Finding the Thing Within (13 page)

Two days after he got back, Rosario called to ask what he was doing.
“I’m at the beach.” he answered.
“What, and you didn’t tell me?” He was dressed in a

suit and went off to change.

Part 15

He was there alone and there were others looking at him and circling as if to pounce. Rosario neared where he lay and stared down their neighbors, who then took flight.

“Hey darling! I’ve really missed you,” said Rosario. “Hey!” he came back with.
Rosario went to kiss him, but he flinched. Rosario

didn’t understand, could it be than it was due to the fact that there still people around? Then he realized that this couldn’t be the reason because they had kissed openly here before. No, there must have been something else.

“What is it?”
“Nothing, I’m tired.”

He had been tired before,
thought Rosario,
and had not been so cold and reticent.

“Do you have something you need to tell me? Did something happen on Lampedusa that I need to know about?”

“I suppose there is something I have to tell you,” and he came closer to Rosario but pulled away when Rosario tried to hold him.

“What do you have to tell me then?” Rosario was beginning to worry.
“Well, I told you a lie.”
“What lie?”
“There were four of us in Lampedusa.”
“No I already knew that.”
“Yes but as well as me, Tullio and his girlfriend, Paola came too, instead of Domenico.”
“And who’s Paola?”
“Paola’s my ex-girlfriend.”
“So? What’s the problem? Why did you have to hide that?”
“Well, I didn’t know how you’d take it!”
“How was I supposed to take it? It’s fine, I’m not jealous of you if you want to go with girls, in fact it makes me proud of you.”
“There’s more.”
“What’s that?”
“We’ve…kind of got back together.”
Rosario had a few seconds of intense mental confusion and then answered, “That’s ok too though...I can accept that. Does this mean I have to share you with her?”
“Er, but I still haven’t told you everything…”
“Even more? Why are you shaking everything up?”
“Sometimes, like you say, shaking things up can be a good thing.”
“So? You can’t leave me on tender-hooks, what is it?”
“What it is, is that I told her. I told her we couldn’t get back together because I like men too.”
“What did she say?”
“She said that she didn’t care; she loves me, has always loved me and doesn’t mind that I have these tendencies. She accepts me as I am,” Rosario was saddened and quiet. Lorenzo too, fell quiet.
After looking in his eyes for a few minutes, Rosario said, “I still don’t see where the problem lies; I’ll just make a sacrifice and share you with her.”
“That’s still not all.”
“How do you mean 'still not all'? Can you just speak openly?”
“I told her about you.”
“And she?”
“She said that what we did is done and that from now on I have to choose; it’s either you or her.”
Rosario shuddered; even though the day was hot, he was in a cold sweat. “And what did you choose?”
“I told her the truth. That is...that I don’t want to lose her but neither do I want to lose you. She loves me and I love her but I love you too! You have to know you are my most dear person. How can I choose between these two worlds that I live in? You’re my link to the gay world that deep inside I feel I belong to but she’ s my link to a ‘normal’ life, where maybe I really belong. You know I’m not really gay, I don’t like ‘men’, it’s you that I like, and I can’t give you up. What should I do? Help me and stay near me.”
Rosario was externally calm, but he felt a tornado raging inside. He had no idea of what to say or do! Smiling, he wanted to cry, and said not to worry, that everything would somehow be alright.
Why did he have to go to Lampedusa? None of this would have happened if he hadn’t gone there. Rosario fought with himself over this latest news. On one hand he was happy that Lorenzo had a girl and on the other he resented the fact bitterly. What he really could not abide was the changes taking place to Lorenzo’s personality, he wasn’t the same as before, no longer smiling and full of joy, as before.
As the days passed their meetings became less frequent and when Rosario phoned him he replied that he was already going out with Paola. He was already phoning less often. One evening Rosario knew that Paola was going away and managed to get a date with Lorenzo.
“Rosario, I have to speak to you.”
“That’s why I’m here. I’m listening,” answered Rosario apprehensively.
“I can’t give her up, we get on so well and with her I can go out freely and without having to hide things all the time, like it is with you and me.”
“What does she think of me?”
“To tell the truth, she thinks it’s all over between you and me and that what happened was just fling.”
“Oh I understand!”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m trying to live in two parallel worlds and still don’t know which I really belong to. I don’t know if I’m gay or bisex, all I know is that I get along so great with you. We understand each other so perfectly but then I’ve known her for three years and you, barely two months.”
“Are you saying you want to separate?” asked Rosario.
“No I don’t want to separate. I wish it was possible to love you both.”
“I wouldn’t mind. Can you imagine all three of us in bed, eh?”
“Yeah, I in the middle, fucking with both of you, don’t make me laugh,” and his face dropped again. “To tell the truth, she is a bit narrow-minded. I think it was hard enough for her to accept what I have already told her, about my uncertainty. You don’t want to understand! You can’t understand!”
“No my dear, I understand perfectly well. I know too that I was just starting to get to know you, coming to love you and then this happens. Why did you have to go to Lampedusa? If you hadn’t gone, none of this would have happened.”
“Yes it would’ve, I know I didn’t tell you, but we were always still in contact and we probably would have gotten back together sooner or later anyway.”
Rosario had nothing to say, he searched his mind for a solution but could find none.
“Do you still care for me?”
“Obviously, I still love you like crazy.”

