Luke at University Pt. 02

We spent the rest of the week very quietly, not much sex, but lots of cuddling, exam work in the mornings, a walk in the afternoon, sometimes ending at the Jellycotes Arms for a drink or a meal or both. On other days, Tom cooked us a simple evening meal. On the Sunday we packed all our necessaries into the 4x4 and Pop, who had come from Camford for the purpose, drove us to Buckingham College, where we unloaded our baggage and bade him farewell.

Chapter 33

The Pentecost term begins

The first thing that happened when teaching began was that my Italian tutor advised me very strongly to go on a four-week language course in August in Emilia-Romagna, and I registered for it at once. The course was residential with accommodation costs included in the course fee. I would have to meet the cost myself, but that was of course no problem. I knew that I could not be with Tom, as he needed to work. I decided to contact my grandfather and ask him for my mother's address. Now that I was eighteen, I had the right, if I chose, to meet her. Grandad gave me the address without demur. It was in a small town near Verona. There was no telephone number and no E-mail address, and the surname Mascagnoli was Italian.

All my enthusiasm was concentrated on my Italian studies. I was much less enthusiastic about my French. Fortunately, the minor language would take only 30% of my time in the second year and would be dropped altogether in my final year. But nonetheless I had to pass three papers in my first year exams in French and another three in Italian, along with single papers in Latin and Greek.

Nic Aspergini renewed his attentions. He invited me personally to go to an Italian film with him, not one that Tom and I would have chosen. I agreed to go with him one afternoon provided that we only spoke Italian. At least then I had some sort of excuse for accepting his approaches, but it was a pretty feeble excuse, because one doesn't talk much at the cinema. My problems with speaking Italian, and even more so with French, were my lack of self-confidence in keeping a conversation running.

Nic got more intimate than mere kisses on this second occasion. In the darkness of the cinema he reached over and unzipped my fly. He slipped his hand inside and began to grope me. Having reached my cock, he began to fondle it. Of course it began to stiffen. Then he kissed my ear and started to massage my cock. By now I was unsure whether he would try and suck it, or merely wank me off. Then my mind clicked in. What was I doing? This was folly! I was being ruled by my senses rather than by sense. If anything happened, I would not be able to tell Tom, because every time he and I came here, he would remember it and it would sour, if not destroy, our relationship. Yet if I didn't tell him, I would be guilty of deceiving the man I loved. I got hold of Nic's hand, gently removed it from my fly, zipped the fly up, got up and left the cinema.

After much thought, because nothing had actually happened, I decided not to tell Tom anything about the incident, because it might undermine his confidence in me at a time when, because of the imminent exams, emotional injury, whether or not it was slight, was to be avoided at all costs. Prompted then by my guilt feelings, I was specially affectionate to him that night and left him dropping off to sleep in postcoital contentment. I also fell asleep quickly, relieved that I had just avoided doing something very stupid.

Tom's singing got steadily better with regular practice, and he began to unwind to our fellow choir-members, and joined in the chat and banter over Sunday night dinner in Hall. The following Friday, I went with Tom for the first time to his pub evening with his fellow chemists. He had decided at this stage not to declare himself gay, but just to introduce me as his roommate. Even so, I noticed that one or two significant glances were exchanged by some of those present. The group consisted of about a dozen people, including one or two hard-drinking women students, and one or two girlfriends. At first, the major occupation seemed to be drinking. I eyed up the men with some interest. Several of them seemed even more nerdish than Tom, and were obviously drinking hard to conceal their poor social skills. 'Why do some scientists have so much difficulty interacting with their fellow-humans?' I wondered. I noticed one or two of the female chemists eying me up, but I studiously ignored them. I began to understand why Tom had few friends among the chemistry students. However, as the evening went by, the drinking slowed down and the conversation got more interesting, as people lost their inhibitions. We talked about politics, sex, religion, sport, and even about current events.

