GAY SEX AND SEXUAL INTIMACY

Sex is not performance, it’s not about giving a show or giving demonstrations of various kinds. Real sex is not a porn movie. Sex, and I’m talking about gay sex in particular, that is, a sexual dimension that has nothing to do with procreation, is essentially shared intimacy. Such concept of sexuality is very broad and includes many things that are not sex in the strict sense, but have or can have many sexual implications. True sexual intimacy is achieved when a guy is not conditioned by his partner, in the sense that he feels neither forced nor artificially induced to have sex, but does it freely, when asking for sexual contact from his partner does not create embarrassment and does not can under no circumstances elicit perplexed or embarrassed responses, when the request for sexual contact by one’s partner is welcomed as a positive thing and of great emotional significance, when being naked together does not create anxiety or embarrassment, when physical contact is unreserved and without taboos. The only real problem in gay sex is represented by the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, but beyond this risk, which is objective and which must ALWAYS be adequately prevented, there are practically no other real problems.

Sex, all sex, is absolutely incompatible with the idea of ​​domination, oppression or exploitation of the other. In gay sexual relations the rule of equality of partners is absolutely fundamental. Anyone who tries to use sex as a means of domination and control of another person or simply behaves by inducing forms of subordination or fear in the other, even unconsciously, should understand that those purposes and those behaviors are the denial of sexuality, which is a profound participation in the life of the other, in his anxieties and problems, that is, in the life of the other as a whole, because the entire personality of an individual is reflected in sex. And this is why living sexuality well brings enormous benefits not only to the tone of mood,but to the person’s overall balance and general state of health.

Sharing sexuality, when it is authentic and reciprocal, lowers anxiety levels and helps to face the problems of ordinary life together, because it creates a solid bond, a relationship of trust and esteem between two people who support each other and can participate in each other’s decisions by also expressing a different point of view, which never hurts.

Accepting the idea that compromises must be reached and that peaceful coexistence is basically the art of compromise is an indication of maturity, but if it is easy to accept compromises on questions of objectively very relative weight, the more a choice implies profound levels of a person’s affectivity, the more difficult it becomes to accept compromises. We can easily accept the idea of ​​going on a Sunday with a friend to see a film even if we are not interested in the film, but it is morally reprehensible to accept marrying one woman instead of another in order to obtain economic or career advantages. By morally reprehensible, I mean that such a choice is not only theoretically immoral but ends up negatively affecting all of life. In essence, immoral choices seem to bring advantages, or perhaps they objectively bring immediate benefits, but in the long run they are paid for and often very heavily. Mixing sexual interest with interests of another nature, that is, with interests linked to the search for economic or social advantages, means subordinating a fundamental emotional choice to the achievement of purposes that appear fundamental but are not at all. Those who devalue sexuality by subordinating it to non-affective ends deny an essential part of themselves in the name of ephemeral interests, that is, they subordinate the essential to the marginal.

Sexuality should not be mythologized or decontextualized, precisely because it is relational, it does not exist in the abstract but only in specific situations. Experiences related to sexuality are lived in a strictly personal way and depend on the relationship with another specific individual. What we lived with Titius has nothing to do with what we can or could live with Caius. It is precisely for this reason that defining rules of sexual behavior has essentially no meaning. There is no manual of sexuality beyond the one fundamental rule that sexuality must be a form of love. The only true rules of sexual behavior are in fact only corollaries of that fundamental rule.

Abstract rules, such as strict monogamy, the at least tendential definitiveness of the bond and therefore its irrevocability or its difficult revocability, the need for coexistence, the socialization of the relationship, etc. etc., are merely attempts to pigeonhole an affective relationship within categories similar to those that are taken for granted, although not always, in the context of marriage. That those rules may have no use and may even be an obstacle in the sphere of marriage, obviously heterosexual, has already been recognized on a social level, through the introduction of divorce, which among other things is an institution as old as the world, at least in countries where the law has retained its substantial secularity, that is, it was seen as an organization of the existing and not as a form of indirect imposition of behaviors deemed right a priori. In the heterosexual field there is the objective problem of protecting the interests of the children and a regulation of marriage has a motivation in any case. Basically, the real problem in that area is the definition of the limits within which the legislator can operate. In the context of homosexual relationships, if we refer to the protection of children, where there are any, we can only refer to the same discipline that regulates heterosexual relationships, because the interest to be protected is that of minors and not that of adults, but when there are no children, as still happens today in the vast majority of cases, in a secular state no restrictive intrusion by the legislator is admissible, while any intervention aimed at guaranteeing equal treatment with heterosexual couples for partners in homosexual unions who intend to legally formalize their relationship is a duty.

Obviously one thing is the substance of the couple relationship and another thing is its legal formalization, which is not an obligation but a right that must be the object of a shared choice by the two partners, but, it must be emphasized, it must only be the formalization of something that already exists. The couple relationship is not established with marriage or with any other legal instrument and, indeed, it can be said that the formalization of the relationship does not in any case constitute a prop to keep a shaky union standing or to create an emotional bond. In a gay couple sharing sexual intimacy is an absolutely primary and free fact, it is not a rational choice or decision that takes into account predictable advantages and disadvantages. The sharing of sexual intimacy, if it is not absolutely spontaneous and instinctive, is the result of a more or less violent forcing or self-forcing and for this very reason it is born spoiled by a lack of spontaneity and is destined not to produce positive effects.

Experience teaches that just as a straight guy is not attracted to all women, so a gay guy is not attracted to all men and, indeed, the vast majority of men are completely indifferent to him, because sexual attraction only arises towards a few or very few people. It is only with those people that one experiences a true form of sexual involvement, only with those people, if one gets to know them better, is it possible to experience forms of true sexual excitement. If the attraction is mutual then the idea of ​​sharing sexuality becomes a real possibility.

It should be emphasized that the traditional formula according to which well-matched couples, which would be better defined as stable couples, must be formed by individuals who are very similar to each other, is a classic preconception that has no correspondence in reality. There are no a priori parameters that allow predicting the greater or lesser stability of a hypothetical couple based on the mere observation of the two hypothetical partners separately from each other. Sexuality is relational and stable couples often find “their motivation” in things that seen from the outside have very little or no meaning at all. The reasons why a couple lasts over time are inherent to that single couple and cannot be generalized.

However, one element is recorded almost constantly when a new and true couple bond is formed: when a guy feels attracted to another and realizes that the other shares the same feelings, the involvement is total and both feel the feeling of starting a “new life” a life together. It is not said that these sensations are destined to last over time, because instinctive interest often arises on the basis not of serious reciprocal knowledge but of projections of what one desires, projections which one sometimes risks confusing with reality. The guy who sexually attracts me is beautiful, very serious, very good, very spontaneous, very much in love with me, etc. etc. Naturally these assumptions of principle will then have to deal with reality, but, if, even redimensioned, they will basically remain standing, perhaps leading to a conclusion like: “He has his flaws, but I wouldn’t trade him for anyone else!” and similar assessments will also have been made by the other partner, one can only acknowledge that a couple has in fact formed.

Couple means mutual freedom, mutual esteem, mutual knowledge without taboos and sharing of sexuality, this is where the difficult part begins, because, I stress, in this case sharing means sharing without reservations, without gray areas, without omissions. There is no real esteem for your partner if you don’t consider him capable of fully understanding your point of view and your experience, I am talking about understanding, not necessarily sharing, but, mind you, to understand behaviors of an individual, you must not adopt a judgmental attitude and at least you must have respect for what youe dom’t share. Not sharing does not mean judging negatively but only not experiencing the same things firsthand.

Sharing sexuality is a form of mutual trust. Each partner confides very private aspects of his person to the other, which is possible only when there is deep mutual esteem. Obviously this entrusting presupposes absolute confidentiality on the part of the partner. The violation of confidentiality is always an irresponsible behavior, but when it comes to sexuality it is particularly unpleasant for the partner and if the violation of confidentiality is fully conscious and wanted, it represents a hateful form of aggression that makes the continuation of the relationship unthinkable. What is known in the context of a couple relationship, and not a generic relationship of a social nature, must remain strictly within the context of that couple relationship. The violation of this principle of confidentiality, even towards parents or siblings, is intolerable and does not admit of any justification. Similarly, couple problems must be resolved within the couple, other people can also be called upon to intervene but only if both partners agree, otherwise the privacy of the couple would be violated and one of the two partners would see the trust placed in the partner heavily betrayed.

Sharing sexuality means finding a balance, i.e. a compromise between different ways of experiencing sexuality. The less the two partners’ visions of sexuality are compatible, the more complex the search for balance will be. I emphasize that I did not speak of identity or similarity but of compatibility. Two people can have distinct views on sexuality that are, however, perfectly compatible. Maintaining balance is not always easy and moments of crisis exist. A solid couple is not a couple immune to moments of crisis, but a couple that manages to find sufficient motivation within themselves to overcome the crisis and proceed further.

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SEXUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

I inform you that today I have put online a new book that enriches  Gay Project Library: “SEXUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS”. It is a text of about sixty pages, which is also accompanied by notes that require the typical layout of a book, and which, therefore, cannot be posted in a forum post.

The text is based on a recent and important publication: “The Memoirs of John Addington Symonds”, in the critical edition edited by Amber K. Regis for Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, in the Genders and Sexualities in History series, from which I took the texts of Symonds that I quote in my essay.

This is not a generic memoir but the author’s sexual autobiography, written with absolute adherence to the facts and total transparency to leave a document that describes the true sexual evolution of a cultured Englishman, born in 1840 and died in 1893, precisely as he himself saw it.

I have translated two important Symonds books into Italian for the Gay Project Library, and I think it is really useful to publish now, both in English and in Italian, a text that illustrates the evolution of Symonds’ sexuality.

Symonds’ Memoires are unique, because they constitute in practice the only sexual autobiography absolutely free from commercial interests of any kind that has been published. It should be emphasized that the text was not originally intended for publication because in England homosexuality was punished by criminal law and the text I am presenting to you would certainly have been considered obscene and its publication would therefore have been a real crime. This is not a novel. Symonds in addition to telling the facts explicitly names the protagonists. The book, which required the author a tremendous effort and removed him from the possibility of pursuing greater success in the field of art history and classical culture, which he dealt with at the academic level, is therefore a unique contribution to serious study of homosexuality which in his time was taking its first and uncertain steps. It should be noted that Symonds married and had four daughters, and his marriage story, carried on despite some important and enduring homosexual relationships, is a one-of-a-kind testimony of him.

I will be immensely grateful to anyone who reads my work and wants me to know his thoughts on it.

You can read the book just clicking on the following link.  I remember that all the material of Gay Project is always and absolutely free and Gay Project never asks for personal data and does not keep any data relating to accesses.

http://gayproject.altervista.org/john_addington_symonds_homosexual.pdf

GAY DIARY 2021

I

Falling in love with a guy is not a dream, I can’t even say if it’s desirable. Of course, first it all seems like a dream, then you realize that it is not even your thing, it is something that has its own logic that you don’t control and often don’t even understand, you realize that you are a part of a larger mechanism that it is not at your service and that, once you are inside, you can only go with the flow, which takes you wherever it wants. I love you, I don’t even know whether to say it’s true, maybe it is but in my own way that is probably very far from your way of conceiving these things. It is good together, it is good for a while, there is also sex in the middle, I don’t know if there is really on both sides the idea of building something in two. A guy, indeed a handsome guy is like a box, you see the outside you like, but you don’t know what’s inside the box, you don’t know if you’ll like what’s inside, if that box really opens in front of you. Fears, after all, are mental reserves, they are forms of prudence that come from the fact that you don’t really know what you want or rather who you want, after all it is a choice in the dark, and for you it is the same, you too see the outside and I think sooner or later you will realize that the contents of the box are not worth much. I should be happy to have found a guy, a handsome guy who “maybe” is interested in me, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by feelings but rather by uncertainties. Having some sex, as good as it may be, just means having some sex. I wonder why we got to this point, if by inertia, by chance, or just because each of us had our dreams of doing it with a guy and by chance that guy was me for you, but he could have been anyone else. After sex, and especially after an evening like the one we have just spent together, one should feel happy, enthusiastic, but no, I feel worried, I think maybe it would have been better if this whole story had never existed. In a sense it was nice, but in the end it is only an experience and we must be careful not to consider it a fundamental achievement, maybe it can happen again, but it will not be a basic choice of life. I know that you will leave, that it was only a moment, it is difficult to accept but in the end it can only be accepted. Even a moment can be beautiful and shouldn’t be thrown away, it’s just a moment. We do not have a life in common, which doesn’t exist for anyone, we shared a few moments, then each one will continue on his own path that is already marked.

