Interlude 1.3

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EPISODE 24

Maybe not from the sources

You have poured yours

Maybe not from the directions

You are staring at

Twist your head around

It's all around you

All is full of love

All around you

( from 'All is full of love' by Björk )

It tells me the crossing must be done.

This was the title of the email I received from Fabrizio a few weeks after having visited him. When I saw his name on the mailbox of my professional email, which was available through the art gallery's site, I felt sadness and anger, but still I opened  the message -- to find a picture from his Richter's painting, with no other text.

It tells me the crossing must be done.

I waited at least a week, hoping to leave Fabrizio expectant and also to calmly think on my reply. I simply rewrote the title of his email and replied Re: Thank you for the pic. Good luck.

I had no wish to prolong that suffering, neither for him nor for myself.

I had my own crossing to make.

'Wait here, please.' -- I said to the taxi driver who had taken me from Fabrizio's apartment to the nearest club, where I was pretty sure Gabriel was not an habitué. The entrance queue stretched under a marquee, protecting a lively crowd of men from the rain, all neatly dressed or semi-naked for the night. I did not even want to go inside, and from the queue I drew a cute young guy who was looking at me with intensity -- 'The taxi is out there, shall we?' -- And again I went through the storm, towards a pretty decent little hotel near the beach that rented rooms by the hour.

Now, I was not so decent with the young man who later revealed that he had attended one of my workshops, and thus had so readily accepted my invitation to leave the queue. I did not remember him -- a rather handsome dreamer and idealist, who wanted to become a visual artist, he had seen my show several times, and in bed he looked at me with so much love that finally, after so often having done the same thing over and over, my heart broke when later in the evening I dumped him without further explanations.

It had done good to my pride to go to bed with a beautiful guy, and who was younger than both Fabrizio and Gabriel, who had admiration, even respect for me.

And it was only after I had returned to my home in Samsara Heights, remembering the teary-eyed cute guy -- Justin or Jason, I did not pay attention to his name --, that I understood I also had a crossing to make, my own journey to undertake.

I decided that my journey would begin with a more radical measure, and Fabrizio's email had found me leaving for a 3 weeks total silence retreat. 

It were three weeks of suffering and hardship, physically and mentally, meditating more hours than sleeping, but the numerous and valuable insights into my suffering and personal torments was worth it!

There began a period of voluntary chastity and absolute reclusion, which I spent at my secluded home in Samsara Heights, seeing just a few good friends who ventured climbing The Cliff. With the decrease of suffering, my sexual energy had also decreased, and I had also stopped painting -- the two of them had been inexpressibly intertwined for a long time in my life. I tried not to worry about that creative hiatus, because during that time I began to creatively write again.

'Does this feel like a retreat to you?' -- Fabrizio had asked me one day during the stay in our Icelandic home. We had chosen a house that was well away from the city, and being on Iceland's wild coast, there was no sign of civilization to be seen, as if civilization had actually never touched those shores. And except for an occasional fishing boat, or the far noise of a plane, we had no contact, not even visual, with any other human being. 

'Oh no!' -- I laughed sweetly at his remark -- 'This is a retreated house, but not a retreat in any sense.' -- though I had been profiting from the silence and spaciousness of both the house and the landscape to meditate often, during the periods in which Fabrizio went on the internet and took care of his businesses -- 'I never had ​​a retreat with kisses, hugs and sex, babe... I think it doesn't exist!' -- I laughed again.

Some time after I had returned to my home in Samsara Heights, back from Sweden, there came a second email from Fabrizio. It was the continuation of the Richter message, bu in this one there was no text or image -- just the title read: The crossing has begun. Again, despite all the meditation that I had just done, and how it made me clearly see the way I could be bringing more suffering for him, I took a lot of time before answering him, wanting him to fell uncertainty and expectation, and then I simply wrote back: Congratulations. I had intended to reply Good for you, but I thought it sounded aggressive.

'Does this look like a retreat to you?' -- I asked Fabrizio the same question. I sought to understand how he was feeling about our Icelandic holidays. The other times he had rented a house in other countries, it had been with Andara and their group of friends -- and now his entourage had came down to me only. We hadn't so much to talk all day long -- I had been telling Fabrizio about my reunion with Carlo at the Nirvana Lounge after 20 years of separation, but when I felt burdened by emotions, having to go back to my breathing to regain control, we stopped and continued only when I felt at peace again, which could be hours later. And in the mean time, there was either silence or music, since we had both agreed on having the television removed from the house.

'I've never done a retreat to know how it is...' -- Fabrizio laughed -- 'As you said, I cannot hope on love and sex, can I?'

'Much love, yes. But fraternal, not romantic love.' -- there were some pretty dry and hard retreats, but there were many with so much camaraderie and sharings, like those at Plum Village, that were dearest to me -- 'And lots of love for yourself,  and acceptance, friendship, peace... Fabrizio, would you agree to go on a retreat with me?' -- I asked him suddenly. 

In our one week living in a house in Iceland, which would become memorable, Fabrizio and I had the quiet fluidity of time and space, the convivence, the silence, the attention, the dedication, the care, to get to know each other in greater depth, by asking personal questions that needed time and care to be properly answered.

'I won't say yes, at least for now... But neither will I say no, definetely... Is it a good enough answer for you, monsieur Zen?' -- Fabrizio smiled his charming, wittiest smile, trying to give me an ambivalent response, just like I had sometimes given him.

I was afraid that Fabrizio would eventually develop a disdain for meditation just like Catherine had -- though hers was more like an aversion. There was a time when Carlo had to hide himself for his sitting sessions, for she was possessed when she saw him at it -- she felt like she was being excluded, that Carlo had left to a far off place where she could not reach him, even if he was right there in the middle of our living room, nor have any control over him... And she had been mad at me when I had started it, too -- "This is not some religious sect that will kidnap you and your money, is it?" -- Catherine had asked when I unskillfully shared it with her over the phone from Vice City.

But Fabrizio seemed to be a bit different. Though he did not find himself attracted to any spiritual practice, he showed respect towards mine -- just like I did not feel any drive to the financial market, but I did not criticize him for constantly playing with it. In fact, I'd ask for his advice before investing my money, and he had read Shantideva's and the Dalai Lama's books I had given him, and even a couple of others he had seen laying around.

