GAY PAMPERING VERSUS GAY SEX

Hello Project,

I’m twenty years old and study engineering and all in all I’m pretty happy about my life. After some hesitation, I decided to write to you because reading for a long time your sites, I have been struck by the fact that you talk a lot about the affective world of gays rather than about the sexual one. By browsing the internet, I find a huge amount of gay sexual content or that looks gay, but in practice I do not find references to the gay affective world, which for me is very important. 

I confess that I considered myself as a sui generis  gay and asked myself several times if there was something wrong with me, since for me the idea of sex without love is inconceivable, that is, I cannot understand sex as a game, like something that can be done with the first cute guy passing and that is available. Until about a year ago I saw a lot of pornography but somehow I censured it by myself, I saw the part I was interested in, the most affective, then when the video went through the penetration I changed video. I feel 100% gay, I never fell in love with a girl, not even at minimal levels, but, I tell you clearly, I never had fantasies about anal penetration, which is something I cannot even conceive. 

I think of sex with a guy as something extremely sweet, tender, affectionate, with no script to be respected, I see it a little bit like a free and disinhibited being in two, a thorough reciprocal knowledge even from that point of view. For me, the fundamental thing would be to see my boyfriend’s convincing participation. Some gay friends whom I have spoken about these things have puzzled me because they told me that my sexuality is immature, almost childish more than adolescent or adult, they think that I’m very inhibited, that I’m afraid of certain sexual practices, but in principle I have nothing against anal sex, if someone likes it, do it freely, but it certainly is something I don’t feel mine and frankly I don’t feel less gay because of this. 

As you say, there are so many ways of being gay and my is much more affective than sexual, I need a guy who loves me, who wants to pamper me and get pampered by me, and, dear Project, a guy can be pampered in a thousand different ways and not just in bed. I always dreamed of meeting a gay guy who would love me among my fellow students to be able to study together, but I often thought that if my boyfriend was studying other things, I would let him study quiet but at six in the afternoon I would take him a cup of tea with some sliced bread with a bit of butter and jam. This means also pampering for me. Pampering means taking care of the loved guy, trying to make him feel good. It is not trivial, loving a guy cannot be reduced to a sex issue, it takes a dimension of intimacy, mutual trust, credibility. 

I like sex, too, but it has to come all out of my mind spontaneously. And then hugging each other naked in bed is a way to have sex, is a direct and intimate contact with your boyfriend, a way of perceiving his warmth, her breathing, the beat of his heart, is just the shared intimacy that is beautiful and I really like it a lot. I understand and desire a true intimacy even without sex, but sex without affectivity, that is, without love I will never understand it. I’m romantic inside. I happened to find guys who made explicit suggestions about sex, but by saying that it was only sex for them, I replied: “No, thank you!” And they looked at me with astonishment, maybe it was the first time someone was saying them “No, thank you”. 

I dream of being in bed with my boyfriend, embracing him and seeing that he is good with me and that he wants to stay there, that our thoughts go in unison, that there are no mental reservations, double bottoms, and unambiguous motivations. I dream that we can caress, that we can huddle each other and then also do a bit of sex, but always in a reciprocal way, I dream to be able to intimately touch my boyfriend, to masturbate him and see that he’s is happy to be with me, obviously he would have with me the freedom to do spontaneously what he wants, the only limit must be what is good for me as well. This should be the only true limit of individual spontaneity: respect the limits of the other, never try to impose something. 

I have often found guys convinced that they had understood what sex was, who assumed that their way of seeing things was not only good for them but was the only way to see gay sexuality. Frankly, I do not think there are two gay boys with the same behaviors and the same sexual and affective desires. Cuddles are not something just for kids, and then there is a reflection that comes to my mind now: also animals like cuddles. My neighbor has a big white dog that people leave because they are afraid of him, but that dog when he sees me starts to wag his tail, then he falls to the ground and I start to caress him and he closes his eyes and I see that he is satisfied. The desire for pampering is so ancestral to be even common with animals, a bit like sex, because pampering transmits safety, tranquility, heat, in short, helps to be well. I think that many gay people like me really exist, though I have not met them so far. I greet you, Project, if you put this mail in your forum, maybe some gay lover of pampering will feel less alone and encouraged to go on.

