GAY SEX AND CELL PHONE

 Hi Project,

everyone calls me Martin, even if my name is Gabriel, I’m a 26 year old guy who has been working for a few years and who has always dreamed of opening his own business. Unfortunately, now I have also had problems with the covid, but all in all relative, because I’m a computer scientist and I know how to do my job. 

However, this is not what I would like to talk to you about but I want to talk about something that I absolutely cannot stand and for some time has been ruining my life, that is the cell phone. As you can imagine, the mobile phone has no secrets for me, I have an amazing one where there is everything, but I mean everything always and only related to work. You could never find my private, let’s say so, on my mobile phone, because I keep my private only on my home PC. On the home PC I have installed all the possible security systems, in case someone steals it from me, an extremely remote hypothesis, and among other things I live alone and therefore I don’t have to defend myself from anyone’s prying eyes. 

I’ve a boyfriend for two years, or better I should  say that I had had a boyfriend for two years. There was no possibility of living together because he lived still with his family and his parents didn’t know anything about him but also because I was very reluctant to live together with him, because I didn’t feel sure of him. He’s two years younger than me, he’s a good guy, but I didn’t really feel him interested in me. We were fine together, but relatively. I didn’t feel that need to be with him that I had felt with other guys. It must be said that in the end I couldn’t build anything with those other guys because I felt the need to be with them but they didn’t feel the need to be with me, and then they double-crossed me, they used to tell me that for them there was just me, but anyhow they constantly went around sites and applications to look for other guys. It wouldn’t even bother me too much, but I can’t stand being told lies … Oh my God, maybe I couldn’t even bear the idea of my boyfriend going away with others, I don’t know, but I’d rather not try such experiences. 

I will call my boyfriend or ex-boyfriend here by the name I have always given him: Slim, not because he’s particularly slim, rather it is not at all, but since I understood that he liked to be told that it was slim, I started calling it so. Meanwhile, one thing: the other guys I have disgraced them “all” on the ap. I had a doubt, I knew their nick, I registered on that application, I put down two photos a little provocative (even not mine) and they tried immediately to get in touch with me, but when we were together face to face they used to said they never go on that application! It happened to me three times and I sent all the three guys to … (you got it!). With Slim nothing like that, put to the test of facts, he didn’t tell lies, I knew the nick he used on the application, after we got together, he actually didn’t go there anymore. I thought he was going in with another nick and one day I challenged him to show me his cell phone and he said to me: “Ok! But on par! You have to show me yours! ” Since I have nothing personal on the cell phone I use, which is unique and which I also use for work, I told him I agreed and we exchanged cell phones. 

Actually he didn’t have anything compromising, but then I thought that he too had a home PC and maybe for some things he used only that, anyway, honestly, I have never been afraid that Slim would betray me, from this point of view he is clean, at least I think, what bothered me was that he always carried his mobile phone with him, even in the bathroom and in the shower! It wasn’t that he carried it around so as not to leave it around because maybe he was afraid that I would go and peek inside, he carried it with him because he always had to be connected with his friends. 

I work on my cell phone and can’t wait to turn it off when I can, because I get work calls and sometimes it’s a real obsession, that is, I have to keep it on at least from eight in the morning until ten in the evening, but at ten I turn it off anyway, especially when I’m at home and if people are looking for me for work they will call back the next day. Slim instead no! His cell phone was on 24/7. He always had to have his friends within reach, and he always answered, even to say absurd bullshit, they were friends with whom he laughed like an idiot, in short, with them he seemed really unleashed, which he practically never did with me. He was serious with me, or at least he wasn’t stupid up to that degree. 

We used to meet when we could, usually on Saturday nights, he would arrive at my house at ten and stay with me for four hours, more or less, then he had to go home. In those four hours we had to have as much sex as we could, because it was once a week… well, I used to turn off my cell phone, he as usually didn’t the same! Once we started making love and everything was fine, at a certain point his cell phone rings, I tell him: “Close it!” but he doesn’t close it and answers. I was black with rage! But then I let my anger go away and went to the kitchen to make coffee. He stayed on the phone talking about crazy shit for half an hour! But I say: we can only be together for four hours a week and you stay on the phone for half an hour?! Anyway I pretended nothing happened, but by now I felt strange and almost explosive. The sex had gone to hell, but he eventually tried everything to regain ground and the evening ended with some pampering and a promise that the next week we would make up for lost time and sex. 

During the week, I took care not to trouble him with the cell phone problems, thinking that he had understood, he was like a puppy on the phone and the week went on like this. The following Saturday, he arrives at me at ten, while he goes to the bathroom for a moment, I turn off his cell phone, thinking it is a foregone conclusion, but then I forget to tell him. We start making love but I see him strange, at midnight I see him very strange and I ask him what is happening it and he tells me that he is worried because Matthew and Francis didn’t call him, while they had told him that they would call him before eleven. I tell him that I turned off his cell phone because I thought that, after what had happened the previous Saturday, it was a foregone conclusion. 

He looks at me with disappointment. He immediately turns on his mobile phone, finds unanswered calls from Matthew and Francis and immediately calls them back and as soon as he talks to them he makes a face as radiant as the sun, while the face he had made for me was between angry and perplexed. I find it hard to hold back my anger, I go to make coffee and pretend nothing has happened, and he spends half an hour with Matthew, when they say goodbye I go back to the room, but he tells me that now he has to call Francis, otherwise Francis would worry, and attacks with another endless series of crap with Francis, I would beat him up but I don’t, I don’t tell him anything. He sees me dark in the face and asks me: “What’s wrong? Nothing happened! Are you jealous?”

I don’t answer his phone calls all the week long. He gets worried and sends me a message and asks me: “See you Saturday night?” I answer him: “Only on one condition.” And he immediately asks me: “Which one?” I place my condition: “That you don’t carry your cell phone with you.” I expect a simple ok! Maybe even apologizing, but his reaction is totally different! He Turns up the tone and takes it out on me because I am “mad jealous” and I want to take away his freedom. And here I couldn’t stand him anymore and I said: “I don’t want to take anything away from you but if you have to think about many other things even when you stay with me, maybe it is better that you feel totally free!” 

In practice it was a definitive farewell, at least I meant it that way, but he didn’t understand that either and kept bombarding me with messages. When I closed the phone I was very bad and maybe he too. It’s been 10 days now and we haven’t heard from each other anymore, I have very bad sensations. I don’t know what I’ll do tomorrow and I don’t know what he will do. He went back to the usual sites and I went back there too, but it is absurd that a serious story should end like this for the cell phone!

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gay-sex-and-cell-phone

GAY SEX AND MELANCHOLY

 Hi Project,

we met on chat last winter and you were the only one who told me that my story with Max was a very serious thing and I think it really is. I’m sending you these reflections of mine to update you, perhaps they could be included in the forum, I would like it. 

Yesterday I spent the night with Max, the guy I’ve known for several years, who is not my boyfriend, because I don’t have a boyfriend, but with whom it sometimes happens. Our sex night has been very different from how people imagine these things. Seen from the outside, everything would be normal, sex, in behavior, is more or less always the same, but lived with a strong emotional involvement it can take on a thousand meanings, even apparently contradictory: participation and detachment, illusion of having involved the other in our world and acknowledgment that this is not the case, and in particular sexual participation and affective detachment on the one hand and strong affective participation and decidedly weaker sexual involvement on the other. The asymmetries between me and Max are apparently profound but the similarities are certainly deeper and our asymmetries have progressively reduced over the years and in any case have never been destructive. I know well that this is not the classic language of lovers, but there are many kinds of love, some of them lead to the need to absolutize and mythologize opening the door to hopes and dreams without foundation, others pass through this stage without too many dreams. The illusion that sex can solve all problems, can remove anxious people from anxiety, the indifferent ones from indifference and can create that magical atmosphere that is a bit like the Arab Phoenix, which everyone talks about, even if it doesn’t exist, unfortunately it is a weak postulate of sexuality that doesn’t stand up to comparison with reality.

