MEMORIES OF A GAY COUPLE

 Hi Project,

my name is Mario, I’m a 74-year-old Roman who saw his partner die, after trying to do everything to save him, but the doctors and himself were aware of how it would end. It was a very short thing, lasting 31 days in all. He tried to tell me until the end that he loved me and that he was happy to have been with me. He was five years younger than me and I could never have imagined what was about to happened. Almost eight months have passed now, and I have overcome the anxieties of the first moments that made me cry alone without consolation. Now I have his photos, memories and he continues to live inside me. We lived together for almost 40 years and in this we were lucky, because 40 years ago the idea of living together for two men was a utopia and nothing else, but for us it has become reality. 

When we met I was 33 and he was 28, we both were already working. He was a young engineer and I was a slightly older English teacher. At the time, I took it for granted that I would never have a partner and was still living in my parents’ home. I had never gotten along with my parents, who still didn’t know about my homosexuality (and it never occurred to me to think about opening up to them). We didn’t get along especially for political reasons, my mother was a Christian Democrat also and above all because she didn’t read the newspapers and didn’t understand anything about politics, my father was still living in the myth of the “twenty years” (the fascist period) and for him the parties of the left were like smoke in the eyes. 

We had begun to feel something similar to a reciprocal repulsion the year before, at the time of the kidnapping and murder of Moro [Aldo Moro, president of the Christian Democrat Party, killed by Red Brigades]. On the one hand my father hated the Red Brigades but on the other he also hated Moro for his openness to the Communist Party, and towards Moro he used derogatory expressions of the worst kind. My mother used to tell me that the only thing that could be done was to pray and in any case she wouldn’t be able to understand the double game of so many Christian Democrats who couldn’t stand Moro and supported the line of firmness. On the contrary, I had always liked Moro a lot, I had always thought he was an honest man who had not chosen to be a politician for personal interest. And so Moro’s story was also the collapse of my family’s balance. My parents began to consider me a communist by now irrecoverable to their classic petty bourgeois common sense or it should be better to call it opportunism. In practice, I too, although I cannot say that I had begun to hate my father, certainly I had come to the conclusion that there would never be any possible serious conversation between us and on the basis of this, reacting out of rage and irrational impetus, I made a  request for a transfer to go to teach in another province and said nothing at home. Such a behavior would have seemed out of mind to my parents but it seemed somehow necessary and freeing to me. 

Just after having  submitted the application, I regretted having sent it, anyhow I couldn’t go back, but the possibility that my transfer application was accepted was rather remote and this was enough for me to keep calm. Contrary to my hopes and expectations, at the end of the summer of ’78 I was informed that I had been transferred to a very distant province (Turin). It was very difficult for me to tell my parents, especially since I hadn’t told them that I had asked for a transfer. They took it as a real betrayal, a sudden and premeditated stab inflicted to my father and mother. My father was really disgusted by me, he said that he had fed a snake in his bosom, my mother tried to keep him good, but if she hadn’t been there, I would have really come to blows with my father. 

I left home when my father was at work, breaking away from my mother’s hugs and promising that I wouldn’t disappear and that I would send her my new address as soon as possible. There were about 40 days before the beginning of the school year and I stayed in a hotel in Turin until I found a mini-apartment not very far from the school. It was at school that I met Carlo. The Province and the Education Superintendent had plans to build new school buildings and the company where Carlo worked had won a contract, or something similar, and it was decided that a series of meetings should be held at my school, with the planners, with some officials of the Province and of the Superintendency and with some principals. My principal told me that I would be part of the group, which was a show of confidence that I couldn’t resist anyway. 

The first meeting was just for presentation, we were 14 people, and all they did was establish a calendar for the following technical meetings. I thought that all the meetings would be rituals like the first one but it wasn’t so. In the first meeting, however, I immediately noticed Eng. Carlo B., who seemed to me a really nice guy, but nothing more. 

In the second meeting very animated discussions took place, Eng. Carlo B. started unrolling projects and tried to explain the technical problems but then began the brawl of the buts, of the but instead, of the could and should, etc. etc.. It was past 10pm, and the meeting that had begun at 4pm was going on and showed no sign of moving towards its conclusion. Carlo looked at his clock every five minutes, then, after 11.00 pm, he stopped looking at his clock. The meeting ended at 11.30pm. They all left because they had their cars parked in the yard. There I realized that Carlo had no car and I told him. “Can I accompany you somewhere?” and he told me that he would spend the night in the hotel and that he would leave by train the next morning, because by now there were no more trains useful for him, and it was there that I almost instinctively played my cards: “If you want to go to the hotel, I’ll take you downtown, but if it’s okay for you, you could sleep at my house too, it’s small but it’s just a few minutes from here, then I’ll take you to the station tomorrow morning before going at school.” He didn’t let me add a single word, and just said to me:” But do you think it can really be done? ” I replied: “Sure!” He said to me: “It things are so, well, thank you!” Our story began like this. 