Tom and I continued our weekly pool, cinema and pub visits, and half-way through the term Tom's membership of the Men's Fitness Centre came through. Pop told me afterwards that while there had been no vacancies in the 18-25 age category, there were two vacancies for the more expensive over-25 membership. I agreed with Pop that I would not only pay Tom's membership, but would pay the difference between the two membership tariffs for the guy who was at the top of the under-25 waiting list. In this way, I reckoned that the unknown guy would not have been disadvantaged by Tom jumping the queue.

Chapter 34

Tom's birthday

Early in June, it was Tom's nineteenth birthday. I went into a card shop to buy him a birthday card, and found one of a type that I had never seen before, obviously designed for the teenage market. It said in big letters on the front 'To my Boyfriend' and inside there was a slightly sloppy, but not inappropriate message. 'Hello, big, sweet lover-boy! Happy birthday!' I gave it to him when I wakened him on his birthday morning, and on opening it, to my amazement, he burst into tears. He reached out with both arms as he lay in bed and pushed his wet face against mine. "You are so sweet, my own faggot-boy! I still can't believe that you're really mine!" he said. I could scarcely realize how much had happened between us since my own birthday only six months before, and especially how my grimly monosyllabic roommate had started to show real emotion. Apparently he had only received one other birthday card, from his sister. Not even one of his other four sisters had bothered to send a card.

I insisted on treating him to dinner at the Venezia, as I had no idea what I should give him for a present. I had bought him a Buckingham College hoody like my own but a size bigger, because I didn't want to get him anything like fancy designer clothes or jewellery unless he really wanted such things, so I took him out to eat and during the meal I gave him a USB memory stick with some MP3s of my father's songs that had not been commercially released on CD. It included that wonderful aria sung by Tito in Mozart's 'La Clemenza di Tito' 'Ah, se fosse intorno al trono.' Dad was due to appear in that role at Glyndebourne later in the summer, and then it struck me: I would get Dad to get me two tickets for a Saturday performance of the opera as Tom's birthday present! I knew that artists had access to tickets that were not available to the general public.

We had a wonderful evening. As I poured the wine, I sneaked a look at Tom, and the look of love on his face as he sat opposite me was reward in itself. Adoration radiated from his face and must have been evident even to the waiter, who grinned at me conspiratorially. (Most of the waiters at the Venezia were Italian trainees, come to improve their language skills and to get some experience serving in other EU lands. I often wondered if I disappointed them by always talking to them in Italian). It filled me with a huge sensation of tenderness for this inscrutable guy. What emotional depths lay behind the dour and impassive face that he usually presented to the world! We got through a bottle of Prosecco, a bottle of Valpolicella and a three-course meal. As the evening proceeded, the look on my stud-boy's face got more and more lustful. I bet even the waiters could read his mind!

We wandered back to college discretely hand-in-hand, and I knew exactly what would happen when we got in. The door to our room was no sooner closed than he grabbed me, put his arms round my shoulders, and started to kiss me violently. "I know what you want for your birthday!" I said, disengaging myself for a moment from his lips. "You want my arsehole!" I let myself melt in his demanding arms.

The Venezia had a dress code, so it took us longer than usual to get our clothes off, as ties and suits had to be removed and left on the sofa. I spread a towel on my bed, unwrapped a condom and handed it and the lube to my lover, who was standing there with his rock-hard dripping tool. I lay on my back on the bed and spread my legs and Tom knelt between them. He rolled the rubber on to his prick, put my feet over his shoulders and began to spread gel on my perineum and in my crack. He gently prised open my anal sphincter with his gel-smeared fingers and stretched it slightly. I had piled up pillows behind me, and I lay back on them and let him have his way with me. He thrust into me faster and more deeply than he had ever penetrated previously and the desire in his eyes was intense. But once he was well inside me, he slowed down and bent forward and kissed me gently and ever so sweetly. "Keep going!" I said as I ran my hands over his hair and shoulders and caressed his hairy chest. He gently resumed his fucking movements and his eyes got a far-away look as he slid in and out. After a few moments, he started to pant and breathe deeply.

