Chapter 15

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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 

chapter 14, continued

to read BOOK ONE click here

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EPISODE 35

C'est comme si je t'avais attendue

Dès le matin du premier jour

C'est comme si je t'avais reconnue

Quand je t'ai vue

Venir à mon secours

'Le soleil de ma vie'  sung by  Sacha Distel & Brigitte Bardot

Armand took me across to the opposite shore, that we reached in five minutes, where he pointed to his house standing on a deserted corner -- but instead, he took me to an old cottage sitting before a small bay of placid waters, picturesquely sitting near the only tree grove on the whole island.

'This is where I lived, when I first arrived on this island, many years ago. The house I now occupy was in ruins then, having been damaged by a fierce storm. And while restoring it, I stayed in this cottage, that belonged to the first settlers. It is cozy, indeed, just like you said it before.'

The cottage stood some five hundred meters apart from the main house, that could not be spotted behind the trees. I confess I was a bit disappointed that I was going to be staying away from my uncle. At the same time, I understood that he wanted to keep his privacy, and I humbly accepted whatever kind of hospitality he had to offer me. 

'I am sure you are going to enjoy staying here, Laurent, instead of sharing a room with me... and my snoring. I am pretty sure you won't be bothered by it from this distance, haha!' -- and Armand laughed wholeheartedly, a bit like a child or like only Buddhist monks could -- 'Of course, you are joining me at the other house so that we can have our meals together. Tonight I should dine at seven, which allows you almost two hours to settle and rest a little bit. I suppose it's been a long trip for you. At the same time, feel free to turn in early if you need to. If you don't show up by seven, I'll understand it. Then we will have breakfast together, tomorrow, how about that? I could bring more food over to the cottage, if that sounds like a good idea to you.'

And with that, we parted. I thought I hadn't misunderstood my uncle's message -- he wasn't really expecting me to join him that evening. Nor even wanting it to happen, it seemed. The cottage was equipped with a small refrigerator, he had explained, that he had filled with fresh food just that morning.

'There is a small bowl with yoghurt that I've made myself, Laurent. Will you please start with that, if hunger you may feel? I'm sure you are going to appreciate it, and it should taste better today.'

When left on my own, I realized how tired I was. I had started over twenty four hours ago, driving from Samsara Heights to the LAX airport, and then the unbearably long flight to Stockholm, where I should have stayed at least one night, instead of heading straight to the port to catch an early ferry.

But I had been in Stockholm before, and I knew how easily I could fall into temptation in that town. Male top models seemed to be everywhere, working in museums and shops, and as guards, wall painters, repairmen, waiters. There was not one single place you'd enter and not stumble upon a gorgeous man. And I was really trying my best to disintoxicate from the unbridled sex life I had been leading until Gabriel -- and for that matter, trying to overcome him, too. For as hard as it was, I had the intention to keep my bed empty, until I found the meaning of true love.

I knew I needed time on my own, no matter how hard it was for me. But I hadn't expected to be left all alone like that, and though the prospect of solitude on that silent, isolated island did frighten me a little bit, I was willing to accept the improvised challenge proposed by my uncle.

I immediately felt at home. The cottage was just as big -- or just as small, if you wish -- as the bungalow we had occupied in Punaouilo, for the first eight years of my life. And it was stocked not only with healthy food, but also with a well curated small library that included poetry, short stories and novels by authors from all over the world. Specially some Swedish ones I had never heard of before. I could picture Armand carefully choosing the  authors he wanted to offer to me -- like later he would confirm he had done, indeed.

And I was not just physically tired. I had finally arrived at my uncle's shores, after a quest of two years, and I was just starting to relax, as if something had been achieved. But the story on how the Île du Blanchomme, the island of my true conception -- opposed to the tale I had always heard on how my parents had met in a chic resort in Puanouilo, where I had been born --, had been erased from the surface of the planet had deeply impacted me.

I still did not know to what extent, until I decided to actually skip dinner with Armand and turn in early, just like he had suggested. With a prayer of gratitude, that I might not have recited until the end, laying in a small, antique bed that hardly fitted me but was nevertheless comfortable, I drifted into my sleep and dreams.