'The titles are really catchy!' -- he justified when he had started reading two of Pema Chödron's books, 'When Things Fall Apart' and 'The Places that Scare You'. I have to confess I had read both books more than once, but I had pretended to be re-reading them because I thought they might interest and help Fabrizio. And they actually had -- 'Though I don't really understand the difference between this and the self-help guides...' -- he had commented.

Some time later after that "The crossing has begun" message, and I had been quietly spending most of my days in isolation at home in Samsara Heights, redecorating it, another email had popped in my professional mailbox.

"It's burning" was the title of the email, and this time there was more text to it: Hard to say if it's a bridge or a boat I've taken for this crossing. Whatever it is, it's burning. The margin I've left, too, seems to be burning. Now there is no way of turning back. But the boat or the bridge that I'm on is also burning. These flames all around me, is it what they call hell? Or was it hell before, with all the lies and deceit, and now this fire is purging? Does it ever stop burning?

I had goosebumps upon reading that message, and it brought tears to my eyes. Fabrizio insisted on the "crossing" term, and that language was like a code, a Buddhist code, between us -- he would later tell me he had used it because he was writing to a public e-mail at the site of the art gallery, and he was not sure who had access to it. And he neither wanted nor could be exposing himself more than that.

The main difference between Fabrizio and me was in relation to how we handled our personal, private lives, and the part of it that was public.

I did not hide my sexuality, and made it my own art and form of expression. Although it seemed outrageous and scandalous, I absolutely did not care about publicly revealing my nudity. In my understanding, it was just the image of my body, it was not my body itself that people were looking at. I hadn't been shocked at seeing the picture some guy had posted, of a brochure with my self-portraits made all sticky after he had masturbated to it. Touching or looking at my pictures was not touching or looking at me -- but the wish to, the lust and desire that my art inspired was what made it strong, and a good selling product. I felt so separated from that body of my art, and even the body with which I delighted in bed, just because it had no heart...

It took me longer to answer that message from Fabrizio, since I was dealing with my own grief, having seen how heartless I had become. The Justin or Jason teary-eyed cute guy from Vice City still haunted me, along with many I had dumped and hurt. And then he wrote again, before I could send him a reply -- How does the other margin look like? Where is it, actually? Are you there, please?

Of all the things I had told Fabrizio that night, one had impressed him more than anything else -- what I had called my loyalty to myself. 

I had a private truth that would set the tone of my public life. Fabrizio's life was exactly like that, too, his private truth actually being the same as mine, but the effects were opposite. While I was living my truth openly, with freedom, he lived his in a veiled way that turned his private life into a secret and the public life into a lie. And that I would be included into that scheme was what terrified me -- to be the lover in the private life, parallel to the public life that Fabrizio led with Andara.

It was that "please" in his message, and the realization that he was suffering, and a certain empathy with what he might be going through at that moment, and the fact of being in an airport again -- all that led me to call his mobile, the number which I had stored since that night in Vice City.

But Fabrizio could not answer my call at that moment, and when he called back, I was flying to Italy, and he found my phone off for many, long hours.

I had finally decided to visit Carlo. My chastity had the effect of an artistic abstinence too, and I no longer painted nor even neared the easel.  It seemed like the last canvas I had painted was ages ago. For my new, Argentinian art dealer, who kept demanding new works, I had sent some old paintings, which I had not previously enjoyed, but that were not so bad. The guy was exploring new markets in emerging countries, and even what was old to me was new to them, so I didn't worry much about my creative hiatus. 

Yet, I'd rather be like my father, who painted so little and had thus valued his work so greatly -- and seeking for inspiration and guidance, I had decided to take refuge in his atelier and hermitage in the Apennines, on the farm he had inherited from my great-grandfather.

During the flight from Samsara Heights to Italy, I gave way to the impressions of my first visit to the family's farm in the Apennines. At first, I had felt a huge dullness. Not because the place was boring or ugly -- in fact it was the first landscape that somehow fascinated me since we had moved to Europe. Although I missed the sea, always missed the sea so much, that harsher and tragic landscape of the Italian mountains had awakened interest in me. Quite unlike the rural countryside of France where we lived, beautiful and domesticated, that had succeeded in arousing only ennui -- and sadness.

I cultivated sadness, at that time of my life. Other boys had dogs or cats as pets -- I had my sadness. The sadness of having left Punaouilo, the sadness of being a foreigner in France, the sadness of not recognizing any place as mine, the sadness of having no good memory anywhere to be found in my new life. Nor did I have any friends, because I felt French children were very aggressive and competitive.

What I remember most of my great-grandfather's house is the small room that I occupied on the second floor, which had once been my father's. And most of all, I remember the breathtaking views that I had from the windows next to which my bed stood. I sat on the bed and watched the valley at our feet, where a lake was fed by inumerable small streams, the ever moving fillets glittering under the sun, and there were ragged mountains to be seen all around me, and no other houses at all. 

A world that seemed deserted but not empty, very quiet in its harmony, yet incredibly lively in its natural rhythms. And at night, perhaps because it was my very first time on high mountains, I thought the sky was incomparably star-filled, and the moon shone much brighter and looked much bigger. I truly believed that I was closer to heaven.

I slept looking at the sky, and the clouds passing by between me and the stars carried me into my sleep and dreams. Literally, I believed to be living in heaven. 

But since all the time I had been cultivating the vines of sadness and boredom in European lands, most of the time it was also just that what I felt at my great-grandfather's rural house.

Since Carlo had returned to Europe, after having lived for almot 10 years in the tropics, it was the second time he was visiting his grandfather. His first time, I had been little and we were just newcomers, and Catherine had forbidden me to accompany my father. This time, however, Carlo and I had urged Catherine, and since she was in the final stages of writing her latest novel, she too was happy for the chance of taking a break from us.

However, the trip began with a setback for me -- I wanted to fly to Italy! It would be my first time on a plane! But Catherine's terror of flying made her eagerly support Carlo's idea of going by car -- at this point in our life, my father had his works exhibited and sold in Europe, the Americas and Asia, and he had bought a modern and fast, very fancy sports car.

Obviously, the trip had lasted much more than if we had taken a plane, but it was also much more pleasurable! At the first turn we made, leaving our house and Catherine behind, Carlo had started talking to me in an Italian that was enriched with dialect, which my mother did not allow him to teach me for being "so far from Dante's language!"

