episode 10-II | Ultimatum

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sensitive issues

I didn't realize Angelo was feeling so lonely, and isolated.

In my mind, I had done what he expected from me. I had decided to follow him to America, and I had communicated it to my mother. My own expectation was that he would then take over everything else. He had gathered information about the whole process of applying to the American universities. He had the addresses, the phone numbers -- but what he did not have was money to start and carry on with that bureaucracy.

When Edoardo refused to help him, Angelo wanted me to talk to my mother to help the two of us. Reluctant, I wanted to hear from Catherine first. I thought once she agreed to help me, she wouldn't mind helping my boyfriend, too.

But in the meantime, she and Edoardo arrived to a decision. They were going to care for their respective sons only, and not interfere in the other's decisions -- that settled, they never again fought.

Of course they knew what that meant. If Angelo couldn't go anywhere without getting his father's financial aid, it meant I wasn't going anywhere either, even if Catherine would help me. I was just accompanying him, and had no will of my own to move towards our future in America.

"You don't love me, do you, Laurent?"

"Of course I do!" I protested. 

"No. I'm just another toy for you. I get it now. You just like my body. You like my ass. You use me for sex, for fun."

"Don't be ridiculous, Angelo." I almost said 'melodramatic', but it would sound too much like Catherine.

"You don't understand me. You don't respect me. You don't care about my needs. My dreams."

"Of course I do." I repeated myself.

"No, you don't. And that's why you don't want to help me."

"Don't be unfair, Angelo. I've done everything I could..."

"No you haven't. And you know it."

Angelo had come up with another idea. He wanted me to ask for my grandmother Celeste's help.

He was aware that she sent me money every Christmas and birthday. With that, I had gathered a considerable amount in savings. That money could have helped us -- but Angelo himself had helped me to spend it all. We -- or I -- had bought a new music player, and plenty of long-plays, shirts, jeans, tennis shoes, and junk food. Actually, he was responsible for us having no money, having exchanged it for fun.

"Your grandmother is rich, Laurent. You could convince her to sell one of the paintings in her collection, or her jewelry. Then we would have the money we need."

But I knew Celeste did not have to sell anything to have money. That was Angelo's family history -- how they had sold all the artifacts from his archaeologist grandparents, even the furniture and finally the apartment in Rome, to go to the United States for his mother's treatments.

"I can't do that, Angelo." 

And I'm glad I never did, even if it led to tragedy in our household. But how could I? I hadn't seen Celeste again in eight years, though we every once in a while spoke over the phone. Catherine would sometimes visit her in Paris, on her trips to Belgium, but I was never again invited to her house.

"Of course you can. She has never denied you money, has she?"

"No. Simply because I have never asked her for money. Do you get it?"

It would have been funny to see what Celeste's reaction would be, had I asked her to sell one of her paintings. What would the painting be? Her Picasso? Her Renoir? Or the Monet? She could get rid of her Bonnard, or the Leger. She owned at least one painting from most French painters starting with the Impressionist period, and also of those foreigners that had made Paris their home for a while. Not that I knew any of that when I was eighteen. And I knew nothing about Monsieur de Montbelle either, who had bought her many of those paintings, and from whom she had inherited several others. 

*****

Seeing so much art at my grandmother's apartment had confused me, when I was ten years old.

"Maman, why does... grandma--" I recall whispering the word, afraid that Celeste would hear it, "live in a museum?"

"Oh, mon cher. This is not a museum. Though Celeste's apartment is just as full of preciosities."

But I had never been to major art museums before visiting Paris, and to me they were no different from my grandmother's apartment -- except, perhaps, in scale. 

Catherine tried to enlighten my ignorance. When I elected two paintings I had liked best, she proceeded to explain who had been their painters, Chagall and Matisse. At some point, she said they were very famous.

"Not more famous than my papa!" I declared in triumph.

"Oh, much more famous than Carlo, mon cher."

"Certainly not, maman. I had never heard of them before. And I have know my father is a painter since... forever!"

