GAYS BETWEEN DIVERGENT THINKING AND INTELLECTUALISM

 Hi Project,

I read on the forum a very interesting discussion entitled: “Gay affectivity and divergent thinking”. It is a discussion from more than eight years ago that particularly attracted me not because I’m or feel like a guy capable of a really divergent thinking, I’d like a lot if it was so! But because my boyfriend, whom I will call Elio here, is so, in my opinion, and I would like to bring my small contribution to the discussion by considering the question from another point of view slightly different. I state that to understand that we are dealing with divergent thinking and not just with petty rhetoric or a show of exasperated intellectualism, a counterpart of a certain cultural depth is needed. 

I have read some books but frankly I don’t feel quite up to these speeches. Elio, who in my opinion is a refined intellectual, one who reads a lot and above all who thinks a lot, has not won me over for this aspect of his personality, which I think serves him above all as a defense weapon when he doesn’t really trust someone, and even a little to hide his fragile ego. I’m not doing intellectualistic speeches in my turn, Project, I mean that in the end the affective research that you yourself associated with divergent thinking, in Elio’s life ended up being the prevailing element. When the affective dimension creaked or failed, then divergent thinking came out. A little as if the genius was born out of the frustration of feelings. 

I remember now that I have not yet told you that I am 35 and Elio is 32. Fortunately for us we both work, Elio in a much better situation than mine, and it is right that it should be so because objectively his work commits him much more than mine commits me. He may be proud of what he has done but he is absolutely not proud, on the contrary, he underlines in a thousand ways that he has done much less than he could and that I think he is a great person, while he is just one who strives to do what others do spontaneously without any effort. Those who only know him through work respect him and in a sense fear him. I, who have known him for almost 10 years and have followed step by step all his studies and all his work successes, I also know the human side of Elio, his weaknesses, which in my opinion are the most fascinating side of his character. 

Some days he comes back from work very tired, because he often works even in the afternoon, he goes into the house, he leaves his shoes near the entrance and puts on some house slippers, then he goes into the dining room and I make him find the table set and he sits down and lifts his neck towards me because that’s the moment for a kiss on the forehead, a use that we inaugurated many years ago, when we met. During dinner we don’t see TV, sometimes I mess around his hair or stroke his hand and he squeezes it tightly. During the dinner he uses only one plate, he is very careful not to dirty the tablecloth because he knows that I should wash it later. Sometimes he tells me some anecdotes of his work but always in brief. 

After dinner we go into the living room and he takes off his slippers because he likes to walk on the carpet only with socks, he says it’s a bit like walking on grass. I sit on the sofa and he lies down and rests his head on my legs and when he is very tired he falls asleep like this! We talk little between us, we are able to tell each other everything with a hug. 

We have been living together for 4 years now and we share the costs, but not at 50%. He earns 1.45 times what I earn, and pays 1.45 / 2.45 of all expenses. He tells me that that is the minimum of the equity and that I work at home while he does practically nothing at home and it is obvious that I contribute in other ways to the functioning of the house. This precision in the division of expenses, however, is a kind of game, because Elio, who in the past has always had very little money, is not in the least stingy and leaves his salary together with mine without distinguishing mine and his, the one  of us who needs money takes freely what he needs. We have a joint account which by law is half his and half mine, although obviously he contributes much more than me. At first I thought that there could be money problems between us but it never happened. 

His parents once found themselves in the faculty to redeem the apartment they lived in but they didn’t have all the money they needed and we gave them (not lent) all our savings. Please note, Project, that we weren’t expecting any money back and instead they returned everything to us in just three years. I no longer have my parents and Elio’s parents are a bit like my family. They cuddle me more than Elio because they know that he appreciates a lot such a behavior. We see them every week, as far as possible, and I think that the fact that Elio is a man inwardly calm is largely due to them. In Elio’s attitudes I see many attitudes of his father. 

Sometimes we talk about cultural things, that is a bit of the “highest systems”, and I am often amazed because he listens to me. He makes me talk and listens to me, he never silences me, he tries to follow the logical thread of what I tell him. When I have finished, he keeps quiet for a few seconds and then takes up all the points of my speech, enriches them, develops them, and if they weren’t already part of his way of thinking, he makes them his, integrates them into his way of seeing things, tells me that I give him often some tips that are also useful to him in his work and that you don’t need to have studied philosophy to be a philosopher. Note, Project, he tells me this very seriously. He often tells me that I reassure him, that I am his anxiolytic, his antidepressant. He is very rational but easily goes into crisis when he sees people suffering. 

When we first went to live together, in our building there was an elderly lady, the lady or rather Miss Adele, who treated us very well from the beginning, when she met us on the stairs she always smiled at us and I think she understood very well that we were a couple, then, after a few months, we never saw her again, Elio inquired and learned that Miss Adele could no longer leave the house, she lived alone and was assisted by a voluntary association. We went to see her when the guys from the association were there, the house was clean and tidy, thanks to those guys, even though the young lady couldn’t get out of her wheelchair. But she was very alert mentally, she joked with us and treated us well and so we got into the habit of spending two evenings a week with her and having dinner with her. I can tell you, Project, they were beautiful evenings, nothing forced, everything was very spontaneous, it was a bit like having a grandmother. 

Then Miss Adele’s health deteriorated and they hospitalized her, and after three weeks she died. For us it was a real family mourning. At the funeral it was just us and we paid for the funeral. Less than a week later, a notary called us and told us that the Miss Adelina had made her will and had left us the apartment and all the money she had, as well as a sealed letter. In the letter she told us that she would pray for us from Heaven and that she had left us her things so that we could do with them what we thought was right. Three days later we returned to the notary with the legal representative of the association who had assisted the young lady and we left everything to them. 

