A gay story: Those Days of Summer Ch. 06 I woke up to the sound of thunder and wind. Chilly morning air was sliding over my naked skin, painting it with goosebumps. My hands crawled through the sheets in panic, searching for Marcel’s warmth that was nowhere to be found now. A few seconds passed before my sight stabilized enough to notice his silhouette looming by the window. His fingers were clenched around the open shutters, and he was smiling ecstatically.
It took me quite a while to understand the reason behind his sudden cheer. When the first droplets of rain silver-plated his cheeks, I already knew what was going on.
“We’ll have one more day,” he gasped out, turning his face towards me. “Just for ourselves.”
The works were postponed. There was no point in shooting outside unless the weather improved. Mom and Marco took advantage of the opportunity and left to visit friends in Lucca.
“You won’t be joining us today, will you?” asked mom by the breakfast table.
There was a tint of understanding in her smile, telling me she knew exactly what was going on between me and our handsome tenant. And it didn’t seem she had anything against it.
“Have fun, dear.” She kissed me on the forehead later when she was leaving with the same mild expression on her face.
We’ve never really had the big talk about my sexuality, the great “uncloseting”. I grew up in a melting pot of Milano, full of people with different backgrounds. During mom’s work at the studio, during parties, during runway shows I was surrounded by eccentricity, extravaganza, controversy. And most importantly – with queer. It didn’t take me long to realize it was guys that turned me on. And it had never occured weird or unnatural. Different people are into different things. Same with sexuality. I quickly accepted my queerness, took it as a fact and lived on. Although I came out to my closest friends, I never felt the need to talk about it at home. I was sure mom knew anyway. She must have known for a long time. Maybe even before I knew it myself.
“You’ve got the coolest mom on earth,” noticed Marcel, putting the vinyl on the player’s plate in the living room.
“I know.”
I shut the door and it was just the two of us. Close. Intimate. Skin to skin, breath to breath, in the coziness of our tuscan hut.
I adored the heavy skies of navy blue that day. I adored the sounds of droplets hitting the window sills, the sparks jumping over the wood in the fireplace, the crackling of an old vinyl spinning in the record player. I adored Marcel’s fingers going through my hair. I adored his pearly laughter when we were playing scrabble on the living room floor. I adored the gentleness of his embrace when we snuggled under the blanket on the couch.
When we were lounging in the evening, I got a call from mom. She asked me to keep the house closed, cause they weren’t coming back for the night. It seemed they were having fun. I could hear the sounds of the party in the background.
“Do you think she knows?” Asked Marcel, pouring us two glasses of wine when I hung up.
“Certainly.”
“I wish my parents were so cool about it,” he let out a heavy sigh. “About me…”
“Did you come out?” I asked, taking the glass.
“Yeah, biggest regret of my life.” Marcel twisted his face, sipping his wine.
I felt like we entered some dangerous territory. Maybe I should have changed the subject. Maybe I should have just backed off with some stupid joke. But I really wanted to know. To learn something significant, anything that would grow us closer. That would make it special. That would proclaim me the knowing one among the oblivious.
“I’m sorry…”
“It’s them who should be sorry.” He shook his head. “I have spent most of my life loathing myself. Kids are like little mirrors walking around, you see? They take for granted anything their parents believe is true. Too bad mine believed I was worthless.”
A pause. He was wondering about something intensively, biting his lips and wrinkling his forehead before finally sighing and finishing his thought.
“And then we grow up. With all those ugly things scratching our heads from the inside until… you know.”
He shrugged and finished drinking the wine with his eyes fixed on the floor. His fingers were tapping nervously against the surface of the glass he was holding.
“There are just two ways to go about it.” He continued. “You can either move on, or…” the words stuck in his throat.
“Or what?” I whispered. A cold shiver came down my spine when I realized what he was referring to. “Don’t you dare…”
I put my palm on his knee, squeezing gently, as if my touch could break him out of the depths of these dark thoughts, scare the demons away. He looked at me with a blank stare. Those were the eyes of a dead man. In a blink of an eye he stopped being the cheerful boy. As if a mask fell down.
