A QUIET GAY COUPLE

 Hi Project,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul

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

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GAY SEX AND CELL PHONE

 Hi Project,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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STORY OF A GAY AND A TRANS

 Hi Project, I’m a 39 years old gay, I can’t say gay boy because I’m not a boy anymore and I don’t feel like a boy. I have had my life and my stories but it’s not about me that I want to talk to you. Last night (the night between August 23th and 24th) surfing TV channels as I often do, I ended up on “Rai Tre” (a well-known channel in Italy), and I saw a broadcast about the “transition-path”, that is, about transgender people and transitions MtF and FtM. The broadcast was beautiful, honest, real, and for me it was shocking because it made come forcefully up to the surface of my consciousness the story I lived with a trans who was a guy at first. Obviously, given the need to respect privacy on such sensitive issues, I will not be able to go into details, but such memories are not only unforgettable but remain as a yardstick for many other things. I’ll avoid by necessity even too punctual definitions of times and circumstances. In a certain year, when I was no longer very young and I was single again after living together for a few years with a guy, I meet for work reasons a very young boy who had just come out of the school. I think he was more or less 19 years old. He’s a nice guy, I’ll call him Norbert. I only look at him because he is a handsome boy but he is completely outside my horizons, too young and then, frankly I still had to lick the wounds of my just finished coexistence. A couple of months go by and since the work reasons remain, I have the opportunity to meet Norbert several times, even three or four times a week. In short, a certain sympathy is created between us. Norbert is smart, reliable, he knows his work, he is almost amazed that I treat him with respect, as the days go by Norbert tends to talk more with me and even, sometimes, to smile, but very rarely. 