I dreamt of Carlo. He was as young as he had been in Punaouilo, a gorgeous Italian hunk. But the dream was about the ocean as much as it was about my father. At first, all I could see was a great extension of blue water, gleaming like liquid jewel under the sun. The light was so strong that I could not divise the horizon -- maybe, in the dream, there was actually none. Sky and sea were both blue and made of the same element, that somehow mingled air and water. And I sensed him before I saw him, as my view zoomed on my father, swimming in those waters -- or maybe flying in that air -- of transcendental blue. He had just gone for a swim, like he often had on the Île du Blanchomme. But after what in the dream seemed like more than an hour that he kept on swimming, I understood my father was not exercising. He was lost. He had left the shores of the island, but now he couldn't find it again. And I knew why. He hadn't been caught by one of the treacherous currents. He had always been careful about them. No. While he was swimming, the Île du Blanchomme had been swallowed by an earthquake, and that's why he swan in all directions and wasn't able to find it. The island had forever disappeared. The thing is -- I knew it had vanished, but my father didn't. And there was no way I could let him know about it. And he just went on swimming, in all directions, back and forth, increasingly confused and lost. Weakening. But even if I could not communicate with him, still, in that awkward emotional and mental confusion typical of dreams, I was able to feel whatever he felt -- and his desperation was mine, his fatigue and pained body were mine, and in that vast ocean that no longer held any possibility of refuge for him, we both knew we were going to die by sinking and drowning, after we could no longer sustain ourselves on the surface of the water.

When I woke up, feeling breathless and sweating cold, I could not go back to sleep again. My mind was agitated, and the heart was pumping so hard that it actually ached, just like my muscles, as if I had been swimming too.

When I started meditating I had read a list, apparently by the Buddha himself and not some neuroscientist, on what would improve in my life with meditation -- sleeping better was item number one. I had never had a problem with my sleep, but since the last retreat I was prone to nightmares. They had started during the retreat, and when I asked the master if there was a way to avoid them, he had simply said "Awareness always increases. It goes forward. No, there is no way to stop it."

I hadn't quite understood what the relation between my nightmares to meditation and awareness was, so now I simply had to face the fact that I was awake. The night had grown cold, and I lighted the fire. But eating from Armand's delicious yoghurt and even trying reading a book -- Cormac Mccarthy's "The Crossing", inspired in Fabrizio's words and my own moment -- didn't make me any more relaxed or sleepy.

I would need a few more years to figure out of that dream with Carlo, but the master's words about awareness started to make sense that same evening.

Angelo. I knew the time had come to finally face the harm he had done in my life. Carlo was right -- I had been trying to hurt other men because I had been hurt by Angelo. I had been screwing around with so many guys because Angelo had screwed around with so many of them while dating me. And I had tried to put a pathetic distance of men between him and me. Still, I hadn't been able to forget -- nor forgive -- him. And if I hadn't had any other serious relationship since him, it was because, deep in my heart, I was still in a relationship with him. No longer the bliss it used to be, now there was only sorrow left – no longer love, that had long ago turned into hatred -- but still in a relationship with him.

It still hurt to see a picture of Angelo. All those years, I had avoided watching his interviews program on the television, and I would switch the channel if by any chance he was the one being interviewed at a party or any other fancy social event like the Met Gala, where he was an habitué and a celebrated guest.

Angelo's beauty, enhanced by his charisma, had also taken him to the pages of many magazines -- and a few covers, even. Those were harder to avoid, as I glanced through them at the dentist's waiting room or at the airport bookshops. His image always delivered a blow right in my guts -- and it was even worse if he was in the company of Laura, his ever so perfect wife, with whom he had had two perfect children. Angelo was a model of male beauty, and he hardly wouldn't make it to those annual lists of the sexiest celebrities. Not the best dressed lists -- but he would be placed at the top of the best undressed.

And it had always been so, when in his first week of school he was voted the Hottest Boy. 

I still remember the Sunday night Catherine came to me, just before bed, saying that someone from school had phoned.

'Has there been any problem, maman?' -- my voice trembled and awfully modulated as I shivered.

'Should there be any, Laurent?' -- Catherine inquired.

There shouldn't. But I was always afraid something was going to jump on me from somewhere. Maybe coming from the country club -- someone from the swim team had learned about my true reasons for quitting. And I recall being terrified at the possibility that I had caught Aids. What if someone had caught it from me, drinking from the same glass? I knew very little about it. In my teens the information about the disease was not so widespread yet, and trying to learn more about it could arise suspicion -- not so much about having Aids myself, but about being gay, which in my mind were inextricably connected. So I'd rather keep my anguish to myself, and live in despair. My sexuality was to remain hidden at all costs.