*****

"Besides," I continued my argument with Angelo, "we don't need so much money to go to the US, do we?" I was starting to doubt his intentions. Any of those paintings would have sold for millions of francs. (*)

"You will always need money in this life, Laurent. As much as you can have. Don't be silly."

"How can I ask her such a thing? Grandma," she would kill me at calling her that, "why do you need two Matisses? Why don't you sell one of them?"

"That would be perfectly fine. Because these paintings are yours already. Don't you see? You don't have to wait until she dies to sell them. Or are you going to keep all her old stuff?"

"You are out of your mind, Angelo!"

"Then don't sell anything. Just ask for her spare change. She is filthy rich, didn't you say so? She shall have enough francs to help us coming from her purse only. How much money do you think she keeps at home?"

"I can't do that, Angelo. And you're sounding like you want to rob my grandmother."

"It's not that you can't. The truth is you don't want to, Laurent."

"Let's wait."

"Wait for what, Laurent?"

"Your father might change his mind..."

"I can't wait, Laurent." Angelo had expected we would be studying in the US in the second semester of 1993 already, but we hadn't moved any closer to that. "Not in this hole." And then he threatened me again. "I am leaving, Laurent. No matter what, no matter how, I am leaving."

Angelo stormed out of the room.

We had discussed those issues several times, and I did not get that his threat was indeed an ultimatum.

Not until very late that evening did I start worrying. It must have been 3, maybe 4 AM. When we fought, both Angelo and I liked being alone, and we could spend hours not speaking to one another. But we hardly skipped sex, and the previous weeks, full of tension and expectations, we were doing it at least twice a day to dilute the stress.

I confess I was horny, more than worried, when I went looking for him. First, I checked the room in the back, where I had slept when we had guests, and where Carlo would seek refuge when he fought with Catherine. To keep the tradition, it was Angelo to occupy it now, when he wanted to get away from me.

I opened the door slightly, enough to peek into the room and check that he was not in there. I closed it again, and decided I would not go after him into the fields. Or could he have ran away? His words about leaving suddenly sounded more serious than usual to me. But he wouldn't have ran away without taking a backpack, would he? At least I wouldn't. But when I thought my father had disappeared just like that, to never ever send any news, I had icy goose bumps. I couldn't bear the perspective of being abandoned once again.

I opened the door again. The room was unusually stinky. In the dark, I saw the undone bed. Hoping Angelo had at least written a message, I walked towards the side table, where he had left a book open.

I screamed when I saw him lying in his own vomit. Incredibly pale, his body tense, fists clenched -- he was frozen with pain. Reminding me of one of those petrified inhabitants of Pompeii, his face was twisted in a clownesque grimace. I shouted again, and again, as I collapsed onto the floor, crawling next to him, to take him in my arms. His body was lifeless and covered in cold sweat. I shivered. I had never seen a corpse before, but as I held Angelo, I knew he was dead.

Catherine did not scream when she arrived in the room, taking in the scene of Angelo's suicide. To her, life was only a tragedy in books. She dealt rather coolly with reality, as if it were an experiment in a laboratory. There was always something she could use in a future book -- even her own son's misery at the death of his boyfriend.

But she did shout at me when I fought Edoardo, as he tried to fetch Angelo from me.

"Please let go of him , Laurent! We need to take him to the hospital!"

As Edoardo ran away with Angelo in his arms, Catherine stayed behind with me. Patting me on the shoulder, she tried to reason me out of my shock, but I don't recall her words. 

I did not cry, as I realized I was being abandoned again. It was useless, I knew. I had cried for Carlo, but my tears hadn't brought him back.

*****

For several months after the incident at the country club, that led to my decision of quitting the swim team, I had contemplated the practical problems of suicide. At fourteen years old, suicide was a thing from books, and that's where I researched my possibilities. 

