Episode 86 | Panic ridden success

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"There is a kind of success that is indistinguishable from panic."

Edgar Degas

It was not the first time I exhibited some of those pictures. From my past exhibitions at commercial galleries and cultural centers, I had brought accolades and won over lovers and new models -- and consequently, more paintings. I liked to seduce my models at the galleries, though an unprofessional attitude it might be. My own paintings aroused me, turning my studio into my main stage and my alcove. 

But it was the first time the complete series were shown. The works had been painted over a decade of serial sex, and Dan Charmand had intended that my presentation should be a portrait of gay promiscuity, beyond my own intimacy. But since there were several 'straight' men among those I had portrayed -- like Marlon, who had a girlfriend whom he loved but did not feel physically attracted to; they were men who only had sex with other men, without considering themselves gay, a cop-out as they were returning to their women, their marital lives, their families and homes -- that theme had been dropped.

I was recruiting my models anywhere and everywhere. It was weird to think that when I was seducing I was also working -- and maybe that's what had helped to leave my heart out of those matters. At the gym, running at the park, at the fanciest restaurants or at the supermarket -- both in Samsara Heights, where I was trying to establish myself in my studio, as in my many travels around the world. 

To be honest, I approached men first as potential lovers, and just later would they become the models. After sex, I mean.

For some time, I had enjoyed having my rented house in Samsara Heights full of boys -- although often they were competing for my attention and unfriending each other -- and there had been threesomes often ending in disagreement and quarrels. 

It was silly, but naked men in my pool made ​​me feel like I was a sort of David Hockney's cover, and it had made me feel more like a painter. I had screened the documentary on Hockney's lifestyle and creative process, "A Bigger Splash", a hundred times in my atelier -- maybe also because it was on Hockney's love life, and the breakup with his most enduring model and lover. Did I see myself mirrored, when Angelo had encouraged me to paint and yet dumped me?

I was young and thought I could be ruthless, and reckless. 

I felt I did not need to care. That I did not need to fear. 

I was completely lost, but since I was going nowhere, I could not realize how aimlessly wandering I was. 

Blame it on my youth?

Carlo then watched the video that I had added to the exhibition, while sitting on the couch where there rested a sculpture that was my life-size reproduction -- naked, obviously, and ass up. Carlo did not comment on the sculpture, which would frequently be classified as 'outrageous', and he remained silent at the end of the video, where I appeared nude in several shots at my old studio in Samsara Heights, mixed with scenes from some of my affairs eating, walking, bathing, sleeping -- mostly naked, too. The voices of the narration were both mine and from the guys who had agreed to be filmed. I had edited them so that our lines mingled and no sentence was spoken by a single voice, and several of the sentences made ​​no sense at all. I would later banish the video and the sculpture from my following exhibitions. Seeing it in my father's company, for the first time I realized how infantile it was.

"Pathetic and unnecessary." Dan had also disliked the video, which he thought to be vulgar, and technically problematic. "Your butt appears twelve times, and your smile only seven." Dan had scowled. "You certainly are photogenic. But no video maker, Laurent dear, and certainly no sound technician either. What you classify as raw footage is just badly, carelessly executed, and inferior to most plain TV shows." But he had agreed to show it along with the sculpture, just to shock and possibly attract audience. "If you think you'll be able to handle the criticism..."

Carlo was more shocked by the video than with my nudity in the self-portraits, and his next question was very surprising. He was acting like my father again.

"Have you ever tested, Laurent?" He motioned me to leave the room were the video was continually being screened, as if he couldn't tolerate seeing it one more time. I hadn't immediately understood his question, and he clarified rather bluntly, not without blushing, though. "HIV, I mean?" 

"Yes, Carlo. Negative. I always took precaution and had safe sex." After Angelo opened our relationship, I had become almost obsessive about safe sex, to my ex-boyfriend's great frustration. He enjoyed "exchanging body fluids", he said. Naively, to condoms I had added spermicide. "You can't get pregnant, Laurent!" Angelo had made fun of me and laughed for days, after he found it out.

