotten to turn on the heating. The grandson was peacefully dreaming without a fever anymore, with a healthy color absolutely unjustified considering how ill he had been that morning.

Waking up his mother, Uncle Giulio got an incoherent explanation, but whatever it was, miracle or luck, Paoletto was definitely getting better. The youngster smiled happily, obviously content to be back home in a familiar bed, and undoubtably healthier having regained his appetite. Giulio noticed all these things, even if he was still only a medical student. That unexpected recovery by Paoletto, caused the family to reconsider the decision they had made about the child’s fate.

For the moment, during his convalescence, no longer than a couple of weeks, Paoletto would stay with his grandmother. Then he would go to live with his father and his new mother, whose care no one doubted.

Seeing how he spent all the following years at his grandmother’s house, one might easily have said that Paoletto was never really cured, because his grandmother never let him go. His father stopped asking for his son’s return and his stepmother simply didn’t think about him anymore. Paoletto thus remained with his grandmother, who loved him so very much. His parents would gladly take him to lunch on a Sunday every now and then. However, as the little boy’s parents were like strangers, those lunches became Paoletto’s nightmare, until he was old enough to confess to his father and stepmother that he would have gladly done without them. Therefore, they also stopped, and the family gathered only for the holidays, until his father had to move to a city far enough away that they could hardly see each other anymore.

During the years in which these events took place, my mother often talked about them with my father, as almost all the people who knew the story periodically did. My mother always blamed everything on Grandma Luigia, who could not accept being parted from her grandson, and so had contrived, who knew what sort of plot, to prevent his return to his parents. My father, on the other hand, who was the same age as Paoletto’s father, and his schoolmate, then later, colleague at the University, had always leaned towards the belief that the arrangement suited his father. He remembered, in fact, Paoletto’s father’s uncanny ability to escape commitments and duties.

Whatever the truth and despite the events which determined his childhood, Paoletto’s life was spent peacefully living with Grandma Luigia. She always gave him a lot of attention, without spoiling him, and educated him with a necessary severity as was expected. Uncle Giulio took the place of his true father, until he got married when his nephew had just turned eleven.

The day after the wedding, that first Sunday in October, was the celebration that inaugurated the activity of the Scout Group for that year. It was there that I met Paoletto for the first time.

***

We were all eager to get acquainted with our new comrades, but they were staying apart, too grown up to be with the Cubs, but not yet comfortable to be with us.

Paoletto was the tallest of them, but what struck me and made him standout from his companions, was his disheveled appearance. He had a large mop of blond hair that magnified his head. The Cub uniform, which he was wearing for the last time, was a little too small for him. But the thing about him which struck me the most, was his expression. His face reflected an air of extreme gravity, as if he had been hit by a disaster. I knew nothing about his uncle’s marriage and had no idea about anything which might have happened to him. The fact was that he was the only one who was subdued in a group of noisy and cheerful kids. He was looking at the ground, his hands in his shorts pockets and his eyes reduced to squinting, although there was shade under the pine trees. He looked as if he were cross, that there was something he didn’t want to see or that frightened him.

When I realized he would be in my Patrol, I paid even more attention and studied him, finally recognizing who he was. Then his bizarre story came back to my mind. I thought that maybe all that sadness was due to not having a mother. I, who had a mother and loved her so much, was sure that never knowing your mother was a misfortune that brought unhappiness to every moment of one’s life.

When it was time to eat, we found ourselves in the Patrols and that was for the little ones the first contact with their new mates and something much more serious, like companions for adventures and life. Paoletto came to sit next to me and immediately began to devour a huge sandwich. Sometimes I looked at him curiously, and he always frowned at me without talking. We all joked and laughed, happy to have found each other, but Paoletto, always profoundly serious, only chewed his sandwich.

“At least tell me what you’re thinking about,” I murmured to him, no longer tolerating that mute presence next to me.

That year I was the Assistant Patrol Leader, the second in seniority in my Patrol. I had to take care, among other things, of the younger boys, make them comfortable, if possible. I immediately liked him, with that sad and disarming air.

“So?” I insisted.

“Nothing that could make you laugh!” he said without even looking at me.

He had replied with impoliteness, but I decided not to give up.

“We’ll be in the same Patrol… We could even become friends, if you want, of course…” I tried to win him over. “I know you live not far from my house and so every night we’ll go the same way to the Section. Maybe we will meet because we will be leaving at the same time. But walking with someone who never laughs and only munches sandwiches… Well! I don’t know if it’s worth it!”

He was still frowning at me and then he realized I was joking, and he smiled. I still remember that smile.

“This sandwich was made for me by my grandmother. She’s always afraid I won’t eat enough!”

“She must be terribly anxious!”

“Affirmative!”

And finally, he laughed, his eyes lit up. When he smiled, two dimples were formed in the corners of his mouth, which gave his face a lively, intelligent, and somewhat mischievous expression. But his eyes were always cheerful, charming.

“Can we really become friends?” he asked me, almost as if he didn’t believe my offer, “Or were you just joking like you did about the sandwich?”

“I live really close to your house” I replied, and then explained to him who I was and where I lived “Why can’t we become friends? Don’t you want to?”

“I know who you are… And I agree. Friends!” he finally consented, then he concentrated on the sandwich, managing to eat it all, even as he laughed and chatted with the others.

Then he turned to me to ask me if I played any instruments.

“No, although we have a huge piano at home. My mother often plays it,” I said “And you? You play something?”

At that point he leaned over and started drumming with his fingers on my thigh. It seemed to me he was miming a pianist. Which he was. It turned out he wasn’t simply miming, Paoletto was a pianist.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m playing… Its Mozart’s Turkish March. From the piano sonata no. 11 - K 331,” he replied, without stopping playing, that was, drumming on my thigh.

“And can you really play it?” I asked, laughing.

“Of course!” he replied, sounding offended. “Are you stupid? I’ve been studying the piano for five years! And I’m good at it!”

He was a little angry then, but he immediately smiled at me again and continued for a few more minutes to make chords and scales on my thigh, while he hummed Mozart almost silently to himself. From as much as I could understand, he seemed good. After all he was playing on my leg and I recognized the tune of the Turkish March he was humming.

I didn’t interrupt but let that kind of massage end, which is maybe why he considered me worthy to become his friend.

That evening we returned by train from the excursion to the countryside. When we boarded the carriage, he came and found me, convincing another guy to give up his seat so he could sit next to me. Tiredness overcame many of us and I was about to fall asleep myself when I heard him shake me gently. He was trying to capture my attention.

“Do you believe in imprinting?”

“What?”

“Imprinting has something to do with ducks,” he explained to me seriously. “An Austrian scientist thinks that a newborn duck chooses for a parent the first living thing it sees, even if it is not his real mother. The guy says that’s how it works!”

“What’s that got to do with me?” I inquired.

“Guess!” he said, smiling and shaking his head. Then in an instant he fell asleep resting his head on my shoulder. He snuggled closer every time the train shook, until he was hugging me, holding me as if I were a pillow. I, on the other hand, never slept again, intrigued by his words whose meaning was completely obscure to me.

Paoletto had chosen me.

I understood this after I got back home. I asked my mother to enlighten me about Conrad Lorenz and Ethology. A subject that Paoletto seemed to know well, unlike me.

It didn’t take me long to understand, and I became for him what Marco had been to me.

At first, it vexed me a little and I even felt embarrassed. I was not a person whom one should put their trust in. I was arrogant and unstable, prone to be hard headed. I could even say selfish, because I simply did not want a lap dog outside the gate every night at a quarter to seven. But the puppy insisted, proving himself to be much stronger, tyrannical, and more self-centered, than the master he had chosen.

He bribed me with the licorice he chewed continuously and which he offered me without any hesitation. He won me over with the apparent docility with which he accepted my changes of program, so long as they did not exclude him. We were After all of different ages. He was eleven and I, fourteen. I had commitments that I could not share with him. We attended different schools. I was already in high school, he went to middle school. None of this stopped him from following me everywhere. We ended up being inseparable. I had no doubt that this was what Paoletto wanted. We had become friends because he had chosen to do so, it was all thanks to him. What was also certain was it was something I needed as much as he did.

Thinking back, we were similar. I was an only child. He was an only nephew, as he said about himself, joking. He called himself that because Grandma Luigia and Uncle Giulio were his family, and like my mother they were very affectionate and very caring. We both lacked a father figure, although in a radically different way. Our fathers were not dead, but they were far away. His was physically far away, mine was invariably at work, which made me think he loved his work more than me.

By the way, on this last matter, I was wrong.

The loneliness we shared as children had produced a rather divergent couple who completed each other. His youth was tempered by an innate wisdom, a thoughtfulness of actions, which easily compensated for my extra three years of childish, impulsive, and selfish behavior. You might say we suited each other!

It did not happen immediately, but over time we became firm friends, always within that larger organization that was the Scout Section, where we spent all our free time. In that world there were other groups of friends and as well as us, all with a carefree happiness that pervaded our days.

That first year passed like a dream, the serenity of my fourteen years and his eleven was complete.

After the camp I became the Panthers Patrol’s Leader. Paoletto was in his second year in the Scouts and it would have been my last year, because afterwards I would have left to become a Rover.

There were seven of us in the Patrol, and in the age range, Paoletto occupied the penultimate place. For me only he existed. But my happiness was upset, without completely dissolving, at the end of the summer. Although the real trouble happened on a gloomy Sunday in November.

That Sunday we went on an excursion, just the Panthers Patrol. We left early in the morning despite it almost raining. We took the train and then walked until we reached a vast karstic depression, a place as impressive as it was huge. We settled on the edge of a large hollow. The intention was to try remote signaling methods, with sounds, lights, and flags. We divided into three groups. It was predictable and everyone expected that Paoletto and I would form one of the teams. It always happened like that.

We moved away along the edge of the abyss and gained the opposite side, far enough away so that we almost lost sight of the figures in the distance, but we could distinguish the movement of the signal flags, hear the sound of a whistle, or still see the flashing of a light.

***

How I felt about him had become complicated, something I could not easily understand or define. At times I hated him for the way he made me angry, for how rebellious he was and for how little attention he paid to those unimportant things that seemed important to me but were irrelevant to him. At other times it drove me crazy with joy to have him around, to smell his candy scent, to know I was the most important person in his life.

He used to repeat it to me over and over again and, since our friendship was yet uncontaminated by malice, that was a statement that filled me with pride. Me, the most important person in his life.

Knowing that every night I would inevitably find him in front of my home, gave me the strength to live my day at school, to study what little was necessary, not very hard, since I was doing well. It helped me to bear my father’s absences and offer my mother some of that same joy. Paoletto was all this for me and I for him, given the commitment he put into making our relationship more and more alive.

That feeling had begun to complicate one day, at the end of the summer, when I realized I wanted him in a different way. I mean sexually.

We were at the beach. A dozen or so of us of various ages, intent on joking around. We were waiting for the summer to end, for school to start up and, above all, for the Section to reopen. I looked at Paoletto, and suddenly I desired him. Until a moment before he was a nonsexual angel whom I adored. Then, I closed my eyes and when I opened them again, he was a body to be desired. Suddenly, all I could think about was how he would look naked, without that heavenly costume that covered him so little. And I had an erection, difficult to hide, because I was in a swimsuit.

To me, it was a reminder of the reality of things, of bodies, of the flesh.

I didn’t think about sex too much, taken as I was by so many ideas and activities. My first masturbation was a couple of years before. Then there was the experience with Marco. Knowing he didn’t want, didn’t like, me to remind him of those moments, had blocked me towards him and anyone else. So much so that I considered masturbating a very private, very secret, but necessary affair.

In any case, in those years in the scouts and anywhere else, sex was unspoken about. As if it didn’t exist.

My sex life was at the time tied to some memories and pleasures I was giving myself with a certain regularity, thinking about who, what? It may seem strange, but my dreams were so vague that they were indistinct. Did I already have a precise objective and unconsciously made it indefinite? I could not say. I masturbated, as Marco had taught me, almost every night, in bed, with great speed, anxious to reach orgasm and then to calmly fall asleep. Thoughts were not supposed to be important, because I reached pleasure and sleep almost together. And I would forget them, dreaming of something else.

It went like that until I looked at Paoletto with different eyes, as if they were no longer mine.

That day on the beach I calmed down with some difficulty, but that evening I did not fall asleep. The pact with my private demon was over, and the thoughts I had were the best proof of it.

I dreamed, fantasized, saw, with my eyes wide open, what I desired to do with him. I was more awake than if it had been morning. The excitement was so intense that I had no inhibitions in imagining every detail of the seduction I could attempt and then, from fantasy to fantasy, guessing the ways I would violate his innocence.

I evoked the scenes that took place in my mind as if they were in front of my eyes. And I experienced all the sensations with my body up to an orgasm, something I lived with an upset, an emotion I had never before experienced.

I had degraded him and that was it.

The next day I was nervous that he would read in my eyes how dirty my thoughts were, but he was as always warm and friendly. Even that night I imagined seducing him and I did it so many other times, thinking about him night and day. And then I would wait for him by the front gate, so that we could go to the beach, or play football, or wherever our imagination invented for us to spend a couple of hours doing. I felt dirtier every day, and he finally realized something was different, but he could not understand the nature of my feelings.

I would have died rather than reveal to him how corrupt I was.

“You are acting weird… Why? What have I done to you? Did I do something?” he asked me suddenly, one morning on our way back from the beach. Perhaps that day I had looked at him for too long. I had stared at him, trying to take off his costume with my eyes.

“What… why?” I pretended to be surprised.

“You look at me… weird… I don’t know. You’re getting strange!”

I tickled him, grinning. It was our way of proving to each other that we were friends as always.

The start of school helped me. The Section began to work again and so even though we continued to see each other regularly, to frequent each other with the usual affection, we had much more to think about. Above all, the opportunities to see him almost naked, and be forced to desire him, ended.

***

Until that morning in November, when I attacked him.

That day my hormones took over. I could say that is what happened and blame it on that. Then again, perhaps, it was not that at all. I am, however, certain that I didn’t plan what I did. I only knew that I wanted to see and touch Paoletto in all those secret places. I dreamed of touching him. And then, I had the opportunity, and did so.

As soon as we were far enough away from the others, I asked him.

“Do you know how to jerk off?”

I never had any doubts about why I did it, but one of the mysteries of my life is where I gathered the courage. My hormones again, I suppose.

We had never spoken about it between ourselves. We discussed everything, but it was as if we didn’t possess that part of our body. Our dicks seemed to be outside of our friendship, certainly because those talks did not represent for Paoletto the existential problem they had become for me. He was too young.

Paoletto seemed not to have heard me.

“So, do you know how to jerk off or not?” I insisted.

“Eh?”

“Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“I know what you’re talking about. What do you think?” he said to me, impatient and apparently not at all embarrassed.

“Well… and do you do it?”

“Yes!” he finally admitted.

So, he masturbated.

A friend would have stopped there. Even if the real, special one, the best friend I was supposed to be, he would never have asked those questions.

“And since when?” I continued instead.

“And why do you want to know?”

He wasn’t annoyed. Perhaps he seemed intrigued by my questions. He wasn’t embarrassed. He would have answered me in the same tone even if I had asked him if he had done his homework for the next day. A reddening of his cheeks would have stopped me. I am sure. A hesitation in answering would have perhaps made me reconsider what I was doing, but Paoletto didn’t get upset and kept looking at me waiting for me to make the next move.

My throat was dry. My heart was pounding in my chest, I could almost hear its beat. It was so strong I thought it would burst. I was afraid he knew it, understood my emotion, and was alarmed, instead he remained calm.

“No reason,” I said, trying to control my voice. “Only, of course, I do it too…” I tried to joke “And I thought it would be fun to do it together!”

I had told him. All in one breath and without imagining the consequences for him, still a child. But what consequences? I wondered about it at that moment.

“Yes, yes! Come on. Please, let’s do it! Now? Here?”

He was eager.

“Only if you want to… Are you sure you want to do these things with me?”

“But what things? Jerk off? With you? Sure, come on, let’s do it. Where are we going to do it? Here? Back there?”

He smiled happily, and his enthusiasm overwhelmed me, along with all the good intentions, if I ever had any. We had a few minutes before the others were ready to start the game, so we ran and hid behind a massive rock that was on the edge of the chasm.

We stood in front of each other. Paoletto was waiting for me to move first. It frequently happened like that when there was something to do that, he imagined, I knew more about. And that was a field in which I was supposed to be more experienced than him, but my hands were shaking.

Then the excitement took over. I opened my fly, and he immediately did the same. I pulled out my dick already hard enough to grip it. And so, did he.

I don’t recall what I was thinking at that moment. Nor, oddly, what I really saw. But I know, and it is an image that I have impressed on my memory, that the wind picked up and the clouds started running across the sky.

It brought me back to reality, the feeling of cold on my groin. Paoletto was waiting for my moves. I caught only a glimpse of the object he held in his hand, that which I had so longed to observe.

“Close your eyes,” he said in a breath.

“Why?”

“I’m ashamed… I’m still so little…”

I was too excited to understand or discuss this, so I obeyed him immediately. Then I started to move slowly. I put my forehead on his and with my hand I brushed the tip of his cock. I heard him sighing. Then I smelled the scent of his hair and the smell of the wind bringing rain. Before long, a lot of water would fall, but I didn’t care. We moved simultaneously with eagerness.

From the way he reacted before and from the way he was doing it, I finally understood that it had to be his very first time. He was imitating and exaggerating my movements. He was thrilled, but also awkward. His breath immediately became labored and then it happened. He sighed, I felt him contract, and then he felt what was perhaps his first orgasm. I heard him moan and immediately I added my own climax to his spasms. We ended up hugging and clinging to each other, until our breathing returned to normal.

Only then I saw him staring fascinated at my wet hand. Curiosity had won out, making him put aside his modesty. He took hold, bringing my hand to his nose, and smelling it.

“So, this is semen?” he touched my fingers, picked some up, testing the density of the liquid that covered me.

I nodded. I was mesmerized by his inexperience, by the naivety of his questions. He smelled it one more time, then he stared at me with that cunning gaze of his.

“I told you a lie,” he said laughing. “It’s the first time for me. But if I hadn’t done it, when would you have shown me?”

And without a blush, smiling calmly, he caressed my dick that was going soft again.

“Will mine become like that too?”

“Soon…” I whispered.

Without any embarrassment he took my cock in his hand, as if to weigh it. He squeezed a little bit and looked carefully at the hair of my pubis. He was curious and had no shame, simply taking advantage of the opportunity I had given him.

Then the wind that had warned us brought rain, just a few drops.

I would have liked to touch him too, but he had decided to get dressed. The way I was excited I would have undressed him again and I think he would have let me do it, but suddenly the rain began to get heavy. We ran for shelter under the trees of the forest a few meters from where we were.

Only then was I really aware of what I had done. That kind of ecstasy I had experienced was followed by an intense remorse. It was an anxiety that would never leave me alone, an anxiety that began at that moment its slow work inside my mind.

I felt an overwhelming anguish building inside me. We went and sat under a tree, he ran to sit next to me, hugging me as he did, as if he wanted me to protect him.

I should have warned him, told him to stay away from me, that I was dangerous for him, but instead I returned the embrace. I closed my eyes so as not to cry. It was raining hard and penetrating through the thick tangle of branches. We shifted closer trying to avoid getting wet.

I hoped with all my heart that somehow being occupied with keeping dry, escaping the storm, would have distracted him from what we had just done. That he might forget. But he was like a young pup, he was exuberant and fixed on what he had discovered, already thinking about doing it again. He was a puppy, I was almost an adult.

“When are we going to do it again? It was just…”

He hesitated, searching for a suitable adjective, then simply said, “it was ‘beautiful’”. When he said it, with all his innocence, he moved me and increased my awareness of my inadequacy.

“I want to do it the way you do!” he added, after a while, seeing I was not speaking.

“We cannot do it anymore!” I murmured.

“And when will I have semen, too?” he asked, not even considering my answer, oblivious to my pain.

“When you are older. Next year perhaps…” Then I made my angry face, which he knew, “But now we two won’t do that anymore!”

“And why is that?” he asked, as if I had snatched his preferred toy from his hands.

He was disappointed by my change of heart, far from comprehending how bad I had been to him and how misguided my actions were.

Where was his modesty? That request to close my eyes so as not to look at him. What was it if not shyness, innocence that he had then given up because of me?

I was unable to tell him anything else. I locked myself in a mutism that disorientated him and prevented him from asking me any more questions, which was very unusual for Paoletto. This also encouraged me in my intent to resist his every request and above all my impulses, which I feared the most.

We went back and joined our comrades after the rain stopped. We had to decide whether we should return to the city or continue the excursion despite the rain.

I was worried about what I had done. I already felt indecent simply having those thoughts I had kept to myself, but now I had corrupted someone else. Yet he joked happily as if nothing at all had happened. He remained close, attached to me, as my best friend.

The sky cleared, and so we could stay outside until dusk, when we took the train back to the city. As always, I made my way home with Paoletto, who didn’t mention what we had done, even though I think he wanted to. Several times during the day he looked at me, as if to tell me something, but my mood must have deterred him.

I was afraid and hopeful, at the same time, that he would talk about what we did together. I wanted to touch him again, touch him, even just to look at him. And if he had asked me, we would have done it again. I am certain of it. But that day did not happen.

***

I didn’t walk away from him. I couldn’t, I couldn’t live with the idea, because I would have to leave the Scouts, and that was inconceivable. I decided I would stay close to him, but would never even touch him again, not even if he asked me. I would always refuse to go back to doing what we had once tried together.

Yet I knew very well how impractical this way of thinking was, even at the very moment I made the decision. I did not have the character suitable for martyrdom. However, I was very prone to expect and accept punishment and pain.

At that time, something happened that frightened me so much, it strengthened my intention not to undermine Paoletto anymore.

Paoletto did not seem to suffer either from what we had done, or from my decision not to do it anymore. A couple of times he proposed we masturbate together and I, while despairing within myself, virtuously refused. He also alluded to how much he had enjoyed himself and how nice it would have been if we did it again, but I side stepped his requests, feigning disinterest or pretending not to understand.

What really kept me from succumbing to temptation was something that happened at school. The fear that we might suffer a similar fate to a boy who went to my school, when suspicion arose that he was too close to one of the teachers. No one had ever seen them together more than usual, but there had been rumors. Someone had known, it had been stated that the boy spent many evenings at the teacher’s house, an unmarried man, and living alone. It was enough for both of them to be branded as homosexuals, without anyone ever saying it openly. The rumor was that the boy was corrupted by the teacher.

It meant he had to change schools. The professor disappeared and we never knew if all those whispers were true or false. Still, the voice inside my head told me to take heed and a fear remained.

That others might discover and malign Paoletto and I, terrified me. It was a salutary lesson and the idea that my mother could discover my real desires towards Paoletto, even prevented me from masturbating for many days.

In spite of this, I attached myself even more to him, in what I tried to make the most chaste of friendships. I vigorously made sure we escaped any hint, even the most distant, of sex. Paoletto neither noticed, nor did he pay any attention to my new found purity. At least, he didn’t seem to, nor did he mention what had happened between us, the matter that I considered so dirty, I felt terrible just thinking about it. We incredibly never spoke of it again.

***

Winter passed, spring blossomed, and summer returned.

It was once more time for camp, my last camp as a Scout, before embarking on the next adventure, as a Rover. I had known where that would take me. Certainly, I would no longer be close to Paoletto who would stay in the Scouts for another three years. The nearer the approaching moment when we would separate drew close, so Paoletto attached himself to me more and more, almost foreboding that something would happen. During those last months, I often had to steel myself, to become strong enough to stem and limit the degree of confidence and familiarity we shared.

The preparation for the camp was hectic and we no longer had time to worry about our future, or think about what would happen in October, when we would no longer have a legitimate reason to see each other every night.

I was sure anyway that we would invent something to keep seeing each other somehow. Both of us would grow and mature. Our bond would hardly remain unchanged, but in my heart, and I knew Paoletto thought so too, our friendship would evolve and be preserved intact. As strong as ever.

And who knows what our life would have been like if Paoletto, that day, the penultimate day of the camp, had not taken the yellow flag and I had not chased him.

It all happened so suddenly.

We were playing a game, the most important one during the camp. A kind of war between two groups who were formed by mixing the members of all the Patrols into two factions. To our great regret, Paoletto and I had ended up on different sides. Each group had to conquer a flag and defend it all day long from the attacks of the other group. It was a bit more complicated than that, there was a story for the setting of the game and other rules, but in the end the goal was to keep possession of the flag until four o’clock in the afternoon.

Paoletto, using his speed and ability to squirm and wriggle, managed to get through a bunch of people bigger and heavier than himself. He reached the flag before anyone noticed and was already running towards the woods. I saw him and followed him.

I saw him before the others because he and I never lost sight of each other. We looked at each other all the time and always knew what the other was doing. So, I was the best prepared to chase him. Some of my team tried, but soon gave up, because Paoletto’s companions managed to block them, delaying their run.

After a few minutes of uncontrolled charging through the woods, between ascents and descents, I stopped to recover my breath and get my bearings. I seemed to know where I was. We had been living in those woods for two weeks, and we had explored them far and wide. The direction taken by Paoletto was uphill towards the mountain that overlooked the camp. By now I had arrived at the clearing from where another thicker patch of trees climbed up towards the top of the mountain. Below there was the village and the whole valley with the lake.

I saw him dawdling at the upper edge of the clearing. He was waiting for me because he knew it was me who had followed him. He signaled for me to come closer, and I was about to reach him, when he shouted at me.

“Truce. Truce. Peace. You can’t take the flag from me!”

“And why can’t I?”

“Because you have to give me your word that until four o’clock you will not try to take the flag from me!”

“And why should I?”

“Because I will confide in you.”

He had disarmed me. He always knew how to do it.

“OK! Then, peace! But only until four o’clock!”

“Alright!”

He ran towards me and hugged me, as if the truce between us had allowed him to find the friend he had lost.

“What time is it?” he asked.

That was one of the very few times he had asked the time. Paoletto had a very singular relationship with time. He was only punctual if we were to meet. Otherwise, including school, his measure of time was elastic and unreliable.

“10:30 AM.”

“Then we have at least five hours to be alone, don’t we?”

“I think so!”

Being on opposing sides in the game we were playing, it was not convenient for either of us to be found by the others. For me to be found by his companions would have meant being overwhelmed and ending up out of the game. For him, who was practically my prisoner, but until four o’clock protected by my word, meeting my team would have meant losing the flag. Instead, arriving at the fateful hour with the flag in his possession would make him a little hero. Regardless of the final outcome of the game.

He was right, it was convenient for both of us to hide. And it was a beautiful opportunity, to be alone in a world of our own.

“Shall we go? Shall we see where we can get to?” he said, looking up, to the top of the mountain.

He took me by the hand and pulled me into the woods. After an hour of strenuous climbing, we stopped next to a stream to take a few sips of the very cold water. Then we continued on, climbing to the top, and after a short distance we lay in the sun on a spur overlooking the valley. Beyond the treetops we could see the campsite and even further below. A branch of the lake and then at the bottom a whole panorama of hills and countryside, more and more flat and indistinct in the distance.

It was an enchanting spectacle that took hold of us, but we were immediately ravenous. I took out the sandwich I had in my backpack, since he, with all his dexterity and maneuvers to capture the flag, had left his bag in the camp. So, we only had one sandwich, not even that big, and only one water bottle, always mine, which we shared, happy to do so. At the end we collected and ate the crumbs that had fallen on the stone. We devoured the apple by biting it in turn, until we also ate the core.

By the time we had finished our little meal, it was just after twelve o’clock and the sun was beating down. We were at an altitude of almost two thousand meters. We moved into the shade beneath a tree. I lay down on the grass resting my shoulder against a boulder. He came next to me, laying his head on my chest. Immediately my heart accelerated its beats. The emotion I felt ran from me to him and our eyes met. Many months, almost a year of proposals, of sacrifices, of fears, of remorse, everything was swept away by what I saw in his eyes.

I put my arm on his chest and he came closer to me, he gathered himself against me.

We were alone. Suddenly I was aware we were alone, absolutely alone. We had drifted away, as distant from everything and every path as the rocks that surrounded us.

Only God could see us there. I hadn’t believed in it for a long time, and Paoletto believed only what I believed in.

He held me tight. I felt his body, as he felt mine.

I touched his face with my hand. I drew him to me. I caressed his chest, then I went down slowly to touch his belly, and then further down. I felt he was excited. I caressed him, and he let me. He didn’t stop looking at me, then he untied himself from my embrace to sit cross-legged next to me.

I could no longer decipher his expression. He hesitated, it was as if he were stunned by what we were doing.

It was then I stopped thinking and without realizing it decided about my life and his.

I took his hand and placed it on my crotch. I was afraid he might run off, yank it away, or hit me, but it didn’t happen. He didn’t burst out crying, or laughing, he didn’t withdraw. He did nothing to bring me back to reality. That is not meant as any sort of justification. Instead he caressed me gently, down there, just as I had done to him shortly before.

Then he surprised me. With a slow movement, he lifted himself up and came and lay down on top of me. I felt his excitement pressing against mine. He put his head in the hollow of my neck. His lips opened to touch my skin. He hugged me. Then he was looking for my mouth.

He wanted to kiss me, and I was letting him. I stayed motionless. He was going to kiss me. His serenity, the confidence with which he moved, not only amazed me, but literally overwhelmed me.

Finally, our lips joined but it was not a deep kiss. We would have been unable to do it. Neither of us had ever kissed like that.

I squeezed him. We looked into each other’s eyes. He had few clothes on and I let my hands run over him. First to touch him, then to get rid of his clothes. When I began to undress him, I felt him stiffen. I didn’t mind his shyness and he let me do it. He offered himself to my hands, to my eyes that fed on that poisoned food. He had grown in those months. He was beautiful.

We moved aside and rolled on the grass. When I was on top of him, I got rid of what little clothes I had on. He was intrigued, because to him, who was no longer a child, my appearance as a young man must have seemed like a revelation. It was like seeing himself in the future, a specimen of adulthood.

Our bodies pressed together. Not a word was spoken. What could we say?

With my eyes closed, I tried living those moments in full. And I lived them in an orgasm that was sudden and upsetting, suddenly bathing his abdomen. Exactly as he did with mine.

The pleasure for me instantly turned to tears and sobs. Paoletto, who was always suffering with me, followed suit, and cried too.

When we calmed down my head had no more thoughts. They would have been too dreadful for me to contemplate.

I felt nauseous and giddy.

“Why did you cry?”

He was frightened. Our eyes were red.

“You were crying too…”

“You started it,” he insisted “Why? Tell me!”

“I don’t know,” I replied, a little rudely, trying to get dressed, “We can’t stay here any longer, let’s leave!”

“Why? What have I done?”

I should have stayed by his side and consoled him. I should have tried to explain, to justify my behavior. Instead, after using him, I was abandoning him. Once clothed, I got up and walked towards the woods, leaving him behind, alone.

“Did I do something to you?” he cried.

I heard him shout as he ran after me.

“I promise you that I will never do it again. I swear to you. I’m sorry!” he cried again.

I stopped and waited for him to reach me.

“What have I done to you?” he murmured again as he approached me.

“What have I…” I shouted to him, to the sky, to God if there was a God “What…”

“Please!” he was crying.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Swear on your mother’s life you won’t tell anyone what we did just now!”

“I swear to you,” he whimpered, “but don’t be angry with me! Please, I beg you! I will never do it again! I will never speak of it! I swear! With anyone! Don’t get angry! Please!”

He was like me! It couldn’t have been! It was not supposed to be! It was not supposed to happen!

I was the sick one, of that horrible species. I had the unmentionable vice, and I knew it for a while, but discovering that Paoletto could be like me too, terrified me, because I was sure I had infected him. Probably, as Marco had done with me. I don’t know why I imagined a disease or a curse, something that was transmitted from boy to boy, but that’s what I thought as we were going down the hill. I was stunned by screams that didn’t exist. I could hear a buzzing sound in my ears that deafened me, and my eyesight became clouded until I fell down a couple of times.

I could barely hear his footsteps behind me and every once in a while, I would hear a sigh and hiccup, or his pleading for me to stop and wait for him. He cried and begged, but I didn’t stop. We descended towards the camp. When we met a group of our comrades, I said I was sick and could not continue the game. Paoletto was silent, behind me. He also seemed dazed.

The Scoutmaster diagnosed both of us with sunstroke and sent us to the tent to rest. The game continued without us.

***

My life had changed. I had taken a path that would make me quite different from what I had been until a few hours before. When we were in the tent alone, I slipped into my sleeping bag and turned my back to him. Paoletto was wasted, washed out, his eyes closed. He didn’t say a word and practically did not speak again until the end of the camp. I too, was not much company, hoping that everything would end as soon as possible, and I could get away from everyone, especially him.

I just wanted to be alone, in my room at home, looking at the ceiling.

And that’s what I did when we got back. I stayed for days alone in my room without leaving, except to eat listlessly.

It was there, lying on the bed, with my eyes shut, that I determined and planned my future life, if what I conceived could be defined as a plan.

Looking at the ceiling, I saw those images of what I wished I had not done. My devious, slow, implacable approach to Paoletto, exploiting his naivety, his vulnerability. He was a child and believed in his oldest friend. As plain as daylight, in the same vision, I saw myself and Marco. Him running away from me. More subtly, moving away from himself. Perhaps he had understood my weakness and was afraid of it, somehow stopping in time.

I was in an orgy of self-pity, in the raging of my desire to punish myself. I was not touched by the idea of how Marco had acted so that I would follow him, only to run away scared.

It happened there, in the bed I was soaking in sweat, because that August was the hottest in a century and it was even hotter for me to burn in hell. It was the beginning of hell.

In those sheets that were soaked with tears at night because I cried, that’s when I decided to die. I contemplated my suicide, but my cowardice did not figure it should be immediate and definitive. Instead, I planned that it had to be slow and painful. Out of selfishness and with malice towards my loved ones, I decided to let myself die and stop worrying about myself.

My apathy made my mother uncomfortable and she even managed to get my father’s attention. He, recognized the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, had me examined by one of his neurologist colleagues. I was fit, the man said. I only had growth problems. If I cared about myself, I would have shouted my real problems at him, but I didn’t do that.

Give me a medicine, doctor! Let me heal, asshole of a doctor. Or let me die.

I was desperate. I had a monster inside and I had to drive it out. And in order to destroy it I had to look for something stronger, something that would bring it down. Or at least reduce it to silence so that I wouldn’t listen to it screaming inside me anymore. Even if it were not the screams I was afraid of, but the song of the siren that drew me to a place where I would embrace Paoletto again. I knew he was still there, crying and waiting for me.

I went out again, but I was wandering around on my scooter in places where I had never been before. Where I was sure not to meet any of my usual friends. I made some new acquaintances and approached some kids from my school who were meeting in a public garden far from my neighborhood. At that place, late at night, when most of the ordinary people had gone home, someone would pull out a joint and we would smoke it all together.

That’s how I started, taking a few shots, and seeking company, because I got tired of crying alone.

I went looking for a monster mightier and stronger than my private vice and my impossible love.

One evening there was an alarmed phone call from Paoletto’s grandmother. It seemed that the boy had been refusing food for a few days. Grandma Luigia asked, if possible, that I come and talk to him.

If I had done so, someone would have asked me to explain, but what could I have said?

Perhaps I should have looked Paoletto in the eye.

When my mother told me about the phone call, I left the house slamming the door, without saying a word.

That night I bought drugs. I was never short of money, my father and mother gave me as much as I asked for, and I could afford all the vices I wanted.

I bought some LSD pills. Feeling more scared than I thought, I swallowed one and waited for the effects. My new friends, more acquaintances than friends, assured me that for a while I would forget even my name. That was exactly what I was looking for.

However, with that first high I distinctly recall a complete sequence of odd dreams whose concreteness still astonishes me.

In the first dream we were on the high mountain, the sun burning on our skin, Paoletto was on top of me. The feeling of his weight pressing on my belly. Him touching my lips with a kiss, me undressing him. His resistance. I tore his shirt. I remembered the sound of the tear. We rolled together on the grass. He was then underneath me. I blocked his arms. He tried to move. I forced my lips on his mouth. I found his sex, gripping it and joining it to mine. I felt them pulsating. The orgasm wet us.

That first dream ended there.

Instead of waking up I realized I was in another reality. I discovered with terror that I had dreamt while I was awake. The merry-go-round of dreams on which I had climbed on took off for another, even more terrifying, ride. I dreamt I was chasing Paoletto and then I reached him. It was easy to overwhelm him because of how strong I was. Still my hands were looking for satisfaction on his body. Then, as skillful as I was, he still eluded me. He managed to slip out of my sweaty hands. I saw him disappearing over the precipice and I fell with him.

Once again I failed my attempt to return and wake up. It wasn’t over yet. In another round I was certain I had killed him. It was then I panicked. I frightened the others who were with me. I screamed, calling out for Paoletto, whom fortunately no one there knew.

When I was conscious enough, they told me, in no uncertain terms, that if I wanted to stay with them, I had to stop taking hallucinogens. At least until I was a little calmer. I could smoke all the grass in the world, but no more trips.

The humiliation of that night with the risk that I had run of betraying myself in front of everyone, hit me hard. The thought of being taken away from the only people with whom I had any sort of friendship, pushed me to be more cautious, to save myself from worse damage.

3

My Father

My father discovered he was ill with cancer one morning while shaving.

He felt a swelling on his throat under his fingers. He didn’t have to wait for his colleagues to confirm it before he knew what it was. Even before he heard a friend report that they had to do tests to make sure it was a tumor, he was convinced of his own illness.

Needless to say, he was right.

It all happened on a spring day.

On my way home from school, I discovered that my mother was not there. I was convinced I would find her, but the house was unusually quiet and empty. They were at the hospital and I didn’t know. How could I? In the morning by the time I had woken up they had already gone out, and the night before I had returned at dawn. For me it had been a special night and getting up had not been easy.

I almost always skipped the first hour of classes, but I had to attend school. My father had made two conditions whilst I was still living at home. That I didn’t miss a single day of school, and that in June I passed my exams, no matter what my grades were. Since I could certainly not make the second commitment, because I was traveling confidently towards flunking out, I tried to have as few absences as possible. Like that he would let me stay at home for a few more months.

As for later, I didn’t hope for anything, because I knew that very soon something worse would happen to me than not having a safe place to sleep.

My life was on a long, nerve-wracking roll towards the bottom of the pit.

I had been living a deviant life for too long and it was obvious I was now close to the limit. In fact, I was making a definite effort to take that last jump. That night I had shot myself with heroin. My first time.

I did it with the help of others because I didn’t know how to do it by myself, not yet. I mentally took note of how it was done and if there was a second time, I would know what to do myself. But I never had that opportunity.

To tell the truth, I was afraid. It was my first shot, and it was horrible. When the effect of the drug wore off, I had a sense of loss that felt unbearable. An emptiness that crushed me. Then the heartbreak of having to go back to being who I was. After experiencing all those feelings from euphoria to despair, I was left with the total unhappiness that was my usual state of being.

That night I hoped to forget everything, but I had only touched forgetfulness. I thought, rather recklessly, that I had achieved my goal, but I had not. I was cast into despair, and went home before dawn had broken, to throw myself across the bed. I shut my eyes, crushing my face into the pillow, and hoping I would no longer have the strength to get up. The morning light woke me and brought me back to reality. I was happy to have at least avoided my father’s looks of pity and the pain that my mother now carried permanently etched into her face.

My father, I was only ever seeking him when I wanted to fight, but with my mother I avoided arguments, because with the pain I saw in her she reminded me of what I had become myself. She tried to mediate the increasingly grim glances that my father and I exchanged, but we were cunning, and when we wanted to catch each other, like two roosters, we were particularly good at finding each other.

My scruffy way of dressing was a continuous challenge to his concept of order. My dirty and unkempt hair, my face obscured with fluff, were an offense to his principles of personal hygiene. My behavior without rules, the dirty words I constantly used, annoyed him. What he imagined I was doing with my life humiliated him. But his imagination was far from the bitter and demeaning reality of my existence, of that I was certain. If he had known the truth, I think he would either have killed me or perhaps tried to save me. But he never recognized the extent of my pain, the damage I was doing to myself.

If he never acted, it was because even after my abandonment of decency, he was ignorant of many of the details of my descent into hell. I kept a lot of things diligently hidden from him and my mother.

Consequently, he considered me only as an impolite intrusion on his life. If he could have read me, if we had been more familiar, he would have seen, and released me from all the shame I felt for myself. He didn’t, he couldn’t, because I always prevented him. He only knew that I was taking drugs, but he was convinced I only smoked pot and perhaps took the odd pill.

When someone told him about the group I frequented and what they did, he decided my family should ignore my deviance and he instructed my mother not to give me any more money. He never knew it, but by doing that he forced me into prostitution.

***

That day when I had a particularly good reason to fight with my father was because my friends and I conceived a brilliant idea on where and how to spend the Easter vacation, but my father didn’t want to give me any more money. I was eager to face him and argue my case, even though I knew the discussion would be a tit for tat vying between two seasoned fighters. I thought perhaps, at the end of the fight maybe my mother, after agreeing with her husband, would be able to sneak me at least some of the money I was asking for.

Our plan was, whilst pretending to have gone to Amsterdam or who knows where, to devote our time to drugs, stuck in a house with other wretched people like me. The drugs, of course, we would buy with the money supposed for traveling. That was our plan, at least if, in one way or another, I had obtained the money.

I was one of the few in the group who maintained some sort of stable relationship with my parents, because I lived at home and was obliged to spend part of my time there. I was the only one who could still squeeze a little bit of money out of my parents.

This imaginary Amsterdam vacation was I hoped, in my thinking, to be my last trip. The ultimate destination.

The end.

Death.

The achievement of peace and oblivion.

For me it was a perfect solution and to achieve the goal I had to get the money in any way I could. But no one was home, which left me feeling cheated out of the confrontation. I had been deprived of the fight which was necessarily postponed.

I realized I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten since the day before. I had skipped dinner because it was not something I had thought about in a night like the one I had just lived. Now I was famished. In the fridge, however, there was nothing worth eating, nor did it seem that my mother, before she disappeared, had thought about leaving me something to eat.

It was then I began to worry. I couldn’t remember ever coming back from school with no one being there to welcome me or prepare my lunch. Sometimes there was the house cleaner, but more often there was my mother. She always tried to be there, she would listen to my confidences and hear my news. My report on the day, the story of my school successes, my doubts. How many such conversations we had had while I was nibbling on whatever I had found in the kitchen and waiting for my father to come back from his job at the hospital.

In the days when my father was busy in the operating theatre, knowing that he would be delayed, she and I would have lunch when I got home without waiting for him. Our conversations had gradually turned into discussions about the topics I was learning more and more easily at school and she had become my major cultural advisor. At that point came the summer, that summer. I had gone to camp, left the Scouts and the worst had happened. When school started once more, I stopped talking to my parents, except to ask for money.

Finding the house empty I was suddenly overcome with panic. I had never felt that before, but now it hit me brutally. Not immediately frightening, because I was accustomed to dealing with the situations I found myself in. My life was one of expedience amongst people who lived on the street, even though my parents still put a roof over my head. I believed I had given up the love of my parents, but too little time had passed for me to forget the sweetness and not regret it. The fear that struck me was the thought of being orphaned. That fear which only diminishes with age. In that moment, the realization that they were gone, abandoning me alone in the world, crept upon me slowly, forcing me in small steps towards despair.

After half an hour I was in tears and crying miserably as if I were an infant, lost or abandoned. I didn’t think to contact the hospital, to find out if my father was there, or the University to ask about my mother. I had no idea about what to do, as if I had stopped thinking. Sitting on a stool in the kitchen, entwining my greasy hair with my fingers, I sobbed. I was crying for myself, not for them. I knew it and I told myself. I was crying for a loneliness I would have to bear, deprived as I was of my parents, before I could really be a man. That particular idea, thinking of myself as a man, made me nauseous, because I knew I had become the least like a man I could imagine.