All this doesn’t mean at all that sex has no meaning because it doesn’t work miracles, but that it can have another meaning, even partial and relative, and that this other meaning, a liberating meaning because it is communicative, affective and stabilizing, in some cases can become the most important one. You can have sex with enthusiasm or even out of desperation, of course, sex may not solve everything, but it is still a help, a different way of looking for a real contact that can also be frustrating but can, despite everything, allow a form of communication that would be very difficult to realize verbally. My sexual contacts with Max have apparently always been problematic. He cares a lot about sex, and especially when he’s alone, he’s looking for me to have sex. When he’s not looking for me, I know he’s found a boyfriend and all in all he’s fine with him. It seems paradoxical, but I’m happy when he doesn’t look for me, but not because I feel bad with him or because I want an exclusivity from him that I don’t find, but simply because I know that if he doesn’t look for me it is because he is fine and does not need me. Do I need him? I’ve asked myself this many times, of course he hasn’t been the only guy in my life, but he has been certainly the only important guy. During the day I think about him many times, I’m convinced that he is an excellent person from all points of view, physically he embodies my ideal type, if I were to lose him definitively, a hypothesis that seems objectively unrealistic to me, because we have known each other for a long time and our relationship has gone through storms of all kinds without falling apart, I think I would feel very bad, but if it happened because he found a guy and feels fulfilled, well, then I would accept it, but losing him with the awareness that he is abandoned to his melancholy, well, I wouldn’t accept this, it would make me feel really bad, I would consider it a heavy failure of my life. I don’t want him to be mine, even if I would like it, I want him to be happy!

Max had called me three days ago after a long silence that lasted more than two months, but in those two months he hadn’t completely disappeared, he had called me a couple of times for a few seconds to ask me how I was and to tell me that he had found a guy with which he was fine. He knows that receiving news of this kind, for me, it is a positive thing and his phone calls are due precisely to this. Three days ago he calls me and it is evident that he is not well, the enthusiasm is no longer there and melancholy reigns supreme, he speaks little, he only says very significant things and listens. The phone call ends well, at least as far as possible, but it is clear that he is alone or that at least he feels alone despite everything. Yesterday afternoon he calls me and tells me that he will come to me in the late evening, I tell him that I’m waiting for him and that I’m pleased to see him, which is very true. While I was waiting for him I changed the bed linen and the pillow case, cleaned the room a bit and open the windows, I can’t deny that I was happy to see him again.

Last night I did everything to put Max at ease, at certain moments he was serene, distracted, he smiled, joked, it was a wonderful thing, and for me those were the most beautiful moments, those I try to impress in my memory, but in other times, if I looked into his eyes, I realized that he was on the verge of crying, He participated in sex with me, at least in certain moments, but didn’t completely detach himself from his problems and thoughts, I would have done everything to get him away from his frustrations and his feelings of emptiness, I was under the illusion that sex could do this miracle, but obviously it was impossible. The deep reasons for his melancholy were there, they had not been eliminated and they smoldered like fire under the ashes, you could see them in his eyes. I had my sexual problems with him last night, as it has happened at other times, I would have told him about it, as I have done other times, but he looked me straight in the eyes and passed his index finger in front of his mouth as if to tell me to shut up and that there was no need to say anything, because in fact he didn’t care about sex. Sex was the official reason for our meeting, but the real reason was to realize that we still exist for each other and to see that the mutual physical attraction, that confirms that there is a real interest on the other side, still exists between us, and that nothing has failed or changed at least between us. He never points out the failures or weaknesses of others, but only his own. I asked him if he was disappointed in me, he replied that he was not at all disappointed but that he saw me tired, and I really was, because in fact he has much more resistance than me. What was the point of having sex with me if in the end, even if he wasn’t disappointed, he still didn’t succeed in removing his melancholy? I think that behind all this there is a desire to be accepted for who he really is. In sex he has patience, he is very sweet, he guides me, he never gets angry, and with me patience is really needed.

The nakedness of the body is the symbol of the nakedness of the soul. Spending time naked, together, without sex, but only to rest when a bit of fatigue occurs, gives the feeling of being fully accepted by the other because that non-sexual moment is probably more important than everything else, because it is a moment of normality: you stay with your partner as you would be with yourself, you don’t involve him in a moment of sexual performance but in a moment of your daily life, you don’t have to prove anything to him, you just have to be as you are. But anyhow that deep loneliness that comes from the knowledge, real or assumed, that you will never have what you really want and that your whole life will be filled with substitutions and substitutes for what you really want cannot be broken, not even this way. The feeling that that state of dissatisfaction that has grayed your life up to now will manifest itself anyway, identical or almost, many other times it seems a granite certainty that will condition and devalue the future.

He noticed that last night I never said no to him, that I followed him in everything and this fact gratified him a little, not so much for the sex but because he understands that if I don’t tell him no it means that I realize that he feels really bad. In certain moments, I would say in the moments when he was further away from his negative thoughts, I think he had the feeling that a strong bond was being created between us, but he would have wanted to create that kind of bond with another person with whom he knows he cannot create anything like that, and therefore something that in itself could be beautiful has turned into another frustrating thought, and I think his wet eyes were due precisely to this.

What does it mean to love and be loved? Each of us, at different times, gives different meanings to those words and they are often incompatible meanings: bond and freedom; selfishness and altruism; happiness and martyrdom. Why does a very handsome guy, very intelligent and in many non-affective respects even very fulfilled, end up crushed, at least in certain moments, by depression, by the idea that the world sucks and that the future can only be worse than the present? I have known Max for many years and I love him but I realize that our acquaintance, which is also a long-standing acquaintance, based on mutual respect and affection, cannot alleviate his melancholy. Max has an extreme need for affection but always claims his autonomy, his not wanting to depend on anyone. His self-esteem largely depends on the level of his autonomy. He tries to reconcile the fact of being loved with the fact of being totally free, perhaps with me he succeeds but with others this attempt ends always in a failure.

By now, several hours have passed since our sex night and I keep thinking about it, and the dominant feeling is that there was something not expressed, that sex was just an excuse to be accepted with all his melancholy. I tried to understand how he could feel, but except for the slightest flashes of smile, very few but very beautiful, the dominant tone was one of sadness. At one point we stopped and he started talking to me about his frustrations and his sadness, and deep down he didn’t understand the cause of it. In a way, he accepts half things from me, but from the guys he is really interested in he would like total involvement, but even there he finds only half things and tells himself that he is better off alone, but then he doesn’t accept the idea of being alone and looks for me and in the end he realizes that he is alone even when he’s  with me and so he comes back to his melancholy. He tells me that I behave with him a bit like he behaves with the guys he cares about, in the sense that I always say yes and I try to please him and then I feel bad because he doesn’t correspond to me, or at least at the affective level, he does not correspond to me as I would like. I tried to make him understand that I love him, but this expression, spoken by me, scares him, I told him that I’m not at all upset that he has sex with other guys, but I wish he wasn’t sad and he could manage to chase out that black melancholy that he carries inside, but this discourse seems strange to him, as if behind it there was the desire to cage him, to take away his freedom.

