chapter Twelve

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"There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic."

Edgar Degas

EPISODE 29

If I cried a little bit

when I first learned the truth

don't blame it on my heart

blame it on my youth.

from the song  Blame it on my Youth  with Chet Baker

Carlo was never a bad father, actually.

But he abandoned me. 

And the fact that he used to be so loving doesn't mitigate his fault nor the pain he caused me -- maybe it even worsened it.

He was never a bad father, let's put it this way, until he abandoned me.

One night in Punaouilo, I was already asleep when Carlo woke me up to say that we would finally see Catherine. He had just spoken to her over the phone and he wanted to let me know it right away.

It was the year of 1983 -- the Catalan painter Joan Miró died that year, but not until more than 10 years later would I get in contact with his works; William Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, but only 20 years later would I read his haunting novel "Lord of the Flies"; Red Hot Chilli Pepers launched their first album, but I showed no interest in music yet; "Return of the Jedi" opened in theatres, but I had never been to the movies before --, and 1983 was so important to me because it was the year I reunited with my mother.

"When is she coming, Daddy?" -- I had asked, screaming and jumping on my bed, filled with joy.

"Actually, we're going for her." -- Carlo stared at me, studying my face, worried about my reaction -- "We are going to France, Laurent."

Of course we learned about the history of France in school, but from that night on, I began to ask  Carlo all about the country. How big? How far? How do we get there? Are we going to stay in Versailles? Do I have to study in France, too? Who is the King of France, now? How are the French children? Is the school near the sea? Will we visit Mademoiselle Monalisa? What can I bring? He was patient and kind to me, but actually he did not know much about the country either.

'I've only been to Paris, Laurent.' -- and I imagine that Carlo then suffered from my frequent questions about Paris, a city inextricably tied in his memoirs to his beloved Armand -- 'And, for now, we will not go to Paris. I'm afraid Mademoiselle Monalisa will have to wait. Your mother found a house for us in Southern France, and that's where we'll meet her.'  -- patiently, Carlo clarified me about everything he could, even if the return to France would cause him a bit of anguish mingled with melancholy -- 'That's where we are going to live!'

Moving to France was the most exciting thing that had ever happened in my eight years of life. 

I had never left Punaouilo, and I took it for a very, very large island, since it was impossible to circle it on my bike, not even within one whole day. Actually, I had never tried that -- but I imagined it being thaaaat big!

I had no idea about ​​the size of the country I was headed to, nor how far I would have to travel until reuniting with my mother.

Nor did I percieve the dimension of that farewell to Punaouilo -- I did not realize it would be so definitive, for I had never gone back. 

The only goodbyes I knew at that age were those at the end of the school year, when I bid farewell to my classmates -- to meet them again the next semester. I guess I still imagined that we would meet my mother and then together return to the island that I knew as home. France was not  yet definitive in my mind -- maybe I simply hadn't learned the word or the meaning of 'definitive', yet.

That's why I was not sorrowful during our last visit to Passage Beach, where Carlo had taught me how to swim in the company of the haunting ship wreck and sharks.

Because I did not know that everything I did was for the last time, I don't remember crying. 

I was instead so very happy to meet my mother again.

The last time I hugged Joanna and Will, the last time I swam at the enormous pool of the mansion, my last day in Punaouilo's school, probably the most beautiful school that has ever existed in the world, with classrooms opening onto the beautiful tropical landscapes, the sea illuminating our lessons, the breeze sometimes carrying away the voices of our teachers and liberating our minds for daydreaming.

I did not know that for the last time I was inhaling the scent of the tropical flowers and picking from the trees mangoes rippened under the sun, nor that I would never again fall asleep to the sound of the animals in the forest next to our house, glancing through the window at the starry skies. 

But the hardest part was to get rid of my bike and books.

'Why can't I take it with me, Daddy? You said the ship is huge! Don't you think my bike would fit in?' -- Carlo must have heard thousands of questions during the days preceeding our departure.

And that was my first lesson of letting go and unattachment, when I finally gave my bike to Uncle Will's nephew. That bike had been my greatest wish for a long time, and the first gift that I had ever received from my father. I think for him as well, the bike was like a landmark of the shift in his life that Davez Drew's support had represented for his art. 

'We'll buy you a new one in France, Laurent, I promise! A fancier one, even!'

'But it is this one that I love, Daddy...'

And indeed, just a few weeks after landing on French soil, I had my new bike, even better and more modern than the Punaouilo version had been. And a lot of toys, books, and a whole new room -- all just for me. 