II

Dignity is your main virtue, but dignity is, even if not above all, detachment, separation, the de facto claim of absolute autonomy. I understand that you claim your freedom, and you do very well to do so! And you do it gracefully and decisively at the same time. I had set out to never say no to you but also not to look for you and not because I don’t like your presence but because on the one hand I wouldn’t want you to consider me as a burden and on the other, if this happens, it would really bother me. Then it is better to disappear first, slowly, rather than knocking on the door of someone who doesn’t answer.

III

Every now and then, when you can’t find anything better, you look for me too, you say it’s not like that, but in the end the pauses between our meetings become so long that they appear to be the prelude to a definitive goodbye, or rather to a disappearance without goodbye. Maybe we have only a physical communication, or at least we have had it, then everyone remains closed in on himself, I behave this way, we behave this way together, we play the part of lovers together once in a while and then everything returns as before and another very long pause starts again. You have your dignity, I have my prudence and it’s all over before we start. Only sex remains, which is still liberating, at least up to a certain point, but then the parenthesis closes and we return to real life. I know absolutely nothing about your real life, beyond a few names. We just have to wait for it to end by itself.

IV

I’m pleased when I hear from you, in the minutes we spend on the phone on the one hand I’m glad that you are still there and on the other I’m afraid that talking to me could take you further away, or further highlight that I have been only a moment and that moment has passed, perhaps there is still a non-negative memory, but that too is fading. I like your voice. Long ago it would have seemed impossible but you are fading into my memories. You were a need and you are becoming a memory with more blurred outlines day after day. I count the days since the last call, they are now 35, that call could really be the last. Archiving is difficult, I’ll have to do it anyway, because it’s not even a choice.

V

Well, after 42 days we met again, some physical contact, to have the illusion of contact. I am left with the idea that you too are a drifter without reference points, with so many frustrations and so many resentments, so many unresolved conflicts that will remain unresolved. Our sporadic being together doesn’t help us to solve our problems, or maybe yes, who knows what we would be like if we were really alone, that is, one without the other, maybe we would be even worse than that. Tonight I had the feeling of a minimum of emotional contact that still aborts before birth, because maybe it’s not worth it. I had almost forgotten you and now it starts all over again, the count of days starts again, mine is a life made up of expectations, yours I don’t know what it is made of, I’m afraid there aren’t even the expectations,

VI

You turned up after two weeks, we started talking a little more seriously on the phone, just a few words, more pauses than anything else, then another call came, you said: “I’ll call you back” but, according to the usual script, you didn’t call back. Our phone call lasted 4 minutes and 26 seconds, then there were other things to do.

VII

Why did you call me? You joked, you played, you even provoked. What did you have in mind? You looked like another person. Were you happy or was it just an almost neurotic outburst? Because it’s not like you to joke like that. I played the game, or what looked like a game, but the atmosphere was tense, almost a way to test how far I would follow you. I fear moments out of the ordinary, I fear unusual things, I wish they were, but I wish they were true. I was expecting you to propose to see us but it didn’t happen and the phone call ended with a brutal: “I have to go to lunch, bye”.

VIII

But why are you mad at me? I have tried never to intervene in your choices, or perhaps it seemed to me that I did not intervene. Sometimes I think you don’t listen to me and instead you listen to me, but it happens at the very wrong times, and nothing good ever comes to you. After all, we only exchange a few words, how can you feel conditioned by these things? Yes, it is true that you remember the things I say, but you remember them in your own way, you take them for criticism, for ways of dissenting or worse for incoherent sermons. If I think you did right some things, it was anyway you the one who did those things, the one who chose them, I didn’t impose anything on you, I didn’t condition you in any way. I have never judged your friends, I have not tried to distance you from anyone. Each extra word said can cause misunderstanding. I tell you positive things because I respect you and maybe I love you, even if I feel you are far away. I’m not trying to seduce you, not only I know from the beginning you were going to leave, but I think that basically it has already happened. You consider my behavior strange because I want nothing more from you than what you give me. I don’t keep you at a distance to bind you to me, you have to be free. You are a serious man even if very different from me. My frustrations are only mine, I can’t blame you for being like that. I keep thinking about you but in another way, I miss you, at least in a sense I miss you, but I no longer have the desire to build something with you that is different from what already exists (and something exists), the rest just doesn’t it makes sense because it doesn’t exist. You once asked me about some friends of mine that you thought were my ex-boyfriends, but you too are my friend and you are not my boyfriend, you never were, you never felt like my boyfriend and, in my opinion, you did very well, both for you and for me. Friends, even a little distant, we really are, the rest is just some sex, which I don’t think was ever exciting for you either, that was just the cover for something more complicated and more convoluted that I can’t understand completely, it is that something that is not clear that is probably the real motivation of our relationship, that produces conflicts and problems that are not typical of friendship. I wonder what you think of me, if you’ve ever asked yourself the problem, sometimes I think you identify me with other people who have had a real weight, I don’t know if positive or negative, in your life, and that’s why maybe I am worth more as a symbol than as a person. Sometimes I thought that you saw things in me that never really were, both in the negative and in the positive. In any case, the image you have of me is largely a figment of your imagination and I could say more or less the same about the image I have of you. Who knows what you would say if you read this diary. Would you take me for a delusional who fills the notebooks with absurd meditations? Or maybe you would wonder why I write these things? Only one thing is certain, I’ll never know.

IX

I haven’t heard from you for a very long time, now I don’t count the days anymore. Sometimes you come back to my memory, I think that if you have disappeared it means that you are fine and that my function is now exhausted and this thing lifts my spirits. Would I like to go back and restart our story again? No. I say that without an exclamation point. Thinking about you happy, or at least more serene, reassures me. Who knows if we will meet again. The meaning of things can often not be understood. It’s okay to forget me but I wouldn’t want you to remember me in a negative way. Having had a negative influence would morally crush me.

X

When I heard your voice, I challenged all the certainties that I had built up in so many days. I must admit my wrongs: I didn’t trust you, I let my thoughts run on the usual negative tracks and I took for granted things that seemed obvious to me but were not. The pause was particularly long and therefore anxious but it was just a pause, but I couldn’t realize it and I ran to the wrong conclusions, and basically it was a pause that you didn’t even want. You have not forgotten about me, it seems almost impossible but you are still here, we are still here. That labile and problematic relationship still exists, it hasn’t fallen apart. We talked more than usual and in a very quiet way, I don’t know if you were happy to hear from me but at least it seemed to me that  you were. At this point even this prudence seems to me out of place, if not completely stupid. You told me that one of these days you will come to see me and I was happy with it, I did not expect a similar speech that was undoubtedly welcome. All the talk, mine and yours, came spontaneously and I wasn’t afraid to say wrong things. I cannot deny that I’m happy. It’s amazing how a phone call can change a person’s mood.

It is true, I had given space to my fears, but you have not disappeared, your presence is direct and simple today as in the end it has always been, while I was only inclined to read the worst in your talks, I interpreted your behaviors as destructive, I projected the worst of myself into you, I lived my relationship with you as a relationship between the worst of me and what I believed to be my best and weakest side, I was killer and victim of myself, in you I embodied the indifferent and destructive spirit that I carry inside me, but you are not the worst side of me, you are another person, luckily you are another person. What drew me to you was your weakness and your availability, under a rough skin. The mistake is to project oneself into the other without trusting him, because this seems the best and almost obligatory choice, it is basically a way of believing oneself better, to think that you understand everything, that you are the paradigm of everything. Today I was happy because I realized that you are not my double in the negative but you are better than me, you have your flaws, but you are different from me and you can understand things that I cannot understand and feel things that I cannot feel. The pauses, even the very long ones, were not a prelude to anything, your claiming your freedom didn’t hide any attempt at abandonment. After all, what is the point of asking if you are or are not my boyfriend? You remember me, you look for me, you are the one who looks for me, I just want to be sought. Thinking about you takes me away from the sense of emptiness. You had patience with me because you saw something good in me, not something strange but something good. After all, our relationship has deep roots, I didn’t look for other guys, you did it and I always considered it well done and I pushed aside, but our relationship never got lost, I didn’t want it to be lost, even if I feared it, but it was you who actually prevented our relationship from getting lost in thin air. When words were difficult and complicated between us there was the physicality that spoke. I’ve never wanted another guy, I just wanted you, even with a problematic relationship, even with so many doubts and uncertainties, but I wanted you and no one else. You’ve had your stories but there has always been a place for me. You know that I pay attention to your words, that I try to understand you and that I’m happy when I see you. We have never acted and we have never quarreled, because the quarrel leads to detachment and we have never lost sight of each other. Today was a happy day.

XI

I’m fine with you, there is no need for too many words, together we can allow ourselves to be who we are, you a little rough and drastic, I obsessive and sticky, things that we accuse each other of but that we basically accept. I don’t even know what I can console you for but I know that you really are there and you know that some of your drastic reactions will be accepted and will not be considered destructive anyway. We put up with each other, but maybe it’s not just that. If you wanted to do without me you could very well put me on the back burner, but it never happened and it’s so from several years now. I too somehow could do without you, but I’m fine with you, I objectively think I’ve never found anyone better than you, I dream, I still think in vain, to build a future with you, but it’s a dream of my own, I dream of it because you are my private refuge, the one in which perhaps you are not 100% understood but still accepted with that rough politeness that reproaches but without being aggressive, and then your censorship is never radical, in the things I say you at least recognize my good will. You distance yourself but never go too far. Then there is sex which somehow basically represents everything else, it is the will to find a balance and we found it there much more than in words. Sometimes I’m amazed at how, in sex, everything becomes much easier and more direct, I talk about sex with you, because in other situations it didn’t happen like that at all. Intertwining hands is a gesture of extraordinary intimacy. There is nothing about you that I don’t like and I’m amazed that you find me sexually interesting. Other people also found me interesting from that point of view, but they were people who did not attract me, with you the extraordinary thing was the reciprocity, something that I had never experienced with anyone. Hugging you tightly, feeling that you are really there and that you are comfortable with me is the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced. Spontaneity and simplicity at the same time create the profound union of two people. You have allowed me to have a place in your most intimate world and this no one has ever done as you did, without reservations and without hesitation.

XII

You don’t just have me, you also have other guys and it’s not for a sexual outburst, you have other guys you love and I see it from the very few things you say about them, it’s not a whim, those guys are really important to you more or less like me. On this point I can only reflect with myself, on this I cannot have a comparison with you. Is exclusivity important to the point of influencing everything else? Of course it is an underlying desire that is very difficult to keep under control. Honestly I don’t have the impression that you love me less because you have other stories, of course you have to share your time, but I’ve always known this. Do I feel jealous? Frankly no. There is no couple relationship between you and me, I don’t feel betrayed or disappointed, everything was clear from the beginning, no lies, no dust under the carpet, and I don’t even think you’ve experienced your stories as conflicting stories. So I should put the problem aside and just forget about it. Even thinking that you can have sexual contact with other guys doesn’t upset me, because it has certainly happened several times since we met and you have never denied it and in any case we have maintained an authentic emotional relationship with a sexuality that doesn’t seem to me minimally conditioned by either side. Maybe I would like a little more of your time, even though I know this would be a form of selfishness. If I have never worried about these problems before why should I worry about them now? I don’t have serious, objective reasons to get myself into such problems, even if underneath I tend to interpret our relationship as something that could (should) become exclusive. I know it will never happen but getting such an idea out of the brain is not that easy. Of one thing I am sure: the absence of exclusivity would never lead me to undermine our relationship.

XIII

I spent a wonderful evening with you! I would say far beyond my expectations. There is only one element that worries me and that is the hypothesis that you have mentioned that you can go to work abroad. You mentioned it en passant, as something that could “also” happen, let’s say as a remote eventuality. I was afraid to push the speech further and I was silent. You love your job, no problem with it, but you also love some people, including me. If you leave, you don’t just put me aside, but pretty much all the people who really matter to you, at least that’s what I see. Work is important, I understand it but a qualitative leap in work would lead you to emotional loneliness. You could certainly create an alternate world elsewhere, this is undeniable but it would take years as it took years for you to create the world you have here. In short, I didn’t have the courage to tell you what I think and I don’t like that. I shouldn’t anymore be afraid to tell you what I think and instead that fear is still there.