“Oh my God, Marcel…” I moved closer, grabbing him by the shoulders. “You can’t think about these things, you can’t…”
He shook his head, and the shiny pearls appeared on his cheeks, leaving salty trails of sorrow on his skin. His stare felt empty, his voice dangerously calm.
“I’m just so tired of running away. Of doing things I no longer know are good or bad.”
“There’s nothing wrong with who you are.” I frantically wiped the tears away from his face.
“You don’t understand. There’s this darkness inside of me. Like a knot, like a fist squeezing my lungs, my heart. It’s suffocating.” He pressed his hand to the chest, breathing heavily. A quiet, bitter laugh left his lungs. “God, I’m pathetic.”
“No, you’re not…”
I embraced him silently, not knowing what else to say. His body was shaking uncontrollably. The throbbing sobs entwined with the cracking of the wood burning down in the fireplace. We sat there still and silent for a longer while until his trembling eased a little.
“I’m sorry you had to see me like this.” He whispered with his face hidden in the folds of my shirt.
“Marcel…”
He pushed me away, trying to wipe his eyes and put on a happy face, as if nothing had happened. The real Marcel was slowly disappearing under his usual facade. He had deceived us all, I thought.
“Please don’t do this.” I shook my head.
“We don’t have much time left. I don’t want you to remember me this way.”
“For God’s sake!” I grabbed his hands. “You’re not taking me seriously, are you?”
“No, that’s not…” he stuttered, shocked with my sudden anger.
“Yeah, I may be younger. But that doesn’t make me any worse, or stupid. Fuck the great pretender, just give me the real you. You’re carrying so much pain you’ve nearly drowned in it. Share it for once, and help me help yourself. You don’t have to talk, we can sit in silence. Let me just be there for you, when you need it, and I clearly see you do. So please…”
I had no hopes of saving him, fixing him. Chances were we would never meet again anyway. Why did I want to know the guy so bad? Out of curiosity perhaps. Out of my selfishness. Out of my utter need to smile when he laughs, and to suffer when he bawls his eyes out.
That night he clinged to me like a little child. By the way he was holding me, I understood he needed me in all those fragile ways. As if my embrace was powerful enough to protect him against the evil of the world he came from.
He was careful with words. It felt as if he didn’t want to overshare all the negative emotions he was bearing. And I was slowly putting together scraps of information about his childhood, his parents, his siblings. He told me how they used to treat him like trash, how they tried to convert him, how they were ashamed of him, and how it all became irrelevant, as soon as he started to earn good money. One toxicity smoothly shifted into another. His dough couldn’t make them love him, but it could buy mild tolerance to his preferences at least. Indifference and pretended oblivion were better than constant shaming. And so he started to believe that more money meant more regard from his relatives. He was spiraling out, working nights and days, ready to do anything for a better gig. He was rushing all the time, pushing his career forward at all costs, getting better contracts, working with more and more prestigious companies. Until he set his foot in our house, and all the uproar of his busy world fell silent. The fever stopped. Suddenly he had time for himself, he had people who accepted him the way he was, he had everything he had ever dreamed of. And amidst all that, he had me.
***
We went for a short voyage to the middle of the lake the other day. After borrowing our neighbor’s boat we carried it all the way to the water. Marcel was rowing, while I sat on the floor in front of him with my sketchbook resting on my knees.
“There,” I pointed at the horizon in the direction of Ponte Tibetano, “take us there. I want to draw the panorama from below the bridge, and then from over the sunken village.”
“I read they used to pump the water out of the lake.” He said out of nowhere when we were nearing our first stop.
“It’s been twenty-something years since they did it,” I replied, sharpening the pencil, and throwing the shavings overboard. “God knows when they’ll do it again.”
“Next time they drain it,” Marcel started slowly, as if he was wondering what words to use, “I think I’ll come to see the place.”
“Is that so?” I asked, outlining the landscape on paper. Was it a prelude to the invitation? “What if they don’t drain it in a decade? Or longer?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll make sure not to miss it.”
After what I had learned the day before, it was good seeing him looking so far ahead. The last thing I wanted was his dark thoughts spiraling him out of control straight into destruction.