I discovered a very different Carlo during that drive. The man who had always been quiet and melancholic, always submissive and bland in Catherine's presence, while away from her, speaking in his original idiom -- moving his hands so much and so often leaving the steering wheel that it was making me nervous -- on the way to his homeland... That man became expansive and cheerful.

All along the way,  he enthusiastically told me stories of his childhood and youth on the farm, and a little more about the death of his parents and about his difficulties in living with Tarso -- my dad had actually been discretely warning me about the difficulties I might have, too --, his grandfather, that soon we would meet. On the way, we stopped a few times so that Carlo could show me the landscapes of his memories. The road was very scenic, truly beautiful, but my enchantment was all towards my father, and his new enthusiasm and joy that deeply affected me.

'Look, Laurent! That's your great-grandfather's house!' -- Carlo had finally pointed out, when we saw a lonely house high on a hill with a sparkling lake at its feet. We had crossed two countries, and after seeing towns become villages, and those villages become even smaller hamlets, until at last we had seen only sparse and isolated houses. Now, the dramatic mountainous landscape had totally enveloped and departed us from the rest of the world, which seemed to exist only like a faint possibility behind those walls of rock.

"Bellissimo ragazzo! Ma troppo delicato e mingherlino!" -- Tarso, my great-grandfather, had commented upon seeing me, leaving me both embarrassed by praising a beauty I did not think I had, as well as pointing at my dreaded thinness, that actually haunted me. To my dismay, later I came to understand that the last word he had used -- Tarso spoke only Italian, from which I understood just the few words I had gotten during our drive from France -- meant not just thin, but also weak.

 'Let's make this boy a man!' -- Tarso then proposed, scaring me a little when he punched me on the shoulder. My great-grandfather was a tall, strong man with the biggest hands I have ever seen, and I was afraid of him. What is he going to do to me, I thought? I had heard that older boys went to brothels, sometimes taken by their own fathers, and I feared that my great-grandfather had something similar in mind. Or even worse -- since we are in those desolate mountains where no other houses or villages were to be found, I imagined there could be something even more primitive and horrifying for a rite of passage.

Somewhere I had read that one needed to look at the quality of the perfume and not so much at the bottle's beauty, since it was after the fragrance that we would be scenting -- and before my extreme thinness and my total lack of grace to walk, sit, speak (my voice had started changing, sometimes deep and muffled like a truck's exhaust, other times sharp and tuneless like a little jumping frog), I tried to compensate showing some content. 

As soon as I entered my great-grandfather's house I went to the bookshelf, where there were a few books in French, which I would quickly devour in a couple of days -- but it was the Italian books that fascinated me, for the challenge it represented trying to learn a new idiom for the first time in my life.

And it was not just at Tarso's that I had been taking refuge in the books, where terrible and awesome adventures were experienced only by the others.

I think I had started to read trying to understand how a book could be so fascinating that it would steal my mother from me. Because I had the impression that she liked them more than she liked me, spending more time with them, reading them or writing them, than she had ever devoted to me.

And when I actually took interest in reading, it was as if I finally shared a secret with Catherine. I had the notion that we read books of different kinds, but when I lifted my eyes from my book to see her reading, I knew that I had inherited her love and fascination with letters, and I felt reassuringly closer to my mother.

For almost a whole day, Tarso had forgotten me, since his grandson was back home. I could then explore the house that, contrary to what Catherine had imagined and always told me, was not poor. Simple and rustic maybe, but so huge and solid! With two floors, a magnificent and broad staircase made of impressively thick logs, and a multitude of rooms opening to other rooms to explore. That first day, the evening came before I had even left the house or the books to explore the rest of the farm.

Since it was the weekend, and my great-grandfather had already made his daily rounds of the land, we did not go out. Carlo and Tarso had spent the whole time in conversations before the big stone fireplace which, according to my great-grandfather, had been erected on the same spot where a bonfire was lit by pastors since the times before the Roman Empire. The fireplace looked like a great devouring mouth, a little scary for me, so wide and tall, and its primeval fire should be able to burn, so it was said, the concerns and fears of those who talked before her.

And it seemed that Tarso and Carlo believed it, for they talked for many hours by the fireplace, day in, day out. They lowered their voices every time I approached, though they actually conversed in Italian -- in fact, a dialect from those mountains, of which I could not understand anything. 

Still, there was something they wanted to hide from me.

I was the summer holidays of 1987, and less than a year after, Carlo would leave home. 

I think I had already noticed a much worse tension between my parents, for Carlo and Catherine had started frequently quarrelling and screaming at each other. Usually, they just ignored one another, so that it seemed I was luckier than most children of my age, whose parents had already divorced. I did not know what was being discussed between Catherine and Carlo, nor in the conversations between Carlo and Tarso, but I could sense their severity by the way adults changed their tone and seemed to pretend else in my presence. 

I had started worrying and often startled at the beginning of their fights, but not even with my worst fears could I have predicted that my father would leave us.

'You know that books grow from trees, son? It's time for you to know the origin of the books, rather than stick to themselves. Lets walk through the fields! It will do you better than burying yourself into those books!'  -- my great-grandfather promised me, pulling me away from my notebooks, in which I wrote children's stories that I wanted to pretend were the great adventures of adult characters.

I was still too young to realize the scale and importance of what was happening at that meeting of generations, and I did not share the pride and happiness that my great-grandfather and my father seemed to feel just by my presence in our family's farm and lands.

At least, I was able to show true enthusiasm with what we saw on our tour through the mountains. 

For the first time I was seeing the world from so high, and my constat exclamations actually made my great-grandfather happy as much as they annoyed him, as sometimes I could notice by a certain glow in his eyes, denoting a doubtful approval. 

But he never smiled.

I had no idea how those lands belonged to me and even constituted me, being the ground for my birth as much as Punaouilo, and how before me, countless generations of D'Allegro boys had been born and raised there. 

Carlo had been the first D'Allegro to leave, to Tarso's deep sorrow, and I had been the first D'Allegro born far away from our farm.

My great-grandfather was still a bit upset about the fact that Catherine hadn't come with us. 

