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

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

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

MEMORIES OF A GAY COUPLE

 Hi Project,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

___________

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

A GAY COUPLE DIVIDED BY THE COVID RED AREA

Email dated March 13, 2020.

 

Hi Project,

I am writing to tell you my and my boyfriend's story in these terrible days of the virus. I can tell you that this thing, which risks becoming a worldwide disaster and which you would do well to try to contain by any means, has also involved my life and especially that of my boyfriend. I use invented names to respect privacy: I will be called Peter and Paul.

I start from afar. We have known each other for several years, I work in the IT field and he is a doctor. We have been together for more than 10 years, we met in a completely random way because we had friends in common. He lives in northern Italy and  I’m in central-south. In practice we have dreamed of living together for a long time but it has never been possible. He has family situations that don’t allow him to go too far, I could do it, I could go to him, but this would create other difficulties and therefore somehow we got organized, I don't work on Saturday, he had flexible shifts and had, on average, a free Saturday out of two, therefore, leaving my home on Friday after 20.00 and traveling all night, I usually was able to get where he lives early on Saturday morning, and he was there waiting for me at the station, we used to go together for breakfast in a beautiful bar and then drove to a small house that his parents had at the foot of the Alps, in a large meadow, which was often covered in snow in winter and in summer was of a unique and incredible green like an emerald, near the house there was a small fountain of cold and clean water, we unloaded our bags at home and walked around in beautiful places that he knew like his pockets, in the evening we could have our intimacy in an unimaginable silence. The following day we used to go on a few more excursions and then he used to take me back to town to the railway station where I had to take the train back home. It is true that we saw each other more or less twice a month and that in practice it was always me the one who had to take the train back and forth, but those Saturdays and Sundays were so wonderful that had the power to give sense to my whole life. Paul and I really love each other, I don't know how I happened to meet him but I consider myself totally lucky, he is a sweet, generous guy who works for others, when on Sunday mornings we go to have breakfast in the mountain village, they all embrace him very warmly and you can see that they love him. He tells me he is happy to be with me and when I hear him say these things I fill myself with pride.

 

But let's get to the facts. Now he is finished in the red zone. For practically a month I have only seen him on Skype, he works in the hospital and we only get in touch late at night when he comes home and contacts me. Since last year he lives alone, he is no longer with his family, even if he lives very close to them. He has his own house and when he arrives home very tired he starts chatting with me. He understands the seriousness of the situation, because he sees it every day and tells me that people don’t understand and minimize but that it is a disease which can decimate the world, but beyond these speeches he doesn’t go. I have a damned fear that Paul could become infected but I can't talk to him about it, he tells me that he doesn't want to hear those speeches and that he must do his duty because if even the doctors run away, sick people are left to themselves and they have no means to defend themselves. He always asks me about me, what I do, where I go, mutual friends but he doesn't want to talk about his work, he just avoids the topic, it is evident that he too is afraid but on one side he cannot be afraid and on the other he doesn’t want to give up. He only tells me that he is tired, that shifts are exhausting but that he must go on anyway because it is too important. Sometimes I feel him happy and he hints at something that has gone well. Paul is not a machine, he participates very emotionally in the fate of his patients. When there are new government decrees, we start reading them together to try to understand exactly all the rules they contain. If I mention that certain prevention measures can be excessive, he attacks me (albeit gently) and tells me that I don’t understand because I don't deal with those things and that certain measures are absolutely indispensable. He brings me China as an example, China risked disaster but with very rigid measures has managed to contain the infection. Here things are more difficult because among the people there is a lot of unconsciousness, a lot of foolishness, they think that the worst has already passed while it has yet to begin. He tells me that times will be longer than people imagine and he recommends me a thousand times to observe all the rules of prudence: “Wash your hands! Avoid crowd! etc. etc .”. When I told him that my company had started teleworking he calmed down. In fact, the work of a computer scientist can also be done at home or on platforms that allow multi-conferences, for us it is easy and we also have the means to do these things. Paul worries about me, but I worry about him and if in the evening he is late, I panic, but until now he has always come. He repeats that he is careful, of course, because he puts into practice all the security measures that in the hospital are very tight for doctors and nurses and this is the only way he has in order to reassure me.