“Would you like me to join you there?” I asked, half-jokingly.
“Oh, I’d love to.” He smiled at me.
“Where will you wait for me?”
“The church,” he gave me a pat answer, as if he had thought it through. “I’ll be by the entrance to the church at noon.”
“The first day after they drain it?” I proposed.
“Deal.” He nodded joyfully.
I started imagining the moment we would meet in a year, in five years, in a decade, each spread of time pulling us further apart. A nineteen year old me would be just a shadow of the past, a base version upon which the adult Victor will be built. Will my future self even remember the promise he made? Will the future Marcel remember?
How long does it take to become strangers again? A month? A year? When will the butterflies die out? When will the scent of grass become just the smell of summer, and not the smell of his skin burning next to mine?
I raised my head, detailing the chiaroscuro between his pale body and the darkness of the wood around him. I noticed his sight was focused on me. There was hunger in his eyes. I was glad we weren’t standing, cause having him look at me that way would make my legs weak.
“Marcel?” I asked precariously. “What is it?”
“Am I sick and twisted, if I’d like to make you come right now?”
My insides squeezed in a painful spasm of desire. His directness could turn me on in an instant. Just like those daring “do you like what you see” moments. I looked around nervously. There was no other boat on the lake, the shores were far away, and the dam was high above us in the distance. Chances were slim someone would notice.
“Am I sick and twisted if I say I’d like you to?” I replied with my heart beating fast, as if it was getting ready to jump out of my chest.
His foot moved forward to touch the hardening place between my legs, and I pushed my hips towards it, boldly pressing against his toes.
“It seems we both are,” he encapsulated, before leaning in my direction and whipping the sketchbook from my palms.
My tools hit the wooden floor after I rushed to meet Marcel’s soft lips. The hands were impatient, the tongues were wild, the fingers thirsty. Next thing I remember I was lying on the planks at the bottom of the boat, the moisture of his mouth embracing my cock.
“May I?” He asked looking up at me with his wet palm placed in-between my buttocks.
I nodded sharply, and soon his fingers buried in me for the first time. While touching places no other had ever touched, he opened the doors to unfulfilled urges I had been too shy to articulate or even think about before. All of a sudden what was muffled, tentative, questionable became obvious to me. For the first time I fully understood my needs. And there wasn’t an ounce of shame in me.
I wanted more than just the fingers. I wanted his skin, his warmth, his breath, I wanted to absorb his whole existence, so we would become one. I was sobbing beneath him, unable to vocalize my desires.
“Don’t stop,” I was crying, when his lips were wandering around my chest, and my hand was clumsily stroking our shafts. “Don’t stop.”
I loved his fingers diving deep within my flesh. I loved the feeling of sweat between our bodies, and the puffiness of our cocks burning in my grip. We were moving in sync until we lost our breaths, until all we could do was weep, until la petite mort caught us in its tight hold trembling, shaking, flushed with fever, and satisfied like never before.
“Are you alright?” He asked with a worried voice when we were resting with our backs pressed against the wood afterwards.
I was. I was better than ever in fact. As if some heavenly illumination came upon me. As if God’s finger touched my soul, making me finally understand everything. Understand myself. Know myself.
“I was a blind man, Marcel,” I gasped out, looking up to the sky. “But you made me sighted.”
“If I messed you up, I swear…” He shook his head.
“I am fine,” I looked at him all excited and grasped his hand. “We are fine. This is good.”
“Okay,” he sighed, relaxing a little. “Alright.” He leaned to kiss my forehead. “I just… had a flashback and panicked. Sorry.”
“No need to be…”
I didn’t push, and he dropped the subject, but his forehead stayed wrinkled for the rest of the day. His eyes lost some of the vigorous joy. His demons were showing up again… Demons of the past, demons of the present, demons of the world outside of our little Italian province. A world I had no access to. Would they catch up with him when he leaves? Most probably…
“What is it that you don’t want to tell me?” I whispered, gently stroking his dark brown hair when he was asleep that night. “What else are you hiding behind this facade of yours?”
Carelessness is the privilege of youth, I remembered his words. Your “carelessness” is nothing but a lie…