Catherine was a very well organized writer, and she kept lists for everything -- from names for characters to a thorough table of colours. In her archives, I found under S a list of suicides in books, and that's where I learned that Romeo drank poison, Heathcliff starved to death, Othello and Juliet stabbed themselves, Werther shot himself, Mme Bovary ingested arsenic. As I went through my mother's list, I learned about those who had hanged themselves, and drowned. 

Some suicides seemed noble, like Plato's, and other were beautifully tragic, like Anna Karenina's, who stepped on the train track. And in the company of so many suicidal characters, my desperation eased and I realized how my own death would only seem pathetic. I also understood I was a coward, and inflicting death upon myself seemed harder than coping with my shame and guilt.

Unlike me, Angelo was brave, full of determination and will to live -- or to die. Whatever he chose, he would accomplish. If he couldn't leave France, he could leave this life. Whichever direction he favored, he would travel. 

Unlike me, he did not seem to fear death as his final destination.

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(*) this in Laurent's memories is the year of 1993, and French franc was the currency then.

Interlogue

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Samsara Heights

2011

Have I loved -- no, not loved, just worshiped -- an impostor?

The most constant, solid presence throughout my adult life, during the past fifteen years, everything I have achieved was under his guidance.

To his suggestion I have moved to Samsara Heights, where I watch the sun set over the sea thinking it is headed to Punaouilo, the island of my birth. This nostalgic happiness -- or was it unhappiness? -- that softens my days in a city where I have practically no friends, I owe it to him.

That I now have the Pacific Ocean of my childhood at my feet -- that, too, I owe him. One just needs descend the hill, wandering through an enchanted garden trail, the final steps leading to the beach where I can relish bathing in the same waters of my early years. Melancholically poetical and marvelous as it is, it has been his idea, first of all, that I moved to the West Coast.

Once I bought the land, he indicated the best contemporary architects to build my dream house. Yet, it took him three years, since it has been completed, to accept the invitation to visit me.  Now, I am not just anxious with his visit -- I fear it. I fear how our relationship will evolve from there. The questions I am about to ask him won't necessarily lead to disaster -- but most possibly. 

My artistic career -- I owe it thoroughly to him. And to my talent, too, of course. Since the day he first visited my atelier, it has been under his sole guidance. I have entrusted him the power to determine my steps in the art world. Be it my solid prestige in the museums circuit, or my thundering commercial success, Dan Charmand has led me all along the controversies of my triumphant career.

That envious people call me Dan's boy, or Dan's toy, I couldn't care less. They are right -- to some extent. I am his creature. A happy creature have I been, so far -- living in ignorance of what, now, I think have been his ruthless intentions.

For love of my father, Dan will probably have to step out of my life. Like before, as I am led to believe, my father has gotten out of my life because of him.

Quite naturally, he occupied the place left vacant by my father. At twenty, when we first met, without being conscious of it, I was eager to find an adult masculine figure to replace Carlo. Angelo, then my boyfriend -- and through whom I met Dan -- was sure a strong enough manly presence in my days. But he was just as young and lost as I was, making me the more lost. Having been dumped, in the labyrinth of loss and hollowness that Angelo's absence ensued, Dan had taken the center of stage -- to never, ever again leave it.

Irascible to most, Dan took me into his liking. Because, like Catherine used to say, I was an obedient boy? Dan's advices were guidance to me,  his suggestions like marching orders. Books I should read, movies I should watch, exhibitions I should visit -- I was always up to date with his check lists. Jazz to Britt pop, Japanese food to hamburgers. He told me what I should prefer, if I were to be the 'citizen of the world' he wanted to turn me into -- and turned me into it he has. In ways I could not guess -- at least not until now --, he echoed my grandmother Celeste. 

"Do you think Charmand gets to choose D'Allegro's underwear color, or if he should put no underwear at all?" Jokes about us abounded. No matter how many lovers I was 'allowed' to have, I remained being Dan's boy. But I was no puppet of his. I was not just free in sex -- there was intelligent life for me outside Dan's perimeter. For instance, he wanted me to dress Boss, but I had insisted on Armani. I had kept my own style -- unless I was to accompany him to a dinner party, or a gala evening. Then I would need Dan's approval on how I dressed. I had to match his impeccable elegance to remain being his constant escort to ballets and operas and all other openings. 

