Finding the Thing Within (14 page)

This is why our relationship will always be special, because we’ve both been giving each other so much without any doubts...everything happened so spontaneously...you can’t now throw your love in my face, as if it were a gift...but the real gift were the feelings of happiness and pride that you felt for another person for the first time...you have, at any rate, lived an experience different to any of those before, and this is a start, a little flame in your heart, so cold until now.

So I’m asking you not to say that I was the man of your life, but that I still am. And that I’m still a point of reference for you...you know you can talk about anything with me...and you know about the rest! This is how I see things, about me being gay or bisexual, I know you’re right and this is my main problem right now. I don’t really know either and yet it doesn’t stop me trying to find out...

I’ll keep looking for what I am...and I’ll always remember how much I enjoyed being with you...to feel so comfortable with a man so much older and to consider trying to stay with him...It was so difficult trying to deal with a relationship situation like this...and maybe you never quite appreciated this. Anyway I’m happy to have lived this experience.

I would tell you how much I really love you and would love to be with you but you probably wouldn’t believe me...I’ve always been honest with you...I want to be always near you but maybe you’d rather wrap yourself in the knowledge of your chronic bad luck and not try to see what we still have that’s good between us...

Thanks anyway for the love you gave me... Love and always yours.
Lorenzo”

Part 17

Rosario was suffering; he kept promising himself that he wouldn’t cry. He was scared, scared that everything they had slowly built up, the happiness he was beginning to feel and the joy that was finally beginning to thaw his heart could return everything so quickly back to how it was before. He tired to think that maybe it was all for the best, for the best that Lorenzo should be left to his road and to continue the crooked path that he had, till then, followed with amusement. He thought of all the beautiful moments that they had together. He thought back to Lorenzo’s gentle caressing touch, his kisses and the stupid things he had said to make him laugh and relax. He thought of the furtive meetings they had, at the family home when his parents were at work and his brother at university. One day Lorenzo got annoyed when he had commented on a photo of his brother, saying that he was better-looking, and really he was.

***

He didn’t sleep that night, or the following. It was hot, very hot and August, always murderously hot in Sicily, had just begun. His mind spun with images of all the guys he had met and known. It was impossible to remember them all, there were so many. He lay and relived those that had made the strongest impression on him, the most passionate. One among many was the memory of a young and beautiful 25-year-old policeman from Rome that came by one day when he used to have his own shop. He had just arrived in Palermo, and had no real friends there so he would often drop in on the shop. One day Rosario picked up the courage to say:

"As a matter of a fact I’m gay, and...I like you!" but he only smiled and said that while he had nothing against homosexuality, he wasn’t gay himself.

"Have you ever tried anything like it?"
"No, I told you, I only like women."
Almost all of the young men he had known had

started off saying a similar thing, that they just liked women, but then...

"So you wouldn’t like to try a new experience?" he said.
"No, it’s not something I want to try, it’s not for me."
Though it wasn’t something for him, he kept hanging out at Rosario’s shop, stopping to talk each time. Rosario, for his part, never abandoned the slow, eroding power of conviction and persuasion.
"Are you sure you don’t want to try something new?"
"If there’s one thing I’m sure about it’s that no."
"But why not? You might enjoy it," Rosario continued.
"It’s against the natural scheme of things."
"So you don’t want to do it because you think it’s against the natural order, not because you wouldn’t enjoy it."
"What does that mean? I don’t want to do it."
"How do you know if you haven’t tried it?"
"I just don’t..."
But the policeman kept coming back and Rosario kept up his passive war of slow persuasion. One day in the middle of Rosario’s usual arguments, the policeman, perhaps only to make Rosario calm down a bit, conceded that if he were to try it, it would have to be at the right time and in the right atmosphere.
"Let’s create the right atmosphere," said Rosario.
"Well you can go ahead and create the atmosphere but I’m telling you, it’s not the right time."
Rosario insisted for a time but the policeman was resolute and he gave up. Two days later the policeman came by again and Rosario asked nonchalantly:
"So have you decided when the right time is going to be?" He was as direct as ever so didn’t expect it at all when the policeman answered:
"Whenever you want!"
"Whenever I want? Now!" and he led him through into the back of the shop, locked the door and starting taking off his clothes. As he pulled off his sweater he came across the policeman’s gun, which he removed and placed carefully on a shelf. Then he returned to unbuttoning his shirt, revealing his chest. He was fairly well-built and Rosario felt his chest muscles and kissed his nipples. The policeman didn’t protest, though nor did he participate to any extent. Rosario, with the greatest care, slid off his belt and opened his trousers. The policeman was already hard and Rosario felt in his hand what he had desired for some time. He reached over to the policeman’s hand and brought it close to his own hard cock. The boy hesitated just for a moment before doing the same to Rosario as he was doing to the young, handsome policeman. Two days later he heard that he was going to be transferred and he never saw him again.

***

These were the thoughts that were running through his mind and he tried in vain to get some sleep. Continuing to see images of past lovers in his mind’s eye, he conjured up Salvo, a guy he met at the same beach and practically the same rock that he always went to. When he had approached, he had looked at him with wild eyes. He was really tall, about six-foot, four with gorgeous eyes and a nice face, but what was most attractive was his personality.

He was so cheerful and had an easy way about him. He had a good job and supported himself financially. What was important for him was that some of his friends and family had accepted him. Salvo had been in love with Rosario and would call him every morning to say good morning and every night, to say goodnight. Rosario had quite liked him but had grown ever more irritated by Salvo’s effeminate side. It lasted two months and then they broke up.

His mind was racing. The following day was Sunday and he decided that he would go to the beach and use the time to write his farewell letter to Lorenzo and try his best to betray him with someone.