"Are you coming from the Carnival of Venice?" -- Catherine had laughed the moment she saw us arriving at our modern, beautiful and tranquil house on the French countryside, with no neighbors in sight -- nor the sea to be seen anywhere. She was talking about the new and colorful clothes that Carlo had bought for us in Marseille still, just after we had disembarked, and before we had boarded the first train in my life.

My adaptation would be difficult. All the novelty of my life as a wealthy boy did not compensate the loss of the promixity to the ocean and the freedom of going about dressed only in my swimsuit, had I wanted it -- Catherine had always hated to see me "dressed like a savage, and smelling to salt like cod", as she put it, but I'd taken advantage that Carlo allowed it. But in France, Catherine's territory, she had definitely won. 

I was always questioning about the sea, how I could reach the sea. The sea is far away, Laurent! Catherine had already explained it, One day we will visit it, Laurent! my father kept promising, When? was the only thing I wanted to know.

And while that excursion did not happen, Catherine had changed my room's decor into nautical and marine patterns, while Carlo gave me boats and submarines for toys, instead of cars and trains.

In France, I discovered I was afraid of sleeping alone -- for I had never slept alone before in my entire life. 

I missed both Carlo's snoring and my mother's grumbling noises, as much as I missed the mysterious forest noises to fall asleep -- and when Catherine started leaving the door of my room open to the balcony, so that the nocturnal country sounds could enter my room, I was terribly scared and I had cried to the lowing of cows and the neighing of horses.

And I started peeing on the bed, to my embarassment. 

"What is happening, Laurent?" -- Catherine had asked, half amused and half annoyed -- "Are you too excited about your new life or are you marking your territory just like a puppy?"

But I was too young to understand my own feelings, and the reasons giving rise to them  -- I just felt very confused and plainly ashamed.

I used to cry when I was all on my own, almost every day, probably because I missed Punaouilo really hard. I missed my home, our little damp, cramped cottage by the forest, even though in France I had a very spacious bedroom all to myself, full of toys and books, and even my own bathroom. I misssed the vast landscapes I had known so well, the far horizon where sea and sky were one indistinct blue -- while in France, everything was fenced within ungenerous limits, and hills brought the horizon just too close and narrowed it, giving me the sensation that I had been imprisoned. There were too many rules, too many things were forbidden, and a whole new social code to learn. 

And I missed my school, where we happily sang songs and recited poems that got carried away by the breeze that roamed freely through the classrooms. The school in Punaouilo had been less than a hundred steps from the sea -- and just too often before returning home we would swim after class, leaving our books and uniforms in the mango groove nearby. 

Though bullying would only start a little later, the school in France was a true horror for me, with all the kids aggressively competitive and dressed to impress, talking in slang and revolting against things that seemed quite orderly and reasonable to me. 

I now realize how I put myself into that submissive position that led to bullying, fearfully retracting and isolating myself rather than expanding. And somehow refusing to adapt -- I never dressed like any of the groups I could have belonged to in my survival struggle, and by the way how I dressed the mockery had begun. I was a tiny bit more exuberant than most of my French colleagues, and when I realized that, I was made shy. I also refused to play their games, and ultimately refused their friendships, too. During the class breaks, I would stick to my books, clearly enjoying Phileas Fogg and D'Artagnan's company better than my colleagues' chit chat. I considered Edmond Dantés, the Count of Monte Cristo, to be my best friend in my initial years in France.

But from that harrowing period, there stands the most striking incident of all. One summer afternoon, A few months after we had arrived,  my father came home driving a fancy sports car. Carlo seemed to be enjoying himself in France, now that he had his own money.

'What idiocy is this, Carlo?' -- Catherine accusingly questioned him, as he walked out of the car. 

'No need not be worried, Catherine!' -- Carlo was so happy with his acquisition, something inimaginable in his former life, and could not understand Catherine's wrathful irony -- 'I bought it with my own money! I got a new comission from an art gallery in Los Angeles and they have paid me in advance...'

'Oh, I don't care what you do with your money!' -- there had started a finantial unrest between my parents, as Carlo seemed to be making more money with his paintings than Catherine with her books -- 'But I imagine that this car is a gift to me ... and Laurent!' 

'Of course it is, Catherine! You can use the car whenever you want! And...'

'For God's sake, what is it that you don't yet understand, Carlo?' -- Catherine continued to protest -- 'This car has only two seats, isn't it?' 

'Like any fast sports car, Catherine!' -- Carlo had replied, a bit indignant now that he was feeling hurt by my mother.

'Great! But I think you forgot that we are a family, Carlo! Who do you want to leave out?' -- Catherine's voice rose -- 'Laurent?' 

