11-29-2020, 05:33 PM
Hi Project,
I’m a 35 year old guy from Northern Italy and I have recently started reading your forum that intrigues me a lot, sometimes I think that the emails reported in the forum represent a bit, let's say, quite rare cases, that is couple situations which are more the exception than the rule in the gay world, other times, however, I think that beyond a visible gay world, there is also another reality, if you want, much less connoted in a gay sense, that is, without the classical gay appearance , in which the stories I read in the forum may be not the general rule, but at least something much less unusual.
There is one thing that guys tend to avoid, at least in words, and that is compromise. According to my experience, most of the important things in life are not the result of conscious choices, because no one foresees the future, but they are things that just happen or don't happen. Randomness and instinctive choices play a fundamental role, I don't know if they are always decisive but they certainly weigh a lot. For example, finding a guy with whom you are really good, which is a very complicated thing, in essence it is a random matter, you have to stay in the right place at the right time and meet the right person, if this doesn’t happen, you can waste years in useless research and in trying to build substantially impossible things. And then you have to understand that the "perfect" guy, which corresponds perfectly to your expectations and desires, doesn’t exist at all and therefore in any case it is unavoidable to move towards an adaptation, that is in practice towards a compromise.
It is a bit like when a couple has to buy a house and they want it not to cost too much but also to be large enough, they would like it to be in a certain neighborhood in order to have pleasant neighbors and to live according to a certain decorum, etc. etc.. Starting from these assumptions you can spend years in a continuous and vain research because a solution that satisfies 100% all the often contradictory needs doesn’t exist. When you "look for" a guy the situation is very similar, you know many guys, the perfect one is just a dream and you have to put aside the idea of finding him, otherwise you would end up remaining single, and if we think about ourselves, whether we accept it or not, we too are a compromise choice for our partner, because we all have defects. I don't want to give general rules, instead I would like to show how weak and dangerous the idea that general rules exist is.
I say these things because I have personally experienced them. I live in a big city in the North and I grew up in a wealthy family and all in all also mentally open towards homosexuality but not so much towards other things, primarily social rank. Let me explain: my parents didn’t cause me problems for the fact that I was gay, in the sense that they have known it since I was 16, with them no coming out has been needed because they are not stupid, I could go out with a guy instead of a girl, but he had to be a guy "from my world" (expression of my parents), if I had chosen a guy coming from a social category a very far from mine, they wouldn’t have accepted it easily, at least that is what I have always thought, and this idea of social rank, in the long run, I internalized it without even realizing it, that is, as something obvious and natural. I started very early, in practice already at 18, to frequent gay circles, but "good" gay circles, that is, selected clubs, high-level discos, etc. etc.. I grew up in cotton wool, isolated from reality since I was a baby, I only attended private schools, which were excellent in some respects but bad in others, because they were closed boxes that prevented me from looking around.
Personally I have never experienced being gay as a problem and I have not even had any other problems, at 18 I had a car, I had my personal bank account, powered by my father, of course, but I had it and above all, I thought it was more or less like this for everyone else, because for everyone around me it was like that. I used to spend my time hunting for gay experiences, thinking of vacations and weekends as if those things were the essentials in life. Basically, I had reached 25 years, I had graduated, I had started to work and earn and therefore also to be independent from the family, I had had three almost important stories with "good" guys, who in fact weren't too bad, but for me , and perhaps for them too, living as a couple was above all a game. I had never actually taken those things too seriously and for the guys I had been with, in all likelihood, it was exactly the same.
I was looking for a guy basically to have sex and not to disfigure with my friends and because, as I used to say then, I wanted to have fun, and I really used to have fun spending my life like that because that was my world, or better, my world ended up there, then at 26, in the summer in 2011, I met Joseph, who came with another worker to do a renovation work at my parents' house, because I was still living with my parents at the time. Joseph struck me immediately: his handshake was very different from that of the guys I used to meet, who didn't even like to touch my hand, and furthermore he was very direct and cordial. The work he did in my parents' house lasted several days and in a way we made friends. We talked about the work he was doing, the working hours, the technical solutions to be adopted, but sometimes we also exchanged a kind of complicity smile because we were the same age. The day he finished work I asked him for his mobile number and we exchanged numbers.
