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BUILDING A GAY COUPLE IN THE 60S OF THE LAST CENTURY (second part)
#1
Link to the first part:  FIRST PART


SECOND PART

Thanks for your email, we are more or less the same age, but I attended a state high school, that was also a closed environment but there was a very different air and there were no institutionalized attempts at ideological education, even in my school there was an insinuating penetration of Catholic organizations, but the fact that the school was not part of a boarding school but was a state school where one only stays for morning class hours, still allowed forms of relative pluralism. One could also get caught up in a state school in brainwashing organizations like the ones you talk about, but he also had the option of getting out of them if he wanted to, and then a consideration must be added, the boarding school you speak of had two characteristics, one was being Catholic and the other was being an elite social environment, therefore very selective, and it's a terrible match. Your story reminded me, for certain atmospheres, of Roger Peyrefitte's novel "Les amitiés particulières", but Peyrefitte's novel was published in 1943 and refers to times well before the 1960s, the epilogues of Peyrefitte's book are tragic because the pervasiveness and violence of what it portrays were objectively extreme. The story you tell is from the 60s and the climate had already changed. I must add that reading your e-mail I was afraid of finding a conclusion similar to that of Peyrefitte's novel but luckily it was not so. After the end of the war the world has objectively changed, at least in Europe, and the happy ending of your story is a clear sign of it. Thanks again for your contribution. I add another consideration: it is truly terrible to see how the Gospel can be exploited and the history of the church shows infinite examples of it, some far more terrible than those you refer to.
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Dear Project, first of all, thank you for your reply.
I respond to Lao's remark, who asks me for a more detailed report of my story after 1967.
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I graduated in 1967, before the Sullo reform, to let you understand the one that introduced the exam with only two written and two oral tests, then I took the exams as they were foreseen by the Gentile reform, with all the written tests, with the oral about all subjects and with the repair session (in September) for those who had not obtained the pass in all subjects in the first session, the exam at the time was truly a nightmare. At the time, about 30% of the students failed the high school graduation. In this sense, having attended high school in a border school like the one where I studied was not a small guarantee, because it was a school that was respected and feared by the examination boards themselves. 

Both Joseph and I seriously took the risk, if not of being rejected, at least of being postponed to September session, what then happened to about 50% of the students and we got away with it, I think, essentially because the commissioner of Italian, who was certainly not of Catholic inspiration, questioned Joseph about the 11th canto of Paradise, that of St. Francis , and questioned me even about Carducci. Joseph understood that the professor of the commission was open-minded and talked about Boniface VIII, ecclesiastical corruption and the repression of pauperism movements, all problems that we had studied on our own in the Treccani encyclopedia, which was free to consult in the library of the school because it was believed that no one would read it. I, on the other hand, let myself be carried away by enthusiasm by speaking of the hymn to Satan, while the internal commissioner, father [omitted] looked at me with eyes of fire as if I were the incarnate devil. 

The commissioner of Italian told me that he appreciated my essay on Carlo Cattaneo. I went to find Cattaneo's passage that I commented on in my graduation paper, I am copying here a part of it, which is what excited me: "Today we want science in literature, not in the didactic sense but in the sense of vast, profound erudition, in the sense of the solidarity of nations, in the humanitarian sense, in the sense of freedom." I, who was used to reading only Manzoni, found myself perfectly at easy in a vision of the world that was much more mine, that word "freedom" exalted me. 

Joseph also did his essay on Cattaneo but devoted himself to commenting on another passage by Cattaneo: "Literature, which in our days has given itself entirely to the service of civilization, can no longer be, as in ancient times, cultivated in isolation; we laugh now at hermit scholars, we shrug our shoulders disdainfully on their selfish meditations from which transpires such profound ignorance of the world and things, so limited erudition, often limited to the circuit of their own city or at most of their own nation, and which shows to be inspired by idols long overthrown, by rhetorical or purely classical scholastic traditions." What Cattaneo said was precisely the demolition of the culture that had been proposed to us, but I should say imposed, as a model. 