I was an unfinished being, neither a boy nor a man, but someone suffering from a vile vice. I was a fag who was terribly ashamed to be so. And now I would be left alone and defenseless. I wept. I slid to the floor. I gathered myself together, I tried to take courage, holding myself, embracing my knees. I squeezed my head in my lap. I ended up falling asleep, exhausted by the dreadful night I had spent, the boredom I had suffered at school, the anxiety over the disappearance of my parents, the tears I was shedding.

They arrived after three o’clock.

I opened my eyes and saw my mother leaning over me, shaking me, scared. She looked exhausted. Her face already said that something terrible had happened. She was asking if I felt ill. She had been afraid I was dead, discovering me on the floor, curled up against a piece of furniture. I was pale, she said. I had frightened her. At that point, inexplicably, she left. And only then did I see my father.

“I have cancer, Roby,” he said. “We went to the hospital. I noticed it this morning…”

He had never spoken to me like that before. There was no more challenge or pride in his voice. His voice was that of a frightened boy, even though he was almost fifty years old. A boy who had just been told his death was close.

Having them there, his announcement notwithstanding, I felt I was not yet an orphan, nor was I alone in the world. But his words made me tumble back into despair and I burst into tears once again. I sobbed without being able to control myself.

He knelt close to me, then sat down next to me and that was my father, as he had never been for too many years. Even before I changed and rejected him. In that moment I went back to being his son. No longer the antagonist or his opponent, forced through growing up. Because it was this authority over me that I had tried to take away from him, in the fear that, being too much of a friend, he would discover my secret.

He hugged me.

“I will have an operation. I hope it works.”

But I knew this wasn’t the truth. I understood a doctor like him could not have escaped the gravity of his own illness. If he had been convinced even a little of those words he was saying he simply would not have uttered them. He would have stood upright in front of me, looking at me with compassion. He would have inquired, with all his usual contempt, what I was doing sitting on the floor sobbing.

I had often dreamed of being an orphan, but when I woke up, I understood that in reality nothing irreparable had happened. Now everything was true and the irreparable was going to happen, because my father was really dying, and my mother would soon follow him. I knew, I was certain, at that moment, that she would not survive my father’s death for long. They loved each other too much.

We stood there hugging each other while he tried to console me, and I tried to calm the sobs that were shaking me.

He had always boasted of having built his professional success, which was remarkable, on the firmness of his nerves. Being a surgeon, operating on people, opening their hearts, was his profession, but also, he had made it a kind of religion, a code of conduct. When I began to see him for how he was and then to openly criticize his way of doing things, our house became like his operating theater. My mother and I were his assistants, seeing that everything worked properly. The pleasure I felt by contaminating this aseptic environment, which I believed he had built around us, with my deviant attitude, was enormous.

Only that day, I grasped the vulnerability and desperation he felt. When he was kneeling next to me, hugging me, ignoring the fact I was filthy. As ever, in those days I was dressed in a fashion that disturbed his way of thinking and behaving. So, when I felt him caress my hair to console me regardless of the fact that it was long and filthy. Then I begin to understand how much I would miss him. How much he loved me, and how much I loved him.

After a while, we were both a little embarrassed about what was happening.

Up until the day before we had said the harshest things to each other. Now we found ourselves hugging. I was crying and his eyes glistened as he caressed me. It was a shock, even for someone like him, accustomed to maintain a certain self-control.

We shook each other. He helped me get up and stroked my hair.

“I’m going to your mother,” he said, and he couldn’t stop the gesture, that despite of everything that had happened, I was sure he would do. He looked at the hand with which he had caressed me. “Your hair is dirty,” he said, and he smiled at me, coming closer and caressing my hair again.

The scalpel was not sterilized correctly, the swabs were not in place, the tweezers not ordered by size. The last nurse had on a different colored gown. He had looked about and had discovered there was something out of place in his private operating theater. Only the day before, a few hours earlier, he would have been furious and so would I. We would have challenged each other with looks, and I would have announced my decision not to wash my hair for another year. He would have threatened to kick me out of the house. My mother would have been in tears. But he had smiled at me and caressed me once and then again. Meekly I said yes to him, nodding my head. I left the house without another word and went straight to the barber to get my hair cut.

The family barber, who I had abandoned years before, couldn’t hold his tongue and asked me the reason for my sudden return.

“It gets too easily dirty and is a mess to keep washing!”

I knew the answer would not satisfy his curiosity, but I would not confide that before I didn’t have the money to pay him.

This was not the only change in my life because of my father’s illness. I no longer took drugs. I stopped hanging out with the people who had induced me try them and with whom I shared them. I started studying again. And I ended prostituting myself.

***

I had begun my life as a boy for rent when my father forbade my mother to give me the money I kept demanding from her with increasing insistence. By now he knew I was on drugs and he was trying to prevent me from being able to buy them.

Taking drugs had become an intrinsic part of my life. I was not so much physically addicted, I had never suffered through any real withdrawal symptoms, other than psychological. There were times when not having anything to smoke, or not being able to escape reality with a pill, made me suffer.

I found a companionship with those friends with whom we had this one thing in common. I smoked marijuana and experimented with some hallucinogenic drugs, but I had never injected anything.

I had always been careful never to completely lose control over myself, because, I had a huge secret to hide. I felt I could not lose contact with reality, so my trips could be a struggle, because I couldn’t completely let go. Maybe my need to keep a hold on things stopped any addiction. It didn’t prevent me from resorting to all sorts of tricks to get drugs, not simply for myself, but for my companions.

I only cared about having the money to buy them, because it was the way to be accepted into that group. They were extremely selective. I was certain they would not keep me with them if I didn’t have the money to buy drugs, for myself, and especially to offer to them. That was the way I paid my way into that very exclusive circle.

It is why I came to sell myself, but I had only done so on those occasions, few fortunately, when my mother had been unable to secretly give me money.

When I came home with my hair cut and my face shaved, I ran straight to my room to tear off the torn clothes I was wearing. I piled them in a corner to throw out together with the other rags that I had covered myself with until then. That had been my clothing for a long time. I tried washing myself, to get rid of the bad smell of years of poor hygiene, all the accumulated dirt that stuck on me. It was not easy to remove!

That day I took the longest shower of my life. I let water cascade over me and mercilessly scrubbed my skin until it was painful. I emerged red, sore, but clean. Yet, I still had that rancid smell on me, in me, and it was many months before I could forget it.

Putting on decent clothes was a problem. I went looking for a pair of pants that I had last worn almost two years earlier and they barely fit. I found a shirt and a sweater that I had forgotten I owned. Then I dragged myself to my mother and asked her to take me out to buy more clothes. I didn’t dare to ask her for money which she knew I would spend on drugs.

She saw me with my face shaved and saw the shape of my head freed from the messy hair that usually covered it. This seemed to wake her up from the torpor in which she resided.

“Hey… what did you do to your hair? And the face?”

“I couldn’t put up with it anymore. Besides, Dad said it was filthy.”

I realized I sounded childish, but that was how it came out, I wasn’t pretending. It wasn’t anything I ever adopted with her. When I needed money, I only had to say so and she gave it to me. If I didn’t need to, I did not lie to her. But at that moment I spoke to her like a child because I felt like a child.

“I need some clothes, Mom. I don’t want to go around looking like I used to! Please!”

She stared at me, almost as if she didn’t comprehend my words, not believing what she was hearing. Not believing what I was telling her.

“My poor baby, you haven’t eaten anything today, have you?”

I hadn’t eaten and didn’t even remember it. At that moment, the only thing on my mind was getting new clothes that would at least make me look respectable. But I didn’t want her to worry and so I sat down meekly and ate what she insisted on preparing for me.

She looked incredulous, dreamy, shaken by the events of the day. First my father about to be torn from her, and me who seemed to have come back from a long exile. I had been missing for too long. She appeared as if she were lost.

We went out, and she bought me clothes and shoes. Like Oliver Twist the poor wretched orphan who needed to be dressed in new things that he had never had before. She didn’t seek explanations, perhaps because she was already reading my thoughts. Or she was afraid to ask, afraid that thinking about it I might change my mind again.

My return to life seemed to console her, because in those hours of pain she had found her child again. And I understood. Right then I would have done anything, almost anything, she had wished of me. I would have tried, even at the cost of dying. That desire to die I would leave for another time. If I had not succeeded in one way, I would have tried another.

The next day I went back to school.

I felt like I had missed a lot. I had gone there almost every day, but I refused to listen and learnt nothing. It was only because I was good at improvising and had a lot of credit with the teachers that I got promoted to the fourth year. At least that is what I told myself, in a semblance of pride, but I knew I had my father to thank. Someone told me so, but I never found the courage to ask him directly.

In the fourth year it was a different story. I had new teachers who hadn’t met me in my previous life and for whom I was a drug addict. I was condemned to fail, without thinking about it too much. I had to leave school. I was the rotten apple. I really was.

That morning I went back to school, starting the first hour, with everyone else. I faced the incredulous look of my classmates and the distrustful look of the literature teacher. At the end of the hour, I went to look for her in the teachers’ room and asked to speak to her.

She was a tough, demanding woman. Usually, she could sense the gaps in any preparation and exploited them. I knew she did it so we would not grow up with the idea of obtaining everything with little effort. With her I had not succeeded in my game of pretending to know.

I spent that night awake, not trying to fall asleep. My eyes were stubbornly open, my pupils dilated, as if I had sniffed cocaine. The drug I had taken was another, a nastier one, more elusive. It was a terrible cocktail between my survival instinct, the remorse I felt and guilt towards my dying father and my mother’s pain. It was, as I would discover after a few days, a rather masochistic search for spiritual agony.

Those three ingredients were the elements of the mixture that had snatched me away from the desire for death, an obliteration that I was trying to satisfy with my vagabond and wasted life. Turning over in bed, several times I had the impulse to flee and purchase drugs. It would have been enough for me to abandon the house. I had money, my mother had insisted on giving it to me, but I didn’t move. A mysterious force kept me bound to the bed. Perhaps it was the thought of my dying father in the adjacent room.

Instead of going back to drugging myself, I played through those events of my previous life. I was on the same bed, in the identical position as that torrid night in August, when I had decided to take drugs to drive away that horrible thought. The thing I had done to Paoletto.

The literature teacher was amazed by my decent and dignified appearance, but she was definitely not influenced by it. Without my messy hair and unkempt beard, I knew I looked like an orphan or a wayward angel. I had barely recognized myself in the mirror that morning.

“I have decided to change everything in my life and would like you to help me,” I told her in a pathetic voice and one breath. “I know I will have to accomplish a lot, but I need to pass. Please, help me!”

I would have liked to have told her in a normal voice, neither pleading nor mocking. It was a wish expressed and I hoped it would strike her, at least for its audacity.

She, on the other hand, did not believe a single word I expressed.

“And why should I support you? Just because you have washed and shaved? How can I believe someone like you? I know what you do and how you live. Do you think I hear nothing about you? I know more things than your father wants to know…”

At that moment I didn’t understand what she meant. I could not give my genuine reasons. What was happening to my father, my remorse, my desire to atone, the need to punish myself more than I had done until then. My father’s illness was a private matter, for as long as that was possible, it should remain unknown to anyone outside the family. He had expressly asked me the night before.

Then there were the other reasons, my deepest secrets, which were precisely secrets and I could not reveal them to anyone. If known by others they would have lost their possibilities.

“Support me, please,” I repeated, “If I can’t do it, I’ll fail anyway. It won’t cost you anything and at least I will have tried. I won’t do drugs anymore. I don’t want to do them anymore!”

“And when was the last time you took drugs?” she insisted.

“The other night,” I confessed with a little voice, “I injected myself with heroin,” I revealed to her, almost unwittingly, feeling, realizing, at that moment how unreliable I was, “but it was my first and it will also be my last time! Believe it or not!”

I stated it and was already crying. I didn’t want to, I didn’t think about humiliating myself so much. But I had forfeited my confidence and modesty had left me years before, along with respectability. My self-respect no longer existed.

“Whining like you’re doing is not enough to convince me that you’ve really stopped,” she insisted “And could I know what happened to cause your sudden change of mind? For all one knows the fashion has changed and now you are dressing better, to go and purchase drugs?”

She mocked me. She was provoking me, but I didn’t mind her.

“I have decided to quit,” I insisted, “I have to stop doing drugs, and want to go back to school!” I pitched my voice a little because I was exasperated. I began to tremble. “If you want to support me, it will be easier for me, otherwise I will study anyway and when the end of the school year comes, you can judge me. If you fail me, it means that I will have deserved it.”

“You deserve yourself and deserve all the bad things that happen to you” she said staring at me “It would take a miracle. Do you know that? We have only two months to the end of the school year and you haven’t read a single page of a book in two years! Do you think I haven’t noticed? How do you hope to make the time up?”

I explained it to her. Calmly and with a coldness that frightened me. What I described to her was difficult and dangerous for me. The harshness of my commitment, the recklessness of my promises. I had thought about it all night long.

“So, study,” she ultimately granted. “You will have to show me every day what you are achieving and see you do not make any mistakes. Mistakes of any kind and mistakes you know about!”

She did not promise to support me, but at least she was interested in me. She would help me.

With the others it was a little easier. To all of them I proposed cross-examining me a month later on the first half of that year’s program. I would study at night and make up time in all the subjects. I knew I would not be getting much sleep. If that first interrogation went well, I would continue working hard again, and I would get back on track with the whole program by the end of the year. For the written tests we could see how they went. Someone even suggested that I repeat some of them to increase my grade averages.

It was madness, but I had no choice. I would have to keep my mind busy if I didn’t want to go out again with my usual friends and if I wanted to stop using drugs. I had to study until I knocked myself out if I wanted to pass in June.

I had already achieved the experience of chasing and killing the beast within me, looking for a stronger, more powerful beast with whom I instantly became a slave.

So, I drowned all of myself in that mad study. I didn’t leave the house anymore, except to attend school, and there I didn’t talk to anyone, except to ask for explanations on topics I hadn’t understood from books.

It was a crazy chase. For a long time, I had nothing left to lose, it seemed to me that I was at the bottom of a very deep well. I was there and I was walking around, knocking my head on the stone walls. It was not a nightmare, a vision, the anguished dream of a junkie who suddenly stops, but the rationally constructed image to describe myself and my state.

I wrote about it in an essay and got a good grade from my literature teacher. That day she called me to the teachers’ room. She didn’t say anything to me, but she caressed my cheek. When I realized that she would not speak, I left. Perhaps we were both moved.

I had a sufficiency in almost all the subjects and something more in Italian, Latin, and Greek. I had always passed close to the top, and these were not grades to be proud of, but my mother was happy to hear the news. My father, when I took the news to the hospital, burst into tears.

That I recalled was the first time I had seen him in tears. Then, with the onslaught of the disease, he did it more and more often.

That night I cried too. I wasn’t excited about making the grade. I certainly wasn’t crying with relief. I was terrified, terrified at having lost for the next three months, the only way to keep my mind occupied.

Probably my fall to the bottom had ended with the injection of my first and only dose of heroin. That night a few hours before my father discovered he was sick. It had been quick, but sometimes when I look at those years, I think I recognize a more precise pattern in my life, in my destiny. It was the day I left Paoletto. When I abandoned him to himself on the mountain without speaking to him again. After that I fell ruinously into a hell from which I could barely rise again. The drugs, the sex, the trips, the acceptance of my father’s death, the promises I made to him, remain the only evidence of my return to the light.

***

I began to prostitute myself in the fall, a year after I had abandoned Paoletto.

There were two of us, me, and Valerio, blond and thin. He became skeletal when he started injecting heroin. He had turned eighteen, but he seemed younger than me. His family was not as wealthy as mine and he was constantly seeking money to obtain some pills, some smoke, then heavier stuff. Thanks to my mother I required less money and I tried to be less involved in drugs, consuming them less than my mates did.

When my father prevented my mother from giving me any money, finding the cash became indispensable. It was then I began to accompany Valerio. We went together on Saturday, taking the train at two in the afternoon. After school. I was the one who needed to do it, because Valerio had dropped out a long time ago.

We arrived two hours later. We didn’t do it in our city out of pride. And then Valerio wasn’t gay, he didn’t think he was homosexual. At any rate, when he wasn’t high, he was still getting hard for women, which I never could. No matter how desperately I desired it. Regardless, we didn’t want to be hustlers where someone could see and recognize us. It was a residue of pride a little unexplainable.

We sold ourselves in the area of the Central Station. It was even practical, because as soon as we descended from the train we were in the proper place. In the underpasses, near the toilets, next to the luggage room, leaning against the columns, we waited for our customers.

Valerio had proposed this to me when he saw me running out of money and so one Saturday, I went there myself and the adventure had begun. On the train he explained a few things to me.

“If it goes well, we make a lot of money. Even without getting too tired. I always decide first how much money I need. You always have to say what you want to do or get done to you and how much they have to give you. Don’t let yourself be convinced if you are not really sure. And then you are cute, you will always find someone who will want you. But you must tell him you have just turned eighteen. It’s not true and they don’t believe it, but you have to tell them anyway, so they feel their conscience is clear. And maybe they’ll even give you more money!”

Valerio was nice too, but he didn’t imagine he was. I thought if I had the money I would have paid him for an afternoon with me. I had a hard-on but was too sad and worried to even take care of it. My cock adapted to my state of mind and calmed down.

My first client, Valerio negotiated for me, was a gentleman of my father’s age who took me to a somewhat metropolitan ravine, at the bottom of a disused underpass. As soon as we were hidden, he asked me to take his cock in my hand. Whether I had any doubts, or the idea of feeling embarrassed at a moment like that, nothing like that happened. I felt no shame. I needed the money.

I didn’t think that man was like my father, or that I had a desire to hold my father’s cock in my hand and play with it. Maybe hold it, I laughed, and hurt him. I didn’t think anything like that.

I beat him off serenely and when he asked me if I would let him touch me, I let him do it. He unzipped me and pulled my dick out. My cock instantly became hard. Valerio had warned me against ejaculating with clients. It was unadvisable if you had not contracted it and they were paying. As a result, I didn’t concentrate, there was nothing exciting for me about what we were doing.

The man wanted to kiss me, and I allowed him a hug and kiss, but only on my neck. I felt no disgust because he smelled of good aftershave and was clean. Unlike myself, I hadn’t taken a shower in who knew how long. After he had come, he pulled out a handkerchief and always kindly asked me if I wanted to wipe it off. I did. At that point he paid me, and we went back to the station. Valerio had also returned and immediately wanted to know how it had gone.

“You have made yourself a regular customer! That one will be here next Saturday waiting for you, believe me! But you didn’t have to get kissed. Next time remember to ask more.”

There were other clients, other sad Saturdays and even Sunday afternoons, other lazy participation in sexual acts, not at all exciting. My cock became hard because of the solicitation it received, never because of any real excitement. From that point of view, I was a little disappointed.

When we returned on Saturday night our friends were waiting for us to scrounge what we had purchased with the fruits of our labor. The place where we used to hustle was better supplied than our city when it came to drugs.

At dawn I would return home. Without emotion, without regret for the innocence I had lost. Where had it been, how and when? Assuming I had a few crumbs of innocence left after what I had achieved. If I did have some left, whatever remained I trampled on with anger. My innocence.

What I remember most about those days is how I suffered no remorse. For nothing, neither for the life I was living, nor for myself, no shame in showing some of my nakedness to strangers who had paid for the right to look. No embarrassment in allowing myself to be touched by unknown hands, to touch the limbs of strangers myself, beautiful or ugly. I experienced nothing except the knowledge that those little inconveniences would provide me with enough money to pay for what I needed most.

***

The group that I had joined in that extremely hot August, after my last camp, was made up of boys and girls of different ages and I was among the youngest. We smoked pot and took some acid. In the intervals of lucidity, when we were not high, we identified ourselves as a group on the extreme left wing that was in close proximity to anarchy and which finally exploded in a myriad factions. Some groups ended up in subversion and armed struggle (1), others, like mine, in drug addiction, more or less heavy.

In the summer when I betrayal Paoletto, my future friends met in a secluded corner of a public garden on the other side of the city. I instantly understood that there were strict codes of conduct amongst them. To be one of them, I began to dress like a beggar, looking for old-fashioned, oversized pants and worn-out T-shirts. I abandoned personal hygiene and the razor that I already used infrequently, since my beard was only a shadow on my face, only down. But I let it invade my face like a mist almost as if it could hide it.

I don’t know what fascinated me about those guys. Not their political speeches that I still didn’t follow correctly. Undoubtedly, it was their unconventionality, the freedom in which they seemed to move. I discovered that their aspirations were above all to ignore the taboos that society dictated, and which were imposed on all of us. It seemed to me that they did not allow themselves to be conditioned by any of the bourgeois conventions which they were fighting openly. The enemy was the Bourgeoisie, with a capital letter, an indefinite and elusive entity. Religion didn’t influence them. They said they ignored it rather than opposed it.

In them, however, one thing disappointed me. In that desire for freedom, they overlooked one thing that was of the utmost importance to me. For them, males were males and all very proud in their desire for females, who in turn were proud to possess something sought after. It was a kind of sacrament administered with liturgies of which they were fiercely jealous. They forgot, nor did I want to remind them, that there were other kinds of desires.

If freedom were to happen, I thought it was unfair that it wasn’t for me too. And I was well aware of being the way I was. But I had found them and was also aware that without them I would have gone mad.

What I was doing in that group I couldn’t say, but I knew I would find no other place to go than there, so I joined in. I invented for my own benefit and by way of explanation to those who asked me, a vaguely mystical sexual abstinence. In any case, being among the youngest I was not considered as a possible conquest by the girls and not around enough for them to care about me. One of the golden rules of the group, the one that I appreciated the most, was that each one of us would scrupulously mind his own business.

Before winter began, we had occupied the school (2).

As in a script produced and recited with fervor by all, we ran to barricade the doors and declared ourselves in permanent assembly (3), breaking down a few desks. And as every year, the occupation lasted two weeks, during which I slept at school every night.

That was a challenging time for me, because every night I had to look for a valid excuse not to get fucked by one of the girls who wanted to do it. My appearance was not bad then and even amongst anarchists and communists everyone knew I was from a rich family and therefore had money in my pocket. Briefly, I was quite a catch. One night I couldn’t escape and found myself in a sleeping bag with a girl a little older than me for what was supposed to be my baptism of sex. It remained the only such experience of my life.

I was a bit stoned from smoking a joint and had enjoyed a beer. Another joint smoked with her, in that awkward position, had led me to a state of inebriation that freed me from reason, will, and judgment. At a certain point, I think I told her, ‘I love you’. She kissed me. I hugged her and all I remember is our hands frantically trying to undress each other in the narrow confines of the sleeping bag. The last sensation, before oblivion, was the alien scent I smelled when she was naked, and I stroked her between her legs. The rest, if it in fact happened, I could only picture in my mind. That night I definitely ejaculated, because when I woke up my cock was covered in dried up cum, but where my cock was when this happened, I couldn’t say.

It is a doubt that I have never resolved with certainty, nor did I ever care to know. The next day she claimed that I had been inside her until a moment before. I woke up because we had fallen asleep in the same sleeping bag and it was getting uncomfortable. Instantly the memory of my camp and another awakening came over me. Of when I was in Marco’s arms in his sleeping bag. With that memory I burst into tears. I pulled myself out, kicking, waking up the girl, frightening her. And I ran away, I don’t know where. All that halted me was the awareness that I really had nowhere else to go, nowhere else to hide. Weed, beer, wine, those friends, some pills, what else was there in my life at that moment?

The occupation, anarchy, or communism, I had not yet decided about. I didn’t need an idea to believe in. The others had the State to fight, demonstrations and marches, shop windows to break, the police charges to fight. And then there was a revolver hidden in the school. And there was the fear of everyone being arrested.

I stayed there and pretended to believe in free sex, in the fuck that maybe I hadn’t had. If I had left that school, I would have had to come home and listen to my father. There was nowhere I could go.

In those days, in those months, we were all doing drugs.

We had a kind of hangout in the old town. It was a block of rented rooms, I don’t know from whom, and paid by someone else for who knows what reason. It was the headquarters of the ‘Movement’ (4), the breeding ground of the most subversive ideas somewhere that provided a number of people who later worked for the criminal press or went into politics. In the penultimate room, there was habitually someone who was getting stoned. Those like me who had money and knew where to purchase their supplies, offered others a smoke, sometimes some acid. During the breaks, between a joint and a trip, ideas got discussed.

In the last room, proletarian expropriations were planned, and attacks on the police, Molotov cocktails (5) were prepared for the next day’s demonstrations. Maybe other things, even worse, but I never had any direct knowledge of that. Nor was I told anything by anyone because I was too young and considered unstable because of my behavior on acid. In short, the memory of how badly I reacted on the drug was still alive in everyone’s minds.

I quickly learned to be appreciated by others, becoming an expert in the preparation of joints. I was also able to speak for several minutes without saying anything concrete. I could read a few things quoting Trotsky, Bakunin, and a few others. It was easy enough to learn the standard stuff and appeal to those stereotypes.

My mind, just like at school when I pursued my studies, was busy, but my own ideas and my real thoughts remained always permanently locked away. It was enough for me. I occupied my days with meaningless words. I assigned a sense to the debacle of my life, framed it with politics, consecrating myself to an alien ideology I never debated. I was in a pack, a tribe, and my people followed that direction.

Some time passed, a few months, before a group of us chose to abandon the party line of our leaders. To break away from the ‘Movement’ in search of an experience of ‘real freedom’. Which was actually an existence determined through our actions. In fact, the choice was either to move to semi-secret, cloak and dagger, direct support of the clandestine armed struggle, or to let ourselves be caught in the spiral of a utopian non-conformism that was the use of drugs and the search for money to get them. The group to which I stayed faithful chose the latter alternative.

At the time, in that spring, my mother and a few other anxious parents were providing enough money for most of us. Our goal, very minimal, and not very connected to the destiny of humanity, was to reach the summer, hopefully with a promotion at school, and to go as a group to Amsterdam. There we would get to know a different and much more stimulating world. Not a cultural enrichment, but an opportunity to sample some foreign beer and above all to smoke freely when we desired. The rumors were that there was much more freedom in Holland than there was here.

(1) Those were the so-called Years of Lead (Italian: Anni di Piombo). It is a term used for a period of social and political turmoil in Italy that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s (the story is set in the 1970s). Marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism. Most of the terrorists were students and came from universities and also from the last years of the Liceo (High School).

(2) Strange as it may seem, in Italy it is still almost a tradition that, between the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, starting from the historical 1968, many High Schools are ‘occupied’ by students, just as described in the story. The motivations have changed over the years. They remain no longer the same as fifty years ago, but among all the ones that are not confessed is to be able to do in the school just what is told here. Even the Author has done it and more than once!

(3) ‘Permanent Assembly’ is a term used during ‘occupations’. It refers to the fact that the school is entrusted to the decisions of the student assembly convened in ‘the permanent’ mode.

(4) The Movement represents a spontaneous political movement that arose in Italy in the 1970s. It began mostly from groups of extra-parliamentary left. As for form and substance, it was completely new compared to previous student movements, such as the protests of 1968. In fact, it was drawn by the declared objection to the system of parties, unions, and even political movements.

(5) A Molotov cocktail, equally recognized as a petrol bomb, bottle bomb, poor man’s grenade, is a generic name used for a variety of bottle-based improvised incendiary weapons. Because of the relative ease of production, Molotov cocktails have been used by criminals, protesters, rioters, urban guerrillas, terrorists, irregular soldiers.

4

The Journey

We got off at the Amsterdam train station at seven o’clock on a July morning. It was very cold, but I was happy to be where I was. No, never happy, but at least content. Because this was my first trip without anyone deciding for me. I had often been abroad, but this time it was different.

I was not happy. That was never how I was.

There must have been six or seven of us, and then there were only three. With me there were Valerio and a boy in his twenties we met during the trip. We didn’t even know his name since he introduced himself to everyone only by his nickname, Cochise, like the Apache chief.

Cochise would be our guide, but only for the first few days.

We looked for the tourist office, where according to Cochise’s own experience, we could find directions to our accommodation. Maybe in a hostel, as I wanted to sleep in a real bed. Those who had already been to this city told us that in Amsterdam it was possible to sleep in the parks or even on the streets.

We went to a hostel. I paid for a week’s accommodation for myself and the other two. My mother had given me a lot of money. Travelers’ cheques, which I carried hidden in a bag I always kept around my neck, together with my passport and the weed we bought as soon as we arrived.

It was true. In Amsterdam there was everything a junkie could dream of, and more. If you had the money to buy it.

We started walking around the city and for a few days did nothing but wander here and there. We chatted with other guys who, like us, were in Amsterdam to spend the summer getting stoned and doing whatever else they wanted. We lost Cochise as easily as we had met him and did not regret it. Valerio and I pursued our life of drinking and getting high. As always, he drank and smoked much more than me.

I met René at the Milky Way or Melkweg, as it is called in Dutch.

It was housed in a former diary and is still there today, a cultural center and more, in the heart of Amsterdam, behind Leidseplein. Every night there were rock bands performing, groups at the beginning of their careers, all of them of dubious fame. Everybody used to go there, staying inside until nightfall, because it often rained and was always cold. There was no shortage of people to share a bottle and a few tokes with. The place was always crowded, with up to a thousand people in there. Usually, they were guys like us who came to Amsterdam looking for experiences, or just some place you could smoke joints and drink in peace.

The music was not always very good, and that night it wasn’t exceptional! So much so that I wasn’t listening. Instead, my eyes roamed over the crowd, looking for a face, a body, nothing special. I was seeking any pretext to let go to my fantasies, to build a dream in which I could take refuge and live it for a few hours. In those days it was my preferred way to spend my time, as good as any other. I let everything wash over me.

There were groups sitting cross-legged. People leaning against the walls. Guys standing up who blocked the view of the stage. Unfortunately, they did not reduce the volume of the music that reached me, ramping everything up until I was stunned. I was sitting next to Valerio, now drunk and almost asleep, like the other guys around us. I hadn’t drunk at all, nor smoked, and I can’t recall why. I have often tried recalling that evening, the moments that preceded that important moment in my life, but I never succeeded. I would like to know if it was chance or premonition that made me stay absolutely sober that night.

I was lost in my own thoughts when I felt something cold and wet against my ear. I turned around and saw a dog was sniffing me. A reddish colored mongrel, as far as I could tell in the semi-darkness. When I stared at him, he looked back at me, then yawned. I yawned back loudly too and so did his owner who was standing behind him. He was holding the dog on a leash made from a piece of rope. We broke out laughing together. Even the dog perhaps!

He was a guy in his twenties who looked like Jesus. That was my first thought. Those figures of Christ that you can see on the holy cards. He was beautiful, with long blond hair and a silky beard, smooth, cut close to the cheeks. He was also thin and lanky, slouching, but charming.

“Don’t you like this music?” He cried out so as to be heard and nodded towards the stage.

I shook my head, while carefully scrutinizing him. He was certainly attractive.

Beautiful!

“I’m bored,” he said. “And Brick,” he looked at the dog, “is hungry and thirsty. I need a drink too!”

At that point, my English wavered. I held up my hand, signaling to wait.

“Sorry, please! I’m Italian. I don’t understand well! Speak slowly, please!”

“Tu sei italiano?” he said, and his face opened up in a broad smile.

“Yes!”

“My father is Italian.” He switched to Italian “He wants me to learn the language. But my mother is American, and she is blonde like me!”

“My father, on the other hand, forces me to learn English.” I told him in English “He invested a lot of money, but I never wanted to study. My mother is Austrian, so I speak German very well. Can you understand me if I speak Italian or German?”

“No! No! Not in German!” He bobbed his head, swaying all that hair which I wanted to caress. “It’s better Italian, but speak slowly and don’t say difficult words? OK?”

“OK, but if you want, you can speak English too. I understand something too.”

So, we agreed on the languages to adopt to understand each other.

“Are you tired of being here?” he asked, always shouting to overcome the noise produced on stage.

“Yes!”

“Come on! Let’s go! Shall we go? Yes? Do you want to come with me? I told you, Brick is hungry and must drink, and so must I!”

He laughed, and I saw he had a beautiful mouth with perfect teeth. Mine had no faults either, but I hadn’t cleaned them since we’d arrived in Amsterdam.

We went outside and escaped the noise. The air was invigorating, it would soon get cold. The Milky Way was on one of the canals that crisscrossed the center of Amsterdam. It was on the outermost one. I looked out over the parapet on the bridge and watched the dark water flowing lazily below.

“Are you hungry too?”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t hungry. In those days I never thought about food. But I would have said yes to anything he asked.

We got hot dogs. I bought three, one for the dog. We drank beer while walking to the Dam, the square that all the young people from every part of the world had practically taken over during those years.

“Shall we let Brick decide where to go?” René said suddenly. “He is from Amsterdam and knows it better than we do.”

For me one place was the same as another if I were spending time with him. We followed the dog along several canals until we ended up in a narrow alley. It was dark and a bit sinister. It divided two tall buildings, deserted at that time of the day. In part it was floored by grates with water flowing underneath and closed at the end by a parapet beyond which another canal passed.

The water was the only discernible noise in the otherwise silent night. The Dutch went to sleep early, and the only solitary souls wandering around at night, were us. Inept tourists, looking for a place to sleep, smoke, or get drunk.

Whilst we were strolling around René began telling me about himself. He came from New York. His parents had given him an untranslatable name, Salvatore. He had decided to call himself René, French-style. But only outside his home and secretly, when away from his father, who was very proud to be Italian. He told me he liked his chosen name, and I should use it, even though I was Italian, and I could easily call him by his real name. I reassured him that that would be the only way I would address him.

“I’m gay!” He said, after a while when we were talking, but I didn’t understand him.

“Gay? Are you happy? What does it mean?” I asked.

“Oh, sorry! I am homosexual! Do you understand?” He asked me without hesitation or seeming to care, just as we were going into the alleyway. “I’m a faggot, do you know what that is?”

“I think…” I said slowly, I was scared. “Yes…I think so!” and I started trembling.

Of all the guys who were going around Amsterdam that summer, did I really need to meet someone like me? I was terrified and fascinated. Why had he chosen me?

“Now in America we homosexuals are called gay… Like cheerfully, happy… Gay!” He explained. “But it means so many other things that I can’t explain. Does it bother you? Me being gay?”

“No, no. It doesn’t matter. But you are the first homosexual…gay that I know!”

“Right! So… Want to kiss me? Only if you wish!”

Kiss him if I wanted to? I was amazed, and my mouth was still open. He really wanted me to kiss him, but why me?

He was proposing something ridiculous, but it was in the logic of that time, of that summer. There we were all the same, all brothers. But why me?

Before answering myself, I accosted him and kissed him. Lightly, I set my lips on his, then I stepped back and asked him why he had chosen me of all people.

“Why me, René?”

“You seemed miserable and I like you. You are a charming boy. But it was Brick who chose you, while you were there being sad at the Milky Way! And so, I asked if you wanted to kiss me. We could have gone out and had another beer.”

“I could have punched you in the face. I am not homosexual,” I lied pathetically.

“It doesn’t matter. You kissed me.”

I went to lean against the railings that barred the alley. I had my back to the canal and kept my eyes fixed in him.

The water flowed all around us, generating its dull and continuous noise. It was the real sound of Amsterdam, and we all knew it. When the clamor of the day, talking, cars, boats, faded away, the murmur of the water arose and it was night, and everything was allowed. René approached me.

“You’re gay too…aren’t you?” he whispered to me, softly.

He did not wait for my answer. He came up again and hugged me, blocking me against the metal railings. He grazed my neck with his lips and then looked for my lips. Our mouths joined and we kissed again. He ran his tongue into my mouth and waited for me to do the same.

We exchanged our tastes. I stupidly thought about my breath, the fact that I hadn’t brushed my teeth for who knew how long. Then I realized that our bodies had come together. I felt his erection against mine. His weight pushing me against the metal bars. If I wanted to escape, I could have. He wasn’t forcing me in any way, but I definitely didn’t want to escape him. I was granting myself a respite, from my ruin, from my self-destruction. I would not let it pass me by. Not that night.

Our arms intertwined, his soft beard tickling under my nose. His smell was indefinable, but cleaner than mine. That was certain, even if it still smelled of sweat and smoke. That scent excited me more than anything else. I squeezed him until I heard him sigh. At that point I loosened my grip. His hand slipped between us until he felt my hardness. His fingers traced the bulge and stopped to stimulate the tip through the fabric of my jeans. A long sigh escaped me.

I’ll come, wait, I wanted to shout at him. At that moment I realized I did not know the English word to describe how I felt. To tell him to stop immediately. None of the expensive schools paid for by my father had ever taught me that. And he certainly didn’t know the Italian words that I could have told him.

“One moment! Please…wait…René!”

I babbled in perfect private school English, trying to escape from his hug. We stopped just in time.

“You’re not worried, are you?” he promptly asked, fearing he might have frightened me in some way with his boldness.

I shook my head.

“Do… do you want to make love?”

Make love? How? With you, René? And how would we do it?

That question surprised me. I felt an enormous shame for not being prepared for what he was asking me. The excitement of that moment, however, was stronger. Even fiercer was the instinct that pushed me to cling to that boy. He had chosen me among a thousand others, because in his eyes or because of his dog, I was the one, the one who would say yes to the question he would ask me.

My instinct told me that this might be a unique moment, the one place, the only opportunity of my whole miserable life. The last opportunity offered before I died, killed by the hardships with which I filled the void of my ugly existence.

Make love to René? I was ashamed.

No one had ever seen me naked. My hard cock had only been seen by my eyes. It was only ever touched by my lover who was now far away and whom I would never see again. Only my hands had caressed it. I was ashamed, René. I was ashamed!

In that infinitely short time, which for me was long enough to feel embarrassment and then desire, virgin modesty and uncontrolled sensuality, and have all those thoughts, address those silent prayers to him, René waited. He miraculously understood how difficult it was for me to decide.

“Yes…René! Make love to me!”

I told him yes, but in my head I felt like I had smoked ten really strong joints. My brain was exploding! My body had become extremely sensitive. My perceptions were intensified. I felt his body against mine, and felt him, every movement was amplified.

Of course, René, of course I want to do it, but how? How do two men make love?

I looked with apprehension toward the street that crossed the alleyway.

“Brick will be our lookout and will inform us if someone arrives!”

He reassured me and I believed him, because the dog, after glancing at us with a certain curiosity, walked away, really going to stand guard at the entrance to the alley.

“This is the first time for you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I whispered, I was ashamed.

Yes, René, my love. This is the first time. And I will do it because I have fallen madly in love with you. I didn’t tell him any of this, but he had understood it. I never told him that I loved him, but he knew it. Even if it weren’t true because he wasn’t the one whom I could love.

René caressed me. I felt him fiddling with my pants and lowering them. Immediately I shivered. I got goosebumps on my legs and all over my body. The nights in Amsterdam can be cold. I was wearing a sweater, but he had slipped his frosty hands under my cotton shirt, onto my bare skin and I shivered, he uncovered me. He kept kissing me and I felt so passionate. I blushed, hoping the darkness concealed the state of my filthy underwear.

He kissed my nipples, moving from one to the other, several times. Then he detached himself from me just enough to make me turn around and I was looking at the canal, the water flowing in front of me. I saw how it turned immediately to the right, crossing one of the major canals. I could hear the filtered noise of a river boat moving beyond the corner. René caressed my chest and gradually lowered my underwear. He took my cock in his hand and while he was kissing me on the neck, rubbed it against my belly. He realized that I was getting close again and stopped. I could feel his erection against my ass. He had also undressed. He had hair on his chest that I felt on my bare skin. His long hair was flopping onto my neck.

“Can I make love to you?” he murmured.

Make love to me, René. It was what I wanted. And I hoped he would do it, not even really knowing what it was.

I had never in my life even imagined how two men could unite by making love. I never had the opportunity to do so. René was the first homosexual that I met and how it happened, I owed to the particular atmosphere of the times, of those days, in that fantastic city. Otherwise, I would have had to wait a long time before meeting someone who would satisfy my curiosity. At that moment it was absolutely unknown to me that two men could go beyond touching, rubbing, and enjoying each other. My knowledge was still limited to what my instinct had suggested to me on those two occasions I had experienced.

I had also, perhaps, participated in an intimate act with a woman. It had happened to me although I didn’t know for sure.

I had seen it being done in the sleeping bag next to mine during the occupation of the school and a few other times at the Movement Headquarters. Once, in particular, while I was pretending to be too stoned to notice, a boy and girl had made love right in front of me. These were vivid images, sharpened in their intensity by the drug I had just smoked.

Needless to say, I couldn’t remember anything about her, only the boy. I could draw him in every detail, describing and mimicking his every movement. From how easily he had stripped himself naked because it was almost summer. To how he had tried to find his way inside her. To how and with how much sweetness he had penetrated her and then his movements making love.

Slow, rhythmic, faster, slower still. Then he had suddenly arched over and fell back, while the indignant girl pushed him off, as she would have done with a blanket full of fleas. I was already wet, and was just trying to calm my breathing, having to pretend sleep. My memories, my knowledge of mating, stopped there.

So, when I felt René’s dick pressing on my ass and I heard him whisper those words in English that I almost did not understand. I only imagined he wanted to make me his and that the way he was going to follow was that way.

I wished he would do it. That was one way, maybe it wasn’t salvation. It would not have driven out one love with another. It couldn’t, but at least it would offer me some relief from my pain.

I felt him wet his hand with saliva and moisten between my legs, then I felt a strange, stimulating feeling. He had penetrated me with a finger. I felt his finger inside me, moving, as if to open me for him. He wet his cock and placed it where his finger had been. He pushed slowly, but I refused him, tightening myself. He caressed me. He had never stopped kissing me, licking me behind the ears. I tried to move away from him. I leaned forward towards the canal, as if I wanted to throw myself into the water. He was holding me tightly now. It was I who had wanted it, accepted it.

And I still wanted him, so I straightened up and let myself be hugged again. He wet his cock with more spital and lubricated my asshole with his saliva. Then he did it. Very slowly he pressed into me and penetrated me with infinite delicacy. I felt him inside me and I was overtaken by the excitement. For a few minutes I had forgotten about my cock, but when René entered me the sensation of having him inside reached my brain, waves of pleasure started and overwhelmed me, making me enjoy it.

I spurted against the railing while he was rubbing my belly and trying to grab my cock which seemed to have a life of its own as it moved and jumped. When I calmed down, I felt that René was filling me. It was as if he was rasping inside me and burning my flesh. He moved, he tormented my nipples, he squeezed my cock, he caressed my belly, he kissed me on the neck.

He wasn’t fucking me. We were making love. Before he had said, ‘let’s make love’ and that’s what we were doing.

I was moved, because that’s what I wanted, and it had never happened before, now I was doing it. I hadn’t had the courage or even the notion, the knowledge of that act. I would not have been able to do it. I couldn’t have done it. And now it was too late.

It is possible René loved me, I thought, though I was suffering because I felt sore. It was out of love I wanted to let him do it. In the moment it happened there was a substitution of people, in my head I became René and Paoletto was me. Did I want my devoted lover to suffer as I did? I definitely wanted to be inside him, to sink my sword into his flesh. I desired it. It was exactly what I wanted with my whole being because I knew that suffering would be a proof of our love.

René kept kissing me, but I was several thousand miles away. In a garden that smelled of flowers and the sea, overlooking the Mediterranean. There was jasmine and the scent of Paoletto, that mixture of talcum powder and soap I loved to remember, and which kept terrorizing me.

René had almost collapsed on top of me, covering me, and murmuring in my ear.

“Oh baby, it was great! How for you?”

