Dear Project,
I start from the beginning, I’m almost 27, I always knew I was gay and it was natural for me, never a problem and never a doubt. I had absolutely no problems with it, but the others had them and I could only pay the consequences. I have never been good at school and I have always had a lot of problems for this, but perhaps this also helped me a lot, focusing my parents’ attention on school problems more than on the fact that I had no girls around. After my high school diploma, I attended a very specialized semester course and there I did pretty well, even better than the other guys. At the end of the course they called me for an interview in a large Company, and against all my expectations they hired me. My parents didn’t see my new job favorably, because I would have had to go out of my region to move to a very distant place and the wages were low and my father would have had to pay for my accommodation near the Company. Anyway, then my father ended up saying yes and I left.
I had turned 22 a few months before and I finally felt free, but I was also very scared, I did a six-month internship in the Company and then they confirmed my permanent employment. The real salary was better than what I had supposed and furthermore I had no expenses, because from Monday to Saturday, for lunch, I ate at the Company canteen, but since the industrial production was continuous, there was also a canteen for dinner, and also in the morning for breakfast, but for dinner and breakfast I had to pay, but the costs were very low and the food was good and plentiful. In short, after three months, I told my father that I was able by myself to pay for my accommodation and that he would no longer have to sign for me the monthly money transfer, and he felt very relieved because my parents aren’t rich at all.
I started to look for a rented house, even a very little but a house that had to be exclusively mine, I found one not very close to the Company, more or less a kilometer and a half, 35 minutes on foot walking briskly, but it was a single house with a small piece of vegetable garden, no more than 400 m2. As soon as I could, even losing some money, I left the room I had rented and moved to my new house. I had discovered that in the Company it was possible to be available to work overtime, I had no family load and with overtime I was able not only to pay for the house but also to put some money aside and do some extra shopping (a camera, and with some effort a new PC).
I felt like a king, but I was alone. Obviously in the Company I had started looking around, like all gay guys do, looking for others like me, but frankly they were all much older than me, all or almost married with children. In the department where I worked, the youngest one after me was 36 years old, he was bald and had a belly that came out of his belt and moreover he was probably straight. In the department we used to work hard and had no time to waste, I tried to do my best. I saw that the supervisors sometimes scolded some of the employees who had done their job wrong, but they never scolded me.
One day, unexpectedly, the shift supervisor comes to me and tells me that I know how to do my job and that I do it well. I feel very encouraged. In the sector entrusted to me I had noticed that one of the machines that I knew best was not set up in the best way and that there were operations that, with those settings, required much more time and much more human control. It occurs to me that there may be a solution, I say this to the shift supervisor who, however, does not take me too seriously and only tells me that he will talk of it to the engineer responsible for automation. I think he told me so just to say something and from this I deduce that the story is over.
Two days later the shift supervisor comes to me and tells me that Engineer Bordin (modified name) wants to talk to me at the end of the shift. I feel very gratified, at the end of the shift I wash my hands and also my face well and go to the Administration Department. The environment is luxurious but without exaggerating, I find the Engineer’s office, the secretary, a lady of about 55, tells me that the Engineer will arrive in minutes and lets me in the room to seat. I feel intimidated, there is a computer turned on with drawings of production lines and folders of papers everywhere. After not more than five minutes the Engineer arrives and here I have a heart attack, I was expecting an elderly man and instead he is a beautiful guy who in my opinion is not even thirty years old, he smiles at me immediately, we shake hands, he has a nice warm and strong hand, and then he tells me that the shift supervisor told him that the setting of an industrial machine could be changed and that I had proposed the change, and he asks me what it is. I try to explain it to him, but it is clear that these are things he doesn’t understand at all.
At one point he asks me: “Are you sure of what you say?” I tell him that I think I’m quite sure of it but that I should do a test, that is, I should reset the machine in the new way and see what happens by letting the machine perform automatically the same work it does now, just to confirm that it is able to do everything automatically. He asks me how long the test could take, I tell him: “At most 10-15 minutes”, he tells me to do the test and to let him know if it works. If the shift supervisor has doubts or problems I have to tell him that I have been authorized by engineer responsible for automation. He adds that I have to send him a report on the outcome of the test as soon as possible, then he smiles at me, we shake newly hands and we say goodbye.
I rush to the shift supervisor who opens his arms and says to me: “Okay, but we must stop production line for the shortest time possible.” We agree that I would have done the test between 3.00 and 3.30 in the night, when the system is operating at a lower speed, just to minimize the effects caused by the interruption of the production line. I go home, I study all the technical manuals, I write the reset program, reread the programs dozens of times, then I mount the simulator on my PC and proceed to start the standard execution of the piece. It seems that everything works perfectly. I load the program on the pen and start writing the report for the Engineer, assuming that everything will work as expected even on the real machine. At half past one in the morning I leave my house and go to the Company. I send the production stop signal for 15 minutes, “due to maintenance” at 3.05 o’clock. I load the reset program, insert a piece to be worked and at 3.09.10 a perfect piece leaves the machine, even better by eye than what was obtained with the old procedure.