I did not know, but Carlo had hidden my mother's refusal from Tarso until our arrival, not to show his weakness and lack of authority as a husband, as my great-grandfather had thus interpreted  Catherine's strong will and freedom.

I never had heard that she had been invited, and I think she never even considered joining us, but I was actually glad that it had been just the two of us, Carlo and me. As for Carlo, despite Tarso's strict disapproval, I could see that he was exulting in his freedom, and enjoying just like me our renewed closeness.

But my great-grandfather had still another intention, that was bothering me above others -- he wanted me to work in the fields, experiencing the peasant activities like once my father had done.

'No way, dad! I don't want it!' -- I had complained to Carlo, far from my great-grandfather's presence -- 'I did not come here to work... or did I?'

'I will not force you to obey your great-grandfather, Laurent, although he cannot conceive being desobeyed... Tarso wants you to have the experience that for generations has been that of the  D'Allegro family... One day, Laurent, this farm will be yours, and if I know your great-grandfather well, he wants you to love this land as he loves it himself, to make sure that it will continue in the family when he dies, and when I die...' -- I remember shivering to that thought -- 'Could you perhaps try to please your great-grandfather? Even if you don't want to, could you pretend that, son? Tarso will be so very happy!'

I went to sleep with the goodwill that my father asked me to have, but I woke up the next day very grudgingly, when my great-grandfather came to take me out of bed shortly after the sunrise. I got to the fields full of ill will, but without the courage to dare contradict my great-grandfather. 

That same morning, however, my annoyance evaporated and turned into enchantment and commitment of becoming an exemplary farmer -- when I met Fabio.

Since Carlo had abandoned the farm and gone to study in Paris, Tarso had been forced to hire someone to help him on the farm -- at that moment, it was Fabio, the son of a former employee.

Fabio would have been 18 or 20 years old, I guess -- because I never got to ask him. There are things I never knew about him, because our communication was effortful but never deep nor fluent. What little I know from the mountain dialect I learned that summer, in my effort to talk to Fabio.

I started to wake up every day early, spontaneously, to my great-grandfather's contentment. Though sleepy, I was happy to go the fields -- not because of the work that awaited me, obviously, but because I knew that Fabio would be there.

The path through the woods that separated the house from the fields was so lovely, with the dim, flickering light filtered through the trees, the morning symphony of birdsong delicate and joyfully waking me up, the sun majestically rising behind the mountains while illuminating the day without being yet seen -- and when the first rays of sun fell upon the earth, I'd meet Fabio. And he was the sun, for me.

I had learned in school that ancient people worshiped the sun as a deity -- and I adored Fabio as if he were the sun! There had been tribes who sacrificed their people to their gods? I sacrificed my sleep and my vacations, I sacrificed my laziness for Fabio.

My day did not start before seeing him and exchanging a "buon giorno!" with him. 

My day began only after having looked into his eyes, as green as the needles of the perfumed pines around us, and having again amazed at his ​​beautiful face and the manly body. Fabio was markedly my first experience of wonder and rapture with masculine beauty. I lived continually in an altered state, as if a boy of twelve could be drunk,  in Fabio's presence.

Even while working, I sought Fabio. I looked with curiosity and worship at his muscles bulging from the hard work -- he gave me ​​all the easiest tasks -- and how, when he was sweating, his body started to shine. I cannot possibly quite remember the smell of his sweat, but I do remember that when I'd smell it, it was like a punch in my perception, and I felt a shiver across my whole body.

Fabio wouldn't notice my worship. At first, he was polite and kind to me, just because I was the great-grandson of his employer. And he treated me like the child I in fact was -- the shy, awkward boy, a foreign and foolish city kid. However, since I strove as best I could to help him, and tried as well to learn the dialect to be able to communicate with him -- perhaps my sincere efforts, to work and talk with him, had won him and he started to show his liking for me.

In the afternoon, when the sun got too hot, we worked in the barn. Away from the fields, and far from my great-grandfather's frown, Fabio relaxed and we could then talk.

Although I spoke poorly the local dialect, with creativity and the will to communicate, we'd spend many hours talking, sometimes even neglecting our work, and on various subjects -- although that might be more the result of a fanciful recollection than that of reality itself, since we had no common vocabulary to talk that much and sustain our exchange, and probably neither interests nor experiences in common.

My childhood memories, however, recall of long talks with Fabio whom, to my eyes, was not just an ordinary peasant, as someone we'd met at the street market, for instance. Not only was he very beautiful -- he also had dreams and ambitions. He wanted to study, wanted to go to town and to have a technical profession, to progress in life.

At least, that was what I could understand -- but still if I did not understand much of what he spoke, I could see his determination and ambition. He was happy to have someone to talk to, and I -- I was absolutely delighted with the attention and the time that lovely guy shared with me, and I listened to him with devotion, while worshiping him with my eyes.

Fabio was the first friend I had made ​​since coming to Europe. 

At school in France, I was shy and tried to isolate myself from the other boys, who were all aggressive, competitive and noisy -- or at least I felt so. Egress from my sweet tropical school where we had all been friends, all wearing uniforms and not only looking the same, but somehow feeling and thinking the same -- though in fact, despite being also born in Punaouilo, I was the only boy with European looks in my class. I hadn't felt any different from my peers on the island; however, in France I felt completely alienated from all other French boys, compared to whom my physical aspect was no different.

Despite the French citizenship, I was a foreigner in France. I did not care for the games the other boys played, I did not want to compete, nor wanted to choose the nicest clothes that I should wear to have a style and to belong to some group.

Apparently, my education in Punaouilo had been faulty, and I was set one year behind at school in France. Being thiner and taller than the other kids, one year older but not as bright, gave me the perennial awkward feeling of misfit.

In class, I was ridiculed every time I spoke -- beyond my lazy accent from the islands, my voice sounded feminine. And so did my way of sitting, walking, making any gesture -- compared to other children, I was too slow and delicate, and I was considered effeminate. Nothing I did seemed appropriate, and even in doing nothing, just standing still, motionless, paralyzed, someone would still think that my posture was effeminate, and I'd be ridiculed and swore at. 

There was nothing I could do. I came to the conclusion that I had been born completely wrong and flawed, inappropriate for socializing with my peers. I just wanted to be left alone, and during the breaks I sought to isolate myself.