Last night my sexual behaviors were hesitant, we were having sex, nevertheless I was afraid to caress his face, afraid to kiss him, which I haven’t done in a very long time, because these things make him think that I fell in love with him and that between us a dissymmetrical and sick relationship is taking place. We can have sex, but exchanging tenderness, cuddles, it would be difficult for him to accept it, but not because he considers such behaviors childish or too sweet but because of the emotional content they express. I think of sex above all as the physical proximity of the guy I love, for him to associate sex and affectivity is difficult, he has dreamed of it with other people, but he has never realized his dream and at least, with me, he finds something similar to what he has dreamed of. The emotional involvement on my part is deep and he realizes it but at the same time he fears it, because he doesn’t want to end up in anyone’s orbit. He confuses love and addiction, for him the two things are essentially identical. He has always told me that he is not in love with me and he has always been convinced that I was in love with him, in reality I love him, in the sense that I would like to see him happy because he has unique virtues that not even he knows he has, he is not aggressive, he is not angry with others but with himself, he does not complain, he does not reproach. Last night I asked him if he was disappointed and he told me that he was satisfied instead, but this means that he felt satisfied not with the sex but with the fact that the wall built by me against his melancholy has not collapsed and that I remain close to him despite all, I think the meaning of the evening was just that. I know well that when he is with me he doesn’t think of me, except in some magical moments, and that he always carries with him the heavy baggage of his thoughts and this is precisely what I would like to happen less and less, I don’t say I would like it happen nevermore  because I know it will happen anyway. I would like the spaces of clear weather on a gray day to become many and long, that that light smile would be seen more often, that those eyes were not so often wet with melancholy.

I love one thing above all about him, honesty, the fact that he never acts a role, that he wants to be accepted even in what he considers his weakest sides, his contradictions. It strikes me a lot when he tells me he wants to be alone, because he doesn’t say it thinking of me but the guys he is in love with and who don’t return his love, he feels those bonds as forms of addiction. He loves those guys but he realizes that they don’t love him the same way, they wouldn’t feel really bad if he broke away from them, after a few weeks they wouldn’t call him anymore because mentally they would have already gone their own way. He never tells me that he wants to break away from me very simply because he doesn’t feel me like a bond, he realizes that I can never be a viable hypothesis for him and this fact reassures him, he’s aware that, despite some pampering too much, I will not try to cage him, that I will be there when he needs me, as on the other hand he has been there when I needed him, but in my loving him I will leave him free. He knows that ours is anyhow a stable relationship, which has lasted for years and doesn’t claim to become a bond at any level. We rarely hear each other, we see each other even more rarely, when we see each other there is a little bit of sex, which by his standards I don’t think is very exciting, but above all there is that little bit of emotional warmth that he lacks. When we make love, he hugs me very strongly and these are the moments when she is better and puts aside other thoughts. Sex, for him, is a way of expressing himself that I think in most cases remains completely misunderstood. Sex for him is affectivity embodied and when I see him happy to be with me, because sometimes it happens, I think that, even if he devalues these things, it also gives my presence an important emotional value. He tells me I’m not his type but he’s fine with me. He tells me that he appreciates the fact that I don’t judge him, that I don’t shoot stupid sentences, that I know how to shut up at the right moment, that I never keep him under pressure, that I have the perception of the limit, he sees these things as a form of hesitation and respect. He feels that I try to make him feel good, he is not afraid of me, he trusts me, at least up to a certain point, he can talk about his melancholy, his failures, his way of feeling inadequate to build truly mutual relationships. In fact he is not the guy who attracts people, to appreciate him you have to know him closely, his frankness is unsettling, but if he loves you even a little, he doesn’t forget you, he doesn’t bury you in the past. With his ex-boyfriends, at least with the serious ones, because there have also been some, in the end he maintained a relationship, sporadic but real.

When I talk to him, it strikes me that his answers are always different from how I expect them. I feel that he is another, he is not my double, he doesn’t talk just to talk, he doesn’t always agree with me, he doesn’t trivialize but takes me seriously, he listens to me, he remembers the things I tell him. I don’t know how to define our relationship and I think it cannot be defined by any common category, we are both strange, we are different but we understand each other, we are also different in sexuality but in the end we found our balance and I didn’t think it would happen, neither on his part nor on mine, and instead it happened. There is not the slightest embarrassment, we know our physical and mental limits and we don’t let ourselves be conditioned. I’ve had other guys, let’s say less complicated, but with him it’s different, he never made stupid talk about sex, after I met him in my life there has been no room for anyone else. I met a lot of very beautiful guys, but he is different, he is not my boyfriend but I love him in a deep way.

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gay-sex-and-melancholy

GAY COUPLES AND LOAVES WITH PORK ROAST

 Hi Project, 

we met in person in 2012 and spent a day together. You may remember that in the morning we went to the Museum of Roman Antiquities and in the afternoon to Villa Borghese. You were exactly my father’s age and I’m writing to you for this very reason: my father is dead and I miss him, I miss him a lot. He also resembled you physically and you reasoned in very similar ways. When I was 20 I had the problem of whether or not to tell my parents that I was gay and for the first time I talked about it with you. On this point you were very careful. Three years later things in my life have changed radically, but since you don’t know the facts, it’s good that I tell you them in order. My father had been a widower for 5 years at the time, I had lost my mother at 15 and my father had not remarried and in practice from 15 on I grew up with my father. He was not very expansive, he used to speaking little, especially after my mother’s death, but was also very rational, especially when he had to think about me. He used to get up very early in the morning, made me breakfast and went to work, he left me a total freedom which I never took advantage of, he never acted in front of me like a man experienced in life affairs who had to teach me how to behave. 

When I entered University, in a faculty to tell the truth not particularly easy, I found myself with a very assorted group of colleagues, from those obsessed with studying (very rare people) to those absolutely use to do absolutely nothing and convinced that they would graduate because they were “intelligent”. I did not feel particularly intelligent and initially I found myself in enormous difficulty, especially due to the total absence of scholastic preparation in Mathematics and Physics. I thought that if I had given up I wouldn’t have many other chances and I did my best to make up for my remote shortcomings. And here my father has been a great man. He didn’t understand anything about Mathematics and Physics, but he began to study with me and he did it with care and love. We used to study, then stop for a snack and then we restarted to study. In practice, I passed all the exams of the first year studying with my father who, I repeat, had started from scratch. 

The second year I felt able to follow the lessons without help and I started to study with Peter, a colleague of mine who had to take my same exams. We studied together and my father used to bring us tea with biscuits in the afternoon, and to prepare lunch for us when I studied with Peter at my home, but he used also to prepare dinner for me, when I studied with Peter at his home and used to come back at dinner time. I liked Peter, at the time I only knew this: that he was a good guy and that I liked him and also that he wanted to study seriously. 

The second year ended well, with Peter we studied hard, we wasted no time, studying was not an excuse to stay together, it was really the basic purpose of our common work, and we were good with each other. I didn’t have the courage to tell Peter that I had fallen in love with him. I don’t know what my father understood, but I noticed that at a certain point, when Peter was at home, my father would go out and return directly to dinner time. At the beginning I didn’t give weight to this “detail” but it was a form of respect. I used to talk a lot about me and Peter and I was very proud of what we were doing, my father approved, always in his very reserved way. We took the three-year degree and enrolled for the specialist degree. 

At a certain point, without any formal admission neither on his part nor on mine, Peter and I began to understand that “maybe” we were both gay. One day a very handsome guy passed in front of us and Peter said: “What a handsome guy!” and I nodded yes and my eyes probably sparkled more than usual. He said looking straight into my eyes: “Then I guess I wasn’t wrong! I was afraid that my imagination had flown too high.” Then we stared into each other’s eyes for about ten seconds. There was no need to add more, we were now a couple. With Peter we understood each other immediately, the words were very few and in a sense, even if with very few words, we talked about everything with the utmost freedom. There was no space between us for psychological discussions of any kind, we had a study goal but that for us was already “our” goal, that is, our goal as a couple, we knew very well that after university we would still be together. 

I told him I didn’t know what to do with my father, he replied that he thought it would happen without any particular problem. Peter, in these things, was much more skilled than me and was able to see much further than me. After those days our behavior became much more casual, even at home and in front of my father, and my father had the confirmation of how things really were between me and Peter, assuming he had not understood it before, But I think that very likely he had understood everything from the beginning. Obviously my father would never have talked to us about the fact that we were a couple, even though he had understood it perfectly well because he thought it would be inappropriate anyway. 