XIV

Another wonderful evening with you and without any mention of a possible change of job. From what you say it seems to me that in the job you have now you feel very comfortable. Again I preferred to shut up. I would have gladly asked you for some more clarification on the hypothetical departure but this time too I was afraid and I don’t like this. Tomorrow or in any case as soon as possible I have to try to address the issue. Maybe it’s best to wait until the next time we meet. Damn! I still let myself be influenced by you!

XV

Really beautiful evening with you. I found the courage and immediately tackled the job issue. You told me that the possibility of going abroad had vanished, I had already understood this from the fact that you hadn’t talked about it anymore, then I asked you “But if the chance hadn’t vanished and the possibility of leaving had really been there, would you have accepted?” You said to me with a smile: “Luckily I didn’t have to choose, but if I had to, I think I wouldn’t have left, because I don’t just have a job here …” Then we had sex and it was a very beautiful, very tender thing, with some smile and a few chuckles when it suited the situation. Our relationship, seen from the outside, is incomprehensible but for us it has an enormous value! And I really mean for us, not just for me!

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion of this post open on the Gay Project Forum:

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gay-diary-2021

A HAPPY GAY MAN

Hi Project,
there are moments in life when you understand that your choices were the right ones and that you were right to follow your path, that is your instinct, to the end, without being distracted by anything or anyone. At nearly 40, I feel like a happy man. I’ve been in love with a guy for years, sometimes being near him kept me anxious, sometimes I didn’t know what to do, but now, 15 years later, I think our story was not the fulfillment of my wishes but I would say a lot more. He made me understand what it means to love each other. 

Lately our relationship is something indescribably beautiful, we love each other, between us there is an excellent sexual understanding, I never thought that such happiness could have been achieved. I’ve always been looking for guys, but it had never happened to me that someone really fell in love with me, that is, that he loved me as “he” did. My happiness is not my merit, I tried to escape, to get away, sometimes I did not understand him and I was almost afraid of him, but he has curbed my escapes with sweetness, he is a truly unique man, with a sweetness that displaces you, he is generous, when we are making love and he looks into my eyes I melt and I think I never imagined I could find someone like him. 

I had had other guys, but for both them and me it was a way to fill the time, it was a way to build a relationship because then I had the myth of the gay relationship and I had other myths of various kinds in mind too, in layman’s terms, I didn’t understand anything about love. I have my limits and my flaws, I’ve never been a nice guy, at best passable, normal, but nothing more, but he fell in love with me just the same. He understands me, he knows that I have my limits and he accepts them, when he is with me he is fine with me and I see it not only when we make love, but also when we talk about something else. He feels that I love him and there are moments of intense communication between us. 

When we met we both felt a powerful attraction made of sex but also of personal esteem, he seemed interested in me above all for sex, I, even if I tended to run away because I thought he would never take me seriously, I was strongly attracted to him because I saw that he instead took me seriously in an absolutely unique and special way, even if apparently everything seemed to be based on sex, besides, he was my ideal model of guy and I instinctively felt that I wouldn’t want anyone else if I couldn’t be with him. 

At first, being with him seemed like the classic pipe dream, because he’s not only handsome, but he’s sweet and he’s a man, not a puppet, he has his own brain and soul that make you fall in love. I have always been in love with him, but at the beginning with some hesitation and anxiety, now instead I feel totally fulfilled, you know, precisely those things of physical instinct, when one strikes you deeply, because perhaps what amazed me most it was the fact that he was really attracted to me, and it was the first time I ever felt attracted to a guy who really wanted me. It was as if there was something between us that prevented any possible breakup of our relationship, whatever happened there could be a break but never a breakup. He never forgot about me, anyhow I always let him free and kept myself a bit on the sidelines, but he always looked for me.

We have had our stories with other guys but none of these stories have ever really pushed us away from each other. Over the years, slowly and not without jolts, but progressively more and more seriously, I learned from him the value of sexuality, which I tended to belittle and he learned from me that saying “I love you” may not be a saying. We progressively adapted to each other, we learned from each other and we kept our relationship strong even in the difficult moments that were inevitable, because we both had other ideas on our minds at the time, then we did not have the perception that what held us together would become the determining force of our life. 

Then, month after month, and even day after day, so many other things that previously seemed fundamental vanished as our relationship strengthened because we realized how important we were to each other, that is because we realized the fact that relationships with other guys could falter and collapse, but our relationship would have remained strong and would never collapse because we really loved each other. I feel him extraordinarily close, being with him seems to me the most beautiful thing in the world. 

When he calls me I feel in Heaven just seeing his name on the smartphone screen, I feel happy just hearing his voice, when he comes to see me I feel transported into a dimension of total involvement and at the same time I don’t feel anxiety but only a sense of gratification, because there is no longer the fear that something could go wrong, because now misunderstandings are a memory of the past that little by little has vanished into the mists of memory. Note that we are not dependent on each other, we are not attached like oysters to the rock, we are totally free, even if we love each other. 

Freedom and loving each other are two things that can coexist very well. Our love is not a kind of half loving each other. I am deeply in love with him, he does not use these words, but when we are together he feels totally involved, understood and accepted and I can see it clearly, he feels at ease, he does not play a script, now I am part of his daily life as he is part of mine, but this means that I consider him as a part of me and I see that I’m really important to him.

At the beginnings, he did not like gestures of tenderness, or better he accepted them and perhaps he desired them but he didn’t like to put such gestures in practice himself, now he has learned to understand them and has developed his own non-verbal affective language. It is beautiful when, remaining silent, he looks me straight in the eye as if to say: “Come closer!” or, after sex, when he stays with his eyes closed and makes the gesture of sending me a kiss or when he stares at me, squints and laughs, or when he hugs me with all the strength he has. It is beautiful when he allows me to stroke his hair or squeeze his hands tightly. It is beautiful when he calls me to propose to meet at my house, basically to have sex together, and you feel that he is happy with my clear and always positive and indeed enthusiastic response.

I trust him and he is totally aware of it, there is no need to even say it, he has never disappointed me and he has never told me one thing for another. I try to make him feel that I love him but he knows it very well. He is much taller and stronger than me but he is extremely delicate, when we shake hands he adjusts his strength to mine. In sex our mutual involvement is total, there is not  even the least embarrassment, everything is spontaneous, there is nothing due or taken for granted. When we are in bed together we don’t talk, there is no need for words, we have our own language made up of minimal gestures. After sex we stay naked on the bed talking about other things and I see him calm, determined in his facing the future but not anxious, I see him operational, rational, capable of managing problems and also of giving me confidence, and he understands how much I need it. 

Our physical contact is not only sexual, we often caress and shake hands even as a simple gesture of tenderness. Between us we don’t talk about the problems of everyday life, each of us handles his little problems as he wants, we talk about the more serious problems instead, but we don’t talk about them obsessively, but generally we don’t even need to talk, we sit on the sofa and stay hugging each other to feel each other’s warmth and to caress each other, many times this way we get to sex but many times we don’t but we feel good anyway, I know that he is there and that he wants to be there and he has the same certainties about me.

Even just five years ago, I would not have imagined our relationship developing up to this level. I wished that things could take this path but I still had doubts that it would actually happen. The past five years have been the real flowering of our relationship. I got rid of conditioning and preconceptions that held me back a lot and I saw that he was really happy, because in some way I too was making his dream come true. He radically changed my life, he was a ray of sunshine, a rush of spring that entered my world and transformed it into a beautiful world. I try to follow him, I take him as a model but above all I need his presence, I can’t wait for him to call me and come to me.

When I think the day is approaching, I polish the whole house, wax the floors, wash the window panes, iron the sheets and pillowcases and perfume them lightly, so that the day when he comes to me he can find everything perfect and in order. He encourages me not to let things go and to keep everything in order. My secret dream would be that he would stay at my house for one night, because that way he could feel my home a bit like his home, I would like to cook for him, let him find dinner ready when he gets back from work, but he lives far away and these things are difficult to put in practice. We are no longer boys and I am sorry but at 40 I can say that I am a happy man. 

____________________

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GAY COUPLES AND POLYGAMY

Hi Project,

I’m not doing well today. I haven’t heard from Enzo (actually his name is Lorenzo) for more than 15 days . I’m not sad, basically I know that sooner or later I will heard from him again and I also know that now he has so many important things to think about, so many things that worry him and worry him a lot. When we don’t hear from each other for days we don’t even send text messages, it has always happened like this. I’m not sad and, in a sense at least, I’m not afraid of losing him, I know well that in a few days I’ll hear from him again, it has happened so dozens of times.

I’m not doing well because our relationship is not enough for me. I love him, obviously in my own way, and I also feel quite reciprocated, but I would like more from him. I wouldn’t simply want more, in the sense that if I found someone capable of giving me what I would like, I would feel at ease, I would like more from him, from him and from no one else. First of all I would like him more present but I know that I could ask him anything but this. Would I like to change his character? Well, as in many important things you want everything and the opposite of everything, I would like him to be always exactly like he is, but I would also like him somehow different, I know it’s a contradictory discourse, but that’s what I think.

His silences are often long and make me feel bad, but on the other hand I look for him very rarely, because I think he doesn’t have to feel constrained in any way, I would like him to realize that I need him. I know that he only needs me sometimes, for the rest he must feel free and I don’t have to ask him any questions and for sure I don’t ask him anything, but when he needs me, he admits it even if this makes him feel weak.

He treats me with respect and more than respect, but he’s careful to strongly emphasize his autonomy. I have asked myself many times what he really thinks of me, I think that overall his opinion is positive, even if sometimes he tries to widen the distances and certainly not to reduce them. On the other hand, I have always encouraged him to do so, that is, to feel totally autonomous. He is not my boyfriend, he has his own very complicated affective-sexual world, of which I’m a part too, it is that world that somehow gives him a push to make him go on, his wellbeing as well as his feeling bad depend on that world. That world is the small nucleus of people who are important to him, I mean who are really important.

With him concepts like boyfriend or couple are absolutely out of place, at the beginning he tried to adapt to it, but it was not for him, he lived it as a stretch, as an imposition. Enzo must be accepted as he is and I made my choice, because when he feels happy I feel happy too. He doesn’t think only of himself, he’s not at all selfish, if he cares about you, he really cares about it, but he doesn’t accept limitations to his freedom and wants to be accepted for what he really is, but when he esteems you and loves you he doesn’t let you go, he stays by you, he doesn’t forget you, he considers you just like a part of his life, not an accessory or temporary element, he doesn’t exclude you from anything, he trusts you.

When we met, but not immediately, I began to understand his way of loving. At the beginning I felt terrible, I tried many times to cut ties with him but I never did it because he didn’t let me, every time I tried and I started to give him my farewell speeches, to make him understand that I wanted to go away, he didn’t stop me, he just said to me: “Okay …”, and he didn’t seem upset in the least, then after a couple of weeks he would call me back as if absolutely nothing had happened, he was used to my goodbyes and didn’t take them seriously, in reality they weren’t goodbyes but a kind of periodic ritual confirmation and he had figured it out before I did.

He never told me he wanted to get away from me. He never told me he was in love with me, but not even that he wanted to move away, he never made scenes of detachment, without saying too many words he simply assumed that there would be no detachment anyway. Even if in a limited way, he also talks to me a little about other people who are part of his very private world, to make me understand that that world exists, that he loves me, even if he doesn’t say so explicitly, but that world exists anyway and will not disappear, and obviously exclusivity is not part of his world.

Before meeting him I had had other guys, a bit following the classic pattern of engagement and standard gay couple but it never worked, they said too many words, but I never came to understand what they really thought, they still acted on two levels, one of the things that can be said and another of those that cannot be said, and in the end I always found myself displaced because sooner or later something unexpected and unspoken came up, which was however decisive. It has never been like this with Enzo, he tells you everything, then leaves the decision to you, if you choose to stay with him you know there will be no surprises, that is, you know what you are going to encounter.

At the beginning it is unsettling, because you cannot delude yourself and you must take note that the story will not be what you dreamed of, because at the beginning one has myths and fables of all kinds in his head, then you begin to understand the meaning of his way of being. I have understood for a long time that he cannot have an exclusive relationship with me, that is, I have understood that for him it is impossible, as far as I’m concerned, things are different, for me there is only Enzo, I would say I’m essentially monogamous, I want to be with him and in order to be with him I don’t have to give up anything, he is naturally polygamous, accepting him it’s difficult but when you accept him you realize that it is a different balance but that it can work very well anyway.