But my invisibility had ended earlier in the year, when some of the older kids at school had found out that my dad was a famous painter and my mother a bestselling author, and me, a weakling, timid and fearful boy. 

In fact, a happy occasion for me -- when Carlo had come to fetch me at school with his fast and fancy car, which was also very expensive -- had been my doom, as it stoked the interest of a bunch of bad boys on me.

They couldn't care less about my parent's fame, though they regarded them as an odd couple, too modern for the countryside community -- what had interested them was that I came from a wealthy family, or so they thought. That was the impression that the frequent trips abroad from both Carlo and Catherine gave, and their appearances in local newspapers talking about their careers, in addition to some foreign visitors who came on their foreign cars to our house, which was also too modern for that peaceful, somewhat old fashioned countryside.

I did not have any reaction when the older boys began to drag me with them, during the class breaks, to the back  of our school. There, they would take all my money, and even the fancy watch that had been a gift from my grandmother Celeste -- I had to lie to Catherine that I had lost it when they took it away from me.

I had to lie at home about needing money to buy more books and do excursions with the school that never existed -- to be able to pay the daily toll to the boys who continually threatened me.

The school was the slaughterhouse at which I had daily to voluntarily present myself, to be massacred and humiliated, a renovated torture from Monday through Friday. I was afraid even to go to the bathroom for fear of what might happen to me there, and I spent all day with that urge,  afraid that I would pee in my pants, which would have been the ultimate humiliation. 

But the guys from the gang would take me wherever they wanted, without asking me -- just pulling me by the ear or pushing me around, mercilessly.

The other students, seeing I was so weak as to be so easily mistreated, just laughed or mocked me, adding to my humiliation with more swearing. 

At that time, no one talked about bullying. I think even the teachers who saw me hostage might have thought it was "just boys being boys," and no one ever came to offer me help. I guess nobody perceived me terrified, humiliated, miserable. I was just the kid who happened to be the mocking target of the school, and everyone saw it as just a joke -- and anyways, no one dared to oppose my tormentors, who were the worst boys in school. 

I had even stopped attending the library, despite my love and appetite for books. I did not go into any other room that was not the classroom, afraid to see myself ambushed. I used to cross all the corridors running, eyes on the floor to avoid anyone who would try to make me trip, as if running for my life and from the mockery that followed me in shouts and laughters.

'Are you eating well at school, Laurent?' -- Carlo had asked me one day -- 'You seem to be getting much thinner...'

The money I had to eat, it didn't stay with me. And if I took a snack from home, I had to devour it before entering the school, or it would also be confiscated. Later, even the imported food Carlo and Catherine brought me from their trips became a toll I had to deliver to the gang. 

'That's exactly how it's supposed to be!' -- Catherine had justified -- 'He is in a growth phase. Look how tall he is! And pimply! This boy needs to eat less chocolate, that's it! What's done of all that Swiss chocolate I have brought you, Laurent?'

But if it were only the financial blackmail, which forced me to repeatedly ask for money from my parents, it would not have been so difficult.

 The older boys, however, thought they would look older and way more cool by humiliating me. One of their favorite games was pushing me around among themselves like a ball, from one side to another, and back again, back and forth, until one of them would let ​​me fall to the ground. I had no courage to react, and I also tried not to cry in front of them, not even when I actually hurt myself from falling to the ground -- because crying was the worst shame and confession that I was not a real boy!

 I cried and sobbed like a little girl. Even Catherine had pointed that.

'Have you heard it said that boys don't cry?' -- Catherine had asked me one day, a bit annoyed with my tears -- 'That is nonsense!' -- she amended -- 'But boys cry like boys, not like girls! Please, Laurent!'

 And I tried to handle the violence and the humiliation without complaining, without exclaiming nor screaming, for I also knew that my voice at times sounded shrill as a girl's .

Still, there was a secret thing that terrified me the most, and that I could not understand so well, yet. 

Being constantly with the school gang, among those boys who smoked and drank beer and belched and were aggressive and noisy, I had realized how gentle I was, and quiet, shy, soft, fearful... and my perception was that I would never get to be a real boy like them. 

Not that I either identified with the futile girls' world of vanity and consumerism, gravitating around silly novelties and small, useless things. 

That's when I started wondering -- I do look like a boy, but I'm not like one of them... then, what am I?

Fagot... I had heard other kids call me that in France. That seemed to set me apart from the other boys and define me. I was not sure what it meant, but the disdain with which it was said made me feel deeply ashamed, and different from all the other kids. It was also like a code that allowed others to disrespect me, like a confirmation that I was inadequate, unworthy, the worst of all. They threw that swearing at me like stones -- fagot was the password to my daily exclusion from the school community.

Those holidays in the Apennines had also represented a break from that suffering -- and, in a sense, a redemption, to be able to befriend a boy who was older than me, and also much stronger, and tougher. And who was not the least threatening. I did not fear Fabio's company.

He did not seem to judge me like the other boys. Beside him, I did not care if my gestures were boyish or sissy, I did not have to worry on how I looked, walked or sat, nor how I was talking and how my voice sounded to him. Fabio never looked down, condemningly on me, and never ridiculed me. Instead of stupid, wimpy, sissy, he just called me friend. Amico.

I felt loved, accepted, just as I was, without the struggle to try be someone else or silence, bury who I was.

And a feeling I had never had before, and that I did not know how to name yet, had been born and slowly grew on me, with each day I spent in Fabio's company.

One day, an accident happened. 

I was looking raptly at Fabio and not to the ground where I walked, and I stumbled on a root.  I had been so relaxed and enraptured with Fabio that I fell without anyone having set a trap for me, unlike school, where despite all my precautions I was frequently being led to trip and fall by the other boys.

I slammed my face against the ground, scraped my hands and knees, and my left foot immediately started hurting a lot.

Fabio carried me through the woods to the house -- and though I was in pain and even bleeding, I just remember the feeling of being supported in his powerful, strong arms and being held against his broad chest, feeling his intensely masculine scent invading me, that made me shiver with pleasure, his sweat wetting me -- and when I cried, it was not like a small boy, of pain or fright, but as a teenager, crying from happiness and love, on the discovery that, after all, I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the arms of men.

For the first time, I had the perception that I liked boys. 

My great-grandfather, after all, had been right, when he said that the mountains would make me a man. At that moment, in Fabio's arms, I stopped being a boy to start being the man that would forever be in love with other men.