He does not have a family -- not a single member. He once mentioned being raised by a grandmother in Tunisia -- or was it Algeria? --, who has already died. Once, when I was crying over Angelo, he implied to have suffered a great loss, due to a tragedy of some sort.  "Death only should be mourned, Laurent.", he had stated. To that, I dried my tears, and never let them flow again, not for my ex-boyfriend. Even his scolding was benevolent.

That is all I know about the story of his life. No details, nothing concrete. I have never had the occasion to ask any further. There is no space for personal matters in his days. The present only exists for him, dominated by impressive professional achievements -- 24/7, Dan is the almighty director of Vice City's acclaimed Contemporary Art Museum. 

I do not worry who will inherit his fortune, his precious art collection, his ultra elegant penthouse, his partnerships in several businesses -- such material matters concern the gossipers only. Why should I think about Dan's death, when he is the best thing to have happened in my life in all the years spent at Vice City? I already have the unique privilege of being his intellectual heir.

I have been family for him, and he has been family, for me. We do not try to disguise a rather compensatory father and son relationship -- that people mistake for a daddy and son fantasy. I couldn't care less.  

What I do care, though, is that he has lied to me. No, not perhaps lied -- just omitted. But omitted too great a deal, from our very start.

I had to go to Sweden to find out about Dan's passage through Paris. Nothing unusual, for someone who, in the sixties or seventies, wished to make a career in the arts. But I am left breathless, my heart racing, at the simple recollection of the nature of his connection to Monsieur de Montbelle -- my grandfather, if I am to still believe Catherine. 

I have heard it from the mouth of Armand de Montbelle himself . Plus many other facts that gets me wondering why I couldn't have a normal family like everybody else -- instead of that kaleidoscopical mess that leaves me gaping and panting and traveling from one corner of the planet to another, trying to gain some sense and perspective on my own origins. 

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Episode 85 | Survival strategy

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nudity and sex

"Painful, Carlo?" I had expected adjectives like 'shocking', 'bold', which in fact would be used in newspapers and magazines articles, along with 'coarse' and 'scandalous'. I was hoping to become famous with 'Portraying Dorian G', and I did not worry about becoming infamous -- though I would hate the nickname 'The Dark Room' that was to give me so much exposure. 

But instead of my offensively explicit nudity, and the impressive set of enrapturing beautiful men I had collected along my sex life, had Carlo seen my exposed, fragile soul? 

"So you are to be the contemporary incarnation of Dorian Gray?" Carlo was referring to Oscar Wilde's famous character, implied in the title of the show.

I had rehearsed a challenging and nonchalant speech about the ugliness of the soul of our present days. How shallow and uncultivated it was, hiding behind the cult to the body and the apology of a very artificial beauty that slipped back into ugliness, unable to masquerade our souls, after all. Oscar Wilde had published his book in 1890, but Dorian Gray was one of the most iconic characters to that early XXI century, with its superficial aesthetics, the immensely alienating consumerism, a myriad of empty and equivocated values  -- I had an arsenal of topics to address critics and journalists, to at least intellectually justify my presence in such an important museum. Dan Charmand had prepared me to turn my exhibition into a public statement.

But with Carlo I decided to be personal -- and it was the only time I did it, regarding that exhibition. Not even with Dan.  Clearly, I felt that one painter had already spoken to the other painter about technical matters -- now it was the father talking to his son.