"Luke, my darling, I'm gonna come!" he muttered as he climaxed within me. I reached up and pulled him down on top of me and clung to him as his stiffness subsided. The warmth of his body filled me with contentment as his cock slipped out of my rear end. He rolled off me and lay at my side, "When I fuck you," he said, "I get a feeling that something in addition to spunk is being shared between us, something totally non-physical, like love, maybe."

"I think it's more than that," I said, "I think's it's something sacramental, sent by God. Anyhow, whatever it is, it shows that we are soulmates and not just two queers having it off. I love you so much, Tom. I wonder how the domestic bursar, or whoever does college room allocations, knew to put us to share a room."

Chapter 35

The first year University exams

The following Saturday morning we made our first visit to the Fitness Centre together. Although public smoking bans had not then been introduced in England, the Fitness Centre had been, for obvious reasons, smoking-free ever since its opening in the early nineteen-nineties. Tom was fascinated by the way that the changing rooms were laid out. Both the swimming changing area and that for dry sports were laid out in a duplex arrangement. Opening off a central locker room were two separate changing and shower areas. The one on the left had changing cubicles with doors, and separate shower cells for use by modest straight men, about 20% of the clientèle. The one on the right had a pair of facing rows of bench seats running down each side of the room and two rows of unpartitioned shower heads arranged in the same way, for men who didn't give a shit about being seen by other men naked or getting undressed, which comprised the other 80% of users, a significant number of whom were gay. Non-gays of course had to put up with being scrutinized by other men, but it was heavily frowned on for any direct approaches to be made. Anyone who felt self-conscious in the showers could of course shower in his swimming trunks or even in a jock-strap. There was nothing about the arrangement that could not be found in any military establishment. I warned Tom not to stare too much, in case he got an erection, but in fact it was usually possible to see at least one person with at least a partial erection! Most men are at least mildly interested in other men's male equipment, and while it may not be true for women, for most men, gay or straight, size does matter, at least to some extent.

The pool of course was not as spectacular for length-swimming as the Olympic Pool, being only half the length, but what it lacked in length, it gained in convenience of situation, and male cameraderie. Many of the members swam daily and got to know one another well. It could get crowded at busy periods, which could make it difficult for men who were not undergraduates or unemployed.

Because of the shortness of Camford terms, teaching continued in all faculties until the end of week seven, allowing in my case just one week clear of contact hours before the exams, which for me began in week eight and continued into the first week of the vacation. Tom was luckier in his revision time, his exams did not begin until the first 'vacation' week and continued into the following week.

Before we knew it, my first exam was upon me. It was the Latin literature and translation paper and as I had been learning Latin since the age of seven, it did not pose problems, so it was a good exam to begin with. The rest of the papers of course were more of a challenge. During the exam period, Tom and I had some kind of sex each day, although often it was a gentle suck or a 69 session. I had a problem after my last exam, which was an Italian paper. All my fellow students were going out to get sloshed, Tom could not come with me, as he had an exam the next morning. So I joined my colleagues alone, but refused to go beyond a comfortable five pints (just under three litres). In spite of my abstemiousness, it was a good evening. Because a majority of the Italian students were girls, it was not the type of event in which we ended up so drunk that we rolled vomiting into the gutter! Most of us just got comfortably drunk, and it was just after midnight when I got back to college. Tom had already gone to bed, and after a visit to the bathroom, I muttered a few hasty prayers before collapsing into bed. It was another week before Tom's exams were finished, and I was able to join him on the chemists' post-exam booze-up. That showed all the signs of degenerating into a disgusting all-male drink-and-then-puke event and we left after five pints.

Buckingham was not a very popular college with the conference trade, and they let us stay in our rooms until the end of July if we wished, but we decided to move our things to Rockwell's Barn two days after Tom's last exam. He was due to start a job at the Fitness Centre at the beginning of August for six weeks as a holiday replacement, doing pretty well any job that did not need specialized training. Pop had fixed this up, with the understanding that should Tom give satisfaction, he would be hired each year. For that, he would have to live in the flat in Fountain Street. I would be in Italy for the whole of August.