I thought he was going to call me because I felt like I had at least fascinated him a little, but he didn't call me. After a week I was no more able to wait and called him. I think he felt pleased of my call. I proposed to meet him one afternoon after work and he said yes, he added he would come to me and we made arrangements for the following Saturday. He showed up on his bicycle, which I never expected, left the bicycle in a parking for bicycles, and we started walking around the city.
In such a situation, either you tell him immediately how things are or nothing goes on. I didn't know where to start, he was the one who got me immediately out of my embarrassment, he looked me straight in the eye and said: "I think it wouldn't work ... I'm flattered by the fact that you invited me, but it wouldn't work ..." I pretended to be stupid, that is, I tried to avoid an explicit speech by continuing to remain vague but he blocked me immediately, he looked me another time straight in the eye and said: "If a guy like you asks for the mobile number of a guy like me and then he calls him after a week, it means only one thing ... isn’t it?" I said to him: "Yes, sure, but there is nothing wrong with that ... " But he continued his speech: "And if a guy like me he accepts the proposal, this also means only one thing, but it wouldn't work anyway ... " I was really fascinated by his way of dealing with the issue, but I was scared by the harshness of that" it wouldn't work anyway ... " and I tried to insist: "But we can at least try ... " And he told me : "Your approach is not like that of those who are playing with guys..."
We continued talking all evening, I suggested to go have a pizza but he said no, so I proposed him at least to go to the bar for an aperitif, and he looked at me smiling and repeated: "It cannot work … ”
We kept walking around the city, he didn't want to cut it short and neither did I., despite what he had told me. We dealt with lighter speeches, we talked about music and sports, about school memories, but not about our families, I clearly felt that it would be an unwelcome topic. I saw him several times amused and in any case always participatory, every now and then he made a comic face, let's say so, between amazement and amusement, which made me smile too. Despite that terrible statement: "it could never work ...", for me it was a really beautiful afternoon and I think it was for him too.
In the end I asked him if he had a boyfriend and he said no and this time he avoided repeating that terrible "it could never work ..." and then, before saying goodbye, I asked him if we would meet again and he told me: "It can also be done, but I told you, it won't work ..." I tried to ask him why and he replied that I would have realized it by myself. He treated me with respect, I would even say with affection but he kept me at a distance. We finally made a new appointment after two weeks, but I should have called him a couple of days before to confirm.
I waited 12 days and then called him back and we agreed for the following Saturday. I told him: "I'll come to you this time!" But he was very clear: "No, I'm coming to you, exactly like last time." On Saturday afternoon he arrived very punctual and left his bike at the usual parking, this time we just walked, and I didn't even try to offer him a pizza or an aperitif because I thought that being seen around with me might bother him. We walked a lot, we also talked a lot, even if maybe it was me the one who talked mostly, he listened to me, he wasn't or didn't seem bored but, when I asked him about him, he told me that there was very little to tell. He never called me on the phone, I called him from time to time and he stayed talking to me for a long time, he didn't cut it short. We went on like this from summer until Christmas.
At Christmas I had the idea of giving him a gift, I bought him a watch, a modern type watch, since he always looked at the time on his mobile. On December 17, 2011, which was the last useful Saturday because the next one was 24, that is Christmas Eve, I gave him my parcel, but he didn't want it, he didn't even open it, I stayed there very badly, and he said to me: "I told you it wouldn't work ..." Then he saw me in big trouble and said: "I'm sorry too that it can't work but it's a fact, you see, you proposed to me to go for an aperitif in a luxury bar, but I have never been to such a place, and then you invited me to have a pizza in a very special pizzeria and you didn't wonder how much it would cost, now you give me a gift and you don't ask yourself if I can reciprocate ... "And I said to him:" But you don't have to reciprocate anything!" And he replied: "You see, you didn't understand, we would never be at the same level ..." For me an answer like that was like a stab, I didn't know what to say but I absolutely didn't want to lose him, in the end I said: "But we can at least be friends ..." He looked at me and said: "But that's not what you really want ..." I told him: "Please don't destroy me completely ..." He looked at me steadily, he sighed, and said: “Let's leave each other like this, without farewells and promises. I was happy to meet you ... " I told him: " Me too!" I would have hugged him but he kept me at a distance. Then we said goodbye, he took his bike back and walked away. Seeing him go away I thought that I would never see him again.