'Of course I won't leave Laurent out! Never! I'll be taking him to school in this car... Why do you want to bring up his education right now, Catherine?' -- Carlo was  convinced that she was overreacting.

'But I'm not bringing his education up!' -- Catherine shouted -- 'His education is perfectly fine, the proper education a refined French boy should get...'

'You know I don't agree on that, Catherine, and I don't see the point...'

'That's so foolish of you, Carlo!' -- she cut him short -- 'To think that Laurent would still be better  in Punaouilo, learning native songs and walking barefoot like the little Indian he is not! But don't try to change the subject!'

'It's not about being better, Catherine, it's about being happier! And I'm not changing subjects... I'm actually corcerned with him and no, I don't want to leave him out of anything... He is home, isn't he? I wanted to take him for a ride...' -- my father went on naively, trying to demonstrate his good will.

'So it's me you want to leave out, Carlo?' -- Catherine exploded.

'That's not what I said, Catherine... I can take you later on a ride too, if you want...' -- Carlo was perplexed with her anger, not quite yet understanding the reasons giving rise to it, but he decided to nevertheless apologize -- 'Sorry, sometimes I guess my French is still not so good to express what I'm thinking...'

'Your French is very good, Carlo. It's just your accent that is awful! And you're not as stupid as you seem to appear! But let me translate what you are demonstrating when you buy a two-seater for a family of three members.' -- my father blushed when he finally realized Catherine's point -- 'Unless you yourself stand away, Carlo, you will be leaving Laurent or me behind, whenever the other one is riding with you. God, that is so mean of you! And that's what your private toy means to our family, Carlo. The cruelty of exclusion. And you still say you are worried about Laurent's adaptation... Thus a family begins to disintegrate... It's really sad.'

'Please forgive me, Catherine...' -- Carlo groaned, not hiding how embarrassed he was -- 'I never thought you could look at it that way...'

'A clear demonstration of your lack of consideration for our family, that's what it is! Shame on you!' -- Catherine had turned her back, puffing, and returned to the house.

In the immensely boring silence of our rural neighborhood, I had heard the powerful roar of a car engine approaching the house. Thrilled, I had come out of my room to the balcony, and watched the whole scene from the first floor, unnoticed. 

To the grief and anger of my mother, to the grief and shame of my father, I added my own sorrow and perplexity, when I returned to my room to cry.

Carlo's sports car was my parent's first major fight in France, and I never got to ride it without feeling sadness and guilt, no matter how cool and fancy that car might have been  -- and I think Carlo felt the same shame, and a few years later, he changed it for another sports car, but only after giving Catherine a family station wagon.

'Laurent!' -- I suddenly heard my father calling me, when he touched my thigh to wake me from my reverie -- 'We have arrived, son. But it really seems to be closed, already.'

I asked the taxi to wait while I looked for the night guard. It took some time, because the guard at the door did not know me, but finally he managed to find Ted on another floor. Ted was the oldest guard at Vice's Contemporary Art Museum, himself an institution and part of the museum's collection, and he knew me since I was nineteen years old. Before I even met Dan, the director, I had been chatting to Ted in my frequent visits to the museum during my initial years in Vice City.

'This is it, Carlo! Vice's Contemporary Art Museum entirely for you! And without Dan knowing that we are here, of course!' -- I had to add, with a laugh -- 'I would like you to see my exhibition before anyone else.' -- this idea had suddenly occurred to me at the Nirvana Lounge. 

'Son... It's so many privileges that you're giving me tonight...' -- Carlo's voice broke with emotion and he fell silent as we entered the museum.

And that's how my father came to be the first person to see my exhibition -- which, for me, was a real honor. When Dan had suggested that I invited Carlo for the openning -- because yes, the idea to contact my father had been Dan's --, he must have been thinking of the prestige my father's presence would lend to my exhibition -- and to the museum, too. And only when Carlo had accepted my invitation did I dare to think of him seeing my paintings for the first time in twenty years. My father was an abstractionist, and I feared he would despise my portraits.

 Now that the dream had come true, Carlo was also the first person to be exposed to the audacity Dan Charmand had reserved to the general public, as he had chosen to place one of my naked self-portraits right at the landing of the stairs that gave access to the room -- The Dark Room.

At the stairs landing, Carlo came across my erection -- and I realized he was shocked. 

'Will you name your boyfriends for me, Laurent?' -- he had asked, giggling, indicating the nude. 

'This is me, Carlo. All the nudes in the exhibition are self-portraits.' 