Project, it may seem incredible to you but when we left the notary’s office we hugged each other tightly for the happiness of having done what had to be done. You can understand, Project, that in my opinion these gestures are the real divergent thinking, because Elio is not only cultured and intelligent but he is good, he is a good man that I can only admire. He is not narrow-minded, he does not think only of himself. When I embrace it, I know I hold the rarest treasure in the world. And do you know what he told me? He said when he realized that about Miss Adele’s legacy we were thinking of doing exactly the same thing, he felt the happiest man on Earth because both of us were inclined to divergent thinking but to a divergent thinking in exactly the same direction. 

When you meet such a man there is no need for words! This divergent thinking is not intellectualism, it is absolutely another thing. When I think of Elio, tears come to my eyes, being together we have learned to be better. You can understand why we get along well. Sometimes I read stories of jealousy, sex and power play within the couple on the forum. Before meeting Elio I too lived that kind of situation and he probably lived them too, but then we met and our life really changed. 

In Miss Adele’s house the voluntary association has accommodated two elderly ladies, we went to visit them but they looked at us as if we were two intruders, so we said goodbye and left. They weren’t like Miss Adele who used to smile at us when she saw us, showing a face full of happiness and when we dined together she was all well dressed and combed and hugged us tightly to make us understand that we were important to her. 

Yesterday Elio came home in the evening all wet, he did not have the hood of his raincoat on his head but he carried it with the utmost care, I approached and he motioned me to shut up, then he opened the hood of the waterproof and there was a not so small kitten inside, all wet. We dried it, we made a kind of kennel for him and then we tried to give it some milk, after having warmed it a little in our hands, and the kitten was able to eat on his own which was a huge relief for us. We have a veterinary friend to ask for advice but if the kitten eats alone it means that all in all he’s fine. We set him up in our room and spent the whole evening cuddling the kitten who also looked in great shape. Today our vet friend told us that the kitten was actually a she kitten and that she was in good health and we decided to call her Adelina. You can’t imagine how carefully Elio treats the kitten and the kitten trusts him, and actually me too, as if she had always known us, a bit like Miss Adele had done, that’s why we chose that name. 

Today Elio began to call her “the baby-girl” and many thoughts came to mind about how nice it would be to have a real baby-girl. I know these are just dreams, but Elio would be a really good dad and I would try my best too. Now I’ll send you the email, otherwise I won’t finish it anymore. Of course, you can use it as you like better.

Thanks for what you do, Project. Keep it up.

_________________________

If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum:

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gays-between-divergent-thinking-and-intellectualism

UNDERSTANDING GAY SEX

 Hi Project,

I often read your forum posts, there are good stories but it seems to me that sex remains somehow a marginal topic, I don’t say avoided but treated as much as possible in a neutral way. Instead, I would like to make it clear that it is a very important thing. Maybe you are laughing now because I’m saying something obvious, but for me it has become a very important thing. It wasn’t always a very important thing or rather I didn’t understand its meaning and trivialized it. But perhaps it is better that I tell you the facts, otherwise I will waste time.

I am 32 years old and I no longer feel like a boy from any point of view. I have had my experiences, I think more or less similar to those that all gays have, with the basic idea that sex was after all a marginal and also risky thing, so when I happened to have a concrete experience, I experienced it badly, a bit like I was doing it unwillingly just because my partner at the time wanted it.

Let’s say that I always took it a bit as an imposition, then I never loved anal sex, which for some of my partners was instead a fixed idea, even if not for all, I have been with two guys of very different age, who told me that they didn’t like anal sex at all, but the two other guys I have been with were really obsessed with it and I couldn’t stand them because they insisted we had to do it anyway, because it was the very important for them. Among other things I have never endured the condom that bothered me, but on the other hand I’m a phobic hypochondriac and the idea of doing something like that without a condom doesn’t even pass through the anteroom of my brain. You can understand well in what spirit I used to have sexual intercourse, let’s say that in the end I have adapted quite reluctantly. I just didn’t understand what others were finding in having anal sex. I looked at them in amazement, they seemed to me completely out of their mind.

With my fourth boyfriend it all ended because I couldn’t bear that everything was reduced to have sex and nothing more. That is, at the limit I can also adapt to do what you want, but how can you think that for me that is the maximum enjoyment? It means that you don’t really realize how I feel and that you only think about yourself. If I caressed him he replied that it bothered him, when we had finished he would get dressed and leave without even saying hello … you can understand what level we were at!

And these stories went on for up to my 30 years! Then I meet Matthew, a guy more or less the same age that I like immediately, that is, he is my ideal type of guy, let’s say that I have never seen one that interested me more than him, I mean that he attracted me precisely on a physical level and very. I was intrigued by Matthew, we started chatting and he intrigued me a lot, he too had had his stories and he had one that still went on, but he was not satisfied at all. He was in love with his boyfriend but did not feel reciprocated, somehow he felt exploited only for sexual reasons, but he could not detach himself from that guy.

Matthew was the first guy with whom I managed to build a relationship of serious friendship. We talked a lot, he didn’t compliment me, he didn’t try to seduce me, he talked to me about himself and above all about the discomfort he felt with his boyfriend and the fact that he loved him anyway and this made me uncomfortable, because I was in love about him and he kept talking to me about the other guy, even though the things he said to me were obvious signs of unease. I would have wanted some physical intimacy with him, but there was no such thing.

I trusted Matthew, he was very serious, always a little sad but he was a true, faithful friend, I too began to talk to him about me and my discomfort with my last boyfriend, that I had already archived for a few months. Slowly, with Matthew, we also came to talk about sex, but he used to speak about it in a different way from the other guys I had known, he was very direct he didn’t sublimate speeches  but it was evident that sex for him had a strong emotional value. However, I realized that he had a different sexuality from mine, he too considered anal sex a very important thing and this made me uncomfortable because I thought that assuming that there could be sex between us, it would never be something of truly shared on the same level.

But time passed, we chatted a couple of times a week and several times even once, he had his life and I mine, he was very busy with work and often had to go out of town for work, and I in certain periods in practice I had no working hours and I had to work in the office as long as there were people and many times even at home in the evening, and nevertheless sometimes I have been waiting until late for his call, I avoided to call him because I would have risked calling him at a time when he was busy for work or maybe while she was with her boyfriend, because he kept having a boyfriend and feeling bad about it.