David

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GAY GUYS AND SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES

Dear Project,

today for the first time I had the evidence of the stupidity of some guys and I also sent one of them to hell, not to say worse, even though he was a very good guy in many respects and I liked him a lot. I’ve always been afraid of sexually transmitted diseases and I’ll explain why, and some of the things you’ve told me have accentuated my fears. I do not think that happiness can be achieved just though sex, though sex is still a thing that creates a true dimension of intimacy, however, thinking of ruining life for five minutes of unprotected sex with an unknown guy seems to me the classic behavior of a totally irresponsible person. 

I had a friend, or better, luckily, I still have a friend, he is a guy of Irish origin, I’ll call him Patrick, even though this is not his name. Patrick has become HIV positive for underestimating the risks. It is true that now being HIV positive does not turn immediately to AIDS because there are antiretroviral drugs that control the situation well enough and that’s why the outlook is far less terrible than a few decades ago, but Patrick’s life will be permanently conditioned by the HIV. I’ve seen how Patrick changed after the diagnosis and everything he needs to do for therapy and related clinical controls and are not at all banal things, and anyway HIV is not definitely eliminated. 

Talking to Patrick causes me distress and it causes me also rage because no one has ever made him reason, on the other hand I too didn’t even do it, I thought he was very careful about prevention but it did not happen, and I cannot even blame him because he did not have risky behaviors or at least he did not seem to have risky behaviors. He had sex only with his partner and his partner didn’t know he was HIV positive. So, in essence, no one and not even his partner is really guilty of what happened. You could try to figure out who has infected his partner but you would end up tracing back the infection chain without any real utility. 

The only way to avoid what happened would have been to test before having sexual intercourse and repeat the test after the window period without having sexual intercourses between the two tests, but it’s a long thing, not easy to accomplish and people end to neglect it with the terrible consequences that Patrick is now facing. I must say that I am very informed about HIV (I study Medicine) and I have continued to attend Patrick, but many of his friends, having known that he is HIV positive, abandoned him completely and this has greatly aggravated his psychological situation. 

After I saw how Patrick’s life changed (because of these things I often talk with him), I became absolutely uncompromising in terms of prevention, I would say almost maniac. At that time I had not had already any sexual intercourse with anyone and I was quiet for my personal situation, but later I also had a boyfriend. Until a few months ago, I was with a guy who unfortunately got tired of staying with me and has gone, but from the perspective of prevention he was a guy with the brain in the head. When we thought we could have sexual intercourse, we went together to test and another time four months later for the window effect, clearly we went together to test and retire the results, so as to take away any doubt, therefore, when we had sexual intercourse we did not have in the background the ghost of the fear of HIV. 

There is not only HIV but there are several other sexually transmitted diseases, which make perhaps less frightening but are able to cause anyway serious damages. And then, if one goes to test, he becomes also more careful and learns that prevention is a fundamental thing. Of course we waited four and a half months to have sex, but when we did, we could only think about sex and not about the possible risks. Okay, this was my ex-boyfriend, and losing him caused me trouble, because he was not the type of sexual escapades, he had met Patrick, and Patrick had shown him very closely that the risks really exist. Anyway my ex-boyfriend left because we were thinking about other things in very different ways, however he left, and bye! 