“Absolutely, René, it was tremendous!”

But not because of you, I should have told him. But I didn’t. The credit is all yours and I love you. I love you so much even if I don’t really love you.

I love him and not really you. I thought.

We became inseparable. I used to sleep at the youth hostel, but I abandoned the hostel and followed René to Voldel Park. We slept in sleeping bags, in a corner where there was no danger of being disturbed. There were about a hundred of us. There were also more older people. Everyone minded their own business. I caught sight of some other couples like us.

At night we waited for the others to fall asleep and then I slipped into René’s sleeping bag which was bigger than mine. We would undress and make love. We fell asleep naked and hugged and were never cold.

One night, one of the last we would spend together, René wanted me to penetrate him. I didn’t want to, but he was adamant.

“If I only wanted an ass to fuck,” I had learned many new words in English, “I would have found myself a girl,” he said to me. “I want to be loved and by you! It’s what I need! It’s what I want from you!”

He directed my hands and my cock and moved with me. I possessed him with all the strength and love that I could give him. He came in my hand as I held his cock.

“Can you fall asleep like that now?” he asked me, as my breath calmed. “Leave it inside me. Let’s sleep like this. I want this memory to carry with me.”

We fell asleep, almost crystallizing our coupling. In the sleeping bag it was impossible to move except together, but we did fine. I kept my cock inside him all night long and at the first light of dawn which usually woke me up, I was hard again.

“Love me again, pretty thing, as you did last night…” René whispered. “I felt you inside me for hours. You always have it hard…” he chuckled.

“They can see us…”

“Don’t think about it…”

We made love as he wanted. With the sweetness and cruelty, he had taught me.

Then he was about to leave and after a few days, I too would return to Italy. René would have already flown to New York.

In Italy, I would start masturbating again, thinking about my usual ghosts. From then on, I would have one more to add to my private gallery.

He left one morning, leaving me Brick who I would in turn leave to someone else. After a few more days I went home. I wept as Amsterdam bade me goodbye with a downpour that washed my hair and clothes, but not my soul. Amsterdam cried and I cried with her because I loved her as a person. I left her my love and the shadow of what had been.

Only a game of mirrors and maybe René had never really existed. It was an illusion in which I transformed myself into Paoletto. Like double mirrors facing each other, we had loved our reflections, the echo of my experience. But had I really loved René? Certainly, for his nonchalance, and because he listened to me and consoled me. When I confessed to him that I loved him, almost as if he were an intercessor, a go-between, he had not chased me away. I certainly would have, but he had accepted the kind of love I wanted to give him and perhaps he too had loved me for that short season.

***

What I believed were my sex problems began at a time which seemed remote although only a few years had passed. After those first discoveries, my doubts had begun. The first one was when I noticed my cock didn’t want to get hard like those of my schoolmates.

In the eighth grade we all went to see a bit of a naughty film. We managed to get in because the usher paid us no attention. We sat in the back row and carefully followed the movie. The scenes were not exceptional. A few kisses, numerous hugs, a couple of boobs, and the shadow of a woman’s ass, which together with the breast, practically made a nude.

When we left, my companions were literally on fire. There had been enough in the film to make them lose any inhibitions and immediately start an animated discussion, there on the street. Talking excitedly about some of the scenes from the movie, of course the most enticing. Then shouting at each other and bragging about what they would have done if they were in the place of the male actors. Watching that film was like throwing a match on a bale of straw. The others had all caught fire, but my straw was damp, and there was no flame at all. What I said, my ramshackle laughter, my gestures were my imitation of what the others were doing. If I had stayed indifferent, they would have noticed it, and without knowing why, I didn’t want to be different.

I didn’t think about it again until a few days later when we received a mail order catalog at home. It had been years since we had been sent one, my mother refused to buy that kind of merchandise. And it was years since I took possession of it and leafed through it carefully. I had enjoyed the pages dedicated to toys, then bicycles and more recently men’s underwear. And there, I would stop and allow my eyes to consume that parade of groins wrapped in all the different underwear. For me, all young and desirable. I knew for sure, because we had talked about it, that my companions were looking at the pages of women’s underwear for similar reasons.

That was the second doubt about myself, a new crack that opened the rift between my friends interests and my own.

The third reason for disappointment about myself was more noble in its origins and came from the world of art which I frequented through my mother’s work. It was not the Impressionists with whom I was very familiar who struck me. Not their women with the strongly erotic details of their paintings. It was some other French painters of the nineteenth century, with scenes full of naked sensual men and boys, often in very ambiguous poses. When I discovered them, I went looking for a book that collected their most important works and got to know every work of those painters, Ingres, Delacroix, David.

I was most impressed by the painting that portrayed a naked young man, sitting on a rock, in a pose that seemed to be centered on himself. It was a ‘Studio’ painted by a certain Flandrin in 1836. Aesthetically the boy looked similar to me, with my own curly black hair and complexion, with smooth skin. He was seated on a green cloth and from his pose I imagined, I fantasized, that he regretted something. I transfigured myself into that attitude after masturbating. My repentance, the remorse for having done it, the regret of having sinned. That painting haunted me in many ways. At night I dreamed of the boy. His head bent over, his forehead resting on his gathered knees, his left hand on his right arm clutching his legs. I fantasized about caressing him, consoling him, clinging to him, he to me. I am certain I desired him, that I came to worship him. It was the idea of his supposed repentance that urged me to attempt to feel regret. But I was incapable of achieving that.

There was a lot more I remember about that year. Other stimulating events, but above all it was my interest, more and more marked, for my classmates. Sometimes these were real infatuations which fortunately didn’t last more than a few days. When usually the object of my attention turned out to be rude, insensitive, and ignorant, like almost all my classmates were. School for me had always been a place to spend the morning in the company of people of little interest. It was the place I had to go to study and nothing more. My real life and my friends were among the scouts, at the Section, and there especially was Marco.

I never understood how or why, but between us scouts there was a kind of unstated agreement which made us leave sex outside the door when we met each night. This still seems incomprehensible to me, so much so, that if I hadn’t experienced it for myself, I would not find it believable. More or less, everyone was at the age when curiosity for one’s own body and the bodies of others was at its strongest. At school and elsewhere you would be confronted by stimuli that left things almost uncontrollable. Yet at the Scouts, I never thought about looking for something exciting in my friends and I don’t think they did either. When I was in the Section, I completely forgot I had a dick, maybe we all forgot.

The explanation for this perhaps lay in the undertone of our lives. It may have been that we were participating in wonderful adventures and stimulating projects, but there was also another reason. How strongly it affected us individually depended on how each of us dealt with it. For everyone there was this absolute certainty, you could call it a blind faith, that God was watching and judging our actions. We all knew and recognized his omniscience, but we were equally certain that outside the Section his judgement was much less severe.

I had turned to Marco when what I was feeling had become too strong. I asked him to enlighten me on masturbation, but only because I was desperate and needed to know, and then we never mentioned it again. He had always offered me friendship, solidarity, and affection. That satisfied me and I didn’t look for anything more. I never understood the sensual and subtly erotic aspect of his relationship with me. Only when I encountered Paoletto did I begin to understand, but then it was too late, and my remorse made me want to die.

Discovering and being almost certain that Marco had seduced me, as I had done with Paoletto, did not help me. Knowing his affection, his interest, and his behavior with me, had been those of a boy in love, had a shocking effect on my conscience. Knowing that with the attention he had dedicated to me he had drawn me into his arms. Understanding he had been blocked only by his hypocrisy. It made me think even worse of myself for what I had done.

Only now, after so many years, could I recognize a lesser awareness in Marco than I had with Paoletto. But could that justify how he had acted? Unquestionably, it did not justify my own actions, not in my eyes.

I think, however, that my choice, my destiny, were in a certain sense favored by Marco’s coldness, by his apparent disinterest. I never knew this from him because I could not have asked such questions. If I could, I would now ask him if he had ever loved or desired me in that particular and forbidden way, because I am certain I had loved him, without knowing or thinking it.

***

The last time I sold myself was on Sunday. As always, on Saturday, we had gone to the station, but the next day we decided to go to a suburban avenue, another well-known hook up place.

I needed more money. Much more because I had decided to take another step towards my ending. My friends, or companions in misfortune, unluckier or just stupider than me, had convinced me to try heroin. I, who now felt I had not much more to lose, decided to go for it. To inject myself with heroin. I would have done it despite being terrified, that fear was simply the last glimmer of consciousness. If you are scared, it is because you have something you are afraid of losing. I was still afraid, although I was completely certain I had nothing to lose.

I already knew I was dead. What happened next was in a way a confirmation of those thoughts because I had my life back at the price of another.

For months I had been clinging to that fear. The others kept on at me to try heroin, to pierce myself with a needle, but I resisted. That Saturday, after school, even the fear was gone. I had seen Paoletto from afar entering a store. Seeing him, feeling how I had felt, had erased every fear and uncertainty, everything. I decided to try it. I was left with only the urgency to put an end to my pain.

It had been several months since I had seen him last. Perhaps over a year. I had almost banished his image from memory. I often tried to recall his face, staring into my soul, pretending not to recall his features. Then adorned with some magic halo his face appeared as he was the last time. Lined with tears and frightened. It was my nightmare.

But nothing comparable to really seeing him again. Grown, changed, distant, unreachable, beautiful in his youthful grace.

To shoot up with heroin seemed to me the only possibility left in my life. A kind of redemption, an act of courage. Very grotesque!

So that Sunday I went to sell myself in order to get enough money. I was soon approached by a man who was still young and good looking. He was driving a large car, quite new, and seemed relaxed, at ease.

He approached me and immediately came to the point.

“How much do you want, to get fucked?”

I suddenly found his demand impudent, and went to leave, annoyed. No one had ever approached me like that before. Then I tried to imagine how I looked, dirty and dressed in rags. I was certainly ill-mannered myself, and what I was doing was dirtier still.

I turned to stare at him with indifference. I didn’t care about myself, but that was a performance for which I was not available. Part of me was not for sale and I didn’t want to start that afternoon. It really had nothing to do with my bodily integrity, more that I didn’t want people to know I was taking it up the ass for money.

In my group, among those wretched people, everyone knew that every Saturday Valerio and I went to jerk off the old men. Sometimes, to obtain some more money, we let them do it to us. This was well known and since everyone benefited from our earnings, the thing was, if not praised, tolerated. To tell the truth, I did a few other things, always in order to get more money of course. I let them give me blowjobs and for a supplement lick the cum off me. Nobody knew this, however. But I never took another man’s cock in my mouth or in the ass.

This guy was not at all discouraged by my disdain and followed after me.

“Hey! Listen, I could pay you well if you let me fuck your ass! I like you, kiddo!” he shouted after me.

And I got a hard-on. Suddenly, as if with those words he had opened a door that had been closed for a long time. I had not expected this. What he had just said excited me.

I looked at him once more, carefully. Why not, I asked myself. Nobody would have to know, Valerio was already with another client, and I suddenly felt like getting fucked. My cock pressed painful against the fabric of my jeans. I wanted to be taken, even brutalized. For the umpteenth time I had that thought, you couldn’t lose what you didn’t have anymore. My integrity, for example.

My erotic impulses had fallen asleep when I decided to let myself die. My desires had been frozen more from the way I lived than from the use of drugs. Any feelings came to me muffled and I hardly ever got off. If a client grabbed my cock in his hand and stroked it, I got hard. To ejaculate I had to really concentrate, and I only ever bothered if it was part of our agreement and the client was paying extra. Which meant more weed for me and my friends.

Feeling it harden just because this guy was telling me he wanted me, excited me even more. I shot him a price that seemed exorbitant to me. But he accepted immediately, even though he demanded we first agreed on what I would let him do to me and what I would do in exchange for all that money. It wasn’t difficult to understand, I was seeking money and someone to fuck me. He had the money and was more than willing to fuck me. He made me promise that I would not resist him, and he promised not to hurt me too much. I didn’t believe him, but that last promise made everything more exciting.

What was really ‘hurt too much’ for me?

“So? Get in the car?”

“Right, but don’t go too far.”

The fear had returned. What if he murdered me? My parents would have mourned me. I thought I no longer cared about them, nor about myself. But I was nervous.

He drove quickly away from the suburbs and slipped into a lane that descended until we were hidden between two hillocks at the bottom of a rubbish dump. It was Sunday and there was no one around. If something bad happened, if he had killed me, no one would know for a long time. He knew the place, I reflected, a little worried.

Then I thought I would cry out in pain, because I was sure he would hurt me. And at that idea I felt a wave of pleasure running through my whole body. Was this what I really desired? Was I waiting, knowing I deserved it, chasing suffering? I tried concentrating on something else, because if I weren’t careful I would come in my underpants before we started.

“Take your jacket off,” he said abruptly, “and recline the seat. Turnover on your stomach. I’ll do everything myself.”

I carried out his orders. I usually was not docile with customers. I tried never to lose control, but that day, everything was different.

“You don’t talk,” he instructed me. “Let me do what I want, and you won’t regret it.”

It was an ambiguous phrase that contained a threat and a promise. I could only rely on it, but by then the fear had gone. My excitement was total and any thoughts about what I was doing had disappeared, leaving me defenseless, at the mercy of my instincts. The desire to destroy myself and the desire for carnal pleasure and pain blinded my consciousness. I was no longer a human being.

He lay on top of me and I felt his erection against my ass. Mine pressed into the car seat. He fiddled with my belt, opened my pants, and hauled them down to my ankles. When I went to work the streets, I didn’t wear any underwear. He didn’t seem to notice. He put his hands under my shirt and lifted it up to my armpits. My now exposed body was under his. I felt him touch me, handle me, grab me everywhere. At no moment did his hands, which were smooth and warm, caress me.

With his left hand he grabbed my cock and squeezed it hard, then he started to jerk me slowly. The thumb of the other hand slid along my back bone and between my buttocks to my hole. I was already a little sweaty and he tried forcing the opening. First, he tried with his thumb, then he just penetrated me with his finger. He roughly pushed it in. I felt pain, but I tried not to moan. Then I felt that, while he tried pushing his finger deeper, with the rest of his hand he pressed under my scrotum, almost trying to put his fingers together, squeezing me between my legs. The pain was intense, it shocked me.

“No, wait!…” I cried.

I tried struggling, but he was much stronger than me, and he immobilized me, crushing me with his weight. He gave me another terrible squeeze between my legs that made me scream.

It was like torture. He squeezed and pushed. He forced my hole open, and then he crushed the skin, the flesh between my legs, under my balls. With his other hand, he squeezed my cock hard. The pain made me scream again. Then everything changed, I felt waves of pleasure coming from afar, coming closer, while that finger fucked me mercilessly. His hand rubbed the skin between my legs viciously.

I came, getting cum all over the car seat. He only stopped for a moment, then he jerked me furiously again. My member was softening, but he kept squeezing and jerking it with malice. Even though he had pulled his finger out of my ass.

“Enough, wait… please…” I whimpered.

I tried to stop him, to move, to slide out from underneath, hoping it was over.

“Stay still!” he shouted and locked me under him with his weight.

Then he put one leg between mine and with his knee he spread my legs apart.

“Stay still,” he hissed, “don’t move. Do you understand? If you move, I’ll kill you! Do you understand?”

I blocked my fear, frightened not because of what he had said to me. I was somewhat aware, and I was prepared for the violence. I had looked for it. What terrified me was his accent which revealed his origin in his excitement. Probably we lived in the same city, I was almost sure of it. He could have recognized me. It was possible I knew him too. Perhaps I had already seen him.

We were both in another city for the same reason. Perhaps, he also moved around when he wanted to look for forbidden merchandise. We were not so different.

His face was one of those you think you have already seen. Something surfaced in my memory. He could have been a colleague of my father’s at the University, in the clinic. He certainly could have been a doctor. Finally, I seemed to remember.

“Will you stay still?” he hissed.

I was afraid. Shaking, I nodded and sank my face into the back of the seat, hoping he would not recognize me, if I did that. Although I had my beard, and long dirty hair covering my face.

He left my arms free for a moment and lifted himself on to his knees which were planted between my legs. I heard him undoing with his pants, taking off his shirt. I no longer dared move or turn around to look at him.

I was afraid of what he was going to do to me. Of the idea that maybe I knew who he was. Of the possibility of being recognized, but my cock was hard again. I had become hard even though I was terrified. I felt disgusted with myself and already imagining the terrible pain I was going to feel. I was disgracefully hard again.

He was on top of me. He took my cock with one hand. He hesitated. Perhaps he was surprised it was already so hard. With the other hand he guided his cock to my hole. He tried penetrating me, but he couldn’t make it. He couldn’t get in. Perhaps fear had dried up my hole. He got up and spat on his hand and rubbed it on me. Then on his cock.

He pushed hard and I felt it. Then he was inside me.

I was out of breath from the pain and screamed, but I let myself get fucked. I heard him huff and puff and swear. Then, too quickly, he came inside me with a series of sighs. The pain had subsided. What I now felt was my hard cock, finally caressed by that bastard’s hand. I moved on my own in his hand and came, moistening it with a few drops left over. It was then he kissed me on the neck and continued to rub his watery lips until he touched my mouth. I would have reacted angrily, but he was blocking me. He was still inside me.

I’m sure he sensed my disgust, but luckily he didn’t get angry, just stopped kissing me. I wanted to cry.

We stayed like that, lying on the seat, for a couple more minutes, until he went flaccid and only then did he pull out. He returned to his seat, panting.

He looked at me, and I stared at him to imprint his face on my memory, to calmly try to give him a name. Even though I had planned to die that same night. I thought I wanted to keep for myself the memory of the last man who had kissed me. Then I was no longer so certain I had seen him before. After the excitement he returned to speaking without dialectal inflections. Nor did he show any sign of having recognized me in any way. Not that it was easy, seeing what I looked like.

He paid me without a word. Gave me the arranged amount that would be enough to buy as much stuff as I would have needed to die. When he left me on the street he made me promise that I would be there the following Sunday.

By then I will be dead, I thought, with a sense of relief.

I looked for Valerio. My ass hurt. I was suddenly in a hurry to leave. All I had to do was tell him that I had enough money for both of us to do whatever we wanted. On the way back by train I stood up for a little while. Then I felt the pain increase and it got worse. My belly felt swollen. I went to the train toilet and tried to get rid of that pig’s cum. I felt a terrible burning, all the times I had done it with René I had not suffered so much. I cried, sitting on that shaky toilet with the stench of piss while the cum ran out of my ass.

Before long, the pain would disappear, lost in a fog of dizziness. My pupils would dilate, and I would see things that no one could have imagined. Above all, I would have forgotten myself. Someone would have left me on the floor, among the garbage, hidden under a pile of trash.

It was what I desired. I wanted it and I was going to get it, but there was still a step I could go down. There was another ladder descending deeper from the bottom of hell that I wanted to try to get down. I would try it before I left for my last trip. Before I died.

I would try seeing Paoletto again, as if it were the dying wish of a condemned man.

It was quite late when I arrived at the front entrance. I was walking, crawling along by the wall. I was thinking about what I was going to do, but also about my ass that was burning. Because as I walked, the pain was only getting worse. I had all the money I needed to purchase a lot of drugs. Which was why Valerio followed me like a puppy. I kept my hands in my pocket and caressed the bills, almost with love.

I was distracted by my thoughts and when I saw him it was too late to prevent him from recognizing me. When he called after me and then screamed my name, I turned around and started running. His cries filled the silence of the street. He tried reaching me. I heard him shouting for a long time. Even when I was too far away for him to have followed me.

Ours, mine, and Valerio’s, was a lengthy and desperate run which ended in the unloving arms of those who would sell us the drugs.

I paid for what we needed. And we ran again to look for help to inject it into us.

It was ugly. The worst experience of my miserable life. I was already sick before the drug took effect, but when that effect ceased, I knew hell.

Someone, I don’t recall who, either because I erased him from my memory or because I didn’t really know who he was, prepared the syringe for me while Valerio was working on his own.

“Are you ready? Clench your fist…” the guy said, while someone gripped my arm. “It’s painless for you, just finding a vein. You’ll see later!”

There will be no later. Never. I will die. Before long I would be gone. I still wonder why I was so sure I was going to die that very night. Why I had the illusion of having so much credit with my fortune. Perhaps it was because I just wanted to. Or maybe it was because I was used to having everything I wanted. And I pretended to be able to have death when I went looking for it.

But the dealer who supplied us was trustworthy. Perhaps because we always had enough money for him. He would never sell us dangerous stuff. I knew that too, but I wanted to die anyway. I deluded myself that that extreme experience, preceded by the violence I had suffered, would lead to the collapse of my existence. That life, finally, would escape me.

It was a skillfully prepared performance, but one from which the final act would end in failure.

I closed my eyes. I saw Paoletto. I could still hear him running after me, shouting. Then I felt the tip of the needle on my skin, pricking me, entering me. The liquid flowed, mixing with the blood and a feeling of well-being and oblivion enveloped me. Slowly every pain slipped out of my mind. The fears dissolved. In those hours or minutes, I forgot everything and especially him. But before anything else, the pain ended. Even that intimate burning that had not yet left me.

I was seeking a pitiful death, one which would soften all sensation before final extinction. It was a lethal embrace that would suffocate me, but obviously it wasn’t what I thought, because, although I wanted to die, I was careful they didn’t inject me with an excessive dose. So, I woke up. Hours later, trembling with cold and fear, fearing that where I was, was in hell.

Hell really existed, it was an icy wind that was blowing in my face and it smelled of garbage and piss. But it wasn’t hell, it was the dark depths of an alleyway in which we had hidden ourselves so that we could take care of our business undisturbed. My companions had abandoned me there when I had fallen asleep. They had placed me in a sheltered corner and screened me with a cardboard box. There was a kind of affection in those gestures. Or it had been the gratitude of Valerio who had almost tucked me in that precarious blanket to sleep. Although they were dirty cartons, and my sleep was induced by the drug that I wanted to kill myself with.

I woke up. It was still night, but when I was able to get up the sky was already clearing. I heard a bell chime discreetly and I went home to sleep until it was time to go to school.

I was sincerely and hypocritically disappointed not to be dead. Fate had betrayed me again, although I was a little relieved not to have ended up in hell. Even though I did not believe it existed. I started off with murmuring warnings to myself. Almost as if I could force myself to do something, make a commitment and be able to keep it.

“I will die another time. I will collect enough money for an overdose. I will do it next Saturday! I will make myself do anything, but I will get the money!”

It didn’t happen because I didn’t prostitute myself anymore. Because what happened that day in my house, changed my life once again. For better and for worse!

***

Twelve months after Amsterdam, another summer. Three months after I injected myself with heroin, I undertook one more journey, this time to London.

Even though memories coexist in my brain, it was as if the two journeys were made by different people. Two separate souls, in distinct bodies.

Looking at me, three months after I came back to life. It turned out that physically the drug hadn’t hurt much. Only my eyes had not returned to those of before. I had dark circles under them, like two recesses beneath my cheekbones. Two bruised undertones that refused to disappear, perhaps because of the effort made to study in those last three months. For the rest, my appearance had stayed the same. I was back to being a healthy-looking boy. On the outside I was intact, except for the hole in my left earlobe, which had been made a year earlier to put a silver earring in it. One night when I was terribly sad, the need to feel part of a group, not to be alone with myself, was stronger than anything. Almost all my companions wore a silver earring and I wanted one too. My father was furious when he saw it and my mother cried. I tried in vain to explain the reason. That hole was and still is, the permanent sign of what I was. Although now, after so many years, it has almost disappeared.

I was seventeen, I had a figure still adolescent, with only a hint of a dark beard on my chin and lip. The rest was almost invisible hair on my face.

My eyes betrayed me. Their tiredness, you could tell by looking at them, that it was not only physical.

My father, in the days when I was still at school, was in the hospital for surgery. He was on his second surgery. He would have five in all. Each time they would remove a piece of his throat. For the first two surgeries, the doctors, his friends, and colleagues, had aesthetic concerns, but the scars were almost unnoticeable. His voice changed a little and he had a constant hoarseness. Frequently, he was aphonic. The third surgery in September was devastating and afterwards he expressed himself merely with murmurs. The last two surgeries were a joke in comparison. It was mainly a matter of evaluating the progress of the disease that affected his other organs.

And my eyes told all this.

At the end of school, having achieved promotion, I soon discovered the pain of loneliness and boredom. I had obviously broken up with my drug and prostitution buddies and I could not, I would never, reconnect with the friendships of my former life. I was alone, desperately lonely, so I spent a good part of June dividing myself between home and the hospital, to be close to my father. I read a lot of novels and always imagined myself the champion, identifying with any character I could. I tried, without success, to escape from reality, but my fantasy, always vivid, had been suffocated by my experiences. Every flight of my imagination ended in me crying without shedding tears. My eyes scanning the ceiling looking for something in the plaster that did not exist.

My father, understanding my pain, tried to convince me to leave. He suggested I went to my grandparents in Austria, but the idea of going alone distressed me. I had spent part of my life in Vienna, and in that house I had always been happy. But with me I had always had my mother or father. When I was there with my grandparents or uncles, it was because they both had commitments in Italy, but I knew I could reach them at any time, or that if I called them they would come. A summer in Vienna without them would have been an unbearable punishment for me. I implored him with tears in my eyes not to force me.

Then my father decided to send me to London. I tried opposing it, I didn’t want to go anywhere, I told him, because I just wanted to stay with him. With my mother who was dying with him. But he imposed it on me with an atrocious and indisputable argument.

“Go. It’s not time yet. There is still time.”

How much longer, Daddy? I didn’t dare to ask him. I never asked him, not even afterwards, when I knew there was much less time.

I set off to improve my English at a college in London. I took a two-month full immersion course that I intended to follow with the same fury with which I had just earned my promotion.

Upon my arrival I was picked up at the airport and taken to the school. The course would start the next day.

They told me that there would be ten per class, and we would sleep in twin bedrooms. I would have a French roommate. I encountered him and that evening we exchanged a few words with each other. We could not establish any kind of dialogue, because he did not speak Italian and I spoke ridiculous French. As for English, if mine was sufficient, his was barely more than elementary. Talking German was impossible because it was unknown to him.

I was furious with my father for forcing me to come to London. I was angry with myself for letting it happen and I was annoyed at my mother for not keeping me home to keep her company. Then there was this boy who followed me like a puppy in the corridors of the college while we were trying to find something to eat.

I was incredibly mature at the age of seventeen. With that maturity I was gloomy, sad, and unbearably serious. I couldn’t stand being too close with people and especially with my peers. I knew my intolerance had a precise origin. It was the terror I could desire them and fall in love with them. George or Jean, I hadn’t even understood his name, he was sixteen and was there invading my territory. The next day I thought I might try getting a room of my own. Of course, he had no idea what danger I represented to his virtue, having to sleep in the same bedroom with me. I felt like a vampire, ready to jump on him and bite his neck. As we slid through the corridors, having managed a couple of sandwiches to calm our appetite, I discovered myself imagining what I could, and wanted to do to him that night while he slept. Assuming he was asleep.

I devoured my sandwich, then I muttered something to him and went to the restroom down the hall.

More than scared or embarrassed, I was bewildered. My erotic desire was presenting itself in front of me, without mediation, distressing me. The drug had attenuated it, made it go into the background. With René, it had been a parenthesis lived in a remote and extraordinary world in which people were constantly using dope. All the rest of the time had passed without me having any genuine desires. My body had adapted to abstinence, periodically producing wet dreams which I never remembered, I had dreamless nights. My mind was now accustomed to withdrawing from excitement.

George-Jean, on the other hand, by running after me, had aroused my first genuine sexual desire in an awfully long time.

Sitting on the toilet, English and therefore not exceptionally clean, I was clutching my head in my hands, wondering what to do with my life. Whether to indulge my instincts and rape the guy that very night, if I could do it, or resist him and wallow in my pain. Put him alongside all the others, so many, who crowded my sad past.

The impulse to run away came and went. At least it didn’t frighten me anymore. I knew I was in a prison from which I would not escape, so I had to face that suffering too.

George-Jean did not need to suspect anything. I could have stayed away from him. At least, I could have tried.

I was uneasy that evening when he left to take a shower. I watched his return to our room, as he took off his robe, displaying for me all his charming qualities. I looked at him and feared he wanted to make fun of me. Maybe, he had sensed my weakness and wanted to provoke me? But the absolute ease with which he moved and the blissful smile with which he greeted my gaze, told me without ambiguity that he was far from imagining he was in danger of being raped. I found myself wondering how heavy the sleep of a French boy could be. Mine was shallow, I could hardly fall asleep, and woke up disturbed by even the faintest noises. But what about him?

He slipped naked between the sheets, muttering to me, “Bonne nuit!” with a loving whisper.

And my heart leapt. I was falling in love with him! Already? After not even three hours of knowing him, but I had already seen him naked.

While I was trying to calm myself down and fall asleep, I thought how leaving home had been good for me. If I had stayed there, I would have remained locked in my room, moving like an automaton, not feeling any emotion other than the guilt of seeing my father die and myself return to life. Here instead I started to feel emotions again which confirmed I was alive, even if those emotions were shocking.

When I did finally fall asleep, I dreamt of my roommate. I am sure of it, because in the morning the front of my pajamas were damp and encrusted. A clear sign that my dreams had been erotic, and they were a faithful mirror of my thoughts. Those thoughts I didn’t want to admit to.

I woke up at dawn, which in summer in that part of the world is about four in the morning. There were no shutters at the window, and my disturbed night was not enough to send me back to sleep. I spent a couple of hours watching the boy in the next bed. Alternating between sleep, wakefulness, and dreaming, even with my eyes open, about him becoming my friend and lover, perhaps.

At seven o’clock, when I decided to get up, I saw he was smiling, still half asleep and he made a very childish gesture, with the open palms of his hands he wrinkled his eyes. Paoletto used to do it too and I remembered that immediately. Tears came to my eyes.

“Ciao!” he said cheerfully.

“Ciao,” I answered, pretending to be as happy as he was.

We had only a few words between us.

He stretched himself out a bit, then he moved the blankets to get up and I saw his nice straight cock that seemed to be mocking me. Naturally, I was excited too. He noticed I was devouring him with my eyes and gave me another one of his disarming smiles. Then with his incredible carelessness, or rather ‘nonchalance’, he jumped out of bed. He gathered a robe, covered himself, chirped cheerfully to me a ‘pardon’. He flew to the bathroom, leaving me in bed to tame my erection. With my head in my hands and tears that had fallen from my eyes onto my cheeks. A few hiccups and a lot of self-pity.

George ended up in another class, at a lower level than mine. It seemed that my English was already good. My father with his extra-school classes and my dear René, between kisses, had taught me enough. George, on the other hand, was absolutely desperate and had to start from scratch.

For a few evenings I only saw him again in my room. And, as he progressed in his knowledge of English, we began to exchange more than a few phrases. One afternoon he looked for me to ask me if I wanted to go and visit London with him. I had not made friends with any of my classmates. They were all too cheerful for me, it would be easier getting drunk or smoking joints. I couldn’t even get close to them. George seemed different to me, and I accepted his invitation.

So, we started walking around after the end of the lessons. We both had enough money on us to have fun, and we did. As if we were really two lifelong friends. In the evening we would go back to our room, and he would give me the show of his body. But he liked girls and all I could do was watch him, smile at his smile, and wait for him to fall asleep. When I could feel his breath getting regular, I would hug the pillow and love him as if he were my lover. I murmured sweet words to him, I gave him my affection. I covered him with kisses. Then I caressed him and undressed him. I felt his hardness in my hands, and we loved each other. In an ever-changing way. Night after night. Dream after dream.

I had discovered that he was certainly heterosexual the first time we went out together. He had turned to look at a group of young girls that I would have gladly deprived of the air they breathed. George asked me what I thought about them. I gave him a look of interest and approval, but I would have easily thrown myself into the Thames from my disappointment.

I cherish you, George, I thought. And I pretended to be heterosexual for his sake.

It was like that for many days. He didn’t try speaking with any girl, perhaps because I had convinced him that he wouldn’t be capable of explaining himself in English. Fortunately for me he didn’t encounter any French girls he liked. Maybe he discovered my companionship interesting. Because I, surprising myself, even frightening myself, had become a remarkably cheerful and even witty playmate. We visited bridges and museums. We saw treasures and castles, we went to cinemas and theaters. George had fun and I, too, devoted weeks to forgetting myself and my sorrows. My mother and father, sensing my state of mind, competed to be calm when they called me and informed me that the cancer was regressing. And I tried to believe what they told me.

I also lived for George’s evening show and for the fun I could have afterwards when I was alone with myself and my body.

Then we started talking to each other even after the lights were turned off.

Apparently, it was a ritual in that college. They turned off the lights centrally, like in a penitentiary. It would have made me furious had it not been that this regulated darkness, at exactly eleven o’clock at night, allowed me to have George asleep within a couple of minutes. And usable for my dreams, or willing to tell me about himself to talk and listen to me.

One evening, after we had slipped into bed, and the lights had been off for a while, he told me he had something serious to tell me.

“It’s an important thing. Do you want to? Can I?”

I told him yes, that I wanted to, very much.

“You look at me often,” he said next, frowning. He seemed almost resentful.

“George…”

“You look at me, even when I’m asleep,” he continued “and then…I know that you…” and he took his hand forward, performing an emphatic gesture of jerking off, “I heard you. Is it true?”

End of fun, I thought, end of friendship, end of serenity. He had noticed it. More than frightening me, those words shocked me. Embarrassed me. I was still willing to take the beating that he might have given me, because I would not have been able to defend myself against him.

And tomorrow he would have gone to the management to ask to change rooms, perhaps without giving any explanations, perhaps telling them. But at that point I really didn’t care about anything anymore.

Instead, he looked at me very sweetly. He was turned on his side, with his hand holding his head and staring at me, but with a serene gaze. I thought that, after all, he wasn’t angry with me.

“And you like me, don’t you? I have known that for some time now. I have observed it from the way you look at me and how you blush when you see me naked. But I don’t care if you look at me. You know, I am happy, that you like me. No! I am proud to please someone like you! I like you too, but…not in that sense. I would really like you if you were a girl, but you are not. If I were a girl…What I could do for you!”

He left me with my mouth ajar. That little boy. He was younger than me and could state things that I barely imagined. He had understood who I was and how I was. I who, not understanding myself, had almost killed myself.

“You really don’t mind, if I look at you?” I stammered.

“Really! You are the sweetest person I have ever met. You are my friend and I love you! Do you believe me if I tell you? I wish I could love you. Hey! I am sure of one thing. The person who will fall in love with you will be lucky. You will make him happy, because he will be a boy, won’t he?”

He was speaking, but I wasn’t listening to him anymore.

I was crying.

I took my head in my hands and started sobbing. Those words were really too much.

He jumped out of bed and came and hugged me. He took my hands away from my eyes and kissed them. He held me tight until I calmed down. His skin was soft and smooth. The touch of his hands was firm and delicate. George was naked. I thought that was perverse even in a moment like that.

“Is it better now? What did I say that made you cry?”

To him, who already knew about the drugs and my father’s illness, I told everything else. Almost everything. I couldn’t tell him anything about prostitution. I was too ashamed of it. But I told him about Marco, Paoletto, my escape, and my cowardice. Of all of the whys and wherefores.

“Do you want to come to my bed?” he said at the end of my storytelling.

Outside it was practically dawn. It must have been at least three in the morning. We had been talking all night long. We were tired and couldn’t keep our eyes open, but it was the night between Saturday and Sunday, the next day we didn’t have to get up early.

“Why in your bed? To do what?” I asked, more alarmed than suspicious.

“I am cold. And so are you. Come, will you?” he said, in a melodious voice.

Was this merely a personal sacrifice on the altar of an odd friendship? Did he want to experience an emotion, exploiting the aroused homosexual that he had in the room?

But we were really cold and trembling. I shook more, because of the emotion that overcame me, and the excitement that assailed me.

“Do you really want to? Can I do it?”

“Come, please.”

He slipped under the covers and made room for me. I went and put myself next to him. We were a little squashed. He hugged me, making his body adhere to mine. He placed his head in the hollow of my neck. His sincerity was perhaps proved by the fact that he was not at all excited. I was so excited it hurt.

“George…sorry, I don’t…”

He didn’t let me talk. He kissed me on the mouth, then spoke, murmuring in my ear.

“It was I who desired you next to me. Because we are friends, because I wanted to hug you, because you cried, because I didn’t want to leave you alone. And then because we were cold and to warm ourselves, there must be two of us!”

I didn’t think about anything anymore, and I kissed him. I looked for his tongue, and ours was a real kiss, not as friends anymore. But I understood that he didn’t get excited. My caresses became more sensual, and my erection rubbed against his limp cock.

“Continue…” he whispered to me, surprising me, “you continue… I’ll follow you… later!”

I hugged him tightly and came almost immediately, messing yet another pair of pajamas. It was then I was frightened that he would withdraw from me, drive me away, eager to dry himself, to clean up my traces. And then he would become cold, unsettled, even denying me the memory of his friendship.

I was underestimating him. He didn’t stop caressing me. He didn’t stop kissing me, he put his hand on his cock and started beating off. He also came and we wet ourselves together. We hugged. I was incredulous, shocked by what had happened.

“Will you remember me?” he said to me after a while, “Tell him about me one day.”

“To whom?”

“To your friend!”

“I have no friends, George! Beyond you…”

“No, you have another one. You just revealed it to me!”

“Not after what I have done to him, or with what I could do to him!”

“You have done nothing wrong to me. And it was not a sacrifice to hold you.”

I was breathless with emotion.

“Why don’t you go and look for him?”

“I will!”

“Will you promise me?”

“Yes…”

“You promised me!” he said triumphantly.

But I already knew I would not do it.

I curled up against him and closed my eyes. We were exhausted and fell into a deep sleep. We slept in each other’s arms and a few hours later I woke up to his movement. I was dreaming that I was right there, where I was at that moment, close to him. And it was true. George also opened his eyes but staring at him I realized the magic of the night was over.

We smiled at each other, and it seemed like a farewell to me.

That day he went out with other boys and girls. After breakfast, he came to me all excited by the idea and insisted that I joined them. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I already knew I would get bored and I did. That evening when he took his clothes off it seemed to me that he did not have the usual ease, and I could not look at him anymore. When he was in bed, he glanced at me as if he were sorry and, whispering a ‘good night’, he pulled up the blankets he had shared with me the night before.

The courses ended a week later, during which I continued to go out with him and other friends. I must confess that I was not bored, although I would have preferred to have George all to myself.

At the moment of saying goodbye, when the cabs were waiting, ready to take us to the airport, he held me in a hug that hurt and that I did not expect. He kissed me on the lips in front of everyone, which made me blush. Only a hypocrite like me could be ashamed, and I was.

“You promised me that you would go and look for him,” he reminded me, “When you think he is old enough not to hurt him, find him and tell him everything, everything!”

“Thank you, George.”

“You are welcome. I love you, but you must go and look for him. You promised me! And when you have done that, you will tell me!”

And he ran off to his car, while I was moved and regretting that I was not a girl, one of those that George would have loved, in every sense and every possible way.

5

Paoletto

At the camp, my role was somewhat similar to that of a Quartermaster.

A task and word that makes you think of the army and soldiers, but which is equally applicable to a Scout camp. As Marco had explained, I needed to organize the support for about thirty people, supplying them with what they needed. It was not complicated, although it was very tiring, but it was exactly what I was looking for. I could handle everything using a small part of my brain which left plenty of scope for more or less pleasant thoughts, the tasks only involved me in completing practical things.

Camp life was hard, just like I recalled it. I spent the morning of the first day in the little village which was no more than four houses and a few shops. I planned with the bakery to deliver us bread every morning and talked to the greengrocer who, together with the bread, would send us the fruit for the following days. I did the same with the butcher.

I came back on foot, four kilometers in the sun, loaded with parcels and envelopes. Several times, because of the heat, I stopped to wipe my sweat and curse the moment I had agreed to come to the camp. In those moments, knowing that I had done it for Paoletto, did not console me. But it was a way to joke with myself because I knew that for Paoletto I would have done anything. The proof, I was there! On a dusty road, two kilometers from the camp of thirty incredibly noisy scouts, loaded with packages, sweaty, dirty, and blinded by the sun. I was also quite serene about my future, strongly conscious of myself, of who I was. So aware that I was afraid of it. Yet, I was strangely comfortable. In the sense that what I was feeling frightened me, the idea of waking up from that dream at the end of the camp already unnerved me.

I devoted those first few days to looking after minor cuts, bruises, some colds, taking care of distributing food, and making sure nothing was missing for the camp to work. I wanted to tire myself out, and it was easy enough to do. But there, in the mountains, as the sun set, tiredness became languorous, upsetting, disturbing. To prevent myself from suffering I snuggled up in front of the tent which served as a storeroom. Hugging my legs, I sought out Paoletto with my tired eyes, following his every movement.

Each time I looked at him he seemed more attractive. His body was harmonious, graceful, and agile. I observed him for as long as possible. Until someone would call me because I was needed, and my fantasy ended. He would frequently become aware of my looks and stop and stare at me. Then our eyes would meet, and everything ended with a smile, mine hesitant and scared, his open and happy.

Every day I became more and more convinced that Paoletto was happy to have me near him again. During the preparation for camp, in the days before our departure, we had returned to see each other every night at the Section. But I had understood that our relationship was still far from the confidence we had shared years before. We had changed, grown up. Our paths had crossed again, but we had been apart for too long. We had occupied our lives differently. And before that, I had betrayed him. I could not have hoped it would all have been forgotten. It was reasonable and understandable he felt distrustful towards me. But comprehending and accepting this conclusion made me suffer a lot, despite how obvious and predictable it was.

I noticed how he was very cautious when we talked to each other. Many of our conversations ran aground before they even started, because of the embarrassment we both felt in recalling something from the past. Several exchanges faltered, cut short by the memory of an episode from the past which neither could face through fear of hurting ourselves again. Not yet at least. And this made us uncomfortable.

For my part, those hesitations were inherent in my character. In him I had never recognized anything but the candor of his innocence, the immediacy of his reactions, his absolute transparency and loyalty. But I had left him little more than twelve years old, while he was now fifteen. He had grown, changed, matured and I had found a thoughtful and attentive young man. Paoletto was rightly cautious about getting involved again in a friendship that had been painful and ambiguous for him. I was sure he was well aware of the real nature of my feelings. He was not naive, he had never been naive, that I remembered. I was convinced of this one evening before the camp, during one of those discussions that seem particularly important only when you are a boy.

That night he was talking to someone, but he was looking at me.

“We are who we are although often it is others who make us good or bad! Only sometimes we may influence this a little ourselves. For you, am I as you perceive me or as you want to see me?”

The other boy, disoriented by that question, had not replied, but Paoletto was talking to me. I was sure.

“You all have a picture of me,” he continued, “but what you see is not who I really am. And you don’t know how different I am!”

The boys were discussing a passage from some sacred scripture. It was a meeting of the elders, and I was there only because I was waiting for him to free himself so I would have him to myself. Not that we were planning anything for later. We were going back home together, and in those days that was enough for my happiness and peace.

That night Marco and Tonio, the other leaders, we’re there with the same priest who a few years earlier had remonstrated with me, inveighing upon those other poor souls. Meeting again after all that time, I had not exchanged more than a few words with him. I immediately made it clear that I was there to provide for the sustenance of the camp, and I told him frankly that I knew how to take care of my soul on my own. He let me understand, without stating it clearly, that his god didn’t want to know any more about souls like mine. Not that he was bad, but he had his job to do, and that caused me to loathe him. I must have been even more detestable to him by the mere fact that I had come back to annoy him by interacting with Paoletto. That was my thinking.

The words he said that night trying to refute Paoletto’s ideas did not increase my esteem for him.

“You mustn’t believe that. You are yourself and should be proud of it. But others and above all God judge you for your actions, good and bad! And it is to God that you must be accountable!”