I leave the machine with my settings and at 3.12.00 I restart the production cycle. I take a piece made with the old technique and the one made with the new one on which I put a drop of red paint. Then I come home, complete the relationship. In practice with the new settings the time was reduced from 7 minutes and 10 seconds to 4 minutes and 10 seconds and there was no sign of work discontinuity on the piece. I go home exhausted but happy. The shift starts at 7.00 am. I go to the shift supervisor, tell him that I did the test and that it went well, he replies that he has seen a some acceleration of the line and tells me that I have done a good job. I ask him if I can go to the Engineer, he says yes and I go.
The Engineer is not there but the secretary calls him on his cell phone and tells me to sit down and wait. He arrives after a few seconds, smiles at me, tells me that he is happy to see me and informs me that the shift supervisor has detected a line acceleration of almost 7%. I give him the report, he reads it or better he just looks at it, then he offers me a coffee. I’m afraid he asks me something about school, but he doesn’t, we have coffee together, then we talk a little, he asks me how long I’ve been in the Company, where I live, where I worked before, how I find myself with my work colleagues, I dare to turn the same questions to him and he answers me in a very friendly tone, he trusts me, he tells me that he is 29 years old, that he has been in the Company for three years but is very stressed from work, he doesn’t mention wife or children or girlfriends, maybe those are too personal matters, then he asks me for my cell phone number, writes it on my technical report and puts it in the drawer. Then he tells me that he is sorry to have to send me back to the ward because he sees that I’m a very good guy and he dismisses me with a stronger and warmer handshake than usual and that lasts a few moments longer than expected. I go back to my department and feel very excited.
The shift supervisor calls me and asks me if I know also another automatic control machine, he explains that there are problems that have never been solved, and he tells me that, when I have time, I could also take a look to that machine. I tell him it’s okay.
Project, I don’t go further in telling the details, in no more two months all the automatic control machines have been reset and reprogrammed to optimize the production, the times have been reduced by almost 20% and the production standard has improved. Since I’m very young, compared to their standards, my colleagues don’t look at me with envy and the supervisors encourage me a lot. I have been to the Engineer four times in a month and a very particular mutual sympathy has been created, there is only a problem, he is a manager and there is a lot of hierarchy in the company and the rules must be respected.
To make the English language speakers understand exactly what follows, I must first explain to them that in Italian, when speaking formally with a person you don’t know and with whom you are not familiar, we don’t use the second person of the singular, but the third person of the singular “feminine” also in reference to a man. For example, to a friend you say “today you came to visit me” (that is, you use “you”) but in reference to an important person or to a person you don’t know, you have to use an expression that in English would sound more or less like this: “She came to see me today” (i.e. you use “she”)
Well, however, one evening, after a little more than two months from our first meeting, he calls me on the phone using “she” (formal speaking), I think it is for issues related to the machines, but it is not so, he talks about other things, about the life that does not satisfy, about the work that disillusiones and makes you feel stressed, about the time that passes, I think at every moment that when the preambles will be over he will start talking to me about work but it doesn’t happen. We are on the phone for over an hour, then he asks me: “Can we use the “you””? … But only outside the Company, otherwise it could sound strange.” It’s a request that makes many lights light up in my brain! I reply that it’s fine, he tells me his name is Stefano and I tell him my name is Dario. He says to me: “Thanks, Dario, it was really a pleasure to talk to you tonight, you have my cell number, if you call me it’s nice, don’t forget it!” He says these things in a very hesitant voice and this makes me very tender. I tell him. “Thanks, Stefano, I’ll show up shortly, you can count on it!”
When I close the phone, my eyes shine, it is clear that Stefano is gay and that between us there is already a special sympathy and furthermore he is a beautiful guy, he doesn’t put me in embarrassment at all, it’s he the one who feels embarrassed with me.
He knew my work shifts and I knew his, and we never met within the Company, because it could be embarrassing for both of us, but after another month, we got to the point that we talked on the phone every day and met one day a week, when we were both free. I used to take the bus and go to the second village on the way to the mountain and I had to wait for him just minutes, he usually arrived there by car non more than 10 minutes after me, he parked and we went around the woods, then in the evening he used to take me back home by car. It was precisely in one of these walks that we got to speak clearly, it was all much easier than I had imagined. I said to him: “Well, I think it is up to me to start the topic … I’m gay and I think I’m falling in love with you …” He looks at me and smiles with a huge smile, then says to me: “I understood it the second time we met!”