"Grazie a Dio, son!" He had sighed, throwing his hands in the air and rolling his eyes. I smiled, thinking I should try that myself every once in a while to revive my Italian roots. "Yet, accidents happen. I still prefer you wouldn't risk yourself that way... This... need..." His voice caught, "to hurt other men... you can end up hurting yourself, Laurent... Even killing, I mean. Have you thought about it?" He sat at one of the sofas on the main room, and motioned me to sit by his side. I chose the floor at his feet, though. I was starting to feel uncomfortable with our conversation -- how come were we again talking about me, and not about him, nor why he had left home? Was he pretending it was over, long past, and there was no need to talk about it? Was he trying to talk me around? He wouldn't rebuild our relationship so easily over that twenty years gap -- for it had opened an abyss between us.

"Why should I care about them, Carlo?" My voice trembled. "They were not considering me, when they hurt me... when they were having sex with Angelo." My heart dropped at those recollections. What kind of fear ridden love had dominated me for so long, that I had put up with so much filth from my ex-boyfriend? "Some of them even knew me... More than once, I think, Angelo had sex in the bathroom of cinemas and restaurants, while I was waiting for him like an idiot. These men did not care about hurting me." And neither had Angelo. In fact, after I had revealed my secret to him, he had started hurting me as an enactment of his power, and his domination over me increased. Since then, I had decided not to reveal my darkest secret to anyone else. Not even my father. Much less to him. I was aiming to forget it.

"It doesn't matter what others do to us, Laurent! This is their karma. Whatever evil they do to us, it shall return on themselves. This is true to all, including Angelo--"

I snorted, and my father startled. "I don't know if I believe this karma stuff, Carlo." It was very convenient to sit and think that life would be in charge of punishing Angelo. Until then, he had become a celebrity, he held a very successful TV program, a beautiful family and the perfect wife. He was living in a design house often pictured on magazine covers, a house many times larger and more luxurious than mine. Angelo was often appearing in fashion editorials and adds as the embodiment of success and male beauty. How had life punished him, indeed?

And after what my father had told me that evening, I suddenly thought that it was too bad I had not taken after Catherine and her thirst for revenge. It had taken her to Asia, on a journey she had dreaded, yet she had moved on with the fierce intent of perpetrating revenge against her half brother. 

But it suddenly dawned upon me... Maybe... that exhibition was an unique, creative vengeance?

"Still, it doesn't really matter what others do to us." Carlo continued with his newage-ish speech. "We cannot have control over others. Other men have hurt you? Their conscience will hurt, the guilt and shame is all theirs, not yours--" 

"Or it is not, Carlo!" I said, scornfully. My dad's speech was starting to annoy me. Or was it the look on some pictures that confirmed what he was saying. Piers stared back at me, and his gaze was saturated with sorrow. Why hadn't we traveled Greece together, like he had proposed? Because I thought having him was like carrying a sandwich around a banquet. And on other corner of the room I could see Matt, Portrait # 213, who had accused me of being "emotionally crippled". Or was he #321? I resumed my defence, though. "I don't think many of the guys who did it to Angelo felt guilty... Most probably felt very satisfied and happy..." I was purposedly contradicting Carlo.

"But what about you, Laurent? How did you feel acting so carelessly? That's all that matters in the end, my son. What we do to others, because this is what our consciousness is made of... Why live with guilt, and risking to--" 

"Why not live like that, Carlo?" I spat the words. Suddenly, I felt angry at my father. With what right was he scolding me? What if I had been leading an unbridled and vicious life, especially in the last ten years -- when he had been absent during the last twenty?

He had left me, and a crowd of men, and my endless, sick addiction to the main male figure in my life, Angelo, had not been able to mitigate Carlo's absence. I felt like shouting at Carlo, letting my accumulated anger explode, when he suddenly asked "What is it that you don't want to see, Laurent?" Carlo remained calm, and that he used a teacherly more than a paternal tone increased my irritation. "Is there anything you want to tell me, son?"

And I suddenly remembered it. 

"Aren't you seeing well, Laurent?" The question from twenty years ago echoed in my mind.

It had been Carlo, during the painting classes in our rural home in France, who had realized that I was not seeing well. 

It had been him to take me to an optician. With him, I had had my first glasses made. He paid them with his own money.

During the last months he had spent in our house, the pool had been finally built, and I felt so happy. But I had never felt so miserable in my life like when I had to start wearing glasses. 