“Oh, come on… I don’t believe that!” Paoletto promptly told him.

He was furious. My thoughts, however, returned to the child I had left behind and to the boy, or rather the man, whom I had found again. Able to defend his ideas, even at the cost of making himself unpopular.

I had drifted away, far away, occupied with my thoughts. The discussion had continued without me and how it reached the point it did, I could not imagine.

“You can’t say that” the priest shouted, “You can’t talk like that, because if you believe that, it means you don’t believe in God!”

This noise jarred me back to reality, and Paoletto who was looking downcast at his shoes. Then he looked up at me and raised an eyebrow. We were accomplices again. I gloated.

Marco tried conciliation whilst some of the others struggled to rationalize Paoletto’s thoughts. Paoletto, seraphic, reiterated that to be totally honest, he had for a long time believed only in his own judgement and perceptions. Not in someone, even God, who could judge them. The meeting ended before it degenerated further. The reckoning was postponed for another time. It was the first time I had listened to Paoletto express his ideas and I was impressed. I should say ecstatic, or in love.

That evening we headed home together. It was something we continued doing very naturally. If the first evening I had fled from all those emotions, the second evening I waited for the meeting to conclude. We hung around a little while with everyone else and then one glance was enough to decide it was time to go home and that we would make our way together. I felt like I had come back to life the moment I saw him again.

Before, there had been darkness and mine had been pitch black. If there had been darkness in his life, I knew nothing about it. I was not ready to ask him, for fear that he would blame me.

“So, do you believe in God?” I asked.

“Do you?”

“What has that got to do with it? I asked the question first!”

That was our way of discussing. And that was one of the first times we discussed as equals. Our ages no longer created very much difference in the maturity our thoughts.

“I don’t know,” he said, and returned to look at the tip of his shoes, “You think that I should, don’t you?”

“Well…to be in the Scouts, I think it’s crucial.”

“But do you believe in God?” he insisted.

“No, not anymore, but…”

“Then neither do I!”

“You should not let yourself be influenced by me…” I told him, but he didn’t let me explain. I had lost his attention and we had arrived in front of his house.

It was how we ended many of our discussions in the past. In the most complicated matters, Paoletto would defer to my judgment. Before, I would have said it was because I was more mature, and at that moment he seemed to have done it again, but maybe he was joking.

***

During the train trip to Piedmont, a long night trip, we did not talk much. The memories between us were always too many.

“Are you thrilled to leave for another camp?” he asked me.

I nodded, unable to say even a word, I felt so emotional. I had a lump in my throat from happiness.

“I hadn’t dared hope for this anymore,” he said, after a while, “You know…the evening I saw you again was the most beautiful of my life.”

“For me too.” I was barely able to say. One more word and I would have burst into tears.

I knew he had so many questions and that he didn’t ask them for the same reason that he had never looked for me in all those years. I also knew that that good reason lost its meaning and importance with every step we took towards each other.

When we would really reconnect, on that special day, there would no longer be a veil of discretion between us. We would talk about everything in depth. He would ask me questions, and I would perhaps give him answers.

One day, in the future.

That night it hadn’t happened yet. It was still too early. Because he was a boy and so, although excited by my presence, he was also very interested in other matters. Mostly, the idea of leaving for his last Scout camp and the first one as Patrol Leader.

He was particularly proud of that.

“The Panthers have always been the best Patrol in the Troop,” he confided in me, as if it were a secret. “Marco was the Patrol Leader, you were too, and now it’s my turn. And we are special, aren’t we?”

“You can say so!” I said, then I closed my eyes.

Why are you special, Paoletto? I wanted to ask, but I only smiled at him. I loved him so much. He was very special to me, more than anyone in the world. But I had to sublimate that feeling, the despair, the torments, the unhappiness. Then there was that promise I had made to George, my French roommate. We had kept in contact. He had accompanied me, as close as it is possible to be by letter, during all my father’s illness, till the end and beyond. He had never stopped asking me about Paoletto.

When I told him I had seen Paoletto again and I would be going to camp with him, he was very enthusiastic about that. He was waiting to hear from me. He wanted Paoletto to write him a couple of lines. Just to get to know him, to see and evaluate his handwriting. One of George’s obsessions in those years was graphology, he analyzed all my writing, interpreting my moods, which in that year had often been stormy. Sometimes he had replied to me with his predictions about how things would evolve. He was often so precise in his descriptions that I had come to believe in graphology too. Obviously, the letter in which I told him about the camp and that I had seen Paoletto again had been analyzed more thoroughly than the others. With predictable results of euphoria for the present and a fear for the future.

But everything was still so vague. At times I was inside that old shell in which the same dramatic pain was stirring. The desire to cancel myself out draining me completely. At other times I was in good spirits, absolutely delighted. These were the moments when Paoletto was with me and I could look at him.

That night, when Paoletto fell asleep, as a boy happy and undisturbed, he lay his head on my shoulder and I allowed my eyes to close. Lulled by the movement of the train, I cried silently to myself. Only a few tears, so as not to lose the habit. Then came the blessing of sleep and I dozed wrapped in Paoletto’s unique scent.

***

In the first days of camp Paoletto, like all the others, was busy constructing tables, camp kitchens, and stools. Everything that would serve us in those two weeks was built using wooden posts and cord, but no nails! I ended up helping too, although I didn’t really feel like it. The axe and saw were the two tools which one needed to know how to use, otherwise they could be dangerous. I was always frightened for my fingers, but I managed not to injure myself.

On the afternoon of the fourth day of camp, just before sunset, the tournament of a sport only practiced by scouts, a remote relative of rugby, began. The Panthers were playing in the first game. I was at the edge of the field, crouching, watching fascinated as the boys chased each other to collect the ball and get it across the goal line. What enchanted me was how much vigor they still had after the hellish day they had spent. They were boys and I was not much older than they were, but my tiredness was different. I would need more time before I could return to enjoy the high spirits due at my age. I was eighteen and the last three years I had practically flushed down the toilet. An abused beginning full of self-pity and regret.

I was about to indulge in my usual exercise of self-compassion, a miraculous expedient to console myself, but I took instead to following Paoletto’s movements. I admired the grace of his motion and he immediately caused me to forget my tiredness and depression, however they had arrived. I knew it was I who made him much more beautiful to my eyes than he really was. He was definitely an attractive boy, but not more so than others. It was my love that turned him into a god.

I closed my eyes and dreamed of touching his agile body, and this immediately brought me back to a much more material dimension. I began day dreaming, describing in my mind what lay hidden beneath his white shorts, dirty with mud, and underneath the slightly torn shirt that covered his now nicely shaped chest. Such dreams were forbidden. The kind of visions which had been at the origin of my troubles.

I saw him stretching out to reach an opponent who was running in front of him. I understood, before it happened, that he was going to get hurt. He lost his balance and fell. He tried getting up, but collapsed to the ground, holding his thigh. The other players promptly surrounded him, and I came running over.

When I was near, he looked at me with frightened eyes. It was clear his leg was hurting a lot as he was holding it with both hands, bent over himself to contain the pain. He was in a lot of pain. I stroked his head, trying to comfort him. Slowly he took his hands off his leg and tried to extend it, gritting his teeth. He was gripping his thigh. Maybe he had pulled a muscle or perhaps worse, tore a ligament. I poured some cold water over where it seemed to hurt most, and this appeared to offer him relief. We all helped him to the edge of the playing field and there we were left alone.

“Perhaps you pulled a muscle! It can hurt a lot, but only for a while. The pain should ease off.” I told him, hoping that I was right.

I tried to gently massage his leg, but I saw he was in pain, so stopped. I bandaged him with a towel soaked in cold water, but it still hurt him a lot.

“We need to see a doctor,” I said, “I wouldn’t want to do something to you that will make it worse.”

Not very far away there was a restaurant, and we asked the owner if he would drive us into the village in his car. As I had feared, the doctor diagnosed a sprain and told us he would need two to three days of absolute rest, without moving a single step. He also prescribed an ointment to apply several times a day and injections.

“If you want, you can come here and I will take care of the injections, even outside clinic hours. Don’t worry about disturbing me.”

“Thank you, Doctor, but I know how to perform injections,” I said.

“Do you study medicine?”

“Not yet I just got my high school diploma.”

I turned to look at Paoletto and it was at that moment I made the decision that I would become a doctor.

“But I think I will study medicine at University.”

It was a decision that was in the air. If my mother had had the will and the ability to discuss it with me, we would have reached a decision together. As things were, I hadn’t talked about it with anyone yet. But the choice was there, and I had to make it quickly. And so, I did, under the proud gaze of Paoletto who with his innate sensitivity had followed almost all my reasoning. Even that which I had not told myself.

“And how did you learn to give injections?” inquired the doctor, somewhat intrigued. “Did you take a course in nursing?”

“No, it was because of my father. He was a doctor too, and he taught me.”

“Oh… I see!”

“When he fell ill with cancer we needed someone at home who could administer injections at any time of the day. He thought it best he show me because he didn’t trust my mother’s hand.” I looked at him and then I added, with a hint of naughtiness, “He diagnosed the disease himself.”

The doctor smiled and gave me an affectionate pat on the shoulder. At that moment I asked myself if it was pity or admiration. But he was simply uncomfortable, like all people to whom I happened to tell how I had lost my father. I too was embarrassed to tell the story, but I was also convinced that only by telling everyone would I eventually be free from that nightmare.

We bought the medicine and went back to the camp, prevailing on the kindness of our improvised driver.

Then the question of how to accommodate Paoletto’s restricted movement arose. For a few days I would become his nurse and had the perfect excuse not to leave him alone, even at night. It was a dream and my private demon suggested I might perhaps even touch him.

Marco immediately agreed that I should move into the Panthers’ tent, at least for that first night, since Paoletto might have a fever and would certainly need help. We placed him carefully in his cot which we had moved outside, next to the tent. From there he could easily call for help, and as he reminded us, give orders to prepare dinner. He still had his responsibilities as Patrol Leader and did not intend to let everyone down. The doctor had already administered an injection and explained to me how to apply the ointment so as not to hurt him.

As I walked away, still keeping him in sight, he called me almost immediately. He had to pee.

“I’ve been holding it in,” he moaned, apologetically, “but now I can’t take it anymore. I can’t get up, can I?”

The doctor had been firm, he mustn’t move a single step for at least forty-eight hours, and we didn’t have the device that allows you to pee without getting out of bed. I hadn’t thought about buying it at the pharmacy.

“I’ll help you. Lean on me.”

When was the last time? How much had I suffered since then? How many times had I approached death? The idea and longing that he might hug me again had unconsciously driven me away. And now it was happening. A contact, a touch, a hesitant contact. I placed my hand on his side and supported him to lift himself, while he leant all his weight on the other leg.

“Place your arm over my shoulders,” I said, and it seemed like I was dreaming. It was as if he was really hugging me. “Let’s go towards that tree. Can you make it?”

He nodded and hopped forward holding on to me. We made it as far as the edge of the clearing and I realized he was hesitating. He looked at me. It was almost dark. Time had vanished with everything that had happened. I imagined he was blushing, embarrassed by my presence.

“Should I leave you?”

“No! Wait, I might fall!” he murmured, then added, unexpectedly, “I’m not embarrassed… I don’t think so. It’s… I really don’t know. I don’t have the urge anymore!”

“Lean back against me and wait. It will come back…” I didn’t know what to say, I was also a little ill at ease.

I saw him close his eyes, as if to concentrate.

“When I have to do something difficult,” he said, with his eyes still closed, “I think of my mother. She is the one who helps me.”

That was a confidence I knew, something he had shared in the past. That he was telling me this again meant there was still something left between us. I hoped so.

“When I try to imagine her, however, I can’t see her,” he explained to me, “I can only imagine how she would be. I feel like those who are blind from birth and are forced to imagine a world, real things, invent what colors look like. That’s how it is with my mother. You don’t remember her either, do you? You’ve never seen her, have you?”

I shook my head. “No,” I whispered.

When he was younger, he frequently asked me that, but I couldn’t recall her. Once he even asked my mother and she described her to him because she had met her. Paoletto hugged my mother and thanked her, then he hugged me too. Remembering those moments, I felt like crying. In those months I often cried without worrying too much about why I did.

“Now, however, you only have to pee…” I said resolutely, “and it’s not a difficult thing. If the urge has gone, it doesn’t matter. Let’s go back. We’ll try later,” I suggested, to distract him.

I thought about how much he was still a boy who had seen his camp ruined by an accident. It was his first camp as Patrol Leader, something he had certainly dreamed of over the last five years. And now he was stuck in his cot and to take a piss he had to be accompanied by another guy. The same guy who was his friend, but also someone about whom he could tell some, not so good, stories.

“That’s not it!” he said, in a subdued tone that wasn’t like him.

“So, what’s wrong?”

I caressed his shoulders.

“I’m sorry to talk about this… perhaps you wouldn’t even want to…”.

“Wouldn’t want to what?”

“This closeness to me!”

“I wouldn’t…”

“I don’t want you to do anything you might feel sorry for. Anything that makes you uncomfortable. You don’t need to!”

“I’m doing this because you need someone to help you” I said, sternly. “I would do it for anyone.” Then more softly I added. “But with you it’s different. Our friendship used to be special. You remember?”

He narrowed his eyes and looked away beyond the trees.

“It’s not like it was then,” he said, in an adult voice. A tone which he was perhaps using for the first time. “But it could be a new friendship. Will you tell me about yourself?”

Saying those last words, he had used his somewhat childish and petulant tone. That same tone he used when he wanted me to give him something and I didn’t want to please him. I recognized it with a shudder. I couldn’t resist him when he spoke like that.

“Just piss! We’ll discuss all that another time.” I said, resolutely.

I would have loved to have told him everything, there and then, while he was perched on one leg and I was holding him, hugging him. To have whispered to him the truth and have finally asked his forgiveness.

“OK…well…” He turned his head and smiled at me. It seemed he was a little calmer. “Now I’m going to try. But don’t look at me! Ok?”

“Right!”

He detached himself from me, still standing on one leg. He tinkered with the pants of his jumpsuit, but almost lost his balance. I moved to support him. Without saying anything he pulled out his cock. Finally, he peed, while I closed my eyes. I was ashamed of my thoughts and my body, which regardless of my embarrassment had reacted as I had feared.

I trembled at the idea that Paoletto would guess, read the truth in my face, or simply look at the front of my pants. And I did the thing he had asked me not to do, I half-opened my eyes and looked. I enjoyed that image, holding my breath, fearing a sigh would undo the innocence of that moment. It was just his penis held in his hand, but for me it was everything I had run away from in desperation, and now I was seeing it again.

The same scene, so shamefully exciting, repeated itself again before going to sleep, then the night passed quietly. He complained a little but got a good night’s sleep. I, on the other hand, almost didn’t sleep a wink, for fear he would need me.

At the alarm call, while everyone was running outside to do gymnastics, warming up to start the day, the two of us stayed in the tent. The others went to wash.

That morning I had to gently apply the ointment to his thigh and had to give his first injection. Trembling, I helped him lower his pants, and while massaging the top of his leg I tried to joke.

“In a while I’ll have to go over all my poor knowledge of how to administer injections. Do you by any chance know how to fill the syringe? And which way I should insert the needle?”

I was trying to be funny, but I could barely speak, my throat was dry. My voice must have seemed amusing to him because he smiled at me. He knew I was joking, but he still looked a little scared.

“End of the first part! Turn over!”

He got onto his stomach and I massaged the back of his thigh. I handled him with a kind of sensuality that was restrained by my responsibility as a nurse.

“Do you want the injection now, or after breakfast?”

“Better on a full stomach,” he said.

I noticed he wasn’t joking anymore, his voice sounded worried.

“You can turn around if you want, I’m done. I’ll help you put your pants back on. Then I’ll get you up and take you to wash yourself!”

He didn’t move. He stayed with his face pressed against the pillow and his eyes closed. I was knelt beside him. He didn’t turn around. I brushed my hand through his hair. When I did this he moved and shivered.

“Paoletto, do you want to go back to sleep?”

I didn’t understand why he was doing this, he had seemed quite awake before. He didn’t answer.

“Don’t you feel well?”

“I can’t turn around,” he said, with a little voice.

I caressed him again.

“Why? What’s the matter with you?”

“It’s nothing, but don’t look at me. Please, close your eyes!”

I closed them and to convince him of my commitment I put my hands over my face. I heard him move. He got quickly into his sleeping bag.

“Now you can open them again.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes. It’s just that I got… excited,” he explained, and blushed, like I had never seen him do before.

“My hands are miraculous,” I said, smiling and desperately trying to defuse the situation. “Or is it just an expression of adolescent exuberance?”

“Both!”

And that’s all he said. I was grateful that I caught him laughing. It left me thinking that something which wasn’t supposed to be, that couldn’t be, maybe it was.

Years ago, after meeting him, when our friendship was so important to both of us, but before I made it what it had become, I often dreamed he was my brother, my little brother. He felt the same way towards me. His had always been an absolutely pure and innocent affection.

Now that I was lucky enough to be able to caress him again, I wanted to show him that the affection we felt for each other had remained unchanged. We really were friends, just friends, and nothing need be changed. I had suffered and I had atoned with my suffering. Those were my intentions, but I came out of the tent trying to hide my erection. At that moment I wanted to die, to castrate myself, to flee.

I have always liked wallowing in thoughts like those, basking in pain, in the doubts of my own existence. It was strangely delightful to contemplate dying knowing full well I would do nothing to really kill myself. It was one of the beneficial aspects of having struck the bottom of despair and having somehow recovered from it. Still longing for imminent death, looking around to carefully choose which tree to hang yourself from. To discover a suitable one and at the same time tell myself there was no hurry to end my life. The tree next to that one was better and would soon be taller, I could wait for it to grow. And that day was no exception, the world smiled at me, telling me to postpone the execution. It was not urgent to carry out the death penalty which I had sentenced myself to. Marco called me, and I forgot all about doing it.

After breakfast, when he had finished directing the construction of the table and field kitchen for his Patrol, having managed to injure a finger with a saw, Paoletto called me. We had agreed he would when he felt ready, and now finally, he seemed to be ready.

“Give me that injection. It’s now or never!” He said, with the expression of someone who has made up their mind to undergo a difficult surgery. Then he smiled at me, encouraging me and also maybe, himself. I took him into the tent and helped him to lie down.

“Frightened?” I asked.

“Not at all,” he lied, I could tell.

Then he stared at me.

“I feel like dying. The last time it was Uncle Giulio who did this, and he had wanted to tie me to the bed. Now I can’t even cry. But do you really know how to do it?” he asked, if not frightened, worried.

“I know you’re frightened, but don’t worry! I really know how to do it. You can cry if you want!”

“I’m sorry about your father,” he said next.

I didn’t answer him immediately, and he spoke again.

“I know what happened, but…I couldn’t… I didn’t go to the funeral. Nor did I come to see you afterwards because I didn’t want you… I didn’t know if you’d want to see me. I thought that you would be grieving. And seeing me…and… I’m sorry!”

I focused on the injection. I tried in vain to break the vial, but I couldn’t do it, because my hands were trembling. If he had come to the funeral, it would have caused trouble. I was already upset but seeing him would have been too much for me.

“It’s in the past,” I told him, and suddenly I knew I was going to cry.

“With Grandma Luigia we never spoke about it. The subject of orphans was forbidden in my house. You know that don’t you? And you too, arguing about you, is still… barred!”

I was able to blink back the tears. Thinking about Grandma Luigia helped me, perhaps the worst was over.

“Well…now I am an orphan myself,” I said. “Maybe, you can help me since you are such an expert yourself?”

“How are you? How…are you, now?”

“I’ll share a confidence with you,” I said, kneeling beside him, “I believe that participating in this camp, coming here with the Scouts, has helped me.”

“Can I do something for you?” he asked, hopefully.

This touched me deeply, and it also helped to chase away the melancholy. I was so happy to be there with Paoletto.

“Rehabilitate me with your grandmother.”

“She hates you!”

“I imagine she does!”

“It will be a little difficult. You’ve made too much trouble. I didn’t tell her that you would be at the camp either. If she knew that she wouldn’t have let me come. Uncle Giulio, on the other hand, knows all about it and has no problem with you. With Grandma, I will try, and we will succeed, you’ll see!”

I had made a lot trouble. Grandma Luigia was right.

“Okay, now shut up and let me give you this damned injection!”

I finally managed to break the vial. I had calmed down.

“Let me look at you a little bit. Where should I hit?” I tried to joke.

Paoletto turned over and I helped him to pull down his pants.

I only touched him just enough to give him the injection, but I still got excited. I didn’t want to, because reacting like that seemed to me to insult the trust that he had placed in me. He was waiting for me to take care of him, not for me to abuse him, even if it was only with my eyes.

I disinfected the spot slowly with a trembling hand and managed to do what I had to. I did it well and he felt no pain. I had done the same many times with my father, even when his muscles had atrophied, and I had to struggle to get the needle in. Paoletto had firm buttocks and it would have been easy had that sight done nothing but distract me.

I helped him to cover himself and there was a look that passed between us which I didn’t understand. Could he have read my thoughts? I grew scared and without saying a word left the tent, telling myself that nothing had happened.

What could I tell him if he asked me any questions? Could I tell him I would have liked to bury my face in his embrace? Drown in the tenderness his body and his spirit evoked in me? I couldn’t, so I tried to escape.

I had to give him at least five more injections and it was likely to become increasingly difficult to control myself.

In the afternoon I helped him move again. This time it was harder for both of us.

“I have to go to the toilet… it’s not for peeing,” he told me, and the distress showed on his face. “I can’t take this anymore. I am sorry!”

“If you tell me one more time that you are sorry, I will get really angry! Have I made myself clear?”

“Ok! Ok! Ok!”

We walked together again, hopping and hugging, this time going farther away. We had to solve one important problem quickly, because he wouldn’t be able to squat over the latrines which had been dug (1). We needed a place that would work somehow and that was also a bit sheltered. I spotted what I thought should be ideal, two smooth rounded boulders next to each other with a small gap in between. I helped him to sit across the stones. Of course, I wanted to help him, but at the same time, I was afraid of being intrusive. I did it anyway, so as to get away from him and leave him alone. But he called me back.

“Stay with me, please! If you want to?”

I went back towards him and made him lean against me while he was struggling to get rid of his clothes. Once again, my body had that same shameful reaction I had had that morning when giving him the injection. While I was helping him at a moment that must have been very embarrassing for him, I could not get his nakedness out of my mind. My thoughts were drawing me, with an annoying yet exciting intent, to what I didn’t want to look at directly, but which was right in front of me. No matter how hard I tried, closing my eyes, thinking about something else, it didn’t work.

So as not to put any weight on the damaged leg, Paoletto rested his other foot on the ground and held on to me. As soon as he was finished, he put his clothes back on and tried getting up on his own. This time he managed to maintain his balance, having learned how to position himself. He hopped across the bumpy ground, but he risked twisting the only good foot he could use for the moment, so to my immense joy he came back and grabbed a hold of me.

“You are the best nurse I have ever had.”

“I am strict. Be warned. For example, I think it’s time you washed and changed. When are you going to do it?”

“I hadn’t thought about it myself. Are you saying I stink?”

“A little bit! Well…not too much.”

He looked a little unhappy.

“But how can we do it?”

“It’s cold now. But tomorrow, around noon, we can try going to the stream. We will tell Marco what we have to do, so he doesn’t let anyone come down and disturb us. What do you think?”

After a quiet night. Two injections which I administered with the same state of mind as the first one. A lot of hobbling around with him far and wide, so he could carry out an infinite series of tasks that he didn’t want to give up and to which I ended up submitting myself. It was late morning when we went down to the stream which ran right behind the campsite. It was almost noon and the air felt warm. We chose a corner sheltered from the wind and anybody who might pass by. But the rest of the troop were all busy and it was not likely anyone would come past.

Paoletto sat on the shore, leaning against a protruding rock. He took off his shoes, his socks and then his pants. He kept his briefs and vest on and started washing his feet. I was standing in front of him, watching. The naturalness with which he undressed in front of me was not an exhibition.

At that moment I realized I admired everything about him. I tried to think of something I disliked in him, to discover anything. His physical appearance or his attitude, what he did. Was it possible, I asked myself, there was nothing I disliked? Not just a bit, some little questionable thing? I knew I would never find anything because I loved him.

I had found him grown up, and I immediately realized I wanted him. His body attracted me. But at that moment, while he was undressing in front of me, on the bank of that stream, I felt a feeling manifest itself. I had never felt anything like that before, certainly not when I was taking drugs. Or in Amsterdam because I hadn’t had the time. Nor when I went back to my ordinary life because I was too ashamed to be who I was to think about falling in love. Even with Marco it hadn’t happened that one of us thought about the other passionately. He would have been too scared of it, and I would not have understood it, because then I was still too young.

On the bank of that stream, I realized I loved Paoletto and it was a complicated love, one I also found difficult to understand. I wanted to caress him, to touch his skin. Even to possess him and let myself be possessed by him. But above all, to feel loved, to spend every moment of our lives with each other, to arrange our future together. In those minutes spent contemplating my lover sitting almost naked on the bank of an alpine stream, I imagined a thousand strange unrealizable projects for the two of us.

It was the first time this had happened. That’s when time dilated, the horizon became more distant and my end, the death that I wanted to procure for myself, moved away.

“Will you help me?” I heard him say out loud. He had already asked me, without me hearing him. I was so far away lost in my thoughts “You were staring at me, but you stopped speaking.”

“I’m sorry… I was thinking of something else” I said, coming closer so that he could put his arm around my neck as usual.

He got to his feet awkwardly, and we took a few steps towards the center of the stream, but he lost his balance and we fell into the water together. The icy bath woke me up completely. We burst out laughing. Paoletto began tickling me, without even trying to get out of the water. I was fully clothed and resigned myself to the soaking. I did everything to try to make him stay still, and grabbed him close to me, caressing him.

Our movements in that ambiguous and confused situation excited me. Paoletto was almost naked and I, at least for a while, could hold him where I wanted. Almost anywhere, although avoiding certain places and paying attention not to press on his leg. He didn’t care about what I was doing, his focus was entirely on tickling me, while I tried to immobilize him. We stopped struggling only when we were exhausted, but we didn’t stop laughing or looking at each other. We were an impressive sight, completely soaked, water dripping from the few clothes we were wearing.

“How long has it been since I tickled you, Zucchini?”

“Three years, Giuggiola.”

We called each other by our secret nicknames. I was Zucchini because of a horrible light green T-shirt that my mother once forced me to wear. Paoletto had seen it and came out with that expression. He, in turn, was Giuggiola, my jujube. He was Giuggiola for me, as an affectionate nickname. I called him that because he liked to chew candied fruit, and also because it annoyed him. When I wanted to make fun of him, or I wanted a bit of action, all I had to do was move my lips to mimic chewing or say that word and he would jump on me. We used those nicknames only if we were alone because they were a secret between us, a secret we wanted to keep.

“Did you miss that?”

“More than you can imagine!” I replied, seriously, and my heart leapt.

“Not as much as I felt it, you, asshole!” and he gave me a push, which made me end up back in the water. Then he looked at me with a somewhat grim air.

He was standing there on one leg in the middle of the stream.

“Do you still think I have to wash?” he asked.

“Of course! And with soap, if you don’t mind,” I told him, while I was trying to get myself up and out of the water.

“All right!” He said and got busy.

He was occupied with removing the dirt from under his toenails when he said:

“Promise me you won’t disappear again?”

“Because you like me as a babysitter, or what?” I tried to joke.

“Nothing…just… I thought you were my friend, but you left. I thought you were really my friend. Now I would like to know if I can trust you. Promise me that you won’t disappear again.”

I knew he was happy to have found me again and this made me happy but listening to him filled me with regret. If I had had the courage to grow up with him in the last three years, I would have avoided at least some of my bad experiences. Maybe even the unavoidable ones would have been less hard. I was aware of all this and also understood that this boy was much more mature and aware than I was at his age. He would never take drugs, and above all he would never run away, as I had done to avoid facing my nightmares. If our roles had been reversed he wouldn’t have needed to escape. I was acutely aware of that.

“What kind of a person are you?” he asked.

He expected me to promise not to leave again. Perhaps he had not yet understood why I had escaped. Nobody really knew about it. Only Marco had sensed it. To resume relations with Paoletto, however, forced me to confess the truth to him. I had to do it, and I would have done it, but not right away. If I had told him then, maybe he would have pushed me away. Knowing that I was a homosexual would certainly have made him suffer. Perhaps he would not have chased me away but kept me at a distance. I, on the other hand, intensely desired to live those days close to him. The peace and happiness he was giving me were a food that I had never tasted and that I would never find again after losing him.

I could tell him everything at the end of the camp, but at that very moment I was missing the courage.

“If I committed not to run away, would you make me a promise?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“If one day I say or do something that troubles you, makes you uncomfortable, anything, however small, if that were to happen, you must promise me… you will ask me to get away from you!”

“Do you really believe something like that could happen?” He was surprised.

“It’s possible… you don’t know anything about who I have become. So, are you willing to promise that? Ultimately, everything will always depend on you!”

“I accept. I promise!”

“And then I, too, promise not to run away!”

He held out his hands to me, and I aided him to get up, but as he got up, he grabbed me. He held me in a hold that was also a hug and, as strong as he was, he prevented me from breathing.

“And you are my prisoner!”

It was true at that moment, in those days, but I also hoped it was forever.

I wonder if he noted how my heart was pumping. I had indeed become his prisoner, but not quite as he intended. I had placed myself in his hands. He was apparently engaging in some kind of game with his new found friend. We had even sworn to stay together forever, and our promise was like an eternal pact of friendship. If only I had not been that sort of prodigal son, returned from hell, without very much hope.

I took his promise to heart and made my pledge to him.

That same afternoon the doctor came to visit us. He examined Paoletto and found him much improved, so much so that he was capable of taking a few steps. This made my little boy almost independent. I no longer had to accompany him everywhere. It depressed me a little, but the relief of seeing him heal so quickly swept away the melancholy. I also went back to sleeping in the leaders tent, leaving the Panther Patrol to its not-so-silent life.

The cutting of that kind of umbilical cord that had united us for three days, gave me terrible nightmares that first night, but also gave space to some other thought, no less disturbing.

***

What would become of me after the camp?

Before I saw Paoletto again, my idea was to select a University in some faraway city, perhaps in Vienna, where I could live another life, if that were possible. This time trying to avoid drugs, as I had vowed to do for my father. I was also absolutely certain I would convince my mother to follow me.

But now everything had suddenly changed. I was always aware of that tender love I held for Paoletto, but I never imagined he would welcome me back as he was doing now. It was as if he had opened his arms to show how much he still loved me, despite everything. Having promised not to abandon him, this presented me with an agonizing dilemma. I could no longer escape the city to study somewhere far away. I had to continue my studies, but by staying put, which meant I would never break free from the impotence that was killing me. Most likely Paoletto would not be able to give me what I was looking for, nor would he understand my need to be free from my commitment. I would drown in the chaste hug of his friendship that perhaps would never be enough to save me.

This was the nightmare of that dreadful night.

In my life I had made another promise, just as demanding. I had made it to my father. He had asked me to continue studying despite his illness. To make my mother rest, to force her to do so, I spent my nights next to him. Staying to sleep at the hospital, but in the morning I still had to attend school. Often he could not stop moaning and woke me up during the night. One of those times, he clasped my hand. I thought he needed a pain relief injection. I nodded to him that I had understood and went to prepare the syringe. When I came back, he took my arm again and I felt his unexpectedly powerful grip on my wrist.

“You must promise me that you will continue to study, even after I am gone.”

His was a murmur, little more than a whisper, because the tumor had devastated his throat. I was the only one, along with my mother, who understood that kind of muttering and I understood his words fine.

“Go to University,” he said, “I would have supported you if I could. I would have done better than I have done until now. I don’t want to influence your choice, decide for yourself what you want to study, get advice, but go to University. Don’t ever, at any time, hide your problems from yourself or abandon your studies and your life. Do you understand? Promise me!”

His own death, which, as a doctor, he had foreseen precisely, did not make me miss more than a few days of school. For three months, I witnessed his nightly agony, because the night time hours were the worst, I went to school every morning, leaving my mother to attend to him during the day. The day of his death and the day of his funeral were the only school days I missed because of him. With his illness and death, he had hauled me off drugs and in some way offered me a reason to live. It was like playing his life against mine. I won, he lost. Sadly.

In the days leading up to his death, I had often wondered if I would really continue studying with the same commitment. Or, after he died, not having to tell anyone about my promise anymore, I would let everything go to hell, including myself. He died in March, and I continued studying in desperation. Reading books, trying to understand, distracted me from the most frightening thoughts, those of my father and mother’s suffering, and above all prevented me from thinking about my loneliness.

***

Once the construction of the campsite equipment was completed, usually by the sixth day of camp, it was planned to go on an excursion. This first excursion was generally very tiring. It was always some inaccessible place difficult to get to, at the summit of a steep climb. That was the tradition, after the first four or five tiring days building the camp, to undertake a strenuous expedition.

Paoletto, although his leg had improved, could not manage that effort, so he had to stay at the camp. Marco proposed that I keep him company. We would be alone the whole day. Maybe Marco discerned something. Not because I had told him anything, but because he had imagined it. I never knew if he knew something about what had happened that day on the mountain, many years before.

For the whole evening I wondered whether or not his decision that I keep Paoletto company was dictated by his understanding. In short, maybe he wanted to give us the opportunity to explain things to each other, once and for all. I ended up convincing myself of his good faith, even if a doubt, which I still have today, remained to arouse my curiosity. Marco, having understood everything about me and perhaps even about Paoletto, wanted in some way to help us. Pushing us into each other’s arms like a matchmaker.

Those doubts did not help me when we went to sleep in the tent. When I was able to fall asleep, it was my dreams that worried me. From the moment I got back close to Paoletto, I had a kind of hallucination of what it would have meant for me to touch him. To touch his body, no longer immature, but not yet adult.

Part of the nightmare was that he might reject me. But what really terrified me was that Paoletto, knowing me so well would too easily accept my fantasies and go along with whatever I wanted so as not to disappoint me.

I was well aware I had reached the end of the track. I understood my life was about to undergo a change, perhaps a solution. In my pessimism, I was certain that in one way or another it would lead to my ruin. His refusal would be insupportable. It had become evident that continuing to live without him, renouncing him, would be impossible for me, as it always had been.

I knew it. I had understood that much from seeing him again. I had denied it to myself, but I had agreed to return to the Scouts, because I was well aware of who I would find there. Marco’s plan, if he had a plan, was not even that well thought out. He relied only on my vulnerability and therefore on the complicity that I would not have denied him. And now I was in a maze, a trap without any way out. Were I to live with Paoletto and thereby force him into homosexuality, I would have to admit I had suffered needlessly and that I had failed. I would have come to think my father had died for nothing. This was not very rational, because the tumor that had struck him was not a punishment. And then there was my mother who would have suffered again and for always from all this. At night, these thoughts became nightmares, because it was the darkness that made them scary.

In that woodland the silence was total and the noises, with no wind, were inexplicable. That night I became once again afraid. I felt the same terrible sense of repulsion towards myself that I had felt three years earlier. I looked back to see myself as the real ruin of Paoletto and my family. If I had not found myself in a tent in the middle of a wood, far away from everything, with friendly people who I might have frightened with my actions, maybe I would have sought something, anything, to give me peace.

If I didn’t move, it was because Marco was occupying the first place in front of the exit from the tent. He had unconsciously blocked it and I would have woken him up had I tried to go out. That boy was watching over me even while I was sleeping. It was that thought, a sort of oxymoron of reasoning, that shook me violently, leading me back to reality. But even if I had gone out, would I have really run away? To look for something that would give me relief in some way, and would I have found it in the middle of the Alps?

I knew my stability was still fragile, much more delicate than I wanted to admit. A year and a half I had been away from drugs. Those months of intermission were nothing compared to the failure of my life.

Paoletto tied me to that cot with the thought of his disappointment and also that of Marco when they would find me missing in the morning.

I fell asleep, waking up when Marco was already getting up to give the wake-up call. I hadn’t run away, but my mouth had a bitter taste in it, as if I had been smoking all night long. It was something I had done sometimes, and it had been horrible having to return to the world and realize I was still alive. That morning, however, I was gratified to be alive, because the first person I saw coming out of the tent was Paoletto, who being unable to run as yet, hopped across to greet me. His movements still cautious, but at least he could walk.

With him there with me, how could I think about dying or drugging myself again? I considered how stupid I had been that night. How many silly thoughts you could conjure in the dark and absolute silence.

I waited impatiently for us to be alone. He was everything to me. When everyone finally left, the problem arose of how to occupy our time. He suggested we collect some firewood for the evening. As soon as we had put together enough, another idea came to him.

“What if we explore the stream? We could follow it to the waterfall…”

“It’s fine by me, but do you feel up to it?”

Slowly we followed the stream that flowed near the field. After half an hour’s walk, we arrived at a tiny pool which had formed in a depression in the ground. The water was not stagnant, because a small waterfall cascaded from a spur of rock. It refreshed the air in a delightful way making a pleasant sound.

I left all my concerns behind me at the camp. Unconsciously I decided to live that day regardless of any nagging doubts or concerns I might still have. This choice was perhaps the first sign of a new maturity that had emerged in my life. I didn’t consider either abandoning drugs, nor my behavior before and after the death of my father as anything other than acting out of necessity.

My behavior at that time was in reaction to the imminent death of my father and a need to calm the turmoil in my life. It was both practical and respectable, but not at all heroic. Although, I liked to dress the time I spent in a quasi-monastic retreat as heroic it was, when I considered it clearly, simply a passage of seasons, neither noble nor memorable.

The season of my self-destruction had ended in failure. I had not died with my first heroin injection, nor from the violence I had allowed to be inflicted on me. The pain and humiliation I had suffered, the heroin I had taken, this did not have the effect I had hoped for. The revelation of my father’s illness proved to be a perfectly timely and emotional reason which served to close that depressing season, only to open a new one, another journey.

At the camp, returning next to Paoletto, I hoped that a new season would open. A new maturity would perhaps allow me to distinguish between good and evil. As long as I chose not only for myself, but also for him, because, like so many previous times, he had entrusted himself to me.

The idea of swimming came to both of us and we did not hesitate for a moment to undress and run to the shore. I went first into the water. Splashing through the freezing cold, a shocking contrast compared to the warmth in the air. When he approached the water’s edge, I was already accustomed to the temperature. I began showering water on him, making him shiver and move away.

We had undressed together. He had been a little slower, because of his leg. When I stood alone in only my underwear, I turned quickly towards the water. Having Paoletto undressing next to me had made me excited. It was so as to hide my erection that I ran so quickly into the water and forced myself into the chilling cold.

Usually it took me ages to go into the water, testing it several times, only to determine it was far too cold. My friends would make fun of my reticence and ridicule me. That was the only time I can remember charging and diving into the water, it was definitely the coldest water that I ever experienced.

Standing on the edge of the pool, Paoletto cautiously evaluated the temperature, dipping his toe in the water. It was then I drenched him.

“No!” he shouted, with a leap, trying to get away, while I splashed with more force. “It’s cold! Let me go into the water first. It’s not fair. I’ve never sprayed you.”

That was true. He had always been the only one who had resisted the temptation to throw water over me, during my tentative approaches. And he refrained because he loved me, I thought.

“Come on, jump in,” I said, in a condescending tone, but as soon as he got closer, I started splashing him again.

This disloyalty forced him to enter the cold water, and he came after me, trying to take revenge and push me underwater. We struggled, swallowing several mouthfuls of water, grabbing each other wherever we could, slipping on the slimy bottom of the pool. After a while we were exhausted, more than simply from fatigue, from laughing too much. Only then did I realize that, despite the cold water, I was still excited. I raised my eyes to meet his, then I looked at his groin and realized he was in the same state. His white cotton pants, soaking wet, didn’t conceal anything.

We registered the same thing at the same time. We blushed and turned around swimming in opposite directions, almost as if we were too scared to look at each other. We walked away until we each reached opposite sides of the pool. We were only a few meters apart, but far enough not to have to look at each other. We splashed at each other a little, without getting closer. While our cocks, fortunately, had calmed down, no doubt due to the scare we had experienced, and had returned to normal.

We came out of the water trembling and exchanged similar cautious looks. Paoletto staring at me exactly as I looked at him. Eyes fixed on the same place. I lay on my stomach on the soft grass that grew along the shore. We were both out of breath, but not through exhaustion. It was the emotion and also the fear. He followed me and did as I did. I couldn’t think of anything that could get us out of that situation. We were too wet to get dressed. Nor could I in any way cover up and hide my embarrassment from my reaction that was already coming back to assault me. I gathered myself into myself, squeezing my knees with my arms. I took on the pose of that painting by Flandrin (2) which had so influenced me as a boy.

It was a moment when I regretted putting myself in such a compromising situation. With Paoletto next to me, whom I dared not look at, through fear that this precarious situation might irreparably damage our rekindled friendship. It was he who rescued us both, looking the other way as he tried controlling his breathing.

“It would be nice if we could get some sleep,” he said, casually, as he eyed me. “Only until we are dry. What do you say?”

“Yes, all right!” I replied, heaving a sigh of relief.

I lay back down on my stomach and pretended to doze, because I could not sleep lying next to his almost naked body, the thought of which I could not get out of my mind. The more I tried not to, the more I thought about him. I didn’t sleep, but only managed to rest motionless and not to turn around, which in itself required a superhuman effort.

I sensed him moving from time to time, but I kept still and made no response. I finally heard his breathing become regular and I realized that he was asleep. I got up slowly, avoiding looking at him, I stretched out my hand to get my pants. I quickly pulled them on over my wet underpants and covered my cock, which was still hard as a rock. I went back to the edge of the pool and threw stones for at least a quarter of an hour. I forced myself not to think about anything other than bouncing those flat pebbles off the surface of the water. That kind of self-censorship was effective and lasted until I felt Paoletto’s hand caress my shoulder.

“Boss, Little Limping Panther is terribly hungry!”

He had put on his clothes and looked at me smiling contentedly. For now my secret was safe and so was my love. So many untold truths were safe for the moment. I could lament silently for a little while longer. Was this the change I anticipated? The new season of my life? Was it all to be reduced to a silent suffering?

We ate the sandwiches and fruit we had brought with us. Paoletto was hungry and that food barely managed to satisfy his appetite. I pretended to be, maybe I really was. However, the thought that my life was going to experience another long ordeal, this time made of waiting and silent suffering, took away all my enthusiasm.

In those few days I had been close to him, but we had never been completely alone. Although we had often found ourselves in a special intimacy, that situation had never lasted long enough for us to speak seriously. What he was about to ask me had been suspended between us ever since he saw me a couple of months before. I was afraid of the questions he was going to ask, because I didn’t want to lie to him as I had always done with everyone. I wanted to tell the truth for once, but I already knew I would not, because I did not yet have the courage to do so. I was so afraid of losing him once more, and if I did so, it would have been a condemnation without appeal.

We lay on the grass next to each other looking at the sky through the treetops. And if before we might have napped in the early afternoon sun, now I was more than awake and so was he. There was a silence between us until he spoke.

“Why did you disappear?” he asked, “Why didn’t you want to see me anymore?”

Three years earlier it had been enough for me to walk away, so I didn’t have to explain anything to him. If he had looked for me, he was too young to ever find me in those places where I had hidden myself. In time he must have convinced himself to leave me alone. Now he was no longer a twelve-year-old boy. There was a young man in front of me, very self-aware, and I didn’t know what to say to him.

“Even that evening you ran away. Didn’t you?”

I nodded. I instantly understood what evening he was talking about. It was the evening, before that night, before that morning!

“You saw me, and you ran away. You didn’t even look at me. You didn’t see that I had grown up. I already had a little stubble, you know. But to you I was just a little boy. I was a pain in the ass, and you didn’t want to waste your time with me. I could have helped you.”