In his life I don’t feel marginal, I have a specific role and this fact has lasted for years, I understand if he is good or bad from the tone of his voice on the phone and when I understand that he is fine, I’m fine too, no matter why he is fine, he can also be fine because he made love in a satisfactory way with another guy, the important thing is that he is well, that his little world is capable of making him feel good. Enzo doesn’t act, he is simply himself. In the long run, this type of relationship is creating an almost family bond between us.

Between us there is also sex, in appearance there is above all if not exclusively sex, but in reality sex is just a way to tell us that we love each other, or at least it is so for me, I tend to see him more as a brother than as a sexual partner. If there were no sex I would be sorry but I believe that, at least for me, nothing would collapse, however I think that sex is a very important component, because it was probably several times, at least at the beginning, the glue that prevented our relationship from dissolving. I have to say that the fact that he has sex with other guys creates two kinds of problems for me: first of all our sexual contacts are much less “technically sexual” than they were at the beginning, when he was trying to build a real couple relationship. This fact, paradoxical as it may seem, has caused a shift from technical sex to pampering, or rather from risky sex to pampering. Reducing, that is, practically eliminating risky behaviors was a decision that matured by itself, let’s say that we both took it for granted and I think it is also a sign of common sense on the part of Enzo, who didn’t make problems.

Psychologically, well, I can’t deny it, but to think not only that he may have been in love with another guy in the past, but that he’s presently in love with another guy, it embarrasses me a lot. I know his fantasies aren’t all about me and that’s not that easy to accept. Sometimes I imagine him in bed with another guy and such a thought upsets me a lot, but in the end this is his nature, if you want to be with Enzo it can only work if you accept that things are so, otherwise you have to find another guy who goes looking for the classic life as a gay couple, but you have to put Enzo apart. If I have to choose between Enzo and his polygamous relationships and another guy in a classic gay couple, well, I prefer to keep Enzo, because there is a real feeling with him. I have never felt betrayed by him, but by others I did.

He doesn’t use to make promises and speaks clearly, the others made fantastic promises but then the facts didn’t correspond to the words. We haven’t spent years of life together, but we have lived through several significant moments of our lives together. I know very well that he will never be all mine but in the end that’s not what matters, I remember seeing him in moments when he felt really terrible and really broken, now it’s a long time that he’s been all in all not so bad, now he makes plans and looks to the future with a positive outlook.

Sometimes I think he will do great things, which are already beginning to materialize, and I’m afraid that he can go to work far away, this would be his realization but in a sense it would also be destructive for me and for that small world that is Enzo’s vital drive, and this scares me. Even if our relationship is partial, I wouldn’t want to lose him, I would really be sorry, my life would be much grayer and I think that for him too it would be a form of sudden and violent uprooting, but it is also true that there are trains and planes and that probably nothing would collapse, but that episodic contact that exists now would also be lost and it would be a blow to both of us. Our it’s a real, direct, personal contact, not via the internet. Falling in love is beautiful, but tremendously difficult.

___________________

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GAY COUPLES IN BED WITH OR WITHOUT TROUSERS ON? – PRAISE OF MY GAY PARTNER

Dear Project,
you perhaps are wondering why I put a title on the email and why I didn’t write “praise of my boyfriend”. First of all because he doesn’t like to feel somebody’s boyfriend, then because he’s no longer a boy, he’s 43, and then because he deserves praise.

I have never had an easy character, I do a lot of small talk, I’m very picky, I split hairs but I always postpone decisions and I’m afraid of everything, that is, I prefer to avoid deciding when I can. I have to admit that there were some guys running after me, I mean they were pretty interested in me, actually those guys weren’t more than five or six, including those who passed like meteors, but of those few guys I always got tired after a short time and they left because they saw me faded and not very participatory. You can understand what real chances I had of finding a true boyfriend. In practice I probably was neither looking for a real boyfriend. I was not closed in principle to such things but they were only eventualities that I was not “concretely” looking for.

Then he enters my life, several years ago now. He’s two years younger than me, but he looks much younger. We know each other at university, we attend the same degree course but I’m in the third year and he has just enrolled. I had noticed him because he was really beautiful, or at least I liked him a lot, he had begun to chat with me, because usually, when you know nobody at all, you start to chat  with the guy who is just nearby, then those five minutes of chat became ten, then twenty, then I asked him where he lived and I told him that I would gladly accompany him home, he smiled at me and said “Thank you!” It all started like this, he didn’t live near the university and so we spent at least 20-25 minutes together every day.

He used to talk to me about his studies, what he wanted to do “when he grew up”, etc. etc., I, in turn, told him about the courses of the following years, the professors and the exams. We didn’t use to talk about personal things, but the habit of accompanying him home become a rule. We couldn’t study together because we had to attend courses of different years but we were fine together. The conversation between us was usually more meaningful for omissions than for admissions, we never talked about girls, what obviously was very significant. We certainly had something in common: never in the disco, we thought above all about studying and building a future, we both felt a certain impatience for our family environment, and above all we were well together.

We started seeing each other also on Sunday morning, officially for cultural reasons but basically just to be together. We were only together in the morning, then at lunchtime I would take him back home because we had to study in the afternoon. Between us a very particular exchange of smiles was very common, on Sunday mornings we played like two kids, we talked nonsense and laughed at everything. I remember that there was an advertising poster of the “consorcio” tuna that he read emphasizing the separation between  the words “con-socio” (that in Italian mean “with a mouse”), and started to laugh and the laughter became unstoppable!

Time passed, the situation was pleasant, very pleasant, but it did not evolve. Obviously I had done more than a little thought about him, but I had a thousand psychological problems, for me sex was just a matter of fantasy, I had the idea of being able to really try it but I rejected it with a lot of pseudo-arguments, from the fear of diseases, to the fact that I would have disappointed him, up to moral scruples of various kinds, a residue of my Catholic upbringing, in the sense that I thought that somehow having sex with him would have been a bit like making him have a negative experience, let’s say how to dirty him a little etc. etc .. He, in theory, did not know that I was gay, as I did not know about him, we had never explicitly told about, but, after six months, only an idiot could have had doubts and I had them and I felt like an idiot.

I have begun to have doubts like Hamlet: do I tell him or do I not tell him? But I didn’t tell him anyway. I didn’t ask myself what he could think (which would have been the healthiest thing), I thought about what I could or could not do myself and that’s it, but in this way the situation didn’t go on. Then we started talking about things a little more personal and I started to be afraid that he was going to put me on the corner, but he didn’t, he exposed himself first and told me a half story with a friend of his, who that did not even look at him, but that he liked a lot, in practice this was his coming out. In that situation it is obvious that you have to tell him about you too and I did and I said, “I’ve never been with a guy, but I guess I’m not ready for these things yet. “The morning ended just like all the previous Sundays, I accompanied him back home and we said goodbye, I noticed that this time we didn’t shake hands, as we always did, but he smiled at me looking into my eyes and said: “Today I’m very happy” and I replied: “Me too”.

Project, at that point one would expect the story should go further, he probably expected it, but I would have gladly driven back, I would have liked to cancel that Sunday morning, because by now I had taken a step with no return and I would have liked not to have done it. It is paradoxical, you are finally in the condition that would lead you to have sex with the guy you dreamed of, because for me he was really at the top, the others were less than zero in comparison, and instead you are afraid and try to postpone, to take time, to avoid any decision. After all, it was he the one who had decided coming out, as usual I would not have done anything, and I wondered what I would have done if he had tried to take another step forward. Here the temptation was great, but so was the fear.

His attempts were very cautious and gradual. The first time he deliberately touched my hand to have a minimum of physical contact with me, I pulled it back, then he repeated the gesture and I let him do, I didn’t know what to do, I wanted to go further but I also wanted to leave. I tried to explain, but he was perplexed, he didn’t understand, my behavior seemed absolutely absurd to him, let’s say pathological.

We both lived with our parents, so we couldn’t see each other in the house and obviously, in the car, on Sunday mornings, we could get to hold hands a bit, which we had come to, not without stupid problems on my part and not without anger immediately suppressed on his part. Of course, however, we could not go beyond that level and I must say that this reassured me. I was very excited when I was with him, even just holding each other hands, and he was very excited too.

One Sunday he asks me if I would like to spend a weekend with him, I ask him if he means even sleeping together and he says yes, and I begin to procrastinate as usual, to not answer and pretend nothing is happening and to be distracted, he insists and I tell him I don’t feel like it. He makes a face of disappointment and tells me: “Okay, I understand …” opens the door of the car and leaves. I realize, years later, that he must have felt very discomforted and deceived, because in practice I had refused him. On the other hand, at first I felt like a great man, a moral hero who had said no to him because he really loved him, beyond sex! But then already after an hour I missed him very much, I thought he would never look me in the face again. I was aware  that perhaps not only I had not done anything good for him but I had offended him in a very profound way. But even in this situation I didn’t pick up the phone to tell him how I felt, I kept for myself my discomfort and also my “moral” satisfaction of having done it for him and I didn’t think about how he could really feel.

The next day I go to class, but I take a different tour of the corridors so as not to pass in front of the classroom where he attends lessons. At the end of the last hour of class I find him in front of the door as usual, as if nothing had happened between us, he doesn’t mention that in the morning I didn’t come to greet him as usual, everything happens as if the previous Sunday nothing had happened, but he is not acting, it seems that the anger has passed. Our life proceeds as before, I think in the meantime that I have not lost him, and it reassures me a lot, and that perhaps he has accepted the idea that sex for the moment is to be put aside.

A couple of weeks later, he tells me that the family has a little house in the mountains where nobody ever goes and that we could go there on a Sunday, then he looks me in the face and says: “I will not jump on you! don’t worry!” I tell him that we can also talk about it. He wants to get me to say that it’s okay for me also for the following Sunday, but I start again with hesitations and stupid speeches and he says to me: “But why do you always have to ruin everything? What are you afraid of? I don’t infect you with diseases, I’ve never been with anyone, really never. ” I keep beating around the bush and he gets out of the car and drives off on foot without saying goodbye.

Again I feel bad, but then in the end, for the second time, I console myself and tell myself that I do it anyway for his good and that I have to put aside the melancholies. The next day, I pass in front of his classroom and greet him as if nothing had happened, he looks at me with an attitude of defiance but not of disinterest. At the end of the lessons I take him home as usual and he says to me: “Don’t tell me you don’t care! I can see very well that you are tempted and very much too! But what are you afraid of? ” I start again with the discourse of diseases, “in the sense that I would not like to infect him, I to him, non he me”. He looks at me and says: “You told me you’ve never been with anyone, so that’s not true …” I swore it was true and he said to me, but if we both do the test first, then you don’t have excuses anymore, ok? ” I replied: “Well…” and he was about to lose his temper again, then he held back and said to me: “Meanwhile let’s do the test! Ok? ” I replied by nodding my head yes, he said to me: “Okay, I’ll take care of it …” I thought it was a way of saying and I nodded yes again. Then he looked me straight in the eye and said: “But remember that you must keep your word!” and I just said to him: “Ok!”. I thought that the speech was very vague and that it would be talked about in an indefinite future, and instead, exactly in moment when I got back home I received a text message telling me that I had to pick him up the next day at home at 6.45, to go together to do the sample, because he had made the appointment for 7.15, in a laboratory near the university. I only replied “Ok”.

The next day we met and went to take the sample, then the day followed the usual course. We didn’t have the slightest anxiety about the test, neither he nor I. When I took him home he said to me: “Friday afternoon we must go together to pick up the results…” and so we did. The results were evidently both negative, what was practically taken for granted, we had no sexually transmitted diseases, but so also my excuse to say no had vanished in the air. He suggests that I go to the mountains on Sunday and I feel a little forced and a little tempted but in the end I say yes.

On Sunday morning I go to pick him up, after about an hour’s drive we arrive at his little house, a  place lost in the middle of the mountains. According to the agreed program, we would return in the evening. I wouldn’t have agreed to spend the night there to avoid sleeping with him, I know it seems pathological, but that’s how things worked for me then. Once at my destination, I wanted to go around so as not to be alone at home with him, not that I was sorry to be with him, quite the contrary! But I didn’t know what I could expect and still felt too conditioned. We went around until lunchtime and I suggested that we go and eat somewhere, again so as not to stay at home with him, but he told me that he had brought his lunch from home and that the bag with provisions was in the trunk. I had no choice I had to agree to go home with him. It was winter and it was freezing cold, we turned on the stove but the cold was anyhow very strong.