When we talked on the phone they were very special moments, very engaging, very real, something that had never happened to me with anyone before. I realized that I shared everything with him except sex. We talked for hours, he was often melancholy, even bordering on depressed. Our bond was strange, asymmetrical, at least in a certain sense, because I also wanted him sexually while he seemed essentially disinterested, however, slowly our relationship had become a very important thing both for him and for me, we were not just friends, it was evident that there was something more, we instinctively trusted each other, we were a real couple without sex.

I do not hide that for me it was a pain. He was the object of all my sexual fantasies and just hearing his voice on the phone caused me an erection and of course this lasted the entire time of the phone call long and afterwards I masturbated but with a background of melancholy, as for a wish that would never come true. And then I had never told him these things, I was afraid of influencing him or maybe letting him run away. We had talked a lot about sex, but about sex with others, while about sex between us, possible or not, we had never been talking and this made me very embarrassed, as if I were tricking him by trying to give him the idea that for me the fact that our relationship was without sex was somehow a quietly accepted fact. He treated me like a friend but to me he wasn’t just a friend.

Then came a time when he was very grumpy, I mean that anyway he was always respectful, he treated me as best he could but he was sad and spoke little. There were moments of embarrassment between us when I didn’t know what to say and once he gave me a caress and left without saying a word. I felt helpless, I loved him but obviously I couldn’t change his life, I couldn’t give him the serenity he needed.

Then he disappeared for 32 days, and disconnected his cell phone. I called his office and they told me he was on vacation and they didn’t know anything else. But on vacation he would have carried his cell phone. I did not know where his parents lived and I did not have their telephone number, because Matthew lived on his own and so, day after day, I became terribly anxious, I tried to call him, I left him messages on the answering machine but I was very scared.

On the 32nd day at half past midnight he called me on the phone and just said, “Would you like to have sex with me?” I told him: “Sure! Where are you?” At that moment my intercom rang. It was him and he went up to my house. When he entered the house he hugged me, something he had never done! But it was a hug that had nothing sexual at al. Then he said to me: “I’ll stay with you tonight … ok?” I told him that I had been very worried about him, and he said to me:

“I’m done with Silvio, I felt like a complete fool, he was only interested in having sex with me, but he didn’t care about me …”

We went into the kitchen, he sat on a low stool and I made him a cup of tea with some biscuits and then we went back to the living room to talk. In reality we talked very little, he only told me that the next afternoon he had to go back to work, not a single word about sex. He lay down on the sofa and fell asleep. I stayed close to him and slept in the armchair.

I say I slept, but I actually wondered why he asked me if I wanted to have sex with him. That was the first time he had ever mentioned such a hypothesis. I had all night to think about it, but then I started thinking about something else, about the fact that he was next to me and that sex or not sex, somehow he loved me and that I had passed from the deep anguish of a few hours before to such a love feeling in that so incredible but true way.

In the morning we woke up before seven, went down to the bar to have breakfast and then went home. I was supposed to be at work at 9.00 and we had to say goodbye. I wanted to ask him what that request to have sex with me meant but I pretended to  have forgotten it, he said to me: “We have to talk, I’ll come to you tonight around nine, if you like, make a little dinner to me , if you like.” I said yes to him and he greeted me by giving me a very light kiss on the mouth, something he had never done before. My working day literally flew in a whirlwind of thoughts that you can well imagine. After work, I ran to the supermarket and then immediately home to prepare some dinner. He arrives on time, finds dinner ready and the table set. We have a quick dinner then we start talking. I’ll quote here the speech on the basis of what I wrote down the next day in my diary:

“It’s over with Silvio. I told you. I was in love with him but he always said that there was only sex between us. I mean, I felt treated like shit and finally got rid of it. With him I had deluded myself that it could work and instead it ended exactly as had ended all my previous stories. I felt like a total moron. You must have wondered why when I called you I asked you if you wanted to have sex with me and there is a reason for this question: it was what I told Silvio when I needed him. It was always me who called him and always when I knew he was free, and he didn’t say no, but then I when we were together, we did what we had to do, and then it was automatic that I left immediately. When I last went there I asked him the same question, just as it had always happened, that is if he wanted to have sex with me, and he told me to go up but I didn’t want to have sex with him at all, I needed him to listen to me but he didn’t even try, he told me that if I ask him if he wants to have sex, then I can’t start with “pathological bullshit” (his words) and that if I don’t want to have sex I don’t have to break his balls (always his words) so I left and came to your house and I asked you to if you would like to have sex with me. You let me in and it was all very different and I expected it would all be very different. I know you love me and I too love you in a sense, but I’m not in love with you, you are not physically my type, but I think I could be fine with you anyway. I think I’m not indifferent to you. In conclusion, if you think we can be together, we can also try. I do not know how I will react, it may be that then I will feel uncomfortable, but if it happens I will tell you immediately, it could be an experiment … it seems absurd, I know, but we could try, however I do not promise anything, but now I think we might as well try … “.