 

In short, Project, so far for the two of us it has gone quite well, but nobody knows how long it will last and then we must put our soul in peace and hope that things will not become explosive and that he will not end up in the number of infected people or worse. There is a lot of anxiety on both sides but he cannot admit it.

 

Who knows how many couples have been divided by the virus! As I would like to hug Paul, now we only do the gesture on cam but sooner or later we will hug again and it will be beautiful. I conclude by wishing everyone involved to be able to get out of it as soon as possible and in the best possible way. Thanks also to you, Project, of course you can use this email as you like better.

 

Peter

________________

Email dated March 24, 2020.

Hi Project.

 

I wrote to you a few days ago, I think you will remember Peter and Paul. I am writing to you in the long moments of emptiness when I cannot get in contact with Paul and I find myself alone to reflect on what is happening.

 

The general situation of the epidemic would let anyone to begin a rethinking of their whole life, for those who have lost parents or grandparents or other relatives or friends the situation is terrible, they see the plan of a life vanish in a few days, death upsets families in the more violent and unexpected way, but for me and Paul the situation is fortunately not so dramatic, I’m I am worried about him, I know he’s prudent and very scrupulous but very little is enough to make a difference.

 

As for me, certainly the least directly exposed, I began to question many of my certainties, I feel much more fragile than before, I’m devaluing a lot of things that I previously considered fundamental, such as economic security and a broad possibility to make my choices but I feel weak because I’m exposed to the risk of losing Paul and it would be a tragedy for me that I don't even dare to think about.

 

The father of one of my friend's died of the virus and two other friends of mine have a relative in the hospital. Many are afraid and try to keep going day by day as they can, because they must also work to survive. I work from home, I don't take serious risks, at least for the moment, but I’m worried about Paul, I think of him at all times of the day because he is right on the front line and I feel him exhausted from fatigue and downcast for what he has to see every day and that when he talks to me he systematically tries to omit.

 

I have always loved him, but seeing how he strives for the good of others to the point of exhaustion I begin to consider him as half a saint, and I think I will never be at his level. In these days he saw many people die, he tried to give them comfort as it was possible and as long as it was possible, but then he saw those people whom he had tried to save in any way die terribly. He tells me that for him now death is not only a daily reality but something he must see several times a day. When someone comes out of the intensive care ward, he feels happy and in fact sometimes it is almost a miracle.

 

He was even before an excellent, generous, selfless guy, but now I see him in a different atmosphere and, if possible, I love him even more than before, because I saw him at work, I saw his moral dimension. Yesterday he asked me to say a prayer for him, and I got scared and I asked him if he was positive and he said no, he asked me for a prayer to help him go all the way and not give up, he needed a greater strength, or better a consolation, I think, to be able to transmit it to all the people it tries to cure every day.

 

Today I tried to pray for him and I did it, but it’s something I never do, that’s why probably in my prayer there was something selfish, I prayed not to lose him, because for me he’s as essential as the light of the sun, but he had asked me for something different, that is, he asked me to pray for him to have the strength to go on. I know that he is taking serious risks and I’m very scared and it also seems right to me to ask the Lord not to take him away from me, even if we are a gay couple, because we really love each other.

 

Tonight I feel very agitated, sometimes at night I can't sleep, I miss him, I miss him damn but I know that he has his duty to follow and that he will do it to the end. I have never seen anyone die, obviously I have seen sometimes dead people, but I have never seen anyone die, but he sees these things every day and I think it is precisely seeing suffering and death that gives him a very strong push to do what he does.

 

Yesterday he told me that a lady who had gone out of the intensive care ward and that he had been assisting for days had given him a wooden rosary and told him that she would pray for him and his girlfriend, he was moved and told the lady that he didn’t have a girl but a guy because he was gay and the lady told him that it was fine all the same and that she would pray for his boyfriend, because Paul was a good guy and he could give so much to his boyfriend. Then the lady started to cry, because she had a son more or less the age of Paul. When he told me this story he had a voice broken by emotion! How can you not love a man like Paul? I would have hugged him strongly! I would have lifted him off the ground to make him feel that I love him! I’m very upset and anxious, Project, but for me living these days is a very profound experience that is changing my life.

 

Peter

___________________

 

Email dated March 30, 2020.