It was December, it was freezing cold, but I left my bed and my bed duvet to him and went to sleep on the sofa. In the morning we had breakfast together, then I accompanied him to the station, we were both visibly happy to have broken the ice. He left me the phone number of his parents’ house, I took it but told him I didn’t have a phone but perhaps I could call him with a payphone. At school the principal was thrilled with me because I hadn’t left him alone at the planning meeting and he began to treat me with a special eye. The next technical group meeting was scheduled in a month, I just had to wait, but the wait would have been too long, after not even a week I thought about calling Carlo on the phone, I first prepared all the speech to give, a very official speech if the parents had answered and a very different and very friendly speech if Carlo had answered. 

I decided that the ideal time to call would be around 20.00, at 20.00 sharp I called and told his mother that I was the prof. Mario C. of the Institute’s technical coordination group …, the lady replied that if I left my number her son would call me back as soon as he returned from work, it seemed ugly to answer that I didn’t have a phone and I simply told her to notify the Engineer that I would call him back the next day but the next morning it was he who called me back to school, because perhaps he thought there were really problems related to the coordination group. The janitor came to my classroom to tell me that I had to go up to the offices because there was a phone call for me in the secretary. As soon as I heard his voice the phone I immediately understood that the reason wasn’t certainly the anxiety due to the coordination group. There were people nearby and obviously I couldn’t speak too friendly. I told him: “Good morning Engineer!” and he replied: “Hi Mario!” I went on using a very polite and almost ceremonial language and he replied: “This morning I’m in Turin and I finish at 11.00, would you like to have lunch with me?” I replied: “Look, it was just what I would have suggested, I believe that the project can start much better this way!” Three hours later we were having lunch together! 

We were friends now. It was evident that there was a mutual interest but on both sides the prudence was maximum, we strictly avoided too personal arguments, we talked about our experiences of study and work, at first we didn’t talk about politics, I didn’t know how to frame him even from that point of view, then slowly I began to notice on his face some expression of disappointment those rare times that we spoke of Christian Democracy, or at least of certain Christian Democrat politicians, of others, however, he had great esteem. Once we also talked about Moro and it was evident that the kidnapping and murder of Moro had upset him, even if he was not well informed about the facts. Slowly we began to talk about daily politics and I almost always found myself in agreement with him. He spoke of socialism with some enthusiasm, but not of Craxi’s socialism, but of Nenni’s socialism. 

We also discussed literature, once he told me about a novel by Pavese, “The house in the hills”, a novel that I didn’t know, but rather than talking about partisans and Germans, he focused on the relationship between Corrado, the protagonist, a very disenchanted professor coming from Turin, and Dino, a very young guy, whom Corrado suspects is his son. The relationship between the alleged father and the alleged son, in the book, is hinted at, more than clarified. Corrado sees himself in the young guy, who will eventually join the partisans, while his father will not be capable of anything like this and will close himself in his inner world made of awareness and above all renunciations. In the novel, which I then read almost immediately, it also speaks of Corrado’s relationship with Dino’s mother and of two other women who host Corrado, but obviously this was not what struck Carlo. Then once we also talked about Bassani and the “Finzi-Contini Garden”, where there is also a hint linked to homosexuality. Carlo was well acquainted with the book, evidently he had read it several times but never mentioned homosexual references. 

After that first lunch together in Turin we got into the habit of meeting every Sunday, he always came to me by train and left with the last useful train at 11.00 pm. We met in the morning around nine and spent the whole day together, obviously we never talked about girls, and this led us to hope, but the doubts remained and were very strong. As Christmas was approaching, I asked him what he would do for Christmas and he simply told me that he would be at home with his parents because he was an only child and had only his parents. From there we started talking about our family relationships. His parents had spent every penny to make him study and he, once he became an engineer, somehow felt he had to repay them, he had to at least devote his time to his parents and somehow had to compensate them for everything they were deprived of to make him study, also for this reason he worked from morning to evening and furthermore had a very special emotional relationship with his parents. His parents weren’t old, but it was a bit like he considered himself the father of those he called “my two old folks”. All this seemed very strange to me. 

I told him about the quarrels with my father for political reasons and the final ruin of my family following my transfer to Turin, requested without saying anything to my parents. But Carlo surprised me with his answer: “If that was the situation, you did very well to leave! For me it’s different, my parents are very simple people but they taught me the true values of life.” Little by little we were getting closer to more personal confidences, obviously neither of us was talking about girls. We went on like this for almost six months, like good friends. I was in doubt whether to install the phone or not, with the phone I could call him, but in the end he would always have talked from home, so I didn’t install the phone, but we continued to meet on Sunday, as had become tradition. We never gave ourselves gifts of any kind, partly out of superstition because we wanted everything between us to be free and without obligations. 