'Wow! I see something you inherited from me, son!' -- Carlo blushed at his own joke, and I saw him checking my reaction with the corner of his eyes, and I blushed too.

While Carlo silently walked through the exhibition, having decided that joking around my exhibition would not probably be the best way to masquarade our uneasiness with the present situation, as he stopped before each painting, I eagerly sought in his face any evidences of his approval or disapproval. 

And I clearly remembered doing the same with him and Catherine in Punaouilo, when I was a child.

I would spend a lot of time watching Catherine as she wrote. I tried to guess what she might be thinking and feeling, what was it that both absorbed and interested her so much, as she scribbled words in her notebooks for endless hours --- even though I hadn't yet discovered the fascination of reading, my curiosity had been aroused because I felt I was competing with books -- and helplessly losing against them the interest and time of my mother.

Carlo was different. 

While my mom just ignored me, my father made sure to address my presence and always tried to include me in his painting sessions, when I approached him. First he asked if I wanted something, and if it were not the case, he invited me to tell my opinion about what he was painting, as a means of inviting me to participate, and with patience and interest listened to the imaginative stories I told about his works.

But from some point on, he too just focused and lost himself in his own painting -- and at those moments I also lost my father to himself. 

That reverent attitude of absorption from both my father and my mother had intrigued and fascinated me profoundly. Probably trying to understand it and experience it in myself is one of the reasons why I became a painter -- and later, a writer.

I had started painting prior to being literate. And I did it in secret, spontaneously -- to my father's sincere delight and my mother's disappointment and surprise.

"Oh no, please don't tell me you intend to become another Hungerkünstler, Laurent!" -- she would often call Carlo "Der Hungerkünstler" after Kafka's short story, in perhaps what was already a reference to my father's starvation period at the abandoned factory in Paris -- but I had not understand it then, and to our own precarious situation in Punaouilo.

Since Johnny and Clothilde would come just once or twice a year and they did not lend the house often, it was usually only five of us occupying the mansion -- Joanna and her husband Will, and our little family. And Joanna would let me wander through the mansion with her, ​​while she did the housekeeping with the condition that I did not touch anything -- except the books, for she had already noticed the great care with which I handled them. And it's not that I would help her somehow -- she let me turn on the TV and watch cartoons while she worked.

But what had fascinated me most was to find another easel in one of the mansion's many guestrooms. Joanna let me use it because it had been abandoned long ago by an artist, friend of Clothilde, who had never returned to Punaouilo. There was a blank canvas, and although the ink tubes and the brushes were dry, I had cleaned them and mixed the colours with water and started to paint. 

That was how I lost interest in television, too soon, upon discovering that with canvas, brushes and ink I could tell my own stories, rather than just watch them.

And the joy with which Carlo received my first finished painting that I had executed in secret is unforgettable. 

'It's so beautiful, Laurent! It is our home, isn't it? And the forest next to it... And the animals of the forest, too... Oh, that parrot is so colorful! And you portrayed rain and sun in the same day, as it often happens here on the island...'

I was so glad my dad had appreciated and understood my painting, and from then on I painted regularly. 

With time, he was teaching me how to prepare the canvas and wield the brush in different ways -- and in France, he proceeded to give me regular classes, and I could even use his expensive oils. Until the day he left us.

Just like in my childhood, Carlo had begun commenting "Portraiting Dorian G" by the quality of my painting, some strokes and effects, the expression of the portraits, the variety of moods I had been able to evoke. 

He was complimentary, but I could sense he was being cautious, too.

'It's so heartbreaking, Laurent.' -- he looked me in the eye -- 'This exhibition is such a painful experience.'

And when I heard this from my father, a tightness in my throat made me feel like crying. The portraits that were being exhibited had been painted over the last ten years. As far as they were depicting my various affairs, they also portrayed my travels around the world, and to me they meant recollections of the many islands I had visited, reminding me of hotels and hostels, cheap and expensive rooms and the beds where I had laid with those men, hunks and twinks of several ages and nationalities. Those pictures reminded me of intense and fleeting pleasures, and an always underlying pain. 

Years and years of confusion and perdition, years and years of sex with the only compromise to avoid love, to avoid pain. And yet, there had been just pain in my heart, all those years.

'Painful, Carlo?' -- I had expected adjectives like "shocking", "bold", which in fact would be used in newspapers and magazines articles, along with "coarse" and "scandalous". I was hoping to become famous with "Portraiting Dorian G", and I did not worry about becoming infamous -- though I would hate the nickname "Dark Room" that was to give me so much exposure. 

But instead of my offensively explicit nudity, Carlo had seen my exposed, fragile soul. 