One day Peter and I found ourselves talking with my father about the university and we began not only to boast of having done well but also to give opinions not so positive on some of our colleagues who had dropped out of school. My father at first listened and did not intervene. Note, Project, that Peter at that time called my father by name, without having any problems. Then, at the end of the evening, my father told us that he had to tell us something important. We thought he wanted to ask us about our relationship and we felt embarrassed but the speech was completely different from what we expected. My father intervened with his calm but also with his decision: “Guys, you have worked so hard and you have done important things but you must not judge the guys who have stopped on the road, never forget that you have also had many fortunes, above all the good fortune to meet and study together.” 

Peter and I blushed, and Peter caught the ball and said to my father: “Albert, for a moment I thought you wanted to ask us about our relationship, I mean the one between me and Aldo …” My father just said: “No , I understood that you love each other and that’s a good thing, that’s is your freedom, and there is nothing more beautiful than loving each other. You are two good guys and I’m happy that you met and that you are fine together. Your happiness is my happiness! The problem is not this, that you, guys, love each other it’s fine but never judge your neighbor, because, before judging, the life of others should be known from within. Now I’m going to tell you something I only said to my wife, but I think it’s time to tell you too. 

When I was a boy I went through very difficult times, you see me now, but I wasn’t always like this, when I was a boy they couldn’t handle me. I was very frustrated by the school that I could digest by no way and by the relationships with my parents, who sometimes I hated deeply because they humiliated me in public and, as my father told me, they wanted to straighten my back but by dint of slaps and blows . I don’t want to talk bad about my father, because he drank and didn’t control himself, he was violent, he beat my mother and me with the belt and he behaved like an animal. It happened that I ran away from school in middle school and he took me back to humiliate me and insult me in front of my classmates. He thought he was a strong man who was respected but they feared him because when he drank he was really out of his mind. 

I was always around hanging out with some criminals of my age, who used to steal and did damage to the traders, trying to extort some money. As long as it was about being braggart with girls and acting like a bully, I liked doing it, but I felt it was wrong to go and break shop windows, but my friends told me I had to prove I was a man and show my courage. In practice, according to them, I had at least once to go and break the window of the delicatessen shop under my house, it was a small external window, and I broke it deliberately, I was about 15-16 years old, no more. 

The owner was an old man who knew me, he had seen that it was me the one who had broken the window and he also knew where I lived, because sometimes had delivered the shopping to my house, and I was afraid he would report me to the police, but this seemed to me quite unlikely, I was much more afraid he would go and tell my father all the story because my father would have beaten me badly. Inside I was scared but with the guys of my gang I had to be a braggart. The old man did not come to my house and my father remained calm, I didn’t know what to think. The next day, before going to school, I passed the delicatessen and the old man kindly motioned me to come closer, I was afraid, but I saw him all in all calm and I didn’t know what to say. I made the scene of the one who didn’t know who had broken the window: “They broke your window … but do you know who did it?” And he told me. “Yes I know it was you … but are you going to school?” I said yes and he said to me, “Wait a minute!” He went into the shop and a minute later he came back with a wrapped bundle and said to me:” This is a loaf with pork roast, it’s good! But you has to start studying seriously. Don’t go around doing damage because you can find people who if you break their shop window can ruin you! Did you understand?” I nodded yes and added an awkward half smile, then waved a wave and walked away. 

In short, after that morning I began go past the delicatessen every day before going to school and above all I started going to school again, and every day there was a different snack. This story went on until the year of the final exam. In January they closed the delicatessen for mourning, the old man was gone. Seeing that closed delicatessen caused me a violent reaction of tears, it was the first time that I had not cried out of hatred but because I had lost a person who had believed in me. I didn’t end up drifter or delinquent because I found the butcher, but if I hadn’t found him who knows where I would be now. Perhaps Aldo would not be there and you would never have met him. What you two are experiencing now you also owe it to the butcher, even if you have never heard of him before. Remember what you have had from life. You are a couple of guys, and that’s okay, but you have to be a couple of good guys not only with each other but with those who are worse off than you. I’m not homosexual and I’ve wondered many times why that old man prepared a loaf for me every day, I don’t know if he was married or had children, maybe he was gay too, I don’t know, and in any case, we’ll never know, but he changed my life!” 

Peter loved my father, when my father was ill and was hospitalized we were always close to him “together” to the point that people thought  we were brothers. My father never raised the issue of accepting a gay son, such an idea never crossed his mind. He said, “Whether and how accept a gay son? What a strange issue! … I had two gay sons, one better than the other!” He passed away at the end of 2019 and for us it was an excruciating loss. Peter, if he thinks about it, tears come to his eyes and for me it’s just the same, and when it happens we hug each other very tightly until we almost hurt ourselves. 

Project, this story is above all a tribute to my father. He taught me many things I didn’t know and also that a pork roast loaf can give birth to happiness even 50 years later! It sounds unbelievable but things went exactly so.

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GAY GUYS AND OVER 30 CRISIS

 Hi Project,

I have read so many of the things you have posted in the forum, your and others’ things, that I seem to understand your way of reasoning. I especially liked real stories. I understand that there is also a need to catalog, but the human world is that of individuals and not that of categories. I especially liked the “non-standard” stories as you call them, even if, I tell you frankly, stories of that kind have never happened to me, and are certainly exceptions rather far from becoming the rule.