“Matthew, I’m only interested in that you are fine, what hurts me is to see you sad, discouraged, unmotivated. If you are better off without sex, we can be very well even without it, you don’t have to feel forced into anything … “

” But you are saying this because it is fine for you as we have done so far and only this way? “

“No, certainly not! It’s fine for me if we try, but I wouldn’t want that if it doesn’t work, this was another reason for disappointment and frustration … “

“No, I don’t think there would be a risk of disappointment, I never felt exploited by you, but listen, first of all there is a very important fact to take account of, we need to get tested for HIV because with Silvio we also had risky behaviors and the idea of being able to infect you with a bad disease would destroy me … and I would also like you to do the test too, it would be a way to start from scratch together. It was precisely out of the fear of infecting you something that I kept away from you when I was with Silvio … “

” Well, I’m very attracted by you, sexually I mean, I masturbated dozens of times thinking about you but I didn’t tell you never because you were thinking of Silvio and I should not interfere … “

“Well, physically you are not my type but it just happened to me two days ago that I masturbated thinking about you and that’s exactly why I told you we can try. I used to think I could not have sexual desires on you but now I think it is possible, in practice it happened. But understand me, for me it is all new and everything in reverse compared to what I have always lived, in short, what will happen I do not know … but we can try. “

Dear Project, as you can understand, it was a very unusual start for a love story, but there was already a strong bond between us before and we didn’t get scared. We went together to take the test, he was a little anxious but only a little because with Silvio they “almost” always used a condom, but luckily the test was negative for both of us. In theory, the first major obstacle was over. We still had to go from words to deeds and here the embarrassment was enormous, not because of the sex itself, but because neither he nor I wanted to put in crisis our relationship due to inexperience, or due to too much haste or unavailability. I had also mentally accepted the idea of having anal intercourse with him, because for him they were important and after all they practiced them in a reciprocal way with Silvio and perhaps it would have been so with me too. The problem anyway did not arise precisely because knowing that those things were never in my fantasies, he had accepted the idea of doing without them. Basically each of us had accepted the idea of having to adapt to the other. But problems occurred much earlier. The very idea of attempting a physical contact was also a problem. Luckily it was he who made the first move.

One night in my house, he undressed completely and lay down on the bed. I too undressed and he said to me:
“You are such a beautiful guy!” and he said it with conviction, almost as if it were something he did not expect, a spontaneous smile came to me and he replied in the same way, then he gestured for me to approach … the rest you can imagine it. He was not at all clumsy and we understood each other on the fly. It didn’t even seem real to me that I was in such a situation, because I had dreamed of it for so long. We hugged naked, very tight and he kissed me tenderly. It was the height of summer and it was very hot, we went to the kitchen, naked as we were, and had two cold drinks. We looked like two Adams in the earthly Paradise. I didn’t know what would happen next, but we went back to making love in a very playful way and then we went to sleep hugging. I woke up long before him in the morning and went to prepare some breakfast, when I brought it to him, he stretched like a cat and smiled as he hardly ever did.

Then several days later we also got to anal sex, I didn’t tell him no, I put on a condom and then we went on, you could see that it was important for him, in the end he didn’t ask me to change roles and said that after all it is not what you do that counts but with whom you do it and added that now he knew that if he had asked me I would not have said no. In the following months we did it a few more times but in the end it was not a fixed idea even for him, it was not a taboo but it was not even an obligatory step and slowly the matter became less important for him and less problematic for me, now it is done every now and then but mostly as a demonstration that I do not say no.

What I like most about Matteo’s sexuality and that for him sex doesn’t have a precise beginning and end, is a bit of a general atmosphere of warmth and intimacy. We now also know each other well sexually, for example 

I know that he really likes that after sex I don’t get dressed and stay naked with him on the bed to chat and joke. The post-sex phase for him is fundamental because it gives him the feeling of being considered like a man and not like a sex toy, in practice that post-sex phase, with Silvio, did not exist at all and he felt uncomfortable. He likes to have sex with the light on because he tells me he wants to see me in all my splendor and I know this means that he begins to appreciate me also from a sexual point of view, and he repeats to me that I am beautiful because he knows that I like very much to hear such things from him.

In a sense, our being a couple should be fragile but when we are together we see that it is not so, now he is much less melancholy than before, sometimes he jokes and above all sends me very tender text messages. To be honest, I have fulfilled my deepest wishes. When you hold the one guy you truly loved in your arms and feel that he is happy to be with you, I don’t think you could want anything more.

I had Matthew read this email before sending it to you, since it also concerns him and he told me that I mythologized him, because he is not like that, but much worse! Publish the email, if you like, it’s fine with us!

A warm greeting.
Mark

______________________

If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum:

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-understanding-gay-sex

A QUIET GAY COUPLE

 Hi Project,

I remember starting to hang out on your forum many years ago and it made me a little vaccinated against dating sites, applications and especially easy sex. Somehow I owe you a lot, even if you don't know, because I met my partner, with whom I have lived for years, on the Gay Project Chat, when there was a lot of people and there were even two chat channels. You don't know me, because I was one of those hit and run users and then I would have been very embarrassed talking to you. 

I'm 35 now and my partner is 31. I can say that all in all we are a nice couple. He is really beautiful, I am much less, but we are a beautiful couple because we have been living together for more than eight years and we love each other. My name is Paul and my partner is called John. We have always been calm and have had a lot of luck, in addition to meeting on Gay Project and feeling a little fond of the environment, even if from the outside. 

We both had families that didn't cause us any problems. They certainly struggled to accept our relationship, but at least they didn’t create problems of principle, I would say that above all my parents struggled to accept the situation when they didn’t know John in person and therefore reasoned a lot in the abstract. John's parents had an excellent relationship with him even before and would never have been afraid that he might get into trouble. We are both only children, which on the one hand made family relationships easier but on the other, perhaps, made it more difficult to accept the idea of a gay son, but in the end, our parents met and made friends. This was our second luck, but the most important one was that we were just fine together. 

We are not partygoers, not obsessed with fashion, we don't smoke, we don't drink, we work a lot but without the determination to make a career or money at all costs, because we want to enjoy our life. First we studied, then we had to think about finding work and we had little time for ourselves, now that our work situations are at least relatively stabilized, we want to have some time for ourselves, not to travel or to do who knows what, but just to be among us. We always had both Saturdays and Sundays free and on Saturday evenings we had fun cooking something different, or doing laundry and ironing, or cleaning the house, and then we would get together on the sofa to watch TV. They may seem trivial things, but staying lying on the sofa and feeling the warmth of my partner's body leaning against me fills me with tenderness. A caress and a smile are the best thing in the world if they come from the right person. 