But since then it had been over a year and I was slowly falling in love with another guy, a very nice and very sweet guy, a guy I loved very much. We started chatting, then we met in the evening to talk a bit (he lives somewhere near my home). Then, inevitably, sexual expectations were also created. I told him about my story and he told me about his. At this point he thought we would come to sex immediately, because in our stories it didn’t seem to be any risk of sexually transmitted diseases, but in such things I don’t accept at all the word “seem”, and I told him that we had to do the double test before having sex, as I had done with my old boyfriend. He was very weirded by this speech. I quote here a piece of a mail about the subject:

 

“I felt treated like a leper. You do not trust what I tell you. But why should I tell you something false? Do you want to use the condom? Okay, that’s fine, but using it for oral sex just seems absurd. But you do not even need this, you just want to do the test and you want to do it twice! But so we have to throw away five months to wait. But do you feel right? And It’s all for a matter of principle, because you know that you can trust me. Please, try to think serenely and put aside absurd complexes!”

 

Obviously I could not give in, I told him I did not want any risk and our relationship began to crunch. We met another couple of times, the second time I told him about Patrick’s story because I thought that the story would cause him to reason but that didn’t happen at all and he reacted in a way that annoyed me and probably from here on our relationship went into crisis. I told him that Patrick had only had sex with his boyfriend and that his boyfriend did not know he was HIV positive. I had told him so because that was what really happened, but he started to do strange faces, almost insinuating that Patrick probably had had sex with so many guys and that he probably had infected his partner, but such things were all completely devoid of sense, because he had heard Patrick’s name for the first time just 10 minutes before. Then I became the target of his frustrations, he considered me a psychopath. In the end he put an ultimatum

 

“or tonight we do it and as I like, or our story is over. I think you’ll be happy.”

 

I cannot stand ultimatums, and even less that someone judges without knowing what he is talking about, nevertheless I tried to make him understand my point of view and said:

 

“But how can you not understand that it is not a psychological problem but a real risk? Patrick trusted his boyfriend and came out devastated. You do not know him, you know nothing about him and you think you can judge him, but you don’t know how he is now, you should meet him and understand so much more. Anyway I do not blame you, before I saw closely Patrick’s story, I too considered these things very superficially, it was he who taught me to reason and not to trust. I’m not full of complexes about sex as you think, I’m not trying to get away from anything, before I knew you, I had a boyfriend and we had sex a lot of times, but it was safe sex. I’ve seen more than once worried guys for having had unprotected sex, guys who have been waiting for the test results with a terrible anxiety, they felt extremely worried because they felt as if they had played a game similar to the Russian roulette. In the end, things have gone well for them, but your answer: “So why should not go well to you?” It seems completely absurd, because to Patrick things went wrong. But, sorry, is it not better also for you to have security at another level? It’s about waiting, and then we can be well together even without sex, not forever, but only for a while.”

 

After this message he disappeared altogether. Now he is not with me, but there is not even fear in the background. I told Patrick that this guy was gone and he said to me:

 

“He has had a really childish behavior, if he really wanted to, he would have understood, but he preferred trying to force things and impose his point of view, and this is already not a good sign and in fact he has tried to impose an imprudent behavior, which means that it underestimates the risks and as he did it on this occasion he could have done the same in the future. I think that if the guys could see closely the problems caused by HIV they would use much more brain and with a serious education on prevention, the risk of AIDS could be slowly eliminated.”

 

If you want to post this mail, post it, I think you should absolutely publish it because making the guys aware of the risks of unprotected sex might be equivalent to saving their lives.

A hug.

James

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If you like, you can participate in the discussion of this post, on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/showthread.php?tid=144

GAYS AND RELATIONSHIPS WITH WOMEN

I would like to try to illustrate how women fallen in love with gay guys are trying to cope with the situation.

Below, with the author’s approval, I quote an email of a woman who has realized that her boyfriend had behaviors that are not typically straight.

“I’m writing to you because I need to clarify my ideas a bit, or maybe because I need to talk to someone.

I am a 25 year old girl and I fell in love with a guy a year older. He is a very nice and very sweet guy. I had previously been with other guys but a bit snooty and full of self and sometimes I was nervous, I thought that with such types I would never agree, then I found him and it was a completely different thing, he listened to me, talked a lot with me, behaving differently from other guys, being a friend, not hitting on me, and even if it seems absurd, I liked this behavior a lot. We have become intimate friends, let’s say so, so much cuddle some kissing but of tenderness, not of passion, almost it wasn’t not real to me.

