chapter 15, continued

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EPISODE 38

Between Angelo and me there were coincidences and convergences which, ultimately, were circumstantial. But there were also differences and contrasts -- that were fundamental. And that is why our love was not destined to last.

With Edoardo, the only thing I had in common were Angelo and Catherine. And how we competed for them, specially for her. As for the rest, we were opposites in everything. If I was slightly feminine, he was totally masculine. In our fights, I would have to scream louder to try to cover his resounding, baritone voice. I often regretted my high, girly pitch, feeling I was losing my arguments just because of that. I was indecisive, soft and thoughtful, a teenager experimenting with my opinions and values, while Edoardo -- except  when it came to opening his restaurant -- was very assertive and righteous, fixed in his ideals, beliefs and judgments.

I fought Edoardo like a plague, as if he was an aberration -- because, in fact, I sensed he regarded me and my love for his son as the aberration. 

I was often, if not always, overreacting. I now know it, but I thought I was just defending myself from an adult bully that had entered my household. I won't tolerate being abused in my own house, I kept telling to myself. 

It was never openly mentioned, but there was this expectation that he should act like my stepfather. But I never wanted him to.  My father was not dead, not that I knew -- Carlo had just vanished. Edoardo's presence in my house not only aggravated my resentment  towards Carlo, for having abandoned me, but it was enough to trigger revolt and a sense of justice in me.

Carlo and Edoardo could never have been more different. Where Carlo had been gentle and caring, Edoardo was strict and arrogant. Angelo was often lowering his head at Edoardo's shouts of reprimand, while I usually fought him back.

'Why don't you fight Edoardo back with me, Angelo? You are always submitting...'

'Because I need his aid to go to the US. Where else will I get the money? Will you give me that money, Laurent? Are you going to pay for my ticket and expenses?' -- and once Angelo had suggested that, the seed stayed with me to first sprout like a challenge, and then to become a plan -- 'Because if you are, then you'll have me on your side.' 

I did not feel like I was being manipulated, instead, I felt I had a place in his life, that I was important to him.

And Angelo was usually on my side, I have to say. He might not have been faithful to me, but he was loyal. At school, when he got picked for a group, he would usually bring me with him, too. It became an unspoken agreement with our colleagues -- if you want Angelo, you will have to take Laurent, too. Every now and then, I would be picked before him, if we were forming study groups. But when it came down to sports, my notorious clumsiness with a ball would always leave me out. 

When the other kids understood what the deal was, they left Angelo for the end, to be last to complete the team, so that he could not pick me. Once, realizing what was happening, he simply enacted a stomach ache and left the gym, calling me to aid him.

'We are going to teach those bastards a lesson, Laurent! You and I, we are the team. They are the rest, isn't it so?'

Was Angelo being sincere about us? Sometimes, I am inclined to think so. Other times, I have to guess it was just another way of seducing me into his plans of going to the US.

He had already made up his mind -- he just had to convince me to join him. He had extensively spoken to Catherine, and instead of joining a Literature faculty, they had agreed that Journalism and Communications was more his field. And that's how I ended up at the Journalism School in Vice City -- I did not get to chose anything, just to follow Angelo.

But my decision took time.

'Are you coming or not?' -- he had been asking me for some time already, and then it turned into  -- 'Are you joining me or not?'

Every once in a while, Edoardo tried to be nice to me.

'What can I cook for you, Laurente?'

'I don't know.' -- I wanted to tell him to just pronounce my name properly, that would do -- 'Whatever.'

Why care, indeed? He was always cooking pasta the Italian way, and I did not like it the least.

'Thank you for being kind to Edoardo, Laurent.' -- and I knew Catherine must have been thanking Edoardo for trying to be nice to me, too. Just because of her, we tried to make a convivial effort -- 'It makes me really happy to see the two of you getting along.'

Indeed, I had never seen Catherine any happier. She was looking prettier and dressing even better because of Edoardo's presence in our house and in her life. I had never seen her kissing Carlo, and though I had witnessed her kissing another man, seeing her was always kind of shocking and stirred difficult emotions in me.  Why couldn't she have been like that with my father? But with time, and observing how Edoardo grabbed her waist and held her tight and was often making her sit on his lap and constantly kissing her -- I started wondering if it might not have been Carlo's own fault, that Catherine had lost interest in him. 

'But could you try to show some interest for Edoardo's things, Laurent?' -- Catherine had suggested -- 'I know he misses that from you...'

'You mean... His cooking?' -- because his interests seemed to be limited to the kitchen, and limited to Italian dishes. Latter, he would start preparing ossobuco and other stuff that he considered delicacies, but that I thought were quite heavy -- 'I think I have taken at you, Catherine...' -- and by that I meant that my mother and the kitchen had always been worlds apart... Until she met Edoardo, whom she followed into the kitchen, often staying at his side while he cooked, while she read a book -- 'But I shall try!' -- I gave my mother the answer she had wanted, and off she went, satisfied with me. I knew I was being a hypocrite, but I did not care as long as I had my mother's approval.

But I was also increasingly concerned about Edoardo's drinking habits, and how they were affecting Catherine.

'Will you help me drink this one until the end?' -- he would invite my mother. And maybe that would have been the second bottle of wine already, and they might open a third to share. Angelo and I weren't allowed to drink, nor did we want to. I'd rather have my soft drinks than wine, and Angelo had suffered too long from his father's alcoholism, because I think we can call it that, to be interested himself in drinking. Later, he would experiment with drugs in Vice City, but not with alcohol.

'Sometimes, he would vanish.' -- Angelo was telling me about the time when they had lived in Vice City -- 'For days, perhaps. Specially when my mother had a new crisis. I know he had to make difficult decisions and take responsibilities, and how that must have been stressful for him. But why did he have to drink to escape them? A new surgery, that would put my mother's life at risk but that at the same time could save her? She was often too sedated to take part in the decision, and I had no right to say anything. My father had to take it all. And he would then disappear, be it before or after the surgery, once he had decided for it. The situation was hard enough on me, but without my father is was even worse. Sometimes, I'd skip school to stay with my mother at the hospital, where my father wouldn't show up for days. The doctors and nurses were specially nice, bringing all sorts of foods and drinks from the vending machines for me, since they knew I could not afford it. There was even a therapist giving informal, free sessions for me, and it took me a while to realize she a psychologist. I was being taken care of, if by strangers. I don't know where did my father go when he would vanish, what did he drink. I just knew he was drinking. At least he always had the decency to show up sober at the hospital, often looking like a wreck, stinking to liquor and in rags, as if he had been sleeping on the streets, and with terrible hangovers -- but sober.'