Before getting to know each other we had some experiences but minimal, a little disappointing, and therefore in a certain sense educational, but never traumatic. I mean that we have understood that to be well together you have to stay on the same wavelength, that is, you have to see life in a rather similar way, otherwise the contradictions sooner or later come out. That is, in love the “who” counts much more than the “what” and the “how”.

 Since we met we have lived in strict monogamy, not out of a theoretical duty of fidelity or out of fear of diseases but because we were well together. We looked for our sexual equilibrium together and it wasn't even difficult to find it because even from that point of view we reasoned more or less the same way. Sex between us exists and has always existed, since the beginning, but other moments in life have not been less fundamental for us. 

In particular, it happened to me a few years ago to lose my job and at that moment I felt John very close. He knew that I was going through a very difficult time and he was close to me not in words, but by spending hours scrolling through advertisements and checking employment opportunities and conditions. Sometimes we spent the night in front of the computer preparing and mailing resumes, and we went out on Saturdays for job interviews. The problem of work was my problem but I felt very comforted by John's presence and I think that if the problem had been his he could not have done more than he did for me, and all this operationally, without useless chatter. He was anxious that I find the best possible job and quickly, he didn't think in the least to have to show me that he was taking care of it, he didn't have to make a good impression but to solve the problem. 

He and I both had few friends before we met, then our friends met and his friends became my friends and vice versa. Now the friends are no longer mine or his but ours, in the sense of us as a couple, they are seven people in all, two straight couples, a gay couple and a straight guy looking for a girl. Among us everyone knows everything about everyone and there have never been problems. When I tell it nobody believes it, they tell me it's impossible, but that's exactly what happens. 

Now I feel serene and I only have in the background the fear that all this could be upset at any moment by something unexpected and terrible, because when you have achieved your happiness you are afraid of losing it. In our life there have been no sensational facts, it was all very peaceful. Our parents are all still in good health and things should go on like this for at least ten years. The Covid virus, which for many people was a shock, brought both of us the opportunity to work from home. We work, yes, but there are no more transfer times and we have much more time for ourselves. 

I am experiencing how important it is to be two in the substantial sense of the term, it is something that reassures you, that makes you feel good, and then you realize that you are also important for your partner, you know that you can put him in a good mood when he is sad or frustrated and above all you have a reason not to let yourself go when it turns bad, you have to feel good for him too, and it is not a small thing, it makes you bring out the best you have inside. When he is in a good mood, John hums and consequently I feel happy, when he stays too long without humming it means that there is something wrong and that he needs a caress or a kiss, and it works. 

When we met we didn't live in the same city but in very close cities, just a few minutes away by train. We met every time we had a free afternoon, so at least twice a week, then slowly we began to move by car, also to have a place to stay and talk with a minimum of tranquility and privacy when it rained, because at the beginning our parents knew nothing about us; when they knew about us, basically a year after we met, John came to my house and I went to his house a lot of times, there were no problems, it's true, but we had need to have a little intimacy and that's how we started thinking about looking for work in the same city and living together. 

Basically, I sent many resumes to companies in his city when he was still finishing his studies and I found a job in his city. He was not earning yet and the idea of taking an apartment together, I mean buying it together, that is, paying it each for a half, was not feasible, and so I was in a "student" rent, that is, in a rent that could be renovated annually and things went on like this for almost two years, but at least we had our own little place. 

By the time he started working our parents met for the first time and week after week they got to know each other better and so, making a tremendous effort, they paid us an advance for the purchase of an apartment. To tell the truth, it wasn't all easy because neither his parents nor mine were in favor of a joint purchase, because if the relationship did not go well there would also be the problem of  sharing the house. But frankly, such an eventuality seemed completely unthinkable to both John and me and so we purchased the apartment. 

The mortgage was not very heavy because we worked in two, then when I lost my job and I was without work for almost a year, that is, I did odd jobs for almost a year, for me, paying my share was not really easy, I continued to pay it anyway, but John paid all the bills, taxes, car tax and insurance, among other things we had also sold my car which was newer and worth something more, and we had kept for us only the John's one, because, since we lived in the same house, we didn't need two cars. We took a short mortgage to pay less interest. We would have made a more intense but shorter effort. Today we are only a year away from the end of the mortgage and then our house will truly be ours. 

John says very well about the place where he works and his colleagues but he doesn't consider them friends, he never receives them at home. I have my satisfactions in the workplace but in a sense I don't physically have a place where to work, that is, in theory I do, but over 10 days, at least eight I spend them around the province, with the company car, to make inspections and to install systems. The teams of workers I work with change every time and I always find myself in the role of the expert who comes from outside but who has nothing to do with the environment. My bosses trust me because I don't create problems and on the contrary I solve them if there are any. If I have to tell the truth, I have never had any real work problems, some complications yes, but for administrative problems and only for that. 

John, on the other hand, had some problems with a girl who has lost her mind a bit for him, and she is a colleague of his, but they don't really work together. We talked about it but I didn't know what to tell him. In the end, he showed detached and the girl put her soul in peace, without the need to say anything and make statements of any kind. The whole story didn't last more than a couple of months and it ended by itself. Such things have never happened to me because there are no women in my workplace. In this period of my life I feel happy and I see that John also feels happy. 

Project, if you want to publish this email you can certainly do it, I often hear guys (straight but not only) who talk about homosexuality as if it were a kind of catastrophe and talk about homosexuals as a kind of damned race. I don’t know what experiences they have had in life and I don’t allow myself to judge anyone, I limit myself only to saying that it is precisely homosexuality that has made me happy. I love John and I feel loved by him. They may well be rare things, but these things do really exist! 

See you Project! John too greets you. Thanks for what you unknowingly did for me and for John! 

Paul

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PASTRY AND GAY LOVE

 Anyone can be able to prepare good biscuits even by instinctively mixing flour, sugar and eggs, adding flavorings to their liking and then baking everything, but pastry is a difficult art, which is learned gradually, proceeding by trial and error: not all flours work the same way, the methods of dough and leavening have great importance on the final result, not all ovens are the same and not all cooking methods produce the same result. The rules of cooking and pastry come from experience and cooking books and videos are so common precisely because through those books and videos it is also possible to treasure the experience of others. In sexuality things work in a similar way but it is much more difficult to treasure the experience of others because there are no tools similar to cookbooks and taking advantage of the experience of others is practically impossible, at least because sex is a topic that is rarely addressed seriously.