Hi Project,

today the data of the Civil Protection are comforting, I should be more calm and instead I feel very agitated and I can't refrain, Paul works tonight, I heard him in the early afternoon, he tends to calm me down, to reassure me, but when I hear the news and they say that other doctors have died, I get terror, terrible anxiety and I think there may be him too. He tells me that even if he catches the virus, he shouldn't take huge risks because he is young and mortality for those of his age is low, but many of his colleagues have tested positive and many have also died. He has no doubts, he must go on, he must put aside all emotions to maintain the highest possible level of self-control. He always tells me that he hopes that all this frightening adventure can change many absurd ways of reasoning. He quoted me a phrase from Pope Francis that struck him a lot, because that's what he always thought: "We thought we would always stay healthy in a sick world". I clearly feel that Paul is tired, exhausted, I feel it because until about a month ago we used to talk a lot on skype, now we speak less because he needs to sleep and I leave him quiet, but when I close the call I begin to be assaulted by despair, I'm afraid, I'm bloody afraid. People begin to relax and think that they are now getting out of it, but Paul continually repeats to me that this is not the case, that the situation can get out of hand very easily and that we could start again as before and worse than before. He repeats that nothing has changed from them yet and that nothing will change for several days, he says at least three weeks. Now they have a little more means than in the first days, if there is something that makes the difference, if anything, it is just that, it is always a struggle but a little less desperate. People continue to die exactly as before even though doctors can at least say they have done everything they could. Paul tells me that to return to acceptable levels the number of ICU patients should decrease by at least 50%, but it will take time and people will continue to die. He thinks of many other countries where there is no public health service that can react like ours and tells me that mortality will necessarily be much higher there. By now we stay on a video call at least for one hour and a half a day, I see him tired, much thinner than usual but nevertheless he is also calm, I don't know how he manages to be calm, it is evident that he is aware of doing something fundamental, he tells me that the thing that is more difficult for him is not to let himself be overwhelmed by failures, that are many, many. I don't sleep, Project, I ask God to save him but when I do it I have a thousand doubts, why him and not the others too? What's the point of praying? Why do catastrophes like this epidemic happen? Or maybe we notice the disasters that upset the world only when they happen to us. I can't even pray, it seems to me an act of selfishness, because I ask for something for myself, while perhaps we should just say: "your will be done" even if we don't understand the meaning of it or refuse to understand it because it affects us personally. Sometimes I find myself making absurd thoughts, almost trying to make a contract with God: He saves my Paul and I give up sex, but then it seems to me a kind of stupid market, if I think that in order to have Paul unscathed I have to give up to sex, it means that after all I also think that sex between us is a negative thing, but I don't think it at all, because it's not like that, and then I don't have to ask anything for me, it will be what it will be, and it will be accepted anyway, although it may be something terrible, as tens of thousands of people accepted it. In certain moments I’m also less afraid of death, of my personal death, I say, because I see it less as a personal drama and more as a collective destiny and I would say almost natural. I can't take it anymore, Project, I think of Paul at all times, I try to imagine what he is doing at that moment and I dream that the nightmare will end as soon as possible and that we can go back to his house at the foot of Alps together, but all this still seems to me damned far and uncertain. Think about me too, if you can, Project, reading your emails helps me to move forward with less anguish.

Obviously you can make use of this email as you wish.

I hug you.

Peter

_______________

Email dated May 9, 2020.

Hi Project,

I tell you right away, to prevent you from worry,  that "now" it is all quiet, but Paul got through some bad moments, and you can imagine how I felt. Between me and Paul there is a binding agreement: if there is any serious problem we must both know it and we must face it together. In our pre-covid life it has always been like this, so I knew very well that he would let me know how things really were, on Thursday April 2, he calls me at a strange time, in the morning, he tells me that he has a little cough but "at the moment" he has no fever, but he confesses to me that he is worried, so the fear that it may be covid is already in his head, he tells me that he had asked for the pharyngeal swab that will be done within two hours, results should arrive within the next 24 hours. He doesn’t try to tell me it's not covid, instead he tries to prepare me for the idea that it is really covid, he is not afraid because, he explains, now the doctors are starting to have a bit more clear ideas on how to handle the matter. He tells me: "I would have preferred to avoid this experience, but we'll get out of it!" In practice, he takes the test result for granted. The cell phone call doesn't last long, because they call him almost immediately for the swab. A quarter of an hour later he tells me that they won't let him go to the ward waiting for the result of the swab and that he thus will go home immediately and will call me on Skype just got home.