But at that time there were no other men -- I cared only for Fabio, he alone existed, and it was with him that I was in love. But maybe a part of me remembered that at the end of the holidays I would have to go away from him, and that I would have to look for lovely Fabio in the other guys, among those who were aggressive, competitive and noisy -- and so I sobbed on his shoulders, nested in his arms.

It was the first time my heart broke from loving.

Nothing serious had happened with my foot, but neither Tarso nor Carlo let me go to work the following morning. I spent all day long in a familiar sad mood, that I hadn't cultivated in a while, and I only rejoiced when at the end of the day, Fabio came to visit me in my room.

For some days I was prevented from going to work, and so a new ritual was inaugurated between me and Fabio, who would visit my room in the early evening, before he went home. 

I made him sit on my bed on purpose, so that after he was gone I would still have the smell of him, and I'd become inebriated and sleep on it.

He visited me even during the weekend, when he had no obligation to present himself for work -- to me, that was proof that our friendship was real. We had agreed to do a tour together on the mountains, but when my injury got it canceled, he still came to be with me.

I was not expecting him, and he found me in my room, writing. It was some adventure from which I cannot remember the plot, but the hero was clearly modeled on Fabio, so beautiful and extremely kind, absolutely perfect and wonderful as himself.

I was embarrassed and wanted to hide my notebook, without realizing that he did not know French.

It was then that I discovered Fabio's other beauty. He was not only a handsome and muscular young man, who was helping me overcome my fear of older boys. He would also bring a new meaning to my school learning -- when he marveled at my writing, and was enthusiastic with the fact that I wrote stories, and at my ease in learning Italian, and so many more things that I knew and had studied. All that I usually took for granted in my education, it was Fabio to teach me how to appreciate and value.

I was happy when he asked me to teach him all that I could. More Maths, more Geography, whatever I wanted and could remember, even if it was in French, he was eager to learn. I was surprised and embarrassed by the difficulty he had in reading, and I suddenly realized how much effort could there be in doing something that I considered so easy and simple.

Thus, we were also getting together after his shift, in my room, where I enjoyed the freedom of looking at him at length, without the fear of being observed by my father or great-grandfather.

One afternoon, the last of my enforced rest, I went in search of Fabio, wanting to invite him to study outside in the woods instead of my room, which was too hot.

And what I saw that afternoon buried forever the boy Laurent had been, and put definitely in his place the teenager who would become Laurent, the man.

From behind a bush, I watched Fabio bathing, preparing to meet me.

And if until then my love for Fabio had been idealized and mixed with friendship, although some sensual elements had been there, like trembling when he touched me, or when I aspired his sweat -- that evening, upon seeing Fabio naked, I awoke to my sexual desire.

Recalling that occasion, I have to think that it was not Fabio's nudity that made me stay hidden behind a bush watching him.

 That would have seemed natural to me. I had seen my father naked before, and sometimes we had even showered together. 

It was the first awareness of my own desire, caused by his nakedness, that kept me behind the bush, my body and senses having awakened in a sudden burst.

I had an intense erection as I had never before experienced, and when I got up to leave, seeing that my friend had turned off the shower, I had my first ejaculation. 

I froze, not knowing what to do, not knowing what had happened, feeling scared but also pleased with that new sensation, that was not the same thing as a nocturnal, unconscious emission, but so much more pleasurable, and clearly caused by Fabio and his male beauty.

From that day on, I started looking at Fabio in a different way.

It caused me to feel doubt and guilt, because my friend did not look differently at me -- he seemed different, but just to me.

Just looking at Fabio and inhaling his manly smell was not enough anymore -- I now wanted to touch him. And without any malice, but perhaps with a bit of pride and vanity, he often allowed me to touch his muscles.

'You are so handsome, Fabio...' -- I now felt unsure in praising him, for it sounded almost like a confession of my love. I was suddenly afraid that maybe Fabio would estrange me, starting to ridicule me like the other kids at school had done -- 'You could be a model and earn money!' -- that was the biggest compliment I could conceive, and it still felt wonderful to be so sincere in my admiration for him, if a bit risky.

  'No.' -- I actually had nothing to fear from Fabio, no rejection, no violence. He had just laughed at my proposal -- 'I don't need that! I want to own a farm!'

'You are so strong...' -- I had started to praise him openly, anchored on a courage that was absolutely new to me, grounded as it was on my desire, and I was even bold enough to propose games in which we would have physical contact -- 'I bet you can carry me easily to the top of that hill...' -- all I wanted was to be back in his arms, only this time I might as well embrace him.

Now that I think about it, Fabio never realized my desire simply because homosexuality was not part of his repertoire. He never had considered its existence, I think, and so he was never suspicious at my constant and exaggerated praise on him. I also think he did not care about being beautiful or strong, since the goats and tomatoes that had been his daily companions didn't care about his beauty either.

'You are also getting stronger, Laurent!' -- he had replied, but unlike my praise, Fabio's contained no lust for my body. He did not notice my provocations, and was completely oblivious to my desire. For him, there was no other healthy feeling between two guys that had not been friendship, brotherhood.

And indeed, not only had my body developed with the work on the fields,  along with a natural and enhanced nutrition, but I was also actually feeling stronger. If at first I had been cautious in carrying an empty bucket, I now felt confident to carry a stack of wood into the house and until the fireplace. 

And the force that I felt was also interior -- and along with it, a new sense of incredulity directed at my own past, at how helpless and passive I had been before my classmates.

I owed this new confidence to Fabio. 

Not just because I adored him. He had actually respected and valued me -- although I was no more than a twelve, almost thirteen years old boy, he saw in me all the things I had already learned and knew, and he valued my talents and abilities that I had taken for granted.

And it was with guilt that, even during our study sessions, when he was so serious and concentrated in his readings, trying to learn everything I could teach him -- perhaps far more aware than I was of our imminent separation --, it was with guilt that I bent over him, rubbing against his muscles and his hairy skin, drunk with desire, wanting to awaken in him an interest in me that would be bigger than the one he manifested for the Urals or even for Punaouilo, and for everything else he did not know across the planet. 

There was guilt, and also fear that he would finally realize my lust, and that it would put an end to our friendship, so sincere and pure on his part.