I was always impressed with how much Angelo had already experienced. And touched, that it had been at such a tender age. I admired his strength. His mother had died when he was just thirteen, and I could only imagine how torturing it must have been to be left alone with a sick and dying mother at a hospital at the age of eleven, twelve. 

I was being bullied at that age, but now that it was over, it did not seem as tragic as Angelo's experiences, and I was ashamed to share it with him.  I felt I had been a voluntary victim while I had suffered it in silence, a coward for not fighting it back from the start. Angelo had been an involuntary victim, and although he had been a brave boy, his mother's terminal disease was not something he could fight for. 

And there was certainly no point -- and no reason for him -- to fight his father.

I wasn't more concerned about how Edoardo and Catherine were often getting drunk because it seemed to do them more good than bad. And by that I mean that Edoardo, when stuffed with liquor, did not get more irascible than he already was -- quite on the contrary, he would get foolishly sentimental and even depressive, while Catherine was made silent, drowning in her own thoughts. I was just a teenager, and the love of an adult couple seemed very heavy and complicated to me. I would have my fights with Angelo -- but next we would be dancing and singing together, or running screaming through the woods, until "The Sources" where we could have sex and be as loud as we wanted. But both Catherine and Edoardo had had their sharing of suffering in the past, and sometimes it seemed too much for them to bear -- it had broken my heart to see them hugging and crying in each other's arms, once. I wonder whether they already knew about Edoardo's degenerative condition, and the disease that would kill him in less than a decade. 

There was something else. Edoardo was really taking his time and presence in our house to experiment and develop new recipes -- and that's how Angelo and I became the receptacle of both Catherine's developing plots and Edoardo's culinary experimentation. It might have been pleasurable, if it hadn't been oppressing.

As we grew up, the house became a prison to us. Even my room seemed too small. When we thought of Angelo moving in, we fantasized about having sex daily -- even before breakfast. But with our parents in the room next to us, we were always  trying to muffle the sounds of our love making -- Angelo wouldn't moan any more like he enjoyed to, and consequently I wouldn't be as excited. Even how our bodies collided, we felt we had to soften that too.

We liberated ourselves only at "The Sources", but even there we were afraid Edoardo would follow and surprise us.

Like Carlo before, Edoardo stayed home almost every day. He wasn't really looking for a place to open his restaurant any longer. Why should he, when at home he could cook without any pressure, and still have Catherine pay for his expenses and continuously congratulate him on his preparations?

Angelo was not concerned with the situation. He thought his father was saving their money for his trip to the US. Angelo would do everything to obtain a scholarship, which in fact he latter did, but he still needed money for the expenses of living in such a cosmopolitan town like Vice City.

All to myself, I had been brooding the idea of moving to Paris, instead of Vice City.

'Paris? It lives from glories of the past! And I am fed up with the past! The past killed my grandparents' -- every now and then, Angelo would mention his grandparents, the famous archaeologists, who had died in an excavation in Algeria, even before he had been born, I think -- 'Plus, it is full of rats and it stinks to piss!' 

Angelo had never been to Paris, but he was so ready to down rate the city. Having been born in Rome, where he lived for a few years of his childhood, seemed to turn him into an expert about the past. And he longed for the future. America was his destination and his destiny, and nothing would move him one inch away from his route. I mentioned Paris just that once to him, and never again.

I had been only once to Paris myself, when I was ten years old, in 1985.

Two years of permanence in France had gone by, before Celeste finally agreed to meet me. 

'Mon Dieu, Celeste! Carlo wants to take him to his family in Italy... How can I allow Laurent to see the peasant life before seeing the civilized world?' -- Catherine had complained.

Of course Celeste wouldn't come to our rural home. Though she herself had bought it for her daughter -- not because she thought it was pretty, nor a good home in a picturesque part of the country. "It's just because it's far away enough from her!", Catherine had explained once, when I had asked why did we live where we live, after mentioning that the house had been given to her.

Paris allowed me the opportunity to see my own mother in a new perspective -- that of the daughter. At her former home, she was obedient to Celeste's commands. I had wanted to go to the beach, or even to the Apennines with Carlo, but instead Catherine had taken me to Paris. I expected we would go by plane, but that is the occasion when I first learned my mother was terrified of flying. It was my first disappointment in a trip that was going to be loaded with them.

I had never been to a house so luxurious as Celeste's apartment. Everything was olden and golden and smelling to history and looking classical and outrageously expensive -- though none of that was family stuff, as I was to later discover in Catherine's "On the ex-diva's divan", my mother's greatest best-seller, yet a long way from being written.

'Is that a dinosaur's egg, grand-mère?' — of all things, I had been mesmerized by an egg that might have been a Fabergé or a Lalique; not that I knew any of them at the time. It was big, gleaming, otherworldly -- I was fascinated.   

 'Don’t ever call me grandma again! Ever!' — Celeste shrieked — ‘Do you hear me?! Not ever again in your life!' I was dumbfounded. I thought I was being formal, like Catherine had instructed me to. Other children at school called their grandmothers 'mémé'. Why couldn't I? Feeling that I was being unfairly treated I still nodded. As I assented, Celeste grew calmer, and just instructed me. 'And don’t dare touch THAT egg!’

'Don't worry, Celeste. Laurent has been warned.' — Catherine tried to calm her mother down — 'He won’t touch anything in the house. Especially not… your hair.'

'If it's not dinosaur's, I bet it's an ostrich's!' — I went on, proud of my knowledge. 

'Mon Dieu! These children from nowadays are so wild! What have you been teaching the boy anyways, Catherine?' — Celeste sounded disgusted — 'I cannot believe the poor has never seen a Fabergé before!' — she had patted my head, condescendingly -- 'This is a work of art, child.'

'At Puanouilo, Celeste?' -- my mother had intervened -- 'The only eggs he has seen were from turtles… Not even chicken's.' — Catherine turned to me — 'Be quiet, Laurent. You're embarrassing me.'

I fell silent, still considering how to snatch THAT egg from my grandmother.

'What are you staring at, little man?' -- Celeste had inquired, the single occasion Catherine and I had entered my grandmother's bedroom. And I was struck by the fact that the room where she slept was bigger than I remembered our cottage in Punaouilo being, that we had shared as a family -- 'Is there anything wrong with me?'