"To be honest with you, Carlo... I am the portrait of Dorian Gray. The painting itself. The picture that in the book suffers decadence, instead of the portrayed. I am the image that becomes monstrous, while the man remains beautiful. I'm the torn soul of the beautiful Dorian... and Gray, in this case, would be Angelo Vivace, my ex-boyfriend." I felt like pacing the room, but my father stood quietly at my side, and I just shifted my weight back and forth, feeling the unrest of my extemporaneous sincerity. "For, while he cheated me, lying with dozens of guys in Vice City," I closed my eyes briefly to that stinging memory, and gulped, "I was alone in our bed, tossing and turning and shedding tears, and crying his name... He would come back to our room radiant from anonymous sex, as I was in tears, having worried about him. While he felt horny, I just felt hurt... He smiled and exulted, while I just tormented myself... He enjoyed it all, while I was just suffering." So many years gone by, and my anger was still there, mingled with a lot of self-pity, too.

In fact, a decade or so having gone by, I had remained being the portrait of Dorian Gray, I thought. Even after my relationship with Angelo had ended. Dan Charmand had pointed that out, once. 

"Why are you trying to look ugly and older, Laurent?" Like Angelo, Dan preferred that I used contact lenses instead of glasses, though he would never go with his own spectacles. "You cannot actually believe that your love life ends with Angelo. And I don't even want to know about these one-night stands you're addicted to, though they become very powerful portraits. What is good for your art might not be good for your soul, have you reflected on that? Your poser image of cruel lover and serial seducer is very amusing, but a hardened heart definitely does not suit you well." Dan had scolded me.

Thus it was that Angelo was present in all my paintings -- although, in fact, there was no image of him on display at 'The Dark Room'. 

He was in every man with whom I went to bed and then dumped -- a continuation of the contempt with which he had treated me.

 I had been remotely inspired by the Hindi tale about Sita and her two beheaded lovers, as retold by Thomas Mann, when purposefully I had kept my face out of that exhibition -- the only faces on display were of my ex-lovers, while the only body to be seen, in all its crude nakedeness, was mine. But with great insight and sensitivity, Carlo had interpreted the show as a portrait of my soul. A wounded, lacerated soul. 

"Did I hurt you that much, Laurent?" He seemed moved, and worried. He saw me puzzled at his question, and added that he had been wondering if he was the cause of the suffering he was seeing depicted in my paintings. "This is clearly destructive, Laurent. You are trying to take revenge on these guys, trying to make them suffer by turning them into mere minced meat... Am I wrong? I mean, have you been hurting them because in fact you'd rather hurt me? Hurt people hurt other people. Does that sound too psychological?"

I almost whined, and glanced at the other side of the room to avoid crying. When my eyes were met by Andrei's, an Slavic beauty and a fierce lover, I regained self-control. "Yeah, you hurt me, Carlo." My father's words had given me goosebumps. He had been twenty years absent, and still, he could read me like an open book? "But all this has nothing to do with you..." Why did I have to lie, at that moment? Everything I had gone through during those years had to do with my father's absence, in a way or another, be it good or bad. "I mean, of course I ended up becoming a painter by your influence, but... the suffering that you seem to identify here has nothing to do with you." Andrei's stare captured in my painting contained all the selfish vanity that made him so superficial, and doubting he would ever have any deep psychological issues, I wished to be just like him at least once. "No." 

We continued walking through the exhibition in thoughtful silence. Until, as we stood before the marmoreal elegance of slender and tall, nerdish Finnish Timo, Carlo exclaimed, "Your depiction of flesh is extraordinary, Laurent! Not the torn flesh of Francis Bacon, nor Lucien Freud's decay, no. Instead, you portray an enrapturing beauty, but so that it looks... harmful, perhaps? Instead of being in a museum, I have the impression of being in a butcher's shop, and all these guys look like ground beef... This amount and variety of gorgeous and anonymous men, whose only point in common is having had sex with you..." Tilting his head, Carlo again looked carefully around the room, taking in the portraits of my numerous ex-lovers. "Your sexual consumerism, Laurent, is a shocking statement. Serial seducer, you said? Perhaps this is as dangerous as being a serial killer, although it sounds like just a funny pun." He shook his head. His voice was neutral still, if fatherly, but it seemed like he was getting judgmental. "All these guys you have consumed and discarded... And that in the title of the paintings it doesn't appear their names, just a number!" Carlo snorted. I had titled the paintings simply as Portrait # 1, Picture # 2, up to a number well above four hundred, though there were only 45 on display. "Is it then right, Laurent, that with this exhibition you are seeking vengeance against your ex-boyfriend? Or actually, finally making it public to him?"