I just had time to go home when he called me on the phone and we talked until two in the morning. Joseph's behavior had exposed me to a series of cold showers but had also opened my eyes to things I would never had suspected could exist. He kept me at a distance because he thought that the social differences between us were such as to make a relationship impossible, but nevertheless he didn’t treat me badly, he wasn’t vindictive, hard or assertive, he had realized that I was in difficulty and tried to make the situation less bitter.
You must think, Project, that before Joseph spoke clearly to me, I had absolutely no understanding of the reasons for his keeping me at a distance, I thought there were psychological problems, that he wanted to feel superior, yet he treated me with extreme delicacy, he was always quiet, never aggressive. He spoke little but when he spoke he said things that made me think. I must say that I felt him much more mature than me. We were the same age, but I learned something new from him every day. Sometimes he would reproach me even with just a smile, for example when I talked too much freely, when I was shooting a barrage of banalities one after the other, or when I let myself go to some too simplifying political speech, or when I repeated the pronoun "I" a little too many times.
Since Christmas 2011 we started to talk often, always by phone, we met no more than a couple of times a month. Little by little, telephone conversations have become more personal. Let's say that since the summer of 2012 it was already evident that our friendship would not end so easily. Obviously I would never have been able to propose to him to meet my friends or to come to my house to meet my parents, he always told me that friendship must be cultivated in two and it is not a social issue, but I would have liked to know some of his friends about whom he had told me very nice things, but obviously this too could not be proposed. One thing used to struck me about him: he only said positive things about his friends. At one point I asked him if he ever had any friends he didn't like for some reason, and he replied: "Sure, but I prefer to talk about those with whom I have been well." Answers of this kind used to totally disarm me and, despite all the declared impossibilities, I began to fall seriously in love with Joseph.
Physically I liked him from the beginning but the more I got to know him the more I dreamed of being able to live with him, even though he had told me a thousand times that it couldn't work. Let's say that throughout 2012 I continued to cultivate the idea that, instead, maybe over time, it could have worked. Joseph loved me, I had no doubts about this but he didn't want to get involved too much and he repeated to me that we had to feel free in relation to any other possible story, that is, we had to feel free to look for a guy anyway, because we were only friends, but also in saying this he was neither drastic nor peremptory, he said it calmly, as if he were leaving the door open to other possible evolutions. We went on like this until 2015, that is, up to 30 years old or a little less.
Keep in mind, Project, that until the summer of 2015 we had never talked about sex, that is, it wasn't a 100% removed topic, but, let's say, we had never talked about it in personal terms. He was theoretically a friend but for me he was really the deepest desire, because he was the only guy who took me seriously and told me what he thought without acting according to a script, my sexual fantasies had been all about him since the beginning and I was having a lot of problems about this fact, I felt dishonest towards him, and so it happened that in a fit of sincerity I told him that I used to masturbate thinking about him and asked him if this bothered him and he replied: " It cannot bother me, because I do it too thinking about you ...".
Since then we have also started talking about our sexuality, I wanted to make him accept that somehow we were already a couple but he would repeat to me: “It can't work…” I told him: “But why not? I now live on my own, and practically of the people of my old world I don't see anyone anymore, except my father and my mother, a couple of times a year, why shouldn't it work?" "Because you have your own home and I don't, you have no ties with your parents while I have to stay with mine, I’m not obliged to stay with them but I have to do it because it is a moral obligation, because they need me." It was on that occasion that he told me about his parents, who were very old. He was an only child, his mother was almost 70 years old, while mine was not yet 55; his father had already turned 80, while my father was even a year younger than my mother, and then Joseph's parents also had serious health problems and were autonomous just theoretically but weren’t really able to live without Joseph.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that with Joseph I would have to face many problems and I began to give a more concrete meaning to the expression "it couldn't work anyway …" but I wanted Joseph, not an easy story with an ordinary person, and I told him: "I know there will be many complications, I'm starting to realize it, but the problems can be faced and solved ..." He replied very seriously: "With you I think I'd be fine, in fact we've been together for years ... but we are fine because from many points of view we are each on our own. It's not that I don't want to be with you, God forbid, but we can't live together, I'm not free because I have my parents and they need me … “ He hasn't even finished saying that and he hugged me very tightly as if to make me understand physically that he wanted to be with me but he couldn't. It was the first physical contact really shared and wanted between us and it lasted a long time, it had nothing erotic, it was almost a hug of despair but it was very strong and gave me the necessary strength to put aside any hesitation.