We heated up the cooked things and ate, then the little sun that was there went out and it was freezing, the cold was really strong. He went into the bedroom where there was a queen-sized bed, pulled out of the closet a large double feather quilt, as high as a mattress and also a large double wool blanket, he spread the wool blanket on the bed and the quilt on top, he took off his shoes and lay down on the bed, dressed as he was, and covered himself with the quilt, then he looked at me and said: “What are you waiting for? Come, you are dying of cold … I don’t touch you, at least we stay warm … ” I said to him: “Promised?” and he told me. “Promised!“ I took off my shoes and lay down under the quilt next to him. I felt actually at ease, but I kept my distance from him. He tells me: “But come closer, so we warm up better! We are fully dressed, but what are you afraid of? ” Then I get a little closer, I feel his warmth, he turns to me and looks at me with his beautiful eyes and tells me: “I’m glad you didn’t run away!” And I just tell him: “Shut up!”

Then he takes my hand and squeezes it, his is very hot, and he says to me: “Your hands are frozen, you are very cold, let me approach that I will warm you a little …” So our first physical contact had been created, I felt the his warmth, he leaned against me. Every now and then he asked me: “Does it bother you?” And I said to him: “No…”. At one point he fell asleep. It was late afternoon and it was dark outside, but the light was on and I could see him very closely, he was serene, he totally trusted me. I let him sleep, then around seven I had to wake him up because we had to go back to the city. He stretched like a cat, then said to me: “Here it’s fine and it’s freezing cold outside… what if we leave in the morning? If we leave at 6.30 we can be at the university on time … “I said to him:” Ok, but I have to tell home. ” He said: “Me too.” We called without getting out of bed, then he said to me: “What about dinner?” I replied: “We’ll do without it, let’s stay here, if it’s fine for you” I said : “Ok, Fine”.

Then he started stroking my face and told me he felt my beard, then he ran his hand through my hair and put his fingers in my collar, I let him do it for a while, then I thought that he could go further and I reminded him that he promised me he wouldn’t try to get further and he said: “Ok, but I didn’t promise you wouldn’t try it, I really like being stroked, stop it when you think you have to stop, ok? ” And I said: “Ok!” We were really fine, warm, we had no other thoughts on our mind. I stroked his face and hair for a while, then, at a certain point he said to me: “My trousers are tight and they bother me,does it bothers you if I take them off? ” I more or less expected something like this and I said to him: “Come on, I’m going to sleep in the other room, in the closet there is also another sleeping bag …”. Disappointed he replied: “I know there is … but would you leave me here alone?” then he saw my face a little annoyed and added: “Okay, don’t worry, I’ll keep my pants on but don’t go and get cold! I’m good at least as a stove! ” I replied: “How stupid you are!” and he said: “I think you are the stupid … but anyway …”. Then he approached me and said to me: “At least I can stay a bit like this?” I told him: “Sure!”, He replied: “But if I’m bothering you, tell me it, you don’t have to put up with me … “I didn’t know what to say and so I didn’t say anything but I put my arm over his shoulders and he hugged me even more and just said:” Goodnight! “

This was the first night we spent together. I can say that I was extremely happy, feeling his warmth felt beautiful to me. Maybe the very fact that he didn’t insist on getting to have sex with me started to defuse my weapons, if he tried to go further I would have felt almost compelled to say no, almost on principle, but he had not insisted and he hadn’t even left slamming the door. I slept very little during that night. He was asleep next to me and he made me a very strong tenderness and it was a sexual tenderness, I could try to deny it, to sublimate, to pretend it wasn’t like that, but it was so, and I began to realize it. I was wondering: “But why do I have to resist this guy? But what harm would it be if there was even a little sex between us? Why should I think it’s better to say no to him for his own good? His good must be evaluated by him. If he’s okay with it and me too, where’s the problem? And then, the fact of being together in the same bed was a tender thing, ours was a love for each other, slowly I began to accept the idea, but I told myself that we had to proceed calmly, by successive stages, without rushing too much.

The next day the alarm went off at six o’clock, around it was still late at night, getting out from under the quilt was truly a trauma. He asks me: “How did you feel last night?” I tell him: “Very well”, and he says to me: “Are we coming here again next Saturday?” and I nod my head yes, then he gives me wild eyes and begins to move towards me as if he wants to try a sexual approach, I raise my arms to defend myself and he just dishevels my hair and says to me laughing: “Are you scared? Don’t be afraid, I’m a guy of my word!” I tell him: “Don’t tease!” Then we leave. During the trip he resumes the conversation: “But next time without trousers …” I stop him: “Don’t tease!” and he tells me: “But I just say in order to be more comfortable. You have nothing to be afraid of, you can sleep in the other room and if you want you can also lock yourself inside!” The week went by with the usual rhythms: lessons and study, but I began to see in my brain what could happen the following weekend and I also began to make comparisons between those fantasies and my so-called moral principles.

After all, we had done the tests, he seemed to really want to get there, why would I have to keep saying no to him? It no longer seemed obvious to me that sex could leave him something negative. I was fighting with myself or rather with the residues of my education, however, the more days passed the more I felt convinced that the following Saturday I would really take a decisive step. Saturday arrived, I remember that in the morning I took a more thorough shower than usual, especially in the sex department, a sign that I considered at least probable the fact that something would happen between us on a physical level. I went to pick him up at his house and we left for the mountain. It was a typical cold winter day, I had chains in my car because, especially at night, the road could be frozen. When he got into the car I felt a breath of perfume more intense than usual and I thought that he too could have taken a much more thorough shower and this thought made me think of an undeclared form of complicity and made me smile. Throughout the journey he did not talk about, let’s say, dangerous topics, but certain silences were too long and were not normal, as my usual I still avoided addressing the subject. We stopped for breakfast along the way, all wrapped up, and then resumed our journey. This time he had brought a large bag full of provisions that must have been enough for Saturday lunch and dinner and Sunday lunch. Given the day, not even the refrigerator would be needed, the arrangements were that we would return on Sunday afternoon to avoid the risk of icy roads.

Once we reached our destination we thought we were going for a walk in the village, but it was so cold and the wind was blowing so strong that a similar idea seemed completely absurd. We brought inside the supplies, but it didn’t take long, then we started to feel frozen. It was still early, it wasn’t even ten in the morning. We turned on the heat. The house was a typical mountain house, one of those with a low ceiling so as not to disperse the heat, but it was still freezing cold. He said to me: “I think I’m going to go to bed, otherwise I’ll freeze.” He pulled the blanket and quilt out of the closet, as he had done the week before.

Once the bed was made, he said to me: “Without trousers?” I looked at him with two fiery eyes and he replied: “Okay, okay! With trousers on! ” Here I felt displaced, I would have liked him to insist and finally  I would have given in, but he chose the soft way and avoided insisting and I was really upset and tried to fix it by adding: “Tonight without …” He looked at me widening his eyes and made a sly face and just said “Wow! … at least we are more comfortable … “I looked at him and said:” Don’t make fun of me! ” He just said: “Well, in the meantime, come to bed now …” We got into bed with our trousers on but now the qualms of the first time were gone, he came close to me and hugged me and we stayed like that for as long as it took to regain warmth, by now holding our hands and caressing us was something automatic and taken for granted. However, I noticed that the caresses, both hers and mine, even if they were insistent, stopped far away from the, let’s say, more dangerous area. None of us wanted to take missteps. This time I felt no scruples of any kind, I behaved in a much more spontaneous way than usual even if not exactly 100% spontaneous, for me it was a very strange feeling, I was with another guy and I could behave spontaneously or almost, and he he corresponded to me, he understood me, he felt the same things as I did, I did not feel him as a different individual to fear and from which to keep at a certain distance anyway, I didn’t feel worried about his presence, I was beginning to see sexuality in another way, that is, as a complicity, as a couple game and it was something that I liked a lot.

We were cuddling in the heat for a couple of hours and I felt really happy. Then it was time to get up to prepare lunch. It was literally a freezing moment. First I sat just a moment in bed, let’s say, to cool the my boiling hormones, because I was erect and I didn’t want to be seen like this, the cold air actually produced its effects in a very short time and then I got out of the bed and I put my windbreaker on, because it was terribly cold even inside the house, instead he waited a bit to get up and I didn’t ask him why, even if I could have imagined it. I went to the kitchen and put my lunch in the microwave. In the meantime he got up and joined me in the kitchen and started making a whole pot of hot tea. After a few minutes the lunch was warmed up and we ate everything in 10 minutes. We had paper plates, so there weren’t  dishes to wash. And then to wash the dishes it would have been necessary to wait for the effects of the heating because the water did not flow in the pipes because it was frozen.

Outside it began to snow heavily. He told me: “Wi must hope it will stop soon, otherwise the road will freeze and we will not be able to return. However, here there is everything you need for survival for several days … If tonight it snows a lot and tomorrow it is sunny you have to shovel the snow at least up to the car and from the car to the road. The car has antifreeze, so it should start again anyway, but we will need to put the chains on at least for the first 20 or 30 kilometers. ” I ask him: “Is there TV here?”, He says no,I ask him if there is internet and he tells me that there is, I tell him: “What do we do?” and he replies: “No choice, we go back to bed, … without the trous …”. I don’t let him finish the sentence and I look at him with eyes of fire, but more for fun than anything else and he replies: “But keeping your trousers on in bed is really uncomfortable … it’s just for that … well … and then look, I don’t jump on you, you can stay almost sure… “. I tell him: “What does it mean to say almost?” And he replies: “That I leave it to you to take the first step … anyway you promised that tonight we will go to sleep without trousers, do you remember?” I replied with a moan: “Mh …” He insisted: “How did you say? I didn’t understand … “And I yelled at him:” Yes, but tonight … “He didn’t let go and continued: “But now it’s already evening … and then do we want to get up again to eat? Naaa! Once a day is enough!” I was very tempted and I said to him: “Ok, make the first move … ” He replied: “Wow! I proceed … ” He took off his pants staying under the quilt and threw them on the chair, then said: “Ah … at least I’m comfortable!” Before doing my part I waited a while and I expected him to urge me to do it, but he didn’t and he just said: “Believe me, so I’m much better … if you take your trousers off, I don’t jump on you, you’d be more comfortable, then if you are afraid, do as you want … ” At this point I made a strange speech to him and I said: “Every now and then, but a little too frequently today, you tell me that you will not jump on me, damn it, what have I to deduce from it? I think I look really stupid or clumsy to you… “He replied : “Neither clumsy nor stupid, just a little braked …” Then I too took off my trousers and threw them on the chair. Actually I felt much better this way. He asked me if I felt on duty, somehow compelled to do things I didn’t want to do, and I firmly said no. He was two years younger than me and much less clumsy than me. Then he asked me: “Can I lean on you?” And I told him yes. We hugged and the physical contact was very strong, we held each other for a few minutes, then he shook my hand and intertwined his fingers with mine and he said: “It was really beautiful!” and I replied: “Yes, a very strong thing that I had never tried”.

We didn’t sleep at night and it was the first time for us, we were very shy and cautious but all the thing was very engaging and very true. Once we were done with sex I was really happy but I realized that he was very melancholy. I didn’t know what to do. I asked him how he felt and he told me he didn’t know, that he had been fine but he had so many thoughts on his mind, a great confusion where there is everything from happiness to sadness. He had tears in his eyes. I asked him: “But is there something wrong? Did I do something wrong?” He looked at me and told me: “Don’t talk, just hug me…” I hugged him and held him tight, but he was closed in his melancholy. Then he said to me: “Did you feel compelled in any way?” I replied: “Not at all …” and I held him tighter, then he fell asleep in my arms. Our story began so many years ago. In the following years, things got complicated for external reasons, there have never been real misunderstandings between us. He made me feel loved, important, he considered me a decisive element in his life, just as I considered him.