It would be another reason for bullying at school -- but as I had learned to fight with all my strength against that, I did not let it affect me. It was no longer the opinion of others what bothered me the most.

But I felt ugly, myself. 

Uglier. 

Although the muscles that I had acquired during the weeks in the Apennines and from joining the swim team were increasing, I was still horribly skinny.  My nose seemed too long, my eyebrows were too thick and dark in contrast to my hair, akwardly white like an old man's, so much that it seemed like a disease at thirteen years old -- and the glasses came to crown all my ugliness and destroy any self-steem I could have cultivated.

Even if I did not accept bullying from others, I knew perfectly well for myself how ugly I was -- made uglier still, from wearing glasses. I felt humiliated. Imperfect. 

I started passionately developing and cultivating an inferiority complex, and I became even more shy, quiet, and insecure. 

I fought to be left alone, though I often felt lonely. And lonelier, when Carlo left.

It was one of the crippling gifts that Carlo had left behind -- because I tended to blame him for having to wear glasses. He had used them himself, and I had clearly inherited that flaw from him. And after all, it was he who had discovered it, and caused my sadness. 

Maybe my father had seen me wearing glasses a couple of weeks, or maybe it had been just two days, before he disappeared from my life, leaving me alone, scared, confused, helpless, sad, and uglier.

But twenty years later, I was able to glance around me, and dotting the black walls with the colors of their beauty, was an army of gorgeous men. Behind them, only I could see the invisible ranks of more men, whose paintings were not displayed at show, either having been already sold or not considered to be among my best. Behind them, another even greater rank of men -- those I had simply had sex with, but not turned into models. Quite a feat, I thought, for the ugly duckling I had been, somehow still was. Had I surrendered to them, or had they surrendered to me? Or is the orgasm surrendering to oneself? Feeling enveloped by that exuberant private army of vigorous warriors, my heart swelled and I was filled with courage.

"Why, Carlo?" I finally got to ask, having my ex-lovers for testimonies. My voice caught, and I felt like crying. But it was from anger, and not from sorrow any longer. Or perhaps it was plain, deep sadness actually, and anger no more. "WHY, Carlo? Why have you forsaken me? And why to never return, nor send any news?" I gulped, and I was trembling, my whole body shaking from expectation and rage. My heart was beating out of its normal rhythm, stronger, wilder, but it might have been just that I was feeling too hot in my suit, streams of sweat running down my back and chest, soaking the waistband of my trousers.

I had expected Carlo's silence.  However, he might have been preparing for that question, like me, for twenty years. 

His answer was on the tip of his tongue, so ready as if he had rehearsed it -- and I did not have to wait. 

"I had to flee, Laurent." I frowned, indicating I hadn't understood. "I was going to be arrested. I intended, however, to return to France." He sighed, and as if in slow motion, I watched his burnt hand fall loosely between his thighs. The hand he had burnt in a bonfire outside an abandoned factory in the suburbs of Paris, when he had burned his paintings, I now knew it. "But if... I never returned to our house... to our family life... it was for another reason."

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Author's note: having been imported from a former version of the story, some of the comments below are dated previous to this post. Once the plot has not been altered, just the pagination, I am keeping them since they are very dear and precious to me.

Episode 70 | Interlude 1.15

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"Oh my God! I think he is dangerous..." Pretending to be nervously biting his nails, Fabrizio was whispering this to himself, but loud enough so that I could perfectly listen. "What have I done, now? He's got me trapped in this secluded house with no neighbors, just like he wanted..." He pumped his right fist against his chest. "Nobody will hear me when I scream for help! Oh, no! My time has come! He has a knife..." He shrieked like a little girl. "I have loved him so much! It was worth risking my life... And now I shall die through his hands..."

"Haha. Very funny!" I tried to look annoyed. "And the Oscar goes to... Fabrizio Molto Tragico! You can stop, now." I had just put the knife into the dishwasher.

We had had dinner. Fabrizio had cooked, and as always the food had been delicious.

He could have easily been a chef. He had a true passion and the necessary discipline, creativity, curiosity and generosity in the kitchen. But Fabrizio was in a hurry to make money, living in constant financial competition with his elder brother, and he had never contemplated a career as a chef thinking that it would take too long to earn money, and that it never would be as much as he intended.