I had immediately averted my gaze from her, to stare at something else and marvel at every single detail of the room. The bed stood as tall as me, and it was bigger than my bathroom, with curtains hanging from as high as the ceiling, all around it (and I fantasized about closing all of them and hiding myself in there, though I never had the chance to ever again enter Celeste's bedroom in our stay). There were mirrors everywhere, reflecting the same warm tone of red with which intricate stencils adorned the walls, perfectly matching the patterns of all sophisticated cloths. Yet, my feeling was that of being inside a huge animal's mouth or maybe its stomach. The dinosaur? And Celeste seemed to have been digested and regurgitated herself -- that thought perhaps gave me the terrified look that annoyed my grandmother. That afternoon, she was getting dressed to some gala event, and she was wearing a dark patterned red long dress, with matching gloves, as if she were part of the decoration, and carefully chosen to fit in. I might have been staring at her jewelry, specially, that shone like nothing I had ever seen before, and certainly not on Catherine, who had never worn anything as fancy. I might have been asking myself the question -- if my grandmother is so rich, how could I have been so poor in my tropical childhood?

'Of course there is nothing wrong with you Celeste!' -- Catherine had answered before me -- 'Laurent is just hypnotized with your stunning looks, I am sure.'

'I can recognize an admirer when I see one, Catherine.' -- Celeste had snorted, glancing at me severely as she guided us out of her room.

Catherine was in Paris to launch one more of her novels -- that was one reason. The other, that I knew nothing about at the time, was the judicial process claiming part of the De Montbelle inheritance -- details that the two women wanted to carefully discuss, and that led to a considerable amount of money later coming to the Mortinné household. Though not the desired Chateau, that remained with Armand -- my unknown uncle, at the time. 

I had been brought along because Catherine thought it was time Celeste get to know me -- not because Celeste actually wanted to. And I guess my mother might have considered me of some use as an emotional pawn in the paternity recognition process she wanted to start. After all, I was the youngest De Montbelle heir, but the women could not agree on how and when to use me -- not that I was aware of any of that. 

What I knew is that I was not welcome at adult's events, and since both Catherine and Celeste had many appointments, I often stayed home long hours on my own. I was not allowed to talk to the maid -- Celeste had lost her long time chambermaid and felt she couldn't trust the new ones -- nor touch anything.

'Please promise me that you won't touch anything in the living room, will you Laurent? Especially not that egg, am I being clear? It is as untouchable as your grandmother's hair, do you understand me?'

I said I did, but in fact I didn't. Not that I ever broke anything in Celeste's apartment -- I was a very obedient boy, and the way I misunderstood my mother's recommendation to avoid touching anything is that I thought I couldn't even sit on the chairs and sofas, and so I spent hours reading on the floor or either in the room I shared with Catherine, where I thought I was allowed to touch at least the sofa I slept on.

There had been a problem about that before. It was one afternoon when the two women might have been talking about judicial problems, I guess. They could have done it openly in front of me, because I was unable to understand anything. Even if they had mentioned Armand and Gaston's names, I would have totally overheard them. Because I think at that point, Catherine was going for her posthumous paternity process, and the women could never agree on that matter.

I had the bad habit of sitting and placing a foot on the chair. Catherine had quarreled with me about that before; still, I kept forgetting.

'Oh mon Dieu! What do you think you are doing, Laurent?!' -- Catherine had reprimanded me.

But I hadn't heard it. I had been engrossed in entertaining thoughts about the dinosaur's egg. It was the one thing to make my grandmother and Paris special and unforgettable to me -- I never thought I'd actually see one. And of course I could understand Celeste was so nervous and careful about her rare egg.

'Laurent!' -- my grandmother had yelled at me -- 'Take off your feet from that chair! Now!'

I startled, but because I was far, lost in the  Mesozoic Era, it took me a while to follow her command. My delay caused great commotion between the two women. It was the only time I saw them raise their voices between them -- Celeste was outraged, Catherine was embarrassed, and I was in trouble. They would sometimes shout at me, but even when they were talking about urgent matters of which I knew nothing -- like the De Montbelle legacy and the Chateau's most probable destination --, they never quarreled. It was more like they battled each other with the swords of sarcasm and gird, but all was done very elegantly, because there was a subtle duel on vanity between mother and daughter, too. 

'And you too, Catherine, for that matter! Why do you have to sit on the sofa arm? Gosh, where are the civilized people in this world?' -- Celeste had taken the chance to reprimand her daughter, too.

'Maman, when will we go back home?' -- I wasn't happy at all in Paris. I missed my father, and I was bored to hell.

'Soon, darling. But I still have some appointments here. Oh Laurent, couldn't you be more considerate and helpful?' -- I knew what she was talking about. Not exactly on purpose, I had again placed my foot on the sit of an armchair while we waited for Celeste. When I realized what I had done, at Celeste's angry glance as she emerged out of her bedroom, where she had been dressing for hours -- I had frozen. My nervousness, that made me paralyze, was taken as defiance by my grandmother, and she had demanded from Catherine "How much longer do you plan to stay?"

 Catherine would no longer forgive  another fault from me, she had warned.

 'Please try to show respect to your grandmother. She is our host! She rules here, do you understand? She has been spoiled by the admiration of her fan club for decades now, and she can't bear anything less than that... Do you understand, Laurent?'

'But she treats me like a baby...' -- I had complained. Even the few toys Celeste had handed me were for babies, and probably for girls. They might have been Catherine's, I guessed, though I never asked.

'Like a baby? I don't think Celeste can treat anyone like a baby, darling, not even a proper baby...' -- and Catherine might have been opening her heart about her own upbringing, but I was not able to comprehend it then.

The first time Catherine and Celeste had taken me around Paris, they were bewildered at how confused and afraid and excited I was at seeing so many cars and the crowds of people. I had continuously stumbled against the passersby, and startled at horns of cars and the engines of the buses. Thus, I was not allowed out of the building on my own, and could only go down to the lobby and hang out there. Since I was not allowed on the apartment's balcony either, for safety reasons, at least at the ground floor I was able to glance through the windows into the street. But Celeste lived on a rather quiet and exclusive street, and there wasn't much going on outside either.

So that my Parisian experience wouldn't be thoroughly associated to confinement, Catherine did take me around Paris every few days. She had no idea what to show to a child, and she couldn't quite fathom what my interests were -- apart from the sea, at that age I might have had none. I might have wanted to meet the King of France, whomever I thought he was, probably the convergence to Charles Magne and Louis XIV or XV, but my mother told me they were dead. 

'Do you want to see their palaces, Laurent?' -- Catherine had thought of Versailles, but I wasn't enthusiastic. Why would I want to see another luxurious residence, when that was my only daily experience of  Paris?

Visiting Mademoiselle Mona Lisa had also occurred to me.

'Oh no, not that, Laurent! She is just a dwarf surrounded by a big, nervous crowd. You probably wouldn't catch a glimpse of her!'