Then something unexpected happened, even if “somehow” expected. The 1st of June 1980 was Sunday and the 2nd was the feast of the Republic and therefore both he and I had two free days in a row, I proposed to him to stay and sleep with me and he accepted. I asked him how his parents would take it and he answered in an enigmatic way that they would be happy, I tried to deepen the discussion and he told me that his parents knew about our friendship, because he had talked about it and they were happy, then he added : “On the other hand, they never expected me to take a girl home.” I pretended not to have understood and he said to me: “Come on, you understood very well!” I immediately gave up to acting and pretending, and told him: “So they know …”, he replied: “Sure, I told them … but they don’t know who you are, if they knew you I think they would be very happy.” By now we were speaking clearly. 

He told me how he decided to talk to his parents. At the time of the university he was he was in Turin, retired in a room alone, and his  parents, those rare times they saw him, were very worried that he wouldn’t find a girl or at least a female company. Because they thought that a girl could make him feel better, and therefore they insisted that he had to “feel free” and it was from there that Carlo’s whole speech started. His parents listened very carefully but they didn’t think they already knew what Carlo was talking about, they trusted him and wanted him to make them understand what it meant to be homosexual. He just said it’s exactly like when you fall in love with a girl, only instead of a girl it’s a guy, but the feelings are the same. 

Then he said to me: “You won’t believe me, but nothing has changed between me and my parents, my father has never been very expansive even before, but afterwards, when I came home, I felt much more pampered than before. I had the distinct feeling that my parents trusted me so much that they thought I would never do anything wrong or bad, the only thing they repeated to me was: ‘what is good for you is good for us!’ ” The night between 1st and 2nd June we didn’t sleep but we told each other about our lives. Project, I think you can understand how liberating it was for us to understand that we had found another homosexual guy and that something nice was being built with that guy. 

Neither he nor I had had the slightest experience of these things, I don’t talk about sex, which was all in the realm of fantasy, but precisely on the affective side. Shortly before taking the train back on the evening of June 2, he asked me: “Would you like to meet my parents?” The request was unsettling for someone like me but I said yes and as he got on the train he told me: “So next Sunday you come to me!” I said yes, without even understanding the significance of such a thing. The following Sunday I took the train and at 9.00 I was with him, very embarrassed. He told me to take it easy and we went up to his house. His parents were more embarrassed than me and we made very few speeches. They offered me some traditional artisanal macaroons and told me that lunch was ready and that they would go to the house of one of Carlo’s aunts. The father concluded: “We don’t want to embarrass you and in any case we thank you so much for having accepted our invitation.“ They greeted us a little awkwardly and left. I thought they were upset, but Carlo said to me: “Don’t worry, they trust you too! My father is very shy, but I know him well! ” 

Carlo took me around the valley, we walked a lot in the woods between ups and downs, he was happy and so was I, even though I thought I could never introduce Carlo to my father. Then, over time, we even got to have a little sex, but I won’t tell you about because it is part of my and Carlo’s private life and for me it is something sacred. Carlo worked in Turin but used to take the train every day so as not to leave his parents alone, well, an incredible thing happened, one day we went to the home of Carlo’s parents and his father told us: “My wife and I don’t are still old and we can also be alone, but why don’t you take an apartment together in Turin?” At the time it was not an easy thing at all because of demographic problems, that is, problems of cohabiting nucleus, etc. etc., the idea was very interesting but the doubts were many. Now I know we have been together all our life long, but at that time I didn’t know how it was going to end. In short, we came to the conclusion of buying two apartments on the top floor of a building, facing each other. He was a civil engineer and was able to choose the best. The condition was that the apartments were two and facing each other. 

One evening he arrived at my house all out of breath and showed me what seemed like an excellent opportunity. He explained to me about the exposure, the thermal insulation, because we would be on the top floor, he told me about transports, those that were already there and those that perhaps would be activated later. At that time there was still no talk of the subway in Turin, but Carlo looked far away and following the urban development he expected that sooner or later a subway line would also pass through those parts, what then really happened but in years very close to us. The two apartments were not identical but they were both two rooms and the price was very similar. The next day (Sunday) we went to see them from the outside, he had already been there and had visited everything from the inside and since he was a professional and also understood the financial aspects he had seen that to buy the apartments we could also take on a share of the mortgage taken out by the builder in 1972 with the bank at a fixed rate of 4.8%, while in 1980 the mortgages had passed over 21%. Interest rates were expected to drop in the long run and Carlo insisted that we had to repay the mortgage within 10 years and no more. We would have finished paying very soon but it was at the limit of possible. Carlo used to say: “If there is a need, my parents come to stay with us and their house is rented or, at worst, sold. The appearance of the building was very dignified and Carlo assured me that the structure was modernly built following all the rules of the art. On Monday morning he went to the sales office and gave the down payment for his apartment, fixing the option of taking over the old mortgage. When he went out I went in immediately after, they showed me the apartment and it was really very nice and above all bright and with a splendid view. They told me that if I wanted I could have thought about it but I knew what I had to do and I too paid my deposit by making the compromise exactly according to what Carlo had suggested. He was waiting for me outside and we went to lunch together, by now we had our own houses, with 4 bedrooms and two bathrooms, divided in two, but over time we had already planned that Carlo and I would stay in my house and the other house would host his parents if needed. 