Then he said to me: “If you didn't consider having sex together as a kind of half marriage, for me having sex might as well be possible …”
I was about to show him all my enthusiasm, but he held me back: “No! Not now, be calm, first we have to do the test together ... ok? " I replied: "Ok, sure!" We moved on to the topic of prevention and I realized that he had read a thousand things about sexually transmitted diseases and was extremely competent, I felt safe with him, he was prudent, informed, he conceived of sex as something that is not done impetuously but by choice and by a choice made together. He gave me a written list of tests to ask the doctor for and he didn't limit himself to just the HIV test but went much further.
I remember when we went to take the test together, there was an elderly nurse, in her sixties, who looked at us with some tenderness, I looked at her with a questioning look and she said. "You do very well to do the tests, everyone should do this!"
I remember the heart pounding at the time we went to get test results and the relief to see that there were no problems. However, a minor problem remained, the one of finding a time and a place where we could have a little privacy. He would never come to my house neither he would let me go to his house. He proposed a solution: he would leave his parents alone from Saturday afternoon until Sunday at lunchtime, that is, in practice, he would sleep with me on Saturday night, but he would have to return to his home by noon on Sunday. Time was very limited but it could have been fine too. As for the place, he suggested to go to a fairly close mountain area, where you can rent a bungalow even for just one night, but he strongly emphasized that all expenses had to be shared 50%. Since he didn't have a car, he told me that we had to use my car but that he would pay for the petrol and that he would also bring the Saturday dinner and Sunday morning breakfast. I could only accept and so I did. Saturday 19th September 2015 Joseph and I made love for the first time. It was something radically different from how I had imagined it, a climate made of tenderness, mutual attention, long times, physical intimacy, the best thing for me was to see Joseph totally involved, sometimes with playful attitudes, almost like a kid, and sometimes totally relaxed. With him I felt happy, that is, I felt loved as a person and it was something I had never experienced before.
What promised to be a happy period in our life, however, did not last more than a month. Joseph's mother was very ill and was hospitalized in October and it didn't take long to understand that she had an advanced tumor and that there would be no possibility of saving her. She was a very religious woman, she understood everything and tried to help and comfort her husband and son. She died in early January 2016. For Joseph it was a terrible blow, he was very close to his parents and after his father was widowed, only he could have assisted him, and he did it without sparing himself, but his father, who was already ill for some time, he passed away in early March 2016. After the funeral, Joseph inherited his parents' house, the one where he had always lived. In eighty days, Joseph's world had been completely upset.
We used to talk on the phone every night and I had followed his story moment by moment. I saw him emptied from the inside. Then he started to rearrange his parents' things and found a box that contained 26,000 euros in cash and a letter written by his father: "Dear Joseph, you have always given us a hand to make us feel comfortable in the things of money, but everything you have given us we have kept it for you, so that you can do with it what you want. You have always deprived yourself of many things for us, at least when we will be no longer there you too will be able to fulfill some of your wishes. I'm also speaking on behalf of your mother, even if she is already in heaven, because we had talked about it so many times. You loved us and every time we talked about you between us, tears came to our eyes. Be happy, Joseph, "as you want", following only your conscience as you always did, without worrying about what people think, never put aside the idea of doing what you really want to do out of fear or because it is difficult, no one has the right to judge you, and remember that you are a great person and dad and mom are pride of you and will be always be on your side, because you has been a golden son, a gift from God, who made us live a happy life. We love and will love you forever also from heaven. Dad and mom.
When Joseph read this letter in front of me, tears came to his eyes. I told him: "I think your parents had understood ..." and he replied: "I really think so ..."
At the end of March I saw Joseph more and more absorbed in his thoughts and I tried to ask him what he was thinking and he replied that he was thinking "of a crazy thing" that is, that he was thinking of enrolling in university, on the one hand he was very tempted but for the other he felt too out of time, because he was almost 31 years old. Age is not in itself an impediment, it is in practice only a psychological problem, I told him that in my opinion the problem would have been that of work, because he was now working with a permanent contract in a small construction company but very serious and, with the work commitments he had, putting study and work together would have been practically impossible. In fact, leaving a steady job to start university at 31 could have been madness. He was very restless and didn't know what to do, resign from work could be a real leap in the dark. He could count on what his parents had left him and it was not very little and then in any case I was there too, but one thing is to enroll in university and another is to get to graduate and, given the age, even to graduate without wasting time. But he was struggling with himself to figure out what he should do.