And that's how we ended up not going anywhere in Paris. We just wandered around -- from one ice cream parlor to another, that's how I remember Paris, which was actually nice.

'Is the sea far from here? That river is going there, you know, Catherine?' -- I had learned at school that all rivers flowed to the sea, and I was fascinated with that promise. Wouldn't I reach the sea if I threw myself into the Seine? I had run along the banks for a few minutes, thinking that maybe the ocean would be after the next curve. But of course I never met it in Paris.

'Is Paris bigger than Punaouilo, maman?' -- we had been walking the whole afternoon and the city seemed to have no end, and that had been one more of my silly questions directed at my mother. To my understanding, if we had walked so much on the island of my birth, we should already have met the sea.

'Oh, mon cher, of course it is...' -- Catherine hadn't been mad at my ignorance, but heartbroken, instead -- 'Oh Laurent, I hope you will someday overcome those years wasted at that useless, uncivilized hole...' -- and I hadn't understood if she was addressing my beloved Puanouilo or our rural residence -- '... and become a citizen of the world, one day...' -- and she was really upset about it, because she had been feeling sorry for own exile in the tropics.

One event stands above all from our stay in Paris.

My mother had taken me to the carousel at the Jardin des Tuileries near the Eiffel Tower. I had never seen anything more beautiful and intriguing before. At first, I had just observed as other people were merrily riding it -- the ups and downs of the enchanted animals, the constant yet smooth going round, the dazzling lights and the joyous music were overwhelming to me. Then I had wanted to ride it myself, and after the first round I had demanded another one from Catherine.

'I want to ride on all different animals, maman, can I?'

Catherine was generous with me, and she had instructed the keeper to count the times and let me ride as much as I wanted, while she would go check on some books in a nearby store.

Riding it without my mother watching me wasn't so much fun, though -- and it even seemed dangerous. So many strangers were coming and going and addressing me, saying I was a pretty boy, patting me on the shoulder and head, or even pinching my cheeks. I wasn't used to that, and soon I was scared. But I was afraid to leave the carousel, since I did know where to search Catherine, so I kept on riding, holding onto the same horse round after round -- until I feel asleep, and the keeper had to take me off before I was catapulted off the carousel.

When I saw myself on the ground, still dizzy from sleep and so many merry go rounds, I had started crying. I was afraid -- I was afraid my mother had abandoned me, like she had before, in Punaouilo. "Where do you live? What is your address?" People tried to help, but they just scared me more with questions I did not know how to answer. How would I get home, how would I find Carlo?

I was still sobbing when Catherine finally returned. To avoid the criticism of people who were actually concerned about me, she had swiftly taken me away from the carousel. And I guess when she was about to admonish me, she realized how terrified I was, and instead she congratulated me.

'You were a wise boy, Laurent. I'd forgotten to tell you that if, in any case you get lost, don't try to search for me. Stay where you are. I'll come looking for you, do you understand? Don't move, stay wherever you are! Get it, mon cher?' 

I tried to, but I don't think I could. 

My mother was asking me to trust her? To actually believe she was always coming after me? But how long could that take? My crying in the afternoon had turned into sobbing with the night, and that carousel in Paris had taught me a lesson I wish I hadn't had to learn, ever.

I doubted, in case I'd like to move to Paris, that I would be welcome at Celeste's apartment. I had never seen her ever since, though I received a generous sum of money from her every birthday and Christmas. What if I asked her to pay for Angelo's ticket to the US? I knew we were heading towards the uncivilized world, according to her, but since we had always been living in the uncivilized world -- as she regarded whatever lay outside the bounds of her personal experience of Paris -- it didn't really seem to make any difference, did it?

Finally, the restrained intimacy that was oppressing Angelo and me, and the fights that still ensued between Edoardo and me -- there was a point when we had overcome the border of the swearing, and it was really nasty how often we called each other the worst names in Italian and French --, or even between father and son, and how that affected Angelo and me -- it made me decide for  Angelo's project of living abroad.

And when I did, Angelo was not as happy as I thought he would -- and should -- have been. He was more relieved, and a bit blasé, as if he couldn't understand why it had taken me so long to agree with him.

'Better late than early!' -- he had just commented, before kissing me. Angelo was a great kisser, passionate, and I gladly surrendered -- 'Now we have a decision, there!'

But I was still uncertain of my move. It merely seemed better than not moving at all.

But when Angelo and I communicated our decision of studying abroad to Catherine and Edoardo, things again accelerated and my choice took the feature of an irrevocable  promise to my best friend and lover.

'You are going to love it there, Laurent, you'll see!'

Yet, the only thing I could clearly see was my love for Angelo. Desperate and dependent, I was addicted to him -- and I called it love.

next chapter

Chapter 15

previous chapter

EPISODE 37

Realizing I had tensed up, I tried to relax. I recalled a zen monk's advice -- just a novice, but years ahead of me into the practice.

"I might not sleep some nights. But still, I shall try to relax. Not fighting my feelings, nor the situation. I will calmly breath in and breath out. Aware of breathing, I let emotions and thoughts cross my mind. Like night birds in flight. I don't try to catch them. I surely don't cogitate shooting them. No corpses of emotions and thoughts, you know..." -- the young monk had a sweet smile, and once it gradually overtook his face, it would just as slowly fade, but never quite disappear -- "And in the morning, having relaxed might do better, even, than a tense, drugged sleep."

But better said than done. Because once I had surrendered to my recollections of Angelo, it felt more like a World War raid of thoughts and feelings than a simple flock of birds frolicking across my mind.

I know, I am being unjust -- with myself, with Angelo, and with our budding love.

I am contaminated with everything that happened afterwards, how gloomily our relationship ended, and doing no justice to the empowering sense of well being, joy and happiness that invaded us both from the moment we met, when we were just fifteen.

Angelo had been ultimately as lonely as I had. We were both an only child and, in a way, orphans too. And suddenly, we had found in each other a best friend and lover.

I am letting my bitterness and sorrow overshadow how we delighted in each other's company. How we became accomplices at school, knowing what the other was thinking with just one glance -- and helping each other with tests that otherwise would have been really hard. As a team, we excelled.

I am trying to recall how our sensuality build in a series of innocent episodes, until it actually exploded into our inebriating sexuality. How in school I often glanced sidewards at Angelo, when he was concentrated in reading, and how I eagerly drank his beauty. 

I was convinced that his beauty was necessary for my survival.