Joseph and I were the only two candidates to carry out the essay on Cattaneo and I think it was precisely this that saved us from being postponed to September session if not precisely from rejection. To the enormous scorn of our internal commissioner, father [omitted], we both took 8/10 in the written and 8/10 in the oral of Italian and we also earned the esteem of the external commissioner of Mathematics. The experience of the exams gave me for the first time the precise feeling of how much I had lost not attending a public high school. In the other subjects we took just 6/10, the minimum, because we knew little or nothing about science subjects and the commissioners of Latin and Greek and of History and Philosophy were fascinated by the tradition and the name of my school. When the commission left, the commissioner of Italian shook our hand and did it just with the two of us.

After the exams, we still had the enormous problem of making our parents digest that we would have made our choices about the university faculty exclusively on the basis of our criteria. My father took it for granted that I would follow his "advice" slavishly, Joseph's parents would have left him greater freedom of choice, but in any case with regard to a very limited range of choices and in any case they would have assumed that Joseph attended university in Milan, but we had other projects in mind, we wanted to leave Milan as soon as possible to have our real autonomy and we had already made our choices, we wanted to enroll in Engineering and in Rome, not in Milan, but getting our parents to accept such a project and, moreover, diverting their attention from the fact that a similar choice, made by two guys, could hide reasons that had nothing to do with studies, was an undertaking worthy of Agamemnon. 

We had to find a way to get there and we had to find it soon. Our parents began to offer us well-selected female companies, that is, of the appropriate social and economic level. Coming from an all-male boarding school it was assumed that we did not have female friends but it was also taken for granted that we were eager to have it, which was a thousand miles away from reality. Joseph's family had identified a "suitable" girl for him and this idea was beginning to put Joseph in a bad mood, but the girl, who had also completed her high school path, wanted to enroll at the National dance academy in Rome, this fact on the one hand facilitated Joseph's situation in Milan and on the other hand could have interfered with our plans to go to Rome, but there was the fact that the hypothetical relationship between that girl and Joseph was only in the fantasies of Joseph's parents, because in all probability the girl had completely different projects in mind. 

Since time was short, we first decided to act separately, to avoid our parents think of a premeditated project built in two. We would have started by shooting very high, that is, by proposing something that was not acceptable to our parents from any point of view. One evening while my parents were watching television I told them what plans I had for the future: I wanted to work to be financially independent and I had already sent 10 job applications to Rome. I had made copies to show my parents, but obviously I hadn't sent the application forms. My parents were stunned and asked me why such a decision, but I said that at the university there were also evening courses for student-workers, which was not true then, even if my parents didn't know it, but became true a few years later, and I said I would work and study. 

In reality it was more complicated than it may seem today, because then you came of age at 21 and I would still have been dependent on my parents for another three years, even if I had worked. They asked me what faculty I wanted to attend and I said I wanted to do engineering, obviously they tried to advise me against in every way but I was decided in my choices. Some of their friends' children had done engineering and it didn't seem so scandalous to them, but that I had to work "like a starving man" they just didn't accept it. It was the first time I saw my parents worried, not about me, but about the social disgrace that could result from having a child who works like "a starving man." 

By now the die was cast! After a couple of days of indecision I said that they had called me to work in Rome as an evening conductor in a cinema. My father looked at me in disgust, as if I had gone out of my mind and they had called me to be the keeper of a brothel, but he said nothing, I was terrified that my parents would decide not to intervene. I compared a train ticket to Rome and put it on the bedside table, the next day my mother came to try to make me come to my senses, but I started to pack my suitcase hoping that their resistance would yield. In the evening my father came to Canossa and asked me to pay me a house near the university because otherwise, as a worker-student I would never have graduated. I accepted and said that I had to go to Rome anyway to immediately communicate to those in the cinema that I would not go and that they had to look for someone else and furthermore I also had to look for a small apartment. 