He calls me on skype and asks me about me, he tells me that he has "no fever yet”, but that he has a cough that suggests that it could be covid. We talked a bit, then I had to do my online work shift and we said goodbye. At 20.30 I called him back, he said he had a little fever, but that he had with him all the medicines needed, in practice he had already foreseen the evolution of that angry cough. I ask him how much fever he has and he tells me 38.5, but he says that he has "good" saturation, I ask him how much and he tells me "95" that for one his age he is not good at all, but he is not distressed by this fact. He alerted the hospital and they asked if he needed anything and he replied "no for now". He tried to explain to me what therapy he would follow, but I was unable to understand his speech, was hearing him coughing and I didn't want him to tire too much.

In our conversation, just to not tire him, I spoke almost continuously while he limited himself only to listen and I told him "our story" from the beginning, he was happy to hear it, he felt pampered, object of affectionate attention, and he needed all this very much precisely because he was sick. He took his medicines, then he said to me: "always saturation 95, but the temperature is 38.9 and I feel tired, maybe it's better to take an antipyretic." He took the antipyretic and 40-50 minutes later the temperature dropped to 38, the saturation was always 95 and he was a little breathless. He told me he wanted to try to get some sleep and that he set the alarm on at 3:00 and would call me back. I let him sleep, but, Project, you can't imagine what I was feeling inside, I was stretched like a violin string, wakeful and with wide eyes, I was unable to close my eyes waiting for 3.00. At 3.01 he called me, told me that the saturation was always 95 with some ups and downs and that the fever was stabilized at 38. He had taken other medicines and thought he would try to get some rest again. He would call me back at 7.00. This time I was, if I can say so, a little more peaceful.

At 7.00 he did not call me and I have been anxious for more than an hour because he was not answering my cell phone calls, then he called me shortly before 8.15 am and he said that one of his colleagues had come to see him and had told him that the swab was positive and that since the saturation was always on 95 and this could tire him it would have been good to take a little oxygen, at 2 liters per minute, even a little to support the heart. They said they would bring the oxygen to him within a couple of hours, not a compressed gas cylinder but a liquid gas cylinder that would last much longer, more or less 5-6 days. The fever was 38.3 now, several hours after the antipyretic. He told me that he felt tired and that he would try to rest waiting for the oxygen, he added that he would call me as soon as he started taking oxygen.

What he had told me was serious but all in all not distressed, but other times he had told me that the worst moments come after a few days and I was very agitated. Shortly after 9.00 he calls me back and tells me that with oxygen at 2 liters per minute, which is all in all low, he feels much less evanescent, that he is continuing the therapy and that he is monitored by his colleagues doctors. He tells me that with oxygen he also feels like getting up and walking, whereas before he could only stay in bed and feeling nevertheless very dizzy and fatigued. In the afternoon he did himself the ECG  and told me it was good. During the day he didn’t resume antipyretics and the temperature didn’t go above 38.4, the saturation “with oxygen” was at 98, therefore good, it oscillated a little but little and the values were on average high. Anyhow I continued to hear the cough exactly as before. When he was speaking through headphones I was able to hear the hiss of the oxygen coming out of the inhaler. I'm not going to tell you about everything that happened and everything we said to each other hour by hour.

April 4 was the most difficult day, the temperature, in the evening, went up to 38.9 and he had to take another antipyretic, but that things were at risk of taking a bad turn one could understand it from the saturation that even "with oxygen" had fallen to 95-96 (but perhaps a little more 96 that 95), I was very worried, he less than me and it reassured me a lot. We got in touch 4 times during the night, I was afraid that the situation could get worse at any moment, it has been the worst night. On Sunday morning, that is, the following day, the situation seemed stable, but Paul was not well at all. He often measured saturation, but until 5 o'clock in the afternoon no change was seen, fever always very high (he didn't want to take antipyretics before the fever reached 39 but the fever was always slightly lower).

In the late evening (of Sunday) things started to improve, the temperature, without antipyretic, did not exceed 38 and sometimes even fell below 38 and the saturation slowly rose and gradually abandoned that limit value of 95. Monday 7 temperature began to drop around 37.5 and Paul received another oxygen supply. In the next two days the improvement was constant, Paul preferred not to start talking of "healing phase", and when I spoke about it he said it was too early and that to have a relative certainty it was necessary to wait three or four more days.