He never talked about himself, but made me talk, I did not mind this at first. We met every day but I did not know if he had a girl (obviously no) or had had one before, it seemed that these topics did not exist. Then I tried to make the first step to loosen him up a bit, I do not like the expression but, in short, it was not just a friendship for me, and there I saw his fear, I did the math and I thought that he could be gay but I did not say anything to him.

With the passing of months we have known each other better and I even offered him to go live together, and in the end he told me that he was gay. I told him stupidly that it would not make any difference to me and that we had to live together, because I wanted to stay with him anyway, but he looked at me and said, “Silvia, do not get angry, but a gay guy can only be good with another guy.”

After this talk I felt very ridiculed, I wanted to get away from him because I interpreted what he had told me as a rejection, but I could not, I continued to see him, to console him when he was melancholic but he began keeping to himself more and more. I knew from other people that he probably had found a guy but I had not seen him for a long time and I resigned to the idea of not hearing him anymore. After experiencing the story with him, I think I will not fall in love with another guy, I’m stupid, I know, it makes no sense to fall in love with someone who doesn’t want you because he’s gay, but that’s exactly what happened to me.

Do you think that I can recover some relationship with him, I say just like a friend, of course, or do you think that he prefers to stay away? For me, if he has a boyfriend, is fine anyway, that would not create any problems, but maybe I’m still dreaming like a stupid woman, I think I don’t understand what kind of relationship a gay guy can have with a woman, that is, I understand it, but I do not want to understand it, I know that I still see him too much in the straight way to get along with him.”

This is a typical mail of a woman in love with a gay guy but of a woman really aware of reality. The story with the gay guy is over and she realizes that this guy will never be her boyfriend. She still wants him well, but she understands that in the name of that wanting well there is no sense in claiming a role that does not follow spontaneously and shared. If the guy goes away means he has to go his way and it makes no sense to try to hold him. After all, in this story, the guy never “deludes” the girl, does not objectively cross the boundaries of a simple but profound friendship, which means that his behavior does not cause misunderstandings.

The following mail is of a completely different content, but it is perhaps more interesting especially for the different way of acting of the guy who, voluntarily and guilty, causes the girl to err and eventually causes her reaction to resentment.

“Gays … nice people! I say it very ironically! But why I tell you so? So you’re convinced they’re all good guys. It is not true that just straight guys tease girls, the gays do much worse, and I, unfortunately, run completely into it. I came from a bad story with a little prat … I liked him very much physically but he was just gross and at the same time immature, in short, a real little prat! I was really angry.

I go to the disco once with my friends and there they introduce Marco to me, I do not like him either, Marco seems to me a little bit without character, the other one was rough but Marco seemed even slippery, he didn’t even inspire me at the sex level, and when it comes to guys I’m not one for subtlety. In practice, I do not care about him at all, but I notice he keeps an eye on me, when I try to look into his eyes, he turns his gaze, but keeps looking. I wonder, “But what is he searching for?” I decide and ask him. He only answers me: “You are cute!”

You know how it is, girls like such things, and then I say, “You are cute too!” But so, just for compliment, because he did not attract me at all, then we danced and in practice I lost my group and spent the evening with him who stayed in the disco alone! Yes he was there just alone, without friends! With my usual generic logic I thought that if one goes to the disco alone he goes there just hunting for girls and he, in fact, was courting me. The following week we continued to exchange messages.

Seen by day, in the sunlight he was less slippery than he seemed in the dark of the disco, he was not a great deal, a bit too plump, chubby, but, in short, he could still work. After a few days I got bored of this guy and I did not call him anymore, but he kept sending me messages as he was half in love, and provoked me saying that he was impressed and often thought of me and so many other things, but I was not really interested and I did not answer, or maybe only rarely, and only for education, but I was trying to keep myself in the neutral.