I gasped loud. It was an idea I had not yet had. Maybe in the back of my mind, but I had never admitted it to myself to be my main motivation. Would Dan have helped me to put up an exhibition that was an act of vengeance -- against one of his ex-lovers, too? Of course, I was pretty sure that Angelo, as a journalist, would learn about my exhibition at such a prestigious museum, whose director he had known very intimately. And I would very much appreciate should he visit it. Just to realize how many men I had put between me and him -- the distance being measured in beds, but not just. 

But then, he would understand that he had forever conquered and defeated me. I had been faithful to Angelo for eight years. Since then, I had had only one night stands and explosive love affairs that never lasted more than a couple of weeks. My exhibition, as pointed out by Carlo, was the confirmation that my ex-boyfriend had hurt me indelibly, beyond the possibility of any cure, relegating me to the curb of promiscuity, while he had married the perfect woman, socialite supreme Laura von Tschimmel. 

I startled at Carlo's voice, who wanted to continue sharing his insights with me.

"There is one boy that is repeatedly portrayed, though." Carlo observed, with much wit. "This one young man here... Portrait # 172...And that over there is also another painting on him, isn't it? And I believe in the other room there is another..." It was impressive that Carlo had noticed that it was the same man, because two of the portraits were quite dirty and disfigured. "Is he Angelo?" 

Actually, Carlo had been anticipating a picture of my ex-boyfriend, and seeking for it because, as he later clarified, "this guy who made ​​you suffer so much, my son, is who I wanted to see the most."

"No, Carlo. There is no portrait of Angelo here." Exactly just like how in an exhibition there might be no portrait of the photographer, but he is behind all the photos, always present behind the lens, thus Angelo was in all the men I had portrayed -- I had just realized that. What a peremptory defeat for me, and a definitive victory for my ex-boyfriend, if I were to accept Carlo's interpretation of my work, derived from my promiscuity. "This is Marton... He was..." Also Portrait #193, #224 and a couple more, "a little more special... and lasted a bit longer... than the others."

"But he also was committed to another relationship, as I discovered later." Perhaps only for Marton, had I fallen in love during the last decade. But he hadn't been available for a relationship, although he was always available for sex. "We got together quite a few times in Samsara Heights, when he had business there. But it did not work right for us." Nor wrong, actually, I thought, as he had done with me just as I did with all the other guys, using me and dumping me.

It would have too much of an infraction for Ted to have turned the air conditioning on, too, and both Carlo and I were sweating. I suddenly realized a stream of perspiration going down my back and into my trousers when I saw Carlo drying the back of his neck with a handkerchief. The bottom of his hair was wet too, but despite the discomfort, he didn't seem willing to drop our conversation nor leave my show.

"There are so many beautiful men in this exhibition!" Carlo complimented. More the guys than me, however, for he did not seem impressed nor proud of my sexual achievements. Instead, he seemed deeply worried and faintly stunned. "They all are, actually. But their stares... Many of them stare back at us with defiance, others in disbelief. That one over there, for instance," He pointed Rhys, a professional model who had, however, not charged me for his painting, leaving it even after a good and long, hard session on the carpet of my atelier, "appears to be disdainful, but there are also those who stare with... love... even as if worshiping... Were they posing for you, Laurent?"