Partially listening carefully to what Fabrizio told me, in part through an online article titled Young Global Entrepreneur, when he had been awarded Young Entrepreneur of Excellency in 2007, I had learned that his family owned a conglomerate of companies ranging from hotels to a large and important Italian newspaper, and even a shipyard. 

His father, however, having felt pressed by Fabrizio's grandfather to take over the family businesses -- he would have preferred to be a physician --, had recently passed the administration of the conglomerate to professionals, thus relieving his children from a forced succession. Every child -- they were three, Franco, Fabrizio and Patrizia --, upon completing 21 years old, was given a certain amount of capital so they could work on whatever they liked. Thus had been born the financial competition between Fabrizio and his brother.

A competition that had been stimulated in other ways since childhood -- at least, that's what it seemed to me --, so fierce that it lead Fabrizio to be competitive at all times, even when queuing for bread in a bakery. And even with me, if I did not carefully disarm his triggers.

Fabrizio had always felt to be in the shadow of his elder brother, but with the 2008 financial crisis, he had taken the front row. At 23 years old, though feeling a bit like a coward, he had cautiously taken the money away from the stock market a little before the tremendous fall, believing that from those heights one could only contemplate the abyss. 

He hadn't lost money, unlike his brother, who had suffered a severe blow. And since then, Fabrizio had made fast-growing Asian countries the main market for the expansion of the luxury brands he owned or represented. More than that about his wealth I did not know, or did not understand, or had no interest in knowing.

After dinner, which Fabrizio had prepared with joy and ease -- having cooked during four years to Andara and her group of friends, he felt it was very simple and pleasurable to cook just for the two of us --, he had been checking my mp 3 player. 

During dinner, he had commented that my playlist sounded like a concert, constituted of different musical sections with the same rhythm alternating or succeeding, creating 'soundscapes' through which the listener could travel. Or even storytelling through music. 

To his comment, I had begun to explain my idea for that playlist, which I had called  I'maginary Kingdom.

Fabrizio had actually enjoyed the music, and his mockery was for the "excessive" care I put on every playlist I created -- while his, as I had already seen, were called Like 1, Like 2, Like 3.

"I'm joking, babe!" Fabrizio was very practical for various things while I was recherché, putting dedication and care into the smallest things. "You know it, don't you?" Fabrizio felt the need to clarify, indicating he had realized how his careless words of criticism had hurt me. "I love your artistic way of doing everything, Laurent!" Next, he spoke with a very serious tone of voice. "Even how you fold the napkins... It turns our lives into a daily experience of beauty, my dear."

I had not been angry with Fabrizio, actually. Just a little disappointed. 

His mockery tasted to Angelo, my ex-boyfriend. Angelo knew that I had suffered bullying at school. He was the only person with whom I had ever shared my secret wound that never healed, and he had reproduced it in a subtle way in our relationship, controlling me and imposing his dominance over me, even when he was repeatedly cheating me. It was as if I had had a private bully as a boyfriend for eight years -- or that's how I interpreted it now that I saw our relationship more clearly.

It took me so long to discover that my slow way of doing things was not necessarily bad, like people said. It was just a more careful way, as often opposed to the carelessness and hurry of others. Fabrizio's mockery, however, hurt because it dated back to years and years of misunderstanding, of others to me and finally of myself at myself.  

Just recently had I made ​​peace with myself. 

To think our relationship would have that component saddened and discouraged me. Thus had I reacted, in the worst manner possible, to Fabrizio's joke. No way I would again live the fear ridden relationship I had with Angelo, and I wasn't happy to acknowledge that this was an unhealthy pattern for my love.

Perhaps, more than the mockery that had carried a veiled criticism, it was Fabrizio's girly squeal, raising the ghosts of my past, which had hurt me.

"Come here, babe. I'm sorry for what I said." Fabrizio apologized sincerely. "Sorry, the joke wasn't funny." We had just talked about the bullying that I had suffered in early adolescence for being effeminate, and perhaps he hadn't resisted the temptation to mock me. "I truly admire the way you do all things, Laurent, bringing art and poetry into them..."