The next morning at 5.30 I leave the house and go to the station with a briefcase. I agree with my parents that I will be away from home for three full days and will sleep in a hotel for two nights. Joseph goes up to Rogoredo and we make the whole trip together. He did not need to resort to tricks of any kind with his parents. His father told him that he had to do what he believed best and that they would support him financially anyway. At the time, as far as I knew, my parents and Joseph's did not know each other at all, my parents knew Joseph but not his parents, so we could have taken two very close apartments, but the thing had to be evaluated concretely in Rome. It was a long and tiring journey but it was “our journey”, finally we were free! The train was very crowded but we were sailing towards our freedom. We arrive in Rome Termini in the afternoon and it is terribly hot, just to die. 

We immediately go to the hotel and we take "two single rooms", in order to have two single receipts, we deposit the luggage and we rest for a while, then we look for the way to go to the university area, but it is close to the station and you can go there very well on foot. We go for a ride and buy a Rome newspaper with classified ads. Today in the newspapers these things are no longer there, because they are all on the internet, but then there were whole pages of advertisements of all kinds and obviously also of houses for rent. We spend the evening selecting ads with the map of Rome at hand and we find two that could be fine. The next morning we go to the university to take the Rule of studies from the engineering faculty, we go to see where the lessons are held and then we go to see the two apartments, the first is unpresentable and the landlord does not convince us at all, he wants to do everything “aumma aumma”, that is, without a contract in order to elude taxation, etc. etc.. 

The second would be a possible solution, it costs more but has two rooms and it seems a serious thing, it could very well be taken jointly by both of us, it would be fine for us but we do not know how to make our parents accept such a thing because it would be suspicious and would sound strange. We leave it pending, we spend the afternoon looking for other newspapers with rental advertisements, in the afternoon we see three more. We find a solution that seems possible to us: two very small apartments quite close to each other and that both had a telephone, which is fundamental, because at the time it was not at all obvious that there was a telephone in a student apartment. 

The apartments, however, were a little further away from where the lessons were held than the ones we had seen the day before. On the morning of the third day we go to see and the solution seems acceptable all in all. We pay an advance to secure the apartments, or rather, two separate advances, and we have the receipts made. The hosts seem used to renting apartments to students. 

We take the train back to Milan. Joseph gets off at Rogoredo, and changes trains so as not to arrive with mine, this could have been done without but it seemed necessary to use the utmost caution. At home I explained to my parents what I had done and strangely they didn't make too many fuss, because the very fact of paying for the apartment seemed to them a form of participation more than enough in my life. Classes started on November 5th.

We entered the house on November 1st. In the very early days I had some problems with the landlord who had often seen Joseph leave my house and was afraid that Joseph was in fact a sub-tenant, when he saw that Joseph had officially taken up residence in another house, also in Rome, and that I paid the rent regularly, the landlord didn't make a fuss anymore and in fact Joseph came to live in my house, which was a little closer to the university. The very first days of November we got the necessary books for the exams and we began to leaf through them and there the first unexpected trauma arrived. We read but we understood almost nothing. We realized that our level of knowledge of scientific disciplines was almost nil and, I must admit, we panicked. 

In the meantime, the lessons had begun and after few days had begun to be incomprehensible. In class there was a lot of people and many behaved like morons, said nonsense to make others laugh, threw the cartoccetti (small bullets made from pieces of paper folded several times) with the rubber band, while the professors continued unperturbed to write slates of formulas gradually more and more incomprehensible. We went to class every day but lost ground every day. We realized that if we hadn't studied overnight we wouldn't have carved a spider out of a hole. We had reduced the time we had to take away from studying to a minimum, we went to class all morning, ate a sandwich and immediately went back to studying and exercising. We arrived late in the evening with tears of despair. We did not return to Milan during the Christmas holidays and stayed in Rome to study desperately and it was precisely then that we began to recover some of the lost ground. 

When we began to understand something about the Geometry of the straight line and the plane in space, my brain opened up, I began to understand the general logic of analytic Geometry. Analysis was treated in a very abstract and theoretical way, but passing from the limits to the derivatives we began to understand something even at an intuitive level. Physics and Chemistry seemed more understandable in theory but it still seemed very difficult to solve problems. 