There is a problem that I often think about these days and it is the loss of affective values as we age, I’m not talking about old age, in which you perhaps may lose sexuality or the urgency of sexuality, but I think that anyway affectivity remains. I’m referring to the thirty years old or better to the first years after thirty which for me are the most complicated age in the life of other guys, in which affectivity fades to the advantage of sexuality. I’m 40 years old now and honestly, when I was around the age of 30 and immediately afterwards I didn’t go through a cooling of affectivity because my affectivity has always been very slowed down by education and a thousand objective impossibilities. In the guys I have known very closely, however, I have practically always seen the crisis of affectivity after the age of thirty. Generally they reproach me for not giving space to sexuality and for “chatting too much” but also for being depressed, for putting people in a bad mood, depressing them and extinguishing their enthusiasm, especially sexual, with too melancholy speeches. The guys I have been with, after the initial period of falling in love, didn’t try to build a solid relationship with me, on the contrary they tended to move away whenever the emotional dimension became or risked becoming prevalent. There was a recurring situation that systematically put me in crisis and that is the fact that when a guy was depressed, angry, frustrated and so on, not for reasons dependent on me but for other reasons, he used to tell me: “What a terrible shit day today!” and this was always both the starting and the ending of the conversation, that is, guys didn’t allow me to enter the world of their frustrations and private melancholies. I would have liked a real dialogue and instead the whole discourse either referred strictly to sex and only to that or it became so academic and theoretical up to losing any interest. I had a sexual intimacy with those guys, but only that, as for the rest they were closed worlds in which I wasn’t allowed to enter. I really loved some of these guys, because there had been also periods when we were not just a couple of strangers who meet to have sex and that’s it, but then, after the honeymoon, the emotional distancing began, not the sexual one, which was generally much slower. I have always thought I could be much more attractive on an emotional level than on a sexual one and instead for those guys it was exactly the opposite. I asked myself many times what they could find in me and I never understood it. But if you not only have sex with a guy but you realize that he cares, not about you, but about having sex with you, what is the value of the sex we have together? Sometimes, and I emphasize this, only a few times, I have felt used. Let’s understand each other well: it was okay for me to have sex with those guys, but I couldn’t stand it all ending there, and instead it always happened like this. We used to sleep together but we weren’t even friends, because you talk to a friend and listen to him while we used to go on just to perform sexually. Maybe they were afraid of emotional bonds? Maybe they had been emotionally badly scalded sometimes. I remember a guy I had seen one afternoon and after we had done what we had to do, when I asked him to stay with me a little longer but, note well, after sex, he replied that he couldn’t because he had to go out with friends. But why do you come and have sex with me if then going out with friends is more important than being with me? But obviously I couldn’t ask him such a question. Many times I have tried to put myself in those guys’ shoes and I seemed to understand that deep down they may have their motivations, because they are not stupid, but in the end I realize that my interest in those guys has gone away too, fading over the years. At first I used to see them as central figures in my life, I repeat, in the phase of falling in love and honeymoon, then things changed and I too began to distance, not that I didn’t care anymore, but that interest strong, that physical need of the early days had vanished. Before we used to meet very often, they called me and I called them, then I stopped calling them and they continued, but they didn’t even ask me how I was, they used to go immediately to the concrete proposal: “I’ll come to you and then we have to (omissis) What do you say?” So, Project, let’s also assume that these guys after the honeymoon are tired of my affection and continue to look for me only for sex, which doesn’t upset me at all, because little by little you get used to everything, but, I wonder, will they ever fall in love seriously, that is, permanently, with someone? They are not kids, they are adults and no longer very young. It’s true that we are all very different and that there are no general rules, but by dint of devaluing affectivity we end up being alone and nothing is built. You will tell me that they have devalued my affectivity and maybe they have taken a terrible crush on other guys, and it could also be true, but I haven’t lost sight of these guys at all and I can tell you that they don’t seem at all like guys happy with themselves. Don’t tie yourself up too much! Ok, I’m fine with this thought that in the end belongs to me too, I can understand it but sooner or later we must also start to put some fixed points. A guy once gave me a serious talk and opened my eyes to something that I have always greatly underestimated because I used to take it for granted, that guy told me that I was lucky but I shouldn’t allow myself to judge others, because if one wins a lottery he must not allow himself to judge those who have not won it. I have often thought that many of my basic certainties are such because they have never measured themselves against reality. Basically, I use very abstract arguments because I have always found myself on the side of the guy who is neglected at emotional level. In theory I complain about this thing but in the end it suits me and if some guys became fond of me as I was fond of them, in the end I would be the one who runs away. So: flash in the pan! All the reasoning in smoke! In fact I don’t mind that somehow they drift away and that in any case there remains a sexual interest for a long time, in theory it seems silly to me but in practice it has its logic: the fundamental thing is to save one’s freedom! Everyone wants a companion, but they want him how and when they want him, if he’s not according to their model, they look for another one that is closer to their model and above all they want a partner when they want him, because on many occasions he becomes a brake, a bond, a weight to carry around that takes away your freedom. If it’s cold, everyone wants a blanket at the campsite in the evening, but during the day they don’t want to carry their rucksacks. It is understandable but inconsistent. I will never understand the meaning of sex only for sex and yet until now I have found only that. In the thirty-year-olds I met, I saw the tendency towards widening the horizon of possible relationships, but not that towards deepening them. I have often wondered why, despite everything, the sexual interest didn’t fail. It’s clear that, if you spread sexual interest over several people, out of necessity contacts must thin out, however, why don’t they completely disappear? And here I have an answer. My thirty-year-olds gave terrible judgments about their mates with whom they had had stories ended badly  and I talk about judgments about people and I think that with those people they ceased all contacts even those of sex, while about me they said that I was depressed, boring, that I used to extinguish their enthusiasm, but they didn’t have a negative opinion and somehow things went on and then they also told me that I was hypocritical because they said I dodged the talk about sex and even sexual innuendo but anyhow I liked sex a lot, and in a way it is true. But with a hypocrite who first acts as a depressed moralist and then tells you yes, you can also have sex, while with someone who shows you all the enthusiasm and then, when you need something, doesn’t even listen to you and disconnects your phone, well, it is obvious that things are different. I have never said no, or only very few times, also because my thirties were honest with me and never made fun of me. In a way I was lucky. Some of these sporadic relationships of only sex still exist, they are sporadic relationships, it is true, apparently very elementary, that after all I have said, for me should be meaningless, yet they are human contacts that I feel are important. They are marginal in the sense that they certainly don’t invade my whole life, they have nothing extraordinary, yet they have a human dimension that has its own dignity. One said to me: “I come to you when I’m worse off, I come to have sex but I know that if something pushes me towards melancholy and I don’t feel like having sex you won’t send me to hell and perhaps it will even better for you. You are available, for others it’s either sex or it doesn’t make sense, for you it’s different.” He asked me if I pitied him, if I felt sorry for him and such! I replied that he made me feel an infinite tenderness, because he seemed to me a lost soul looking for a quite harbor. He smiled at me and all ended there. Many years have passed and I still see this guy now but at very long intervals, of a month or even two, and I’m glad when he remembers me. When he arrives, he always asks me if I’m in love with someone, he means with other guys, I flash to him my best smile as to say that there are no other guys, and he smiles in turn, and that strikes me a lot. I let him do whatever he likes better, I want him to feel completely comfortable. There are very few words between us. He expects me to never tell him no, but he also adjusts to me and asks me only for things that are good for me too. It is he who leads the sexual game but he does it with respect, with delicacy. These things seem silly but qualify the person. I would like the relationship with this guy, whom I think about with tenderness quite often, to become I don’t say stable but just a little more stable and frequent. Deep down, I know that it won’t happen. It would be enough for me to go on like this, maybe seeing each other once a month or every two months, and instead I’m afraid of losing him permanently. I would like to have a place in his life, the place he wants, as marginal as he wants, but I wish he wouldn’t forget me. I know he needs more and this is not a problem, or rather it wouldn’t be if he didn’t end up forgetting about me. Is it a fallback solution? Am I wasting my time on totally stupid fantasies? Maybe so, but in the end, this relationship has stood the test of time, it’s a light, fragile thing, apparently made of only sex, but perhaps not only. I don’t know what to think, Project, I haven’t looked for another guy, because he somehow exists in my life, he is not a meteor that explodes and disappears, you know that sooner or later you’ll see him again, or at least you hope it will be so. At the moment I don’t know if I will see him again but I know I would like it.

What do you think about Project?

p.s.: obviously do what you want with the email. I would like to know if any of the guys have had similar experiences.

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STORY OF A GAY BULLY

 Hi Project, 

I’m a guy 25 year old who already feels worn out by life and I’m writing to you on a leaden and slightly cold day. It’s all wet on the ground, the leaves on the sidewalks are reduced to mush, it’s after nine in the evening and I’ve just come home from work, in my little house where the total confusion reigns. 

I’m the rebellious only child, or rather the strange only child, of an ordinary family. My parents, like me, are nothing exceptional, they are not bad, but they are not good, they have no feelings of their own, they do what they have learned to do and they don’t care about anything else. With me as a child they were obsessive, overprotective, then from 15-16 years onwards, I began to not stand them anymore, to face them with a bad face and they let themselves be put under by me, I got completely free and loose and I began to do everything I wanted: to screw up the school, because they promoted everyone and tolerated everything; I used to stay away from home until late in the evening and my parents didn’t say anything to me, they were almost afraid of me, I was a brawler, rude not only to them but to everyone and nobody dared to stop me, they feared me. I had no friends, because they didn’t tolerate me, I raised my voice, I threatened them screaming and they didn’t show up anymore and I felt strong this way. I started bullying a classmate of mine, I enjoyed terrifying him and he put up with everything. I felt strong, dominant. Instead of sex I liked better being the boss, the one that keeps others under. The guy I used to terrify was called Jake, known as Redhead, and I got to slap him in public just for fun. Now I realize that only a moron behaves like this, but at that time I felt strong, the one who can do anything. I scared Redhead so much that he thought it was better for him to change schools to feel comfortable and so he went away before Christmas. 