I recall sometimes losing myself contemplating just his forearm, noticing every little detail of it, from the marbled paleness of his skin that lent his entire figure a deceiving veil of purity (and again, I am losing it here, because at fifteen I had no reason to believe that anything about Angelo was deceitful), to the veins popping on the surface of the muscles he had started cultivating, and that would lead to his physical perfection just a few years later. I remember being thrilled -- and excited -- at the rays of sun dancing on the hair of his forearm, and almost getting a sensation of vertigo from that vision. 

Maybe because I was always too close to Angelo -- still, longing to have him even closer and hold him forever in my arms. As if I saw him in a microscope, I was constantly overwhelmed. I never stopped marveling at his chiseled beauty

I can still recall the thrill of glancing at Angelo's naked body for the first times, in the shower, or when he went to bed -- he enjoyed sleeping naked, perhaps just to tease me. Our nudity would become usual when we discovered "The Sources", and when we started making love there. And it became natural, too, to the point that, years later, Angelo's nudity wouldn't necessarily arouse me any longer.

 We spent hours at the natural pools, and also at the swimming pool that my father had built as his legacy to me, swimming naked when Catherine was not home -- and she usually wasn't! I'll have to agree with Angelo -- we never again were so free as when we were teenagers. Which is pretty uncommon and a privilege in adolescence. I owe that one to Catherine.

The rural landscape that enveloped us was boring, and again I recall Garcia Marquez and his "Hundred Years of Solitude", because we tried to conquer those Hundred Miles of Solitude around us and stamp it with our youthful energy. We were screaming like crazy at the top every mount we climbed -- despite having ran uphill, we were never breathless, never tired, doing everything to escape boredom as if it were a plague.

We were often dancing, too, like two madmen. I hadn't been so much into music before I met Angelo. Carlo would sometimes listen to opera when he was painting, but I thought those people screaming their life and love and tragedies and daily affairs plus death out of their lungs was pretty weird, funny and kitsch -- and I still do. Catherine did not enjoy music so much -- her thing was cinema, probably from having dated more than a movie maker in her youth in Paris, and all the hours spent at the Cinematéque Française -- though she did listen every now and then to jazz, mostly the soundtracks of the nouvelle vague movies. Back then I thought jazz was a boring cacophony, until as a young adult I started going to a Jazz Bar near the apartment Angelo and I rented in Vice City. Then, it became the soundtrack to my life.

Angelo loved American pop -- what else? -- and he gave me this taste for songs in English. "It is the most beautiful language to be sung, don't you think?", he enthusiastically stated, more than once. I don't think I agreed with him, but I am sure I did not want to confront him, either. And so we listened and danced to the American hit parade of the late eighties and early nineties -- whatever we got on the radio, from TV clips and the albums Catherine would sometimes bring us.

'I'm not sure whether I appreciate this influence Angelo is having on you, Laurent. The US? Couldn't he have picked a more interesting country, with a richer and deeper cultural life? Aren't your tastes and interests becoming a little too shallow and limited, my son?' -- but that did not mean she wouldn't look for and buy the albums we requested her.

'Never mind, maman. I like Britpop better than grunge.' -- not that it made any difference for Catherine, but I had finally realized that, in listening to songs in English, I'd prefer Oasis to Nirvana, and on a different ground, anything Annie Lennox to everything Madonna.

It were times of limitless discoveries, made more fun and wider because Angelo and I had each other as magnifying glasses.

Why, then, even while making this effort to stick to the good elements of that early stage of our relationship, do I have to recall that conversation that we had at the lake? We had just had a fight over something silly -- and it might have been a dispute about music, even. Angelo was always down rating my preferences, saying that I was too conservative and rather limited. He loved to remind me that I had been born at one forgotten edge of the world, making the tropical paradise of my childhood sound like a nasty uncivilized corner where there were cannibals who still dedicated themselves to black magic and sacrificial rituals. He was Roman, a citizen of the metropolitan world from birth.

'Why, then, are you with me, Angelo?' -- I had finally complained, one day, when his criticism felt too much to bear. I might have been particularly sensitive over some issue at school, I don't remember. Or it might have been the time when he started his campaign to get rid of my glasses, saying they made me particularly ugly, and trying to get me to wear contact lenses -- 'Sometimes I think you don't like me at all...'

'Look around, Laurent.' -- that's all he commented.

But there was nothing to see, really. Just the boring rural landscape, and two boys lost in it.

'Look around us, Laurent. Do you see anyone else?'

My heart skipped a beat. I still couldn't rationalize what Angelo was trying to tell me. Years later, I would turn the lyrics of Radiohead's song "All I need" into the hurtful sentence Angelo uttered that afternoon. Because of that, I can't remember what he told me at the edge of the lake, when we were "lying in the reeds", exactly like in the song.

"I only stick with you because there are no others." -- Angelo did not say that, but that's what he meant.

How is that, for a love declaration? And it might have been on our first anniversary, I don't remember. I tried to celebrate those dates, but Angelo always and simply dismissed them.

'I am not gay, remember, Laurent? I'm gay just when I'm with you!' -- he sighed -- 'It's all your fault, Laurent. It's all your fault!' -- and he did not hide the melancholy that was depressing him.  

Yet, though Angelo was not gay, we probably had sex that same day, maybe more than once, for horny teenagers we were, with lots of time and the whole house available to us. Sex in the swimming pool, sex in the kitchen, sex in the balcony, sex in the backyard. Left alone in my house, we felt free to do it wherever we wanted.

That sets this conversation by the lake before my coming out, when I finally tricked Angelo into being my official boyfriend.

For some time after my coming out, we were expectant about Catherine's decision on Angelo moving in with us. When one day she called me into her room, I knew it must be it -- she had arrived to a decision.

'Mon cher. This is going to be a bit weird. But we have to talk about it.'

Catherine was looking prettier than ever, all dressed up for a date, having added make up and perfume. She was wearing a designer's gown -- most probably Yves Saint-Laurent, the couturier I got my name from.  Of pale salmon, it enhanced my mother's natural colors and lovely curves. She looked happy, too, so I thought the conversation shouldn't be about anything nasty nor difficult.

'Every boy has to have a man to man conversation at least once. About the facts of life, you know. But being a woman, I was avoiding that. Until I actually understood that because I am a woman I can take better care of that than a man ever would...' -- and after this short preamble, that left me wondering where our conversation was heading to, Catherine blurted -- 'Are you and Angelo having sex yet?'

'We are...' -- I mumbled, and blushed.

'I thought so. What are your... positions, if you know what I mean? Comparatively... Relatively speaking?'

'Maman!' -- the way she posed her question was funny, yet I understood it perfectly and blushed even more.