And because I was so intoxicated with Fabio, I never realized how increasingly serious the conversations between my great-grandfather and my father were. I was used to Carlo and Catherine quarreling, lately often with screams that made me so fearful, so that these men's low voices seemed not so threatening to me, no matter how much tension they carried.

I even proposed my plan of taking Fabio to France, where he could focus on his academic studies as he wished -- and I have to say my proposal was not completely altruistic, since I could also imagine him with me at school, protecting me from the older boys.

'Ma che cose senza senso! Nonsense! Ma che assurdità!' -- Tarso had exploded -- 'It's just what I needed! The government taking away my ancestral land...' -- a National Park was in the process of being constituded, and Tarso was going to lose part of his properties -- 'and now I'm also to lose my employee!'

Since we had arrived, Carlo had been burdened with a lot of paperwork that he did not like to deal with, but that Tarso himself was totally unable to take care of. And besides all the personal problems that Carlo had in France, of which I knew nothing, my great-grandfather had added one more -- he insisted that my father should force Catherine to move to the Apennines, where we would all take charge of the family's farm. My great-grandfather was increasingly concerned about the fate of his property, as he grew older, and that National Park was threatening him. 

And he had never been able to forgive Carlo's defection.

'It's time that the D'Allegros return to where they belong!' -- Tarso spoke fiercely, and he had included both my father and me in his reprimand, for we were the only D'Allegros that were out of place.

But if at the time I did not realize how serious Carlo's problems were -- and the slightest of them was Tarso's will and wrath --, nowadays I think my father, from his side, had realized my feelings for Fabio.

He took me on a tour to the mountains, just the two of us. Since we had arrived, Carlo had gravitated into my great-grandfather's orbit, to the amount of governmental paperwork which Tarso was unable to take care of, and I had spent all the time possible with Fabio, so that my father and I had enjoyed very few moments together.

On that tour, we were able to again strengthen our affection. Especially when Carlo told me for the first time that story -- he'd return to it at the Nirvana Lounge -- about the albine baby chamois that had been rejected by his mother, and that Carlo had tried to save without success.

'Did he die, dad?' -- I was so touched when I heard his narration on the struggle of the baby to survive, and on Carlo's struggle to try to help the baby, which nevertheless had been too scared to let Carlo approach him -- 'But even if he had no mother, couldn't his father have helped him?'

Carlo had to explain to me that in nature such a baby could only be fed by its mother. And often males were hunted and killed on those mountains, so that the baby might have no father anymore. It was a very sad story that had marked Carlo's childhood, addressing his own orphanage.

'But you, my son, you have a father. And I'm here for you. I will not reject you for anything in this world. I will always be there for you, Laurent.'

Carlo did not speak openly about the love that I was experiencing for Fabio, but remembering that statement from him -- that later, when he had abandoned us, would torture me like a deceitful promise --, I could tell that he was declaring his unconditional love and acceptance for me, even if I was to love other boys.

Perhaps my great-grandfather had noticed it too, or at least had sensed it, for he decided to send Fabio to the highlands, to prepare a shack that they used in winter. He would go and stay there doing repairs, and be absent from the farm until after our departure.

I was shocked to hear the news of his departure. But to compensate my shock, and the sadness that he also felt, including his abbreviated studies, Fabio had taken a day of his vacations so that we could go together to the lake at the bottom of the valley. My great-grandfather did not oppose to that, neither did Carlo.

It was the most beautiful excursion that Fabio and I did together. We strolled down through fragrant woods, and often the trail ran along crystal clear streams, to dramatically arrive and emerge near the noisy waterfall that rushed from the icy heights, bringing the defrost water and helping to make the lake down the valley very beautiful and cold.

I was happy, very happy -- but sometimes I also felt sad, remembering that it would be our last day together. And for this reason, or because we are as far from my great-grandfather's house as we had ever gone, and it was for an entire day, I had many expectations. Especially that something -- either romantic or sexual, and maybe both -- between Fabio and I would happen.

I had been waiting for another chance to see him naked, but when we were down to our swimming trunks only, I realized how embarrassing it would be trying to hide my almost perennial erection from my friend, who was inadvertently causing it.

At first I felt awfully shy, and decided I would not go into the water. 

I sat at a stone, legs crossed, hidding the bulge that tortured and pleased me at the same time. It was like being back to school, afraid that my eyes longing for Fabio's beautiful naked body would denounce me and further humiliation and rejection would follow.

It was a very familiar darkness, that of fear and rejection, that had suddenly returned to fill my heart after so many days of light in the company of my friend. 

And under that radiant sun, in a clear day, I had found myself deeply immersed and helplessly trapped in my inner darkness again.

Fabio still insisted that I jumped with him in the water -- It is not cold! -- he had shouted at me, though it was very cold indeed -- And it's not so deep! -- although my father had made ​​me promise to be very careful. 

But Fabio was not ready to so easily settle with my negativity, which would have spoiled all the joy of our tour -- and that actually was not my true will, not to mention my deepest desire.

Since I kept denying, and I had miserably shrunk into myself, for the first time Fabio's strength felt threatening -- when he walked toward me, his tremendous beauty turned mainly into muscles and power, and he just grabbed me and carried me into the water -- just like the school bulliers did, tugging me to whatever corner whenever they had wanted. For a moment, I felt like crying with rage, exactly as if I were in school and being bullied again... only that this time it was worse, for I was being bullied by my best friend, the only one I had so far trusted!

So sad, really, and I felt defeated. I just lay on Fabio's shoulder like a limp cloth, without reaction, feeling it was my fate to be bullied. I felt negligible and contemptible, to my worst. But I decided to hold back the tears because of that shame that was so familiar to me, that even my emotions should be mocked because they sounded effeminate.  And I also was feeling ashamed that he might have noticed my erection brushing against his chest. Humilliated, I tried to hide my emotions from Fabio, and I made an effort to bury them deep within.

 And in this process of burying my emotions, I was surprised to have an insight that, even today, I think was quite deep for a twelve years old boy...

I realized that Fabio was not disrespecting my desire nor my will, but actually forcing me to accomplish them.

The moment we hit the water, I thought -- if he hadn't grabbed me and carried me without my consent -- and he was joyfully laughing as he had done it, all the time being gentle with me --, perhaps I would have remained at the margin, just as I had always done, throughout my life in Europe, huddled and fearful, sad and unhappy, while actually dreaming about being back in his arms.