I intend to proceed in this post with the same criteria that are followed in a cooking books. 

THE MOST COMMON ERRORS 

1) Believing that the life of a couple coincides with putting one's fantasies into practice and that it will be very easy to build something shared on this basis. Let us remember that being appreciated as a good pastry chef is a very different thing from knowing how to make good desserts at home. 

2) Believing that sexual intercourse is the essential purpose of a homosexual relationship, that is, the element that gives meaning to the relationship and without which the relationship loses meaning. Let us remember that there are excellent cookies without sugar or without eggs or even without flour. Sexual intercourse is one of the ingredients of a homosexual relationship, it can also sometimes be a very important ingredient, but just as you can't make biscuits out of flour only or out of butter only, so you can't even create a relationship starting from sex only. 

3) Believing that the partner's sexuality is identical to ours, that is, that his sexual fantasies are identical to ours. Remember that aniseed biscuits are delicious for some and not at all for others. 

4) Believing that sexuality can only be monothematic, repetitive and devoid of fantasy and variants. Let us remember that a good pack of chocolates has a vast assortment to satisfy the most diverse needs. 

5) Believing that sexual intercourse is satisfying in itself and does not need anything else, in particular that it does not need words, affection, pauses, smiles, distractions. Let us remember that many desserts, such as trifle, are delicious precisely because they are soaked in liqueur. 

6) Believing that in a relationship the more sex the better. Let's remember that in every recipe there are optimal doses and that if a pinch of cinnamon gives perfume, an excess of cinnamon makes the biscuit inedible. Even in sex, as in the use of cinnamon, excess means compromising the final outcome. 

7) Believing that in a homosexual relationship sex must be the premise or that in any case we must get there immediately, that is, being in a hurry to get to sexual intercourse. Let us remember that there are biscuits that do not need leavening and can be baked immediately, there are others that need a short leavening and also others that need many hours of leavening. Baking long leavening biscuits before the necessary time means trying to force things but this way only a mediocre result can be obtained. The first virtue of a pastry chef is patience. 

8) Believing that one's way of living affectivity and sexuality is always the best or the only legitimate one and that everything that goes in other directions is wrong and deleterious. Let us remember that pastry chefs are not born pastry chefs but they become refined pastry chefs  after a long period of training and that affectivity, like pastry, is learned through experience and the willingness to listen and learn. 

EQUIPMENT AND HYGIENE 

1) Today there is only one absolutely indispensable tool for dealing responsibly with sexuality and that is the condom. I remember that the condom was not born as a tool for preventing the contagion of sexually transmitted diseases, but as a tool for birth control, clearly this original function has no meaning for gays but for them the condom is and must remain an object they always have to take with them when they can get involved in situations that can even potentially lead to any kind of sexual intercourse. I must stress  that neglecting condom use means putting yourself at risk of AIDS (and other terrible diseases) and putting your partner at risk too. The use of condoms should not be considered a possible option but the only possible option. We never forget that in the kitchen, as in the pastry shop, it is essential to have a life-saving electric switch, an earth socket and a sensor for gas leaks, these are appliances which, in theory, can also be dispensed with, but in case of current leakage or gas leaks, our life depends on these devices. 

INGREDIENTS 

1) To build a truly satisfying homosexual relationship, three fundamental ingredients are needed: human availability, deep emotional involvement, non-ephemeral sexual interest and these ingredients must be genuine and not contaminated by other non-emotional interests such as economic interests and above all individualistic drives. In pastry, if you want to get a top quality product, you have to start with top quality ingredients, preserved from any possible pollution. 

2) What makes a homosexual relationship grow is reciprocity, which is the true leaven of affective relationships. In the absence of reciprocity, a story is born unilateral, it is not even a relationship between two people but it is only a relationship of an individual with his fantasy. Without any type of yeast, only very hard biscuits are created which, when eaten, can break teeth. 

3) To build a homosexual relationship, sweetness is very important, which is not weakness but affective intelligence. Sugar-free cookies can also be made, but they will have very little flavor. 

4) In emotional relationships we often resort to exchanges of small gifts, to affectionate messages, to small rituals that serve to highlight the affection. These things can have their function when there is a true emotional relationship at the base, but they cannot replace it if the true emotional relationship is missing, nor can they correct it if it is deeply defective. In pastry, aromas are used that make good desserts even tastier but which cannot transform biscuits made with poor quality or contaminated ingredients into good biscuits. 

THE PACKAGING 

1) In love relationships, it is not words but feelings that count. The abuse of the rhetoric of love often hides the emotional emptiness. It is by no means certain that the best chocolates are contained in the most beautiful boxes of chocolates. Good chocolates don't need flashy and deceptive wrapping. 

2) In love relationships, clarity towards the partner is essential. The presence of gray areas makes the relationship suspicious. The composition must be indicated on the packages of sweets, if the declared composition does not correspond to reality and above all if the expiry date on the package is missing or illegible, it is legitimate to suspect fraud. 

THE PRICE 

1) Love relationships require commitment, seriousness and availability of time. Those who are not willing to dedicate their time and commitment to their partner are unlikely to build satisfying relationships. Good chocolates are expensive, often double quantities of poor chocolates can be bought at the same price. 

PRESERVATION OF THE PRODUCT 

1) The gestures of affective life do not have an infinite duration. The affective gestures made in the past retain their effect for a while, then they must be renewed. The best desserts are freshly made ones. Desserts do not keep for long and a pastry shop must sell only the freshest products to be appreciated and must therefore work every day. The best creams turn sour after a day and the cookies lose their friability.