Those days, if you had asked me whether I was straight or gay I would have answered I was straight, do you realize it, Project? In the fourth year I had sex with three girls, who were fascinated by me, at least until they knew me, but once they realized what type of guy I was they all left, they just disappeared. Every time, I concluded that they were stupid like chickens and started looking for another girl, not to fall in love but just to have sex, to have a harem to show and feel like the sultan, I didn’t give a damn about them. 

The last year of school things changed, Mario arrived in class, and as for girls he wanted to be the rooster in the hen house and he wanted to do what I had always done, that is, he wanted to impose his law, and obviously I couldn’t allow him. But Mario was worse than me: he used to give orders and everyone obeyed him, he asked everyone for money and they gave money to him, he asked someone to go and get him a snack at the internal store, obviously also paying out of his own pocket, and if the guy made a fuss he used to hit him in the face until his teeth broke or so and once he went so far as to reduce a boy’s face to a mask of blood. 

Of course no one ever said anything. The teachers pretended not to see and the thing was officially non-existent. My classmates were afraid and so was I, but between Mario, who was a real criminal and me, they preferred me and it didn’t take long for my role to change, I was no longer the boss of the class but became the protector of my classmates, or at least they saw me that way. Mario came from a family known in the neighborhood for bad stories and I was really scared. He wasn’t a stupid bully like me, but he was inside an organization that was really criminal. 

One day there was a training session at school and one of my classmates had brought his computer from home in agreement with the teacher. Mario made it disappear, that is, he stole it from him, and I saw that he had stolen it but he said that I had stolen it. We started arguing and we ended up in the principal’s office, who, if he could, he would have pretended nothing happened, but he couldn’t. The principal said that if the computer had come out the matter would have ended there, but otherwise he would have informed the Police. The next day the computer didn’t come out and we ended up in the Police barracks. The complaint was against unknown thieves, but I stated that I had seen Mario stealing the computer and Mario declared that he had seen me, obviously one of us was lying. The day after, Mario stopped coming to school and we haven’t heard from him anymore. A week later I was called to the barracks and they told me that I had been completely cleared. I went to the principal to ask what had happened, he just told me that he was very happy that I was cleared but he didn’t add a single word about Mario. I didn’t insist and went back to class and told my classmates that they had completely cleared me. They welcomed me like a hero because I had freed them from Mario. I didn’t expect anything like this. By now the relationships with my mates had changed, they joked with me, they were no longer afraid of me, or maybe I had changed at least a little, they smiled at me, invited me to their house and we spent Sundays together. 

At this point the second part of my story begins. The first part had been about my changing from bully to patron saint and the second you will immediately understand what is about. One of my prettiest classmates (Mary) starts to lose her mind for me, but the music here is totally different from the stories with the three girls I had before, she had really lost her mind, she was in love and she really suffered from it, but I wasn’t in love with her and I felt terribly embarrassed to say no to a girl who was really in love with me, I didn’t know how to behave, I didn’t want to disappoint her but I couldn’t delude her. 

One day she asks me to go out with her and I accept, we take a long walk and she confesses that she fell in love with me. I tell her that I have noticed it but that I have not encouraged her because I’m not in love with her. She starts to cry, but then she wipes her eyes and tells me: “But I will love you anyway! You are a very good guy! ” and gives me a very light kiss on the mouth. In the evening we talk for a long time on the phone, but we don’t talk about us as a couple. Basically we left each other like this without rancor. 

Before Easter we go on a school trip and I happen to be in the room with Steven, a taciturn guy who doesn’t like to show up too much of sight. You know how it happens, we talk a bit and at one point he asks me how things are going with Mary. I’m amazed that Steven noticed that there was something between me and Mary, because I thought I was the only one who noticed it. I explain to him how things went and he tells me: “Too bad! Because Mary is a very good girl!” but he says it in a tone that makes me suspect that Steven is in love with Mary, anyway I don’t tell him anything because I don’t want to put him in embarrassment. Then he asks me: “But have you had other girls?” and I tell him about the three previous girls and I see that he remains frozen and tries to change the subject and then I block him and ask him: “And you? Stories with girls?” He opens his arms and smiles as if to say zero! Then we change the subject. But after that evening I begin to wonder why Steven asked me those questions and gave me those answers and I begin to observe him. 

One day, just before the end of school, I see a group of thugs, the worst thugs in my school, who have put Steven in the middle and who make fun of him with homophobic jokes, I didn’t even think about it and I threw myself on those guys, four or five guys at least, and I beat them badly, and I also broke the glasses on the nose of one of them. We ended up with to the principal’s office. The guy with the broken glasses said I had nothing to do with his broken glasses, that had fell off his face because he had made a sudden move. Those guys weren’t suspended from lessons because this would have weighed heavily on the admission to the exams, and the matter ended like this, but the principal looked at me straight in the eyes as if to say: “You did well!” 

When I returned to class they applauded me but Steven wasn’t there. I asked the teacher for permission and went to look for him. He was alone in a corner of the courtyard, under a tree. I sat next to him and he didn’t say a word, I had prepared my speech but then it seemed stupid and I too remained silent, then I said to him: “Let’s go to class, come on!” And since he didn’t get up I gave him my hand to help him get up, he held it for a few more seconds almost caressing itand I did the same. This was our coming out, let’s say, but I still had very rough ideas about these things at the time. At the exit I accompanied Steven to the bus, but then I too took that bus, instead of taking mine, we got off together and I accompanied him to the door of his house. Before letting him go I told him: “I’ll be waiting for you at my house this afternoon. Don’t worry, we will be alone!” Thinking about it now, this message might imply who knows what sexual meanings, but for me such things were still to come. 

In the afternoon, he arrived at my house, he was really upset, I don’t know how he had interpreted the fact that in the morning we had held hands for a few seconds, but at that time I gave that fact a very generic weight, it certainly had an emotional value, of course, and also vaguely sexual, but I wasn’t still fully aware of all this. He was probably expecting something explicitly sexual, but I didn’t understand it, in the end he confessed to me that he was gay and that he fell in love with me and asked me if I was gay. I remember exactly what I told him, because then I wrote it down in a kind of diary in which I write about the most important events. I told him: “I’m not 100% sure but I think it could be” He asked me: “But is it the truth?” I replied: “It’s probably less than the truth!” Then I told him a little about me but without embarrassment, as if I wastalking to myself, he was very impressed that I trusted him up to that level, but I felt totally at ease. 

With Mary I understood that it wouldn’t work, with Steven I had the certainty of the opposite but for this very reason I didn’t want any misunderstanding to arise for any reason. We had an ice cream, then we went out. Before leaving there was just a very tight hug and I said: “Now I have no more doubts!” He was happy! I told him: “Let’s not let Mary see us!” and he replied: “This morning when Mary saw you throw yourself at those morons she told me: it’s you the one he wants, you’re lucky, because he’s a good guy!” I didn’t believe those words! 