One night he calls me and tells me he is very bad and absolutely needs to talk to me about something very important. I tell him that if he has to vent he can do it with a friend or with a psychologist, but he insists, as if it were a very important thing, but does not tell me what it is, in the end I can’t do it anymore, I’m stressed by his insistence and I’ll tell him, “Okay, see you tomorrow.” He insists that it must be immediately, but I tell him it’s late and I do not know what to tell my mother and then he says it’s okay for the next day. The next night we meet and go to talk in the car.

I expect a clear and direct speech but it starts talking about generic things, I cannot figure out where this is all going down, I ask him explicitly why he wanted to talk to me, but instead of answering he insist on generic chatting. I ask him, “But are you kidding me?” I confess that I thought he might be one with some mental problem, maybe a maniac. I was just angry, I asked him, “What do you want from me?” And he took my hand, then I said, “I know, I understand! But you are not my type …” and there the contact between us took another way and we kissed, that is he was kissing me, I did not like too much but I was there.

When we broke away he said to me, “Do you think we could get together?” I said, “I do not know.” He said, “You are the first girl I really fell in love with” I took it as a compliment. After a couple of days we went to have some sex, that is to say, just to touch us because he proceeded very slowly in these things. He had a way of doing all his own, I would say above all contemplative. He told me that I was beautiful that is not true because I am a very ordinary girl but he looked at me with admiration, caressed me, but did not take the initiatives that usually guys take.

Anyway, we got together. Typically, guys tend to stay away from the girl’s family, he does not! He wanted to know my mother, my father, wanted to come to my house, a bit like a long time ago when there was the official engagement. He came to my house several times, my parents often invited him to lunch and his parents did the same, in a few months we become engaged in the classic way. All in all, it was all pretty nice, he was serious, he did not bother with the other girls, he was finishing his studies, and he would have found a good social position, even though these things were more interesting to my dad than to me. After a year of this kind of engagement in which we had also come to have sexual intercourses, always and only on my own initiative and insistence, finally we began to talk about marriage. My parents were happy and all in all I was happy too. We were always going around with friends on a Saturday afternoon and we were now an ironclad couple.

One day he tells me that he must unfortunately leave because he has an aunt who is very bad and cannot come with me the next Saturday, I tell him that it is fine and I do not mind. On Saturday, because there was a gay guy among our friends, this one proposes to go to a gay disco but where everybody can go for some fun, we decide and go. I feel like a fish out of water in that environment and I’m not going to dance but I sit a little defiled with two old friends. At some point I have the impression of seeing Marco on the dancefloor, dancing with another guy, the lights are hellish and it’s hard to recognize people, but in the middle of the flashes I guess he is, I’m still upset, but I’m not sure and on the other hand there are too many people and too much smoke to see well staying away, and certainly I would never get close enough to be recognized. I say to my friends that it is too hot and I have to go out a bit.

The disco is practically in the countryside and around there is a large parking lot for customers. I leave, I run into the parking lot and Marco’s car is there. I felt like breaking out for anger! I came back, I told my friends that I was sick and I wanted to go and we went home. They did not seen anything and had absolutely no idea that Marco was there.

The next morning Marco sends me the usual good sms, I ask him how his aunt is and he tells me she is “better”. Well, I was so mad I couldn’t see straight! I replied, “I saw where you were really last night. Get out of my face because if I see you again I’ll poke your eyeballs out!” Despite all he continued to lie and accuse me of homophobia! I did not answer him anymore and the story was over. I do not tell you the messing up at home, I could not tell them what happened, otherwise I would have been considered stupid all my life, so my parents gave me all the blame “because he was a very good guy”, and so on. That’s what a gay guy did to me!

Let’s see if you have the courage to publish such a mail! However I’m not angry with you, it’s obvious, but you do not imagine how slippery can be a gay guy who wants to use you as a screen woman, it’s just something hateful.”