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PROBLEMS OF AN INTERGENERATIONAL GAY RELATIONSHIP

 Hi Project,

I saw that on your forum there are some posts about so-called gay intergenerational relationships, I have read them and I can say that, at least in part, they also reflect my experience, because I’m the oldest partner of something similar to a gay couple, if I can say so, I’m now almost 60 years old, my partner is 30. My experience of gay stories has been always very small, but my life has changed dramatically a year ago. I met a man who is almost half my age, as I told before, and it happened to me what had never happened to me before. As you can well understand his freedom is an absolute value for me. Although he was much younger than me, he had a very concrete and varied experience of gay environments and behaviors. 

We met in a very curious way, our cars have collided at an intersection but with minimal damage, both his and mine. It happened through my fault or rather because of one of my my too frequent inattentions, anyway he got out of the car furious, but more because of the loss of time and the bureaucracy problems he  was going to face out of necessity than because he was angry with me, I was also a little scared at first, because he has a very solid physical constitution. He addressed me kindly and politely, I think because of my age, he saw me willing to take on my responsibilities with the blue form, and treated me with respect. He looked at his car and said to me: “Okay, it’s a minimal damage, you can go away quietly, let’s say nothing happened … ok?” I didn’t trust him and I was afraid of being tricked or blackmailed later. I insisted that the blue form had to be filled in anyway, so he eventually agreed and we filled in the form, one copy of it for me and the other for him. According to the insurance rules it was up to him to send the form within three days to his insurance, because since the accident had happened out of my fault and I had admitted it, it was up to his insurance company to pay him back within 30 days. 

At a certain point he told me that my damage was greater that his and that if he had send the form I would have lost a not negligible amount of money and I would have lost my previous insurance category to be inserted into another much more expensive. At this point I was about to think he would ask me to pay the damage immediately in cash and in the end I would have done it, and I said: “If you prefer, I can pay you back in cash now …” He replied: “The damage is minimal and my car is old, let’s just leave things like that!” I told him: “Don’t worry about me, you now have the blue form with my signature, just send it to your insurance. Ok?” He said to me: “Ok, ok, I’ll think about it.” He greeted me very quietly and we left. Five days later I received this email: 

“Dear Mr. James,I’m Andrew G, the one with whom you signed the blue form for the friendly accident report. I wanted to inform you that I preferred not to send the blue form to my insurance company, because you would have suffered financial damage and I would have received negligible compensation. I had the pleasure of meeting in you a serious person who didn’t hesitate to take on his responsibilities. I greet you with true respect. ” 

After a long meditation, I answered him like this: 

“Dear Mr. Andrew,certainly it’s not so common to meet people like you, I can say that your gesture surprised me, even if in a sense I expected it. If it weren’t too inconvenient for you, I’d like you to accept at least one invitation from me to dinner, not as compensation but out of sympathy. I greet you with esteem.” 

He replied after a few seconds: 

“Dear Mr. James, I accept your invitation with great pleasure.” 

We agreed for the following Monday evening, at the time there was still no talk of Covid. On Monday evening he arrives right on time, he is dressed in a simple but very nice way. He has a brown beard, hair trimmed, he’s a really handsome man, I know from the documents he’s 30 years old. We shake hands, he is perfectly at ease. I chose a very quiet, open-air restaurant, because it’s the height of summer and it’s still hot. There are few people because the space is huge and the restaurant is almost empty on Mondays. I insist that he order the dinner before me, and here he already amazes me, because he is a vegetarian, he doesn’t take pride in it but follows his rule. I adapt immediately, he tells me I can take whatever I like better and I tell him that if he has decided to be a vegetarian there must be a good reason, he just smiles. 

Slowly we come to talk about work but on those things he is very reserved, I avoid insisting and he notices and appreciates it, I talk to him very succinctly about me and above all I tell him that I would like to be already retired but I still have to work to many years. We don’t talk about family or private life. Then we move on to politics and on that level we get along very well. Our first meeting ends with the realization that it was a really good evening and the final handshake is much warmer than the initial one. He unexpectedly adds: “We have to meet again …” and I tell him: “Very, very gladly!” 

A sympathy was certainly born between us but Andrew could have been my son and I just felt a great melancholy because I was not thirty but almost 60, and everything stopped there. Returning home I seriously thought I would never see him again, but after a few minutes he writes to me: 

“Dear James, I returned home. Thank you! It was truly a very enjoyable evening. I think you will hear again from me. Thanks again for everything.” 

In fact, since then I’ve heard Andrew at least once a week, but not in the sense that we talked on the phone once a week, no! On the contrary it became an habit for us to go out together in the evenings at least once a week to go around the city and we were happy of it, there was a very special atmosphere. Tis way we slowly trusted each other more and more. 

With the changing of the season and with the arrival of the cold our walks were more and more problematic and either he came to my house or I went to his house, and it was really a new phase, in the sense that, before he came for the first time at my house, I made all the gay books I have in the library disappear, because I thought he might be straight and that seeing certain books would make him uncomfortable. It’s a stupid thought, I know, but anyhow I hid all the gay books. My home had become an absolutely neutral environment. 

He came to me the first time and we talked for hours, he was melancholy, I didn’t know what to do and the embarrassment was palpable. He said to me: “Don’t pay attention to my melancholy, I’m like this.” His house, when I went there, seemed even more neutral than mine, everything was simple, banal, ordinary, too simple, too banal and too ordinary to be true. This fact, combined with everything that had happened, led me to think that Andrew was gay. Everything was anonymous and there was no trace of emotional life. Little by little he talked to me about his family, his distant and essentially indifferent parents, his older sister who lives in Austria and also about his work in a very important research Institute. 

He didn’t ask me questions but slowly allowed me to enter his world. I listened to him for hours, fascinated, then he also told me, almost as if it were an irrelevant detail that “he had lost his head for a guy”, at which point it would not have been dignified not to tell him clearly about me. I told him: “I think you understand that I’m gay too …” And he said to me: “Well, that’s why I’m here …” Once we had clarified this point, we had taken a step forward, but I didn’t understand why he had chosen me as his confidant, because he had had some guys and still had at least one, but evidently he couldn’t have those kinds of conversations with those guys. 