On the morning of April 10 (Friday) Paul took off the oxygen while talking to me and half an hour later he measured the saturation and it was 97 "without oxygen", now finally an acceptable value, I asked him how he felt and he said " much better, I breathe in a satisfying and trouble-free way even without oxygen. " During the same day the fever disappeared completely and in the evening the saturation began to oscillate between 98 and 99, a sign that things, at the lung level, had come back to normal. By now Paul was calm.

On the evening of April 10 he asked that they do the swab and on Saturday 11 they went to his house to do it, he was now clinically healed, the swab was nevertheless still positive, but he wasn't worried about this fact. On April 13 morning they did him the swab again and this time it resulted negative, on April 15 they did him the second swab which was negative again. A few days later he came back to the hospital ward and resumed work with covid patients. It has been two weeks that I will never forget. He then explained to me that it went well and that it could have been much worse than that because he had seen even young people die.

Now he should be immunized, so the covid shouldn't scare him anymore. The two weeks of illness made him lose weight and he was never one of strong build. Looking at him on skype he seemed to have enormous eyes in a face very emaciated, and he has beautiful eyes! When I tell him that the epidemic is about to end, he always tells me that now he is no longer afraid for himself but that people continue to die and that even if there is a decline, the epidemic is not at all extinguished, that there are still too many new positives to say that we are out of it.

A few days ago he told me that they sent a 24-year-old boy to ICU and that he took care of him. Luckily that boy came out of the ICU after a few days and Paul also followed him to the ward and asked him if he wanted to contact someone in a video call, like his parents, but the boy asked Paul to call immediately his boyfriend ,who had been without news for more than 10 days, while the parents had been informed every day. The boy wanted Paul to stay in the room during the video call. The two boys started crying on the phone and then they also involved Paul: "If the doctor wasn't there, who knows where I was now!" At the end of the video call, Paul said to the boy: "but you two really love each other!" The boy's eyes shone. Then Paul went back to intensive care ward. When he told me this story Paul was happy and said to me: “They were really in love! There you really see if anyone loves you! "

As usual you can make use of this email as you wish. Thanks for your response the other time and sorry if I didn't answer you right away.

I hug you.

Peter
___________________
If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-a-gay-couple-divided-by-the-covid-red-area

INDUSTRIAL GAY LOVES

Dear Project,

I start from the beginning, I’m almost 27, I always knew I was gay and it was natural for me, never a problem and never a doubt. I had absolutely no problems with it, but the others had them and I could only pay the consequences. I have never been good at school and I have always had a lot of problems for this, but perhaps this also helped me a lot, focusing my parents’ attention on school problems more than on the fact that I had no girls around. After my high school diploma, I attended a very specialized semester course and there I did pretty well, even better than the other guys. At the end of the course they called me for an interview in a large Company, and against all my expectations they hired me. My parents didn’t see my new job favorably, because I would have had to go out of my region to move to a very distant place and the wages were low and my father would have had to pay for my accommodation near the Company. Anyway, then my father ended up saying yes and I left.

 

I had turned 22 a few months before and I finally felt free, but I was also very scared, I did a six-month internship in the Company and then they confirmed my permanent employment. The real salary was better than what I had supposed and furthermore I had no expenses, because from Monday to Saturday, for lunch, I ate at the Company canteen, but since the industrial production was continuous, there was also a canteen for dinner, and also in the morning for breakfast, but for dinner and breakfast I had to pay, but the costs were very low and the food was good and plentiful. In short, after three months, I told my father that I was able by myself to pay for my accommodation and that he would no longer have to sign for me the monthly money transfer, and he felt very relieved because my parents aren’t rich at all.

 

I started to look for a rented house, even a very little but a house that had to be exclusively mine, I found one not very close to the Company, more or less a kilometer and a half, 35 minutes on foot walking briskly, but it was a single house with a small piece of vegetable garden, no more than 400 m2. As soon as I could, even losing some money, I left the room I had rented and moved to my new house. I had discovered that in the Company it was possible to be available to work overtime, I had no family load and with overtime I was able not only to pay for the house but also to put some money aside and do some extra shopping (a camera, and with some effort a new PC).