“There were things I didn’t want you to see,” I said, when I finally managed to speak, “but it’s true what you say, when I noticed you, I ran away. I am sorry.”

“Are you sorry? Is that all? I followed you, I shouted after you. I fell!”

“I didn’t come looking for you…you of all people. I was nervous about seeing you. I was there for something else, but I changed my mind…”

“Really? Why didn’t you speak to me? What were you doing standing in front of my house?”

“I didn’t want to encounter you and when you showed up I lacked the courage to do anything else.”

" You can’t tell lies!”

“Ok… But above all, I didn’t want to talk to you. I… I just wanted to see your house again!”

“I don’t understand!”

“If I explained it to you, you would still not understand me. Don’t ask me that, please.”

He looked away. I could see that he was angry. I recognized the approach of one of his rantings. His rants though rare, because he seldom lost his temper even as a child, were famous among his friends. When Paoletto got upset his rages were almost pyrotechnical and very spectacular.

“All right” he said, rather than shouting at me, as he was certainly about to do.

He was granting me another truce, and I loved him as good and tolerant as he was. He kept quiet for a while to consider, then he spoke once more.

“It is in the past now! Don’t worry about it. It’s over!”

“Thank you!”

After all I had done to him, he was still trying to appease me. To hear him almost made me weep with emotion.

“Do you know I have often thought about you over the years?” he said, after a little while. “And every time, I was terrified the same thing would happen to me. I might have disappeared, abandoned the Scouts and all of my friends? Just like you…”

“It could never have happened to you. No way! That’s not possible!”

“What do you know about it? How can you say that?”

His eyes were glistening, perhaps he was moved. He looked around, then he looked at the pool where the sunlight reflected off the water. Paoletto concentrated on that light, while I was contemplating him.

He was beautiful. His skin was golden, his profile classic, his hair still wet, lightened by the sun. That light, that grazed his shoulder, his cheek, until his eyes shone. Or was it my imagination that gave him that halo?

“Did you know that I often cried for you? When you disappeared and even afterwards. For a few days I didn’t eat. Grandma Luigia did not know what to do and Uncle Giulio called a doctor, a pediatrician, for a consultation.”

“Really, were you not speaking?” I thought about how much that extraordinary woman must have worried. And also, Uncle Giulio who doted on him. And he loved me too.

“I only said I had lost the most important thing in my life. I said those precise words ‘the most important thing in my life’. I didn’t say anything else.”

He repeated those words slowly whilst looking at me. And it was me he was talking about. I knew it

“They couldn’t get anything else out of me,” he said again.

“Paoletto…”

“I was twelve years old” he continued, without paying attention to me. “Nobody believed me capable of assuming such an attitude, of having such precise ideas. Uncle Giulio tried making fun of me. Grandma Luigia however, seemed to have understood. She asked me many times questions about you. I did not say anything to her either. I stayed two days without eating at all. I drank only water, then the hunger came back. I almost forgot about you. You were my special friend and I traded you for a sandwich!” he said, smiling a bit sourly.

I had never fantasized about a moment like this, nor had I ever thought that talking about it could hurt me so much. Imagining his suffering, it was tantamount to living it. Once again I was a coward and went back to lying to him.

“I left because everything we did seemed useless, futile. I no longer enjoyed myself. And I no longer believed in God, how could I remain in the scouts?”

“Please, don’t lie to me! I have already told you, you cannot tell lies!” he said, in a disconsolate manner.

I was still afraid that he would get angry. I would have preferred him to do so, but by now he didn’t believe what I was telling him. He knew that it wasn’t true.

“There is one more reason why I left,” I told him on impulse, before I had time to regret it, “but I don’t feel like talking about it. Not yet.”

Not now, my love. I cannot. Curiously enough, I thought of my French friend at that moment, how he would have disapproved of my behavior.

“Was it something that had to do with me,” he insisted.

“No!” I lied.

“Another lie!” Again that feeling of impotence and defeat in his voice.

“I don’t want to talk about it! I cannot, not yet!” I shouted.

By then I was desperate. How could I avoid telling him if he insisted? I was asking too much of him. To have faith in me without giving him an explanation. It was too much.

“Then why did you come back?” he insisted.

“Because my father died. Because I don’t do drugs anymore. Because I needed to be amongst friends. Because my life had become too sad. And, anyway, I don’t think I’m staying…”

“You promised not to disappear again.”

“Paoletto, I don’t think the Scouts need me.” This time he did not interrupt me. I kept talking. “But you and I will still be friends. I promised you that I won’t go away.”

“What if I need you?”

“Why should you? What do you think I could give you?”

He did not answer and did not look at me. His gaze was fixed on a distant spot, among the trees, in the woods.

“Paoletto, I… I am no longer your Patrol Leader,” I insisted.

I had to tell him how little I was worth. How badly his trust had been misplaced, and I tried doing it with a certain honesty.

He clasped my hand and held it.

“I took drugs,” I said. “I stole money from my parents to buy drugs. I did other bad things. Much uglier than you can imagine. My father made me stop, but I never thanked him, and do you know why? He died before I could.”

Paoletto was still holding my hand and I would have done anything to keep him holding it.

“When he was about to die,” I went on, “and he would have wanted me next to him, I was studying. That’s all I did. I spent every night with him. I would sit by his bed, watching over him. I would inject him with a sedative, but when I realized he wanted to talk to me, I would pretend to sleep. I would sit in the dark with my eyes closed. He was lying next to me, numbed by drugs. What did he ever want to tell me? I allowed him to talk to me a few times. But I never thanked him for saving me. And do you know why? Because I hadn’t forgiven him for having given birth to me!”

Maybe I was crying. I realized I had glossy eyes and then I was crying. My cheeks were wet with tears. He let go of my hand and I covered my face with my hands. I was ashamed he saw me like that, but maybe it was good. Perhaps he would understand how little I was worth.

But he kept quiet, lying on his side. His body still kept tempting me. And that thought, once again, as well as upsetting my life, came to excite me, provided another boost to my emotions. I felt the sadness enveloping and suffocating me, the desperation of being unable to control myself. I strained myself even more in an effort not to burst out sobbing.

He approached me to caress my shoulder, and his touch made me shudder.

“I don’t care about what you did,” he said, softly. “I would have liked to suffer with you, but I wasn’t there. Now I just want us to remain friends. I don’t want you to leave again. Remember you promised me!”

“I know, I will always be your prisoner. I remain your prisoner.”

For a moment I dreamed that behind his insistence there was a feeling similar to the one I was trying to escape. I dreamed of being close to him all my life. But it was only a moment. I immediately understood that what I had done once, I was preparing to do again. There was no place, for me next to him. There could not be. To stay close to him without upsetting him or violating his innocence was impossible. I would not have resisted, because even at a moment like that, I was excited. How could I hope to resist him, without undermining him?

“You promised me…” I heard him repeat.

I reinvented my future. Then and there, I imagined what I would do after the end of the camp. I would go as far away as possible to attend University. I would convince my mother to follow me and leave the city. We would never come back. Maybe I would see him again, but there would be no more opportunities to be together.

In the end, he would have to resign himself to my departure and this time there would be no crying, because my betrayal would be evident and definitive.

But just as I was thinking these thoughts, planning my turnaround, he stroked my shoulder. Paoletto took my hand, held it between his, and then caressed it against his cheek. I felt his smooth skin warm under my fingertips. My hands trembled. Then he let me go and went back to lying down. He perched his head on one extended arm and kept staring at me.

I observed him with my heart in my mouth from the emotion. Time stood still. He had a serenity with which he encompassed me, and I stayed there watching him. He closed his eyes and seemed to fall asleep. I closed mine too. Even the forest was silent.

When we looked at each other again, I read something in his eyes. I don’t know what my eyes were saying, but his filled me with joy and despair.

I decided I would wait a few more days, before telling him the truth. Before revealing that I intended to leave for good. I still wanted to enjoy a little more of his affection. I needed it, and I was so selfish, I would use him again, then leave. Soon it would be time to set out on the road.

We returned to the camp very slowly, stopping frequently, because his leg was painful. We walked together, hugging each other, he held my arm over his shoulders for most of the way. I adapted to his body, to support him and touch him. I didn’t think of anything other than the warmth that contact transmitted.

We chatted about the Scouts, his Patrol, the camp. He described his plans for next year when he would become a Rover. With every word he said, with his enthusiasm for the future, I understood his life would not to be shattered by my presence. Not by the proposals I would be tempted to make to him, nor what I would certainly do to him, staying close with him. I was now so certain that if I wanted I could lure him into my arms, at that exact moment. A nod and he would have been mine in every sense, there in the woods, while the afternoon sun made everything redder. But I loved him too much, for it to happen. The suffering was mine alone.

Had we spoken, I would have confided in him, and perhaps we would have stayed friends. I would have explained everything to him. Perhaps he already knew and was prepared to sacrifice himself for me, but I would not let him. I had to face my life alone and let myself be overwhelmed by it. Without dragging him into those places where he would never have ventured had he not met me. His future was for him alone.

We arrived back at the camp. Our brief excursion ended and with it my dream. I had had Paoletto to myself, alone with me. A whole day just for us. What else could I expect from life? I could have died at that moment and I would have been happy to die.

I attended to him for a while, but my baby was now weaned and almost healed, even though he had to use his injured leg with caution. Our life in common was reduced to a few chats. My lost looks were behind him and it was his happy smiles, when he found me staring at him, that remained. He was as happy that I was there at least as much as I was to be near him. He was content, of that I am certain, and no thought or regret would ever take that certainty from me.

***

The last night of the camp tradition dictated that a series of rituals take place. Despite my new fervor, I still considered this rather uninteresting and more suited for those who had the age and imagination to clothe them with ideals. That time was gone for me and nothing, not even Paoletto’s enthusiasm, would make it come back.

I took part in that last campfire anyway. It was a memorable occasion to be remembered for the whole of the following year. For Paoletto it was the last evening before he moved on to the Rovers. As it was significant for him it ended up becoming important for me too, despite my feigned indifference.

A lot of wood was burned on that fire, all that had been used to build tables, benches, and the kitchens. All day long we had dismantled the camp and as far as possible all traces of our passage had been covered. After the winter that clearing would return to the way it was before we arrived. Since it was the last gathering, around that fire many promises were made, personal proposals, some to share with everyone, others to keep for themselves. It was the most important evening of the whole camp, but only for those who experienced it with the enchanted eyes of innocence. We sang and played. There was a lot of emotion because it was our last night together and tomorrow everything would be over. We had had too much fun to want to leave without getting excited and exuberant, one last time. I too became swept up in that atmosphere.

Every night in the camp the campfire had been lit. Every night the silence of the forest had been broken by song and laughter, by our cheerfulness and then the silence which fell with tiredness. In the end, the final song was performed, always the same one, during which we all joined hands. Paoletto always made sure to be close to me in that moment, to clasp my hand. Then we had to make a prayer that I mumbled, being unable to believe the words I was saying and that were sang, quite fervently.

That memorable evening, after all the customs had been respected, only one last engagement, a last effort, remained. It was part of our tradition that the eldest scouts waited for dawn around the final bonfire, holding sentinel over its dying embers. It could get very cold, which it usually did. It was like a rite of passage that no one would give up because it was their last time, there would never be another night like this.

I knew Paoletto wanted me by his side for that last night, to greet the glow of dawn when it illuminated the sky. He didn’t ask me to stay, not in words, but I didn’t doubt he wanted me there, so I laid my sleeping bag next to his. It was already very cold, and we sealed ourselves inside, leaving only a thin gap to breathe and look into each other’s eyes.

“Are you sleepy?” I asked him.

He shook his head, he wouldn’t sleep at all. That night was his last night as a boy and the first as a man. Perhaps it wasn’t like that, perhaps it was how it had happened to me, I had definitely lost my mind on a night like that, but the line between adolescence and maturity was not so clear or so easy to cross.

“Do you want to sleep?”

“No!” I reassured him. I would have stayed with him to clasp his hand. Metaphorically, because the air was freezing cold.

I settled down better using a depression in the ground to rest my tired and exhausted body from the long day we had spent. How I didn’t fall asleep, I don’t know, but I was mentally lucid, at least, though physically exhausted. It must have been the same for him.

There were others who like us stayed around the fire and were chatting. Some had succumbed to tiredness and were already asleep.

“I missed you, you know?” he said, after a while.

“I missed you too, and you don’t know how much!” I said, before I was able to stop myself, because this was dangerous talk.

“Tell me something…only something that doesn’t hurt. Tell me a little bit of what you think I should know.”

From the fire came a glow that illuminated us. Our faces like red stains against the dark of the sleeping bags and the black of the night.

“I have missed you. Really missed you. I would like to tell you everything, because I would like you to know, but it still hurts me, and it hurts me even more to remember!”

He shuffled closer to me, pulled out his arm and caressed me on my cheek. His hand was warm. My face icy cold. An absurd desire to have him with me in my sleeping bag caught me. I wanted him, but only to warm me up with the heat of his body and to thaw him because he must also have been cold.

“Tell me what you are thinking about.”

He took me a bit by surprise.

“Nothing important,” I babbled, “I’m just cold!”

“Liar… I don’t believe it. You made a face… Come on, tell me what you were thinking! I beg you!”

“That you must be cold and that I would like to warm you up!”

“Do you want to know what I was thinking?”

“Yes.”

“That it would be marvelous if the two of us were alone here tonight. I could enter your sleeping bag and we wouldn’t have to explain anything to anyone.”

“Really?”

“Yes…it’s too cold,” he said, with a peaceful smile.

I approached him moving my sleeping bag until I could feel his body next to mine. That’s all I could do, and he looked at me contentedly.

“Over the years,” he told me, “wherever I went I thought how nice it would be to be with you in each of those places. Everywhere I fantasized that you were with me. And you were never there. You were never near me. I never came after you, but I always knew where you were!”

I jumped. He was bewildering me.

He smiled at my surprise.

“I kept on following you…”

“How did you do that? Who told you where I was, what I was doing?”

Sometimes it was Marco, but I had to push him. He was terribly reluctant even to name you. I asked other people about you, too. And then I saw you on the street several times. We don’t live far away. It was easy to casually meet you.”

“Did Marco tell you about me? What did he tell you?”

“Nothing… a few things. He always said that you were well and that you didn’t miss anything. He always made me promise that I would never go looking for you. That you had to decide when and how to come back to us. If you wanted to come back to us! He said I had to respect your decision. Even if it made me feel bad and sad! It was then I cried… when Marco told me that.”

Mentally I sent Marco all the excuses I could. No matter how badly I thought of him.

“And what else do you know?”

God, please don’t let him know everything, I thought. I feared the gates of hell were opening wide for me again.

“Once he told me that you didn’t wash frequently and that you stank a little,” I laughed and imagined that Paoletto would never do that, “he told me that you dressed in rags and smoked grass. You forced your mother to give you money, but then she had to stop, because your father forbade it. Then you started stealing from your house. And at school they promoted you because your father bought the favor.”

So, he knew almost everything.

“What else do you know?” I insisted.

“That’s all, I don’t know anything more. But when you returned, let’s say, to normal…”

He gathered himself, as if in defense of the cold. I saw him shiver. I approached him again, and our heads were almost in contact. His voice was a whisper, and I enjoyed the warmth of his breath on my face. He took a deep breath to gain courage.

“When you returned to normal, it was the most terrible time for me. I was glad you had stopped doing drugs and that you went back to school. I was proud of you when I heard how much you had done in such a short time, the work of a whole school year. It was then I believed. I expected that you would return to us, to me. I waited for you every night, but you never came. I would have gone looking for you, but I promised Marco I wouldn’t, and then I realized you didn’t want to see me. I had to wait for a long time. It was terrible. I could watch you in the street, from a distance. You never noticed me because you were always walking with your head down. And then I heard about your father. And I cried for him, for your mother and for you. Especially for you!”

His lips were a few inches from mine. I saw them trembling as if he were about to cry.

“Don’t go away, Roby. I beg you!”

“I promised you!”

“I know, but I am afraid. Don’t abandon me alone anymore.”

Around us there was an absolute quiet. We were presumably the last people awake near the fire that was being consumed, throwing sparks into the air, whose noise was the only sound we could hear.

“I am cold,” he said, “and all this silence scares me!”

I pulled out my arms and drew him to me. I squeezed him. The air was really very cold.

“I knew that you would come back,” he murmured, “but I am so afraid that you will leave again!”

“I’m not leaving, I swear to you! I’m not leaving, don’t worry!”

I cuddled him. If someone had seen us, it would have been difficult to explain what we were doing, but I didn’t care. It was the right time to do that.

“I don’t know why…but I believe that without you I could no longer live,” he said.

“Why do you say that?” I was frightened by what I was hearing.

“Yes, it’s right!” he insisted stubbornly. But he was sleepy. The day had been tiring, and midnight had long passed.

“All right. It’s as you say. I know it. I believe you, but let’s sleep now.”

And I kissed him on the forehead.

“And you? Why weren’t you looking for me?”

“Let’s sleep. I will speak to you about it. I will tell you everything. Ok? But not now. Now I don’t want to!”

“Do you promise that you will tell me everything?”

“Yes!”

“And that you won’t leave? That you won’t leave me again? Swear to me!”

“Paoletto, I swear that we will decide about our future together. I promise it on my father.” I regretted having said that, I would never have imagined I could say that. “Paoletto, my future doesn’t exist, but I’ll give it to you anyway.”

He looked at me as if he didn’t understand and I thought it had to be like that. Then he surprised me, as he had always done.

“You won’t regret it,” he told me, with conviction, “you should have done it sooner!”

God, how right he was!

“Shall we sleep?”

“All right let’s sleep. When I wake up tomorrow, I know that I will find you here, but afterwards?”

“I have sworn it to you. Is my word worth so little?”

“No. I believe you, even if I am afraid!”

We fell asleep hugging each other, and if no one saw us in the morning, if our honor was saved, it was because shortly afterwards the cold woke me up. I put my arms back in my sleeping bag, but before going back to sleep I kissed him on the lips. I kissed him once and then again, until it got too cold to feel my own lips. Forgetting that someone might discover my secret or that he could wake up.

I kissed him, because that would be the only real kiss, I would ever give him.

(1) At the time, the latrines were holes dug into the ground in secluded corners. At the end of the camp, the hole was covered. Needless to say, an accident to one leg with the inability to bend makes the use of this type of latrine very difficult.

(2) https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/nude-youth-sitting-sea

6

Return

After the camp I tried disappearing again, but my escape lasted exactly thirty minutes. The day after our return, at half past seven, Paoletto was in front of the gate and sounded the bell.

That evening we were supposed to meet at seven o’clock in the Section to unpack. Open the backpacks and boxes. Lay the tents out to dry them. Store the tools. The boys were anxious to get together to talk about the camp, but I didn’t have to be there. My involvement had definitely ended when the camp finished, but Paoletto expected me to be there. I wanted to go, but I lacked the courage to face him and I had no idea what I would say to him?

At seven o’clock I hid in my room, burying my head in a book I didn’t want to read, but which I forced myself to follow, as some kind of punishment. It was a ruse, I was certain Paoletto would seek me out. It was impossible he would leave me alone, after what I had told him and what I had promised. After the intimacy and confidences of the past few days.

When I wasn’t at the Section as I was supposed to be, he waited only a few minutes before he stopped what he was doing and came searching for me. Paralyzed by that same fear which locked me within myself, I did not open the door immediately. Facing him again would change everything, it would force me to keep that promise. I had already made my decision, even if I now regretted it.

Seeing him standing in front of the house made me anxious. I knew this was his last rendezvous at the Section, his last time as Patrol Leader. Next year it would be another boy overseeing putting away the tents. After tonight he would be nothing more than a guest. Coming to look for me meant he was missing out, it cost him a lot. But he had left all the same, and he was waiting for me behind the gate, to make up my mind. His eyes were fixed on the hall window.

He must have realized I was there, hidden by the reflection in the glass, because he was staring right at me, or at least I thought he was. But one thing was certain, he was looking for me, he was still looking for me! I was certain he would have continued to do so, despite everything, despite any of my attempts to avoid and escape him.

He rang again and I heard my mother move to go to the door. Which forced me to open it myself. I flung it open and ran towards the gate.

“Hello,” he shouted, through the bars of the gate. He smiled at me as if it were the time we had arranged to meet and he had not been waiting for me for half an hour, and then a few more minutes ringing the bell.

He smiled at me and I too was happy to see him, at least as much as my mother was. She had followed me down the hall, surprised to discover someone was looking for me with such insistence. Then she recognized Paoletto and came over to greet him. She abandoned her torpor, replacing it with a smile, perhaps reassured to see him once more in our house. I took her lead, encouraged, I renounced for the moment my true intentions.

“I was waiting for you, why didn’t you come?” he asked as soon as we were alone.

“I was tired…”

It was an excuse, and he didn’t believe it.

“So? Are you coming now?”

How could I say no to him?

I followed him back to the Section, where we spent the evening together with the others. It was almost midnight by the time we left and as we made our way home, I had forgotten my promises, my intentions, and those fears. I was happy, walking together, arm in arm. He never stopped talking. He told me all about himself and about the last few years.

Those three years had gone, but It seemed to me it was only yesterday. He was there with his smell of candy and that unmistakable aroma of licorice that was so intrinsic to him, part of his person. His voice had changed but retained all the sweetness I had loved and still loved so desperately. His eyes, the hair he had somehow tamed, the swaying gait of a tall person. He was different, but still himself, amidst those familiar places, the same streets.

He walked beside me, and I listened to him talking. Every now and then I would ask him about someone, someone I had not seen for years, and the memories came flooding back to me. Being close to him was reopening all the doors to my memory, doors which I had slammed shut and thrown away the key. Now I wished I hadn’t closed them.

We laughed happily together, but I felt a growing anxiety. I knew he was about to ask me something. I knew it. I was in love and the person for whom I held that feeling was next to me, but I couldn’t, I didn’t want to tell him. If he decided I should stay by his side, if that were the way it was meant to be, I would follow him everywhere for as long as he wanted. Silently, without any question, I would take my place as his oldest friend, ready with advice and support, but I would never reveal my secret to him.

I felt rather foolish with those heroic thoughts, because Paoletto didn’t need me, he had never sought my help. He had learned to live his life alone and get along by himself. It would be me, the one who needed help, needed him, and these were careless thoughts. I knew from experience that I would never be able to sublimate my feelings. Never be able to live next to him without in some duplicitous way affecting him.

I burst out laughing because he had just said one of those things that make you rejoice when your lover tells you. I kept smiling, but with a bitterness, because it seemed that life hadn’t taught me anything yet if such naive ideas kept coming to me. To be sure about what I felt I touched my groin and there was the proof to confirm how foolish and dishonest I was being with myself.

“Hey…what are you doing tomorrow afternoon?” he asked, blissfully unaware of my thoughts..

We had arrived in front of the gate to my house.

“Why don’t you come and play football? It will be the usual group. At the Pinewood. Ten people, but there’s room for you too.”

Useless to pretend to be busy in some way. He knew very well how empty my life was, occupied only by reading and watching an occasional film. I could have told him I didn’t want to play football anymore, that I was afraid of getting hurt. I could have told him that, but why lie to him again? He didn’t deserve it, and I was tired of pretending. Besides, hadn’t I just decided to become his best friend again, albeit with certain conditions? Not exactly his best friend, more his chaste companion. That is, ignoring my erection, which I had become aware of, and which I hoped he would not notice.

“So… what are you doing? Are you coming?” he asked me impatiently, seeing I was captured in a spell, consumed by my own frightening thoughts.

“At what time did you say?”

“So, you’re coming!” His eyes lit up. “We’re playing at half past three. If we meet at three o’clock…or is it too early for you? It’s going to be hot!”

His voice had become anxious and I was moved he showed concern for me.

“No, no! It’s all right by me,” I said, “I’ll pick you up on my Vespa.”

“Do you still have it?”

An image reappeared, a picture which moved me. A memory of Paoletto on the Vespa.

“It’s not the same Vespa you remember.” I told him. “I sold that scooter to buy drugs. My father purchased another one for me when I returned… when things became normal again. I never thanked him for that. When I went to the garage to pick it up I thought I would never get on it. It reminded me too much of the past, but then I decided to use it any way, but I only took it out a few times.”

Talking to him was difficult, because my mind was flooded with the emotions of all those memories. I had to change the subject.

“You know…” I said, “that was my father’s last gift! I could have asked him for other things, and he would have given me them. But I didn’t, maybe, because he was too weak and sick.”

I could no longer talk. Clearly changing the subject had not been a good idea, because I was still losing my self-control and I didn’t want to. I covered my face with my hands. I didn’t want to cry either.

“You are not obliged to tell me these things…” he said and put his hand on my arm.

Although the night was hot, I shivered. If he had touched me one more time I don’t know what might have happened. I moved a few steps away but seeing his look of incomprehension I went back to him.

“Paoletto,” I said, almost to myself, “my father thought he had to make things up to me. I don’t know why. I don’t know how many times he tried to tell me! But I never let him because it was I who had to ask for forgiveness. For everything. I never managed to speak to him, never mustered the courage to tell him anything. And now he is gone…”

“When you decide to talk,” he said, “it’s not an if, but a when… you can tell me everything. I will listen to you, I need to know, and I would very much like you to talk to me. You promised, do you remember?”

“I remember… It’s just… I’ve changed. So many things have happened…” I was forever repeating the same excuse..

He grabbed my arm again, and he was not gentle. He held me in a strong grip so I could not escape. He was holding me, and I was scared he would let me go. He shook me.

“Do you understand that I don’t care what you did? Do you know that if I had encountered you in those months, in that year and a half in which you had become I don’t know what, if you had let me, I would have asked you to be my friend? I would have helped you!”

He raised his voice, then closed his eyes. When he looked at me there were tears. He rarely cried and recovered quickly.

“Why do you keep eluding me?” he roared, exasperated, shaking me again to get an answer.

“Paoletto, I…”

“Am I still too young to be your friend? Are you ashamed of me?”

“No! It’s me who feels dirty! You don’t understand. If you knew everything you would be ashamed of me.”

“Tell me why…” he stared at me, “please, tell me why!”

He shook me another time, and I lowered my head finding nothing better to look at than the toes of my shoes.

“I am afraid of being a bad influence on you,” I mumbled. “Forcing you to do things you don’t want to do, that you would do only because you are my friend. Perhaps so as not to disappoint me. Paoletto, I could harm you!”

“But what the fuck is so bad about you?” he shouted, so loudly I was afraid someone would hear.

I shook my head, and he finally let go of my arm.

“Are you taking drugs again?”

“No!”

“Then why? Why can’t I know? Do you think I’m stupid, or naive? If you’re so scared, why come looking for me? You didn’t have to!”

I felt like I had been hit. He was right, of course, it had all been some wasted effort, coming back and spreading my suffering to the people who loved me.

“It was Marco who sought me. I would never have come back alone.” I tried to justify myself, as if deciding to take part in the camp was Marco’s fault.

“You didn’t come back for me?”

“No!” I lied.

I was disappointing him, but at that moment it seemed necessary.

“I don’t believe you!”

“But I’m glad I found you again” I added, to console him, hoping to reassure him. “I’m not going away! I swear!”

“You already said.”

He leaned against the wall, evaluating my words. Then he stared at me.

“It was because of me you ran away. I knew it. I understood. At first, I couldn’t work out why, but I know it was because of me. But I want to hear it from you!”

“I will tell you everything. Give me time, please!” I whined.

Perhaps he took pity on me, because he suddenly became serene again, at least it seemed to me he was.

“See you tomorrow, then! Three o’clock! You are coming?”

“Yeah…”

“Listen…” he looked at me and took a moment before saying, “I don’t care about anything. If you don’t want to tell me don’t. I don’t need to know anymore, but…when two people are like us, when…they are like us…”

His expression changed, his face grew stern, he was frustrated and pretty upset. He punched me really hard in the shoulder and ran off, leaving me surprised, hurt and in pain. He disappeared around the corner before I could do or say anything. Maybe even give him a kiss. I wanted to kiss him. Would we see each other again? Maybe, what did I care about what happened? Despite the bruise to my shoulder, I felt overcome by a genuine feeling of happiness like I had never experienced before. I wanted to follow him and hug him, smother him in passionate kisses, take him with me into the house and love him there. I didn’t even know how.

Naturally, I did none of that.

I stood still, glued to the spot in front of the gate, with the key in mid-air and my mouth wide open. My shoulder throbbed from the pain. I didn’t think he had become so strong. He must have been really annoyed. Was it possible he loved me and that’s why he acted the way he did?

I repeated to myself what he had just said, ‘when two people are like us,’ like us, that could mean a lot of things. I decided it meant only one thing, that thing I so desperately wanted, it all made sense.

I had never felt any love which wasn’t filtered through feelings of guilt and now I had discovered someone who perhaps had a similar feeling for me. The possibility that it could happen without hurting him came as a revelation. Did he really desire the same thing?

Tomorrow I would find him at three o’clock in front of his house. He might not be there. If he weren’t would I look for him?

My hands were trembling, and I was not able to open the gate. I stood there, in the silence of the summer night. Gradually it dawned on me that Paoletto had left, and I became desperate, accosted by the idea that I had lost him. Were that true I would have gone back to taking drugs. That realization shocked me.

I was afraid I had sold my soul because of him. He was like a drug. That passionate creature who would slay the monster. Yet, finally, it was no battle of monsters, but a question of love. With his love for me, he was trying to save me, and perhaps he would succeed. There would come a time when we would meet and confide in each other, but for now, I loved him in silence. Perhaps one day he would understand why.

I ran home, undressed, and slipped into bed. I pulled the sheet over my head. Fear gripped me, fear of seeing him again and fear of not seeing him again. That night I slept poorly.

As soon as I woke up I tried to find clothes to wear for a soccer match between friends on a makeshift pitch. Shorts and shirt were no problem, but my soccer boots from three years ago were too small. I decided to buy a new pair, not doubting there would be more opportunities for matches with Paoletto.

“I love you, and you will never know it! I love you, but I will never be able to tell you! I will stay by your side, don’t be afraid. This time I won’t run away…”

I repeated these prayers all morning, jumping at every little noise, my nerves on edge. My mother observed me discreetly, perplexed by my nervousness, fearing it had a more worrying origin. I was delighted to reassure her and console her.

“I’m going to play soccer, Mom. Can you believe it? Do you know how long it’s been since I did that? Paoletto convinced me to play again.”

“Be careful, young man. You two be careful not to get hurt,” she said, as I expected she would. It seemed to me she was happy, although my reawakening to life seemed to perplex her, perhaps because it was unexpected.

She surprised me by asking, “So, you are friends again,” she caressed my cheek. “And do you love him as always?”

“Yes!” I confessed, to her and to myself.

What did she know? Had she always known everything?

We exchanged no more words, I allowed her to withdraw and return to her reclusive world of silence. It appeared to me that she was in some way comforted, I didn’t dare to think happy, but her melancholy had receded. She was, in fact, as happy as I was myself. She only had me, and I her, and Paoletto perhaps.

***

When I came around the corner he was already waiting for me next to his house. He was no less impatient than I was, and I thought I understood why. He climbed on my Vespa saying nothing more than a hurried greeting, then settling down on the saddle and almost angrily clinging to my body.

The smell of his scent took me back years, like this was full on dejà vu. I had taken him with me on my Vespa so many times we practically become one body. We were in a perfect symbiosis on that small seat, it felt almost uncomfortable when I was alone.

The two of us on that scooter were tight, which is why I liked to carry him. The proximity was absolute and the contact inevitable. I got so used to feeling him behind me I could distinguish, and draw in my mind, every part of his body. From his legs which he always squeezed against mine, trying to create the smallest possible impediment, to his hair that touched my head. His nose, which when I braked, always hit me on the back of the neck. His chest pressing on my shoulders, and in summer, I could even feel his nipples against my back.

Riding the scooter Paoletto would hug me and often place his chin on my shoulder. When he tired of that position because it became uncomfortable, as he was still a little smaller than me, he would rest his forehead on the back of my neck and press it against me. He would draw me to him, while he passed his hands around my hips. Holding me like this, his body adhered completely to mine. His groin was pressed against my sacrum.

I always enjoyed that feeling. I fantasized about him having an erection, his cock squeezed against the top of my buttocks was a powerful emotion. Limp or erect, whichever it was, I enjoyed the feeling. I would move to feel it better because I knew it was there.

That day, as if those three years had not passed, he jumped on the Vespa and hugged me, glued himself to me as he had always done. The difference, which I noticed at once, was that he had become as tall as me and so he could easily put his chin on my shoulder, placing his head next to mine. With a little movement, mine or his, we could have kissed if we had wanted to. I wanted to, but obviously I didn’t.

We wore thin clothing, T-shirts and shorts and I could clearly feel the shape of his chest pressed into my back. I thought I could guess where his nipples were on that muscular chest, and further down I recognized the shape of his penis pushed against me. Never did my body feel so sensitive as in that short space of time. Only a few minutes, in which I enjoyed such acute and intense sensations. He adjusted himself often and gripped me tighter and tighter, but he didn’t say a word while I was driving in the light afternoon traffic. It was unusual for us to stay silent for so long, but I was too busy enjoying his hug to notice. His quiet did not alarm me.

Now I know there was a misunderstanding at the root of our silence. Because I loved him I was distracted by his embrace, by the erotic sensations I was enjoying. I waited for him to speak, but he remained silent. Perhaps, but it only occurred to me later, he was disoriented by my quietness.

We left the city and headed towards the pinewood near the sea, just beyond the suburbs, where we used to play football. When we arrived, we encountered the others who were surprised to see me. They teased me and we joked a little. They said I had been missing for so long that they had forgotten how good I was at soccer. We burst out laughing. They were waiting for me. They knew that I would be there.

We all wanted to get playing straightaway and began choosing teams while we were changing. In the excitement of coming back here to play, I didn’t notice that Paoletto had stayed on the sidelines and he had made sure he was playing against me. Only when the teams were decided did I realize that and I was sorry, because it seemed to me a kind of betrayal. Still, I recalled we had played a few times against each other.

I looked at him strongly and he in return gave me a look of defiance. I winked at him and he smiled, showing his teeth. It was enough to calm me down, I thought he was joking.

We finished changing, wearing shirts and shorts even lighter than our summer clothes. Other times, a few years earlier, that moment would have been of great interest to me. Peeking at my companions’ nakedness had been one of my favorite pastimes. This time I also glanced at the guys who were taking off their pants. A pair of them took off their underwear to put on a swimsuit. The pinewood was near the sea and after the game someone would want to go and swim. What I was offered was a naive nudity which excited me. Paoletto stayed in his underwear, before putting on his soccer shorts.

While I was staring at him, he caught my gaze and I saw him blushing, turning around, resentful. He dressed hastily, quickly pulling on his soccer shorts. I looked away because I was annoyed with myself for upsetting him. My eyes were filled with tears knowing how much I desperately wanted his body, but more than that, I needed his love. Seeing him like that was more than I could bear.

Fortunately, we started to play, and I didn’t think about it anymore. I found myself chasing the ball, I had forgotten how compelling it was. I had barely played since I left the Scouts. I immediately became passionate again, experiencing every moment of the game with enthusiasm. Every touch of the ball seemed to me a confirmation of my new found inner order. Every kick, every shot, or pass was proof that my quotidian life had returned to being right and human again.

On that beautiful day there was one out of tune note which upset me. Paoletto was lashing out at me, something he had never done before, not until now. He was pushing me, crowding me out with his tackles, as if I were a soccer star, which I definitely was not. When I had possession, he was there next to me, barging, knocking me until I slipped and fell. My team got several free kicks from his fouls. I couldn’t understand why he was acting like that, we had never intentionally hurt one another. If we had, accidentally, playing round, it always ended in hugs. This was different, I was getting hurt, getting tripped up, and falling over.

“Fuck!” I shouted, “what the fuck are you doing?”

Swearing among us was not usual, it was almost forbidden. At that moment though, it seemed justified. Paoletto had barged me to the ground, and I had injured my knee. I was bleeding. It was a malicious, intentional foul. He looked at me with that same defiance, then walked away without even apologizing, or saying anything. I should have been worried about it, but I wasn’t. I got up, wiped the little bit of blood away and went back to playing.

Since we had left home he had not said more than a few words to me. He was being aggressive and going in hard during the game, it was as if he were trying to provoke me. I didn’t see at first what was happening, and when I did, I didn’t understand the reason.

“If you make me fall again,” I shouted at him, when the game restarted, “start running, because if I catch you, I swear I’ll make you cry…”.

I said those hard words to make fun of him, I wasn’t being serious, I actually regretted saying that. I wanted to joke, not make a drama out of it. But he stared at me like he wanted to kill me. I thought he was putting on an act, pretending to be serious with his hard face. I thought I saw a smile behind it, but he wasn’t smiling.

“Do you understand, blondie?” I insisted.

“You have to catch me first!” he mumbled.

“You trip me again, and then we’ll see!”

And so, we challenged each other, even though I was convinced that we were joking.

“You won’t have to wait too long!” he muttered.

The game continued and he charged into me, head down, striking me in the shoulder. I fell on my back, legs flying up in the air. I hit the ground with some force, and it stunned me for a moment, but not long enough to stop me getting up to chase him. Paoletto had launched himself on a crazy race towards the sea.

Soccer always thrilled me when I played, I got so involved I was not that aware of where everyone was. I did not keep track of Paoletto, perhaps if I had, I would have noticed his odd behavior. He was nervous and angry, and I didn’t notice, and missed the opportunity to ask him why. It was clearly to do with me, but I missed the chance to fix it.

Being so engaged in the game was not spoiled by his tackles or the deliberate fouls. It didn’t distract from the excitement. But seeing him run away, escaping, after that last tackle, pushed me to run after him and make him pay for it.

He had already reached the beach, I tried not to lose sight of him. I saw him dash into the pinewood and head towards the ruined building in the thick of the trees. I saw him go through the gate. The old house had been abandoned for many years, only the walls, the attic, and a staircase leading to the upper floor, remained. We all knew it, we had played in that place countless times.

I entered the ruin and looked around. I knew there was only one way out, and he was already inside. If he wasn’t on the ground floor, he must have gone upstairs. I heard the creaking of a floor board and told myself he must be there. I ventured up the stairs. He was on the terrace, a sort of a loggia, a few square meters with a relatively high parapet.

When I saw him, he was leaning against the wall, his arms wide, staring at me with an air of challenge. His gaze, his attitude, were maddening, and he managed to provoke me even more. He was breathing heavily, his mouth open.

“You certainly won’t get out of here…” I said with a malicious smile on my face.

I wasn’t joking anymore.

“You haven’t caught me yet!”

His voice. I didn’t listen to it. Not as I should have. If only I had done so. I thought it was the running that made him lose his breath. It was the anxiety, the fear of what could happen, of what only then he realized he had caused.

He realized that I was out of control. As I had never been.

“I’m going to get you,” I announced, without any restraint.

“Don’t come any closer!” his voice trembled.

Something wasn’t right, but I did not quite understand. I was completely out of my mind.

“I’ll give you a chance,” I said, instead. “give up, and I won’t hurt you. Otherwise it’s worse for you and I’ll won’t stop until you start crying!”.

I was like crazy. I had lost touch with reality. I would never have dreamed of talking to Paoletto like that, or threatening him, or hurting him. If I had not completely lost my mind. It wasn’t me. It was the foulest part of me who wanted revenge for the kicks and trips he had given me.

Although the soccer game and everything else had nothing to do with it anymore. There was a part of my soul that had decided to take advantage of the situation. It was an even more unpleasant, darker part, which had seen the unique opportunity to touch him. To finally abuse him, take him with force, because, after so many years, maybe I finally had a good excuse not to regret it later.

For that reason, my excitement was total, and my reason lost.

He understood it, because he looked at me with fear, but not yet convinced. He was worried, while I was more and more excited. I had convinced myself it was all a joke, a game, a dream from which we would wake up laughing, sweaty and dirty.

“Well? You made up your mind?” I shouted.

“Don’t come any closer…please… Let me go! I beg you!”

“If you are afraid, surrender,” I said, and I laughed insensitively, “I promise I won’t hurt you. Come on, give yourself up…” I said it only to provoke him, because, knowing him as I knew him, I knew that he would never do that.

“I… I was joking. Come on, let’s go…please…” he implored me.

“No, no… too easy! I warned you and you tripped me again. You ran away and I’ve captured you. Now it’s too convenient to say that it was just a joke. Are you giving up?”

“No!”

And he made to run away, coming at me, then trying to push me or to throw me on the ground one more time. I grasped him. I was more aggressive, more mature, heavier, crueler than him.

I still have all the feelings of those moments, each one, ingrained in my memory.

What I felt, heard, smelt, skin, sweat, everything my hands touched, what touched my body. I also remember the sound of the sea, the scent of the trees, the resin of the pine trees carried on the warm air. I have not forgotten any of it, because that day I discovered how thin is the border between play and violence, the abuse. How easy it is to cross over and do harm.

I blocked him, and we ended up on the hard floor, rolling around. I was laughing even then. He still didn’t understand, but he desperately tried to escape me. I immobilized him beneath me. I could smell his fear, which thrilled me even more. It was a smell so unusual, that of sweat, of fatigue. I touched him everywhere. I took advantage of the moment, of the situation, I turned around and pulled him over me. I blocked him. With one hand I held his arms, with the other I swatted him on the ass once, twice. Crushed on top of me, he was struggling vainly to disengage himself. Our bodies were twisted together.

Then, while we were practically hugging and touching each other as if we were really making love, I realized that he had suddenly stopped fighting. I saw him stiffen, and start panting, then completely lose his strength.

This finally made me come to my senses, and I loosened my grip. He slipped from my lap and got down on his knees next to me. He looked at me, and I saw that his eyes were full of tears. I tried to caress him, but he withdrew in disgust.

I looked at him, then my gaze went down, and I stared at his groin. Even at that moment my mind had that thought and I realized the front of his shorts were wet. I realized he had had an orgasm, while we were struggling, when we hugged. I realized he was frightened. He had always been terrified. Maybe he had assaulted me during the game just because he was exasperated and wanted to induce a reaction from me. But that reaction, which he was looking for, so that I would ultimately declare myself, had frightened him. What had happened, frightened him even more. He had finally discovered that I was an awful creature.

I realized that by doing what I had done to him, I had humiliated him and that he would never forgive me for behaving like that. He looked at me and was about to start crying, but he would never do that in front of me. I tried to caress his shoulder, but he got up and walked away to escape me. He didn’t look at me anymore and ran off.

He had disappeared from sight before I was able to shake myself into thinking about what to do, how to remedy this, if I could. Then I heard him running.

Finally, I got up and quickly returned to where the others were still playing. Paoletto was no longer there. Laughing they asked me what I had done to him. He had come running and had grasped one of the boys’ bikes without asking for it. He had gone off without giving any explanation, leaving his bag behind.

I didn’t stop to explain either and jumped on the Vespa to go after him and try to catch up with him. To get to the pinewood there were an infinite number of possible roads and I ran down a couple of them, then I gave up, because if he didn’t want to be found, I wouldn’t find him.

I went back home, washed, bumped into my mother, we looked at each other, but I avoided her. I looked into the Section, although I already knew it was neither the right time nor the meeting day. I walked around the neighborhood, hoping to see him, but I didn’t see anybody. I had avoided him for three years and now looking for him was an exceedingly difficult task. I walked around the city like crazy and found myself near those gardens that represented corruption to me. I had never gone back there, but I also thought that if Paoletto was like me, he might have chosen to go there, like I did. There were perhaps still the same people there who had corrupted me.

I decided to go in and look for him, thinking that if I arrived in time, I would save him. It was a stupid fantasy, but it distracted me, providing me with the strength to go through the gate. I faced the walk as if it were a ritual of purification, which it really was.