"Unless it's an omelet, right?" I blurted. When I cooked, I had the same practicality and objectivity Fabrizio devoted for everything else. My dishes were rather simple, very far from recherché. "Simple survival food", as I called it. I was unable to make an omelette baveuse, even if in the movie Tampopo I had learned how to, and again taken lessons from Fabrizio. "Then, with an egg, you may be as obsessive as I am, don't you think?"

We rarely quarreled. Fabrizio had very stressful work days, and all he wanted at home was peace and harmony. And at 37 years old, I had already learned how to live alone peacefully, so that to want to live in the company of another man, only if it was to be better than by myself. This was our agreement of coexistence. 

And Fabrizio helped me out of the depressing moods that sometimes dominated me, while I helped him to relax and focus on his own inner peace. In order not to make him sad, I took care of my own sadness, and so that he wouldn't stress me out, Fabrizio took care of his own agitation and anxiety. We took care of each other as well as from ourselves, which ultimately was equivalent.

"I know, Laurent. I'm sorry. It was rude of me. Come sit with me. Please?" He had winked at me, and in return I grimaced. He then smiled brightly, shining his perfectly white teeth that contrasted with his tan skin and illuminated the blue of his eyes. Fabrizio knew how good looking he was, and how his beauty continually struck me. But I just hated when he tried playing Prince Charming to shunt our issues and avoid discussion.

Since Fabrizio had agreed to spend nearly a month in Iceland, we had divided the tasks -- he commissioned the house and the car, while I took care of our travel plans. An appropriate soundtrack was my personal touch. And Fabrizio had more than once derided the care with which I prepared the playlists. One of them had been exclusively on Icelandic music, of course. 

"We are not condemned to listen to Icelandic pop for a whole month, are we?" he had asked along the Ring Road, commenting on yet another playlist he felt was obsessively well done.

"Don't do like that, Laurent. Our trip has been so wonderful!" He finally sounded serious. "Everything has been running harmoniously. I don't want my bad joke to spoil anything. We have never bickered before... Please?" And as if he was delivering me the peace treaty, Fabrizio inquired "What is this song? It's beautiful..." That was his way of showing appreciation to my work and personal contribution to our trip, trying to overcome our momentary grief.

Fabrizio was occupying a chair in the living room, and once I had finished putting away the dishes and was on my way to join him, he had mouthed his criticism. I had immediately retreated to take sit at the steps of the circular stair that led to the upper floor, where the bedroom, a bathroom and the sauna were. That's how we had ended sitting apart from each other, listening to the beautiful, soft soothing song by Carla Bruni, 'La possibilité d'une île'. It gently filled the spacious living room and seemed to bring the twinkling of the stars inside the house, but it still did not abridge our distance.

"Please sit on my lap, Laurent babe." His pleading was done in the most conciliatory tone, and I gave in. But not like I had given in a few minutes earlier, when rather aggressively I had turned off the playlist, to select random. Quite unexpectedly, Bruni was followed by a song from Radiohead.

"This song..." Fabrizio used his deepest voice tone, as if to erase that little girl cry he had given a while ago, which had given rise to the shame I had felt for my own shrill voice in adolescence. "We have heard it once together in the Apennines, haven't we? It was the album I was listening to at that time, wasn't it? It had just been released... Do you remember it, Laurent?"

Fabrizio was trying to break my silence because he preferred to listen to me rather than talk about himself. Sometimes, when Fabrizio spoke of himself, it seemed like he was talking about a stranger -- or even addressing an enemy. At least, someone who had let him down profoundly, and repeated times. Because he was actually very disappointed with himself.

Fabrizio had beauty and intelligence -- and a certain need to have them confirmed by praise --, and he had lived accustomed to having money and power -- so different from my humble, almost destitute childhood in Punaouilo -- and he could not accept less than perfection for himself. The perfect son, the perfect student, the perfect abs, the perfect gentleman, the perfect wardrobe, the perfect lover, the perfect timing.

Or maybe that perfection was a persona he had assumed to disguise the big nuisance that was his own tormented sexuality, which from an early age he had perceived as a major flaw and the biggest imperfection of all. Social death, as he regarded it in the society he was accustomed to. And all his life he had hidden himself behind that perfection, like someone hiding behind a trench, or an armor.