 

I felt like a king, but I was alone. Obviously in the Company I had started looking around, like all gay guys do, looking for others like me, but frankly they were all much older than me, all or almost married with children. In the department where I worked, the youngest one after me was 36 years old, he was bald and had a belly that came out of his belt and moreover he was probably straight. In the department we used to work hard and had no time to waste, I tried to do my best. I saw that the supervisors sometimes scolded some of the employees who had done their job wrong, but they never scolded me.

 

One day, unexpectedly, the shift supervisor comes to me and tells me that I know how to do my job and that I do it well. I feel very encouraged. In the sector entrusted to me I had noticed that one of the machines that I knew best was not set up in the best way and that there were operations that, with those settings, required much more time and much more human control. It occurs to me that there may be a solution, I say this to the shift supervisor who, however, does not take me too seriously and only tells me that he will talk of it to the engineer responsible for automation. I think he told me so just to say something and from this I deduce that the story is over.

 

Two days later the shift supervisor comes to me and tells me that Engineer Bordin (modified name) wants to talk to me at the end of the shift. I feel very gratified, at the end of the shift I wash my hands and also my face well and go to the Administration Department. The environment is luxurious but without exaggerating, I find the Engineer’s office, the secretary, a lady of about 55, tells me that the Engineer will arrive in minutes and lets me in the room to seat. I feel intimidated, there is a computer turned on with drawings of production lines and folders of papers everywhere. After not more than five minutes the Engineer arrives and here I have a heart attack, I was expecting an elderly man and instead he is a beautiful guy who in my opinion is not even thirty years old, he smiles at me immediately, we shake hands, he has a nice warm and strong hand, and then he tells me that the shift supervisor told him that the setting of an industrial machine could be changed and that I had proposed the change, and he asks me what it is. I try to explain it to him, but it is clear that these are things he doesn’t understand at all.

 

At one point he asks me: “Are you sure of what you say?” I tell him that I think I’m quite sure of it but that I should do a test, that is, I should reset the machine in the new way and see what happens by letting the machine perform automatically the same work it does now, just to confirm that it is able to do everything automatically. He asks me how long the test could take, I tell him: “At most 10-15 minutes”, he tells me to do the test and to let him know if it works. If the shift supervisor has doubts or problems I have to tell him that I have been authorized by engineer responsible for automation. He adds that I have to send him a report on the outcome of the test as soon as possible, then he smiles at me, we shake newly hands and we say goodbye.

 

I rush to the shift supervisor who opens his arms and says to me: “Okay, but we must stop production line for the shortest time possible.” We agree that I would have done the test between 3.00 and 3.30 in the night, when the system is operating at a lower speed, just to minimize the effects caused by the interruption of the production line. I go home, I study all the technical manuals, I write the reset program, reread the programs dozens of times, then I mount the simulator on my PC and proceed to start the standard execution of the piece. It seems that everything works perfectly. I load the program on the pen and start writing the report for the Engineer, assuming that everything will work as expected even on the real machine. At half past one in the morning I leave my house and go to the Company. I send the production stop signal for 15 minutes, “due to maintenance” at 3.05 o’clock. I load the reset program, insert a piece to be worked and at 3.09.10 a perfect piece leaves the machine, even better by eye than what was obtained with the old procedure.

 

I leave the machine with my settings and at 3.12.00 I restart the production cycle. I take a piece made with the old technique and the one made with the new one on which I put a drop of red paint. Then I come home, complete the relationship. In practice with the new settings the time was reduced from 7 minutes and 10 seconds to 4 minutes and 10 seconds and there was no sign of work discontinuity on the piece. I go home exhausted but happy. The shift starts at 7.00 am. I go to the shift supervisor, tell him that I did the test and that it went well, he replies that he has seen a some acceleration of the line and tells me that I have done a good job. I ask him if I can go to the Engineer, he says yes and I go.