Catherine was surprised when I finally told her that I was topping Angelo. She had never given a second thought about homosexual relationships, though from then on she would include at least one gay character in each of her novels, sometimes in very prominent roles. But at that point, all she had were a few stereotypes in which she had framed me and Angelo -- and because he was the dominant alpha male most everywhere he went, or at least he tried to be, even when we were among adults, Catherine and whoever looked at us as a couple would have thought Angelo was dominating me... And he was, even if he was the bottom. 

I have to confess that, because of my refusal to vary positions, we had also conformed to those stereotypes as a couple. That was a bit sad and boring for two very young and horny men, who could have played and experimented so much more. I am the one to blame -- but I can already say that such a conformation wouldn't last until the end of our relationship, and later I would be forced to bottom for Angelo.

'Oh, really?' -- I saw Catherine trying to readjust our roles in sex as she had pictured. My feeling is that, as much as she showed interest for me, her son, she was also researching for a new scope of characters she hadn't envisioned before -- 'Then I'll have to go into something else before we talk about condoms and all that...' -- Catherine was determined to act like my father, and the thought crossed my mind that she could be doing field research with me for a scene she might want to write between a boy and his father -- 'I know you have taken to... your father... in terms of... size matters!'

'Mom!' -- I exclaimed again. I couldn't think of anything else to retort, and a sentence of more than two words might get me stuttering in that situation. Still, I looked at her dazzled, wondering how could she know...

'Laurent! It shows, you know. When you were a boy, even Joanna was commenting on it, when she bathed you. And of course I've seen you naked, darling. And I've seen you wearing swim trunks more than once, haven't I? And now that you keep having these involuntary erections even at the lunch table...'

'Mom, please!' -- I felt like fainting. I wanted to evaporate. In fact, just at hearing those things from Catherine, blood had rushed into my organ and it was inflating already.

'I just want you to be careful with Angelo, will you? I have... experiences with that, do you understand, Laurent? Don't think hurting is nice, my son, because it is not. That is not to be a man's pride in love! It is not size that matters, but how you use it... Are you following me?'

'Mom...' -- I repeated. I guess all that talk suddenly reverted my shame into pride, and I blurted -- 'Angelo loves it!'

'Good, Laurent.' -- Catherine blinked at me. And every once in a while the image of my mother looking pretty in her sexy designer's gown had popped into my mind, years later, as I was having sex with partners that were particularly impressed with my size -- 'Now. I will also ask you to be discreet when you and Angelo do it, now that we are going to live together...'

And that was how Catherine announced Angelo was moving in! I exulted, but before I could manifest my happiness, she quickly moved on to another subject.

'I have met and spoken to his father.' -- Catherine smiled, sweet and mysterious -- 'He is a very traditional, conservative man, and though he is very busy at the moment looking for a place where he can open a restaurant, and not seeing much of Angelo lately, he was not happy to be separated from his son... So this is going to be a first period of experience, when Angelo moves in...'

Something in Catherine's words, or how she did not finish the sentence, or maybe her intonation, or how she looked merrier than I had ever seen her -- and I knew it was not about my boyfriend moving into our house -- rang an alarm, as I felt my heart sink.

'First?!? Will there be a second period?' -- I was in dismay.

'Yes, darling. When Edoardo moves in, too.'

'What?' -- I gasped.

'I am dating Edoardo.' -- I was so dumbfounded that she had to explain -- 'Angelo's father! You knew his name, didn't you? Isn't that wonderful, Laurent? It is now all in the family... You and I, Angelo and Edoardo...'

I wanted to faint to escape that scene. The thought that my mother was dating the father of my boyfriend was not very appalling. It was very wicked, indeed. And the perspective that Edoardo was later moving in with us took away all the pleasure and joy of Angelo moving in first.

'I don't know, mom...'

'I hope you understand the situation, Laurent.' -- suddenly, Catherine had become very serious -- 'You love Angelo. You long to be close to your boyfriend. Everyday. He is moving in with us. It is exactly the same, with me and Edoardo. I am sure you understand that, Laurent!'

'You... love Edoardo?' -- I had never seen my mother talk about love before. I knew she had lovers, that she dated every now and then, but love... love was very definitive, I thought! And for adults, it implied many things -- 'Are you going to marry him?'

'No, Laurent!' -- Catherine laughed -- 'At least, not yet. I hope you understand it. You are old enough for that, already. And now you have your own experiences about love, don't you? This is a fresh start for you and me, do you realize that, my son? We were... never really a family before...' -- and it hurt me to hear Catherine dismissing Carlo like that, but her resentment against him did resonate with me -- 'And now, we might build one. With our boyfriends! Don't you think this is pretty cool, Laurent?' -- Catherine rarely used slang, and it sounded so misplaced in her discourse. I realized she was trying to reach out for me -- 'And because it will be two small families joining, we shall immediately experience a new family conformation, how about that? But that is not what's important here! I hope you understand it changes nothing in our relationship, Laurent. You and I, we are the original pair. And we have to stand for one another, no matter what! Do you think you can do that, darling? For me? For us?'

I did not quite get whether "us" meant she and I, or she and her lover. But I understood Catherine's offer at once. She was no longer addressing a childish teenager son. She was asking me to act like an adult. She was giving me the opportunity to grow. To take responsibility for the forthcoming new period in our household. I was flattered.

'Yes I can, maman.'

And with that, bright and beautiful like a night butterfly, with a light kiss on my forehead, off Catherine went happily to her date -- with Edoardo, I was suddenly aware.

Angelo heard the news that same evening. He was as worried as I had been. And our happiness of finally living together -- we were starting our life as a couple, that would last eight years -- diminished at the perspective of living in an odd type of community.

The first time I met Edoardo was an early dinner at our home, when he had cooked. After having failed in engaging in any sort of conversation, we moved on from the living room to the kitchen area, where it had taken ages for him to prepare some very simple pasta with olive oil and herbs. It was rather plain and tasted to almost nothing in my opinion, despite him praising the Italian homemade pasta. Later that evening, I was going to assault the fridge looking for a proper meal, but at the table I tried to please him by eating as much as I could from that unimaginative food.

In a bad way, Edoardo reminded me of Tarso. He was just as silent and reserved as my great-grandfather had been. That went so well with Angelo and Catherine, who could be so talkative. But because I was also more silent than not, and a "good listener" like my mother had already stated, it was often that between Edoardo and I a very tense, uncomfortable silence fell. 

My first impression was that he was ill humored, bad tempered and arrogant, and I wondered why my mother had fallen for him. He was good looking and well built, attractive in a very manly way -- but so had Carlo been.