I am in love with him today more than then because he is an exceptional man who spends himself on others, who has never gone after money, who is profoundly altruistic and is exactly the opposite of a careerist. He has achieved great successes in his work because he works hard but unfortunately he is also very stressed, I have often been his release valve, which honors me and fills me with happiness, but for some years he has been working abroad. I spend my holidays with him, but then in the rest of the year we can only meet in chat and for a limited time, because he has a thousand commitments. He is a profoundly good man, with me he had a unique delicacy and respect, he loved me and showed it to me in a thousand ways. When I have some doubts about a choice, I ask myself how he would behave in the same situation and I try to do what he would do. Now he is still handsome, but we are no longer boys and clearly on a physical level both he and I, we are no longer those of twenty years ago, but I respect him as a man, I discovered many aspects of his personality that fascinated me. He is never aggressive, he is calm, he is very sweet and patient, he encourages me, supports me and allows me to do the same with him, sometimes he scolds me a little and tells me that I should be more open to understanding problems of the others, but it does not refer to his problems but to the problems of those who do not think like us. There is only one point that really worries me and it is the fact that he is very stressed from work, sometimes, when we chat in the evening, and I would talk to him for hours, we are still forced to limit the time and many times I just tell him that I love him and he replies “Me too! If you weren’t there, I wouldn’t be nothing!” This sentence, even if it is not true, makes me feel proud. I hope that our life goes on like this for many years to come!!

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GAYS AND STRAIGHT FRIENDS

Hi Project,

a few days ago I was struck by a sentence on an email from a guy who said that his boyfriend must first of all be a true friend. I have had guys and also friends, but I don’t know how many of them were also true friends, probably very few. I said a banality, I know, I think that true friendship is a rare thing anyway and this is the core of my speech.

I know well that I don’t have to expect too much from anyone because I also think I have been a disappointment for almost all of my guys, if not all of them, at least sometimes, and also for my friends. After all, all this discourse only serves to demystify falls in love and friendships, especially those not tested, and to understand that happiness or its less mythical substitute can be found above all in everyday life and in the banal, as long as it is not too much banal.

We must console ourselves with what is there, which is not necessarily very little. But this also means starting to give a value to many things that were not seen before because the myth of overwhelming and total things polarized our attention so much that we didn’t see anything else.

I will certainly not tell you an overwhelming love story, which is not something that suits me, and then there are too many of them around, but I’ll only tell you a small story of respect and affection between two people who didn’t merge their lives, who indeed continued to go their separate ways, but found in those ways an added value because they met.

Project, I’ll tell you about my friendship with a guy, but it could also be a girl, here, finally, sex has nothing to do with it! For heaven’s sake, I have nothing against sex, but it often promises things that it doesn’t deliver at all, which doesn’t mean it’s always a disappointment, just that it probably promises too much. On the other hand, some friendships promise nothing, they are small things but they help you to move forward and understand many aspects of life.

In April 2011 I’m 26 years old, I lived all the classic experiences typical of gay guys: isolation within the family, parents who don’t know and wouldn’t understand, friends who don’t know and who wouldn’t understand, etc. etc., so much fantasy, so much pornography, so many stories read on your forum, so many half stories mentioned more than started and so many half disappointments.

Among my friends there is one with whom I feel at ease, his name is Guido, we have known each other since school. He speaks little and also rather slowly, he doesn’t speak like a machine gun, he is always calm but I think he’s very restrained and a bit neurotic, he isn’t a leader, he doesn’t participate much in discussions, he listens and remembers but he doesn’t tell you what he thinks. At the university we did very different faculties, I towards the juridical, he towards more scientific things.

He is the only ex-school friend of mine with whom I maintained contact throughout the period of the university, not a special contact, but we met more or less every month and we went to get a pizza together talking about this and that. The conversations weren’t so particularly involving, we didn’t end up talking about personal things, we talked a little bit of politics, and there we understood each other enough, and we talked even a little bit of his and my study stuff. We didn’t use to go on talking for long at the end of the pizza , we just said goodbye and went home, everything was apparently very banal.

I specify that Guido in my opinion is not a handsome guy, I have never been interested in him from that point of view. I didn’t know anything about his private life, that is, I didn’t know if he was gay or straight and I’ve never wondered, especially since we never talked about those topics. When we talked, I was happy, because I knew I was going to have a quiet evening. When he saw me less calm he encouraged me but in a generic way, he didn’t ask me questions, he was very respectful of my privacy and on the other hand he never talked to me about his.

When he called me on the phone he was very concise and in any case he rarely called me, usually he called me, I never called him because I knew that sooner or later I would hear from him. In those years I lived my first stories with guys alternating highs and lows on the roller coaster of love. Sometimes I wanted to talk about these things with Guido, then I told myself that he wouldn’t understand and I let it go, my relation with Guido were something apart, not intertwined with my love life.

One evening we go out for the usual pizza and I notice that he wears a wedding ring on his finger, not a simple band ring, but a classic wedding ring of a traditional type, I ask him why and he tells me that he got married 15 days before but he didn’t tell me anything about not to make me feel obliged in any way, I’m perplexed that he only told me it after the fact, but he immediately changes the subject and proposes something that I would never have imagined, that is, he proposes me to go to dinner one evening at his house, I understand that he cares a lot and I accept, but then he changes the subject again and we end up talking about the usual things.

The next week I go to his house for dinner, he introduces me to his wife, Lucia, a very pretty young girl, who treats me very familiarly and puts me at ease in a way I never imagined. Guido and Lucia are a quiet couple, I would say that the air you breathe in their home is one of serenity. Dinner is excellent and very familiar and the conversation is light and pleasant, basically a nice evening.

At the end Guido accompanies me to the car and I tell him: “I was really good and I’m happy for you and for Lucia!” And I tell him with full conviction, he reads it in my eyes and smiles at me, there I realized that he really cared about my opinion. Then we said goodbye in the usual way. In the following months we continued to see each other with the usual rhythms, in practice nothing has changed between us with his marriage.

In the meantime, I had begun the longest and most tormented of my stories with a guy (Lucio). I didn’t say anything to Guido about Lucio, partly because I wanted those things to remain mine and I also wanted to behave with him as he had behaved with me, and partly because I didn’t know how he would react.

In March 2018 the story with Lucio went into crisis and I fell into a very black period. Guido noticed it, he understood that something had happened that had put me in crisis, I realized it because he was more considerate of me, he called me more often on the phone even though he had become father twice and had to think about family.

One night we go out at a time when I was really in trouble and he simply says to me: “What happened?” I tell him: “I broke up with my boyfriend …” He’s not in tha least upset but remains silent waiting for me to tell him the rest and then I go ahead, he doesn’t interrupt me. In the end he just says to me: “Don’t blame Lucio, he may not have understood anything and he could feel bad too …” This last thing made a light bulb turn on in my brain and I asked him: “What would you do?” He replied: “I would call him immediately.” I told him: “Now?” And he replied: “Yes”.

I took my cell phone, left the pizzeria and immediately called Lucio. Lucio was in a crisis worse than me and it was evident that we were both happy to hear from each other again. After 40 minutes I saw Guido leave the pizzeria with two takeaway pizzas, he gave one to me and said in a whisper: “I’m going on foot, take care of Lucio! …” I continued talking to Lucio and in the following days we started again to see each other and in the end it was a positive thing, because not Lucio nor I were at ease with each other and above all for reasons of stubbornness. The problems with Lucio were resolved, at least on that time, and we both regained some serenity.

About a month later I saw Guido again and I told him that the problem with Lucio was over, he just said to me: “I’m glad.” And he smiled, then we talked about something else. The problem that I and Lucio were two guys was never taken into consideration, for Guido it was completely irrelevant. Guido is not the one who listens to my love problems, but one whom I trust and who often understands me on the fly without me even needing to speak, he plays down things even by not talking too much about. He doesn’t like the blah blah, he is operative, if you have to do something, for him, you just have to do it, without starting to think about it in vain.

I recently went to his house for dinner and I saw that he has a way of treating Lucia that enchants me, he is not expansive but reassuring, he is the man of doing more than talking, when I arrived he was in the kitchen with Lucia and they were cooking together. If I have to think of a model of a happy couple I think of Guido and Lucia, they are straight, ok, they have children, but above all they don’t create stupid problems, they talk little and commit themselves together. I’m sorry to say, but among gays such a thing is quite rare, although I think it is rare even among straight people.

I would like my relationship with Lucio to be similar to that of Guido and Lucia, but we are not at that level, we are still two cockerels pecking each other or two boys who have not grown up who have kept the habit of fighting each other. Slowly we are learning but I think the road will still be long. Lucio is a bit jealous of Guido and I tell him: “But Guido has a wife and two children!” and he replies: “Mh … It may be, but I don’t think you’re telling me the truth!” and then he laughs and chases me around the house.

The technique of not speaking which is typical of Guido also works between me and Lucio, Lucio likes to talk, but now he talks less and between us there are more affectionate gestures, when he comes to me we go shopping together at the supermarket (a small supermarket) and the ladies we meet look at us with curiosity, because they are not used to seeing two men together in the supermarket doing their shopping, at one point I feel a little too observed by an elderly lady and I feel a little embarrassed, and so, to get out of the embarrassment and even a bit ‘to laugh, I try to make me or him look like a young dad and I tell him aloud: “Remember to take the diapers!” And he replies: “But you don’t need it!” And the lady looks at us very puzzled!

I conclude here, of course, Project, do what you think of the email, the names are all fictional.

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GAY DISAFFECTION

Hello Project, I’m a 27-year-old Milanese apparently without problems: I graduated, I have a job I don’t love and don’t hate but that allows me to be independent, I come from a medium-level family, I’m an only child and my parents are dignified people, who know about me even from that point of view and have not caused me problems. So far there is nothing more normal (banal) than all this.

I had my experiences with the guys, but they ended quickly and with no regrets, except the last one which still lasts but only in a sense. My friends (friends?) don’t know about me, least of all at work, I have the problem if ever of keeping girls away, but not that of approaching guys because, very frankly, I feel emotionally very refractory.

I don’t dream of having a boyfriend, even when I was with a guy the involvement was very relative, we could do everything, obviously including sex, but there was anyhow neither the slightest emotional involvement. I mean that I have never fallen in love with a guy, I’m neither straight nor bisexual, I’m gay, I never had any doubts about this, long ago I thought that sooner or later I would find the right guy and I would fall in love with him but it never happened.

I’m certainly not addicted to sex (if anything to work) and I really don’t want to go looking for a guy. The last boyfriend I had, and in a way I still have, (I’ll call him Carlo) was my vaccination against the falling in love virus. I don’t hate Carlo or his way of seeing life, I just don’t understand him. Being close to him I was able to realize many things and first of all that I’m probably not made for couple life and certainly I’m not made for couple life with him.

He perceived already after the first few weeks that beyond appearances I was not really there, he wanted to convince himself and also to convince me otherwise, but I was not in love with him and I was not even interested in building something with him, whatever it was. He treated me with some disdain because he knew that staying close to me was like wasting his time. We continued to see each other for months and do what lovers should theoretically do, but we weren’t in love, we studied each other to know how far the story would go. We said goodbye practically every evening at 9 pm, it was the only clear thing between us, in a sense there was a mutual complicity about this, but nothing more.

He’s a handsome guy and that was the temptation for me, but then, beyond that, there was really nothing else, he had great ideas on his mind, perhaps because his family gave him all the money he wanted. He used to make me proposals that could be suitable for a gossip magazine, let’s forget about politics … let’s just spread a pitiful veil, I told him many times that he has to look for a guy of his world, but he thinks he can have a power of attraction on me precisely because he has money, but I told him that the only thing that attracts me about him is that he is a handsome guy, and that the rest doesn’t interest me at all. I don’t want to be bought by anyone, if he wants a walking dog he can buy it as he likes better, I want a man, not a moron.

Sometimes he provokes me because he wants to feel flattered, but he has the wrong address, sometimes I listen to him just to see if he stops or continues to shoot bullshit with no limit. Perhaps he would like me to stop him to start the usual tirade of values! Yes, you got it right, values!! But I don’t even answer him, and when he falls silent I change the subject, as if I hadn’t even heard him.

Sometimes he would call me on the phone while I was at work, I tried to tell him not to call during those hours, but he kept on, and then I put his number among the unwanted ones, because when I work I cannot be distracted.

Why don’t I care about the guys? I have the answer, I’m trying to build something that I care very much about.