It were rather complex emotions that I experienced at that stage in my adolescence. If I had been asked to judge myself, I would undoubtedly have condemned fifteen years old Laurent -- to the punishment I was already receiving, which was living my own life, full of fear and lies.  I reputed myself being guilty of all charges -- my sexuality was shameful,  making me the justified and natural recipient of despise and hatred in society. And because I had to hide it to try to survive in that same society, I had become a daily liar, a great pretender, the worst impostor -- and that was another condemnation.

'They have phoned because they want you to help an Italian boy that is joining your class. They want you to translate for him, at least for a few weeks. Do you think you can do that, Laurent?'

'No! I don't speak Italian, maman! And I don't want to be anybody's translator... No!' -- I had whined at the prospect of attracting attention to myself through a new foreign student. Wasn't I foreign enough already? All I wanted at school was to be left alone, away and apart from the other kids. 

'I did not ask you if you wanted to do it, Laurent. I asked you if you feel you can do it. I have already agreed that you are going to help the boy. Even if I dislike the fact that you are going to speak Italian... Let's hope he doesn't speak some awful dialect like... Carlo did. Anyway, the boy starts tomorrow.'  

'Oh maman, non...' -- I wanted to protest, but I was afraid of contradicting Catherine. After giving me the marching orders, she sent me straight to bed. 

'By the way. His name is Angelo.'

Thus Angelo, in the year of 1990, had entered my life on a boring Monday morning. I had thought of skipping school, but I knew Catherine wouldn't have bought any sickness from me.

I was stunned the moment he walked into the classroom. "Angelo Vivace", he confidently introduced himself , holding his gaze high and encompassing the whole room, before being told to occupy the place next to me. 

I couldn't believe that such a beautiful boy was actually going to sit by my side... That I was going to have the opportunity to talk to him and to look at him from that close!  I was used to glance at good looking boys with the corner of my eyes, and I was aware that I wouldn't otherwise have ever approached such a handsome boy. That very moment,  as he took the chair next to mine, I felt so thankful for having learned a bit of Italian -- because I needed to communicate with my great-grandfather as much as I had wanted to chat to Fabio. But it was for a very brief moment only, that I thought of my first crush and the D'Allegro farm in the Apennines -- from the moment I had Angelo by my side I wouldn't want to leave his presence and escape the present moment any longer.

I started worshiping his beauty from that very first day -- and if I can't say it was love at first sight I felt for Angelo, it's only because I wouldn't have been so bold as to fall in love for the most beautiful boy I had ever met. I was aware of how ugly I looked, with my nerdy glasses, my awkward white hair and all the Belgian chocolate pimples across my face -- while, if a teenager could have had the most perfect skin ever, that was Angelo. 

His complexion was so pale -- he seemed to be made of marble. In a stunning contrast, his hair was shiny dark, as his eyebrows and the long, lush eyelashes were, too. He had rosy cheeks, and beautiful lips, that he kept constantly licking and biting, which increased the blood circulation and made their gorgeous red glow. But it were his eyes, of a light and clear blue, shining with piercing observation, that most impressed me. His tremendous beauty took my breath away, but it was in Angelo's eyes that I drowned. 

Of course, I wasn't the only one to marvel at Angelo's ideal beauty.

Every once in a while, the girls would throw pools for the hottest boy and girl in the school, and in each class. There was a general award, and minor ones for specific parts of the body -- once, I had been voted for the most beautiful shoulders, probably as a result from swimming or simply as a joke.

That same week Angelo joined the school, the girls decided to vote. I think it might have been their way to officially welcome him -- and Angelo was awarded The Hottest Boy in School.

I was with him when the girls came to congratulate him. After all, I was his official translator -- a function I delighted in for it gave me the alibi to continuously stare at him, what otherwise would have been illicit.

'And what is the prize?' -- he had asked at once.

The girls were taken aghast. No one ever had asked for a prize. For them, it was pretty daring that a newcomer, and a foreigner, had been awarded on his first week at school. He had been noticed, he had beaten all the other boys that in other versions had won. Wasn't it grand enough?

'The prize is... that you were chosen The Hottest Boy in the School!!!' -- they giggled.

Angelo had laughed.

