An Italian boy in Camford Pt. 01

The lab had modern buildings with air-conditioning, so even in the summer it was a pleasant place to work. Tom's supervisor was called Arturo Sescantanto. He was the academic equivalent of a British Reader or an American Associate Professor, with very limited undergraduate teaching responsibilities, and so he was available not just in the lab, but often at the bench alongside the students and postdocs who made up his research group. In spite of this ready accessibility, Tom found him difficult to talk to. It was not any lack of linguistic fluency on Tom's part, so he could only conclude that it was because he was gay. He had never made any secret in the lab of his gayness, but coupled it with the statement that he was in a permanent relationship, although as yet no-one in the lab had met Luke. There was a social life in the lab, which involved a session in a café once or twice per month, and Tom always went along, though his ignorance of Italian politics and society meant that a lot of the conversation was lost on him. He could not bring Luke with him, because Luke was working most evenings at that time.

In many ways, he enjoyed most the Sundays spent with the Mascagnolis. In particular he developed a great fondness for his 'mother-in-law.' He had lost his own mother some seven years before, and Dorotea Mascagnoli was rapidly becoming a mother figure for him. Luke's biological half-sister Bianca had also become very fond of Tom. Luke did not take this amiss, he was glad that his partner had become so fond of his mother and sister. Sometimes, though, Luke did worry slightly about the effect on Massimo of this evident affection of Tom's for his wife. Fortunately, in spite of being a hot-blooded Italian, Massimo knew enough about human nature to know the strong need that most gays have for a mother figure, and that jealousy was pointless and unnecessary.

In early October, about the time that Sandro was moving into Boni's, Tom decided that he wanted to resume piano lessons, neglected since the death of his mother. Not having any idea how to find a piano teacher in Trabizona, he asked Luke to ask around at the opera house. Their répétiteur said that he knew a good female piano teacher, who specialized in non-advanced pupils. She was a middle-aged widow called Signora Teodora Bruschetti. They gave him her phone number, and Tom, trembling with trepidation about making a phone call in Italian to a stranger, rang the number. The lady answered and asked him to call at her house at 5 pm the next day. She gave him the address, Via Mazzini 173.

At the hour arranged, Tom rang the doorbell. The door was opened by a very attractive middle-aged lady. When Tom said "Cerco Signora Bruschetti" she replied that she was Signora Bruschetti and invited him in. She was surprised to see a fit-looking young man in his twenties rather than a teenager. Tom explained rather haltingly, because he did not know all the technical terms in Italian that he wanted to resume piano lessons, having had none for eight years. Signora Bruschetti invited him to play something. Anticipating such a request, he took out of his bag the music of the third of Schubert's first set of impromptus and sat down at the piano. Not having had access to a piano, and not having played the piece for several years, it was little more than sight-reading for him, so he played it rather haltingly and with a few mistakes. Signora B watched him very closely, noting his hand and finger positions and his use of the pedals. The piece lasted just over 5 minutes, and she let him play it right through. "You've got a lot to learn!" she said. "But your basic technique is good. Who taught you?"

"A lady in my home town in England," he replied. "You wouldn't know her." They discussed her terms, and Tom agreed, but said that he could not start until he had acquired a piano. "I've got enough money to buy a new one," he explained.

However, Signora B said, "I know someone who has a secondhand piano for sale. It's in good condition, I've heard it played, and you could have it for €800."

"That sounds a bargain! said Tom, "it could well cost me more than that to move it!"

It took several weeks to get the piano business sorted out. They had first to establish where they would put it, to ensure that the walls were thick enough not to disturb the neighbours when it was played, that the floor would stand the weight and finally what equipment would be needed to get the piano into a first floor apartment. Eventually though, all these problems were solved to the great benefit of both of the boys' vocabularies, and Tom's piano was installed in their small study and tuned.

Once his weekly lessons had begun, he began really to enjoy himself. Signora B was a charming lady and he soon fell under her spell. The difficulties which he had in communicating with Professor Sescantanto did not seem to apply to his piano teacher. She asked him about himself and how he came to be in Italy. "Tutto è a causa di amore." (It's all because of love), he told her. "My partner got a job here at the Teatro Musicale, so I came with him, and I'm doing research for a Ph.D. in chemistry."