'So you are to be the contemporary incarnation of Dorian Gray?' -- Carlo was referring to Oscar Wilde's famous character, implied in the title of the show.

I had rehearsed a challenging and non chalant speech about the ugliness of the soul of our present days, how shallow and uncultivated it was, hiding behind the cult to the body and the apology of a very artificial beauty that sliped back into ugliness, unable to masquarade our souls, after all. Oscar Wilde had published his book in 1890, but Dorian Gray was one of the most iconic characters to that early XXI century, with its superficial aesthetics, the immensely alienating consumerism, a myriad of empty and equivocated values  -- I had an arsenal of topics to address critics and journalists to at least intellectually justify my presence in such an important museum. Dan Charmand had prepared me to turn my exhibition into a public statement.

But with Carlo I decided to be personal -- and it was the only time I did it, regarding that exhibition. Not even with Dan.  Clearly, I felt that one painter had already spoken to the other painter about technical matters -- now it was the father talking to his son.

'Actually, Carlo ... I am the portrait of Dorian Gray. The painting itself, the picture that in the book suffers decadence instead of the portrayed. I am the image that becomes monstrous, while the man remains beautiful... I'm the torn soul of the beautiful Dorian... and Gray in this case would be Angelo Vivace, my ex-boyfriend... For while he cheated me, lying with dozens of guys in Vice City, I was in our bed tossing and turning and shedding tears and crying his name... He would come back to our room radiant from anonymous sex, and I was in tears, having worried about him, and while he felt horny I just felt hurt... He smiled and exulted, while I just tormented myself... He enjoyed it all, while I was just suffering...'

In fact, so many years having gone by, I had remained being the portrait of Dorian Gray, I thought, even after the end of my relationship with Angelo. Dan Charmand had pointed that out once. 

"Why are you trying to look ugly and older, Laurent? You cannot actually believe that your love life ends with Angelo. And I don't even want to know about these one-night stands, though they turn into powerful portraits. What is good for your art might not be good for your soul, have you reflected on that? Your poser image of cruel lover and serial seducer is very amusing, but a hardened heart definitely does not suit you well." -- Dan had scolded me.

Thus it was that Angelo was present in all the paintings -- although, in fact, there was no image of him on display. 

He was in every man with whom I went to bed and then dumped -- a continuation of the contempt with which he had treated me.

 I had been remotely inspired by the Hindi tale about Sita and her two beheaded lovers, as retold by Thomas Mann, when purposedly I had kept my face out of that exhibition -- the only faces on display were of my ex-lovers, while the only body to be seen, in all its crude nakedeness, was mine. But with great insight and sensitivity Carlo had interpreted the show as a portrait of my soul. A wounded, lacerated soul. 

'Did I hurt you that much, Laurent?' -- he seemed moved, and worried, and because he saw me puzzled at his question, he added that he had been wondering if he was the cause of the suffering he had seen depicted in my paintings -- 'This is clearly destructive, Laurent. You are trying to take revenge on these guys, trying to make them suffer by turning them into mere minced meat... Am I wrong? I mean, have you been hurting them because in fact you'd rather hurt me? Does that sound too psychological?'

'Yeah, you hurt me, Carlo.' -- my father's words had given me goosebumps. He had been twenty years absent, and still he could read me like an open book -- 'But all this has nothing to do with you...' -- why did I have to lie, at that moment. Everything I had gone through during those years had to do with my father's absence, in a way or another, be it good or bad -- 'I mean, of course I ended up becoming a painter by your influence, but... the suffering that you seem to identify here has nothing to do with you. No.'

We continued walking through the exhibition in thoughtful silence, until Carlo again exclaimed:

'Your depiction of flesh is extraordinary, Laurent! Not the torn flesh of Francis Bacon, nor Lucien Freud's decay, no... Instead, you portray an enrapturing beauty, but so that it looks... harmful, perhaps? Instead of being in a museum, I have the impression of being in a butcher's shop, and all these guys look like ground beef... This amount and variety of gorgeous and anonymous men, whose only point in common is having had sex with you... Your sexual consumerism, Laurent, is a shocking statement. Serial seducer, you said? Perhaps this is as dangerous as being a serial killer, although it sounds like just a funny pun... All these guys you have consumed and discarded... And that in the title of the paintings it doesn't appear their names, just a number!' -- I had titled the paintings simply as Portrait # 1, Picture # 2, up to a number well above one hundred, though there were only 45 on display -- 'Is it then right, Laurent, that with this exhibition you are seeking vengeance against your ex-boyfriend, or actually, finally making it public to him?'