A separate and almost insurmountable problem was the so-called Civil design. Our colleagues who came from other types of studies did wonderful things without any effort, we struggled with even the most elementary things and our drawings were absolute filth. Axonometry and perspective at the beginning were for me beyond the limits of what is possible. I felt really incapable. After Christmas the classrooms were empty, there were a quarter of the students compared to the first days of November. Who had happened there by mistake understood that it was not air for him and changed faculty. 

We went to hear an exam session and we were terrified, very few passed and many repeated the exam more than once. In February we seemed to begin to understand and follow the subjects, but the exams were almost all on subjects that we did not know at all and that we had not yet dealt with: from quadrics to Thermodynamics, from Stereochemistry to Combinatorics. We were really in crisis, we studied like crazy but saw no light at the end of the tunnel. At the beginning of March we were finally able to follow the lessons very roughly or better only intuitively, studying like crazy until late at night. The exercises started to came more or less to the right solution and we began to understand the beauty of science subjects in which something is either right or wrong and the procedures have indisputable rational motivations. We didn't even go back to Milan for Easter, we just thought about studying. 

At that time, sex between us was just the medicine of despair and basically the least of our thoughts, also because we were still together 24 hours a day and shared practically all aspects of life. The relationship with the other students was reduced to a minimum because in practice it was an "Every man for himself!" The professors were mythical characters you saw from afar except for the heart attack moment of exams. Virtually all the exams had written and oral and the vast majority of the skimming was done in writing tests. You could bring the books you wanted to the writing test, and the slide rule, a thing that today is a museum object but then was practically the only possible means of calculation, because portable electronic calculators did not exist at all and in any case the slide rule was the only concrete alternative to the tables of logarithms. 

Today there are programmable calculators and there are monstrous ones, then there was none of this and a very big part of the difficulties of Physics or Chemistry problems was represented by numerical calculation. Someone carried with them the tables of logarithms with seven decimal places to make more precise calculations, but in reality in that way the risk of calculation errors increased dramatically. Professors corrected exercises in two phases: first they looked at the numerical result, if that was correct, at least approximately, they looked at the procedure and a calculation error led to calculate the score of that exercise as zero. Getting the calculations wrong was deadly. We had gone to look for and put together the texts of the written tests of Analysis, Physics and Chemistry and we had taken notes of the recurring questions in the oral also of Geometry. 

The courses ended in early June and in June we had no real chance of passing any of the scheduled exams. We did not return to Milan even in the summer because we had to pass the exams, or at least three exams by September, otherwise our whole project would have failed miserably and we would have had to go home to face general commiseration. We went to follow all the exams of the summer session, of all the subjects we should have done. We took notes, then we went home and studied the topics trying to understand what the professors wanted and there I realized that I understood absolutely nothing of many topics that I thought I knew. Quadrics and Thermodynamics remained a real mystery, I had learned many definitions to parrot but their meaning escaped me. 

Following the exams, however, we began to understand the meaning of state functions and quasi-static processes and when we understood the physical-mathematical meaning of the Carnot cycle, a world opened up to us. We decided to focus everything on three exams: Geometry, Analysis and Physics and to leave for November or even February, if necessary, Chemistry and Civil design. At the beginning of July we became able to do the exercises and to  find the right results in most cases, and we had learned to use the slide rule speedy and safely, in mid-July we had finished the first review of the theoretical subjects and we began to deal with the written exams. We used to do the tests together, in the set time of two hours, as if we were at the exam, then we corrected each other by looking at the solutions published after the written tests and we assigned each other a score with the criteria adopted by the professors. 

I remember that at the first tutorial on a real Geometry test, I took 11/30 and Juseph 12/30, it seemed a very poor result, but only two months before we would have been at zero. Things were a little better with Analysis (22/30 and 21/30) and Physics (19/30 and 18/30) because the books and exercise collections we used were much better done. At the end of July we had brought the Geometry results to around 20 and those of Physics and Analysis to around 23. In the following 40 days, which preceded the exams, we proceeded studying non-stop from morning to night right out of necessity avoiding even the least waste of time. We arrived on the eve of the exams with average results always above 20, which may seem little but it already means knowing the subjects passably. 