'I know that! I don't need you to tell me! Do you think I don't have a mirror at home?' -- Angelo lifted his eyebrows, and then bit and lick his lips, doing the trick that made so many people declare he had the most irresistibly kissable lips they had ever seen -- 'Is that all?'

The girls still looked at me in consternation, as if I must have translated something wrong, before fleeing our presence, feeling at once disappointed and insulted. I was concerned that they would plot against Angelo, and he would soon become a school castaway like me. 

But he was so charismatic, and defiantly self confident, that his dismissal of the award hadn't sounded like a snobbery. From that day on, he was regarded as superior. He was to be invited to every group, his opinion asked about parties and other social events for the students. He refused all invitations to collaborate, and the more he dismissed them, the harder people fought to have his participation and approval. His presence became an honor and a prestige to be disputed. After my grandmother Celeste, Angelo was the diva I got to know better -- how he couldn't care less about thanking others for their worship and adoration. It seemed like he didn't give a shit about other people's opinion -- but just because he continuously manipulated them, and was certain of their loyalty to his fan club, no matter what.

The second week, he led a movement to improve the food offered at school. It was a common complaint that was heard over and over again -- but no one had ever done anything about it. Angelo was disgusted -- his father was a chef, he pointed out, and therefore he knew and was accustomed to the best food --, and with me as translator, he articulated with the student council a strike that emptied and paralyzed the cafeteria, until they not only improved the food but also lowered the prices. Quite an achievement for a fifteen year old newcomer. 

Within one month, Angelo was known by all sorts of people in the school -- students, teachers, the management board, the principal himself, but also by the servants. He would chat to everyone, which according to him meant that he exchanged useless words with the only goal of building a social network, always with my aid as a translator -- but he would only talk to me. For no good reason unless that I was the one designated to help him, he had chosen me as his single friend and confidant.

Angelo wore an earring on his right ear. Everybody noticed it, but no one had ever mentioned nor commented it. People seemed to admire and respect him, but also fear him. Because he was haughty, evasive and slippery in his interactions, everyone at school -- and specially in our classroom -- seemed to avoid confronting him, or saying anything that could annoy him. I could not fathom how he had become so popular in such a short period of time.

Apart from a girl who ran a gossip-zine, I had been the only one to inquire about the earring. Like everybody else, I hadn't commented nor criticized it; I just wanted to know why he had chosen to wear it. It was a fairly big diamond, and I wondered if it was fake -- but of course, I never asked that.

'This stone has belonged to my mother. And before that, to her mother, and to her grandmother... Well, that kind of stuff, like... you know?' -- Angelo confided me, in a mixture of Italian, French and English that would become our official private language and that just the two of us would have understood -- 'It was a ring. She gave it to me, just before she died. I think she feared that my father would sell it after her death. And she wanted to keep it in the family. Even if she hadn't had a daughter to whom she could pass the ring on, she must have thought I'd give it to my wife... Maybe, one day.' -- I remember my heart sank, along all my romantic fantasies about Angelo, when I heard him talking about marrying a girl -- 'But for now, I made an earring of it, and I pierced my ear... You now, like... I carry my mother all over with me now, do you understand?'

I was touched. Angelo's mother had had a brain tumor. His father had tried every doctor in Italy, and then decided to move to America to try a well known specialist there. That's how Angelo had first been to Vice City, when he was eleven years old. For two years, while his mother underwent the proper surgeries and treatments, Angelo had been going to school and living the life of an American boy. And how he had loved it! But in 1988, the same year Carlo had left, his mother died. After all the expensive treatment that hadn't saved her, being left almost penniless, his father had returned to Europe with Angelo -- against his will. 

His father, who had never settled in America, wanted to start over and first tried to work in a restaurant in Rome. Just recently had he chosen to sell their house and open an Italian restaurant in France. He had searched for a locality that did not have one already, and that's how they had arrived at that part of the country -- and the reason why Angelo had joined my school.

That also explained a few other things about my friend, like his resistance to learn French. He did not intend to stay in Europe -- his dream was to return to America, and make a living there. His English was fluent already -- and fearing he would lose it, he tried to teach it to me so that we could practice together, instead of learning French from me. Because he had no whatsoever interest in France, and no intention to live in the country. His most constant subject was on how to emigrate to the US.

I was the only one to know that Angelo could already speak decent French after a couple of months. He had an immense talent for languages -- for anything that regarded communication, in fact. But to everybody else, he pretended to still need my help in understanding whatever was going on around him, and to communicate with people. But one day, during class, I saw him write a very complicated sentence on my notebook, indicating how good his French had already become. I don't remember what the sentence was about, but I was dumbfounded since I still believed he knew very little. 