"Are you from a musical family?" she asked him.

"No," he replied, "but my partner's father is an opera singer. The reason for me resuming lessons is so that I can accompany him in his practising." Considering that Tom only saw his 'father-in-law' two or three times a year since they had moved to Italy, this was not a good reason, but it was the only one that Tom could think of.

He could now, on the evenings when he was not working in the lab, get on with his practice without distraction. He could feel his old confidence returning and was happier for not feeling that he was spending the evenings just waiting for Luke to come home.

After several weeks of lessons, Signora B asked him whether he would like to bring his partner to dinner one evening. "I don't have much time to cook myself," she said, "But I have a lady who will come in to cook for me if I ask her. How about sometime next week?"

"Si, bene, could we come on Wednesday? Luca my partner works four evenings per week at the Teatro Musicale, but he is free on Wednesdays."

"By all means. Come about 7-30, and don't dress up."

"Grazie, we will see you then."

"You'll need to work on those minor scales. You are not smooth enough. Also practise that new Schubert impromptu."

"OK, e grazie."

The following Wednesday, Tom and Luke turned up punctually at 7-30. They were offered glasses of Prosecco, and asked to sit down. Signora Bruschetti looked appraisingly at Luke and said, "You don't look a bit like your partner!"

"No," replied Luke, "It must be the attraction of opposites! I am adopted, and I am told that my father was an Italian. I was brought up in Camford by my uncle and his gay partner. My mother, though English, still lives in Italy, so you can understand that although I think and behave like an Englishman, I have a deep attraction to Italy. And now after nine months, Tom is starting to like it here too. We go and see my mother every two weeks. His mother died when he was fifteen, and he seems to have taken a fancy to my mother!"

"Luca does not seem to understand that even gay men need female company!" said Tom.

"Tom, you might not feel that way if you had to deal with some of the prime donne that I have to cope with on a daily basis!" said Luke. "Some are sweet, but others are figlie di puttana" (bitches). "Tenori and bassi are always easy to get on with. I never have any problems with the cast that I see nearly every day, the chorus, both men and women. They are the only permanent faces, and we get on very well. It's the visiting principals who give me hassle, especially the women."

"But you liked Leonora!"

"Yes, but the nice thing about Leonora was that she was sweet and feminine without showing any interest in sex! She was hoping to enter a religious order," Luke explained to Signora B. "We used to go to the opera together when I was an Erasmus student in Bologna a couple of years ago. Quite why a prospective nun was so keen on opera, I never found out. As we were both very pious, we got on well together! She did let me hold her hand, but she was not keen on being kissed. This guy loves it!" he said with a gesture towards Tom. Tom blushed.

They moved into dinner, which was a delicious fish dish, accompanied by Soave. "Your cooking lady is an expert!" Luke said, "This is superb!"

Signora Bruschetti smiled. "Young men always enjoy their food," she said. She said that she had a son and a daughter, but that neither was particularly musical. They were grown up, and the daughter was married. The boys divulged that they both sang in the choir of the English church in Bologna, but that only Luke had had any voice training when he was at choir school before his voice had broken, and that his voice, though good, was not good enough for a professional singer.

"I'm not trying to get myself a singing career through the back door!" he said. "I wanted a job in opera management because I'm more interested in people. Tom is quite different. He makes friends very slowly."

"Yes, I was in love with Luca long before he thought of me as anything but a friend," said Tom. Both the boys felt that this sweet lady was someone they could trust and confide in, without the handicap of her being a relative.

Chapter Six: David comes home

About the time that Sandro moved into college, David returned to England by train. Since the advent of high-speed services from Amsterdam to Brussels, London was one cross-platform change away from The Hague, and the whole journey from Heemstede to London only took about four hours. Jon was so anxious to see him that he went to London to meet him at St Pancras International station. Unlike in their younger days, they now embraced openly at the exit barrier before Jon carried the younger man's luggage to a cab.