We decided to try, if we had taken less than 24 we would have rejected the assigned grade and we would have presented ourselves to the next session. The day of the Analysis exam came, the anxiety was very strong, we entered. The candidates were distributed in a huge classroom. The texts of the tests were different (A, B, C, D) and were assigned by drawing lots, Joseph and I had different tests. At the end of the two hours we went out with some unsolved doubts and with the bad copies of the tests, we went home and we corrected each other the tests following the procedure step by step, I expected to have taken 22 and he expected 21, we had both made mistakes of trivial algebraic calculation despite the right procedure. We looked at each other disconsolately. 

Two days later the results of the test came out, only eight guys had been admitted to the oral tests, only one with 30, two with 27, Joseph had obtained 24 and I an unexpected 26, the others were all under 20, it didn't seem true to me. We had a week before the oral. We began questioning each other day and night, obsessively repeating proofs and theorems. We both passed the exam with 27 and there was only one guy who came out with 30. The happiness was total. 

That evening we allowed ourselves to make love, but from the next day the obsession with Geometry began again which however lasted only a week. We both got 23 at the written test, a score that should have led us not to present ourselves at the oral, but since the highest mark in the written test was 26 we thought we would present all the same and we both came out with 25, a result that did not seem like a great thing, but anyhow we had passed the examination. Physics that also had a written test "with numerical calculation" that terrified us was still pending, the exam was scheduled for mid-October and there was a minimum of time. We decided to focus on the most difficult topics: Thermodynamics and waves. 

Our levels in written problems had risen to around 26 and this encouraged us. We went to the written test and we both went out with a 22, but our 22 came after a single 25 and a single 23, we decided to play it all out and go to the oral exam. They asked me "conservation of angular momentum and law of areas", "second principle of thermodynamics" and "interference". Joseph was required to solve some written exercises also in the oral. We both came out with 26, we were disappointed but we accepted the grade. In practice we started from scratch and we ended up with an average of 26, which could seem little only if seen from the outside, for us it was an achievement, it was the certification that we could go on. 

We had more time to prepare for the Chemistry exam, Joseph came out with 27 and I with 28 and I felt like I was touching the sky with a finger. 

We were left with the nightmare of Civil design, an exam that generally served others to raise the average grade, but for me it was exactly the opposite, there the test was basically just graphic and the oral was a discussion of the written. Joseph passed with 25, I had really made a table that was rubbish. The professor calls me and gestures to make me understand that the proof was indecent, and he writes a 23 on a piece of paper, but he does not write it on the booklet, that is, he does not write it as final grade, I start answering in bursts explaining all the errors I had done, after a few minutes he turns the sheet over and writes 24 and underlines it twice to which I nod yes. When I got out it didn't even seem real to me. 

On November 5th, when lessons resumed, we had passed all the scheduled exams and were able to devote ourselves to the subjects of the second year. I liked the Rational Mechanics exam very much, much less Analysis two with multiple integrals, moments of inertia and differential equations, while I was fascinated by electromagnetism, but now things were progressing regularly, the average of the marks was going up. The final three-year period was already more specialized but up to a certain point. I was fascinated by Construction science, much less by Applied mechanics. Electrical engineering seemed to me a real discovery, so much so that I regretted having chosen civil engineering. With our colleagues in the three-year period, the climate was different, we were numerically few compared to the two-year period, there was some collaboration and they also tried to insert us in the group but we always kept ourselves out of groups of any kind. 

The turning point of our course of study has been Numerical analysis exam "with programming elements" which at the time was considered only a further exam in mathematics because computer science was really reduced to a minimum. A new world opened up in front of us, we understood that Electronic calculation had nothing to do with the calculations made with the slide rule and that the rules of the game were changing. We talked to the professor who took us seriously, he gave us programs to develop in Fortan and Algol, then Pascal was not yet there and the thing had for us the charm of discovery. 