"This is our little secret", he had written, also in French, at the end of the sentence.

'It's also a way to help you communicate, Laurent!' -- he had declared, ironically. Keeping me as his translator, he thought he would be offering me more contact and visibility among the other students. But as Angelo's voice, I couldn't be more invisible -- 'You don't seem to enjoy the company of our colleagues very much, do you?' -- Angelo had already realized my tendency for isolation, that I had envised as a means of protection, and he actually enjoyed that I hadn't been "contaminated by the environment" -- 'Well, neither do I. Not these uptight rednecks, anyway. You should have seen the kids in America! They were so cool, Laurent! And they have all sorts of electronic devices there! Well, you know, this here feels like the Stone Age!' 

It was a very convenient secret, for both of us. For a while, we were allowed even to take tests together. I was supposed to explain the questions and texts to him, despite my rudimentary Italian, but of course we would profit from our proximity and even solve Math problems together. My grades increased in subjects like Physics and Chemistry, that were hardest to me, due to my collaboration with Angelo.

And that's how Catherine came to thoroughly approve of my friendship with him. She noticed how happier I had become, but my improved grades were determinant when I asked her if I could invite my friend over for a weekend. We had a paper to write -- that was my excuse to bring Angelo home. And Catherine gave her permission without any further questioning.

'So... You seem to like the Italian boy, don't you Laurent? He is your friend, isn't he?'

'Oui, maman. We are very good friends.'

'I'm glad you've found someone, Laurent. I just hope that it is not some weird sort of Electra complex from your part...'

'What is that, mom?'

'Never mind, Laurent, never mind...' -- and Catherine couldn't have known how right she was about the Electra complex; neither could I, since I did not know what it was. 

Inviting someone over to study at your place is so cliché and such an old trick -- but I don't recall having any devious plans about that weekend with Angelo. Not even many expectations. He was the absolute star of our class, and many girls were flirting with him. Sissies, rednecks -- he despised them, but still encouraged them to fall for him and to join his fan club. I didn't think I stand a chance with my gorgeous friend, but I might have wished to take a peek of him naked in the shower.

Angelo was living with his father in a road motel. They shared the same room -- and only when he told me that, did I realize how precarious their financial situation was. I had already realized that some of Angelo's clothes looked a bit old, even raggedy -- but I thought it suited his intended Grunge style. They looked a bit small on him too -- and when I had guessed he liked them that way to show off his chest and bare his nipples and navel, I was later to find out that his father was not buying him any new clothes -- in a period of our life when we were steadily growing.

Poor Angelo. I had also noticed that he could often smell bad. His sweat was acrid, but the odor was also in his clothes -- since his mother had been inhabiting hospitals, he was washing them himself, with cheap soap and in the sink, letting them dry wherever he could lay them, and rarely under the sun. Sadly, I think he was aware of his smell, because from that first weekend on, he would bring his clothes to be washed in our machine. I couldn't grasp how humiliating those things were for Angelo -- for this and many more reasons, he was so glad to be back in the routine of a home! Even if my home, with a missing father and an absent mother, had not much really of a routine on offer.

Our stories had many similarities and differences, though I was the only one to seem to notice them. He and I had been born in different years, but just a couple of months apart, he being the elder. We were both fifteen -- but so was almost everybody else in our classroom. A nice coincidence was that we were exactly the same height -- a plus, when you kiss someone. 

I had explained to Angelo how my father had left home unexpectedly, without ever sending any news -- but to that he had only said "okay, cool".  Angelo enjoyed talking about himself over listening to anybody else -- even me, or specially me. The only exception, yet to be raised, would be Catherine. But she had been away that first weekend, and did not meet Angelo until perhaps a month later.

 Although with his "okay, cool", Angelo was not simply dismissing my story. I was surprised when, after giving it some thought, he spoke his heart out.

'I'd rather be like you, Laurent. You know, like... Having kept my mother, instead of my father. I mean, no. Well, he is like... cool.' -- I was sometimes irritated when Angelo used American slang; in time, his efforts to sound like an American boy would fade -- 'But if I'd have to make a choice, do you understand?' 