No sooner had they arrived at their London flat than they carried the bags upstairs, locked the door and began to tear each other's clothes off. Jon had left the bed all ready, with a couple of unwrapped condoms and a tube of lube lying ready on the bedside table. As soon as they were naked, David threw his arms round him and began to run his hands down Jon's back. Both were conscious of the other's rock-hard tool. Unbridled lust was obvious on both their faces. David grasped the cheeks of Jon's arse in each of his hands. Jon's buttocks were as tight and muscular as ever. His regime of walking and swimming had kept him fitter than his younger partner. This was in spite of the fact that when he was in the Netherlands, David went swimming three times per week, went for an hour's walk every day and spent half an hour a day on an exercise machine. All this was to try to combat the unhealthy lifestyle that an itinerant artist experiences when he is on the international round of opera, oratorio and recital performances.

Without discussing the matter, David let Jon be top first. He climbed on to the bed and knelt there, hands on the pillow, arse waving temptingly in the air. "You've no idea how much I've missed you!" Jon said. "Having young Sandro in the house was a vivid reminder of how good it was to be young. Many's the night I've wanked myself off, wanting you like mad!"

"Right! Well you've now got me. Indulge your evil unnatural lust on my unresisting body! Commit the vile and bestial act of buggery on your helpless victim! Fuck me silly! I want you up my rear end NOW! Stick your male dagger into my welcoming arsehole!"

Having put the rubber on his dick, Jon began by kissing each of David's slightly plump and rounded buttocks. The hair felt wonderful on his lips as he ran his mouth over the rounded surface. The warmth of David's body and the faint scent of Storing pour Homme intoxicated him. He reached round David's hips and took hold of his tool with his left hand and caressed it gently as he used his right hand to introduce lube over David's crack and to poke the lube into his anus. Three fingers were needed to stretch the sphincter after its period of non-entry. Then, rather than enter him from behind, he turned David over, pushed him down on his back and lifted his legs on to his own shoulders. Smiling lovingly, he pushed his tool into David's anus. David gave a little yelp as Jon slid through the sphincter, and Jon paused and bent to kiss his lips. "Ti amo, caro mio!" he murmured in Italian and smiled again.

David relaxed and said, "Come on then, give it to me hard! I want you just as much as you want me, my much missed man-fucker!" Jon complied, pushing his man-stick as hard and deeply as he could, until he hit David's prostate. He rammed him roughly for some minutes, but then, as tenderness replaced lust, he slowed down and bent forward to kiss David's face and neck and shoulders. When he resumed thrusting, he moved more slowly, savouring the moist warmth of David's gut and spinning out the fucking for as long as he could.

"Do you remember that first time in the flat in Fountain Street, just before your second year began, when I took Viagra to make sure that I would stay hard when I took your anal virginity? I was dead frightened that if you suffered any pain or major discomfort, I would lose my erection! Nowadays my need for your body is so strong that I am as hard as a rock at the mere sight of you undressing!"

"Of course! An event like that, the first time of being fucked, is something that you remember for the rest of your life. The funny thing was that although we arranged that you would fuck me first because your dick, being smaller, would give me less discomfort, everyone that talked to me about our relationship, and particularly the women, all seemed to know that it was you that was doing the fucking. Even my mother seemed to know, though I NEVER discussed it with anyone. Do you know, my little brother Jeroen, when he was undergoing an adolescent period of fear that he was gay, used to ask me what you and I did together! He was only fourteen at the time and I wouldn't have dreamt of telling him anything about what we two did in private."

"I think it was probably due to your long hair making you look more like a woman, and my crew-cut looking more macho, replied Jon. "In fact, as we both know, no-one could be more macho than you. You have all the male characteristics of scruffy dress and a hatred of dancing! But I still love your long hair, even though you are no longer the sweet teenager that I fell in love with."

"It's a helluva nuisance when I have to wear a wig on the stage! But I still like it long, and I'm lucky that so far I still have most of my hair. But shut up and get back down to business. I need your prick doing its work up my bum NOW!"

Jon returned to fucking his partner with renewed vigour. A relaxed smile of pleasure suffused David's face as he lay there, reaching up from time to time to run his hands over Jon's shoulders and chest. Eventually Jon shot his load, and shouted David's name before bending forward and smothering David with kisses as his erection slowly subsided and his tool slipped out of David's hole.