 

The Engineer is not there but the secretary calls him on his cell phone and tells me to sit down and wait. He arrives after a few seconds, smiles at me, tells me that he is happy to see me and informs me that the shift supervisor has detected a line acceleration of almost 7%. I give him the report, he reads it or better he just looks at it, then he offers me a coffee. I’m afraid he asks me something about school, but he doesn’t, we have coffee together, then we talk a little, he asks me how long I’ve been in the Company, where I live, where I worked before, how I find myself with my work colleagues, I dare to turn the same questions to him and he answers me in a very friendly tone, he trusts me, he tells me that he is 29 years old, that he has been in the Company for three years but is very stressed from work, he doesn’t mention wife or children or girlfriends, maybe those are too personal matters, then he asks me for my cell phone number, writes it on my technical report and puts it in the drawer. Then he tells me that he is sorry to have to send me back to the ward because he sees that I’m a very good guy and he dismisses me with a stronger and warmer handshake than usual and that lasts a few moments longer than expected. I go back to my department and feel very excited.

 

The shift supervisor calls me and asks me if I know also another automatic control machine, he explains that there are problems that have never been solved, and he tells me that, when I have time, I could also take a look to that machine. I tell him it’s okay.

 

Project, I don’t go further in telling the details, in no more two months all the automatic control machines have been reset and reprogrammed to optimize the production, the times have been reduced by almost 20% and the production standard has improved. Since I’m very young, compared to their standards, my colleagues don’t look at me with envy and the supervisors encourage me a lot. I have been to the Engineer four times in a month and a very particular mutual sympathy has been created, there is only a problem, he is a manager and there is a lot of hierarchy in the company and the rules must be respected.

 

To make the English language speakers understand exactly what follows, I must first explain to them that in Italian, when speaking formally with a person you don’t know and with whom you are not familiar, we don’t use the second person of the singular, but the third person of the singular “feminine” also in reference to a man. For example, to a friend you say “today you came to visit me” (that is, you use “you”) but in reference to an important person or to a person you don’t know, you have to use an expression that in English would sound more or less like this: “She came to see me today” (i.e. you use “she”)

 

Well, however, one evening, after a little more than two months from our first meeting, he calls me on the phone using “she” (formal speaking), I think it is for issues related to the machines, but it is not so, he talks about other things, about the life that does not satisfy, about the work that disillusiones and makes you feel stressed, about the time that passes, I think at every moment that when the preambles will be over he will start talking to me about work but it doesn’t happen. We are on the phone for over an hour, then he asks me: “Can we use the “you””? … But only outside the Company, otherwise it could sound strange.” It’s a request that makes many lights light up in my brain! I reply that it’s fine, he tells me his name is Stefano and I tell him my name is Dario. He says to me: “Thanks, Dario, it was really a pleasure to talk to you tonight, you have my cell number, if you call me it’s nice, don’t forget it!” He says these things in a very hesitant voice and this makes me very tender. I tell him. “Thanks, Stefano, I’ll show up shortly, you can count on it!”

 

When I close the phone, my eyes shine, it is clear that Stefano is gay and that between us there is already a special sympathy and furthermore he is a beautiful guy, he doesn’t put me in embarrassment at all,  it’s he the one who feels embarrassed with me.

 

He knew my work shifts and I knew his, and we never met within the Company, because it could be embarrassing for both of us, but after another month, we got to the point that we talked on the phone every day and met one day a week, when we were both free. I used to take the bus and go to the second village on the way to the mountain and I had to wait for him just minutes, he usually arrived there by car non more than 10 minutes after me, he parked and we went around the woods, then in the evening he used to take me back home by car. It was precisely in one of these walks that we got to speak clearly, it was all much easier than I had imagined. I said to him: “Well, I think it is up to me to start the topic … I’m gay and I think I’m falling in love with you …” He looks at me and smiles with a huge smile, then says to me: “I understood it the second time we met!”

 

Project, don’t think that what came next was easy and trouble-free, because it was exactly the opposite. He had a lot of problems about the fact that he was 29 years old and I wasn’t 23 yet, but he didn’t show his 29 years at all, maybe my age if not even less. For my part, I had a many problems because he was an engineer and was already a manager in the Company and I acted accordingly with it, but he did not feed my problems, he didn’t at all seem to feel superior, rather, he was very shy and self-conscious. He only used to see the difference in age, which anyhow was nothing excessive, and felt guilty, as if he could rob me of my youth, that is, almost as if he could take advantage of me because I’m younger.

 

One day I asked him how much he was earning and he showed me the credit e-mail of his salary. He was earning a lot more than me but not so much more than me. He could not do overtime because his contract did not include office hours but his job was subject only to the evaluation of the C.E.O., well, with his job he earned 60% more than what I could earn by doing all the possible overtime, but even if he didn’t have office hours, anyhow he used to stay at Office in the Company for 12-16 hours a day, much more than me! And then he was always stressed by work, by worries and by the fact that the top manager always kept him under pressure.