I had never considered that. If I had had a choice? Despite all the anger and resentment I felt towards my father... The truth is, I'd have chosen to be with him! And of course, for the rest of my life, I'll deny I have said that. Because I have never said it, never! And I shouldn't have written it, either. It's just the way Angelo put things. Yes, Catherine was "cool". But if I could have chosen...

It was a very emotional moment, for both of us, that Friday night after school, the first of many he would spend at my home -- later to become our home.

Angelo was absorbed by his own thoughts and recollections, and like he had been fumbling with a pen, he then reached over and touched my hand, and started playing with my fingers. He seemed distracted, and completely unaware that he was caressing me. I, instead, had become very self conscious, frozen to my chair, gasping for air, as I guiltily delighted in his touch.

I was afraid that, just like it had started, Angelo would again quit playing with my fingers and choose something else on the table. I was surely enjoying it, but because I was full of expectations, while at the same time having to deal with my lust on the rise and the corresponding shame, being afraid that at any moment he would realize what he was doing and stop it exclaiming "What the fuck?", I could not surrender to his touch. 

But I realized he wasn't oblivious of my presence and caressing me in a reverie when he sprang from the chair and declared:

'Laurent, you are the best friend I have ever had! I love you.' -- he said, placing a hand over his heart. Did he bare a nipple on purpose too, to crown his gesture, or was it just the t-shirt a few sizes too small?

I did not answer. I just gulped, and smiled. And I didn't respond, either. 

Now I know I should have stood up and hugged him, and perhaps it would have turned into a kiss -- but the erection in my shorts kept me from that. I was paralyzed. Angelo would always be more extravagant in manifesting his emotions, and at that very start of our relationship, the contrast was even greater. I was shy and uptight, while he was easy and out-going, all vibrant and radiant where I tried to be discreet and remain unnoticed. 

After that event, when Angelo had made his advance and I hadn't responded, he retreated and grew cold towards me. Just naturally so. He was hurt -- proportionally to the energy and courage he had invested in that love declaration. He was bold for a teenager, but not as bold as to be rejected once and insist and risk being rejected again. From that moment on, it was my sole responsibility to build our love relationship. It was also the only occasion I heard him say "I love you" -- for the rest of the years, it would be "Yeah, I love you too."

I don't blame Angelo for how things unfolded from that event on -- as if I had to beg for his friendship, and do everything I could to compensate that first rejection -- I blame myself. 

I had to deliver constant proofs of my affection to him, of how important our friendship was to me, and to try to turn it into something more than that. In a sense, Angelo became my client -- and I had to deliver the best service to try to keep him satisfied and coming back for more -- more friendship, more affection, more approval, more worship, more love. He was demanding and to grow ever more demanding, when he realized what the power equation between us was.

But it was never a problem to get him to come to my house on weekends. Every Friday, he would board the public bus that headed towards my side of the county, delivering us about one kilometer down the road from my house.

 It was a ride full of adventures -- how our thighs would brush against the other's, or how one of our hands would carelessly find itself under the other's leg, or on top of the other's hand, our shoulders and forearms against each other's, and the wide range of subtle caresses enabled by those furtive contacts. We were both terrified that someone in the bus could realize our play, but at the same time, that made them the more exciting. I had huge, leaking erections -- and I guess so did Angelo. But we never talked about that, and still pretended that fondling was unintentional, done from a dreamy state and place we would readly deny if caught in public -- and also deny it to ourselves. Even when his fingers were running up and down my thigh, Angelo looked the other direction and pretended not to notice what he was doing to me. 

And when we jumped off the bus, we would both run up the road to my house, trying  to wear down our excitement, and ultimately subside our erections.

Nor was it difficult to have Catherine's approval to what became the weekend's ritual -- instead of returning to his father at the motel, Angelo caught that bus on Friday with me and yet another one on Monday mornings, back to school. He loved the freedom that we had at my house, and he always marveled at how my mother would leave me all on my own when she went abroad to teach. 

But it was exactly Angelo's presence that made Catherine leave our home on weekends even when she was in France. Not that she disliked my friend -- knowing that I had company, she did not feel she had to worry about me anymore. "I'm not sure whether two teenagers taking care of each other is more or less trouble, but... Let's give it a try." And with that, Catherine was able to stay the weekends away -- when she was not in the process of writing, she loved going to the movies, visiting museums and libraries, shopping for fancy clothes -- happily leaving our rural house.