I must confess, Project, that for me there was nothing easy: doubts, anxieties, scruples have upset my life, because objectively I would never have believed that anything like this could happen to me. I had found a gay friend much younger than me who had taken me seriously, because then our relationship was at that level and at that level, all in all, I could manage it, but slowly I began to understand that Andrew was really sexually attracted from me, something that I would have considered absolutely unthinkable if it hadn’t happened to me firsthand. The fact is that Andrew had at least one other boyfriend, so to say, not a stable boyfriend but, let’s say, a friend of reference. I didn’t understand what Andrew could find in me. I loved him, his image was always present in my mind I was thinking of him a thousand times a day, especially because I wanted to see him smile, but his smile was an absolute rarity. 

If you add the fact that Andrew was really a handsome man and wasn’t indifferent to me at all, you can understand that I was on hot coals, on the one hand I wanted him and on the other I thought I had to get away from him as soon as possible. However, he didn’t allow me to escape, he remained close to me, I don’t want to say that he remained close to me in a nagging way but he didn’t leave me the opportunity to break away and cool down the relationship. 

When he started looking for a minimum of physical contact I was really scared, all my contradictions were exploding and I didn’t know how to behave with him, then, in the end, I realized that it was what he wanted and what I wanted even though I was trying to avoid it and so we had our first sexual intercourse one night. I like sex even though, before meeting him, it was almost always more fantasy than reality. I had been with a couple of guys many years ago but it was a completely different thing. I certainly don’t have much experience of love affairs with men but I had never seen someone who lived sex like Andrew, who was totally involved. But somehow he was perplexed because he saw me very hesitant, certainly not disinterested but, let’s say, less deeply involved and he didn’t understand that for me that level of involvement was the highest level possible, sometimes he thought that in sex I acted to make him happy, but it wasn’t like that at all, sex used to make me tired because I’m 30 years older than him. 

Don’t believe that it was easy to be with him, sometimes he treated me in a brusque way, especially when I tried to procrastinate and didn’t give him clear answers, this irritated him and sometimes he went away without giving explanations. When it happened the first time, I was very upset because I thought our relationship was over, but then, the next week, he was looking for me again as if nothing had happened. I wonder if a 30-year-old can truly understand how a 60-year-old can live certain moments and the uncertainty that a 60-year-old feels in a situation like ours. 

He sees the immediate but I think that in not many years I will become a ball and chain for him that he will have to get rid of. If you are with a peer, you get older with him and the differences are always limited, but if you are with someone who is 30 years younger than you, you almost wish it would all end as soon as possible, because you understand that even if there is love, the differences are enormous and in any case everything is precarious. At present I don’t know what sense I can have in his life, I can’t understand it, I know he has a boyfriend and he even told me about him, but obviously his boyfriend doesn’t absorb him completely. I’m only afraid that in the end he may take our whole story badly, that he may take it as a crush gone wrong, a personal failure, almost a kind of self-punishing personal degradation. This fear haunted me especially at the beginning, but now it it’s somewhat attenuated. I never look for him, and maybe I do wrong. 

A year has passed now. With the complications of the lockdown we had met much less, but in the summer we started again. He’s periodically tested with swabs at the Institute where he works and I never leave the house except to do the shopping. I think a lot about him, he’s a good man who feels frail and knows he lacks something to be happy, he looks for that something in sex and doesn’t even find it there and oscillates between sexual frenzy and depression, of course everything within the limits and with common sense but the fact remains that he is not happy. I told him that he’s really charming but he says that his belly is too prominent, which is absolutely not true, and he takes my compliments as a reason to be ironic about himself. 

Why does a young man in his thirties and seemingly fulfilled like him, want to maintain a relationship with someone like me? Can I be something similar to the father he didn’t have? Frankly, I don’t think so. He’s in love not with me but with his special friend with whom, however, he doesn’t lack frustrations. I love him, we have some sexual intercourse but frankly, for me, having sex with him it is not only not the essential but it is a concern, a bit for health, even if we are very cautious, but above all because I don’t want him to think I’m taking advantage of his weakness. 

There is a huge age difference between us, but he is a grown man who knows what he is doing and these fears I should really put them aside and instead they accompany me constantly. I feel very unbalanced, it is true that it is an important thing, I don’t question it, but it is something that has put in crisis the routine to which, for better or worse, I was used to, and has led me to rhythms and problems that are no longer for my age. I ask myself several times if it’s possible or at least if it would be advisable, for him, as well as for me, if I got out of this story, and sometimes I think it would be good for both of us, but then I wonder how I can get out and I don’t find any plausible way. 

I can’t make arguments of this kind with him, because he would consider them a betrayal, a bad gesture towards him, for him it’s obvious that we must go on like this, for me it’s not at all. I want to say that when we pass the night together, while it lasts, the two of us are fine, he is fine and I’m fine too, but later, when we are done, the melancholy begins for him and for me the doubts begin. I have never seen him go away happy after a sex meeting with me, he is not unhappy, but he is sad and this scares me, but we don’t talk about it, it’s a taboo subject. I go to bed with him but I don’t have access to his melancholies, sometimes I think he doesn’t even know why he gets those melancholies. 

I’m so afraid that in the long run I may be considered a negative presence, I have no arguments to say it but it is a feeling that I have had several times. Sometimes I happened to tell him something my melancholy to him, but he silenced me, he told me that I always try to talk about negative things and that he “when he comes to me” he doesn’t want to hear those things, it’s a sign perhaps that he must hear such things too many times in other situations. I wondered if I’m not by chance, for him, just a sexual diversion, but such a thing would make no sense, if only he wanted to, he could very well find a much more interesting company than me, and he did so before. I don’t want to be the sackcloth he has chosen to wear or self-inflict for some reason I can’t understand. In short, I feel really tossed from one extreme to the other.

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