Our calculation programs were evolved and the professor liked us and allowed us to access the calculation laboratory, something then practically impossible for a student. We were automatically pushed to a much higher level ofmathematical study of Numerical analysis. Numerical analysis was the first exam in which we got honors, which sent us into orbit. We maintained contact with the professor of Numerical analysis and when Pascal came out in 1970 we began to work on structural calculation programs, these are things that compared to what today's PCs do are of a disarming elementary, but at the time they were shocking news, above all because they avoided the problem of calculation errors. 

We graduated with honors in November 1972 with two coordinated theses on: “Programs for calculating complex linearizable reticular structures”. Unfortunately, due to the postponements of the graduation session we were unable to take the State qualification exam in the second session of 1972 but in June 1973, at the age of 25,we had taken the qualification and were finally engineers. I must point out that our families knew nothing of our true story, they did not know that we had lived together for years and that we had graduated on the same day practically covering the same subjects. Now our parents expected us to return to Milan to find some prestigious work place, perhaps through some of their friends, but we had quite precise ideas, we wanted to open an "advanced" civil engineering studio based on the use of computers. Today this seems an absolute obvious, but 50 years ago it was not at all. 

To do something minimally dignified we needed money, at least to get an apartment to use as the office of the studio and to be able to hire a couple of collaborators, essentially a very up-to-date computer scientist and an administrative secretary capable of handling tax matters. As far as the problems of patents were concerned, we would have tried to do it ourselves or at most to have recourse (as little as possible) to external consultants, but to start we needed a considerable amount of money. We did not let ourselves be led into the world of dreams and we established a principle: "never take a step longest than the leg!" 

Our parents had offered to help us financially but they would have liked us to return to Milan, what we absolutely did not want to do, so we made a choice that was harshly criticized: we applied for substitute teaching to teach in technical high schools, and at that time it was very easy to have the substituting because there were few technical graduates. We taught for three years in technical high schools  and we put aside everything we could, however we were not even able to pay an advance to buy an apartment for the study and so we decided to rent one and try to become entrepreneurs of ourselves. 

We took a three-room apartment in the middle of the suburbs but rather well placed and we decided to do a crazy shopping for us at the time, we bought an Olivetti P6060 computer which costed a huge amount of money, over 8,000 dollars, at the exchange rate of that time almost five million and a half lire, as teachers we earned less than 250,000 lire a month, which means that the computer costed, including taxes, about 25 months' salary. The computer was an office computer, but it was very heavy (over 40 kg) and a real mammoth, which, however, gave our office an absolutely unique and super-technological aspect. 

As soon as the P6060 was activated we started to work on it and in the time of a month we developed the first software, the one for the office accounting, which was all stored on large 20x20 soft-disks, then we started working on the projecting of steel reticular structures and we had the possibility to make monstrously complex calculations (for that time) and without risk of errors, in practice we could print and deliver in one day the project of a complex structure that required at least 15 days for others and certainly our calculations  were more precise. 

Unfortunately, there was no way to draw with a computer as is done now with CAD and therefore we still needed a mechanical designer able to execute the tables quickly and well. We turned to one of our best students (Martin) who came to work for us, we gave him a state-of-the-art drafting machine, an instrument that is now a museum object. The work began to arrive, we did not worry about following the real work in progress, we had only to project and calculate structures and we dedicated all our free time to software projecting. In a few years we were able to buy a bigger apartment for the studio, as well as Martin we also hired his girlfriend, who was called Martina (a combination more unique than rare). 

Then we expanded further and hired one of the first professionally trained specialists in computer science, especially to choose computers that were at the forefront because in those years the evolution was very rapid. After a few years we stopped using self-produced software and began to master specialized commercial software and we have continued on this path until now. Over the years we have bought two houses for ourselves, in each of the houses there is a single room and a double room, as if they were houses intended to host traditional families. We never invited strangers to our house, those very rare times that our parents came to Rome, the double room, in theory that of the guests, was for them. Today our parents are no longer there and we have no siblings, we have to think only of ourselves and of old age that is advancing big steps, but as long as health assists us we are fine!

Please Project, if you deem it appropriate, add this email to our previous one. Thank you!
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