Now, Project, you can tell me: “So where does all the melancholy you talk about at the beginning come from?” Well, it comes from the fact that I’m a moron and I don’t understand the value of what I have. I got to distress Steven to the point that we broke up and he had tears in his eyes and I was so stupid that I wanted to be right at all costs. He told me he couldn’t take it anymore and that he wanted to be alone, I haven’t heard from him for a week now. This morning I sent him this diary page and I hope he will reply:

“I continually think back to when I tried to look you in the eyes for the last time and you looked away, it was clear that you couldn’t take it anymore, that you would have preferred to be alone rather than be with me. It all started when we were in bed making love and I asked you to do that thing and you told me you didn’t want to. You had never said no to me, and there the spring of my stupidity trigged and the bully I was and had remained inside came out despite everything. If I had been able to really love you I should have said, okay, no problem. But I had to feel like the boss and I couldn’t tolerate you saying no, and I started to insist and I screwed it up. You understood that inside I have not really changed and the balance between us broke up. Then you tried to put the pieces back together, to pass over it, as if nothing had happened, but I began to harass and scold you, reminding you of many little disrespectful behavior towards me because I really thought you had behaved disrespectfully towards me, but you seemed more and more stunned. The next day, you made another attempt at conciliation because evidently you cared a lot, but above all I wanted you to agree with me, that you yield to my will, that you submit. I wanted you to give in without reservation, to admit your faults, the ones I had imagined, and to beg me on your knees, only under those conditions I would have been willing to go back, but in no case I would allowed you to tell me no, and that had to be clear. In my brain I considered you weak while I was strong, I thought you would tolerate everything and you would never leave, and instead you left. Right after that I thought that I would see you come back after a few minutes, or that you would text me or call me on the phone crying, but none of this happened. I told myself that if it hadn’t happened that same evening, it would certainly happen the next day and instead it didn’t. And now I’m terrified of having destroyed everything with my stupidity. I know very well that you are right, and I’m not telling you so to try to get you back. After all, you couldn’t accept becoming the victim of an imbecile like me. I just ask you not to hate me if the bully’s soul I still carry it inside me. Over time I will regain some serenity and I will never forget you because you have given me a life lesson that will be fundamental for me too. Forgive me for all the harm I have done to you by destroying your happiness along with as mine.” 

That’s how I feel, Project, I feel like a moron who has not been able to grow and then I feel alone, I miss Steven, I miss him damn but now he’s gone and I know he won’t come back. I feel awful. 

p.s. Use this e-mail as you like better but please change the names.

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-story-of-a-gay-bully

GAY GUYS LOOKING ONLY FOR SEX

 Hi Project,

I recently discovered Gay Project and in the panorama of gay content sites on the network it seems unique to me and if I had met it about ten years ago I think I would have avoided getting involved in many useless problems which, on the other hand, have conditioned me a lot. Reading the forum in the sex section and in the couples section, I found stories not far from experiences that I have also lived and this confirmed me in the idea of not being a rare exception. I’m 32 years old, luckily for me I can still undertake quite well the passage of time and I show less than my years. Currently, at least in a sense, I’m single, partly by choice and partly because my ex-boyfriends, let’s call them so, after a few months, get tired and needed something else. I understood this and didn’t even try to hold them back. I’ve lived a free life since I was twenty, I left home as soon as I could because I couldn’t stand the daily contact with my parents anymore and I needed to live my life. At the beginning I went through periods of strong disarray, bordering on depression, I thought that no one would ever fall in love with me and this seemed to me like a tragedy, today, objectively, at least looking from the outside, nothing has changed, it no longer seems to me like a tragedy and I stopped looking for a guy, at least in the sense that is usually given to this expression. I haven’t stopped looking for sex, because I think it’s impossible to stop, but I put aside the idea of making my sanity depend on a single guy, but by reading the following you will understand what I mean. 

Up to the age of 24-25 my couple experiences were devastating, perhaps also because I dreamed a lot and I felt very frustrated and disappointed, I had in my head several models and preconceptions that conditioned me. At the age of 25 I met a guy, whom I will call James here, who in a sense, little by little, made me change my way of thinking. The beginning, with him, was only physical. I was attracted to him and tried to repeat with him the same script I had used with the other guys: close couple, eternal love blah blah, but he didn’t let me do so from the first attempt. James was different from the other guys, he didn’t play a role, he was very disenchanted, a bit the opposite of me. He dismantled all my traditional vision of couple life setting right from the start and told me brutally, but seriously: “I like having sex with you, but I don’t know you, for the moment I like it but it’s just sex, I don’t know if I’ll fall in love with you, it could happen, but at the moment it isn’t.” For what I was then such a speech was destructive and I started to feel bad almost immediately, but I liked him a lot and I followed my sexual instinct, putting aside my emotional frustrations. 

In sex James was very direct, he didn’t say stupid things. It may have been just sex, as he used to say, but he liked me, he wanted me and I must say that I understood only with him what it means to make love with a guy. On a sexual level, things worked very well between us, the understanding was practically perfect, we used to think the same things and at the same moments. I have never had a guy interested in totally uninhibited sex and far from any acting like him, at least from that point of view I lacked nothing, but there was a but, he told me that in any case he felt free to go with other guys too and he really did, but they weren’t betrayals or things done in secret, he also used  to talk to me about his guys and I felt terrible. He once said to me: “I’m like that, if this doesn’t suit you, you are free to leave.” These expressions at first sounded aggressive, as if he wanted to control or dominate me, but then I realized that it wasn’t like that. He was looking for me a lot, he had the attitude of a seducer towards me, or at least it seemed so to me, he enhanced my sexual performances and this way he gratified me, but he always said that for him it was “only sex”, and I don’t hide from you that for this expression I hated him, even if hating James was practically impossible. He almost didn’t want me to fall in love with him sentimentally, sex didn’t frighten him but he couldn’t stand the entanglements that he considered sticky, he used to say that when you understand each other you don’t need words. He used to say “you understand each other”, not “you love each other” because he systematically avoided the affective plan. 

This expression: “it’s just sex” has been somehow my obsession for the past six years. But I have to be honest, told like this the story seems very reductive: he is the cynical and insensitive tyrant and I the victim subjugated by sex, but things were actually very different and much more complicated. There were a lot of cynical and overly rational attitudes on his part, but there were others as well that seemed to go in an entirely different direction. Despite his behaviors, he was not a sex hunter, he was free in his behavior, he had had many guys, he was a bit cynical in these things, that’s true, but he didn’t think only of himself, he wasn’t aggressive or vindictive, when we had some conflict he had no problem giving in first and sometimes he felt seriously hurt, but he would never try to hurt you, perhaps he may disappear, if he thinks he’s not welcome. He never tried to force anyone to do anything, he didn’t use emotional blackmail of any kind and above all, when he went away because he had met another guy, he didn’t disappear for too long periods and then, despite appearances, he was very vulnerable on the emotional level and perhaps his being cynical, at least in appearance, was a method of defense. 

Every time he entered a new story I used to feel terrible because I was terrified of losing him permanently, but things never went that way. Let’s say that some of his ex-boyfriends left the scene precisely because he considered them unreliable, with others he maintained non-superficial contacts. I want to specify that when I say that he considered certain guys untrustworthy I’m not referring to the fact that they only had sex with him or anything like that, these things were practically indifferent to him, for him the unreliability consisted in not speaking clearly, telling lies, having two faces, saying one thing and doing another. He just couldn’t stand these things and on the other hand he didn’t do them. With ex-boyfriends that he considered reliable people he also had sex episodically, always underlying that “it was just sex” but it seemed to me that a much more complex relationship was created with those guys, let’s say something like a true friendship even with a little sex .He behaved like that to me too. From him I learned the meaning of sexuality. 

At the beginning, when he said to me: “I’m with you only for sex”, I considered the expression in a reductive way, then I realized that saying “only for sex” was not actually an understatement. Sex for him was also, and I would say above all, a way to be accepted without preclusions.  I understood that sometimes he really needed to have sex with me, it was a very important end liberating form of communication. Sometimes after sex he would have moments of deep melancholy and he would cry in front of me, other times when we happened to meet, he seemed very cynical and aggressive but if he could live sex in a liberating way in the end he was better. 