I followed the path I had taken many times before, going through the thickest trees with their low branches hiding benches which were always in the shade. I encountered nobody I recognized, nor, of course, did I see him. I was frightened it would be painful going back to this place, but I kept my thoughts fixed on Paoletto and that served to protect me.

I discovered painfully I knew so little about the person I said I loved that I didn’t know the place where he could have gone to hide after I had hurt him again. But if he were not nearby, he could only be at home.

***

Grandma Luigia would be at his house and I was certain she would have preferred to see me dead. I still went there, but stood outside, looking at the gate which was closed like a warning. Eventually I gathered my courage and gave a long ring. Grandma answered the intercom.

“Paoletto?” I asked in a faint voice.

“Who wants him?”

She knew very well who had rung the bell, she could not have failed to recognize me. Nothing escaped her, and she had to remember my voice, even if it had changed, she wouldn’t have forgotten the person she loathed.

“I’m a friend!” I said to her without much conviction.

“What friend?”

She was playing with me.

“Grandma Luigia, it’s me! I’m looking for Paoletto. It’s important!”

“Ah! You are the one who is drugged” she said matter of factly “and what do you want with my nephew?”

“I only need to speak to him.”

“Go away! Do you know how much you’ve hurt him? Do you want to hurt him some more?”

I had tears in my eyes. How could I convince her my intentions were noble? At that moment I had real, definitely good, intentions, I was painfully certain of it. I knew I was not very credible, and my presumed loyalty was hardly believable. She had many legitimate reasons to be angry with me. My sole hope was that Paoletto was there and he could hear me trying to convince her to let me in.

“I need to talk to him!” I said, raising my voice, “Do you want me to shout and tell him everything from down here?”

“Go away! Paoletto is not here!”

“Let me in, please, I can explain!” I said, “I haven’t done drugs for a long time!” Then I shouted, regardless of who might have heard me.

Silence.

“I have been to the camp,” I added, “And now we have become friends again.”

“I know. I saw you at the station, while you were trying to hide. If I had known you would be there, I would not have let him go!”

“Let me in. If Paoletto is not here, you have nothing to fear. Could the two of us speak, please? I must tell you about Paoletto. Let me explain. Please, Grandma…”

“Come in!” she said at last when I no longer expected it.

Paoletto couldn’t be there, she would never have let me in the house if he had been there. So, where was he?

Without hesitation I started climbing the stairs quickly, not worrying about having to reach one of the highest floors. I could have taken the elevator, but I was not thinking straight. I stopped halfway to catch my breath, then continued climbing.

Grandma Luigia was right behind the door. She let me in.

“So?”

I didn’t know what to tell her or if I should say anything. In any case, I no longer possessed the breath to utter a word. All those stairs and then my audacity that had turned into panic. The fear of having lost Paoletto forever hit me.

“I must speak to him,” I was able to stammer when I managed to breathe in some air, my voice strangled by the wheezing, “today we had a fight…I want to explain things to him. Tell me where he is, please. I must speak to him. Then if you want, he won’t see me anymore! No one will ever see me again!”

“Paoletto is still too young, and you must leave him alone…”

“Yes, I know that. I will, but first I must see him. I beg you. I must explain to him…”

“Why? Isn’t it enough for you to have disappeared three years ago?” she was almost assaulting me.

Before I realized it, I had raised my hands and arms, and held them in front of my face to defend myself. Not from the slaps she could give me, but from what she was telling me. From the terrible memory of everything.

“We looked everywhere for you, you know. Where were you?”

She could have struck me. She would have been very capable of it, in order to defend her nephew.

“Where were you when that child was crying?” she insisted, she shouted, “He didn’t eat for days…and I know it was your fault. What did you do to him? And what have you done today?”

I must have been a sorry sight, because suddenly she moderated her tone.

“Your mother called me a little while ago. She was worried about you.”

“My mother? What did she say?”

I was bewildered. Before I went out, we had looked at each other and she must have read in my eyes all the anguish that was oppressing me. How could she have connected that to Paoletto? We had not exchanged a single word. Only glanced at each other.

“What did she say? Please!” I repeated.

“That maybe you had quarreled with Paoletto and she was very worried about you and my child.”

“Then I must go and reassure her…”

I was completely lost, the world was collapsing around me. My mother’s balance was precarious, emotions were assailing her, and I had added to it all by making her worry about me. With my thoughtlessness I had caused another mess. I had let myself be dragged into a game that I had not been able to control, and I had practically come here to ask for help.

“I tried reassuring her” Grandma Luigia said “I told her, that if she saw you, she had to send you here in a hurry. That I’d put everything in order. Now you call her, inform her that you’re here. So, she doesn’t worry.”

I did, immediately, and reassured my poor mother.

“What have you decided to do when you grow up? Because to me you are still a child… you know? If you ever grow up?” Grandma Luigia asked.

It was easy to understand that she was not fond of me. Nor particularly interested in my answers. But she was a civilized person, even if her irony stung me a bit. I understood the meaning of her question. I was surprised by the calm with which I answered.

“I am going to go to medical school. I am thinking… I am going to study in Vienna.”

“It would be good for you to go there as soon as possible. And try to go far away!”

She wanted me to get away from her nephew. She was right. It was just like that. What could I do?

We were still standing. I leaned against the door. I was exhausted. She stood upright, in front of me, staring at me with the same eyes as Paoletto. She made me feel small and helpless with the hostility she felt towards me. She and Paoletto were very much alike, but not at that moment.

“Go look for him,” she told me after a long silence, during which she looked at me, judging me very badly.

“Where…?” I mumbled.

“I will tell you where he went because I pity your mother. And because my grandson loves you, in spite of everything. And I don’t know why he does. But if you make him cry one more time…” it seemed as if she wanted to put a curse on me, but it wasn’t like that.

She was preparing to threaten me and from the way she looked at me I knew that she would be wicked and insensitive.

“If I see Paoletto cry one more time because of you” she went on “I will make you regret you didn’t die when you took drugs. You are unworthy of your father. He was a real man. You did not deserve to have a father like him and now you do not deserve the friendship and love of my nephew!” she ended shouting.

I trembled, shivering. It was not from fear of her threat or because of what she had said about my father, I thought that too. I was afraid because I understood Grandma Luigia knew everything about me. About Paoletto, about the two of us.

“He told me some things…” she murmured and suddenly seemed uncertain “if it’s true, I can’t understand it…” she was lost, which was absolutely unusual for her. “He told me you are both homosexual. You and him. Is this true?”

What did I know as to whether it was true? I had always been cautious not to give, even myself, direct answers. Now a seventy year old woman was asking me openly and demanding to know. She was asking me to give her a direct answer. I knew that I had to confess the truth to her or leave and give up Paoletto.

If she had been my grandmother, whom I loved so much, I would have fled, but even the time for escape seemed to be over. And Paoletto was waiting for me. I was certain that he was waiting for me.

“I believe…I believe that it’s true,” I stammered, “For me, at least, it’s like he said.”

She seemed to deflate. Her erect bearing, the pride with which she had confronted me, vanished, and for the first time I saw an elderly woman in her. I noted her gray hair, her wrinkled neck, her hands stained with ephelids. I saw her hunch over before my eyes. She went to sit on the bench in the hall.

“Did you do it? Did you convince him?” she said in a hoarse voice.

I was afraid that question would come, and I had no answer ready.

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I did everything I could so as not to hurt him. You must believe me. I did everything I could, and it was no use.”

“That’s what he says too. That you had nothing to do with it. But I don’t believe him. And then he said it was his fault that you ran away and then you took drugs.”

“He really said that?”

“Yes, he said that, but I don’t believe him. He said it to defend you. He told me other things I didn’t want to hear, but he is my nephew and I love him anyway. I don’t mind what he is like.”

“He really said that?”

“Yes!”

“Where is he? Please!” I joined my hands as if in a prayer, so that she would tell me.

“He is at Giulio’s house. But remember what I told you! If you make him, cry another time…”

And it was no longer a threat, but an affectionate warning.

I would not have made him cry. Never again.

***

Paoletto and I couldn’t have been more different. Not so much physically, even if he were blond and light, and I was brown and a little darker. He was slender with a slouching gait, I was more robust, always upright, standing straight when I walked. The most considerable difference, however, was our personalities, we were opposites and seldom complementary.

I am by nature very tidy, whereas he was a mess. I am someone who shies away from responsibilities, he always faced them. I frequently tell lies, he never did, even at the risk of being considered impolite. Because his habit was to tell the truth to everyone, he had done just that the day when Grandma Luigia asked him about his behavior and mine.

I arrived breathlessly at Giulio’s house. I abandoned the Vespa in a corner, taking the risk that someone might steal it, I didn’t care. I rang the bell and heard someone pick up the intercom.

“Paoletto it’s me. Open up!”

“Come up, Paoletto is here!” was the composed voice of Uncle Giulio.

This was also a remarkably high building and Giulio lived on the upper floor. I ran up the stairs, again ignoring the elevator. I ran more than ten floors, before being overcome by the effort and falling on my knees on the steps. I was almost there, but my legs had given out. I slipped just as I reached the final flight. I hurt myself and curled up trying to control my breathing. I was exhausted from climbing all those steps and intimidated by what I was about to do.

If he was irreparably offended. If I had misinterpreted everything. If Grandma Luigia had misunderstood her grandson’s words. If he rejected me and laughed at me. If, and this was the worst of all the hypotheses that I had been forced to think about while running from one house to the other, rushing up those endless stairs, if Paoletto had given that explanation out of friendship. Perhaps he had decided to indulge me not out of love, but only so as not to hurt me. All those ifs stunned me, together with the oxygen that I desperately tried to breathe in. My head began spinning. I took it in my hands. Everything spun around me. I wanted to stop the stairs, the ceiling, the lights that shone, from turning around.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Uncle Giulio. He immediately understood what had happened and he sat down on the step next to me.

“You came up on foot? Running, huh? Now calm down. Try to regulate your breathing. Close your eyes and breathe slowly if you can.”

He was a doctor. I remembered that. He made me think of my father. Another reason to cry.

“My mother sent him here, because of what Paoletto confided in her, it was too difficult for her to understand,” he said, in a gentle voice, as he massaged my shoulder to calm me down. “She wanted him to explain it all to me. We’ve talked about it… We have talked about a lot of things with each other.”

Perhaps we were a little embarrassed, I don’t know which of us was more uncomfortable. That day it seemed that everyone had learned that I was homosexual. I was not yet prepared to make that revelation to the world. He was certainly feeling uneasy, because maybe he had never talked to a homosexual. A person who he also loved a little bit. I couldn’t get a word out. I was still panting.

“Is what Paoletto says true?”

“I think so!” I said, still gasping.

If this was to be the day of revelations, then so be it, I might as well tell all.

“If that’s the case, I… I believe the two of you need to talk but do it properly. And then, if you want to, you can talk to me about it as well. Agreed?”

“Yes, if you wish…thank you Uncle Giulio.”

He had always treated me with affection. I had the same feelings towards him. I knew I could trust him. He had always done the best he could for Paoletto and at that moment, I thought he would help me as well.

“Now do you feel like going in?”

I told him yes, but I was still breathless. He helped me up, put his arm around my shoulders and accompanied me into the house.

“Go ahead. He’s over there!”

He indicated a room that I knew was his study. He squeezed my shoulder, then left, closing the door behind him. I stepped further into the room and there was Paoletto. I stopped, I was stuck, unable to advance.

That was the end of my journey. Perhaps the end of my world, or the world I had lived in until then. Although, was that really living, what had been my life until that day. Whatever was going to happen, would happen in the following minutes. I would finally know what he felt about me. It was my ‘Redde Rationem’, that moment I had to account for my actions.

I had suffered too much not to be frightened. My legs were shaking. I took a few steps practically dragging them. He was at the window and looking out.

“Can you see me?” he said slowly, without turning around, when he realized I was standing on the threshold.

I did not answer him. I did not grasp why he asked me, but I felt he was resentful.

“Can you see me?” he repeated, in a composed voice, which frightened me even more.

He turned to stare at me, and I lowered my eyes.

“Paoletto…” I murmured.

“Now don’t bullshit me and look at me!”

I looked up and finally we were staring at each other. His gaze was resolute, mine I didn’t know.

“Do you see me? I am here, in front of you, and I am waiting! The time has come to tell me.”

He spoke in a monotone voice which seemed detached, indifferent, but that was probably because of the terrible tension he felt.

“If you had done this three years ago, I would have given you the same answer I will give you in a little while if you decide to speak. Since the first time I saw you I fell in love with you, you stupid asshole! And you’ve barely understood it yet!”

Because of the exasperated tone of his voice, it had returned to a high pitch, just as it had been only three years before. I leaned against the door, overwhelmed by those words, by the sound of his voice.

“Every time you tried touching me,” he continued, “every time you came close to talking to me, telling me what you really felt for me, I thought I was going mad with happiness. You, on the other hand, froze, you became weird. When you disappeared, I came banging my head against the wall, to see if it hurt more than I felt. I thought I would never see you again. Then, with time, I realized you had been afraid. Now I know it for certain. I understood it was fear that made you run away. Even now you would like to escape, but it would be the last time you ever do. For us there will be no more chances!”

He turned around.

“Do you know what your unique act of courage has been?” he said, getting excited. “Do you know what it was?” he shouted. “It was when you left when you disappeared! Do you know why you did that? You left because you were only concerned about yourself. Fucking with me, leaving me crying after you. Coming down from that damn mountain,” he shouted, “You abandoned me up there, because you were afraid of losing what you had and afraid of who you were! And do you know what I’ve been asking myself every moment during these last three years? Do you want to know? Do you want to know?” he repeated.

“Yes…” I murmured.

“I asked myself how the fuck did I fall in love with you!” he cried desperately. “What an asshole you’ve been! And so, have I!”

He turned once more to look out of the window. I knew that from there Paoletto could see a magnificent panorama. At that moment, while I was waiting for him to speak again, because now I knew he loved me. While I was waiting for him to forgive me, because I knew he would, I saw through his eyes the sunset he was looking at. The sky and the sea red with fire. The first lights that lit up the city, the mountain and below them, the sea, the harbor, and the ships.

I knew what he saw and perhaps it was those colors that returned his love to me intact, because he decided to forget all the bad I had done to him. He knew everything and better than me, he had just revealed something I refused to accept.

“Listen to me” he said, when he had calmed down a little, “Listen and understand well what you need to do. I want you to tell me if you love me. Say it now or leave and go far away. Above all, make sure I never see you again!”

He went and sat down at the stool in front of the piano, his arms abandoned beside his body, his hands open. Perhaps he was about to cry, I had tears in my own eyes. Now he had said it, his fatigue disappeared, as if saying those words out loud he had found renewed energy from deep within. Maybe it was like that.

It was up to me now if I had the strength. Discovering at the age of eighteen I had lived three unbelievably bad years and I had suffered needlessly, troubled me. I thought about my parents, my grandparents who I would never see again, my uncle whom I loved, other friends I had abandoned, who had cared about me. They had all suffered because of my behavior and it was all useless because I was mistaken to judge Paoletto. With my insensibility, my immaturity, selfishness, and presumptions, I had assumed the blame for something which I needn’t have.

Foolishly I had taken on the task of both punishing and redeeming myself, to save Paoletto from an illness that was not an illness. Something which was not his alone. He was simply in love with me and love is under no circumstances a vice. Why did I only understand him now and at what price?

I felt giddy. I covered my eyes with my hands so as not to look. I tried to cover my ears because I was dazed. It seemed to me that I was hearing all the voices of those I had disappointed. I began crying. Amidst that imaginary and deceptive noise, I distinguished the sweet and firm voice of Paoletto.

“Don’t cry. Don’t despair. Don’t hurt yourself again. I only need an answer. I’ve been waiting for so long!”

“Of course, I love you!” I cried out impatiently, through the tears.

I tried to calm down, to return my breathing to normal. I wanted to hear him say it to me. I also needed him to tell me again.

“And do you love me?”

“Yes, always!”

“Since when?”

“Do you recall Mozart, the Turkish March?”

“Yes!”

I responded by recovering that sweet memory from the most protected corner of my mind, something held hidden in my heart.

“That day on the train home from camp changed everything. Do you remember?”

“Yes!” I whispered again.

“In every sense…really! I chose you and you…perhaps you almost adopted me…”

I was struggling to connect my thoughts, to separate the sensations from the emotions that troubled me, but I saw him blush. I understood it from the way he moved his head, rather than seeing it.

“It was just like that!”

He had gone back to his sweet, harsh, and affectionate, adolescent voice.

“At first I didn’t understand, but I didn’t take long to know. For me you became the most important person in the world, and you always have been. First, I loved you, as if you were my guardian angel, then, little by little, you became much more, and finally everything I could imagine!”

What he had just told me I had well understood and kept in my heart. No one would deprive me of it anymore. He loved me and I loved him. Not knowing enough about life, I thought I could play with it. I convinced myself that what we had confessed to each other could last forever.

Life then had the chance to show me how wrong I was. Together we discovered we were terribly tired. In the study, in that restful half-light, because it was almost dark outside. Neither of us seemed to have the strength to move, to come closer.

Then we moved together at the same time and grabbed each other tightly. There were no words or other gestures. Only that hug, tight, strong, so tight that we were incapable of breathing. It was only that suffocation that made us release one another. We stood facing each other, hand in hand, looking at each other, caressing each other with our eyes. Afraid to move away even a centimeter, almost afraid of losing the other again.

“Shall we go?” he whispered, after a time that I could not measure. We walked towards the door, he was clasping my hand.

“Uncle Giulio will understand. We talked about it before and he convinced me to wait here for you. He knew you would come.”

Downstairs luckily we found the Vespa was still there. Paoletto grasped me from behind and I felt him clinging to me. His breath became mine. The grip became firmer and I heard him crying. I tried turning around, but he reassured me he was fine.

“It’s nothing, don’t worry. It’s…I am happy! So, fucking happy I have to cry, otherwise…”

With his tears he wetted my neck and my shirt. Then he calmed down and kept his eyes closed, pressed against the back of my neck. I continued wandering around the city aimlessly, even after he had calmed down. Then his grip became more delicate, and his hands caressed my hips. I realized he was smiling and then laughing.

“What if I tickled you?”

“We would fall and end up in hospital!”

“Do you think they would place us in the same room, in two beds next to each other?”

I kept driving with Paoletto hugging me. It was everything I wanted, that I had dreamed of. For the first time he really hugged me, with a feeling that we understood and shared. Even though we had just discovered we had loved each other for years.

That revelation dazed me. I wanted him to explain so many things to me, and I had so much to tell him. I was in a hurry to know all about him and for him to know everything about me. I still kept wandering around the city, aimlessly, only to feel him holding me. I could feel his breath. He stayed with his chin resting on my shoulder and I was sure that most of the time he kept his eyes closed. After he had calmed down and we joked a bit, he hadn’t talked anymore.

“Are you tired?”

He whispered a no in my ear, tickling me a little. We laughed together.

“Shall we stop? Are you hungry?”

“Yes!” he shouted, all happy.

His appetite had never left him, so we stopped to get something to eat. More than something, because Paoletto was very hungry. We went back to our neighborhood and we arrived outside my house.

My family had always lived in the villa surrounded by its beautiful garden that in summer was full of scents. There were citrus trees, jasmine, and honeysuckle. The house and the garden wall were covered with climbing plants and centuries-old bougainvillea. Everywhere the air was perfumed by flowers.

I left him for a moment in the garden and went to inform my mother of our return. I found her where I expected she would be, sitting on the veranda and reading. She smiled at me when I told her I would stop in the garden with Paoletto. Maybe Grandma Luigia and Uncle Giulio had informed her of what had happened.

“Are you hungry? Has Paoletto eaten anything?” she asked me, anxious about my well-being, as always. Worried about Paoletto as well, and this moved me.

“Yes, Mom, we ate something…” I answered, smiling.

“Grandma Luigia was worried! Now I will reassure her!”

As I imagined they had spoken to each other. I kissed her on the forehead and smiled. Then I returned to my love. We went to sit on a bench leaning against the wall. The seat was buried by a bougainvillea, hidden from the house by a large fig tree, fragrant and majestic with its twisted branches. My father had proudly informed me this was the most massive and ancient fig tree in the city. The noise of the street reached us filtered through all the foliage of the abundant vegetation. That evening the colorful canopy guarded our love and intimacy.

We had a lot to say, but instead of talking and explaining everything to each other, we sat down and simply stared into each other’s eyes. Then I took his hands and came closer, touching his lips with a kiss.

“Your mother?” he asked, worried.

“She never comes into the garden. I asked her to tell your grandmother that we are here. So she won’t worry.”

Reassured, he came closer to me. He lay his head on my shoulder and closed his eyes. I think he did so, only because it was dark now and no one could see us. The lights in the house didn’t illuminate that corner of the garden. He closed his eyes, and his breathing became steady, as if he were asleep. It was the quiet of the place and the serenity of the moment that calmed him. All the anxieties and thoughts he had experienced that day and before, since a long time, seemed to vanish, fade, and disappear into the distance. I embraced him with one arm and closed my eyes too. I let myself slip into a kind of slumber, we were at peace.

The time would come for words, for explanations. We would talk, because to be together, as I wanted it to be, we had to share everything and perhaps dissolve into one another. At that moment, however, words were useless, action unnecessary. We edged even closer, and our breath joined together as a single breath. One body adapted to support the other, to be part of it.

I don’t know how much time we spent like that, but I remember the smell of jasmine and honeysuckle that intoxicated us, until we were overcome. The breeze swept up from the sea, not far away. These were the smells of that summer dream.

“I love you, Roby.”

I had only imagined that he would say that to me and now it was happening. Paoletto loved me. It was not a hallucination. No drugs were involved. I was really living those moments. It was then I detached myself from my prison to see myself embraced by him. Hugging him to tell him how much I valued him saying those words and how much I loved him too.

“I love you too…” I said, softly.

“No, listen…” he interrupted, “you are my love. You have always been. I don’t know how I was able to resist coming to look for you. To take drugs with you and do everything you did. Try the same things and then try to take you away. To make you come back with me.”

Hearing him say this, frightened me, but I realized it was only a shared intention and these were words of love. I watched him talking to me with his eyes closed, with his breath. Words which didn’t reach me through my ears because he almost didn’t make a sound. The words were already inside me when he thought them.

“And when your father was ill. Oh, I wanted to see you, but I didn’t have the courage. Forgive me. You needed help, didn’t you? Then I thought I would wait until the summer, the end of school, and I would come and tell you everything. That I had understood. I would have confronted you. I would have said I loved you. And then you would have decided for the two of us.”

I caressed him. I couldn’t think. I would have wanted to tell him many things, but the words that entered my mind were disconnected, disjointed. I knew that if I even said one of them, I would burst into tears and I didn’t want to cry anymore. Or maybe I didn’t have any more tears. Or I mistakenly believed I would no longer need them.

In those moments I had some unpleasant memories of my past. Flashes of my life that suddenly haunted me. But I had Paoletto, his head resting on my shoulder. I thought of him still smelling of Grandma Luigia’s talcum powder and her innate honesty. I thought of Marco too. His gift, a gift of love. He had loved me too. I never thanked him.

The bougainvillea was shaken by the wind. It was a sea breeze. I heard the faint sound of the waves. The mistral was rising. My father knew the winds. He had promised and never kept his promise to teach me how to sail. But it was because of me. One summer day, that summer far away, the last one he had spent before he got sick, he proposed it. A little tight-lipped, pushed by my mother. And I had refused, going so far as to mock him. I had shouted at him that it was too late. That he should give me his damn money because I wanted to go to Amsterdam.

“Are we together?” Paoletto whispered to me, bringing me back to my wonderful present, tearing me away from the horrible past.

I had gone away, again far away with thoughts. And I was so happy to wake up and find I had just had a nightmare and that now reality was the dream.

He lifted his head and stared at me. To make sure I understood him.

“Are we engaged, Roby?” his voice was firm. He needed an answer.

“Yes, we are. We are!”

“Do you really want to be my boyfriend? Are you sure?” he asked again.

“Yes. I feel like I’m dreaming.”

“Then is it true that you love me?”

“Yes. But do you know I’ve been to hell?”

“And it was because of me.”

I touched his mouth with my fingertips, so that he wouldn’t speak.

“It wasn’t you or me.”

“Will you tell me… about your hell?”

“I will tell you everything you want to hear!”

“Why? Are there things that you still don’t want to tell me?”

“I’ve done things you may not want to know.”

“What for example?”

“I have done… Some things that are not good.”

“Which ones?”

“They are difficult things to say!”

“I still want to hear them, but not now.”

His gaze became thoughtful. “I, too, must tell you something difficult. It is important. And I must tell you immediately. Will you be patient with me?”

He saw I did not understand, then he explained. “I must learn…you must teach me. Look… I know nothing of those things that two people can do…when they become engaged. Today you frightened me! When you grabbed me, I… then I ran away in shame.”

I finally understood and his complete innocence ended up moving me. Two tears escaped me. How different we were. I knew the worst of everything, and he knew nothing, nothing at all.

“Please, don’t cry!” he said.

“I am crying because I am moved. Because you always surprise me. And I am happy. But today I behaved like a fool and hurt you.”

“No! You didn’t hurt me. But I was afraid you wanted to do things to me that I didn’t understand.”

“It will never happen again!”

“Do you promise me that?”

“Yes!”

“And will you have patience?”

“We will always do as you want. Only what you want!”

“But I don’t know what I want.”

“Do you want to bet that in a moment you will know?”

I took his hand and kissed it. My lips were wet. My kiss was tender, and he immediately understood what I meant, because he held me in his hug and looked for my mouth to kiss me. When we parted, after a time that I don’t remember, but that was long, it was his eyes that proved to me that he understood.

Then I got up and pulled him to me. We kissed each other, but our bodies just grazed each other, only our lips joined in a pure and innocent kiss. It was not yet the time.

That evening that was it. We were chastely engaged, but we didn’t know exactly what we were yet. In those years, two men, two boys like us, couldn’t promise each other anything but their fidelity and we did that. We promised each other love for the rest of our lives.

“Is that how we kiss?” he asked me, smiling cheekily.

“Well…there are other ways.”

“And what do you know about it?”

“Are you jealous?”

“Don’t you remember anymore?” he asked, with an air of defiance.

He was like that. And I loved him for that. I saw again, in a completely new light, the years we had spent together. I recognized the scenes of jealousy that my lover had made for me. His long faces, the spite I had mistaken for whims. He had always loved me and had been terribly jealous of me, until I had abandoned him. And his suffering must have been greater than mine because he had immediately understood he was the cause of it himself.

“Is it because you love me?” I said.

“I think so!”

I accompanied him home. It had grown late. We promised to meet again in the morning. He didn’t want to let me go. He took my hand and touched it to his lips.

“We are finally engaged at last…I can’t believe it…I can’t believe it! But it’s not too early for us, we’re not little!” He tried reassuring me because he knew I was already worried. “Don’t even think that…you must remind yourself that it was supposed to have happened three years ago. Perhaps it was three years wasted. Do you know that?”

At the time I didn’t even imagine how right he was. I caressed him. There was no one on the street anymore. We took advantage of it and hugged again, exchanging another kiss like the one before.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Will you sleep?” he asked.

“I don’t think so!”

“I will. I am dead tired!”

Your innocence will help you sleep, my love. I will keep vigil because I have to think.

It was the evening of August the thirteenth, nineteen-seventy-eight. I was eighteen years old, three months, some days, and a few hours. I was born shortly after twelve o’clock on May the first, nineteen-sixty. The same day and month as my mother and my grandmother. Strange coincidence!

Paoletto was three years and ten days younger than me, having been born on May the tenth, nineteen-sixty-three. I loved him so much.

My life, our lives had changed.

7

Days

The next morning I talked on the phone with Paoletto. He had already spoken to his grandmother. He told me Grandma Luigia was unhappy and worried.

“She came into my room to wake me up, but instead of opening the window and giving me a kiss, then leaving as she always has done for as long as I can remember. Today she came in and sat on the bed looking at me and bursting into tears. What do you think about that? Grandma Luigia crying? I hugged her. I wanted to console her. I tried to apologize for not telling her before about how I am.”

He seemed to consider that reality, before deciding to add, “About our homosexuality, I mean.”

I heard him affirm it with such a sense of dignity that for the first time the word that had terrified me, meant for me exactly what it was, a characteristic of his and our reality in the complexity of our life, nothing more.

“I implored her forgiveness, but she kept crying. Then I asked her if she would have preferred I had taken drugs, and she cried even more…” Paoletto paused, thinking that he had upset me talking about taking drugs. “I’m sorry I shouldn’t have spoken like that…what I said about the drugs!”

“It’s something I did. I can’t change the past, Paoletto. You can talk however you like about it, I’m more worried about your grandmother!”

“No, wait! Listen to what happened next. It made me angry to see her like that. I wanted her to stop crying. So, I kissed her on the cheek and caressed her. I cuddled her a little bit, exactly like when I was small. I wanted her to know she would always be the most important person in the world to me. Apart from you, of course. But I didn’t say that to her.”

“Good for you…”

“And finally, she hugged me and smiled a little bit. ‘Grandma’ I told her ‘I’m happy. I’m happy!’ She looked at me but was still not convinced. She kept shaking her head. Then I told her, ‘If I had had to keep that secret on my own, I would have gone crazy, but he came back to me. That’s why I had the courage to tell you, Grandma, we both did. Now he’s with me! I’m not alone anymore!’ Still I saw she didn’t understand. ‘Grandma, please. To be the way I am, for me, is not something demeaning. My only regret is not to have spoken about it sooner with you and Uncle Giulio, but I could not, I wasn’t able to. It was Roby who gave me the strength. So now here I am, this is me! In the same way I could have had black hair, but I don’t, I’m blond. And Roby likes it that way! And I am happy because he loves me. Do you want to know how much he loves me?’ I told her everything, but really everything. At long last, we cried a little bit together. She cried for me and I cried for you, my love.”

“Paoletto, I…”

“No, listen… explaining how much you love me, telling her was useful, and she understood. Now she will always be on our side. She is a tough character, my grandmother and she will be a formidable ally. I told her last night that we got engaged.”

At that point I started to worry.

“You told her that too?”

He reassured me. “Don’t be afraid. Grandma Luigia will never let us down. Do you know what she did? When I told her, just like that, ‘Grandma, now we are engaged!’ She smiled and replied, ‘You have chosen him well, your grandfather would never have allowed it. Our grandson engaged to a wealthy man. I don’t like that either, that he’s wealthy!’ My grandmother is a communist, you know that don’t you?”

I knew the story well, during World War II Grandma Luigia was a Partisan and had been in the Resistance (1). Her husband, Paoletto’s grandfather, was taken prisoner and deported to Germany. He came back only a year after the end of the war, when everybody thought he was dead. In the meantime, Grandma Luigia had decided to come and live here, because there were some cousins of hers and she knew English well and became an interpreter for the Americans. Everybody believed she was a widow and Paoletto’s father an orphan of war. Then Grandpa came back, looking for her. They settled here. At that point Uncle Giulio was born.

“Hey…everyone in my family are communists,” said Paoletto. “I think I am one too, but you are wealthy, how are we going to work that out?” (2)

“I don’t know! You tell me?”

“We will have to talk about it, because I love you anyway!”

“There won’t be much to discuss. I could join the communists myself. It’s up to you, whatever you want, I don’t mind either way!”

“We agree on that as well, so.”

And a few months later it happened, just like that, we both became communists.

“What were you thinking about last night?”

“About you,” I replied, “all the time, non-stop!”

“I don’t believe you.”

He ended the call, leaving me holding the phone and thinking about how much I loved him.

And then, there he was, in front of my house waiting for me. As he always had. He was looking impatient, because unusually for me, I showed up late.

When he saw the gate of the villa open, he ran towards the car and jumped in. Smiling as always, as happy to see me as I was.

Sitting in the car next to each other was a harder test than my actual driving exam which I had passed only a few months ago (3). He was like a magnet for my eyes, looking at the road ahead was not at all important compared to the vision of my lover at my side.

There were three cars that had been sitting unused in the garage at home. My father stopped driving when he became ill and my mother no longer went out after his death. I took my father’s favorite red Fiat 500 (4). I asked my mother’s permission, which she gave, without paying too much attention. She was simply happy to see me going out with Paoletto and getting back to a normal life.

Whilst I was backing the car out of the garage I saw my mother watching. I stuck my hand out in greeting, but she moved away. It was then, I realized I had used exactly the same gesture as my father used to. I was growing up to be more and more like him. I hurried back into the house to find her and we held each other. She rested her head on my shoulder and for the first time I spoke to her as an adult, the ‘almost’ head of the family.

“Mum, father is gone and will never come back, we are alive. I need you to be here for me, that’s what I’m asking you, imploring you. Will you promise me you will make an effort and you will not leave me alone?”

She nodded, not absolutely convinced, however.

“Last night Paoletto and I spoke and decided to go back to being friends as before. And I’m so thrilled about that, Mom. I think I will stay here and study. I’m going to medical school. What do you think?”

She didn’t answer, but she hugged me harder. I understood she was happy to hear I would stay with her for a few more years and that I had decided to become a doctor.

“And I want you to go back to teaching,” I added.

She withdrew, frowning. She had resigned a year earlier, because of my father’s illness. Now, she had to decide within a few days whether to come back for the beginning of the new academic year, or postpone again, or quit altogether, as I feared she wanted to do.

“Go back to the University. Do it for me.”

“I’ll think about it, Roby. I’m delighted you decided to stay. I’m equally content for Paoletto. He has always been, and still is, a very good boy.”

“Mum, him and me…”

I was going to say something but stopped. I couldn’t tell her about us. Not yet. Then she placed her hand over my mouth and in her language, she who was not Italian, nor had ever tried to be Italian, murmured to me an adagio from her country that sounded more or less like this.

“Even if her son is silent, the mother understands him!”.

She understood me. So, she also knew and was happy with that.

“Will you go back to teaching?” I insisted.

“Yes, but not immediately.”

“I am going, mum. I think Paoletto is waiting for me.”

“It used always to be you, the punctual one. If memory serves me right, he was ever the latecomer.”

She was right, and I found Paoletto waiting impatiently outside the gate, uncertain whether to ring and announce himself. I suspected he was also a little anxious, wondering if I hadn’t changed my mind about the two of us.

I navigated carefully out of the city, having never taken that route before and not wanting to get lost, since I had a special destination planned for our first trip together. There was also Paoletto next to me, his presence distracting me.

“Tell me, what were you thinking about last night, instead of sleeping?”

I was aware he was staring at me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the road. I had to concentrate to change gears and at the right moment. I had to really pay attention, being new to driving a car, even if it was a small one. After leaving the city, the road had become very narrow and the hairpin bends had started right away. Thinking that I could be facing a bus, or a truck, made me shudder.

I knew that with that particular car, changing down from third to second gear you had to touch the accelerator to make the engine rev whilst still in neutral, before engaging the lower gear. Otherwise the gearbox would grind the gears. I had to do this at every hairpin bend, because if I slowed down too much I had to put it into first to pull away up hill, around the bend, then return to second, third and then immediately reduce the speed.

He kept staring over at me, waiting impatiently for me to tell him about my night.

“Have you ever driven a car?” I asked instead of answering his question.

“No!”

“It’s a nightmare! And this car is really a piece of junk. Next time we’ll take the bigger one.”

“When I am eighteen years old, you can teach me how to drive, it will save money on a driving school.”

“Agreed, but what will I get in return?”

“My gratitude! And that of Grandma Luigia. It would be a godsend, she is waiting for someone to take her around in the car. Uncle Giulio is always busy, so I have to do the errands, because she has swollen legs.”

“Well, for the next two and a half years, we could make an agreement. I’ll be her chauffeur if you make a commitment in return.”

“Commit to what?”

“You commit yourself to love me. Will you?”

“I don’t know! That depends on you.”

And he looked out, watching the panorama which was becoming spectacular as we climbed up the mountain.

“So what? What were you thinking about all night long? Are you going to tell me?”

He kept looking out the window and used his serious voice, the one he adopted when he definitely wanted something.

I decided I had to tell him if I didn’t want to keep secrets from him anymore.

“First, I felt very sad at the idea that we had all suffered because of a misunderstanding. Then I chased that feeling away, because I realized I was so happy I was crazy with how beautiful my life had become.”

“Do you really think so? But was that the only thing you were thinking about all night?”

“No, you fool, I thought about something else too. For example, about you and what you told me about being patient, because you want me to understand and be aware of what we are going to do together.”

I felt he was getting alarmed. “No, don’t be afraid, I only thought about it, because it is a proof of your purity, of your candor. And at that point I wondered when I had lost my innocence.”

He had been looking at me but returned to looking outside. He was concentrating, brooding over some thought I had provoked in him.

We reached the Observatory and from there we climbed in silence along an even more impervious road to a vast square with the most extraordinary panorama imaginable. The night before, the mistral wind had risen and washed the sky, making it brilliant blue and clearing the view for an extraordinary distance. Below us, scattered on the side of the Mountain were a myriad of houses and palaces that gathered together to form villages and little towns. Further down you could see the gulf and the city that surrounded it. Even further away there were islands in the sea that blended with the sky making a distant border. It was a day when the air was exceptionally fresh and clear, and the view stretched as far as the eye could see to the line of the horizon.

We left the car and went to the parapet of the belvedere. Paoletto came close to me. I would have liked to hug him, but, and it was the first of thousands of times in those twenty years, I held back. There were other people, and someone could have noticed our too intimate attitude.

“I don’t think you have lost your innocence,” he said, in such a low voice that I could barely hear him. “I know because it cost you too much to maintain it. You attempted nothing but to continue being chaste and your way of being chaste was to stay away from me. And you succeeded. I think that was the best proof that you never lost your innocence. Whatever you have done to try and ruin it.”

This boy was absolving me of many sins. Perhaps he did not imagine it. But had they really been sins? Those, however, remain my doubts and should not have interested him.

“You are exceptional sometimes!” I told him, half joking, because the emotion was sticking in my throat and I was afraid of bursting into tears.

“Thanks for the ‘sometimes,’” he pretended to be offended, then he changed his tone and became serious. “You know, I always try to be exceptional. When I’m with you, I do it for you!”

He turned to look at the view and I saw he was staring at a distant point.

“See there?” he pointed to somewhere undefined in the middle of the city. “There is the Conservatory. I decided to study the piano seriously,” he said after a while.

“You had stopped?” I was surprised. I didn’t know anything about it.

“Yes, for a little while, but then I started once more and now I’m absolutely skilled!”

He wasn’t being presumptuous, but self-confident, I knew that. He played the piano really well as I remembered.

He turned to look me straight in the eye.

“Why did you stop playing the piano?” I asked foolishly.

“You ask me that?” He replied, then he looked away, but he had also distanced himself from me. Something had cooled down between us.

“Excuse me…excuse me, I’m ashamed. Forgive me, Paoletto!”

That’s all I said, but I felt myself dying. I had been aware of my own suffering and bitterness, but I had never thought about that of anyone else, or of Paoletto in particular. That same night I had done nothing but regret that I had wasted time, that I had suffered needlessly, but the idea had not struck me about how much I had hurt him.

I observed him drumming something on the parapet, as if he had a keyboard in front of him. His hands were moving with confidence, and his gestures were harmonious. Focusing on those movements, I could imagine myself listening to a piano playing. I looked at him, questioning him with my eyes, about what he was performing. He stared at me frowning.

“That’s not Mozart,” he said, “I’ll never play him again!”

And he glanced away, once again staring at something far away that I couldn’t see.

I felt an acute sense of exclusion, of deprivation, seeing he did not share his sadness with me. At that moment it seemed to me that he had become melancholy.

“Anyway… it was Chopin!” he said, without looking at me.

“Paoletto… I…”

“Shall we climb to the crater?” he said instead, shaking himself and miraculously pushing away the sadness. I loved him so much.

We had already been to the crater with the Scouts, but now we would see it alone. It is a rugged and enchanting view.

We climbed along the path covered with blackened stones, dug into the lava heaps. Of course, there is no vegetation. In spite of this, one has the impression that life flows under those stones, because when you step on them, sulphurous clouds are released. Because of the beating sun and the considerable heat there, despite the wind, no one other than us had ventured up there. Before long we were completely alone.

The sunlight was violent and dazzling. We were both perspiring, our foreheads beaded with sweat, our shirts soaked. Making a screen with one hand I looked up and stared at the edge of the huge mouth of the crater.

“Forgive me,” I said, to the Volcano and Paoletto.

I said it, because the Volcano hadn’t erupted for many years and I didn’t want it to do so at that moment, to punish me for my ineptitude. I had finally realized my egocentricity, the indifference with which I had treated him until a short time ago. And I said I loved him!

“Forgive me?” I insisted.

“For what?”

“Everything. All that you already know, what you imagine, what you don’t yet know. All the things of which I am ashamed. For having abandoned you, caring only about myself and what I wanted to do…”

I had begun gesticulating, moving too much on the narrow path. He grabbed me, as I was about to lose my balance. I would inevitably have fallen, peeling my elbows and knees on those sharp stones. It was he who embraced me, drawing me to himself.

We ended under a spur of rock, a sudden dry, violent shadow spread across the sun and protected us. Paoletto pushed me back to shelter us from the scorching gaze of the sun. He kissed me fiercely.

Sheltered from the light we looked at each other and kissed again. This time my lips were apart. I touched his with the tip of my tongue. I tried probing gently. I moved away a bit to look at him and kissed him again. His lips were open too, and our tongues touched each other. We chased each other in a game that he soon learned. Something I was rediscovering after a long time and finally out of true love. His lips opened wide and I could taste his saliva as he could taste mine. He didn’t hesitate anymore and suddenly became greedy for my mouth which he explored with a hunger that surprised me. When he was satiated, or out of breath, he paused to rest.

“I kissed you because I don’t want you to say what you just said to me anymore. And I don’t want you to think it anymore. You will see the past will not return, and we will never suffer again.”

In that moment I felt gratified for what life was offering me and above all I was convinced that Paoletto’s words were true. They were the most genuine and absolute truth of the universe. We would never suffer again because we would confront life together. But he was mistaken and believing him I was committing an even bigger and more terrible error.

He came back embracing me, and I felt his body adhere to mine. His hands ran over my shoulders, seeking my skin under my shirt, still wet and cooler. We were sweaty and in the shadow of that rock, it was almost cold. I squeezed him and together we realized we were excited. I felt him stiffen. I caressed him and my embrace became more delicate. I lay my head on his shoulder and brushed my hand through his hair. He had moved imperceptibly away from me. We were always in contact, but no longer like before.

“We have time, Paoletto, we have our whole life, don’t worry!” I kept stroking him, until I felt him relax.

He came back, kissing me greedily again. He was so beautiful, and I felt like I would go crazy at that particular moment for how happy I felt. Maybe, he read my thoughts.

“I love you too,” he said, “and I am so happy that if I died now, I wouldn’t care. Kiss me…” then, as if in a whisper, he asked, “will you touch me?”

I did as he wanted. First, I stroked his shoulders, then my hands came down and stroked his butt. We did not stop kissing. He pulled his lips away from me to look at me, then he rested his head on my shoulder.

“I’m about to…” he whispered to me, trembling, certainly blushing.

He broke away from me but did not leave my arms. I heard him breathe more slowly trying to soothe himself. I caressed him again, but out of caution, we dissolved our embrace. We had to regain our breath together. I snuggled up to sit on the ground and leant against the rock that was sheltering us from the sun. I pulled him towards me, until he sat between my legs. I hugged him from behind, squeezed him, caressed him. I kissed his neck, the back of his neck, I made him smile and laugh from tickling. He bent his head back, and we kissed again. It was a bit uncomfortable, but we stayed like that.

From where we were, we could practically see the bottom of the crater. We stayed there, contemplating that mysterious cavity. Then I felt numbed and we had to move.