The exam results were due at the end of July. We had both arranged to meet our respective tutors to try and get some feedback on our performance. The lists of exam results were posted in the Examination Building and we were there in good time to see them. We had both passed, and subsequently our tutors told both Tom and myself that we had been awarded college scholarships on the basis of our performance. Scholarships were only given for the very highest academic achievement, the equivalent of a first class in the final exams. The money involved was only slight (£300 per year), but the prestige was enormous. We were members of the college establishment, entitled to special longer gowns, the right to wear a surplice in chapel and best of all, a college room with en-suite facilities. Tom's tutor, who seemed rather surprised at Tom's success, had told him that his contract was expiring and that Tom would have another tutor in his second year, which we both felt was a good thing.

To be honest, I was more thrilled with Tom's academic success than my own. I am sure that Pop had doubts about Tom's college tutor's competence, and Tom with his unjustified sense of inferiority, which his tutor had totally failed to recognize and deal with, had achieved his academic success exclusively from his own efforts. No-one had even helped to smooth the path for him by sympathetic attention. My tutor, Dr Cagliari was a total contrast. He had every one of his students carefully weighed up, and knew all their strong and weak points. Men such as him are the reason for the success of the Camford one-to-one tutorial system. Tom's success in his exams had done him good. I noticed his increased self-confidence in the way that he made love to me. While still loving and considerate, he was visibly growing in dominance, and there were times when I wondered if he might be taking our mutual jokes about me being a sex-doll a bit too seriously. I had not yet raised the matter, but I was sure that I did not want to be a permanent bottom, and sooner or later I would need to take my turn at doing the fucking.

We made the slightly unusual decision to apply for a duplex room, as we had had in our first year, but with an en-suite bathroom. As it turned out, there was only one such room in the college, so we were lucky to get it and to know that we could also keep it for our third year. My parents were delighted at our scholarships, although Pop maintained that it was only what he expected. He said that Tom had all the makings of a brilliant chemist, and hoped that he would go on to become a 'proper' research chemist in three years time. As both my fathers had done chemical research training, but had never become career researchers, they hoped that Tom would do things differently. They were classic examples of how one's future life can turn out quite differently from that envisaged by themselves as teenagers. Both had started their curricula vitae with an impressive list of scientific publications that had ceased abruptly as they had got involved in other jobs.

Chapter 36

Italian visits and a big surprise

Our plans for the summer were now complete. My sister had a part-time job in a Camford store and Pop was keeping house for her and Tom in Fountain Street. At the beginning of August I was flying to Italy for the Summer School at Trabizona, and Tom would start work at the Camford Men's Fitness Centre. Dad would start a six-week season at Glyndebourne, with short spells at home between performances. In mid-September, all four of them would fly to Italy and take up residence at a house owned by my parents in Montecatini-Terme, where I would already be living after my course, hopefully doing some kind of part-time job. From there, Dad would set off with a small group of English singers on a tour of Northern Italian cities singing items from Monteverdi's 'Eighth Book of Madrigals.' The rest of us would have two weeks holiday, bathing in the spa waters of Montecatini-Terme, Tom and I fucking like rabbits, before returning to Camford with Pop for the new term. We were also planning a few visits to La Scala in Milan.

On August 1, I arrived at Valerio Catullo-Villafranca airport in Verona, and took the train to Trabizona in Emilia-Romagna, at whose university the Summer School was being held. It was a very long-established course, which had been attended by my parents while Dad was doing his Ph.D. It had the usual broad spectrum of students, from every country in Europe and some from Australia and North America, with every level of skill from total beginners to experienced and advanced learners. There was a rigid rule that all conversation, apart from the odd sentence, among the students, was to be in Italian at all times. I was finding it very difficult to forget Tom. We were divided into groups according to our levels of linguistic skill, and I was in the top group, which was extremely demanding. Although the work was intensive and interesting, and the company good, my stud-boy was in my mind too much of the time. We exchanged E-mails regularly, and he was also missing me, but he had work to do and the company of his coworkers was not very exciting. Most of them were fitness-obsessives.