It was an idea I had not yet had. Maybe in the back of my mind, but I had never assumed it as my clear motivation. Would Dan have helped me to put up an exhibition that was an act of vengeance -- against one of his ex-lovers, too? Of course, I was pretty sure that Angelo, as a journalist, would learn about my exhibition at such a prestigious museum, whose director he had known very intimately, and I would very much appreciate should he visit it. Just to realize how many men I had put between me and him -- the distance being measuered in beds, but not just. 

But then he would understand that he had forever conquered and defeated me. I had been faithful to Angelo for eight years, but since then I had had only one night stands and explosive love affairs that never lasted more than a couple of weeks. My exhibition, as pointed out by Carlo, was the confirmation that he had hurt me indelibly and beyond the possibility of any cure, relegating me to the curb of promiscuity, while he had married the perfect woman. 

'There is one boy that is repeatedly painted, though...' -- Carlo had commented with much wit -- 'This one young man here... And that over there is also another painting on him, isn't it? And I believe in the other room there is another...' -- it was impressive that Carlo had noticed that it was the same man, because two of the portraits were quite dirty and disfigured -- 'Is he Angelo?' -- actually, Carlo had been anticipating a picture of my ex-boyfriend, and seeking for it because, as he later clarified, "this guy who made ​​you suffer so much, my son, is who I wanted to see the most."

'No, Carlo. There is no portrait of Angelo here.' -- exactly just like how in an exhibition there might be no portrait of the photographer, but he is behind all the photos, always present behind the lens, thus Angelo was in all the men I had portrayed -- 'This is Marlon... He was... a little more special... and lasted a bit longer... than the others.'

'But he also... was committed to another relatioship, as I discovered later.' -- perhaps only for Marlon, had I fallen in love during all those years. But he hadn't been available for a relationship, although he was always available for sex -- 'We got together a few times in Samsara Heights, when he had business there. But it did not work right for us.' -- nor wrong, actually, I thought, as he had done with me just as I did with all the other guys, using me and dumping me.

'There are so many beautiful men in this exhibition!' -- Carlo, however, did not seem impressed nor proud of my sexual achievements, he seemed worried and stunned -- 'They all are, actually. But their stares... Many of them stare back at us with defiance, others in disbelief... that one over there appears to be disdainful, but there are also those who stare with... love... as if worshiping... Were they posing for you, Laurent?'

'Some of them, yes.' -- it were so many years, countless memories of the different circumstances on how I had met those men and taken them to bed and then to the easel, and I still remembered each one of those guys I had pictured -- 'I painted some from photographs. Piers, for example, posed for me. We were at a nudist beach in Greece, where we crossed paths. I made several drawings of him in one of the sketchbooks that I always carried with me, and then used them as a reference to paint his portrait, back in Samsara Heights. That blond one is Lars. I met him in a vegetarian restaurant in Stockholm. I took pictures of him after we had sex. Lars was nervous, tense, restless, and I tried to paint him so...'

'Then Piers must have been the opposite?' -- my father had asked me -- 'Tranquil, maybe shy...' -- since my childhood, Carlo had the ability to read my paintings. Not so much the models in it now, but how I had displayed them... He was actually aiming at reading the painter behind the painting. Or maybe it was my heart that he could still read so well. 

Where had my father been, all those years? I wouldn't have run into so much trouble, I thought, if he had been there, with his sensitivity and clarity illuminating my path, clarifying my own emotions, leading me out of confusion and dellusion. Pacifying me by just being there, simply being there for me.

'That's right, Carlo. Piers was quiet... and sweet, too.' -- I still remembered that when Pier smiled, his gaze saddened. And not just when we had said goodbye... Piers was one of those guys who refused to have sex, and I had enacted a beautiful and tender session of love making with him, but all along his gaze had been full of melacholy, even when his mouth twisted and moaned, in a prenunciation to the end of our vacations, when we would forever part.

'You never fell in love again, Laurent?' -- Carlo asked each question carefully, as if sentence by sentence trying to rebuild his fatherly figure and reconnect. 

'No, Carlo. Never.' -- I uttered, with a vehemence that left me wondering. 

'But this won't have prevented some of these guys from falling in love with you...' 

'Maybe, Carlo. But I never enticed them with the promise that I would love them.' -- and I again recalled Piers; how even in the raunchiest moments of sex he was trying to stare right into my eyes, as if losing eye contact must have turned love making into plain sex -- 'And like I said, many of them were committed. For this reason, I won't ever be able to state that they are all my ex-lovers in the portraits. But neither shall I deny it... It's in my commercial contract with my marchand!'  -- I laughed -- 'And of course, many of the guys I had sex with did not want to be portrayed. So this here...' -- I made a gesture encompassing the whole exhibition -- 'is just a part of my life...'