But Fabio forced me to be happy, and to happily spend a day of freedom and joy, of laughter and excitement in his company -- and that attitude would have profound echoes for my entire life.

Often, from then on, when I realized I was sabotaging myself, giving up on my own happiness or self-imposing difficulties and creating obstacles to it, it was enough to remind myself of Fabio carrying me in his muscular arms, my face so close to his face that I could have kissed him, with his strength overcoming my own resistance, for me to decide to carry myself towards my own happiness. 

I would be my own Fabio to myself!

I am so grateful to Fabio for so many things that I have overcome at different moments in my life by having known him!

And today I think, despite my frustration at the time, it was actually wonderful that he never touched me and did the things that I wanted him so badly to do -- and that I did not exactly know what they were --, because the memory I have of him remains pure and delicate, like a very special and unique friend, and an ideal love.

But there would be one more thing to thank him yet.

When later in the afternoon we returned to my great-grandfather's house, Fabio was still impressed and had been so enthusiastic with the fact that I had won every swimming race. I not only swam better than him, but also much faster, even being weaker and smaller than him. And from the whole day that we had spent together, it was my swimming ability that he bragged the more about. He was elated.

'He is a true champion!' -- he had cheerfully announced to Carlo and Tarso. 

Carlo, who had taught me himself how to swim in Punaouilo, was not so surprised to hear of my prodigious breath, and despite not having seen me swim in a long time, he realized that having become taller with long arms, I had also become faster.

'I'll look into that...' -- Carlo had promised Fabio. 

And indeed, upon our return to France, Carlo would put me on the swim team at the club from the nearest town, and set to build a pool at home -- his last gift for me, before he left.

*****

Our parting had been shortened by at least two weeks, and Fabio was gone before me, leaving me alone on the farm.

The farm that I could not love, as my great-grandfather had wanted it to happen. Maybe if Tarso had been a little nicer, less silent, less strict, it might have helped me liking the family farm -- through him. But he had obliged me to do too many things I did not want to -- like working in the fields, that turned out being so lovely in the end --, and do things his way -- and Carlo invoked on my patience for obeying my great-grandfather while we were at his place --, always looking at me suspiciously or condescedingly, as I perceived it, which made me feel so inapt -- which I truly was, considering a rural life. 

 But it had been on the family's farm where I had felt love -- and loved -- for the first time; it had been our family's farm to teach me what love was.

I did not love the farm, but I was grateful to it.

I had never cried so much in my life, not even when we left Punaouilo.

The majestic, dramatic landscape of the Italian mountains seemed so desolate and pointless, now that Fabio was gone, and I felt so lost and small.

My great-grandfather got mad at me.

'The D'Allegros are strong, boy'! -- he punched me on the shoulder, but not friendly like the other time. He actually hit me hard, and the shock made me stop crying -- 'We are resistant. We are persistant. We have a center, we have a story, we have a place!' -- I was trembling, afraid of him. Neither Carlo nor Catherine had ever beaten me -- 'A D'Allegro is never shaken! Stop crying now, boy! Have you ever seen a rock cry? We are made of rock!'

I was embarrassed, for I knew I was made of sand, the fine and clear sands of Punaouilo, that any breeze took on a fanciful flight. I was smooth and soft too, and now that Fabio had been able to respect and admire me exactly the way I was, I could assume it without feeling any shame. 

I was not made of rock, but then, if I had to pretend to be made ​​of rock to be able to live among other rocks, I would do it. Now I knew how rocks looked like, and how they were supposed to be.

Tarso's rude speech-- and specially that punch -- had reminded me of the school's hard reality to which I was returning, for making me feel like a defective D'Allegro. If it hadn't been for the presence of Carlo, my sweet and submissive father, I would still be in disbelief that I was a D'Allegro. Or that I could be a true, rocky D'Allegro.

I would learn how to lie about my way of being, and how to pretend to seem having been made ​​of rock. Inscrutable, resistant, hermetically sealed. I had observed and experienced the mountains and I had learned exactly how to do it. Secretly, however, my core would still be made ​​of sand, soft, so soft, sweet, tender, gentle -- but only in my heart, and away from all those eyes that could not accept or love me like I was.

*****

'I did not need to be strong, I just had to look strong. I could never be rough and rude like the other boys, but I could pretend I was like them. Perhaps, I thought, among the other boys there were others who also had to hide their weaknesses and suffering, showing off a strength and aggressiveness that they did not truly have, just to survive at school. That's what I discovered. The power and safety of the masquarade for the weak.' 

I had never told anyone about that passage from my childhood to adolescence with so many details, like I just had to Fabrizio. I had spend a whole afternoon talking to him. But before him, no one had demonstrated genuine interest in me. And our Icelandic, secluded house, quietly immersed in a vast desolate landscape, had brought us closer together.

'You had this insight at what age, Laurent?' -- he had asked me, demonstrating that he was not yet bored from listening to me.

'It was just during this summer I've been telling you about, my dear. The year of 1987. Until then, the only male figure that I had known so close was my father, Carlo, so sensititve, so intuitive, with all his doubts, conflicts and wounds, showing his fragility like other men won't. But at the family's farm I discovered my great-grandfather's strength, who would lead me away from my own passivity and fear, and Fabio's beauty, who awakened my desire and would launch me in life, as well as his love and acceptance, which would be grounding for my self-acceptance.'

 'This is quite an insight for a twelve years old boy...' -- Fabrizio pondered.

'It's like I have said. I stopped being a boy on my great-grandfather's farm. On the D'Allegro lands, our ancestral lands. "We will make you a man." At first, Tarso's words had sounded so threatening, but at last it confirmed to be so true! Tarso might have been disappointed in me, but the fact is that he truly succeeded. The Laurent boy stayed behind on those mountains, and it was the beginnings of a man who emerged from those mountains, and returned to France.'

This man that came up to you, Fabrizio. And who loves you, with the courage and the will to face all he must to stay with you, I thought, but I did not say it.

From Fabio to Fabrizio, it was just a question of a few letters -- but between one love and another, so many men, so much dellusion and pleasure, so much suffering, and decades of struggle for self-acceptance.

NEXT CHAPTER