My relationship with Angelo was partially built on his relationship with my mother. At first, I was jealous of their friendship. The first time they met, they connected already. They started talking about religion, that they both dreaded. My mother had never spoken to me like that -- as if I was her equal. Whenever Catherine and I engaged in a conversation, it seemed like she was explaining things to me, as if I could not understand them, until I actually saw it from her point of view, always more mature and deeper than mine. My mother was continuously educating me. And whenever Angelo and I engaged in a conversation, I felt that I had to surrender to his willful opinions and preferences and tastes, too, if I was to remain his best friend and preferred company. With me, Angelo would talk about all things America, and that's all -- I had never guessed he could know anything about "adult topics", and not so much that he could discuss them with my mother.

Or so I thought. I loved and admired Angelo so much that I couldn't conceive that anyone wouldn't be impressed with him too. Especially my mother. From my point of view, Angelo must have been brilliant to be making conversation to Catherine -- she who was used to writers, movie directors and all sorts of intellectuals. And she seemed to love talking to him. But it wasn't exactly so, at least not unreservedly.

'Your friend is very well articulated. For a teenager, anyways.' -- she said, with a grimace, and I understood she was being condescendingly patient with him -- 'And gosh, does he love to talk! No wonder you are a good match... You have always been a good listener, Laurent.' -- which was so true. 

Angelo wanted to be a journalist, to have a program on TV, in America of course, and I was his first audience.

My logic was that, because Angelo had had a good and loving mother for thirteen years, he knew how to access my own mother. Catherine seemed to be closer and nicer to my friend than she had ever been to me. But later I understood that, because Angelo had loved his mother and been loved by her, he accessed Catherine as a person and woman -- more than once I saw him peeking at Catherine's legs --, and not as the mother. Because I was so insecure, and still unsure and begging for her love, I was always demanding from Catherine that she be solely my mother -- and I lost other sides of her, that Angelo had gained immediate access to. She didn't feel like educating him, and that's why they got along so nicely -- while I had turned my relationship with Catherine into a form of tortured slavery, a fixation with very determined roles. And perhaps, just like her mother had done to her, Catherine would like to be by my side like a sister, or a friend, and not necessarily and always as the mother.

There was a common interest between Catherine and Angelo that left me feeling jealous. It was a point of contact with me, too, but they developed a very close and intimate relationship all of their own about reading. And later on, about writing, too. 

I never minded that Angelo peeked at my mother's legs -- they were long and slim, beautiful indeed -- nor at her breasts -- which were small but firm and with a strong presence, because Catherine always held her chest proudly. Catherine was growing prettier as she grew older, becoming more confident and developing her own style in fashion. And with time I came to think that having had so many men love her body, caress her, please her, had helped my mother keep her good shape and health at her 40th birthday.

But I was so jealous when Catherine let Angelo have a peek of her latest novel, before she even sent it to her editor. I know I had refused reading Catherine's drafts before, and Angelo never would -- but still, as her son, I felt that I deserved the privilege of being offered first, even if to politely turn it down, like I always had. 

At 15 years old, I had already lost the interest and showed no patience for Catherine's stories -- not the written ones, nor those she told when she was home, experimenting plots for her books. Angelo, instead, was an avid listener -- I guess Catherine was the only person that could silence my friend, and whom he would attentively listen to.

Like Catherine, Angelo was an eager reader. I’ll leave any interpretations about this coincidence to Freud. And when again I saw myself having to compete with books for the attention of my best friend, to become my boyfriend and lover for eight years, I decided to finally become a dedicated reader myself. But I never had Angelo's focus and concentration, and I was not able to read as fast as him, nor memorize entire passages in a single reading like he would. Even Catherine marveled at his skills.

'The boy has a real talent there.' -- she had commented with me. And I had to wonder what my talents were, and if I had any. Not that my mother had ever mentioned one.

Angelo never turned down any book that Catherine lend him, and soon they shared a passion for Russian Literature -- or so I thought.

'It's so depressing. Always so heavy! Does the sun ever shine in Russia? Not in books, I guess. I don't understand why Catherine likes their Literature!' -- Angelo confided, one day. He had been reading it to become close to Catherine, but he would forever drop the Russians when we moved to Vice City -- 'And now she is talking about going to Russia... To live there, did she tell you?' -- and no, my mother hadn't told me anything about any plans of moving.  Mr. Gorbachev had just imploded the whole Soviet and Communist blocks, and yet I could  not understand Catherine's renewed interest in that part of the world -- 'Do you want to live in Russia, Laurent? Do they give passports there?' -- Angelo continued, ironically -- 'Maybe you won't even be allowed to visit me in the US. I will be on the enemy's side, haha! No, I don't think you should go to Russia. Come to the US with me instead, Laurent.'