We start becoming friends, and he starts to trust me, and somehow I’m proud of it. I’m starting to think he’s a gay guy who has fallen in love with me, his way of doing makes me think so. I begin to wonder what to do, Norbert is a handsome guy but frankly he doesn’t tempt me, I think that with him I could never build anything concrete, at least because of the age difference, and so I decide that I have to keep him at a distance and that I have to cool his enthusiasm above all for his good because otherwise he could be heavily disappointed. I try to distance myself, but he chases me and doesn’t allow me to keep my distance. 
One day he asks me to drive him to a nearby town, and everything that needs to happen happens in the car, but not what I expected. He tells me to park the car in a lay-by and asks me out of the blue: “Are you gay?” I feel terribly embarrassed and I don’t answer, he continues: “I understood it immediately … so why are you running away?” I try to anticipate him and to prevent him from going further: “Because you are too young and furthermore I already have a partner (but in reality I didn’t have one).” He replies in a way that displaces me: “For me if you have a partner it makes no difference!” I ask him: “What do you mean?” He tells me: “I like you but in a way you can’t understand.” I look at him puzzled and he tells me: “I fell in love with you because I feel like a woman and you are the only person who treated me with respect, I don’t think a gay can fall in love with a woman in a man’s body, it wouldn’t work. Don’t be afraid, I know it.” I feel dizzy, I don’t know how to react, he realizes it and tells me: “I look like a guy but I’m a girl and I want to be a girl. You can’t imagine what I went through in school and also in my family.” 
The first impetus I had was to run away because I didn’t want to get involved in too complicated things that I didn’t know anything about, and then I didn’t want to have any contact with Norbert’s family, because I didn’t know what they would think of me. Norbert was of age but the complications were very probable and anyway unpredictable. 
At one point he says to me: “Don’t call me Norbert, call me Magda, because I want to be called so.” For me, calling him Magda was very difficult but with some effort I succeeded. When I got home my brain was boiling, I had left home in the belief that Norbert had fallen in love with me and I returned home with the certainty that Norbert was actually Magda and that she wanted me to help her begin the transition path, all this was upsetting and I was not prepared to face such situations. I was afraid of ending up crushed by too big responsibilities and completely losing my autonomy. I told myself that I absolutely had to get out of this whole thing, but then I didn’t have the needed courage. Magda understood my fears and tried not to feed them, she was present in my life and knew what she wanted from me but she was not an obsessive presence, she had a sense of limit. I expected her to let off steam to me by telling me about her life but she didn’t, or, if she did, she did it in a very limited way. She was looking for true solidarity not for a shoulder to cry on. We talked a lot but always in a very controlled and almost detached way, she didn’t want to scare me, but even from this titanic effort of self-control I could understand the ocean of pain that she carried inside. 
At work he continued to be Norbert, but when I accompanied her home Norbert was Magda, as the days went by our relationship, for me, ceased to be a concern and I began to wonder what I could concretely do to allow Magda to realize her dream. I tried to read up on it, I spent whole nights on the internet looking for sites that talked seriously about these things to feel less inadequate but then I realized that Magda knew a hundred times more than me about the problem and that therefore I certainly couldn’t help her that way. We talked a lot especially about her relationship with her parents. Her problem was to have the support of her parents. The parents thought she was actually a gay guy, but anyway they weren’t able to accept neither such a situation. Making them accept that their son actually felt like a girl and wanted to follow the transition path seemed to me absolutely impossible, I told it Magda clearly even though I knew this could be disheartening for her. Magda, however, was not of the same opinion and told me: “I’m preparing the ground, however, when the time comes, you will have to do your part.” 
In practice, in the previous days she had begun to mention the matter to her parents, who were however very perplexed and felt completely inadequate. She told me that she had told her parents about me, which made me very alarmed, and added that she had also told them that I was gay and that I could explain a lot of things to them. In practice, the parents were convinced that Magda was not a trans with the so-called gender dysphoria but a gay guy with too feminized internalized attitudes and had come to accept the idea that Magda could fall in love with a guy. She had tried to explain to her parents that the matter was completely different but they thought that meeting a “real” gay would allow Magda to understand that she too was “just” a gay guy. 
After not many days, Magda told me it was my time and that her parents were waiting for me in the afternoon. I didn’t have the courage to back down and went to Magda’s parents, who welcomed me with respect but also with suspicion. The first moments were of extreme embarrassment, I had to explain that I was really gay, that I had lived with a man for years, this to make them understand that I was a “real” gay, then I told how I had met Magda, but I didn’t know how to go on, because the atmosphere was freezing. Magda realized that the situation was taking a bad turn and asked her parents to express their doubts saying that I would answer all their questions. The parents made a huge effort and slowly we got to the heart of the matter. The father began with these words: “Norbert trusts you a lot and considers you a very serious friend and was very keen for us to meet in person, now we are here and we must try to understand each other, because we care a lot about our son.” Then, the four of us have been talking until midnight. 