***

A few days later, early in the morning, Lorenzo answered his phone sleepily.
“Hey, where are you?”
“At Paola’s, I slept here last night.” Rosario froze over but pretended like he was normal. I spoke to her about you and now she wants to meet you.”
“Uh, how come? What about her prejudices?”
“Oh she doesn’t have prejudices against being gay in general; she has two gay friends herself and gets on really well with them.”
“How can you be speaking so freely, is she not there?”
“She’s in the other room. Now she’s coming though.”
“Pass her the phone!” he said with an authoritive tone. “You said she wanted to meet me, we can start right now on the phone.”
He could hear Lorenzo speak to Paola for a moment, then, “Hello, it’s Paola.”
She had a sweet and lively voice that immediately gave away her youth.
“Hey there, I’m Rosario, how’s it going?”
“Fine, thanks.”
“So leaving aside the pleasantries,” said Rosario. “You have a really nice voice. I hear that you want to meet me and I want to meet you too.”
“Yes, Lorenzo has told me a lot about you, I know he cares a lot about you.”
Lorenzo snatched the phone from her hands.
“Ok, so now you’ve met on the phone and then you can meet in person. See you later, Rosario, ok, ciao.”
It was perfectly clear that Lorenzo had been put on the spot and hadn’t wanted the conversation to go on to lead it’s natural course.

Part 16

Francesco Aiello had decided that it was better not to take risks and permanently left the girl he was seeing. And, since he wasn’t so good at being on his own, took up with an old flame. He only told Rosario about the break up, though, and not the rest. Rosario, meanwhile was completely grounded with his feelings for Lorenzo and he talked about it with both Giorgia Dagnino and Francesco Aiello, who kept making cheap jokes like:

"Well you can tell him to tell her that, if he does break up with her, I’m available now!"
He phoned Lorenzo, telling him that he wanted to meet to talk things through. He came to his house.
"Listen to me, Lorenzo, I wanted to tell you that things can’t go on like this. I’d like to tell you that I’m happy, but it’s not true. I really don’t think I can share you with her at all, in fact, since she’s been on the scene you’ve been ignoring me, you don’t treat me the way you did before."
"You just won’t accept the reality of the world that I live in. I can’t just renounce it all. I feel like a man when I’m with her. Do you understand? She makes me feel like a man. I love you too but some things have got to change. I’ll have sex with her and give her the ‘active’ part of myself. To you I’ll give my ‘passive’ side."
"Oh I don’t think you will, dear! You can’t treat me like a doormat and do whatever you feel like to me. If I have no other choice but to share you with her, I want some of your ‘active’ side too."
They parted, barely saying goodbye and when Rosario got home he sat down in front of his computer:

“I’ve been thinking a lot about our meeting today and come to the conclusion that it was always going to have to end this way.