I might have been simply jealous. I had never seen Catherine trying to speak Italian to my father -- first of all, because Carlo's French was fluent, if tinged by a rather charming accent. But Edoardo's was really poor -- he had never properly learned French, and he was never going to. I thought it was extremely indelicate of him to try to impose Italian right from his arrival.

'I heard you speak good Italian, Laurente!' -- were Edoardo's first words to me. I hated how my name sounded when he pronounced it, like a stone falling on cement, or like a long burp, though he had tried to compliment and include me in the Italian night we were about to celebrate -- 'But it can always improve, don't you think?', he had added. But I did not want to speak Italian, and I did not say a word that evening that was not in French, though I normally used Italian words with Angelo. And I felt mad at Catherine for actually trying to speak their language. Why hadn't she ever tried it with my father, and only criticized him in the rare occasions when he had accidentally exclaimed something like "Madonna mia!"... Why? 

'Because they were our guests at the table and at our home, Laurent. And you might as well try to please guests and make them feel welcome, can't you?' -- Catherine had reprimanded me, weeks later.

And it was about to get worse. When I finished my food, realizing there was only more of that plain pasta to eat and no dessert, I thought dinner had finished for me, and saying "Excuse me" I stood up to take my plate into the kitchen.

'I haven't finished yet!' -- Edoardo declared, rather sharply.

'Oh, I am sorry...' -- and I truly was. I had done that mistake before, with a few others of Catherine's guests, and I was again ashamed. Some of them had been famous movie directors and accomplished writers or brilliant professors, and yet none of them had told me what I heard next.

'Now sit.' -- arrived the order from Edoardo. He made a hand gesture that was not the least inviting, but demonstrated his was the last word about me standing up and walking away or not.

'I beg you pardon?' -- I still tried to be polite, but no longer sincerely. My heart was pumping hard, my hands had started shaking.

Edoardo did not repeat his marching order. He just glanced in my direction with a severe look, lowering his eyebrows like he often would glance in my direction. He had said it once, and it should be enough, his demeanor indicated.

That moment, I decided my whole future, concerning my relationship with my mother's greatest and perhaps only love, who was the father of my own boyfriend. 

I turned my back on Edoardo and walked into the kitchen area.

'Laurente!' -- I heard him shout, and at the same time coming from my mother -- 'Where do you think you're going, Laurent?'

'To the toilet.' -- I replied. It wasn't true, but it was the only reply that occurred me in the heat of the moment. It was almost a polite and very appropriate excuse, had I intended to come back. And then, giving in to my anger, I blurted -- 'I need to shit.'

It was the equivalent to an scandal in our house. Of course there had been quarrels and fights before -- Carlo and Catherine, Angelo and me. But it was the first time I was confronting an adult -- and if there is one thing I can thank Edoardo for, and that's the only thing I can think of, plus the fact that he had the ability to please Catherine and make her truly happy, is that he aggravated me so much and constantly that my daily confrontations with him, sometimes with shouts, sometimes in a tense silence, were very important in my blossoming into a young adult, developing my own confidence and imposing the limits that people could not trespass with me.

That evening of our dinner, I went upstairs and waited for Angelo to show up in my room -- the room that we were going to share. But he never came. Although it was a Friday night and he could and should have stayed with me, Edoardo decided to tow him away to their motel room. I did not see Catherine either, because she did not come to my room -- I heard the door of hers bang, and that ended the disastrous night.

It might have been my first clash with Edoardo that changed plans for us all -- and instead of Angelo moving in first, Edoardo moved in with him at once.

Catherine never talked to me about that incident. 

She simply left home, without warning me where she was going. And if she would return. I had to go into her bedroom to check whether her traveling bags where there or not -- to actually start hinting that she had probably gone abroad, maybe to Belgium where she was still teaching. I don't remember exactly for how many days she was gone, but nevertheless, enough for me to again feel the panic of losing my mother. Angelo knew nothing either, and at school we just sat side by side apathetically. Every time I was struck by the fear of having lost my mother's affection, I was back at Punaouilo, to the days when she had returned to France and for months not given me any news. The difference was that now Carlo was no longer there for me, and he hadn't send any news in years himself. I was all on my own.

It was a rather puzzling process, that of growing up and yet, going back to infantile feelings of abandonment; that of developing the confidence to confront Edoardo and yet being terrorized of losing my mother. I was tore between two extremes, aggressiveness and passivity -- and that's how I grew up to be what I am. That's also how I forgot about Carlo, trying to find a balance between fighting for my space and dignity in my own home, and at once relegating all the things I found unacceptable in Edoardo -- for the promise of being still loved by my mother.

For the first time in all those years, Catherine did not call me from Belgium to check how I was. Not even once. I cried everyday, sitting in her empty room. If I was still in doubt, her silence and the ostracism I was condemned to, made me fully realize there was a new condition for Catherine's affection -- or maybe, a new opportunity? Being a good student, obedient, taking care of the house chores and respecting my mother's need for privacy and distance had never facilitated my access to her heart. Maybe bearing Edoardo was a new key I was being given the chance to try?

When she came back from Belgium, and Edoardo moved in with Angelo a few days later, I had fully repented. I was determined to soften my edges and be as polite as I could, even if I sounded hypocrite. I'd do anything for my mother, even treat cordially her loathed boyfriend. That I sometimes forgot was also my boyfriend's father.

And that is why it was easier for me than for Angelo to pardon a few things coming from Catherine and Edoardo --- because when I thought of my mother, I was willing to forgive and forget. While Angelo didn't think of anyone but himself.

It was a very uncomfortable and delicate situation when Edoardo and Catherine made love in their room, that was directly next to us. I had heard Carlo and Catherine making love before, and I have already expressed how happy I was when the sounds of their intercourses reached my room, for it meant that after their quarrels, they were making peace that way. And Catherine had never brought any lovers home, at least not when I was there. So this was new and confusing to me, as much as it was annoying to Angelo.

And Carlo had always been a gentle lover, and his love making must have been the same, despite or perhaps because of his being well endowed and easily hurting Catherine when he penetrated her.

Edoardo, if I was to take his son for example, would need to be a fierce and very skilled lover to make the best use of a rather mediocre tool -- and that's exactly what he was. We would often wake up to the sound of their bed forcefully banging against the wall dividing our rooms. Catherine did not hold back her moaning under Edoardo's power, and his grunts were heard even louder than my mother's cries when they came.

We would each time be awoken by their noises, which we listened to in dismay. No, it did not excite us the least, nor inspired us to do like them.