The flat was quite warm, so David got up, naked as he was and, dick swinging between his legs, walked into the small kitchen and began to make coffee. There was no point in getting dressed, because it would soon be his turn to fuck. During his long train journey, there had been a build-up of gas in his gut, and their recent anal activities had loosened it, and as he waited for the water for the coffee to heat, he released it noisily. The noise of the fart echoed through the kitchen. "You didn't lose much time making your presence heard!" Jon joked, as David brought the coffee in.

David giggled, "Oh, it's wonderful to be home with you again!" he said, as they sipped coffee. "How has Sandro been getting on? Has he been any trouble?"

"None at all. He adapted surprisingly quickly to life in England. He's got used to English food, and learnt the lessons I gave him on English beer, lessons that I never had to give you because your father brought you up with a taste for good beer. In that respect he was a good pupil. But it's a relief to get him out of the house and into college. When Cathy got back from Scotland, the flat seemed crowded. It's funny that when we had Luke here as well, it didn't seem so crowded. In many ways, I can now treat Sandro as we treated Luke. But I don't think he's got his sexuality sorted out yet. I think he may be as uncertain as you were all those years ago. We were lucky in a way that both Luke and Tom knew that they were gay early in adolescence and they never had the uncertainty problem."

"Well, I've never regretted being led astray by an older man! You were good for me then, Jon, and you're good for me now!" With that, David took the empty coffee cup out of Jon's hand, and pushed him on to the bed. His cock began to stiffen as he started to kiss Jon's face and neck. "I've been wanting you for weeks. I've been counting the days up to today! He reached for the lube and began to prepare his lover for penetration. When Jon was ready, David rolled the condom on to his dick, lightly smeared it with lube and lined it up to enter Jon as he lay on his back, in the same position that David had been half an hour before. He pushed firmly and slipped relatively smoothly through Jon's sphincter and began to fuck him. Jon lay back and enjoyed himself as David's super-sized manhood repeatedly hit his prostate. His own cock took on new life and lay rock-hard against his belly. He began to writhe in excitement as David speeded up his movements, and before David actually came, Jon squirted another massive load of seed over his own belly.

When the miracle happened to him, David underwent the sacramental feeling that both the men felt when fucking. With the outflow of seed went an outflow of love that seemed to enwrap the two of them and carry them both away into the realms of the spirit. "With my body, I thee worship..." quoted David from the marriage rite as he pulled out of Jon, lowered himself on top of his lover, licked up some of Jon's spunk, savoured it in his mouth and swallowed it before gluing his lips to Jon's, who opened his mouth to allow David's tongue to enter...

Around 4 pm, David said "We're getting too old to shag all night! Let's see if we can get tickets for the opera. He dialled the number of the assistant administrator at Covent Garden Royal Opera house, who was a friend of his, and asked him if he could find two tickets for that evening's performance. "It doesn't matter what the price is," he said. Tickets for two seats in the orchestral stalls were available. David gave his credit card number and was given a reference number to obtain the tickets from the machine in the theatre foyer. They changed into suitable clothes and ate in a small Italian restaurant in the old fruit and vegetable market near the opera house, quite near the Apple Store, and got to the theatre just in time to buy a programme and take their seats. The opera was Rossini's 'La gazza ladra.' They enjoyed the performance, holding hands in the darkness and ate ice-creams in the interval. "It's just as if we were in our twenties again!" giggled David as they settled into their seats for the last act. This time they ventured to sneak a quick kiss when the audience's attention was fixed on the stage.

"The tenor who sang Giannetto was very good," said David after the performance "but it's not a role I would fancy for myself." They left the theatre hand-in-hand amidst the crowd and walked to Holborn underground station to catch a train back to the flat. "I'll be back there myself next month," he told Jon, "singing the role of Otello in the Verdi version." (Rossini also wrote an opera called 'Otello'). "The role really needs someone with a Mediterranean complexion, like Luke. I'll have to be plastered with dark brown makeup, and wear a frizzy black wig. A blond-haired Otello in inconceivable!"