“I’m sorry about before…” he said to me, as he stood up.

“Why is that?”

He came back kissing me some more.

“It would have been a mess and my grandmother would have noticed…”

“I understand.” I pretended to think about it. “If you want, we will find a solution.”

“Oh yes, I do.”

“Really?”

“I want to manage everything that…” and he stopped seeking the words, and this time he didn’t blush, “I want you and I to make love. I don’t know how! But I want to do it!”

“Swear it! Say it to me!”

“Sure! I swear to you. I want to make love with you!” He shouted, so loudly that laughing I turned to reassure myself nobody was listening, but we were absolutely alone.

He wanted to make love with me, and he didn’t know how? I blushed, thinking back on his words. And I did it so violently that it was evident with all that light and on my tanned skin. I trembled with emotion. I took his hand and brought it to my lips. I let him caress me and while his hand was over my eyes, I spoke to him.

“I did it,” I said.

“I can imagine it and I don’t care. I am not jealous. Not of what you did while you were away from me.”

He caressed me with such sweetness that I calmed down, I thought maybe I should ask him to forgive me again. I closed my eyes and placed my head on his shoulder.

“The first time was with an American boy,” I confided, “but it was with you that I imagined doing it. When I told him about it, he was happy that I had confided in him, that I trusted him enough to confess that I was in love.”

“Did you really tell him about me?”

“Yes!”

“So, it is as if you had done it with me.”

“Only you can’t recall it!”

“Yes,” he laughed, “and I can’t tell you how sorry I am!”

I smiled too, then we looked at each other and immediately became serious. I still had something to confess to him.

“Paoletto, I even did it for money. With the money I procured drugs and once I bought heroin for myself and for someone else. That was the last time I did drugs, because the very next day my father told me he had cancer.”

He thought about it for a moment, assimilated what I had just told him. I understood it must have been difficult for him.

“I didn’t know that.”

“It happened!”

“I don’t care anyway” he said, then he looked at me, resolutely, “I love you, Roby, there can be nothing you have done that frightens me, that would make me change my mind. Do you understand that? Was it what you were afraid to tell me?”

“Yes…” It wasn’t everything yet, but I was still afraid to confess the rest.

I pulled him to me, and he held me. I was very excited, really horny, but not desperate. I had waited so long and now Paoletto was in my arms, moved by the same desire that moved me. We shifted so our bodies touched, our hands looking for the warmth of exposed skin. We were back to where we were before.

“And if it gets messy?” he murmured.

“Do you want to see how to take care of that?”

“Yes.”

“But you won’t protest…”

“No, I won’t!”

I lifted his shirt up under his armpits and then I started to lower his shorts and briefs.

“But close your eyes!” he said.

He was obstinate, I knew it. He would only let me do it if I closed my eyes, so I did. I closed my eyes, and he let me. When I was about to undress myself, he stopped me, pulled my hands away and did it himself.

“What if someone comes by?” he asked, a moment later.

“No one will pass by. And in any case, it would be too late.”

I felt his cock standing up straight, crushed against my belly. I moved my own, next to his, between our bellies, and we moved simultaneously, with caution. The embrace became immediately more intense, and I felt every contraction of his orgasm against my body. I instantly followed him, and my seed merged with his, messing us both. We continued to kiss and held each other. At that moment I felt fulfillment, but at the same time the desire to rub each other again.

In the embrace I felt the desire had not run out for him either. It was a new lasciviousness, a languor born from the fantasies we had both made up for years. Our desires suppressed for so long. And from the seed that had just bathed us, and then the hot, dry air that was blowing around us. That liquid noise, that smacking, we made as we moved, was beyond the wind the only noise we could hear up there, in that absent muffled world.

Our kisses continued.

From a kind of mutual unspoken commitment, both of us had our eyes closed and listened only to the beat of our hearts. Lulled by the warm wind that caressed our skin, our nakedness.

“Do not open your eyes. I beg you!”

“Why?”

“Don’t open them. I am ashamed.”

“But I know you are beautiful. I want to see you.” I said, still committed to my promise to keep my eyes closed.

“Not now, but I promise you will see me. Unless you tire of me.”

“That would be impossible. It will never happen…”

“Keep them closed for now,” he insisted, delightfully stubborn as he was.

“Definitely,” I said, squeezing my eyes tight shut with a grimace that was supposed to be laughable.

Maybe even to convince me to keep my eyes closed, he kissed me again and moved against me. We were excited again and soon we would enjoy it. When he came, his orgasm surprised me. It was violent, convulsive. If I had not been well planted on my legs, we would have fallen. He ended up tired, leaning on my shoulder and struggling to breathe through his mouth, taking in the air with desperation.

We were always hugging each other, and I kept my eyes closed to keep the promise I had made. I waited for him to calm down, then I began my own movement. I quickly reached the explosive height he had and together we descended, returning to earth. On those sharp-edged stones that were the natural floor of the crater. He took a handkerchief from my pocket while we were still hugging, wiped himself clean, then he untangled himself from our embrace and arranged his clothes.

“Did you keep your eyes closed?”

“Yes. I promised you.”

It was true, I hadn’t opened them yet.

“Thank you. You can open them now.”

He had turned to stare at the bottom of the volcano, so that I too could clean and cover myself. I didn’t understand if he was ashamed to look at me, or if he had turned away from a sense of justice. He did not want me to look at him and perhaps it did not seem right to him to spy on my nakedness. When I was decent again, I reached up to him and put my arm on his shoulders.

He turned to smile at me. “Do you know I am happy? Now everything has really changed.”

“What do you mean?”

“That I am fine with you. You know that I love you, and I know that you love me. And all of this is beautiful. I don’t need anything else. My life is with you! Roby, you are my life!”

If he thought that about me, what else could I have done or thought? I kissed him on the neck. I moistened his skin with my lips. The wind dried it immediately. I heard him sigh with contentment. With his eyes he implored me to stop. He was tired and so was I. But that place, that moment, the two of us, its beauty, everything was a combination of elements that would make me give up all modesty. I remember that day, those hours, like a long uninterrupted excitement. I wanted to embrace him again, but I held myself back. It was he who grasped me, to seek protection in my embrace. And I protected him. I swore to always defend him, even from myself.

“Will you tell me about yourself?” I asked.

“There isn’t much to tell.”

“I want to know anyway. I’m jealous, too.”

“Do you want to know a secret?”

“What?”

“I smoked a joint once. To try it!”

I felt myself freeze.

“No!” I shouted.

I gave him a little nudge, as if to push him away, before I realized he hadn’t explained anything, and I was over reacting. It had probably been a boyish prank. But drugs didn’t cater to jokes and baloney.

“Roby…”

He looked like he was about to cry.

“It was only once! I just took a puff on it. I got a little fuzzy, but I wanted to feel like you…just for a moment!”

“You’re a fool!”

“I did it to feel like you…” He hugged me tightly. “I wanted to understand. That was the only way. Two asshole classmates had the weed and rolled a joint. We smoked it, or rather, they smoked, it in the garden… in your garden. You know where?”

I knew where. I kept my eyes closed. Now the sunlight was hurting. A horrible film was playing in my head. Paoletto and I huddled down in the garden, passing a joint between ourselves. It was my hyped up imagination that was overreacting.

“I left immediately,” he said, “and I never saw them again.”

He tried to reassure me. He was always the one to counter my insecurities. Even in that moment.

“Swear to me, you won’t ever do that again!”

“Of course not!” He protested, and I recognized his strength of character.

“Who do you think I am? You take me for a fool? Just because you got yourself into drugs, do you think I would too? I swear, on our love. And if you do it again, I will kill you myself, before you do it with drugs!”

His revelation bewildered me. I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. Perhaps it is conceited to say it, but I was always the one amongst all the other unfortunates, with the most common sense, even in those challenging years. I wasn’t so immature as to lose all my good judgement, even as a drug addict. Paoletto astounded me. I had never seen him so worked up.

“Don’t worry about me. I will certainly not worry about you. Excuse me!” I said.

“Excuse you? I didn’t even have to tell you!

“That you were a bit of an asshole!”

“What about how dumb you’ve been!” He smiled shyly

He had a point. I smiled.

“Guess I overreacted.”

Paoletto glared at me, then squinted his eyes and made a sly face. “You were right about the underwear. It’s safe!”

He touched himself on that spot where I had spent my whole life wishing to touch. I shook myself out of my lascivious thoughts. Paoletto had taught me another lesson. We could continue to live our love carefree.

“Oh… your underwear, we can do so much better,” I said.

“How? When?”

“Next chance we get… and you will get tired. Beg me to stop!” I winked at him.

“I am counting on it!”

We hurried back to the city because it was almost lunchtime and Paoletto was hungry, but not as hungry as me, I had forgotten one could be so hungry.

***

That night we went out with the other guys. It was not a great evening, because we had to face a new problem. It wasn’t a complication that I had to consider before, but inevitably it was there, waiting for us.

My nights had become a part of my waking hours, I got so little sleep. This was the fault of certain thoughts running around in my head. No longer those ugly ones like before, but my anxieties. How could I keep my new found lover happy and content, and how could I solve this new problem? Ever since my mother and me had been alone, without my father, her parents, my grandparents, wanted us to go to Vienna and spend a few days with them.

The first weeks after my father’s death had been a bad time for us. When the rites, liturgies, and mourning, to which all the living are compelled, were over, my mother slipped into an alarming apathy. The first day after the funeral, I went back to school and books. I studied with impatience and fury, whilst my mother shut herself away in the silence of our house, cherishing me with a devotion as mute as it was absolute. Until my examinations were finished she put aside my wish to decline the invitation. Afterwards, she waited for me to return from camp, and although I tried to convince her to go to Vienna alone, that I could join her later, she had no more excuses. We had no more excuses. They, our beloved parents, and grandparents, were waiting for us. We had to go there and also quite quickly. My mother ultimately seemed to have come out of the worst of her isolation and was perhaps returning to her normal self. I had no excuse either, apart for my love for Paoletto, but that was not something I could mention as it deserved to be, and so could not use that excuse. In short, we had to leave. And soon.

We would only be away for a couple of weeks, but I didn’t want to think about it. Yet, I had to, because our grandparents were waiting for us and my mother would clearly benefit from the vacation. I simply was obliged to go there, as I couldn’t let her go alone, she was not yet in a condition to do so and wouldn’t have wanted to anyway. We had no choice and would have to leave in a couple of days, so my fate was decided and unavoidable.

Although I was tired from the full day we had had, I did not sleep that night. I was thinking about that sword of Damocles hanging over my newborn engagement. I wondered how I might solve the situation and there was only one way. If I had to go, Paoletto had to come with us. I couldn’t even imagine the idea of leaving him, not now I had found him. Knowing he would be waiting for me when I returned, that I did not doubt his fidelity, or how we would run into each other’s arms. All of these good reasons did not help me to bear the idea of separation.

I decided he had to come with us.

I only had one consideration, this plan should not disturb my mother in any way. I could deal with Grandma Luigia and everyone else. I needed to convince them of my good intentions. In my nocturnal delirium I also thought, selfishly, I might persuade Paoletto to leave without even telling his grandmother and to call her when we had arrived in Vienna.

It was seven o’clock and Mum was already awake. She slept very little, and every night I tried to convince her to take some pills that had been prescribed. Her initial refusal to take care of herself had made me very worried in the past months, but recently she had started to look after her appearance again.

I knocked on her door. She was not sleeping in the room joining my father’s, but had moved to another part of the house, near where I was (5). She was still in bed, surprised and intrigued by my presence.

“Mom, can I ask you a favor?” I did not wait for her to answer me, because she loved me, and I knew she would do anything to please me. “I would like Paoletto to come with us to Vienna. Do you think it is possible?”

She smiled at me. We always tried to be nice with each other. We had suffered too much. I already knew that she would say yes.

“Grandma Luigia could be a problem. What does she say about it? It is up to her. Have you asked her?”

“She doesn’t know yet. And neither does Paoletto. But imagine it, it’s a great plan…” I wasn’t sure I should say this, but she was my mother and had the right to know. “I would like to spend as much time as possible with him and don’t want to leave him right now. I would miss him. We…you see…we’ve just met again and…”

“I know” she said.

I was sure she did, she knew everything.

“Yes, we are… engaged… so, you see… but don’t worry. We will work it out!” I added, hoping that we could without upsetting anyone.

She smiled at me and off I went. The most challenging part of the plan was not convincing my mother, but Grandma Luigia. I had to be careful and catch her at the right moment, when she would not raise her voice to me and tell me how ridiculous it was. So the meeting should not be at her house. I knew every morning she went to Mass at seven o’clock in a neighboring church and decided to stop her before she returned home after Mass. I already imagined asking her for grace as if she was a Madonna. A communist Madonna, perhaps.

I found her where I was sure I would, sitting in one of the first pews, intent on repeating, as every morning, those same words. If she was really a communist, I thought, she was a bit unusual, but this was not the time to go into her philosophical and political beliefs, even though the subject was fascinating.

I sat down next to her. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it. I waited politely for the Mass to end. I hoped that the blessing bestowed on us by the priest, his invocation of goodness, would also apply to me and to what I was about to do. After we were discharged by the gruff patriarch who administered to all the souls in the neighborhood, including Paoletto’s, which was now mine, Grandma Luigia gave me a look. The usual penetrating look that made me uncomfortable.

It was the kind of look that intimidated me when I was younger and would always frighten me a little. The kind of look rivals traded, which was how I interpreted it that day. I finally understood those ominous glances which Grandma Luigia and I used to exchange. We both loved Paoletto in our very different ways, but we were insanely jealous about him.

She had not expected to see me at that time and in church. My meeting her there must mean I had to have something urgent to ask her. Something that concerned Paoletto and which must be serious and important. She was right.

“What do you want?” she roared, with a voice not at all proper to the place where we were.

“I would like to speak to you.”

Instead of replying she got up and waited for me to let her pass. There was not enough space between the pews and the passage, and the other side was blocked by stacked chairs.

“Will you move? I have to go shopping” she said, ignoring my request. “And I have to hurry, because later Giulio will take me to the hospital for my analysis.”

“Are you not well? I am sorry.”

“Don’t worry, it’s merely a check-up. I have no intention of dying! For the moment!”

Her tone startled me. We had talked before to each other in worse circumstances, but here in church definitely didn’t help me.

I didn’t move and she sat down again. She looked at me crookedly.

“And what do you have to ask me that’s so urgent? If it concerns Paoletto, the answer is no!”

It wasn’t a good start, but at least she was listening.

“My mother and I are going to Vienna. We are leaving the day after tomorrow.”

“I know that. She told me. Have a nice trip!”

That she must have thought was the end of things. She got up again, forcing me to move, pushing with one knee, so I would shift and allow her to pass. But I stayed where I was, contracting all my muscles and preparing to receive a slap, which I feared would hurt.

She had never hit Paoletto. Uncle Giulio and Paoletto’s father had suffered frequent beatings themselves, which they had described to us, still remembering those blows. I was expecting her to vent her anger for everything I had done, taking her beloved nephew from her.

“I came to ask you,” I said, heroically, looking at the altar and feeling determined, “to let Paoletto come with us. We will be guests of my grandparents.”

“No! Absolutely, not!”

“I thought it would please you?”

“Please me?” she hissed. “How would it please me? Please you, you mean. So you can keep him with you all the time and convince him to do whatever you want.”

At least, facing her in church stopped her from screaming at me, slapping me, or kicking me out. Paoletto wasn’t there to hear us arguing, who knows what we would have said to each other if he was. I thought I had the upper hand to get her to agree.

“Paoletto, whether you believe it or not, does not need to be convinced to do anything!” I said firmly.

“What do you mean?”

She went back to her seat. This time making a greater effort.

“He knows much better than I what he desires! Always has… he wouldn’t stop looking until he found it. You ought to know him better than I do. As for me, instead, I…”

“You?”

It was a question, maybe she wanted me to say one more time how sad and useless I was. I didn’t mind repeating it. I would have told her I was a Martian if it had the desired effect.

“You know what I did. I drugged myself and other stuff. Then I waited until my father was dying to go back to being a good guy, a good boy, if you prefer. Believe me, I love Paoletto, and I would never do anything to hurt him. That you have to believe!”

“Does he know about this trip?”

“Not yet. He only knows that I have to leave and is very upset about it.”

“I had understood that because last night he was moping around. I knew it was your fault. I was about to do something about you, but he dissuaded me.”

I hesitated, intimidated, thinking of the consequences I risked. Then I recovered.

“This morning I asked my mother for permission. She agreed. My grandparents have a big house. There won’t be any problems with the accommodation.”

“We should ask his father.”

It was an excuse, and I knew it.

“There is no need,” I said. “Paoletto has the documents we used at camp to go to France. They will be fine to go to Austria as well. Please, Grandma Luigia!”

“What do you know about it? I will have to ask my son if he wants his son to go to Austria with strangers. You don’t think I should?”

“No, because I know you have never asked him anything. Paoletto and I have never had any secrets! I know everything!”

I really knew everything. I do not know why, it surprised her.

I knew how she had gradually taken Paoletto away from his father, from the genuine affection of that man. How she had discouraged any attempt for closeness between father and son. How she had avoided Paoletto and his stepmother forming a relationship. His stepmother would have accepted him into her arms, or at least into her home. She was a caring person, according to my mother. I knew Grandma Luigia had taken advantage of her son’s frequent absences from Italy. She had managed to obtain a kind of foster care that allowed her to retain power over her grandson. I knew everything. We had discussed it. We had asked ourselves if and when he would be capable of reconnecting with his father. Paoletto did not really miss him. He was puzzled about his father’s character. Something which, needless to say, Grandma Luigia was very accustomed to belittling. Although, I myself, conditioned by my father’s judgment, tended to agree with Grandma.

“Then you also know I am the one who decides,” she said, after a while when we were simply staring at each other.

“That’s why I’m here.”

She glared at me with a look that could kill. I was about to hear the verdict. There would either be peace or war, if she said no, there would be a clash between us. Perhaps she had grasped that. Or maybe she was just aware of her nephew’s maturity, definitely not wanting to adjust her thinking about me.

“All right,” she finally said. “Take him wherever you want but be careful! These are the keys to the house, go and tell him, that little devil. But be careful,” she repeated, “I’ve already told you how much I will make you pay if you hurt him again?”

“Yes, you told me, and I won’t forget.”

I went to get up, but she took hold of my arm and pulled me back down.

“Another thing, if you really think you’re taking him away from me, you’re mistaken. I have seen the way he looks at you. When he talks about you, he sees you like you’re a god, but for me you’re still someone who’s a druggie and worthless. So be warned. I know what you are and how much you are worth, don’t forget that. It is something I won’t let him forget!”

“I know as well as you, how much I am worth, Grandma Luigia. I have not lived without learning something, even though it may seem I have. Paoletto doesn’t need me or you, you understand that. He will stay with us as long as he wants, and we wouldn’t be able to hold him back if he decided to leave. You know this as well as I do, don’t you?”

She seemed impressed by what I said.

“I know… he is growing up…” she said, in a low voice.

“You raised him well,” I said, to console her, because I felt so much tenderness for that brave, even if a little selfish, woman. “Paoletto is happy living with you. Better, much better, than he would have been somewhere else… and we know where. Me, he adopted the first day he saw me. I believe he told you this. But he could just as easily leave me. He will never leave you. I hope that will not happen with me, because it would kill me. Even though I know about death and it doesn’t scare me, what frightens me is that I may lose him one day. Believe me, it frightens me so much. I will do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

“Young man, you are worthier than I thought! Come, take me shopping, so you can carry the bags and drop them at home. Make yourself useful, my legs are swollen again.”

After an exhausting tour of the neighborhood, I left her with Uncle Giulio. He was going to take her to the hospital and then home for lunch. I slipped into the elevator this time avoiding the stairs. I was loaded with bags and packages hanging under my arms.

I knew the ritual of Paoletto’s waking up in the morning, he had told me so many times. Grandma would tiptoe into his room silently and open the window and the shutters, slowly. To make sure the daylight did not fill the room all at once. I did exactly as she did, then I went to sit on the side of the bed and waited for my blond angel to open his eyes. He looked like an angel at that moment. I patiently waited for him to wake up and see me instead of who he thought was there, his grandmother.

He was gorgeous, for me he was beautiful, wherever he was, but asleep he was even more so. At the camp, in the two nights that I had spent next to him, I had observed him, watched over him. I was desperate, but I couldn’t even touch him and now I felt like I was living a dream, but it wasn’t like that. I was there, next to him. He was mine, my lover. Finally, I could touch him, caress him, rest my lips on his forehead. Wait for him to wake up, receive his smile. He would certainly smile seeing me.

How did it happen that he fell in love with me? I left him, abandoned him. He had waited for me, looked for me, reconquered me, almost as if he had to make up for something.

Under the sheet one could guess the shape of his body. He was almost supine, his legs slightly bent, one arm along his side, the other to defend himself from the light that had invaded the room. He wrinkled his eyes and murmured something about the time. Perhaps it was still too early for him. He did not immediately understand who was with him. He did not recognize me. The emotion of being there, of seeing him so innocent, defenseless, overwhelmed me. I bent down to touch his forehead with my lips. I too with my eyes closed, because I was afraid a tear would fall and wake him up.

“But what…” he finally opened his eyes, “what are you doing here?”

I could only look at him. Two tears slipped down my cheeks and then fell on his face.

“What happened, why are you crying?” he asked me worried.

I tried stopping because it was silly. I was crying. He looked worried until I was able to speak and then he calmed down.

“It’s nothing,” I said, but he looked at me strangely, “I met your grandmother in church…”

“You? In church? And did you quarrel?”

“No…”

“What were you doing there?”

“I helped her to do the shopping and I brought over the bags and packages” I said instead of answering him. “Now she has gone with Uncle Giulio to do the analysis in the hospital.”

“How come you met her and what were you doing there at that time? What were you doing in church this morning?” he insisted.

“I had to ask her something. I went looking for her there, at the end of Mass. I knew she went there every morning, and…”

“What did you have to ask her? Did you leave home at seven o’clock?”

“Almost. It was seven twenty…”

“So what? What did you have to ask her?”

“I don’t think I’ll tell you!”

He made a smart face.

“What was her answer?”

“She said yes!”

He was still lying on the bed. He suddenly got up and kissed me on the cheeks. Then he looked at me and we kissed better, as we had learned the day before. He pulled me down and I ended up on top of him. We clung to each other and it seemed to me I was in heaven.

Those were days when I had to struggle to distinguish reality from fantasy.

A kiss is a kiss. About five minutes there on the bed, clinging to each other with our mouths attached and playing with our tongues, chasing each other in every corner of our mouths. And then kisses on the neck, eyes, nose. And tickles. At a certain point I got up and he had lifted himself with me. I held him in my arms, then I went down to kiss his neck. He had pulled up my shirt to caress my skin. We were short of breath, but his curiosity had won, and he was stuck trying to free himself from my embrace.

“Whatever it was,” he said, seriously, “thank you for doing it! But what did you ask her? What did she say yes to?”

We were alone, at least until twelve noon, nobody would disturb us. I thought it would not be a grave sin to take advantage of the situation. A sin for which Paoletto would certainly have thanked me.

“I will tell you, but first I want to know what I am going to get in reward.”

He made the face of someone who did not understand but suspected something.

“You know, I had a hard time convincing Grandma Luigia!” I said again, to help him make up his mind.

He lay down on the bed, sitting up. He put his head on the pillow, looking sexy. It was made of feathers. I knew it because he had described it to me. It was soft and thin. He held his eyes tight shut, only occasionally peeking at me through half-open eyelids. Then he moved the sheet that still covered him.

“Are you okay with this reward?”

He was not sleeping in his pajamas. He had never used them, summer, or winter, always in briefs and a T-shirt or tank top. That day the briefs seemed too small and the tank top didn’t even cover his navel anymore. He was the prize. Suddenly I realized that what I had achieved that day was nothing compared to this reward. I was tempted to cover him. Say no, that I did not deserve the gift, but it wasn’t something I could give up, not for all the riches in the world.

“It is a beautiful prize,” I said, “Are you sure I deserve it?”

“Yes,” he whispered to me, “whatever you demanded from Grandma I want you to have me as your prize.”

I bent down to kiss him on the mouth.

“I asked Grandma Luigia,” he took off his tank top, “to let you come with us.” I stroked his cock which was now forcing the fabric of his skimpy briefs, “to come with Mom and me to Vienna!”

I couldn’t finish taking off his briefs because he jumped around my neck.

“Really?”

Although he was trembling with emotion, my hands were skillful, and he was soon naked for me.

“I can really come too? And what did your mother say? Does she agree?”

“Yes! I asked her this morning before going to see your grandmother in church. You know, I didn’t sleep last night thinking about how not to separate us.”

“I love you,” he said, “but…do you really love me?”

He was beautiful, but he was unaware of it.

“Yes…” I whispered.

“I am no longer ashamed now,” he murmured, as he embraced me, adapting to my body. “Last night I couldn’t sleep either, not after you reminded me about Vienna. I kept thinking about everything. That I wouldn’t be able to see you. That you had to live your life. That if you went to Vienna it was only for a couple of weeks and then you would come back to me. That in a while school will start and then you will have classes at the University. We won’t be able to see each other all the time. But at least once a day, we will still see each other! Won’t we? Will we see each other at least once a day?”

For the first time he was naked, hugging me, and had not yet asked me to close my eyes. I had half-closed them out of modesty and prudence in case he realized.

“Yes, my love,” I murmured, but he started talking again. Fortunately, he remained naked and in my arms. He was too fervent in his story to realize that he was now buck naked and always in my arms.

“Is it foolish to be ashamed with you. You wanted to see me naked, and I also wanted to see you…”

Maybe he was not too enthusiastic but had simply decided that perhaps he didn’t care.

“I looked at you…” he said.

“You naughty trickster…”

“Because yesterday” he was laughing while talking “I only pretended to avert my eyes… You are beautiful, by the way. And when you left, I thought that it was horrible doing what I did. That because of me we had not been as happy as you wanted us to be, as we could be. Only because I am a fool and was ashamed to undress! And so, look at me, my love. I desire you only to look at me! As often as you want, always!”

He slipped out of my hug and lay back down on the bed, laying there languidly, one arm behind his head. He stared up at me a smile on his lips. I knew he wanted me to touch him, it was an invitation. For a moment I held my breath and stared at this happy, serene, and terribly excited boy. I moved close and allowed my hands to glide over every inch of his smooth skin. As I explored his body he trembled.

I whispered eagerly for him to turn over.

“I’m almost… there,” he pleaded, before rolling onto his stomach.

And then I started to caress him again, devouring every wonderful curve of his body. He stayed still, he did not contract a muscle, and he allowed me to explore him. I followed the line of his spine, all the way to the bottom. I lightly grazed every inch of his shoulder with my fingertips. Finally, when I kissed him in his most secret place a giggle escaped him.

“Get up!” I told him. “Do you want to touch me?”

He stood up and we faced each other. He began to quickly undress me until I too was completely naked. He watched as I took his place on the bed.

Neither of us spoke, but I could see in his eyes and from the little tremors of his naked body, what he was feeling.

The bed was still warm from his body and still vaguely damp from the night’s sweat left by Paoletto. I was afraid to have an orgasm simply from those sensations I felt on my back. And it was a miracle that I was still resisting.

It was now his hands touching my body, gliding across my bare skin. His touch on my nipples made them instantly hard, my body quivered.

My body was different, mature, and it made him curious, temporarily distracting him from his excitement. He paused to evaluate my body hair. Not that I had so much, but he had almost none. My legs were covered with dark hairs, and I had some on my chest too. My armpits mesmerized him. The faint smell they had, the long, silky hair. He sniffed them. We both smiled. My nipples were bigger and darker than his. He lightly kissed them.

“Can I continue later?” he mumbled and then suddenly he climbed on top of me.

Our breathing was coming in gasps as he pressed his body into mine. I wrapped my arms around him, hugging him to me, as his body shook. I released my grip as he pushed up and covered my belly with his semen. Looking down and feeling him I quickly followed suit, our essences pooling together.

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t…” he whispered in my ear, half laughing, breathing heavily.

I kissed him on the lips. I wanted him to know I didn’t care. We kissed each other again and hugged. We lay there, him resting on top of me, before we got up, careful that our semen did not drip onto the bed and mess the sheets.

Grandma Luigia didn’t have to know.

He went to the bathroom, and I saw him come back with some paper handkerchiefs.

“Maybe we will need them,” he said, “are you busy this morning?”

“No!”

He ran to hug me again.

“We will see each other at least once a day. Forever! Do you promise?” he spoke into my ear.

“Sure! I swear it to you!”

“You say you swear it, but on what?”

“I don’t know. It’s difficult. When you swear, you pledge something, and if you don’t keep the oath, you lose the pledge.”

“Then swear it to me! And I will be certain you will keep your promise!”

“No!”

“I want you to swear!”

“And I don’t…”

“And if you don’t keep the commitment, you will lose me!”

It was logical if a bit of a foolish reasoning. But it was impossible to explain it to him.

“All right. But it was you who wanted it.”

We remained a little while longer in his room, playing with our bodies. We hungrily explored them. Perhaps Paoletto was right about my innocence. I could have kept it. I felt I was demonstrating the same modesty in showing myself. Even to him, my lover. I felt shame and excitement in asking him to do something, or in doing what he asked of me. I had regained my purity, freeing myself from my secrets.

“Tell me about yourself. There’s something you haven’t yet told me. That’s true, isn’t it?”

He asked me this after we had satisfied all our appetites. First it had been the most urgent and biggest, then we found ourselves terribly hungry, because neither of us had had any breakfast.

We went out and bought some pizza and went into the waterfront gardens. We sat under a horse chestnut tree which offered a canopy of shade. A pleasant breeze, coming from the sea, moved the air through the gardens the tomatoes cooked in the oven possessed a sour, salty taste. We ate taking big bites, messing our faces with oil. Paoletto more than me. But he was always a messy eater.

We talked about Vienna, about my grandparents, my uncle, and about my mother. The sun became warmer and the shade darker. It was then that he said he wanted to know everything, and I decided to tell him the complete truth without any hypocrisy.

I explained how I had prostituted myself and I shared with him how I justified that to myself. When I told him what I was doing in exchange for money, he did not look away. He did not lower his eyes once. He didn’t blush. He didn’t ask me to stop. He listened to my confession and every detail. It was I who kept my eyes down and it was right that I did. I was the one who should be ashamed.

“Why did you decide to inject yourself with heroin?”

“I was tired of everything, of living the chaotic out of control life, but also of not having you. I was tired of being dirty, but I didn’t have the strength to change. Then I thought that dying would not be so much uglier than continuing to live like that. I thought without really believing it, that injecting heroin would kill me. Obviously, I did not die! And I woke up even more desperate. I must tell you one last thing, though. Do you want to know it?”

He nodded, looking at me sympathetically. I knew he was trying to give me courage.

“Buying drugs took more money than I could hope to find by doing what I had up until then. So, we thought of going someplace else and went to the suburban avenues. It was there when a car stopped and I knew the guy was going to ask me the worst thing, to do the ugliest thing I had ever done.”

He saw me hesitating and took my hand. Perhaps he was also intrigued. I would never know, because after that day we never spoke of it again.

“Tell me now,” he encouraged. “Tell me, and it will be our secret. Tell me…”

“That was the last time I prostituted myself… I let him rape me!”

I saw his strange look and understood that perhaps he didn’t grasp my words. In those days, a fifteen-year-old boy could not immediately imagine the way in which a man can be raped. Paoletto no matter how informed he was, had no idea about this.

“How…did it happen?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

“Yes!”

“And you can’t imagine? If you think about it a little bit…”

I said it in an extremely hoarse voice, feeling pretty upset. I was not bothered about confiding the secret, but I did worry about destroying his purity, because he had absolutely no idea about these things.

“I think I have understood!” he murmured. But without averting, for a moment, his gaze from my eyes.

If he blushed, I didn’t see, because I kept my eyes down. I was too ashamed.

“I let myself be raped,” I forced myself to repeat, “because I needed his money. I told you why I wanted it. But that afternoon I was not only looking for that. I wanted to lose any self-esteem I had left for myself. I wanted my end and wanted it to begin there!”

I had a fit of anger, I almost cried. He took my hand and kissed it.

“Don’t cry. This is in the past.”

“That pig… but I let it happen. He raped me, but I let him do it. Do you understand? I wanted him to see why I did it. Maybe I could have fought and made him stop. I could have run away, got out of the car. He wasn’t bad, he wouldn’t have pursued me. If I had asked him, maybe he would have stopped. But I desired him to. And when he finished, I… I was still hard. I don’t remember the pain he inflicted on me, only how I enjoyed it. I liked it…and now I have confessed everything. Now you know who I am, and I am ashamed.”

I covered my face, and he took my hands and kissed them, my palms, my fingers.

“What you have told me will never happen again. It is all over. It is over, along with all the bad things that have happened to you. When the two of us will do it, before and afterwards we will only kiss. It will be for love. You won’t hurt me, and I won’t hurt you.”

“But you must forgive me. For everything. You must forgive me.”

“For what? You have paid and don’t owe anyone anything anymore. I believe that now life is in your debt!”

“You say this, because you are good…”

“Please, don’t say that, we haven’t been together long enough yet!”

“And why?”

“Ask my grandmother first, then my schoolmates and then all those who know me!”

I smiled. I needed to feel good. I needed him.

“You are terrible, aren’t you?” I asked, knowing very well what his answer would be.

He laughed then.

“Yes!” he admitted.

I kept after him, and the laughter became uncontrollable, until we were choking. After we calmed down, I felt like walking a bit, and we went to look for something to drink.

“Please, tell me that you forgive me…”

“It’s okay,” he said, finally, “I forgive you.”

He knew everything now and I would never hide anything from him again.

I believe that those who are accustomed to lying have no desire other than to be able to tell the truth. Often, they can’t do that, but I had had the opportunity to completely regenerate myself and the man who had come out of that catharsis wanted to be honest with himself and his loved one. From that moment with Paoletto, I would have been honest almost to the point of self-harm. Fortunately, in the years we spent together I never came to regret it.

“Tell me about yourself,” I asked, while we were walking under the shade of those huge trees, along an awfully long avenue, “Paoletto, tell me something about yourself. Something I don’t know… I’m curious.”

“What about me?”

The avenue was so long that the trees at the end closed the perspective. I imagined it reflected our life. We were still too young to see the end of it.

“Something I don’t know!” I repeated, “That you never told me, because I didn’t ask you, or because you were ashamed!”

“I have nothing to tell you. I’m sorry. Your life seems like a movie, but mine has no twists and turns. You know, the beginning of my life seemed like a penny dreadful, but then my grandmother took charge, and it was so normal and quiet it was boring. Nothing ever happened to me.”

“I was also referring to those things… You understand, don’t you?”

“You idiot! Those things, as you call them, I have done almost all of them with you!”

“Almost?”

“Well…once upon a time you weren’t there!”

“What time? When was that?”

An unexpected feeling took hold of me. It was an unfounded, comical jealousy. I was about to make a scene in front of him, there in the middle of the trees.

“I want to know…” I said, changing my tone of voice.

Paoletto could see it wasn’t a joke and it annoyed him.

“You said you want to know…” he was being very serious, “but remember I have been yours since the day before yesterday. Absolutely yours. I will never look at anyone else. But before, there was only me and what I did then only concerned me. You want to know about it, and I am going to tell you, but only because I want to.”

He took a couple of steps away from me. Then he turned around and smiled.

“Perhaps it’s only right that you should know, because in a certain sense you were there too…”.

This, of course, intrigued me. Even though I found myself thinking how stupid I had been to doubt him, to comment on his behavior. My jealousy, like every suspicion, was so foolish and irrational. He had instantly set me straight. I went back to smiling at him.

“Well? Go ahead…Confess!” I encouraged.

“It was in the past, at camp. Obviously not this year,” he clarified, as though he had to make that clear for me. “It was last year. One night, in the tent.”

I frowned. What could they have done? As far as I knew, they only ever slept in the tent. That was what I had always done, it had never crossed my mind to do anything else. Was it a sign of the times? Three years between him and me must signify something.

“And what did you do? Didn’t anyone hear you?”

“We were not at the camp! We made a sort of night Patrol excursion. We left at sunset and each Patrol walked in assigned directions. Then we pitched the tent. After the campfire, the little ones went to sleep and the three of us older ones started talking like adults. You know what kind of talk?”

“No! You tell me.”

“Can’t you imagine?”

“Yes, but I want to hear you say it, because I like seeing you blush.”

It was true. He was delightful when he felt uncomfortable and I didn’t want to give him a way out. In fact, a slight redness colored his round, tanned cheeks, those cheeks I had tormented with kisses all morning.

“We started talking about who knows what but ended up where you can imagine. It was me, by the way. I asked the others if they were jerking off. I got the idea from a friend of mine. You know him, don’t you?”

“You asshole!” I slapped him on his bare leg leaving a hand print on his tanned thigh.

“Fuck you!” he snapped, then he laughed mischievously. “What’s the harm if I used the same tactic as you. Anyway, of course they were jerking off. We told each other a lot of things about how we did it, when we had started, and how many times, where and when…”

“By the way… I also want to know all this stuff about you. You will tell me, won’t you?”

“Of course! Even if you know most of it already.”

“OK! Then I’ll tell you what happened. Now you will have to tell me about the betrayal.”

“As you can imagine, the subject was enough to excite us. Talking about it at length was the best. I don’t know if you understand what I mean.”

“I understand!”

“The little ones had been asleep for a long time and there was absolute silence around us. I swear to you I can’t remember who came up with the idea. I believe it came to all three of us together. We thought, why don’t we jerk off? It was cold as hell outside, but we still had hard-ons. Because it was so cold we went to the tent. We made sure no one could see what we were doing and we each pulled it out. Of course, first we looked at each other’s and then we had the best hand job I can remember.”

“Is that all?”

“Well… what else?”

“No, sorry, that’s everything. Nothing more?”

“No, apart from the fact that, while I was doing it, I was thinking about you, asshole! That night as well. I closed my eyes and thought of you. Did I do well? Because it was you that I was waiting for and no one else.”

He took me by the hand and looked at me. I nodded, he was right. We kept walking like that, until we realized we were still holding hands and it shocked us a lot.

(1) The Italian resistance movement (Italian: la Resistenza) is a term for Italian resistance groups during World War II. It was opposed to the forces of Nazi Germany as well as Nazi Germany’s Italian puppet state regime, the Italian Social Republic. Following the German invasion and armed occupation of Italy between September 1943 and April 1945. Known as partisans, the brutal conflict they took part in is referred to as the Italian Liberation War. The modern Italian Republic was declared to be founded on the struggle of the Resistance.

(2) Since 1943 the Italian Communist Party has played a leading role during the Resistance and has put together many partisan groups. After the end of the war in Italy there was a fierce opposition between the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party in every aspect of political and social life. With the Communist Party defending the interests of the working class, against Catholics and other groups representing the wealthier classes. From this the idea that a Communist boy should not be engaged with a wealthy guy.

(3) In Italy, the car driving license is obtained at the age of 18.

(4) The Fiat 500 (Italian: Cinquecento) is a rear-engine, four-seat, small city car that was manufactured and marketed by Fiat Automobiles from 1957 to 1975. Despite its compact size, the 500 proved to be an enormously practical vehicle with massive sales throughout Europe.

(5) It is really a big deal that a woman in Italy abandons ‘her’ bedroom after the death of her husband.

8

The Journey of Life

As a boy, the Law of Universal Gravitation had fascinated me and most of all, what inspired my imagination was the certainty there could be no exceptions, imperfections, or grains of sand that could challenge it and ruin the mechanism.

In my own universe, imperfection had been created, the device was frozen, as if time had stopped. My life, reduced to ordinary sensory perception, now recording the succession of day and night, forcing me to be occupied with only the indispensable actions necessary for survival. The mind, my poor head, was feverish. It constructed scenarios which it ignored. Opposed reality and the law used to regulate it, which now became no longer valid.

Looking outside at the garden, I could see the bougainvillea had flowered unconcerned. I registered, somewhere in my mind, that all the other plants had also bloomed and finally spring had become summer. Then the sensations overlapped.

The gentle breeze reached me, carrying the scent of the flowers into the house. I could see the curtains rise and a wave of fragrances surprised me as I closed my eyes, offended by the light I wished was not there. The smell of honeysuckle and broom, jasmine, snow-white and yellow flowers, blue wisteria. I registered them all, but the eyes of my mind, of my imagination, witnessed another scene.

I saw myself running among the plants, armed with an axe, cutting them down, uprooting them, tearing down their hundred-year-old trunks. Ultimately reducing them to an indecipherable heap. After a few moments to contemplate the disaster, my work, I set fire to the tangle of branches I had created. I imagined the heat from the flames and the smoke invading the room to which I returned panting and already upset by the destruction. I looked amazed at the precious furniture in the house. The books hiding the walls, accumulated by generations of obstinate readers. Consciously, I witnessed the ruin of smoke as it rose to the ceiling, stopping, and blackening the decoration.

At this point, the cowardly eyes of my mind could no longer reveal the image of destruction, those objects that suffered my madness. I opened my real, suffering eyes, hurting by what life had made them see, and I looked around me. I reassured myself that nothing I had imagined really happened and I returned to caress the keys of the piano I never knew how to play.

For a month I had been occupying my days by moving from the piano stool to the armchair in front of the window. Contemplating the garden, the flowers, surveying those solid objects, evidence I had not surrendered to havoc. Something I do not have the courage to accomplish.

Often my mother, Marco, other friends, and colleagues, would look for me. But I was able to escape them. I would tell one of them I was with the other. To those who inquired with whom I would spend the evening on Saturdays or Sundays, I would say I will be with my mother. To her I swore I would go to Marco’s house. I said to Marco, colleagues had asked me to join them and I cannot refuse. I would play this game for as long as it was possible.

***

Paoletto played divinely, continuing for as long as he found the energy. It was not simply me who said so, but he was constantly told the same by all those who listened to him, who admired his talent. His fingers caressed the keys, extracting their secrets, drawing sublime sounds from the ivory and strings. He was light, sweet, passionate, masterful, and aggressive. He studied the piano and graduated without effort. Placing his hands on the keyboard never made him tired or bored, but when he was offered the opportunity of a concert career, he refused. The Conservatory begged him to accept, promising a wealth that had no meaning for him. They implored him not to deprive them of his talent. He thanked them and declined, without apparent explanation. But he told me why and it was the sweetest and most convincing reason I ever heard.

“I would have to study more than eight hours a day. Which I could do if I let go the University, but, Roby, but…” and he hugged me almost weeping, because the decision was causing him a great deal of suffering. He continued speaking to me, murmuring phrases which tore each other apart like clouds in a storm. “We’d be far away…I’d have to study somewhere else, perhaps abroad. In Berlin, in Vienna… and play… and then there would be the concerts, here and there…You? You couldn’t follow me. You have your career… and I don’t want that… No, I won’t do that, Roby. I’ll never do that! I will always be close to you!”

Perhaps the world lost a great performer of Beethoven, Brahms, and Chopin, who were his favorite composers. A talented musician whom I, selfishly, kept for myself alone. Along with his love and all of the joy he was able to give me.

He never stopped playing, but it was only for me. Even if friends were listening to us, it was for me he played, me he looked at. He continued studying as if he had to prepare for a concert, one he would never give, because I was always his only audience. Each of my University exams had his piano studies as a soundtrack, our life was cadenced by the sonatas, nocturnes and impromptu, scales and variations.

Then he died and after twenty years I was left alone.

He left because of an illness I myself diagnosed as if it were a family tradition. When I wanted to torture myself, I would think I didn’t diagnose it in time, but I knew that even if I had, it would only have increased the time we would have suffered.