***

He arrived in the usual spot at nine o’clock in the morning and expected no one else to be there and he was right, it was just him. He had a quick swim in the water, dried himself, took pen and paper and started to write:

“Ciao Lorenzo, finally after thinking about all this, I’ve come to a decision. I don’t want to think about before, but definitely after Lampedusa, everything had changed. Damn Lampedusa.

I remember calling you from the beach and you asking if I was up to…something, as if you wanted to hear something so you would have the excuse of my betrayal and not yours! That I never did you know, and that I never changed, means that it’s you that had a change of heart. You didn’t want to tell me to my face that it was over so you constructed an elaborate situation, that 'it’s easy for this to happen'...knowing full well that this would crush my feelings.

You’re way of saying that we’ll always be friends seems a little pleonastic; you know full well that we met to have sex in the time stolen from your time.

Not including the element of sex, there would be no time to remain friends. Probably your twenty years, compared to my hundred, made you think that it was never a potential long-term relationship.

I had never loved anyone before. The fact that it was happening frightened you even more than me, frightened you so much that you had to put an end to it but leaving me as the worse off. Last night I couldn’t sleep thinking of how I was going to write this letter to you. I got up early and came to the beach and I’m writing to you from here, expecting to meet someone.

I’m tired of waiting, waiting for you. You said you’d call and didn’t. Another sign of how much I mean to you. I got here to the beach very early, the sun still hidden behind the mountain and I started writing to you. I don’t know if I’ll regret it but it’s very probable that before this day is through I’ll have met someone else on this beach...it’s never failed me before!

How far away seem the days we spent happily together, or that kick you gave me in the country, at Francesco’s. Anyway I’ve never played second fiddle to anybody, and this situation was difficult for me. Who knows how many lies you’ve told me? It was me who told you how good you are at this, do you remember?

I wish you happiness in your straight world of hypocrisy and bigotry, and a long and happy life with Paola. I know that it will be difficult for a Palermitan to stay with a country girl so maybe you should find someone from Palermo instead.

Now I feel lightened of this burden. I’m feeling calmer and more relaxed, maybe happier. I can go back to the life of a lover without lies or regrets. Can I get my book back from you? Then I don’t want to stay in contact.

Goodbye,
Rosario. xxx

Putting down the letter he let shed a few tears, not too many though, he still wanted to carry out his plan. He wanted at all costs to find a man and instead of waiting for them to come to him he decided to go looking for them. There was a really hot guy stretched out on a nearby rock but he didn’t return any of Rosario’s amorous glares. He changed places and got talking to another guy but he too ultimately said that Rosario wasn’t his type. Why was it that whenever you went looking for a fast encounter there was nothing on, whereas if one wasn’t looking they hung around like flies? So he moved yet again, towards a less attractive type who had shown an interest on a previous occasion. Alas he too responded that he had just been with someone else and so didn’t feel like it. It was seven o’clock in the afternoon and Rosario was feeling defeated. He returned to his original rock, determined to wait, even if meant all night, for something to occur. It was half-past seven when he saw a guy with the tattoos who he had desired for a long time and who had been finally interested that day when he was with Lorenzo.

There was almost no one left at the beach, or at least no one else with muscles, as he knew the tattooed guy liked. Rosario pulled in his stomach and puffed his chest up as he came in sight of the stranger. He disappeared for a moment, and then came back with his gaze fixed on Rosario. He came up to meet him and they went off towards a deserted spot. Afterward, Rosario was convinced that the stranger hadn’t gone for him because he had puffed up his muscles, but because there was by that time no one else interesting on the beach. But it didn’t matter, the deed was done. Lorenzo had been betrayed, that was the important thing. He went home with his feelings in turmoil. On one hand he was pleased that he had finally got together with that guy at the beach and on the other sad because it meant for him the definitive end of his relationship with Lorenzo. He sat down at the computer and wrote out the letter he had written that morning.

Part 18

He switched off his phone deliberately so as not to speak to Lorenzo. The following day he didn’t even answer his home phone and when Lorenzo’s number came up on the display of his mobile, he let it ring. That morning of Monday, 6
^th
of August he received twenty calls from Lorenzo and when he switched on his computer he read:

“I just got your email! I was trying to contact you all last night. I thought something had happened to you. Your telephone was switched off and when your mother answered I had to hang up. I thought maybe you’d gone out. But you were at home and had decided not to answer the phone...well, what to say? I feel bad about a lot of things...you’re right that I promised I’d phone you the other day and didn’t...I’ve deliberately isolated myself since Lampedusa and I’ve done it because I needed space to think, especially about myself...I blocked out everybody, even Paola...and I was risking losing you, but it was my choice and I had to do it, I had to think.

I was asking for a bit of breathing space but maybe I was asking for too much. If you are saying all these terrible things about me, I probably deserve it, I can’t risk so much with others, and the stakes are too high. Anyway I am sitting before a decision, before a letter that hurts me, makes me think and in some ways, is killing me to write.

I’ve always been honest with you and I’m sorry to emphasize it again with such superficiality, I’m feeling distraught as I write these words but I have always been honest with you and you’re free to believe it or not, but this is how it is and I can do nothing to change your mind. If I was the bastard and user that you described surely I would not have been so honest! You think I have decided and that’s where you’re wrong. Paola and I have stopped having sex precisely for this reason that I have to make a choice. Just think that my temporary absence could turn into my permanent presence.

And it’s true when you say that a relationship as serious as this scares me, but at the same time can’t remember when fear has ever stopped me. You know I was always a little afraid but always trusted you in the end. Explain to me why I shouldn’t contact you anymore? Just yesterday Paola said again about her wanting to meet you and it made me so happy to think I could finally bridge my two worlds.