It was not the first time I exhibited some of those pictures. From my past exhibitions at commercial galleries and cultural centers, I had brought accolades and won over lovers and new models -- and therefore, other paintings. I liked to seduce my models at the galleries, though an unprofessional attitude it might be. My own paintings aroused me, and therefore my studio was my main stage and my alcove. 

But it was the first time the complete series were shown. The works had been painted over a decade of serial sex, and Dan Charmand had intended that my presentation should be a portrait of gay promiscuity, above my own intimacy. But since there were several "straight" men among those I had portrayed -- like Marlon, who had a girlfriend whom he loved but did not feel so much attracted to, they were men who only had sex with other men, without considering themselves gay, a cop-out as they were returning to their women, their marital lives, their families and homes -- that theme had been dropped.

I was recruiting my models anywhere and everywhere. It was weird to think that when I was seducing I was also working -- and maybe that's what had helped to leave my heart out of those matters. At the gym, running at the park, at the fanciest restaurants or at the supermarket -- both in Samsara Heights, where I was trying to establish myself in my studio, as in my many travels around the world. 

In fact, I approached men as potential lovers, and just later would they become the models. After sex, I mean.

For some time, I had enjoyed having my rented house in Samsara Heights full of boys -- although often the boys were competing for my attention and unfriending each other -- and there had been threesomes often ending in disagreement and quarrels. 

It was silly, but naked men in my pool made ​​me feel like I was a sort of David Hockney's cover, and it had made me feel more like a painter. I had screened the documentary on Hockney's lifestyle and creative proccess, "A Bigger Splash", a hundred times in my atelier -- maybe also because it was on Hockney's love life, and the breakup with his most enduring model and lover. Did I see myself mirrored, when Angelo had stimulated me to paint and yet dumped me?

I was young and thought I could be ruthless, and reckless. 

I felt I did not need to care. That I did not need to fear. 

I was completely lost, but since I was going nowhere, I could not realize how aimlessly wandering I was. 

Blame it on my youth?

Carlo then watched the video that I had added to the exhibition, while sitting on the couch where there rested a sculpture that was my reproduction in natural size -- naked and ass up. Carlo did not comment on the sculpture, which would frequently be classified as "outrageous," and he remained silent at the end of the video, where I appeared nude in several shots at my old studio in Samsara Heights, mixed with scenes from some of my affairs eating, walking, bathing, sleeping -- mostly naked, too. The voices of the narration were both mine and from the guys who had agreed to be filmed. I had edited them so that our lines mingled and no sentence was spoken by a single voice, and several of the sentences made ​​no sense at all. I would later banish the video and the sculpture from my following exhibitions.

Dan had also disliked the video, which he thought to be vulgar, and technically problematic -- "Your butt appears twelve times, and your smile only seven." -- Dan had grimaced -- "You certainly are photogenic but no video maker, Laurent dear, and certainly no sound techinician either. What you classify as raw footage is just badly, carelessly executed, and inferior to most plain TV shows." -- but he had agreed to show it along with the sculpture, just to shock and possibly attract audience -- "If you think you'll be able to handle the criticism..."

Carlo was more shocked by the video than with my nudity in the self-portraits, and his next question was very surprising. He was acting like my father again.

'Have you ever tested, Laurent? HIV, I mean?' 

'Yes, Carlo. Negative. I always took precaution and had safe sex.' 

'Thanks God, son!' -- he had sighed -- 'Yet, accidents happen and I still prefer you wouldn't risk yourself that way... This... need... to hurt other men... can end up hurting yourself, Laurent... Even killing, I mean. Have you thought about it?'

'Why should I care about them, Carlo?' -- my voice trembled -- 'They did not consider me when they hurt me... when they were having sex with Angelo...' -- my heart dropped at those recollections -- 'Some of them even knew me... More than once, I think, Angelo had sex in the bathroom of cinemas and restaurants, while I was waiting for him like an idiot... These men did not care about hurting me...' -- And neither had Angelo. In fact, after I had revealed my secret to him, he had started hurting me as an enactment of his power over me. And since then, I had decided not to reveal my darkest secret to anyone else. Not even my father. Much less to him. I was aiming to forget it.

'It doesn't matter what others do to us, Laurent! This is their kharma. Whatever evil they do to us, it shall return on themselves... This is true to all, including Angelo...'