One day he comes back from work and says to me: "I talked to the boss, I was afraid he would take it badly, because being told that one of your employees wants abandon you out of the blue even if you have done everything to make him grow professionally can also be annoying, but he was perplexed, then he said to me: - Let me think. Pass by me again before leaving - I have come back to him and he said to me: - If you resign you take a very big risk and you know it well but you could do one thing, you could continue to work with me but maybe somehow changing job and helping me in other things, because the Accountant has retired and I would have to pay someone to calculate paychecks and all such stuff, the tax part and the commercial one of the company's accounting. I know it's not your first interest but you can learn and anyway you can get used to it, it's not very difficult, I can teach you how to do, but please put aside the idea of resigning! I can try to annoy you as little as possible, you can do those jobs instead of the construction work and we leave things as they are, ok? - I told him that at most I could try for a couple of months and if it didn't work I would resign."
In practice, Joseph had decided to resign without telling me anything, he didn’t want to give up university, he was willing or better inclined to risk everything, and his boss's proposal left him puzzled because somehow he would have to continue working and this would have prevented him from dedicating himself 100% to studying. I told him: "Joseph, the proposal the boss made you is a very important opportunity and I don't think the workload would be excessive ... no doubt, it will work and, anyway, never forget that I do just that kind of work! ... " He said to me: "I thought about it but the problem is mine, not yours." In the end he was convinced to try at least for a month. I explained to him the basics on wages, deductions, taxation, etc. etc. and when he went to make his boss explain him the job, he practically already knew almost everything. The boss was amazed and Joseph told him that he had tried to get busy with accounting in order to learn at least basic contents as soon as possible. In practice, Joseph was allowed to accessed the company's administrative computer from home and could have worked remotely, and to connect he used software that I knew very well because I used it every day.
One morning I saw that he was about to go to the computer and I said to him: “Stay away from that computer! That computer is my competence! You have to study for the entrance tests. You can't waste time!" He gave me a quite dirty look but then that look turned into a smile and he switched on the other PC to study physics and mathematics. I took a quick look at the company's payroll and fiscal accounting, and everything seemed in order. Even the commercial accounting was in order, in practice the work that Joseph should have done, and speaking clearly I should have done, was a really undemanding job. I did that little bit of work that needed to be done, and was very little, especially for someone like me, a skilled and refined accountant used to much more complicated things. I turned off the PC after no more than 45 minutes, when the work was finished.
He told me: "Where did you get with the job?" I replied: “I'm done! The accounting of your company is simple and clean, the work, if it is done every day doesn’t take more than an hour a day, I think the boss wanted to favor you a lot" He replied: "Well he's a good 'man, he guides you but doesn’t oppress you and above all he makes you work and doesn’t exploit you."
Joseph had attended scientific high school and had also been good in his time, but more than ten years had now passed. I saw him take a math book and do all the exercises, without exception, and he didn't get out of his chair until he finished all the work he had planned. He used to study practically 12 hours a day. I had my job and I used to come back home at 6.30 pm, then I seated at the PC and in half an hour the work for the company was done, then I had to do the laundry, to wash, to iron, to cook, to go to the supermarket and Joseph let me do. I was happy to be able to do something good for him, I no longer felt like a "daddy's boy" running after stupid things, I felt grown up, matured, by now Joseph no longer told me: "It could never work ..." by now he had had the proof that things were quite different.
He enrolled in university, at the Faculty of Engineering, he took the admission test and was ranked among the very first. He didn't expect it but he was happy with it. He told his boss and the boss gave him 500 euros in cash and Joseph was really moved and the boss told him: "I hope to live to see you graduate in 5 years!"
I make it short, Project, Joseph studied without interruption for 4 years and, it is now a certain thing, in July 2021 he will take his master's degree and he has not lost his job. I think that soon the boss will also be able to broaden the company's skills to non-executive sectors and Joseph will become the entrepreneurial engine of the company and I hope he can still count on a reliable and faithful accountant like me still for many and many years. I don't know if the fact that we loved each other really weighed on all these events, but one thing is certain: Joseph radically changed my life. If 9 years ago my parents hadn’t decided to renovate the house, I would never have met Joseph, maybe I would never have known love and I would never have been happy.