 

One day we go to the usual country and since the following day is a national holiday we decide to stay there in the hotel, he has been anxious since the morning, he confesses to me that he never had sex with anyone and that he has a “fucking” (a word, that I’d never expected by him!) fear of diseases. I tell him that he does very well to be afraid of diseases and that I too have never been with anyone. He makes me swear. In the evening we go to a “widespread” hotel, that is, in practice they send us to a small separate but perfectly equipped cabin. Stefano is very anxious.

 

We stretched out on the bed fully dressed but it was cold and we turned on the heating. Basically we only talked all night. I thought he had, I don’t say female friends but at least male friends and instead he didn’t have any, he didn’t use to see anyone outside the Company, except me. The parents did not know about his homosexuality and until 29 years he had thought “only” to study and work.

 

When I talked about sex based on what I had learned from Gay Project, he was listening to me with extreme interest. He confessed to me his sexual fantasies: mutual masturbation, “also” oral sex, but no anal penetration, which never had existed in his fantasies and he was worried about this fact because he thought anal penetration was the fixed idea of all gay people. I looked at him in the eyes and told him that I too had never thought of having anal sex, that I had nothing against the thing in itself because people must be able to do what they want. Stefano still had the conception of sex as a forbidden game, the idea that sex was a form of love seemed strange to him, too irreverent compared to his principles.

 

Project, you have been very useful to me, I told him many things you wrote in the Manual and he was more and more perplexed. We slept only from 5.00 until 9.00, because before 9.30 we had to have breakfast in a bar in the village. We walked in the woods for hours and occasionally there was some physical contact, that is, we held hands. He totally left me the initiative but I was afraid to take some false steps, to put him in difficulty. At one point I ask him, “Can I hug you?” He replies with his eyes while smiling and I embrace him. He was shaking, he was really in ecstasy and I was too. I felt the body of a guy who liked to let me embrace him and was happy to be embraced by me, I felt his heart beat very fast, like mine, I felt his breath on my cheek and felt that he was holding me very tightly, we stayed embraced like this for very long minutes, then we broke up, but we didn’t kiss, I wanted him to take the initiative but he didn’t.

 

When we got home he asked me to show him my house, I was reluctant because everything was messy, but he insisted and then I said yes. He came in and this time he surprised me, he threw himself on my bed and said to me: “What if I sleep with you tonight?” I told him that there was only one bed and he pointed out to me that there was a reclining armchair and he would sleep there, but he needed to stay with me. We prepared a very quick dinner and then the effort of the last two days began to make itself felt: he settled on my bed, obviously fully dressed and I on the reclining armchair, even that time there was no sex at any level because we fell asleep almost immediately.

 

Now Stefano and I have been together for three years, we formally live as singles for work reasons, that is, to keep our relationship completely outside the work environment, but we stay in contact by the phone every day and every week we spend an evening together, then the night, all the next day and also the next night, then the work week starts again, but we manage to spend two nights together every week and I see him happy, now his problems about the fact that he is older than me are completely vanished. It took us more than a year to have the first sexual contacts but then it happened, it was much less simple than I had imagined, but in the end there was an excellent harmony between us also at that level.

 

Unfortunately there is one thing that doesn’t make me feel comfortable and it is the stress that Stefano is subjected to, because he is literally obsessed with work. It is true that he earns more, but in my opinion the game is not worth the candle, if he changed his job he would earn less but he would be much better and we would have more time for us. I have in mind that, if he could, he would change job even at the cost of losing out economically, but at the moment the only alternative would be to be a freelancer, it could be also a concrete possibility, but it is risky and would still keep him constantly anxious.

 

At school I had teachers who were engineers who did little or nothing at all, they earned little but literally did nothing at all! Now I have to try to understand how Stefano could be a teacher, I think it’s a bit complicated, but I have to understand if there is a road and which one, then I will have to try to tell him about it, because according to my opinion he wants to feel encouraged by me to take a step like that, because his parents would certainly tell him it’s madness.

 

My story ends here, or rather begins here!

I embrace you, Project, even if we don’t know each other, and I thank you for all the support you have indirectly given me.

 

Dario

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