'I don't know if I believe this kharma stuff, Carlo...' -- it was very convenient to sit and think that life would be in charge of punishing Angelo. But until now, he had become a celebrity, he held a very successful tv program, a beautiful family and the perfect wife, and he was living in a design house often pictured on magazine covers, a house many times larger and more luxurious than mine. Angelo was often appearing in fashion editorials and adds as the embodiment of success and of male beauty. How had life punished him, actually?

And after what my father had told me that evening, I suddenly thought that it was too bad I had not taken after Catherine and her thirst for revenge. It had taken her to Asia on a journey she had dreaded, yet she had moved on with the fierce intent of perpetrating revenge against her half brother. 

But... it suddenly dawned upon me... maybe... that exhibition was an unique, creative vengeance?

'Still, it doesn't really matters what others do to us.' -- Carlo continued with his newageish speech  -- 'We cannot have control over others. Other men have hurt you? Their conscience will hurt, the guilt and shame is all theirs, not yours...' 

'Or it is not, Carlo!' -- I said, scornfully. My dad's speech was starting to annoy me -- 'I don't think many of the guys who did it to Angelo felt guilty... Most probably they felt very happy...' -- I was purposedly contradicting Carlo.

'But what about you, Laurent? How did you feel acting so carelessly? That's all that matters in the end, my son... What we do to others, because this is what our consciousness is made of... Why live with guilt, and risking to...' 

'Why not live like that, Carlo?' -- I spat the words. Suddenly, I felt angry at my father. With what right was he scolding me? What if I had been leading an unbridled and vicious life, especially in the last ten years, when he had been absent during the last twenty years?

He had left me, and a crowd of men, and my endless, sick addiction to the main male figure in my life, Angelo, had not been able to mitigate Carlo's absence. I felt like shouting at Carlo, letting my accumulated anger explode, when he suddenly asked:

'What is it that you don't want to see, Laurent?' -- Carlo remained calm, and that he used a teacherly more than a paternal tone increased my irritation -- 'Is there anything you want to tell me, son?'

And suddenly, I remembered it. 

We had finally seated, Carlo at one of the comfortable couches in the middle of the room, and I sat right on the floor, in front of my father. 

"Aren't you seeing well, Laurent?" -- the question from twenty years ago echoed in my mind.

It had been Carlo, during the painting classes in our rural home in France, who had realized that I was not seeing well. 

It had been him to take me to an optician. With him, I had had my first glasses made. He paid them with his own money.

During the last months he had spent in our house, the pool had been finally built, and I felt so happy. But I had never felt so miserable in my life like when I had to start wearing glasses. 

It would be another reason for bullying at school -- but as I had learned to fight with all my strength against that, I did not let it affect me. It was no longer the opinion of others what bothered me the most.

But I felt ugly, myself. 

Uglier. 

Although the muscles that I had acquired during the weeks in the Apennines and from joining the swim team were increasing, I was still horribly skinny.  My nose seemed too long, my eyebrows were too thick and dark in contrast to my hair, akwardly white like an old man's, so much that it seemed like a disease at thirteen years old -- and the glasses came to crown all my ugliness and destroy any self-steem I could have cultivated.

Even if I did not accept bullying, I knew perfectly how ugly I was, made uglier still from wearing glasses. I felt humiliated. Imperfect. 

I started passionately developing and cultivating an inferiority complex, and I became even more shy, quiet, and insecure. 

I fought to be left alone, though I often felt lonely. And lonelier, when Carlo left.

It was one of the crippling gifts that Carlo had left behind -- because I tended to blame him for having to wear glasses. He had used them himself, and I had clearly inherited that flaw from him. And after all, it was he who had discovered it, and caused my sadness. 

Maybe my father had seen me wearing glasses a couple of weeks, or maybe it had been just two days, before he disappeared from my life, leaving me alone, scared, confused, helpless, sad, and uglier.

'Why, Carlo?' -- I finally got to ask. My voice trembled, and I felt like crying. But it was from anger, and not from sorrow any longer. Or perhaps it was plain, deep sadness actually, and anger no more -- 'Why, Carlo? Why have you forsaken me? And why to never return, nor send any news?'

I had expected Carlo's silence.  However, he might have been preparing for that question, like me, for twenty years. 

His answer was on the tip of his tongue, so ready as if he had rehearsed it -- and I did not have to wait. 

'I had to flee, Laurent. I was going to be arrested. I intended, however, to return to France.' -- he sighed, and let his burnt hand fall loosely between his thighs -- 'But if... I never returned to our house... to our family life... it was for another reason.'

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