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If you like, you can participate in the discussion of this post, on Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/showthread.php?tid=132

PARENTS OF GAY SONS

Dialogue between parents and sons

 

In order to create a form of mutual respect and genuine affective contact between parents and sons, parents have to set aside all the predetermined roles and have to play without hiding behind comfortable attitudes that actually prevent their cons from really knowing their own parents.

 

Generally speaking, for a gay boy, perceiving that parents play a role, even in a positive way, but are not themselves and are not sincere, is equivalent to a refusal. And that perception is objectively correct.

 

In a serious dialogue, and especially if it is about sex or even homosexuality, there can be no a priori presuppositions. If the answers to give to your son already exist before each comparison of ideas, dialogue is only apparent. Whenever a parent tries to talk to his homosexual son aiming to convince him of something, i.e. by taking for granted what he will say to his son, regardless of the dialogue with his son himself, that parent is offending the dignity of his son and is creating a false dialogue.

 

With sons, and in particular with gay sons, it is indispensable to be 100% honest. In most cases, sons do not speak to parents about their homosexuality, and I would add that in most cases they do the right thing.

 

What I’m saying is that sons are often afraid of the reactions of their parents, and when fear comes into the relationship between parents and sons, the relationship between them is strongly spoiled. The guys I met through Gay Project, and with whom I often meet in chat, want to hear from me the confirmation that being gay means having a dignity, a morality, a high human dimension, not less than that of any other condition of life.

 

Often the less informed or less seriously informed parents have a completely prejudicial view of the gay world, identify it with the most striking and spectacular stereotypes seen on television … but no! Gays, the real ones, they have nothing to do with these things, I know so many of all ages and are people very reliable who work, who try to believe in what they do and who often live in conditions of non-liberty because where they live homosexuality is not accepted.

 

There are people hiding (the great majority!), I call them “the invisible people,” and hiding because they are afraid, not because they have something to hide. I’ve seen gays living very deep forms of love, with or without sex, no matter who gave them a serious affective response. I saw young boys literally destroyed by their parents’ misunderstanding and a thousand times repented of having come out in the family.

 

Coming out  to parents usually causes anxiety and big hesitation in boys because very often the relationships between parents and sons are formalized and are reduced to relationships between roles rather than between people.

 

Parent’s role of support.

 

What must a parent do if he/she comes to know that his/her son is gay (from the son’s coming out or otherwise)? The answer may seem trivial, but a parent who realizes that his son is gay, if he/she loves him, must help him to be gay. A boy told me: “After all, I had had a lion’s courage to talk to them … but they just took it in a strange way and said I had to cure myself.”

 

Such a kind of attitude for a gay boy is equivalent to abandonment, a non-acceptance. Accepting does not mean trying to change the situation and not even hope for it to happen if there is an attempt to change things or the hope that things change, this means that acceptance is not there.

 

Being gay is not a choice but it is a basic quality of a person about which there is nothing to decide but everything to accept. Rejecting the fact that your son is gay means refusing your son from every point of view. Loving sons means loving them as they are!

 

Parents and sex education of gay sons

 

Gay-friendly parents, generally, often in good faith, believe they have nothing to say about affective and sexual education of their sons, but they are completely wrong. A gay boy must learn from his parents to be a serious gay, to consider sexuality a fundamental thing and to live it in an affective dimension characterized by honesty and respect for himself and others.

 

But apart from moral principles, parents can also play a major role in directing boys to responsible sexual behaviors in order to put aside any risky behavior. The parent’s insistence on this point is generally considered by the boys as a form of positive interest and, in essence, as something rewarding. A twenty-year-old gay guy, who had a good relationship with his family, told me an episode that I quote for you here below through a passage of one of his mails.

 

At a certain point, I had quarreled with my boyfriend or maybe I was just a little tired of him, and although I was still in touch with him, I had begun to attend gay clubs and look for guys to have fun, without him knowing it, and my dad did something for which I will never stop thanking him. One night he waited until I went home, in practice until the morning, and he clearly told me that between loving a guy and going to be crazy to have fun there was a huge difference but if I wanted to get along with him, I had to do things seriously, he said to me: you must respect your boyfriend, because he is a boy like you and you are now cheating him, and if you behave in a less than respectful way toward the guy you say you are in love with, you lack of dignity. And he concluded like this: a gay guy must be a guy as he ought to! I think I will not forget such words anymore!