The parents insisted that Norbert was just a gay guy maybe a little effeminate, and making them understand that Norbert was not at all effeminate and not at all gay was really very difficult, because their interpretation of things put them away from the idea of the concrete physical transition from male to female, which was the thing that scared them the most. They started from the idea that since Norbert had never brought home a girl and had never talked about girls he could be interested in guys and this for them meant that Norbert was gay. I tried to make them understand that a gay is a guy who feels 100% masculine who falls in love with another guy because he sees him as 100% masculine, while a trans falls in love with a guy because he/she feels like a woman and  falls in love with a man the way women fall in love with men and the two things are very different. Understanding these concepts was very difficult for them. They thought that a gay falls in love with a guy because he doesn’t feel up to being with a woman and that he sees his partner as a woman, that in a gay couple there is a gay-male and a gay-female and the like and they thought that an effeminate guy was very interesting to a gay because he was more feminine. And then they had a very strange concept of effeminacy, for them effeminacy was not linked to external aspects but to the intimate feeling of having a distinctly feminine personality, which is why they considered Norbert effeminate, even if he wasn’t at all. 
Eventually I told her parents that if they had called their daughter Magda instead of Norbert, she would have been happy. Her mother called her Magda and hugged her. The father said. “It will take me a while but I will get used to it.” Magda took me back to my car and was radiant, she was happy with me and how I had behaved and above all with the reactions of her parents who seemed to be possibilist. I swear to you, Project, that I would never have imagined an afternoon like that, but after that afternoon there were many others not very different. Magda knew how to move and her parents were basically good people whose life had been upset by things they weren’t in the least prepared for, they wanted Magda’s good but they didn’t understand how, in reality, this good could materialize, however, getting the parents to accept the idea of the physical transition was a much more difficult undertaking than expected. 
They feared that there could be serious health consequences for Magda, they too had begun to search for information but were disoriented. They accepted Magda’s trans feelings but only on a psychological level, for them hormonal therapies and surgeries were something inconceivable, almost a way of rebelling against God’s will. They had no religious prejudices but were afraid of pushing Magda towards a choice she might have regretted later. They were the same perplexities that I also had, but Magda was very determined and basically the transition path would be followed by experienced people and this comforted me. In the end, however, her parents reluctantly accepted the prospect of the physical transition as well. Magda was happy, because at least her parents had let her choose freely and hadn’t imposed anything on her.
Magda began her transition path which, however, let’s say unexpectedly both for me and her parents, ended in an early psychological phase, in other words before hormonal therapies and before surgery. Magda spoke long with an endocrinologist who clarified to her that she would have to continue taking estrogen for life and that ultimately her secondary sexual characteristics would have changed but she would not have lost the male genetic characteristic and would not have acquired the female one. The psychologist insisted that Magda’s choice to carry out the transition had be absolutely free and aware and that if she had any doubts, even small ones, she would do well to take her time to think about them very seriously. So there was a postponement and after three months Magda made the decision not to proceed further. In reality Magda felt she was in a female identity but somehow imperfect and completed by a residue of male identity, which was not completely rejected. 
Not carrying on the transition was a choice that perhaps could also have been inspired by Magda’s parents, this occurred to me many times, but I realized that she was calm and that the fact of not proceeding with the transition was ultimately her choice, because individual paths rarely follow strictly the theoretical standard. The suspension of the transition was followed by a period of psychological support therapy with a very competent doctor and, essentially, there were no problems. However, a profound melancholy remained, which was what psychotherapy was focused on: it was the fear of loneliness, the fear of never finding a partner. With the complete physical transition, Magda would have had a feminine aspect and “maybe” she could have found a guy but she couldn’t have children anyway and that would have been a huge conditioning impossible to overcome.
Without the physical transition, Magda-Norbert would have been interesting only for gays but also with gays in the long run, very serious problems would have arisen and anyway Magda’s dream would have been to find a guy who fell in love with her “as a woman”. Without the physical transition, Norbert remained Norbert in the workplace. My friends, who knew about me, thought Norbert was my boyfriend and didn’t believe me when I told them he wasn’t, because Norbert, or rather Magda, was somehow “in a very emotional way” my girlfriend. Our story went on for another two years, then Magda, incredible to say, found a straight man who fell in love with her and who had enormous courage because Magda was apparently a guy in all respects. I too met Magda’s boyfriend and he made a great impression on me. She thought that if she made the transition she could also legally marry that guy; at that time there were still no civil unions in Italy, then when it became legally possible, they made a civil union that also appeared in some newspapers as a “gay civil union” even if of a gay union there was only the appearance.
Then they went to live in Milan and now we only talk for Christmas, Easter and birthdays. Clearly Magda continues to work as Norbert but all in all I think she has found at least a relative tranquility, she has a boyfriend who loves her. When they did the civil union they left for a kind of honeymoon and came to see me, Magda was happy, I could see it from the smile.
I don’t think many gays have lived a similar story, generally the trans topic is a taboo even for gays. Last night’s broadcast led me to think that the more serious you talk about these things the more you improve the level of everyone’s life.
Freely do whatever you want with the email.An affectionate greeting.Daniel (Sorry, it’s not my real name)

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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

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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