Now I work at a good level, but as an employee, well, I want to try in an acceptable time to open my own small business. I’m accumulating skills, just on how to start with a small business, I’m trying to understand how to move between banks, authorizations, tax authorities, contracts and various things. In a few days I will start a master on this and I need it not to enrich my curriculum, but to have a practical competence. I work in very innovative sectors on a technical level but I completely lack managerial-legal preparation, but I’m also trying to grow in that sector.

When I start, I will start small, with a one-person company, then it will be what it will be. My first rule: never take a step longer that the leg! People who know what I have in mind, I mean really knowledgeable people in the industry, think my project is good but  will be something that will totally absorb me and they also told me that such a project can somehow become the substitute for the emotional life, but I don’t agree at all with such a statement.

I don’t know if I will ever have a love life, I don’t exclude anything, if it happens I will be the first to be happy with it, but I will certainly not start looking for a guy because I have no time to waste. I have no projects in this sector, I mean in the affective one, and didn’t even go crazy with the idea of the company, if it works I’ll be happy, if then I see that the game is not worth the candle, well, then I’ll go back to my current job. I have no problems with my current job now and I don’t think I will have difficulties afterwards.

I have not sublimated eros into work, I think that every now and then (if it happens) there may well be some adventure, but woe to believe it too much! I don’t believe in absolute and definitive commitments, choices for life and the like. I don’t like straight weddings, let alone gay ones!

If you want to be with me ok, it’s fine if it’s okay with me too, then when you get bored or I get bored, well then bye and I move on. It could even last a lifetime, but if that’s the case, it only becomes apparent over the years. You can start, then you see what happens. I never understood loves at first sight. In the meantime I have to cut off relations with my latest boyfriend (Carlo) and I don’t think it will be difficult, I think he’s tired of me for a while and honestly I only like him physically, which obviously isn’t enough. So “Hi Carlo!”, I move on! I don’t mean that I move on to another guy, but that I turn the page and put apart the guys chapter, put it on standby for a while, then what will be will be.

See, Project, I’m not asexual, no! I use a little pornography, even there with an unforced but absolutely spontaneous moderation, I go ahead with the fantasy and for the moment it is enough for me, also because when I was having sex with guys I was really obsessed with the idea of prevention, certainly having sex with a guy is different from seeing a video, but with a video the risk is absolutely zero, with a real guy you can never trust 100%, if you try to be scrupulous in prevention they take you for a moron and that’s why you let your guard down, but then you have a thousand scruples … is it worth to be with a guy who tomorrow will go away with another guy? I really think not.

But is there a serious reason to look for a boyfriend? If such a guy arrives and the first signs indicate that he could be the right one, then it suits me perfectly, but it is not mandatory to live in a couple, and then living in a couple is a bond that can only be accepted when there is a serious motivation. I think that loving a guy, or rather, the fact that two guys love each other is certainly possible, but it has to happen and it is still very unlikely. Even when it happens it never happens 100%, there is always a need for mutual adaptation, but, let’s say, if the adaptation is 10-20% then it is also acceptable but only if it is reciprocal, but adapt to whatever, well, I just can’t stand this.

Perhaps I’m rigid of mentality, but there is an expression that I do not like at all and it is when one says that he is “lost in love” that is he has practically lost his mind, I think that either this is just a very rhetorical saying but also very stupid and deceitful, or one is really out of mind. There is too much sugary romance about these things, which everyone in chatter shares but no one shares in practical life.

What’s the difference between a serious friendship and falling in love? Everyone says: sex! But my boyfriend, then, if and when he will be there, must first of all be my friend, which means that we should have substantially similar visions of life and ways of acting. Well this has never happened to me until now! Of course then there is sex, but then! Because if everything is based on sex, it takes very little to bring down the house of cards!

Project, you don’t know how many beautiful and moronic guys I met, people who should talk little because they would gain and instead have the urge to talk and so they waste that little bit of sex appeal that they got from mother nature. Someone let’s say at first sight passable I knew him, but then the first impression was easily overturned by the second and definitive one.

I would like to add one thing, just to clarify, I do not consider myself either Apollo or Einstein, I’m a very ordinary guy, nothing to do with so many beautiful people I see on the street, because we must give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. And I don’t even think that those who seem stupid to me are really stupid, maybe they will be successful in life a hundred times more than me just doing modeling! (The fox and the grapes!) I’m just saying they look stupid to me. Of course, at the end of the game, the fool who loses the game could be me, but I prefer to lose the game by playing my way rather than imitating the moves of others.

Excuse me for this rant, Project, but today I met people who gave me “advice”, something I can’t stand at all, and I had to let off steam a bit.

___________________

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GAY SEX AND TIREDNESS

I’m writing to you because I feel strange and cannot speak to anyone. I’m a forty-year-old who has been living for 15 years with a partner who is a little younger than him (not even two years). Our coexistence was very beautiful, essentially the best thing in my life, and it went on for 15 years, but for almost a year now it has begun to create some difficulties for me. When we met we were both young and beautiful, maybe I was a little less beautiful than him, but he liked me right away and our story began because he was the one who wanted it to start. 

Fifteen years have passed, he is now a little less young and perhaps a little less attractive than 15 years ago but he has a look and a way of doing that are the image of health, in practice you could easily consider him ten years younger, I, on the other hand, had my serious health problems which I have overcome, but created and create still now a lot of problems. In practice, from the outside I still look like a nice and young guy but my health problems are always there. You might think I’m writing to you about his cheating with guys younger and much bolder than me, but we’ve been a strictly monogamous couple for at least ten years, and I see it from the fact that he has a lot of sexual activity with me, and the problem, incredibly, is just that. 

Keep in mind that I’m still in love with him and that I love him, I like him or rather I liked him a lot, not that I don’t like him anymore today, but he doesn’t realize that I can’t stay at his level, he tells me that I shy away from him, that I look for excuses with him, that I keep him at a distance, in reality it is that sometimes, for me, having sex with him is really stressful, not on a psychological level, but precisely in the sense of tiring on a physical level and he does not understand this. He, at 38, does 40 push-ups in a row, I can’t even lie down on the ground, but if I try to tell him such thingsI can’t do it, he doesn’t believe it and feels obliged to stimulate and provoke me, as if I were missing some sexual motivation. 

When I tell him I can’t do it he is very upset, he doesn’t treat me badly, he has never done it, but he thinks that I don’t do my best to follow him and to help him realize is wishes. He tells me that I’m 40 years old and that I cannot fail to rise to the occasion and he takes himself as an example of a healthy and sporty life, as if my physical decline was due to my lack of commitment to sports activities. I tell you that sometimes I begin to fear him, or better not to fear him, no, let’s say I begin to fear his reactions a little and feel conditioned. 

It would be so easy to understand how things are and maybe settle for what I can do without having to face too many problems, but this doesn’t happen, he still sees me as a handsome, young and above all performing guy just like him, but I’m not like that at all. We have been living together for 15 years, I don’t think he has in mind to send everything to hell, if we have gone on for 15 years there will also be a reason beyond sex. The fact is that I don’t want to see him react like a beaten dog. Sometimes I think he would need someone like him or a younger one, capable of staying at his level. Since he can afford to do whatever he can think of, given that his physique supports him in any case, he thinks it is the same for everyone.

I hope he comes to understand that his model doesn’t fit everyone, because otherwise I would find myself living with a man who is not only dissatisfied, but convinced that he has been rejected by the man he loves. Sometimes he is jealous, which seems incredible to me, he asks me questions about our friends, he asks me if I have a secret cell phone, because he thinks that my tiredness comes perhaps from the fact that I go to have sex with someone while he is away, something that has never passed through the antechamber of my brain. 

I feel very discouraged by his attitudes and I don’t know what to do because when I try to explain to him how things are he silences me and gets angry as if I were trying to make him digest the idea that he no longer interests me, which is absolutely not true. Sometimes I tried to talk to him seriously and, on the spot, he listens to me and he seems to have understood, then the next time we are all over again at 12 and he starts again with the idea that I don’t try hard enough and that I say too many words and do very few facts. The fact that we are practically the same age for him means that we our bodies are essentially the same and that I can, or better could, automatically do what he can do. In short, he thinks that the will is enough to do everything, because in his case it is really enough, but in mine it is not enough at all. 

Among other things, he knows about my health problems and tends to minimize them or rather to insist that I, with my attitude, end up exaggerating the negative aspects and precluding me many things that are taken for granted for him. I don’t know if this problem is an objectively stupid problem, but it is certain that it ends up affecting above all our sexuality, I feel judged, he considers me a renouncer who thinks he is old when he is not at all, but it is not a question of age but of health and he doesn’t understand this. I’m fine with him and I don’t think I’d be better with anyone else and he knows it, sometimes, when we have a little quieter sex, I feel very at ease and it’s a really beautiful thing, but when he starts in the fourth he expects me to to follow him step by step and I get tired and he doesn’t understand it and scolds me, then he makes a rant, then he regrets it and tries to downsize. 

What can I do? Sometimes I’m really discouraged. I would just like to see him happy. Sometimes he comes home in a great mood, we start having sex and everything seems to be fine, if I try to tell him that I can hardly keep up with him, the spell collapses and the evening ends in sulking. These are not tragedies, I know, but they are certainly misunderstandings, in the end they don’t create a great discomfort but I begin to be afraid of having sex with him because the possibility that it starts well and ends badly is very real. Sometimes the outcome of all this is that I feel guilty and I think that the fact that I’m at least in some sense afraid of him prevents me from really making him understand how things are. 

Let me be clear, we love each other, of this I have no doubts, but sometimes I start to think that he may feel really uncomfortable. Sometimes I think with terror about what would happen if I were no longer in such physical condition as to be able to have sex with him, even if in a minor tone, and I think it would be hard for him to understand why. There is communication between us, we talk often and even seriously but on this specific point dialogue is difficult. For several years he has considered me a partner up to the occasion and cannot accept the idea that this is no longer the case. Perhaps this is a consequence of a really strong sexual relationship that lasted for several years. 

I think I will age much faster than him and that these problems may become less and less easy to manage. In the last days (three or four) he hasn’t taken the sexual initiative anymore, maybe not to get me in problems, I don’t think he did it to punish me because he never did things like that, but I too avoided to take the sexual initiative and we went to sleep without any sexual involvement and this, for us, it is not a normal thing. I would take the initiative, but I would like sex to be a calmer thing and more suitable for me, but I know that such a thing would disappoint him, however I cannot let other days pass and tomorrow I will take courage. Not that I’m sorry to move towards his direction, on the contrary, far from it … however it is a pity that for him cuddles are trivial or a little more! 

There’s one thing I can do when I’m in bed with him, I can speak less, because in certain moments words can be dangerous, this I think would be useful and it would also be easy to achieve. Sometimes, after a night of sex, I feel exhausted and the next day, when the alarm goes off, I struggle to get up. I’m sorry I’m not at his height but there is nothing I can do to change the situation, I would certainly like to be as he would like, that is, as I was until a few years ago, because this would put him in a good mood, anyhow such things will not put us in crisis. At some point I begin to think that I might as well force myself a little more to please him, but I’m afraid I don’t have the physical stamina to do it and perhaps this way I could slip another step down. 

I have been thinking for some years now that our youth is over, or at least mine, and that we are now middle-aged men, but he still sees himself as a boy, he has a boyish way of doing, that in a sense fascinates me, but in another also scares me. He tells me that I get obsessed with old age, he instead completely ignores the idea, and blessed is he who can do it! He also tells me that I act as a victim, maybe it is even a bit true, but I think only marginally. Maybe I’m really starting to feel old inside, apparently I’m not yet and he only looks at the appearance, it’s a shame he doesn’t notice the rest. 

I’m attaching my contact details [… omitted …] in case you would like to have a chat. Obviously with the email you can do whatever you want, that is, you can also put it in the forum, if you don’t see it too strange.

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum:

http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gay-sex-and-tiredness

GAY RELATIONSHIPS AND COHABITATION

In this last period I have often met gay guys in chat who have a partner but who have found themselves having to deal with at least partial disappointments, so I will try to outline and summarize the nodes of the problem. 

First of all, the expression “having a partner” is extremely generic, ranging from stable cohabitation for several years now to the relationship that is still in its infancy and is still to be verified, up to the long-distance relationship in which there is no real contact except absolutely episodic and brief. Obviously in such a variety of situations the concept of “mythization” takes on very varied and scarcely homogeneous connotations. 