It strikes me as almost surreal to be chatting about my love life -- actually, my sex life -- with my father. I had always talked about my affairs with Catherine, for she seemed to take pride in my conquests. "It looks like you have beaten me, mon cher." She had joyfully declared one day over the phone, as if she had been counting the men I had gone to bed with, comparing to her own figures. It had been the survival strategy we had shared, after her partner Edoardo had died and Angelo had dumped me. Death to her, and an end that seemed like death to me, though we were living oceans apart, had united us in our respective celebrations of the continuation of life, that consisted mainly on relishing a wide variety of men.

But confiding in Carlo had a quite different feeling to it -- more existential, as if for the first time I was weighing and measuring the extent of my wrongdoings. On those matters, Carlo was the flawless one, while Catherine and I had been accomplices in our careless freedom. My mother might have demanded that I dress and speak and write and behave to her standards of perfection, but when it came to sex, Catherine's norm was still that of l'amour libre.

I hesitated. How earnest could I be with Carlo? "Some of them... yes." It were so many years, countless memories of the different circumstances on how I had met those men and taken them to bed and then to the easel. Yet, I remembered each one of those guys I had portrayed. "I painted some from photographs. Piers, for example," He was Portrait # 265, "posed for me. We were at a nudist beach in Greece, where we crossed paths. I made several drawings of him in one of the sketchbooks that I always carried with me, and later used them as a reference to paint his portrait, back in Samsara Heights. That blond one is Lars." Or Portrait #311. "I met him in a vegetarian restaurant in Stockholm. I took pictures of him after we had sex. Lars was nervous, tense, restless, and I tried to depict him just so..."

"Then Piers must have been the opposite?" My father had observed. "Tranquil, maybe shy?" His effort to name my lovers and go beyond the number was not just to humanize them -- it sounded a bit moralistic, too. In his mind, names seemed to soften the more voluptuous, sensual aspects of the portraits. What if he started naming them at the vernissage? I doubted Carlo would be very talkative then, among a crowd. He was better in connecting to one person at a time, like with Gabriel at the Nirvana Lounge. A few of my ex-lovers and models still lived in Vice City, and I was hoping some of them might show up -- in those years, how much would they have changed? How many Dorian Grays would we have? Anyway, I calculated Carlo wouldn't play the host and greet them by their names, so I had nothing to worry about. 

Since my childhood, Carlo was aiming at reading the painter behind my painting. Or maybe, was it my heart that he could still read so easily? Where had my father been, all those years? I wouldn't have run into so much trouble, I thought, if he had been there, with his sensitivity and clarity of mind illuminating my path, clarifying my own emotions, leading me out of confusion and delusion. Pacifying me by just being there, simply being there for me.

"That's right, Carlo. Piers was quiet... and sweet, too." I still recalled that, when Pier smiled, his gaze saddened. And not just when we had said goodbye at the port, before boarding different ferry boats. Piers was one of those guys who refused to have sex, and I had enacted beautiful and tender sessions of love making with him, but all along his gaze had been full of melancholy, even when his mouth twisted and moaned, in anticipation to the end of our vacations, when we would forever part.

"You never fell in love again, Laurent?" Carlo asked each question carefully. As if sentence by sentence trying to rebuild his fatherly figure and reconnect. 

"No, Carlo. Never." I uttered, with a vehemence that left me wondering. 

"But this won't have prevented some of these guys from falling in love with you..."

"Maybe, Carlo. But I never enticed them with the promise that I would love them back." I again recalled Piers; how even in the raunchiest moments of sex he was trying to stare right into my eyes, as if losing eye contact must have turned love making into plain sex. "And like I said, many of them were committed. For this reason, I won't ever be able to state that they are all my ex-lovers, in these portraits. But neither shall I deny it..." I laughed. "It's in my commercial contract with my marchand! Part of our marketing strategy, you see?" Carlo twisted his mouth, clearly disapproving that association of Art and selling techniques. "And of course, many of the guys I had sex with did not want to be portrayed. So this here..." I made a gesture encompassing the whole exhibition, "is just a part of my life." 

No, it was not seeing an exhibition, no matter how explicitly autobiographical, that my father would scoop my whole life into his hands again.

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