 

With this example I mean that a parent can and must play a role in relation to the gay sons and that role is to convey to the son the sense of dignity and respect for himself and for others, which are fundamental values for everyone.

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GAYS AND GAY PRIESTS

Dear Project,

I have seen that lately the activity of the forum is very low. I hope you have the opportunity to answer me because in your forum I have read many interesting things about gays, things that are very different from what I had heard for years and that I still hear.

I’m 23 years old, I’m a gay guy, I have no doubt, in practice I always knew, at the beginning I did not know that my way of being was what people call homosexuality, I was aware of it a few years ago, more or less at 15. Currently I study Engineering, studies are fine and I’m not very far from graduation. Finding work will be a problem, but in my sector, luckily, there are few people and some possibilities still exist, but these are all things I will have to face later.

I am not publicly out, in fact I would say that I am not out at all and this affects me a bit. Anyway, I cannot risk either at university or at home. At the university it is only about study or girls (but little), I have never heard anything gay, not even jokes, the argument does not exist. In my course we are really few, at most a fifteen, and it is not the right environment to look for friends, the collaboration among students is only formal, although no one explicitly admits it, there is a race to stand out and everyone has its unspoken but evident aims because the environment of our faculty is very much tied to industry and professors are in fact an excellent launch pad for high-level work. We study a lot, faculty is considered among the best and it is really, but the human environment is competitive and in essence very unfriendly.

My parents are under 55, they married young. But I do not have much dialogue with them. In practice, I keep them afar off, when the opportunity to talk a little comes I prefer to talk about stupid things or university things that do not matter to me at all. I do not know if they ever wondered why I never had a girlfriend, since all my so called friends have a girl.

Anyway, my parents don’t ask questions. From a bit of phone conversation between my mother and my aunt I can deduce that according to my mother I have postponed after graduation the idea of catching a girl, however, this means that she noticed something abnormal but not only, that also means she talked about me with her sister, which makes me really bother. My dad is a bit different but he is succubus of my mother and, maybe I’m wrong, but I thought this was one of the reasons for my homosexuality: I do not want to be succubus of anyone. My father’s dependence on my mother, in my opinion, has something excessive, pathologic. Nevertheless, it does not make sense to try to make a clear speech neither with my father nor with my mother, so the problem does not exist at all.

I have passed my phases of interest in pornography, even exaggerated, but then interest has dropped. More than sex I needed a true friend looking a bit like me, I’m talking about a gay friend, if it was not just friendship, it would certainly be better, but it did not seem to me an indispensable condition. At the university I do not even try, because the risks are too many and there we are just reciting as in the theater. I tried the chats, those a bit hard but they were really a squalid.

After a while, practically by chance, on a Sunday morning I accompanied my parents to Mass. Time ago, let’s say up to three years ago, I was in the parish circles and the environment was quite familiar to me. My parents have known the parish priest for years and were talking to him. I sat on a step waiting for them and saw a group of guys playing football, more or less a dozen guys, but they were not kids, they could have had more or less my age. One of those guys immediately caught my attention, he smiled, indeed laughed very directly, was a handsome, tall, thin guy with light brown hair, smooth, short but not too much short, for a moment we crossed eyes and for me it was like a lightning strike. He had beautiful eyes, just looked like a happy guy. But the thing ended there, my parents came and we went home, but I kept thinking about that guy. Then the study week resumed and I ended up thinking about something else.