The myth, in itself, embodies an archetype of behavior that is either received from the outside or created autonomously. The mythization of real people is the typical example of the self-constructed myth, identifying the person with the role he fills or one would like him to fill and projecting our personal archetypes of that role onto that person. Attributing even only hypothetically a role to a person is equivalent to recognize that person qualities and attributes that are often taken for granted, because the projective mechanisms lead us to see above all, if not exclusively, what we want to see. 

A few decades ago, when there were no means of distance communication, people’s knowledge was numerically much more limited but also much more direct than what is achieved today through social media. Today social networks don’t allow us to see and evaluate the behavior of others but only to know the image they intend to give us of themselves, that is, to know their self-representation. Obviously, the representations of oneself vary according to the aims one intends to pursue. In the search for the so-called soul mate, often, the self-image that we tend to provide our partner is built on the moment, exploiting the information we already know about him. 

The fundamental information is photography, with which we instinctively assess whether the other is or is not an object of interest to us. If it is not, that is, if the photo doesn’t correspond to our archetypes, the tone of the conversation is low, the appreciations are limited, we don’t try to deepen the relationship but to make it slide towards banality and towards a short-term dissolution. If, on the other hand, the photo interests us, the tone of the language changes and we try to express a concrete interest, the discourse heats up, we immediately enter very personal arguments, we are careful to give a positive image of ourselves according to the interlocutor’s yardstick. The first thing you appreciate is beauty, which is the objectively most impactful element at the first eye contact. Listening becomes extremely attentive, space is given to the interlocutor, trying to collect through his words useful elements to build a representation of ourselves as seductive as possible, even at the expense of truthfulness and completeness. All the similarities and analogies with the interlocutor are underlined and all possible points of divergence or distance are largely overlooked. An image of oneself is built and transmitted by specularity-complementarity (the two hands are not only similar but specular and complementary and are perfectly suited to work together). 

Then comes the time of the retrospective image of oneself, of one’s own history, and in particular of one’s own affective history, and here too often the mechanisms of selection-omission of contents operate at an unconscious level, through which, in the archive of individual memory, some episodes are chosen as emblematic of one’s own being and acting and others are omitted that would be in dissonance with the former. The language slips very easily towards expressions that indicate strong involvement and appreciation (the drift of love language). The whole process just outlined can be summed up in the word seduction. To seduce means to “take aside”, “attract to oneself” a person. 

If the relationship is born symmetrical, that is, the first impact evaluations are very similar on the two sides, one gets the impression of being in front of a beautiful love story or at least its onset and the projective mechanisms come into operation by building a progressive mythization of the partner on the basis of what we know of him, in the presumption that the image that the other has given us is authentic. But the mechanisms of selection of contents, which often operate unconsciously, invariably provide at least partial, if not distorted, representations of reality. In other words, verbal contact or even that in audio-video doesn’t show the reactions of the other in real situations but only what the other, in a more or less conscious way, wants us to see, or simply makes us see. 

Obviously, the encounter in person, if episodic and brief, still maintains this same pattern and if anything tends to confirm the mythical vision of the other. Only a real coexistence in ordinary and long-lasting situations makes it possible to understand and evaluate the personality of the other with a breadth and depth of a certain thickness. 

It should be emphasized that if the one who speaks about himself to a person in whom he is interested in any case provides a sweetened representation of himself, that is, he makes a selection of the contents to be presented, even the listener, in a more or less conscious way, makes a selection among the contents that are presented to him, attributing value to those that go in the direction he wants and neglecting or minimizing those that go in the opposite direction, in this way the image of the interlocutor undergoes a second deformation induced by the listener on the basis of his own archetypes and his own projections. 

At the end of a period, however short, of meetings in chat alternated with short meetings in person, one gets the impression of having built a stable relationship and of knowing each other in depth, but in reality the mutual knowledge is minimal and the image of the other is heavily deformed. Myth makes up for reality, integrates it and strengthens it, as long as contact with reality doesn’t intervene to correct the situation. 

The old saying: “marriage is the tomb of love” means that cohabitation actually makes many couple relationships collapse because they were built only on projections and myths far removed from reality. 

The demythization that follows real coexistence can be of a very different type and degree. The higher the level of mythization in the pre-coexistence phase, the greater the level of disillusionment that follows from coexistence. The person who gives the best possible image of himself (self-mythization) is also the one who has the greatest a priori probability of generating profound disillusionment. The person who, on the other hand, doesn’t avoid speaking clearly about his own problematic aspects, is less likely to be successful in the seduction phase, but, in the long run, is much less exposed to the risk of creating disillusionment in the partner. 

In the gay world, today, stable cohabitations are more the exception than the rule, civil unions are rare, partly because they involve a coming out that in some cases would create problems that are difficult if not impossible to solve, but above all because a coexistence of long term requires basic choices oriented towards stability and the ability to act over a long period in a manner consistent with those choices. Short stories and in any case without formal constraints can be born very easily and just as easily they can end, they are already born under the banner of the relative, the revisable, the non-definitive and essentially the disengaged, and are often based on fragile mythologies destined to shatter when one face a real coexistence. However, it must be said that the tendency towards disengaged or, as it is commonly said, free relationships, has its underlying reason in the difficulty of creating a deep interpersonal relationship, which would require the presence of forms of compatibility between the partners that are decidedly uncommon. In general, the first experiences of gay guys have as their goal the creation of a stable couple, but since in many cases this goal remains in fact unattainable or in any case unfulfilled, one ends up choosing the other choice, the more disengaged one, which is certainly more fragile but represents an objectively achievable goal even in conditions that are not ideal in themselves. 

It should be emphasized that a disillusionment, however heavy it may be, doesn’t necessarily lead to the rupture of the relationship, because, if only for reasons of inertia, the possibly cracked relationship can be mended or better strengthened, even more than once, but obviously that relationship, marked by disillusionment, which is often reciprocal, risks being gradually emptied from within, if other mechanisms don’t intervene to consolidate it. 

The idea that disillusionment is not in itself destructive of the couple’s relationship is often accepted only as a fallback solution, but should rather be seen, sometimes at least, as a healthy return to reality, because disillusionment is such in relationship to the previous illusion, but seen from the perspective of the future, it can lead to a re-evaluation of the relationship which is not necessarily its degradation. In other words, it is a matter of taking note of the reality of the other, or at least of a less mythical and distorted image of him, which can profoundly and not always negatively modify the internal balance of the couple.

Overcoming the couple crises, which often derive from disappointments, can even consolidate the relationship. In long-distance relationships, involvement is largely linked to the myth of the partner, the relationship is based on words and easily controllable situations. In cohabitation, the possibility of more or less deep misunderstandings with the partner is very concrete, one realizes that even sexual compatibility is conditioned by the fact that different individuals have different visions of sexuality and of being gay. Behaviors that are desirable for one of the two may not be desirable at all for the other, the example of coming out is enough here, but many other topics could be quoted here that are argument of frequent misunderstandings within the couple. In gay coexistence it is very easy to make mistakes even when the conditions for building a lasting couple exist. The relationships of stable coexistence without disappointments and without cracks don’t exist, a certain amount of conflict is physiological for the very existence of the couple. To realize a coexistence it is essential that the partners understand at the outset that there will be mistakes on both sides and that rigid positions risk destabilizing even the couple relationships that had all the theoretical presuppositions of solidity at their origin. 

Disillusions, as mentioned, are often reciprocal, but it is not certain that they are obvious, or that they are on both sides. Disillusionment is often kept to oneself while waiting for it to be disproved and vanish and this indicates that the myth is in crisis but has not completely collapsed. In these cases, those who hide their disappointment tend to assume a characteristic claiming attitude, staying in the couple assumes for them the sense of waiting for the decisive proof, until the measure is filled and the account is presented to the partner by listing or better by reproaching him all together his shortcomings or presumed such, it is the moment of the so-called showdown, in these cases the answer can be cold (the worst answer), frustrated or even claiming, in the latter case, the partner to whom the bill has been presented presents the bill to the counterparty in turn, to put on the scales the expectations and faults of the two parties. Even in these cases, however, it is by no means certain that the couple’s life goes irremediably to pieces, the situation turns to the worst when the two separate without having either resolved or lightened the conflict situation, that is, when the attitude is rigid. 

Obviously cohabitations are unstable equilibria in which, especially in a very early phase, small corrective thrusts are sufficient to maintain the balance. It should be added that cohabitation, if on the one hand it can lead to the demythization of the partner, on the other hand it can make one partner discover the qualities of the other partner that are less evident at first sight. One of the qualities of a partner that emerge in long cohabitation is non-destructiveness, that is the ability to manage the destructive tendencies of the other, to cool tones and conflicts, to minimize the negative and to enhance the positive of a relationship. 

Ultimately, the myth of the partner born in the seductive phase fully collides with reality only when it comes to a long-term coexistence. In this phase, the demythization of the partner takes place, which leads to a re-evaluation of the elements on which the couple is based. The outcome of this new evaluation is not destructive in itself, but can lead to a re-foundation of the couple’s life on less projective and more realistic assumptions. 

The “unconditional compliance” that is the tendency to always say yes to one’s partner in order to save the relationship, deserves a separate consideration. The very concept of dynamic equilibrium implies that the thrusts must be balanced and that, if to the pressures exerted by one of the two always corresponds to a yielding of the other, the equilibrium cannot be maintained, the requests for adaptation will progressively extend to all areas of shared life and beyond, and that equality that represents the essential core of the gay couple will eventually be wiped out. In this way not only will life as a couple not be preserved but it will be reduced to a series of obligations or a series of psychological addictions.

Here are some excerpts from the e-mails to illustrate what has been said. 

SEDUCTION 

“He calls me on video and immediately tells me: You are beautiful! But he is beautiful! He looks like an actor and he has a hot, sexy voice. When he saw my photos for the first time he was speechless and didn’t believe it was me! He told me that he has never seen a handsome guy like me, that I have taste, that I dress well, that I know how to choose the haircut, that I listen to the right music, the same one he listens to, that we have the same tastes. He is a sunny guy but he has no friends. When we talk he tells me beautiful things, I tell him that I’m not as he sees me, that I have a lot of defects and that he is mythologizing me and he replies that he can’t wait to meet me in person.” 

SEXUAL LANGUAGE 

“There are some things I can’t stand in his way of doing, first of all the language. We have sex with each other, but when he talks about it he uses certain vulgar terms that really get on my nerves, I wonder where he learned to speak like that. He tells me that I’m a hypocrite and that I want to save my face of good guy , and he can’t stand that I want to save my privacy. He tells me that if I do sexual things I have to call them by their name, but I don’t see those things as he sees them, assuming he really sees things differently, but when he talks about sexual things with me he uses his own language, so vulgar that I can’t stand it at all, then, when he gets angry with me, my God, he speaks with a language worthy of the worst porn and when he does that I would throttle him.” 

FORCING 

“One thing I can’t stand about my boyfriend is the fact that he wants to force me to do things (sexual things) that I don’t want to do and that he obviously did or perhaps still does with others. On some things I can also give in but on others I should really impose it on myself with violence and I just don’t want to do so. When I say no to him in a very decisive way, at first he insists and even too much, and then he seems to go beyond, as if nothing had happened, but when we happen to quarrel he pulls these things all out and reproaches me them, he tells me: “You must always do as you say!” (which, by the way, is absolutely not true), then he tells me that I don’t really love him because I don’t always do what he wants, but I say: if we are together, I give in on one thing and you on another! Why he doesn’t he realize that sometimes he just asks me absurd things, that I really can’t stand?” 

RECOVERY MANEUVERS 

“The other day we had a fight over a very stupid issue, or rather the bickering started from there: to wear socks or not when we have sex, he only wears those socks for the foot, I wear normal short socks, but he wanted me to take them off and I didn’t understand why, since he wore them, a string of complaints about my behavior started from such a stupid thing, basically he told me that I never said yes to him and that I had to argue about everything and then, once he started in fourth gear, he went on and never stopped, at a certain point he dressed as if he wanted to go away and I said to myself: What is he doing? Is he really leaving for such a thing? But he’s out of his mind! So I told him I felt like a complete fool for looking for him and it would never happen again, then he changed his tone, undressed again and got back on the bed and then he said to me: Come here! I asked him if he would still say the stupid things he had just said to me and he replied that he had said too few and that he says such things for my own good, even if I don’t understand it. Anyway, at least he has the dignity to go back!”

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If you want, you can participate in the discussion on this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-gay-relationships-and-cohabitation