But since he had decided to live a relationship with me, he had to be on the front line, with all the openness and honesty about what he believed was his imperfection. From his whole family, it was the elder brother who had hit Fabrizio harder after his coming out, in an attempt to debunk all Fabrizio's former accomplishments.

But if he no longer had ahead of him an army of social lies and hypocrisy to defend him, I tried to clearly demonstrate that I was always at his rear, a new position for an army as Fabrizio had never had before -- an army, my army, of love and acceptance.

*****

In Italy, I had taken a bus to a small village in the Apennines, where Carlo would pick me up in his new car -- always a new car. Carlo, usually a man of modest habits, who did not have many luxuries, had an enduring passion for luxury sports cars.

While waiting for Carlo, I managed to contact Fabrizio. For many months we hadn't spoken, having just exchanged laconic e-mails -- Fabrizio's bold and painful messages, and my single sentence answers to them. He was surprised when I told him I was in Italy with Carlo, and I was happy when, to my renewed invitation, he replied that he could come within a week or ten days to visit us.

Almost twenty five years later, I felt the farm house had changed very little. The region was much more populated, with many properties having been purchased to become country houses to wealthy people. But Tarso's property, way uphill, despite having shrunk by losing a section to the National Park, had remained with its aura of isolation and tranquility, as if it were under protection itself. 

A few trees had fallen with storms, but in general the external appearance of the house was the same as if it hadn't aged -- unlike me.

Carlo had done some renovations, restoring the roofs and walls. The house seemed brighter, even bigger and more spacious, contrary to what is often said of childhood memories, that magnify everything.

Despite having brought the furniture from his apartment and studio in London, the city where Carlo had taken refuge under the auspices of  Davez Drew after he left our home in France, the cottage still looked rather empty. 

The modern and comfortable furniture seemed to perfectly fit the ancestral environment of the D'Allegro house -- the living room, made exquisite, was still however dominated by the huge, frightening fireplace with its unbridled mouth. I was sure that if one day the house should collapse, the fireplace would stand still -- but I sincerely hoped that the house would hold on for many years yet, for I finally saw myself as its heir, for the first time imagining how I would take care of her.

To my surprise, I felt like a real D'Allegro, and connected to my family's history.

I hadn't seen Carlo for almost two years, since his retrospective in London. I could see the enormous effort that was for him to be absent from the shelter where he had been born -- and to where, after having conquered the art world, he had returned.

I found him to be even quieter, somewhat monastic, more like Tarso in his long silences full of acute observation, but without the same strain of my great-grandfather. Perhaps because one was looking outside, constantly worrying about the signs of nature, storms, crops, droughts, and the other looked inside himself and observed his own emotions, sensations, thoughts.

Feeling my father resembled Tarso much more, I began to fear for my days at the farm.

I was afraid to inform Carlo about Fabrizio's visit. Only on the next morning after my arrival did I tell him. He was not pleasantly surprised -- I guess I forgot to ask his permission to invite Fabrizio, and instead I simply informed him that he would have a guest.

"If it's so important to you that this guy visits, of course I shall welcome him..." He did not seem upset, just a little bit doubtful. "Did you say he is an art collector? Are you sure that he is not some art critic or journalist in disguise? Or some sort of writer?"

In the beginning, Carlo had built his career without any support from the art critics nor anyone connected to the artistic elite. Instead, he got a lot of negative, disheartening reviews on his debut. But ultimately the quality of his painting had imposed itself, being displayed at and purchased by museums, and no longer just in private collections and the commercial circuit.

 "This is sacred ground, you know, son?" Carlo was referring to the fact that he had never had anyone from the art market visiting the farm. No critics, no journalists, no art dealers -- unless perhaps an inconvenient marchand from the United States who had 'stumbled' upon Carlo's atelier while traveling in Italy on holidays. And he had kindly requested her to leave, without having let her see his atelier.

Although not on purpose, Carlo's isolation and refusal to give interviews had only increased his romantic aura of a reclusive painter. 

He wanted to be left alone. But instead, people seemed unable to forget him, the fascination with his work increasing as he tried to hide himself, becoming even more mysterious. There were speculations that the dark red that he applied on some of his works was prepared and mixed with the blood of nightly animals from the mountains, and all sorts of other weird rumors.