As time went by, I understood more and more clearly that saying “it’s just sex” wasn’t an understatement at all. With the expression “only sex” he wanted to exclude all the ritualism, the sweet platitudes and the small hypocrisies of which are often studded the so-called love stories. The distinction between love and sex made no sense to him, for him sexual attraction was the trigger of a sexual story, precisely in the sense of “sexual story”, of course, but also of prudently affective story. In a sense, he overturned the common order of things: for many it starts with friendship and then ends with sex, for him it starts with sex and then it becomes possible to understand whether or not it is also possible to build a relationship of friendship. He often told me something that I struggled to understand and that is that at the basis of true friendship, that is, of trusting one another, there is always a strong mutual sexual attraction, which is a necessary condition, but obviously not sufficient, to build a friendship. For him, friendship was more than sex, or rather it was almost another step forward towards a more complete sexuality, a level no more sublimated but deeper, that is, with a deeper level of interpersonal communication. A friend to him was one he could trust 100% and that trust had to be mutual. He had no ritual friendships, he never remembered birthdays or anything like that, he never gave gifts, not to save that money he didn’t have anyway, but to avoid entering the dimension of the ritual, of what one does because it must be done. 

For him, a friend is someone who doesn’t say no, if you go to visit him because you need to have sex with him at one in the morning. This is sex, of course, but it is certainly not “just sex” in the reductive sense of the term. He also has another characteristic that I have always liked a lot and that gives a further meaning to his way of saying: “it’s just sex”. He connects sex “exclusively” to a dimension of instinctive attraction, sex for him mustn’t be polluted by anything else, i.e. it must be “just sex!” because “only sex” means real sex, not mixed with interests of any other kind, and ultimately real sex is the premise of serious friendship. He told me something else that at first irritated me a lot: “if someone doesn’t welcome you into his bed when you need it, he’s not a friend because for him rules matter more than you.” Today I’m starting to think he was right. 

Over time we see each other less and therefore we have less sex and now, in the virus period, we talk  from time to time on the phone, but not very often, when it happens, however, the phone calls are very long. He finally asks me if I got aroused and it actually happens every time. Lately he told me that he has many “friends”, but as for “true friends”, that is, those with whom he can speak freely, he has only three. A few years ago, this speech would have made me feel bad because I would have read it only as a clear sign that for him I was not the only one, neither as a friend nor as a sex partner, since, for him, friendship also includes sexual availability, but today this doesn’t really put me in crisis anymore. 

For more than a year now we have not seen each other “only” to have sex but “also” to talk and to talk in such a serious way that I have never found anything similar in different situations and with anyone else. At the beginning I used to feel a clear difference between his way of seeing sex and personal relationships and mine, then little by little the differences began to fade, little by little we built a common ground, yielding a little to each other’s principles. He is now much less cynical and is also starting to talk about sex as an expression of affectivity and I have ended up putting aside the idea of couple, not because I think there is something wrong, but because I don’t see it suitable for me, I mean for us, me and James. We have found our balance, which is not the classic balance of a couple, but it works between us. So I feel better, I feel much more at ease and somehow, I don’t know whether to say that I feel loved, but I certainly feel much more respected and understood. 

Lately it also happened to me to call him because I felt the need to have sex with him, he just told me: “I’ll wait for you, come as soon as you can.” It was only five words but it was easy to understand that James was glad that I had asked him it. I went up to his house, he let me in, he undressed, while I did the same, then he lay down on the bed and opened his arms and we hugged naked. I stayed with him all night. In the morning when I woke up I asked him: “Is it just sex?” He smiled at me and ruffled my hair. Please note, Project, this is not the beginning, of a perhaps late classic couple story, it is just “a moment” of our relationship, which must be taken for what it is. Saying this I realize that it is as if this time it is me the one who says that “it’s just sex”, even if it’s certainly not “just sex”. In reality I knew very well that after that episode I wouldn’t have seen him perhaps for four or six weeks in a row, I was aware of it and I didn’t want and shouldn’t delude myself. The relationship between James and me would certainly not have ended, and in fact it has not ended, but it would never have been a classic relationship. 

I asked myself several times, from a selfish point of view, if “for me” it would have been better to look for another guy or “also” for another guy. I don’t think that in general James would have considered it as a betrayal, he would probably have accepted it as the most normal thing in the world, because he too was used to do such things normally. The real problem would come with the other guy who would find himself involved in things other than the classic couple stories and feel betrayed. However, since I’ve known James, I’ve never fallen in love with other guys. Now he told me that he fell in love with another guy he likes a lot, and he’s devoting himself completely to this guy, but generally James’s stories don’t last long because guys want him all to themselves and don’t accept the fact that you can’t build relationships with him. 

For slightly different reasons, both James and I have difficulty building relationships with guys, their model of emotional life is different from ours, because they are used to saying one thing and living another. Those guys, when James tells them “it’s just sex”, they feel relieved at first, because they think “it’s just sex” for them too, but when they see James telling them he’s fallen in love with someone else, then they realize that for them it’s not really “just sex” and so they begin to feel terrible and to feel betrayed, because they are unable to put aside the idea of exclusivity in order not to lose James. They want to be with James but they think that the kind of relationship is worth more than the person: better a couple relationship with another than a different kind of relationship with him. I understand that you can be perplexed if you hear your partner saying that “it’s just sex” but to be with a guy because with him you can build the kind of relationship you want it means that in the end “it’s not even sex, but convenience and habit.” 

Sometimes I fear that James, despite everything he has said, might actually fall in love with another guy and end up accepting even a standard couple life with that guy. I can guarantee you that if that happens I’d be happy. At first it might be difficult to accept, but in the end I would be happy. I don’t know if in a similar situation he could forget me, frankly I don’t think so. Perhaps the episodic sexual contacts between us, which characterized our relationship, would end completely, but we would still love each other even so, and at least he would have no reason to repeat that “it’s just sex”.

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I receive the following email at 2.25 am on September 1st 2020, with a request for publication. 

Hello Project, I’m the James mentioned in the post “Gay Guys Looking For Sex”. Here I will call Paul the author of that post, who is one of my closest friends. To some this expression may seem trivial and stupid but for me it is not at all. Paul loved me for who I was, he never frowned like so many guys from good families who were looking for a mate they could take home to have their parents’ blessing. If Paul had taken me to his parents I think they would have kicked me if they knew who I was. Paul didn’t ask questions, he didn’t demand conditions of any kind, he was patient, he never posed as a teacher, he was a true friend, and I think few people know what this expression means. There are many aspects of me much worse than what Paul told in the post, indeed, he almost sanctified me, but he also accepted the worst in me, he didn’t run away like so many others. Now I feel much less as a drifter than before, but not because I found eternal love but because I learned a lot from Paul and still have a lot to learn. I have other friends I trust, but with him it’s different, he’s an exceptional man and he knows I really think so. I never understood what he could find in me, because someone like him could have found guys a hundred times better than me, and he had the opportunities to do it but he really cared about me. He had a vision of sex very far from mine but he didn’t run away, he didn’t get scared. He talked about the night he came to me, and said he called me to be with me, but he didn’t say that he did it mainly because we had talked on the phone in the afternoon and he had understood that I was really in a bad situation. I had longed him to come and he called me and came to me and came here so as not to leave me alone with my paranoia, for me seeing him was like seeing the light again. He said that as soon as he arrived we immediately went to bed together but it didn’t happen at all like that, I was confused and he made me a cup of tea, then he cleaned the kitchen and made me some dinner that he had brought from home, because I hadn’t eaten for two days, then he sat next to me and held my hand until I was better, then we also made love but by now dawn was breaking. I have learned to live or rather I’m learning to live a normal life and I thought that I would never succeed, and instead I’m succeeding because there is Paul. I don’t know if he will ever be my boyfriend, these categories seem absurd to me, I owe him a lot and I’m not ashamed to say it. I’m changing my life because Paul didn’t abandon me when anyone else would. I don’t know if I’m in love with him, in the end in love is a word like any other. I just want to tell him that he was the one who made me realize that it’s not just sex. He knows what is between us and on the other hand I think it is impossible to explain it in words.

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gay-guys-looking-only-for-sex