We worked like crazy to pay for the two houses within ten years: he was awake doing calculations and drawing until late at night, in my apartment I was giving private lessons as much as I could. It was very difficult at first, but with the help of his parents we made it. Then our economic conditions improved and in 1990 we finished paying for the houses and furnished them in a less basic way. Before he only had furniture in the study where he worked and sometimes received people, but the other room was practically without furniture and the kitchen as well. In my house only the room where I used to give private lessons was furnished. The owners of the other apartments of the building didn’t consider us as a couple also because they saw very little of us, we were on the top floor, we never went to condominium meetings and gave the proxies to different people. When we happened to meet on the stairs we greeted each other like two complete strangers living in the same building, it was a ritual that may seem stupid but it served not to arouse curiosity. 

In 1990 he was 39 and I was 44, we were no longer young. That same year Carlo’s mother got sick and came to stay with her husband at Carlo’s house, while Carlo stayed at my house. We assisted Carlo’s mother until the end in ’93. The father suffered terribly from the trauma of widowhood, then he recovered, we spent a few good years together and then it also happened to him in ’99 for a lung disease that took him away. Carlo was then 48 years old and I was 53, we were now mature men, with economic and job security and above all with emotional security. Nobody knew about us but we had our real world and we lacked nothing, we didn’t care about the others. 

And here there was another sudden turning point, my mother calls me and tells me that my father is sick, it was the height of summer and Carlo and I had planned a wandering holiday together, I ask Carlo what I have to do and he replies without hesitation: “Go pack your bags and we’ll leave immediately!“ We traveled all night and the next morning we were in the hospital in front of my father’s room. Before entering we asked the doctor who reassured us, then we went to him together and I said to him: “Dad I came here to take you to my house because there you can be followed better.” And he said to me: “What about your mother?” when I told him: “She’s coming too!” he calmed down, then he looked at Carlo and said to me: “Who is that gentleman?” I replied: “That’s my partner …” I was afraid that this thing could make him feel bad but nothing of the kind happened and my father said: “And what does he say if we come to stay with you?” I shook my father’s hand and told him: “He says you have to come!” My mother was almost incredulous, then she started talking to Carlo. 

Eight days later my father was discharged from the hospital and we began the long journey to Turin. We stopped every now and then to let Dad rest because it was also very hot. Late in the evening, just before midnight, we arrived home in Turin. My father hadn’t yet realized that the two houses were separate, when he realized that he would have been alone with his wife in an apartment with his son on the same landing he calmed down. Carlo prepared the room for my father and my mother, then said goodbye and went to the other apartment to leave me alone with my parents. My father told me: “But he is a good man! He also took charge of us and he has also his parents to take care of … ” I told him that he no longer had his parents and that his parents had lived with us until the end, then my father stared at me and said: “Then you too are a good man! And I was a fool who didn’t understand it before. ” Dad’s health improved, he sat on the terrace looking at the mountains, I felt him calm, he often talked to Carlo, admired him, and used to say some very nice things about him, my mother was serene, did some cooking and saw the family reunited as she would never have imagined, she passed away in 2011 and then my father in 2012, when I was 68. 

Since then, Carlo and I have been truly alone, we were now old men but we thought that we could enjoy another piece of life together and instead the Lord didn’t want it and we went on being together for eight years only. Now my world is really over, I’m the last of the row, and I have no heirs left: I don’t know how long I will live and if there will be someone next to me when my time will come, but I lived my life, I was very lucky and I’m fully aware of it. Meeting Carlo changed my life. The idea of separating never crossed our minds. Without him I would have been an absolute nothing, I would have felt frustrated, I wouldn’t have recovered the relationship with my father and I would never have had a true love life. I would like to tell the guys who will read this story that at the beginning no one ever knows how things will go, I at twenty took it for granted that I would always be alone but it didn’t happen like that at all. I feel like an old man because I’m old but I have lived the life I wanted and with the person I wanted. There have been many problems but we have walked the road together and when I think of Carlo I know that in some way he is with me and will be with me until we will rejoin in heaven.

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