First of all, because my relationship with Angelo remained a secret kept from Edoardo. Around Edoardo, we had to pretend to be two little boys, and look like brothers, never like lovers. I tried to constantly tease Angelo, and give him hard-ons, but that only upset him, and in time I had to stop.

'Now quit it, Laurent! I'm not letting you make me gay before my father, too! No way! There is no coming out because I am not gay, do you understand it? Opening up to my father is not an option. That's it!'

'Why are you so afraid of your father?' -- I had challenged Angelo.

'I am not. But I know him. It will only make things worse.'

I couldn't imagine it being any worse than it already was. We had lost our freedom at home. And since the door to my bedroom couldn't be locked,  we were confined to have sex in the bathroom, with the shower and the music on. It was a rather melancholic backlash from the times when we had taken the whole house for our experiments with different positions and add-ons, like whipped cream from the kitchen or the very convenient lounge with interchangeable cushions at the living room.

And it did get worse.

From the fight that had started at the adults bedroom upstairs, Angelo and I knew we just had to wait for a while until the storm fell upon us, too. Edoardo came down to the living room to meet us. He spoke only Italian, but I understood it fairly well.

'Do you have anything to tell me, Angelo?'

'Nothing new at the front, father.'

'Well, maybe at the back?' -- I gasped at Edoardo's words, but Angelo kept on his cool act -- 'Because I think you do! And just before you say it, let me tell you already... I am disgusted!'

'Really, father? Why?'

I thought Angelo's cynical approach was dangerous, for it seemed to aggravate Edoardo. But this time it was my turn to just be present and silent, like before Angelo had stood by my side when I came out to my mother.

'Don't mess with me, you little brat! You know perfectly well! This is unacceptable!' -- Edoardo's deep voice thundered.

'It depends on who is willing to accept what...'

'Now shut up, Angelo! You have not been invited to speak. This is a sin! This has to stop! This is filthy, this dirty, this is unnatural...'

And Edoardo would have gone on with his ranting if I hadn't interrupted him.

'And this is the Medieval ages, again.' -- I blurted.

Our luck was that I spoke in French, and Edoardo didn't really catch it.

'What did you say there? Repeat it! Repeat it to me if you are a man, Laurente! What did he say?' -- Edoardo demanded translation from Angelo.

And I think I would have repeated it, if Angelo hadn't asked me to go upstairs.

'Let me sort this out with my father. Please, Laurent, please!' -- and it was the first, and perhaps the last time that I saw Angelo kindly asking me to do anything, almost imploring it.

And that's how it got worse. We started being stalked. From then on, Edoardo would break into our room, always checking  and trying to catch on us.

'You have no right to come into my room like that! You will have to knock first!' -- I had hurled at him once.

'I will come in whenever I want!' -- he had retorted, just before storming out of the room, banging the door behind him -- 'My son is in this room, too!' 

That's how the only privacy we'd find was in our bathroom. But even there. We almost had a double heart attack when we were at it, and suddenly Edoardo was banging at the door, almost bringing it down. 

'Go away! We are fucking!' -- I had shouted. In French, because I did not really want Edoardo to understand it.

Next, Angelo was pushing me away, and swiftly getting dressed, and going out of the bathroom to calm his father.

'What did you tell him? Have you explained that we shower together to save water, haha!?!' -- I had ironically inquired.

'Shut up, Laurent!' -- Angelo had retorted; our sex session for that day being thus canceled -- 'Go fuck yourself!'

Most of this happened when Catherine was away, be it for a few hours or a few days. She had changed her teaching routine and never again spent more than a week in Belgium -- and even that was long enough for our home to be turned into a battle field. But when she was home, though there was tension and often mutual provocations between Edoardo and me, it was all veiled and kept at a decent level. He loved Catherine, and so did I -- but we found it unbearable and impossible to even accept the other's presence in the same room. 

But when the sounds of my mother and his father making love would start, it was Angelo who responded worst. He felt so tormented. Often, he left the room, which we considered to be our private kingdom,  and went downstairs; other times, he tried to muffle the sounds by burying his head in a pile of pillows, when he would snatch mine even. Once, he said he thought the noise was aimed at him, as if his father was demonstrating how a true man behaved, making love to a woman. 

'You have to consider, Laurent, that they could be making a baby!' -- he threatened.

I was immediately alarmed. Sharing a territory that in sixteen years I had never fully conquered, to which Catherine had always been a reluctant queen? The idea seemed hideous. A baby was too definitive an establishment of Edoardo in our household -- because I still hoped  that someday Catherine would realize the loser jerk he was, and get rid of him.

'Oh gosh, no! Please no!' -- I grimaced and shivered at the prospect of having to compete for attention in my own home with a baby brother. But I knew Catherine had no talent as a mother, and she wouldn't make that mistake again, not when she was over forty already.

I was surprised when one day, after having started narrating what he thought was being enacted on the other side of the wall, Angelo had screamed above the adults moans and groans.

'Wooohooo! Go, go, go, go, goal!!!!' -- he shouted.

For a moment, Catherine and Edoardo had silenced, and I was afraid that they had mistaken Angelo's voice for mine. For a whole minute I awaited for Edoardo to storm into my room, and finally try to beat me. But they had simply resumed their love making, muffling the sounds, at least for the rest of that session.

'Please, Angelo. We have to respect them...' 

'Respect? What do you mean by "respect", Laurent? They are not showing any respect for us! Listen! Today it must be anal! It's when your mother screams the most!'

'Angelo!' -- I was truly offended -- 'This is my mother's house! You have to respect her.'

'And we finally come to this! Yes, this is her house! And I respect her. You know that very well, Laurent, how much I admire your mother! But I am not going to let her rule over me. Catherine can rule over the other two meek men in this house... But not over me!'

'What are you talking about, Angelo?' -- but I knew what he was talking about. My mother manipulated Edoardo and me the whole time, making us practice hypocrisy as the highest form of art, for it actually was the only thing to keep us at a minimum convivial level, instead of exchanging punches from breakfast until supper.

'I am talking about leaving, Laurent. That's what I am talking about!'

'Would you do that to me, Angelo?' -- my voice broke with my heart at the perspective of being abandoned again.

'From the day I got here, you know very well what my single plan is, Laurent. I am not staying in this God forsaken, shitty hole! And you can come with me or not, I don't care. I am leaving. You can stay in this hellish situation, if you wish, but I shall not. I know you don't have much will or determination, so I will share mine with you. Are you coming with me or not, Laurent?'

NEXT    Chapter

I only stick with you

Because there are no others

You are all I need

You are all I need

I'm in the middle of your picture

Lying in the reeds

All I need by Radiohead