He began tiring easily. Then there were the palpitations he told me about with a laugh. Saying it was my fault, my delays, our schedule that kept us apart for a few days, preventing us from spending our hours together. One evening, in autumn, a few months ago, he suffered a respiratory crisis. We were downtown shopping, annoyed with each other, taking the blame for not being in Paris as we would have liked. Then, in the middle of a sentence, I heard his voice trail off.

I turned around and saw him clutching his chest and bending slowly to the ground. Trying in some way to break his fall, I supported him. He had not lost consciousness, but a strong pain in his chest had left him struggling to breathe. He tried to recover, but was gasping for air, trying to fill his lungs which seemed to have closed. Slowly his breathing returned to normal, the pain subsided, and he could finally get up. We went and sat down in a cafe.

His gaze was already more serene, but his face was pale and tense. His breathing was still a little labored. He smiled at me, while I mentally reviewed all the possible causes of that sudden crisis. Connecting the attack, the sense of suffocation, to the palpitations and tiredness was quite easy. My fear that he had a serious illness was exacerbated by the fever which struck him that same evening.

That night I didn’t sleep and the next morning I knew, I was certain about what it was. Like my father, there were visits to the hospital with me lying to him. Saying we needed more accurate analyses while my colleagues averted their eyes. The two of us looking at each other, aware we couldn’t lie about leukemia, it would tear him away from me.

Not the flowers that bloomed, their perfume sweet and insistent, nor the air, the sea breeze caressing them. Not the music that this piano would no longer play. None of this would ever touch you again, my love.

***

We invented our life together, but it would be more accurate to say that I adapted mine to his, since I had no life without him. We never questioned the days we spent together, we had to be with each other, all the time, everywhere, and we would chase each other around between our schedules. That was how it was, from the first day to the last day of our engagement and this lasting marriage. When we managed to live together, and it was easier to be one person.

The beginning was not peaceful, but we always overcame all the difficulties we encountered.

Our bond was looked upon with kindness for no more than a few days. Everyone remembered or knew how united we had been. My history with drugs and then my father’s illness and death. My life was known to everyone, so Paoletto’s attention to me, our inevitable, prolonged, exclusive being together, were considered his way of aiding me. And my attachment to him was equal, at first, only in the beginning out of noble gratitude.

We, on the other hand, with the passing of the weeks, in the most complete carelessness our love could give us, we began to distance ourselves from everything that surrounded us and was not closely related to us. We unconsciously convinced ourselves reality was only a complement to our love. My mother, Grandma Luigia, Uncle Giulio and, in part, Marco remained the only people we admitted into our life.

In those years, but also afterwards, we often discussed and considered what our behavior had been. We always concluded that, because of what we had done, because of how our bond was seen from the outside, we were untroubled by the world outside, our friends, and the scouts in particular. In the sense that for Paoletto it was not traumatic to be discarded by the scouts and it was quite easy for the two of us to continue living in our city. Staying in one way or another in contact with the same people.

We ended up being merely tolerated by everybody, but never accepted.

In those years, to learn that one allowed a homosexual among his acquaintances, or rather two who were clearly together, was somewhat unusual. Suspicion alone of such a relationship would usually have been enough to decree our alienation or perhaps worse. To know with certainty that two people with whom they had shared almost everything, were homosexuals, was delicate to bear. When among friends and then amongst the scouts, the relationship between the two of us began to manifest itself, some labelled it ambiguous. This was, perhaps, the most effective word to employ. We were, depending on the person’s point of view, or interpretation, ignored or tolerated, but largely kept at a distance, if not isolated.

Initial suspicion arose in the more astute in our entourage, who viewed our closeness in a bad light or saw the worst, and this quickly spread among all the rest. For a while we were gratified by what could be considered a generous understatement. Or a more sophisticated and Jesuitical pretense, tending to overlook my presence so as to safeguard Paoletto’s soul.

Obviously, all this made it intolerable for him to remain in the Scouts. It was a huge relief for everyone, that before Christmas, he decided to leave. Anticipating by a few days that he was about to be asked to leave the Association.

Everything happened relatively quickly, and Paoletto did not seem to be affected much, even if he genuinely cared about the Scouts. When we talked about it, I felt that, despite everything, he was enthusiastic about life and expected there would be other experiences that would be interesting for him. He had soon realized I could not be close to him in the scouts, nor did I want to be, the Scouts did not cherish me. That much was evident by the slight signs and some more explicit warnings coming principally from the priests who worked alongside the leaders.

To begin with, they made Paoletto understand how inconvenient it was to have me arrive before the meeting ended and enter the Scouts’ headquarters instead of waiting politely outside. So I stopped going inside. Then it was pointed out to him how curious it was, even unusual, I would be waiting for him after each meeting and would accompany him everywhere, we were always together.

Those observations seemed valid to us, because in our unconscious happiness during those months, we did nothing to conceal our love. Certainly, we did not kiss, nor behave in any shocking fashion, not at that time. There were those long, sweet looks, and raptured expressions we could not hide. Such being often more eloquent than a kiss, more passionate than a hug. Someone noticed this, it may have been someone envious of others, either way it was reported, a complaint about us, to those who would listen. Paoletto was asked that I keep my distance from the headquarters, which I did, meeting him a little further away.

It was almost Christmas when he was approached by one of the priests. I did not witness the conversation. He told me the man had asked him, in not so many words, to stay away from me, to leave me alone, not to see me anymore. This was not the right tone to use with Paoletto, nor with Grandma Luigia who received a phone call using the same tone that very afternoon.

That evening Paoletto ran to my house. We were supposed to meet as usual on the street, near the Scouts’ headquarters, but he had freed himself early.

“This is the last time! I’m not going there anymore!” he said, in a single breath. “That asshole said a guy who takes drugs once won’t quit and you will soon come back to it. Then he said I should watch out for you. I would do well to leave you alone because who knows what other bad vices you have! Whitewashed sepulcher and asshole himself! He was really talking about homosexuality, but never said the word. He didn’t mention I could love you. He didn’t say anything about the two of us as a couple. He opened his mouth only to speak against you!”

“Whitewashed sepulcher and asshole? You’re something!” I said, laughing.

“Hey, it’s a phrase from the Gospel. St. Matthew, I believe! Not the asshole part!”

When he had begun to speak, he was frowning, but we ended up laughing and calming down. He told me about the warning phone call to his grandmother and the peppery reply that old communist woman had given the priest.

“He also said I had changed for the worse. Do you understand? Because of you! Think about it…” he laughed when he said that. “I left him in the middle of the street. Without saying a word. Without even saying good-bye to him. Grandma Luigia will be happy!”

Then he joked all evening long, but I knew he was furious. This, however, was the end of my and his adventure in the scouts. We parted company and were left alone. Alone with ourselves, as always, which was enough for us.

***

We joined the youth organization of the Italian Communist Party, driven by a political passion which had matured in both of us. For me it had been induced by his ideas and those of Grandma Luigia. They proposed a collaboration to manage a pirate radio station as part of a self-managed group of young communists. It was a phenomenon in Italy in the late seventies which was widespread. Pirate radio popped up everywhere, run by spontaneous groups and especially political organizations. Volunteers were sought to answer the call for assistance. It was the kind of venture where someone would answer, ‘Alright, I’ll do it!’ but with a certain inspired willingness to take part. Those were different times and people spoke about other issues, with different clichés.

We were asked to produce a program of classical music. It was considered an essential part of the radio station, to improve the image by adding culture. Absolutely no one wanted to do it or knew enough about classical music to attempt to put together a program. They needed someone who was committed, a widely used adjective at that time.

They probably asked us, because my mother was from Vienna and I was supposed to know a lot about classical music. Paoletto studied the piano so must have a good understanding too. Ultimately, they had the right idea, because I preferred listening to that kind of music and Paoletto studied it very seriously.

We accepted the engagement. Every Tuesday evening from nine to eleven. It was a bit heavy, but soon we began appreciating the loneliness. By that time everyone had left, and we were alone in the studio listening to the music we were broadcasting, inventing increasingly poetic and rhetorical comments on the pieces we aired. He would sit on my lap and I would hug him, or the other way around. I had kissed him on the neck, and we were aroused already, at the moment when our main opening theme started. It was a piece by Brahms, the ‘Adagio ma non troppo’ from the Second Symphony, which although passionate, would soothe any soul. But it didn’t work with our passion.

I spent those two hours with my hands in Paoletto’s underpants and his in mine. We would suspend our manipulations just long enough to announce the pieces. Frequently, when we were quite sure we would not be caught we had our underpants down and would make love in the director’s chair in front of the mixing desk. On those particular evenings we would program Mahler, a composer known for the dilation of time in his symphonies. I have always loved Mahler but associating him with our embraces and ecstasies made him epic, almost glorious. In those days merely naming him sent a little tingle through our bodies. That name became for us a synonym of concupiscence, consumed as strings and brass resonated and dissonated and the percussions marked the rhythm of love, of the pleasure we gave ourselves.

“Mahler, tonight?” asked my little devil over the phone.

“I’ll bring a couple of records anyway, who knows… maybe… if all goes well!” and I felt my excitement growing.

Then in the evening, if we were confident of our solitude, in the darkness and in the silence of the studio, those notes would start. The music was in our hearts and above all in our bodies, which vibrated with love, with sensuality, until we calmed down in the immensity of those adagios. Who knows if Mahler from his paradise, where he certainly conducts a magnificent orchestra, appreciated all the joy he gave us with his music?

One day Paoletto announced live on air that we were homosexuals. Which is when we were forced to stop. It was June 28th, Gay Pride Day. I don’t know how, he had discovered that anniversary. At the time, it was practically not mentioned at all. It was not the kind of news which the newspapers published, even the most progressive ones. America was too far away for us. But he had badgered me for days with this story. He had gone to look for details in the archives of some library and had told me all about the Stonewall riots.

He absolutely wanted to do something, but he didn’t know what. Then suddenly, a few days prior, he stopped pestering me. I had forgotten about the American homosexuals with their annual gay pride parade. Paoletto, instead, with the unconsciousness of his years, had decided for me. He selected a piece, but different to usual, he hid the title from me. To make sure he surprised me he brought the record in a separate envelope and hid the label with his hand.

“Wait and listen…” he said, fading the opening theme song, placing his hand over my eyes so that I wouldn’t look. I was distracted and happy to have a good excuse to kiss his hand.

As the theme song ended and Brahms returned to the misty plains of Germany, I heard some music I knew well. Notes I knew almost by heart, which he had taught me to love. He had started the record with a piano sonata by Beethoven, the Adagio of the Hammerklavier, Sonata no. 29.

Initially, the music is relaxed, performing it is apparently easy. Then it climbs and the emotion of listening is equal to the difficulty of playing it.

He kissed me on the mouth and when the music reached its complexity, which he knew so well from playing it to the point of exhaustion, when the music revealed all its pain, he turned the volume down and unexpectedly spoke.

“On the night between the 27th and 28th of June 1969, eight men from the First Police Division entered the now legendary Stonewall Inn, New York’s most famous homosexual nightclub.” Paoletto was reading from a piece of paper he had pulled out of his pocket. “What happened that night is undoubtedly ingrained in the memory of homosexuals all over the world, but what matters most, which history can never erase, is the courage and dignity with which gay people reacted to yet another police provocation…”

He was no longer reading, he had learned the text by heart, and he could look at me.

“… in memory of those events, ten years ago today, we celebrate the day of homosexual pride. Of my pride, of our pride, because I am homosexual and am proud to be myself.”

I listened to him with tears in my eyes and my heart in my throat because I was proud of him, but I was also afraid. I was certain, if someone heard us, and someone was there, we would bear the consequences of that crazy act of courage. Would they drive us away from there as well, or just marginalize us? Would they beat us? But I didn’t care, because Paoletto, having finished reading, turned up the volume of the music and held me in his arms. We kissed without speaking, then he played, without commenting, the rest of the evening’s program. We listened to the music and waited until eleven o’clock. We didn’t talk, we simply sat and cuddled.

It was the head of the Communist Youth Federation, a boy my age, worried about the reactions to our gesture, who called me at home the next morning. I had been waiting for his call and considering the best way to react, I had already mentally packed my bags. We would leave the radio station, which would have no more classical music broadcasts.

The final theme song, a joyful and solemn Elgar march, accompanied us as we walked away, even from those comrades who had tolerated us as long as we did not talk about it. In essence, it was that ‘Don’t ask and don’t tell,’ which later became popular.

I have asked myself many times, we have discussed it ourselves and with others we met later, was it right to announce our homosexuality? Knowing for sure they would get rid of us, would it have been more prudent to stay there fighting, like others who achieved some results?

I believe the justification for our behavior was our love, which made us consider our relationship with the world redundant. But I am left with the doubt that that ban was deliberately provoked by Paoletto who could not bear to share me with others. I did nothing to stop him. When I saw him take Beethoven’s Hammerklavier record I should have understood. When instead of announcing the sonata and commenting, he went looking for the piece that he loved playing more than any other, when I heard those notes I knew so well and caught his gaze, I should have known what he was going to do. Maybe I did, but didn’t want to do anything, so I kept silent, waiting for him to speak. I didn’t want to stop him. I couldn’t, I never could.

***

What turned our bond into a marriage had been the death of Grandma Luigia who left us in the winter before Paoletto turned eighteen. At Christmas she had begun feeling unwell while we were in Vienna. We spent some very agitated days because of the news coming from Italy. The thrombosis struck her in January, paralyzed almost her entire body. Giulio’s treatment and the love of everyone did not save her. She died on the first of March and for the second time Paoletto lost his mother, crying for her all the tears he had.

“What will become of him?” My mother asked me that question when it was clear that grandmother’s illness was irreversible. She was worried about both of us and so was I. She helped me, as she had habitually done.

“Do you think Paoletto will want to come and stay with us? At least until the end of high school. Then he can decide what to do!”

I hugged her.

Paoletto was too worried about his grandmother and certainly did not consider his future. I was living in a nightmare, imagining he would go far away, join his father in another city, I knew he would not refuse. No matter that Uncle Giulio was here to support us and despite his father having never really cared about his son, with the death of Grandma Luigia he might have wished to take back his son, and I was pessimistic. I already recognized difficulties, with so many obstacles for us. I never thought about the end of our love. Nor was I ever touched by doubts about him. In those days, however, I carried with me the pain of his suffering and the uncertainty about our future which we had already planned out.

My medical degree, if it had been as timely as I had hoped, would have preceded by only one year, his degree in mathematical sciences. That was the faculty he intended to attend at the end of high school. I would have avoided military service, at the time compulsory for twelve months. In the gap year I would have worked on the best option for my specialization, almost certainly in the United States. After his graduation Paoletto would join me in America.

Would we have made it?

There were many unknowns, but I had enough help in the academic environment for the project to go ahead. He was not enthusiastic about the idea of using my family’s friends to achieve our goals, but I had almost managed to convince him to accept my plan. We both would have graduated in Italy and gone to the United States for my specialization and his PhD as it was beginning to be known as even in Italy. The job prospects would have depended on our efforts and the results achieved. Even on that, I was not particularly bothered, because with our friends help we would both have had every opportunity possible.

Only one thing he didn’t want any help on was military service. Not that he wanted to do it, that would have meant losing a year and certainly spending it away from me, but he had discovered being homosexual could serve to get discharged. Paoletto had decided to utilize this to avoid military service.

“Have you thought about it? For the Italian State, homosexuality was still a sexual deviation!” he told me, one day at the height of his frustration. “Anyway, there is this Article 28 of some law that defines us as ‘abnormal and psychopathic personalities,’ which also allows us to be considered discharged from military service!” he concluded triumphantly.

The law provided for a discharge as incompatible for military service, but with the explicit mention of the reason. This meant being branded for life and effecting job prospects. We would have discussed it a lot in due course, but I already knew he would do as he wanted.

“I want nothing more than to be myself!” He confided in me. How could I oppose that? But I was nervous at the idea. When the time came, obviously, he acted as he had decided to do and was discharged in accordance with Article 28. Fortunately, his academic merits were able to obscure that sort of stain which stayed on his curriculum vitae.

***

“Do you want to talk?” I asked, one Saturday night.

We were watching over Grandma. He wanted to do it, there was no way to convince him otherwise and of course I was there with him. Since she became sick, Grandma Luigia had been helped by a lot of people. Her son Giulio and Paoletto, first of all, then other doctors, arterial disease specialists, cardiologists and anyone who could give advice and opinions. Then a platoon of nurses who often ran away frightened by the character of the old woman which had not improved with her incapacity.

The most challenging period was the one between the first attack, which had paralyzed her and confined her to bed, and the second one that made her lose consciousness for good.

She spent her last days supported only by her heart which did not want to stop beating. She never recovered her senses again, which distressed Paoletto so much. The last words he heard from her were a recommendation to come home from school soon. The attack struck her in the morning when we were all far away and only an unknown nurse caught her last conscious glance.

Paoletto felt as if he had been defrauded of the last viaticum of the woman who had been his mother. He found her with her mouth half-open, surrounded by doctors, and realized that she had gone to a place from which she would never return.

That night, one of the last before Grandma left us, we were together next to her bed to watch over her. I was almost a nurse, not yet a doctor. He with the touching, impossible hope that Grandma Luigia would come back lucid and perhaps she would recover by some miracle, to guide his upbringing once again. Because he still felt too young to grow up alone and without Grandma’s guidance.

I asked him if he felt like talking. As a way to divert him, because he had been there too long staring at the bed, with his grandmother immobile. He only listened to her labored breathing.

“Yes. Go ahead, talk!” he said, and didn’t even turn around to look at me.

“Grandma Luigia will not make it. You know that?”

“Yes, I know!” and finally he turned around. “Do they teach you phrases like that to say to comfort the relatives of the sick?” he answered me, frustrated. “At the University, I mean!”

In another moment we would have quarreled. That time I didn’t feel like it, so I smiled at him instead.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t taken that exam yet!”

He returned my smile and came closer. I embraced him. He held me.

“I’m afraid, Roby!”

“Of what? I am here with you. For everything and forever, remember?”

“But without her, how will I manage? How will the two of us continue?”

“Tomorrow morning, Inge, she’ s coming to prepare breakfast for us. I think she will want to talk to you!”

Inge, Ingeborg, my mother. Immediately after our reconciliation she asked Paoletto to call her by her name. It was an act of extraordinary delicacy which I appreciated so much that I still carry it in my heart today.

“I believe she will ask you to come and live with us for as long as you want to. In fact, I think she will ask to be your mother. To be your father and for everything else, I think I can manage myself.”

I can see this scene again in my mind and I realize, in its strange and twisted form, it was a marriage proposal. I was really asking him to marry me. I was anticipating the proposal that my mother would make to him the next morning. So the form was respected.

“Will you come?”

“And my father, his wife? Uncle Giulio? What will they say?”

“They will understand, and we can explain it to them, again and again if they don’t understand it by themselves! You don’t want to go far away, do you?”

“No!” he said, frightened even by the idea. And that reaction, his trembling, as he approached me so I could hug him, all of this gladdened my heart.

“Our house is big. Mom said that for the time being we will free up two of the rooms upstairs for you, so you can bring all the furniture you want. In addition, she thinks we could get the ground floor fixed up and live there together. The two of us, alone! What do you think about it?”

“Are you sure I won’t be a bother? Do you really want me?”

A kiss concluded the discussion. We were hugging all night long. Grandma Luigia was a little restless, but most of the time it was enough that Paoletto touched her hand and she immediately returned to her torpor.

The next morning my mother spoke with Paoletto for over an hour and I never asked either of them what they had talked about. They must have signed a new parental contract. Although, I don’t know if there ever was one. When they returned to me, everything was decided. I had a new brother, a husband, and a son. We had to ask Paoletto’s father and Uncle Giulio for permission for everything, but I was not worried about it. Not anymore.

In the animated days surrounding Grandma Luigia’s death, Paoletto came into contact with his father for something other than the pleasantries of those who see each other occasionally. The woman who had driven them away was dead and father and son were finally able to cross the barrier she had built between them. He spent a lot of time with him and I became madly jealous. I started wishing he would die. I even planned to kill him.

The man looked nothing like Paoletto, neither physically nor in character. I could say there was no sympathy between them, and he was clearly unprepared to deal with a son he had never met. I, rather than helping the poor man to overcome the embarrassment of dealing with his newfound son, detested him with all my might and only regained my composure when I saw him leave. I was certain he would not return, and he never did.

***

When you love someone, you care more about them than about yourself. You are terrified for their health, fearing their suffering more than your own. It is easier to imagine yourself close to death than to accept the idea that those you love can leave you suffering in their absence. These were the thoughts I entertained while watching over Paoletto. Maybe I had already had similar ideas, even if I was less aware, about losing my father.

During Paoletto’s illness I completely abandoned my work to stay by his side at every possible moment.

“Because of me you are spending horrible days.”

“Shut up, you fool!”

“No, that’s how it is! And I remind you of your father, I know! And it makes you suffer more!”

He looked out into the garden and I realized he had gone to sit him down, or rather, I had sat him down on the armchair my father used to use. More than twenty years had passed or had it? My father had been sitting in that same armchair, looking at the bougainvillea, wondering if he was going to see it bloom. He knew he would see the buds, but not the flowers, and so it happened with surgical precision. Just as I knew at that moment that Paoletto would perhaps see the colors of spring, but not those of summer.

“It is me who has become like your father, Roby. Isn’t it true?”

We knew it was just like that.

“Isn’t it ridiculous? I who never had a father, rejected as a son. No, not refused, taken away from my father by my grandmother’s good soul. I found myself, at the age of fifteen, acting as your father. Have I been a good father to you, my love?”

“The best.”

I could no longer speak. Something tightened my throat. For the second time in my life, it seemed I was about to say goodbye to my father.

***

The trip to Vienna was our first voyage together, the first of many we made in recent years.

We left from the central station in the afternoon. To say goodbye there was Grandma Luigia in tears, accompanied by Uncle Giulio, also saddened by our departure. Paoletto instead was radiant. I felt an intimate happiness that was, at the same time, satisfaction, and expectation. I looked at him and I realized I was waiting with desire for the moment when we would be alone. I didn’t know how and when we would be, because we were travelling in a wagon-lit with my mother. I wanted to hold him and kiss him. In my thoughts I stopped at that because I felt my intense excitement. It was not an embarrassing growing hardness, but the simple awareness of my body, the perceptiveness of my skin.

Given the short notice we hadn’t had the chance to find any accommodation for Paoletto, so we intended to leave mom the lower bunk and we boys would make do in the upper one. We thought the wagon-lit compartment was big and comfortable enough to accommodate all three of us.

Paoletto’s serene happiness calmed my excitement for a while and also infected my mother who agreed to play cards with us. Another surprise. Paoletto made her laugh and, as I remember, that had not happened since my father’s illness. I enjoyed watching them discussing the game animatedly as they were playing. They were the two people I loved the most. It was for them I lived. Had they not been there my life would have had no meaning.

Now Paoletto is gone, and my mother has after some time found a partner.

We had dinner and when we returned from dining, we found the bunks prepared for the night. We waited in the corridor for her to get ready for bed.

“Are you going to sleep?” I whispered.

“I am going to sleep. Because what do you want to do?” he asked, alarmed.

“To caress you!”

“No, we cannot. There is your mother!”

“She will sleep.”

He gave me a cunning smile.

“Well… If you say so. We can always come to an agreement.”

Under the sheets we lay down so that I hugged him, and he could fall asleep and put his head on my shoulder and pillow. We hadn’t undressed much, but at least we were in our underwear and T-shirts. It had been fun taking our clothes off while we were climbing around the upper bunk. Taunting and nudging each other, threatening the other to push him off in his underwear. My mother’s presence didn’t intimidate us at all and was soon ignored. We kissed. Next trying to move as little as possible we slipped our hands into our underpants. The caresses we gave ourselves were silent and discreet. We could not make any noise and we had to understand each other by touch alone. Our erections were immediate and while our lips remained glued to each other, we touched one another with our hands, not going further for fear of being unable to stop and being noisy. The deep sleep of youth born from tiredness crept up on us. Our hands tightened around the objects of our desire, our mouths united, our eyes already closed.

The pillow, thin and awfully hard, was rough in contact with the skin and helped to wake me up, along with a somewhat abrupt braking of the train. It was past dawn, a light glow filtered through the window, darkened by the curtain, but enough to make me distinguish every detail. I discovered that during the night Paoletto had slid out of my hug and had in his turn wrapped me in his protective grip. That must have been the appropriate position for the two of us. Him sheltering me, even from myself, and not me him who was younger. It had to be so, even while sleeping, in the unconsciousness of sleep, we were willing to take that position. I was anxious to tell him.

I distinguished between my mother’s steady breathing and Paoletto’s, slightly harsher rhythm, they were still sleeping profoundly. My lips were a few centimeters from his. I approached him and kissed him. Once and then again, until he shook. I kept stroking him with my lips, and he opened his eyes. He sighed, perhaps in protest.

“We are already in Austria,” I whispered.

He grumbled a yes and closed his eyes. I kissed him again and closed my eyes too. I reopened them immediately and I realized that, while continuing to hug me, he was staring at me frowning.

I got closer until I touched his body. I felt him in front of me and took his cock in my hand. It was hard. I caressed him and felt him adjust to facilitate my movements. Then he touched me too.

“I woke you up to tell you that I love you,” I murmured, “and that I feel protected by you, by your hugs. I suppose for my age I should have been the one helping you, but you are better at it.”

“And you couldn’t wait until later to tell me?”

“No, I had to do it now. But now you can sleep, Vienna is far away!”

“Do we have to sleep like this?”

And he gently shook what he was holding so delicately.

“Yes,” I said and caressed him, “we are like this. Can you do that?”

“I believe so.”

It was in Vienna that we made love and Paoletto gave me his virginity.

At my mother’s suggestion, our grandparents had set us up in a little wooden house in the woods. It was like living in a fairy tale home, but it was all true. It was the little house my grandparents had had built at the beginning of the war, in the Wienerwald, the forest surrounding Vienna. The family had lived there to protect themselves from the bombing. As a child I had spent many summer nights there with my cousins and now I was back there with Paoletto. It was another dream come true.

During the day, we would go around Vienna, which is my other city.

One evening my grandfather and uncle took us to Grinzing to taste and drink the sweet wine in the Heuriger, which are the taverns where local winemakers serve their new wine. When we returned to the cottage, we were moderately drunk. Paoletto more so than me, it seemed. We had eaten and drunk in a special Heuriger because it was situated in one of the seventy houses in Vienna where Beethoven had lived more than one hundred and fifty years ago. This had inspired the musician in my lover. The Sturm, a partially fermented wine sold there, light and sparkling, had done the rest. We laughed like crazy all the way in the car and when we were alone, we discovered we were already embracing. Maybe we had been like that for a long time, in spite of our chaperones who we had evidently not scandalized at all.

“You stink of wine,” he said.

“And you are drunk…”

“Really? Then take advantage of me!”

“How?”

“Fuck me!”

“Eh… How?”

“I said… Fuck me!”

And he pressed himself on me. He kissed me and I hugged him more tightly.

“What are you waiting for?” He said, “I want to do it now. I desire you. I want you to make love to me. You fool! You know how to do it. You know what you have to do. Don’t you?”

He pushed me against the wall, while he began undressing me.

“You know what to do to me. The things you did with René… everything, everything! Do everything to me… now, tonight!”

I was dazed by the wine and excited by those words.

“Yes, love…” I mumbled.

We used to sleep in the little room above. The room was reached by using a spiral staircase that joined the two floors of the little house. It was so narrow we had to go up one at a time. As we climbed up we kept getting stuck, because neither of us wanted to give way or leave the other’s embrace. This made us burst into exhilarating, uncontrolled laughter.

I found myself with my back to the steps, almost twisted on the axis of the staircase, while he was on top of me and trying to pull down my pants. I had my hands under his shirt and feeling with my fingers, hypnotized by the line of his spine. Then with my elbows I climbed a few more steps.

Paoletto found himself in front of my cock which was already throbbing, waiting for attention. I was very drunk and only an insignificant part of me still maintained the idea of escaping that seduction. I didn’t, why should I? He took it in his mouth, without hesitation. To tell the truth, we had done some experimenting in the previous days. He began to lick it like an ice cream. With the same concentration as when he was holding an overflowing cone in his hand from which he struggled not to lose even a drop. He was very greedy. At that moment he had that same intense, concentrated expression.

I was in a state of semi-unconsciousness. The wine had hopelessly confused me and looking at him I could only giggle. But then I got serious again because his tongue was transmitting waves of pleasure. He did it for a time that I could not measure. He stared at me, looked up at me and his gaze told me he was not uncomfortable with what we were doing. If I had been sober, perhaps, I would have understood he was not as drunk as he pretended to be.

Finally, we reached the bed, but in between we had lost almost all our clothes and between the two of us had only one sock on. I remember the white sock, but I don’t know who was wearing it.

We hugged each other, slipping under the covers. We trembled at the contact with the cold sheets and he squeezed me, to protect me. We were exhausted because the climb had been long and tiring. Due to the kisses we had given one another on each step. Because of the hugs. Because of the struggle we had made getting rid of our clothes, the anxiety and excitement that had assailed us.

He was clinging to me, and I was crouching against him, looking for and enjoying the warmth of his body. In a darkness that was not complete, because the moonlight filtered through the skylight which opened onto the sloping roof. We paused to warm up and recover our breath.

“Take me!”

He was not drunk. He was conscious and asked that I make him mine. His body, desired by me with passion and pain, was finally offered to me. And I made him mine, without more words or hesitation.

I moved until I knelt down between his legs and kissed his belly. I got rid of the blankets. The room was cold, but inside we were burning with desire and no longer felt the outside temperature. After I had covered him with kisses, I tried to make him turn over, but he wouldn’t move.

“I want to look at you while you do it,” he murmured, “Please love, let me look at you!”

I had overheard his distant voice, asking me to take him. Then he had spoken again, and I was as if enraptured by the magic of that moment. I nodded and shifted his legs. I moved in between and my tongue found and licked that special place, anointing him with saliva. I wet my cock and moved back towards him. He stared into my face intensely. He was focused on what I was doing, but more on me, than my actions.

The moonlight highlighted the delicate lines of his face producing little shadows. And at the bottom of his concentrated gaze I could only see love. His eyes shone. It was my imagination, but I remember seeing them shine. I touched him with my moist tip and pushed forward slightly. I felt a contraction in his legs which I held over my shoulders, but he relaxed them immediately and I pushed again, gently. We looked into each other’s eyes. I was trying to see if I was hurting him, to make sure he wasn’t in pain. I pushed into him and penetrated him deeper when I was inside him, he closed his eyes. I moved my hips and a moan escaped him. Immediately, I felt his contractions pressing my cock. His body stretched and then fell back. He was coming. His orgasm conquered me too. I closed my eyes and thrust myself inside him with more strength. My movements lifted him again, making us fall back together. I reached my own climax and then we fell exhausted on the bed, in a tangle of arms and legs. I remained inside him.

He opened his eyes and sought my mouth, we kissed. I moved slowly, slipping out of him. He touched the inside of my leg and then took hold of my cock. He caressed it.

“We were one person before. But even now I am yours! Isn’t that true?”

“Yes…”

“You have been inside me…”

“…I want you to do the same. I desire you too.”

“We have time. I will do it when I am ready!”

“When?”

“I don’t want to do it now, nor tomorrow, nor in a week’s time. Give me time. For now, you are enough for me. I always wanted to be yours. We must do it again. Often, always!”

He had decided. For me and for him and my protests were of no use. He did so only sometime later.

***

Now he is no longer with me. He is gone.

“Have you ever betrayed me?”

“Only once.”

“You haven’t told me…”

“I was always ashamed of it. It was in Boston. You were still in Italy, and I felt alone. I believe that Greg took advantage of me. We were drunk, I think…”

We broke out laughing. What had happened was so far back in time that Greg looked like only a faded figure in our memories. In the memory of those who had known him as well as in mine. Greg was a friend for a few months and a lover only for a couple of times.

“And you?” I asked, as a joke, sure he would answer no. That he hadn’t even thought of betraying me in any way.

“Yes…” and he caught my incredulous look, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Should I?” I said, while my face expressed all the skepticism it could.

“You’d better believe it!”

“And why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Skepticism and surprise, but then foolishly, also suspicion and anger.

“Because you would not have understood. Because you would have made a tragedy out of it and the petting I did deserved nothing more than my repentance.”

“The petting… you made-out? With whom?”

Anger at what? With whom, with him who was in front of me, slumped over the armchair?

“He was someone like you. When I realized how much you resembled each other, I let him go. He wasn’t worth it.”

“But who? When?”

“You are jealous. You see?”

“Of course, I am jealous!”

“At the high school! The last year!”

“At the…”

“You see, you are not yet ready to know? Not even after twenty years and after you said you betrayed me too?”

“You are right, sorry!”

“I apologize! But yes, I do apologize… I don’t think you ever met him, but he was nice. He was only months older than me. When he knew I was gay, he came looking for me and told me he had some questions about himself. He didn’t know exactly what he was. Maybe he was a bit gay too. That day I was feeling a little crazy and I was angry with you, so I told him to his face that there was only one way to know for sure. Which was to try having sex. He asked me with whom he could do that. ‘With me!’ I told him, because he was really cute and that day you and I had had a fight. Obviously, we talked about it in more detail and what I’m telling you are just the essentials. But we ended up doing things in his car, while you were desperately looking for me, not even imagining where I had ended up.”

“Now I remember…” I interrupted him.

“Exactly! And you don’t deserve knowing anything else…”

“Why? I want to know everything!”

But I was already joking and smiling at him.

“He was gay. Very much so. Very much indeed. It is enough for you to know that. But he was undecided. As you were, a few years before, and I left him alone. Also, because I felt upset at the idea of having betrayed you. You deserved it, however, because you made me angry. But I didn’t really want to betray you… Just to teach you a little lesson… And…”

His concentration suddenly failed. He was exhausted. It happened in those days. I waited for him to recover.

“Do you forgive me?” he asked, smiling, after having dozed off for a few minutes.

I told him I did, and he stared out towards the garden, looking at I don’t know what. I knew he could see practically nothing at all, little more than distinguishing light and shadow.

“Has God been bad to us?”

“A little bit, perhaps!”

“What will be next? I am afraid.”

“You will go and wait for me in a faraway place. This time it is certain I will arrive!”

“Another time? I’ve already waited for you… What has it been, three years?” he thought about it a little lost. ”Yes, it’s been three years!”

“It was twenty years ago.”

“I will go where time does not count.”

“But I will join you soon.”

“No… stop it, stop it,” he cried.

He cried more and more since the illness had worsened. He was at the end. I knew it. In front of the window, with the gray sky of that afternoon.

“I don’t have much time left.”

Instead of replying, I clasped his hand and kissed it.

“Not much, right?”

His voice was a whisper, reduced to the breath he could articulate in words. His weakness made me understand that for him there were only a few hours, or a few days.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to be convincing. Trying to believe in what I was saying.

“I worry about you. What will you do afterwards, without me?”

“Don’t worry. I will do something!”

“You have to promise me you won’t do anything foolish and then swear to me you will go back to work. I want you to become the doctor you have always been. The man I love!”

“Paoletto…”

Now it was me who was crying. I did not have to. I was no longer a good doctor, nor the kind lover I wanted to be with all my might. I had returned to being only the cowardly boy who had abandoned him and who was now afraid of suffering and being alone.

“Don’t cry. Don’t waste this time,” he scolded me. “I have no more. I want you to promise me what I asked.”

“Alright.”

“Swear it, Roby!”

“I swear to you.”

“On our love?”

“On ourselves and on our love…”

I kept crying. I was committing myself again, but I couldn’t deny it. I had always tried being strong. I cried that night, after I had given him the sedative to put him to sleep. During the day, I could usually overcome the despair I felt.

“So? How much time do I have?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know how much it is… And I know it is little. But how little? You can predict it. I know it!”

“I don’t… I don’t think it’s much…”

“Then it’s the end.”

He closed his eyes. He took my hand quickly and held it as I didn’t think he could anymore, but it took all his strength, his last final effort.

“Now everything is settled. Everything is accomplished. The pianist who hated Mozart because of you is leaving… I love you so much, Roby!”

The effort of speaking had exhausted him. He abandoned himself with his head bent over his chest. I took him back to bed. He no longer weighed very much. For some days now, I had not been using the wheelchair.

He closed his eyes and never woke up again.

Epilogue

So far, this story has been sad. I wrote it to remember him and how happy I was.

I didn’t destroy the bougainvillea, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle, but with each flowering I collected the scented branches and placed them on the keyboard of his piano. Nature, the seasons, were there to remind me that in spite of everything life went on.

I never found the courage to break my last oath. I realized to kill myself would take more courage than I had. I already had some experience on the subject, so I didn’t even try. Even letting oneself die of boredom or starvation, takes effort, and thought, and I couldn’t even think.

Then, my mother, my friends, and especially Marco, forced me to react, together they supported me through the depression that had plagued me. Finally, I began to work again, to treat people and to cure some of them. Above all, this helped me to heal myself, although my life inevitably dragged on in a colorless way. Paoletto had always been its stimulus and catalyst. In the last twenty years of our life, it was him I thought about at all times and of course he thought about me. That was how we did it.

At Marco’s insistence, I accepted a position at an American University and moved to Boston where I unexpectedly began to find pleasure and enjoyment in my work. Recognizing the good I could do for others, which came through trying to help and improve my own life. They remain years of exciting and exhausting work, but they were helpful in rebuilding my soul devastated by the loss of Paoletto. At first, I mourned him every night, every moment when I was alone, when I did not have a patient whose condition worried me. So, I always took on the most difficult cases and often solved them out of desperation. My colleagues thought I was exceptionally competent, for myself, I was merely trying to keep my personal suffering at bay.

I often talked to Paoletto and was sure he listened to me and even came to me with advice when I had doubts about how to proceed in a surgical operation, or with my life. I defended myself as best I could, and he was always generous with his advice. He told me to stop crying every night.

That was the true strength of autosuggestion. But there was no need to repeat it. I already knew it.

I had been in America for five years, Paoletto had left me six years before, and I still missed him like the first day.

One evening I returned from work and found Ines sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands. She was the woman who cleaned my house and with whom I had exchanged a few words in the last three years, since she had started working for me. We said goodbye to each other in the morning when she arrived at my house and I left for work, when I returned she had already run home to take care of her children.

From the few words we had exchanged over the years, I knew she was of Latin American origin, she was a single mother of twins, who were four years old. Leonard and Noah, whose father had left before they were born and had never acknowledged them.

Ines had almost always been alone in the world. Abandoned by her family when they discovered she was pregnant. As well as by the young man who did not want her to carry on with the pregnancy. She had left college and started work, looking after and managing among a thousand difficulties to love and raise the two children. She had just turned twenty-four.

That night she was distraught because she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The disease was in an advanced stage. She was desperate, she knew I was a doctor and had waited for me to arrive home, to ask for advice. From the papers she showed me it was clear there was not much more medical science could do.

My choice to study medicine and then to specialize in cardiac surgery had certainly been motivated by the desire to follow in my father’s footsteps. But more intimately it was linked to the fact that by dealing with hearts, I would never have to deal with cancer patients. Unfortunately, after my father, I had had to assist and live through Paoletto’s illness. Now, while reading Ines’ reports, I wondered if I was entering another nightmare.

That night I dreamt of Paoletto caressing my forehead and hair.

“The moment I was waiting for has arrived…” he said, with his harmonious voice. A voice I could hardly remember when I was awake. “You can do a good deed and this time don’t make a mistake. Above all, try not to run away!”

He warned me with one raised finger before the dream finished and he returned to that place where he had promised to wait for me. A place I would reach when it was time, not before, because I had sworn I would not take any selfish action. It was how he had arranged everything, and he would remind me of it every time he came to me in my dreams.

“Remember what you swore.” He generally concluded, it’s not time. In this dream he had something else in store for me.

The next morning, I accompanied Ines as she underwent a new series of tests which served to confirm the previous diagnosis. She only had a few months. That same evening she returned to my house and this time she had her two children with her.

“I don’t know who to leave them with!”

The two children were delightful. Little angels, four years old, a bit sleepy, with black hair and eyes that would have been very bright had they been open. As I contemplated them, abandoned to the sleep of tiredness, embracing each other as only twins can, I thought how nice it would be to watch them playing in the garden of my house, growing up in my city. In Italy they would certainly have felt at ease.

I had this thought while looking at a picture of Paoletto, one of the many I kept in the house. He was smiling and content, because before I took it I promised him I would do something he cared about very much. I do not recall what.

“Ines, I’m going to make you a proposal, but know, whatever you decide, I’m going to help you anyway!”

That evening we outlined our future. That of Ines which we knew would unfortunately be short and mine which I hoped would be long enough to take care of her children. Some law firms in the United States specialize in everything and it wasn’t difficult to get one to assist me in the complicated mission of securing a future for Leonard and Noah. A future I hoped would be happy.

My mother and her partner had been happily married for a long time and they were both recently retired. They arrived a couple of weeks later. In time to attend my wedding with Ines and to help me arrange my new life as a father, husband, and once again as a nurse. Marco also showed up for the wedding and was my best man, as I had been for his wedding many years before.

“It’s odd, but you deserve some happiness, and these two children will certainly be able to give it to you!” Declared my mother when I told her she would be a grandmother.

Marco was genuinely happy for me. For the initiative I was taking and the idea of enjoying two nephews too.

The adoption procedure for Leonard and Noah fortunately went through without too many problems. Ines’ illness gave her the certainty of leaving her kids in the loving arms of two happy grandparents. In the arms of a playful uncle and in the trembling hands of an inexperienced but motivated father.

As was my habit, I asked myself what Paoletto would have done in my place.

“Close your eyes and try to love them as only you can! There was always so much love in you.” I listened to his advice and I did just that.

For me, meanwhile, the time had come to decide whether to return to Italy or stay in Boston. The decision now involved my children and I paid it due attention. Not even Paoletto in my dreams could give me directions. He kept repeating that the sun and the sky of our city were unique. The house was big enough and needed joy and liveliness after so much sadness. But he never decided to say what I wanted to hear him say.

Marco thought about it and convinced me.

In due time he had married, as everyone had expected him to. His marriage had never been happy, and he had no children. On the threshold of fifty years of age, his wife had decided that it was time to change something in her life and had asked Marco to give back her freedom. Marco had immediately agreed and then jumped on the first plane to Boston.

I found him outside the door one morning. The little devils immediately jumped on him wrapping their arms around his neck. Every time he met them, Uncle Marco won them over with his friendliness and his ability to play as if he were five years old. When he managed to free himself, but only because the two children had to go to school, he explained to me why he had come all the way to America to look for me.

“I know it’s a bit late, Roby. I also know that your heart will always be Paoletto’s, but if you would let me, I would be a little help with the kids. Do you want me in your life?”

“Would you come to live in Boston?” I asked incredulously.

“No, are you crazy? But you can return to Italy!”

“I am in!” I said, without even thinking about it and hugged him tightly.

That night Paoletto confirmed to me I was doing the right thing and repeated that the sky and the sun of Italy were unique.

Now I am getting ready to go to the Town Hall. I will appear in front of the Civil Status Officer who will celebrate our wedding. In Italy, the law that allows the union between people of the same sex has just been approved. It has a different name, but in essence it is a marriage. We waited for our boys to turn eighteen so as adults they could be our best men.

In this hall of ceremonies, everyone was moved.

Marco, with whom I have been living for all these years and who, together with me, has been the father of the boys. My mother and her partner who are the happiest grandparents in the world. And then Uncle Giulio who tries to smile at me amid tears of happiness and nostalgia. They also try not to cry, Leonard and Noah, who now speak our dialect better than if they were born here and are honored to be the best men and the first witnesses of this ceremony.

As I hug my boys and Marco happily, I feel a tender caress on my cheek. It is Paoletto confirming I finally did the right thing!

The End