On the following Sunday I offered to accompany my parents to Mass, just because I was hoping to see that guy again. After the Mass I looked into the yard and the guy was there, he was sitting on a step talking to other guys, he saw me and gestured with his hand, I responded the same way, he obviously remembered me. Then I left and another week passed.
In short, I went every Sunday to Mass and after a few weeks I started exchanging a few words with that guy, whom I will call Luca. I was comfortable with him, he was very direct and at the same time non-intrusive and then he was a smiling guy. We started to greet us with a handshake, and he held my hand tight and it was a nice feeling.

One Sunday, and I will never forget it, we had to go to Umbria at my grandmother’s house and went to Mass at 7am at the first Mass. I almost got a heart attack when I saw him come out of the sacristy with the dresses on him, coming to say mass. Luca is a priest, I did not suspect it at all. There were few people in the church and Luca made a brief sermon that I still remember. The basic idea was to not judge because we just see the appearances and not the heart of people. That preaching, however, applied to Luke, led me to wonder what the appearance was and what was in his heart.

Of course, seeing that Luke was a priest I was shocked. I kept going to Mass but I avoided looking for him. In the end, after a few days, he was looking for me. Frankly I was afraid he would try to take me back to the sheepfold, but I did not have the impression that the purpose was such, slowly, very slowly, a true friendship was born, of course I carefully avoided talking with him about personal matters but I realized he was comfortable with me and was looking for my company. He lived in the parish, cared for the activities with the boys, and the parish priest trusted him very much but also kept him under control, he told me he would like to have a pizza with me one night but that he could not because he felt controlled and it was a strange speech.

One day he calls me and tells that his grandmother is very bad and he has to go to see her in a country in the province of Varese. He asks me if I am willing to go with him to Milan. I tell him yes and I tell him that we had to get there by car, because getting to Milan by train is easy but getting from Milan to the village could be very difficult. I told my parents that I could stay away for a couple of days and left with Luke at eleven in the morning. The journey was long and in the car we were alone, and so it was almost inevitable that we came to talk about our private. He did not ask me if I had a girlfriend. I just told him: “I have to tell you that I’m gay.” And he replied, “Me too.” Then followed a long silence. We talked a lot, he told me about his life, that he wanted to do something good and that he was not a priest to escape from something but to find something, he told me that he was happy.

In seminary he had talked about homosexuality with his spiritual father who encouraged him to move forward and do not abandon the road undertaken. He also told me that he was very happy to talk to me and that for him it was like a liberation, because he could be himself as never happened to him. I refrained carefully from telling Luca that I had fallen in love with him, because I would have put him in serious trouble, within me I do not deny having experienced some bitterness and I asked myself many questions. Was Luke really thinking what he was saying or was he saying that things because somehow he ought to do so? Certainly he seemed happy to be a priest and I think he was really, but sometimes even having a close friend or something more can be crucial, especially when the years begin to pass. I told him about me, practically everything, just omitting that I had fallen in love with him and I think he also told me pretty much everything, omitting that he had fallen in love with me. But in a similar situation what could we do?

We arrived in Varese in the evening, we did not go to the village because his grandmother had been hospitalized in the city. We went to see her. Luca brought her the Holy Communion, but she was better and the doctors thought she would leave in a few days. We had to come back, I would have liked to stay at the hotel to talk a little and start the next morning, but I ended up proposing to leave immediately because I did not want to create problems. We left. The journey was very nice, we looked like a gay couple, we were fine, but in the end we both chose to omit the fundamental thing, that is, the “I fell in love with you” that could have upset our lives. I drove all night and early in the morning Luca was back in the parish. The parish priest saw that we were back right away and now he trusts me.

Every now and again, more or less once a month, I’m going to have a pizza with Luca. Of course the situation is strange, but I see him happy and every other thought goes far away from me. We have also talked about gay things, sometimes, but always in a very abstract way and above all we have never talked about us. This story is very strange and I can tell you that among the many hypotheses I had made for my future I never took into account such a situation. Now I go on so, I just need to see Luca serene, even though I’m so afraid that things can change from one moment to the next.

If you want, post my mail on the forum. (Obviously the country was not in the province of Varese!).

C. C.

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