Don’t worry about me, I have a hard-shelled heart and this latest injury will only make it harder.
I just shed a few tears (very strange since I never even cried when my father died) but the pain will pass.
I don’t suppose I’ve ever been happy, really happy, in my whole life. Whenever I felt even a little happy, I knew that it would be brief or would be immediately crushed by some equally strong negative event.
This brings me to thinking about how that other thing which should be making me happy, the selling of the rights to my patent will probably come to nothing and leave me feeling foolish for even hoping for happiness.
Yes I really am a useless shit that does nothing but check on the facts of my life and judge them critically.
I chose to enroll at an Art school because it was the only one where you didn’t have to do boring subjects, then I studied architecture for three years but couldn’t graduate because I was going to do it after my military service, which was useless anyway.
I started a business with some friends, creating and selling Hi-Fi stereos, until the much cheaper and smaller Japanese imports effectively put us out of business.
Pooling together funds and with great sacrifices, I managed to open my own little shop but then an armed robbery sent me back down the ‘snakes and ladders’ board. Then I started my career as a salesman, which was wonderful for a brief few years, until once again, bad luck came calling and the economic crisis in the early nineties ruined me.
I’ve gone on fighting though, even though the death of my father meant I couldn’t travel as much because I couldn’t leave my mother all week alone, scared and sick. I got a job in a shop with a decent wage and level of responsibility.
Finally I meet someone who at first I wasn’t even sure I liked. He was so different from my usual criteria and with great difficultly I started to let myself like him. Then he changes everything in my life, my way of thinking, of reacting and of living because he fell in love with me too. And so I say to myself ‘Where’s the catch? This can’t really be happening now that I’ve found someone I love and that loves me, what’s going to go wrong now?
He tells you that he’s fallen back in love with his girlfriend and if I want I can have the role of substitute; that I can be his close friend, but not his love, that role is reserved for his girlfriend.
So what do I do now? Love him? Wait a couple of years until his eventual marriage? Or do I give up on it and go back to the life I was living before, looking for bodies willing to have sex?
I’d be content to return to how things were before, sporadic moments of happiness with no great importance...why should there be any importance when I could just as well start again and look for someone even hotter…
I suppose we’ll see if this is to be again my destiny.
Listen to these words, said to you by an idiot. Don’t go on hiding all straight behind the image of Paola, you know full well that you’re gay and always will be... Someone who enjoys being penetrated so much can hardly be straight. You could, of course, actually be bisexual but I suspect that this is really only your inability to break with the hetero world that surrounds you.
I haven’t made any definitive decision about us; I don’t know how to make it. In any case I’m not pressuring you, I would never pressure someone caught between two people who can’t decide which way to let himself be pulled. You should know, however, that all women are bitches who would think nothing of throwing all of this back in your face in some future argument.
A kiss from (maybe just your friend) Rosario xxx”

Lorenzo worriedly wrote his reply as soon as he was done reading:

“I have to say first off that your letter made me very sad, not for the story you told of your ups and downs, but because of the tone with which you, an intelligent person, manage to self-commiserate.

You’re an idiot...go right on and say it! Anyway I still really care for you...still love you and this is why I’m trying to treat you with respect...And I can’t stand the pessimistic sound of your thoughts. Today when you you left, I was in two minds as to whether I should have run after you or phone you...then now when I got back I wanted to phone you, then I randomly switched on my computer and found your email...

I have to say that your words made me angry. I couldn’t deal with your vision and have to say I think everything that happened to you, depended in some way on how you’ve approached life. Then again this naïve, good-natured approach means you have plenty of good qualities, and these are the ones that I appreciate about you; your particular way of loving, intense and full of vitality.

I was very lucky to have met you; you opened up to me all your best aspects, even though I was still only a stranger to you. But I have to renounce completely this special person that I still barely know...and if you hadn’t felt sincere deep down I wouldn’t have trusted you so much.