Angelo had the drive for fame – and money --, and as much as it was a reason to want to emigrate to the United States, where people became "thoroughly and worldly famous", according to him, that was another reason to admire Catherine also. In my adolescence, Catherine was already a consistent author, with several bestsellers in a row. Her "Deep in Winter, a Flower" had made the list of Europe's top ten books the previous year -- and Angelo was hypnotized with the lessons Catherine gave him on writing, the activity he then picked as his way to fame, clearly inspired in my mother's.

'You have to find your original voice, Angelo.' -- I just listened as Catherine gave my friend advices she had never given me, though I had been writing stories trying to capture her interest since I was a child. But again, I must have been aiming at my mother, and her approval and affection, while Angelo accessed the professional in her -- 'In the beginning, it is okay to emulate someone's voice. But not for too long. James Joyce and Guimarães Rosa were so great because they found their own voices, but you don't have to make up words like they did to find your own voice. Are you following, Angelo?' 

But what Angelo really wanted was a voice that would bring him big money. He had no literary aspirations. Being left penniless was a tragedy in his life as big as his mother’s death, which had caused their financial ruin. They had lived on his grandparents heritance – a couple of famous Italian archeologists -- from his father’s side. But even the last artifacts had been sold to pay for the medical expenses in the US, and for his father’s last try of opening up shop – the Italian restaurant in rural France that had brought Angelo to my side. 

'There isn’t any Italian restaurant in this part of the country because people don’t want one, I keep telling my father! I hope he doesn’t ruin us entirely… I’ll need money to go to the US when this shitty school of us finishes…' – Angelo was very unsure about his father’s financial support. Actually, he knew he was bound to take care of himself, and even of his father, too – 'Do you think your mother will allow you to join me, Laurent?' – Angelo’s campaign for me to follow him on his American adventure had already started, even before our love affair had, but we were still years away from the days of planning for Vice City, the town he wanted to return to.

'For now, try finding your literary voice, Angelo.' – Catherine had recommended.

'I wonder how does money speak…' – Angelo had later summerized his concerns in a comment, when Catherine had gone on her errands and we were on our own.

My mother had never cared that much about my writings -- but to me, they were just a pastime and a means of attracting Catherine's attention, while to Angelo they were his professional future. The energy, commitment and effort we put into our stories was completely diverse. It probably showed in the quality of our texts. Catherine, at least, had noticed it clearly, and something else, too.

'Are you jealous, Laurent?' -- she had inquired one day.

'Of course not, maman.' -- Of course I was.

'Good. Because your friend needs attention, and our help. His mother has died not long ago, in the most terrible way. Did he tell you?'

'Of course he did, mom. After all he is my friend!’ – I retorted, giving way to my jealousy.

'Bien sur. Take good care of your friend then, Laurent.'

It was not uncommon that Angelo and I went on our explorations of the fields carrying books. We could forget the drinkable water, but not the books.

Angelo loved the outdoors, and that was another reason to come to my house. I had been exploring the surroundings just because I couldn't stand being home, feeling the hollow left by Carlo's absence, and often enough, Catherine's absence too.

While with Angelo, we explored beyond the limits I had already known. There was always the lake, a fifteen minutes run from my backyard, that became our territory. But further up a hill we came to a group of water sources springing from rocks that formed several small crystaline pools. Hidden in the midst of a grove of trees, they were shaded and the water very cool. There many flowers surrounding the pools, perfuming the atmosphere, and the constant humming of bees and the songs of birds were our soundtrack at what we named "The Sources".

We turned it into our private paradise.

It was there, embraced by beauty, that we first kissed. It happened six months after Angelo and I had met. And that meant we were six months already into our romance that would last eight years. 

But I did not know our relationship had an expiry date, and such a limited validity -- and I wouldn't have believed it back then, at an end, when I was a fifteen years old helplessly falling in love with my best friend, who corresponded to it.

I don't remember having believed in Santa Claus nor the Tooth Fairy. 

But I did believe I was going to live my first love forever.

What a joke, what a pity.

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to read more about the Electra complex mentioned in this chapter, click here.