I had an idea in mind, too, when I had come to visit my father in his atelier -- which had once been the old barn of my many conversations with Fabio. One wall had collapsed, and Carlo, rather than rebuilding it, had instead placed immense windows, so that his studio opened to the mountains and into the woods which, in my adolescence, I had crossed in the early mornings to meet Fabio on the fields.

My intention was to write Carlos' biography, with all the fascinating and hard moments of his rough start in Paris, which I had never heard mentioned anywhere. I had had this idea during the months I hadn't painted, having just returned from Sweden where I had visited Armand, and when again I had felt the desire to write.

My life career had taken alternations between Literature and Painting -- clearly between following my father or my mother's path. I had always believed I had greater ease for writing, despite never having heard any encouragement from Catherine. Or maybe writing had just been my most desperate attempt to be close to my mother, by all means.

My father, on the contrary, had given me painting lessons during my childhood in Punaouilo, and he had at least praised my imagination, if there was nothing else to praise in my childish blotches. But when he was gone, I quit painting at once, as my revenge against his absence. I had tried to deny everything I had received from him. Choosing the School of Journalism in Vice City, however, had been a manipulation from Angelo, whose strong might and determination compensated my lack of will and insecurities. When he had decided that we should do the same college together, to escape our family environment, I couldn't agree more. At the time, it seemed like a very romantic adventure to live abroad with my boyfriend.

In Vice City, stimulated by my frequent visits to museums, along the disappointment with the way my poetic writings were down-rated at college, and having finally distanced myself from Carlo and no longer needing to take revenge from him and his artistic heritage, and without ever having been able to connect to my mother through my writings, I resumed painting. 

But it was only with Dan Charmand's triumphant entrance in my life, introduced to me by Angelo as a most valuable gift of consolation for his numerous betrayals -- and I'm guessing he cheated me with Charmand himself --, was it that Painting took over my entire creation.

Now, however, writing a biography of Carlo seemed to be a good compromise to bring together the worlds of Literature and Painting that had always been confronting within me.

But I would have to find the right time to propose it to him. For now, he was sufficiently disturbed by my presence, and the constant calls from Fabrizio.

"Is this guy your boyfriend, Laurent?" my father had finally inquired.

"No, Carlo..." I had replied quite simply, but the two words had sounded like a dreamy lullaby... Not yet, I thought, but did not say it.

"Well, clearly, he is not just a friend, as you told me. Your voice sounds different, Laurent, when you talk to this guy. As if one could hear a string orchestra sweetly seconding your conversations, haha!" Carlo then confronted me. "Even so, I would ask you to kindly keep your phone in the silent mode, and avoid answering his calls inside the studio. Is it okay with you?"

"Of course. I'm sorry, Carlo." I was embarrassed, and suddenly I found myself again at twelve years old, intoxicated with Fabio without realizing my father's own feelings and troubles, disregarding him completely. But unlike my great-grandfather, who had yelled at me to stop crying and had punched me, Carlo had just made ​​a joke and asked me to quiet down, quite lovingly. Where would my father have taken that love from, a love that he had never received from his deceased parents, nor Tarso, nor Catherine? How could Carlo love so much -- love me so much -- when he had been loved so little?

 "Listen to the silence around us, Laurent." My father paused for a moment, giving me the chance to sharpen my ears. "This vibrant silence full of natural sounds... Doesn't this little noise from your phone annoy you, too?" I could understand Carlo's complaint, because I  had also sometimes had the impression of being listening to a natural concert in the Apennines, that the mobile disrupted. But how wouldn't I answer Fabrizio? The same annoying ring was like the sound of music to me, when I thought he was on the other side... Since we had connected again, every conversation between us was like an orgasm. "That boy will be here within a week, non é vero?" Carlo was in good spirits. "Otherwise, you won't have much left to talk when he arrives, haha!"

But I could understand his feelings about it. It was as if I hadn't actually arrived, or as if sometimes I again departed from the Apennines over the phone, at least once a day, and often for up to an hour, giving prevalence for Fabrizio's virtual presence. 

Was Carlo jealous? And was it a retroactive jealousy?

I was reminded of that visit to the farm long ago, when he had spent most of his time with Tarso, while I had always been in Fabio's company.

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