Project, don’t think that what came next was easy and trouble-free, because it was exactly the opposite. He had a lot of problems about the fact that he was 29 years old and I wasn’t 23 yet, but he didn’t show his 29 years at all, maybe my age if not even less. For my part, I had a many problems because he was an engineer and was already a manager in the Company and I acted accordingly with it, but he did not feed my problems, he didn’t at all seem to feel superior, rather, he was very shy and self-conscious. He only used to see the difference in age, which anyhow was nothing excessive, and felt guilty, as if he could rob me of my youth, that is, almost as if he could take advantage of me because I’m younger.
One day I asked him how much he was earning and he showed me the credit e-mail of his salary. He was earning a lot more than me but not so much more than me. He could not do overtime because his contract did not include office hours but his job was subject only to the evaluation of the C.E.O., well, with his job he earned 60% more than what I could earn by doing all the possible overtime, but even if he didn’t have office hours, anyhow he used to stay at Office in the Company for 12-16 hours a day, much more than me! And then he was always stressed by work, by worries and by the fact that the top manager always kept him under pressure.
One day we go to the usual country and since the following day is a national holiday we decide to stay there in the hotel, he has been anxious since the morning, he confesses to me that he never had sex with anyone and that he has a “fucking” (a word, that I’d never expected by him!) fear of diseases. I tell him that he does very well to be afraid of diseases and that I too have never been with anyone. He makes me swear. In the evening we go to a “widespread” hotel, that is, in practice they send us to a small separate but perfectly equipped cabin. Stefano is very anxious.
We stretched out on the bed fully dressed but it was cold and we turned on the heating. Basically we only talked all night. I thought he had, I don’t say female friends but at least male friends and instead he didn’t have any, he didn’t use to see anyone outside the Company, except me. The parents did not know about his homosexuality and until 29 years he had thought “only” to study and work.
When I talked about sex based on what I had learned from Gay Project, he was listening to me with extreme interest. He confessed to me his sexual fantasies: mutual masturbation, “also” oral sex, but no anal penetration, which never had existed in his fantasies and he was worried about this fact because he thought anal penetration was the fixed idea of all gay people. I looked at him in the eyes and told him that I too had never thought of having anal sex, that I had nothing against the thing in itself because people must be able to do what they want. Stefano still had the conception of sex as a forbidden game, the idea that sex was a form of love seemed strange to him, too irreverent compared to his principles.
Project, you have been very useful to me, I told him many things you wrote in the Manual and he was more and more perplexed. We slept only from 5.00 until 9.00, because before 9.30 we had to have breakfast in a bar in the village. We walked in the woods for hours and occasionally there was some physical contact, that is, we held hands. He totally left me the initiative but I was afraid to take some false steps, to put him in difficulty. At one point I ask him, “Can I hug you?” He replies with his eyes while smiling and I embrace him. He was shaking, he was really in ecstasy and I was too. I felt the body of a guy who liked to let me embrace him and was happy to be embraced by me, I felt his heart beat very fast, like mine, I felt his breath on my cheek and felt that he was holding me very tightly, we stayed embraced like this for very long minutes, then we broke up, but we didn’t kiss, I wanted him to take the initiative but he didn’t.
When we got home he asked me to show him my house, I was reluctant because everything was messy, but he insisted and then I said yes. He came in and this time he surprised me, he threw himself on my bed and said to me: “What if I sleep with you tonight?” I told him that there was only one bed and he pointed out to me that there was a reclining armchair and he would sleep there, but he needed to stay with me. We prepared a very quick dinner and then the effort of the last two days began to make itself felt: he settled on my bed, obviously fully dressed and I on the reclining armchair, even that time there was no sex at any level because we fell asleep almost immediately.
Now Stefano and I have been together for three years, we formally live as singles for work reasons, that is, to keep our relationship completely outside the work environment, but we stay in contact by the phone every day and every week we spend an evening together, then the night, all the next day and also the next night, then the work week starts again, but we manage to spend two nights together every week and I see him happy, now his problems about the fact that he is older than me are completely vanished. It took us more than a year to have the first sexual contacts but then it happened, it was much less simple than I had imagined, but in the end there was an excellent harmony between us also at that level.
Unfortunately there is one thing that doesn’t make me feel comfortable and it is the stress that Stefano is subjected to, because he is literally obsessed with work. It is true that he earns more, but in my opinion the game is not worth the candle, if he changed his job he would earn less but he would be much better and we would have more time for us. I have in mind that, if he could, he would change job even at the cost of losing out economically, but at the moment the only alternative would be to be a freelancer, it could be also a concrete possibility, but it is risky and would still keep him constantly anxious.
At school I had teachers who were engineers who did little or nothing at all, they earned little but literally did nothing at all! Now I have to try to understand how Stefano could be a teacher, I think it’s a bit complicated, but I have to understand if there is a road and which one, then I will have to try to tell him about it, because according to my opinion he wants to feel encouraged by me to take a step like that, because his parents would certainly tell him it’s madness.
My story ends here, or rather begins here!
I embrace you, Project, even if we don’t know each other, and I thank you for all the support you have indirectly given me.
Dario
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