Episode 22.II - Rains Season

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Silently, the daring clouds arrived like a magnificent fleet that nothing could deter; in a few hours, victorious conquering the whole sky for the next months. Bringing the sky closer to earth, they extended and unified their reigns under the pour down.

Deporting the sun from view, their dark barrier made the days seem shorter, as the light grew dim -- until liquid light started falling from the sky, in the form of thick, shiny raindrops. As with great determination they gathered in puddles on the soil, taken hostage to their own will and purpose of reflecting the mother clouds above, Armand had the impression that the earth itself had liquefied too, becoming part of sky, drenched in one single element.

After days of running wild and free from their obligations, Armand and Dave readily resumed the former monastic discipline of meditating for several hours each session, many sessions a day, with renewed diligence. 

Instead of the monastery bells, rolling thunders and the splattering of water marked the steady rhythm of their meditation. Through their half-open eyes they observed as the rain fell continually, sometimes so thick and heavy as to fall in neat vertical curtains, other times lighter and brighter, often carried by gushes of wind, arching through the landscape like wild horses rearing to the menacing strikes of purple lighting that flogged the horizon.

Concentrating on his breathing passing in and out of his nostrils, Armand felt the quality of air change, as it grew heavily humid -- and he started to understand Dave's warnings about how everything about them would grow impossibly moist -- even his lungs, it seemed. 

He often felt like he was drowning from breathing the vapour of water that reached him, through the closed curtains even. Since they hadn't put the monastic robes on, staying in their underwear the whole day through, Armand became very aware of how the temperature oscillated several times, too. From a nasty, indolent warmth that made him sleepy, to the chilly breeze agitating the curtains and giving him goose bumps, there no longer was any possible comfortable circumstance to meditate. 

And as if his body was trying to become one with the dominant element, Armand sweated profusely. But except for the different odour, it was hard to tell if what covered him, and ran in streams along his muscles, was sweat or raindrops. It seemed pointless to bathe in the lake, once they never were really dry any longer.

Armand started regretting the rain not for having drawn away the silence, nor for ruining the books, the words of the Buddha turned discontinuous as their pages grew thick and glued to one another, or for spoiling the food -- but for making him and Dave grow apart.

They would surely endure the lighter rain without leaving their cushions, but still had often to retreat far back into their precarious rooms to escape the violence of passing storms, when the streams of water could hit them with the force of whips. 

After having kept constant company to each other for weeks, Armand hurt as a mere wall stood as a painful obstacle between them. Like before with Carlo, who had occupied the room next to his on the Île du Blanchomme, Armand could not decide whether to venture into Dave's cubicle -- even if it were to start a conversation he should have had weeks ago already.

Suddenly becoming aware to have not reciprocated Dave's confession, he regretted it now -- withholding his own sexuality from his colleague. But Armand had often sensed there was no space -- or need? --, no openness -- or interest? -- indeed, for him to talk about himself to his friend. Dave's confession had versed on his professional sexuality only, with all its torments, which included a guilty pride that ultimately stimulated fantasies from Armand's part. Nothing of a more personal, intimate nature had been hinted -- except, perhaps, for that film crew member who seemed to have taken Dave's virginity and, in the end, recruited him to the porn industry. Perhaps it was Armand's tragic tendency, which had led him into so much frustration, that of separating love and sex, almost opposing the romantic involvement he longed for, and the physical satisfaction he craved for, that made Dave's straightforward, cold and detached openness seem the more mysterious to Armand.

Armand's surrender to Dave's dominance was slow, and so subtle, that it soon became complete. In all everyday aspects, Dave knew better how to organize their retreat. Having learned the sutras by heart, he taught Armand how to correctly recite them while holding the privilege to conduct their religious practices. In practical matters, too, his experience with prior rains seasons had led him to take care even of the cooking, determining the times they ate their meals, imprinting the rhythm of their daily routine. Dave loved tea and prepared it throughout the day for both of them, often adding dried petals or peels of fruits to the leaves -- that Armand drank with pleasure. Naturally, the surfer monk conducted their tea ceremonies, too. 

"Drink your cloud", he commanded Armand, with an inviting smile, as he offered him a cup of fragrant -- if oftentimes a bit too bitter -- tea. "Drink your mountain, drink your sun."

Dave could be surprisingly poetic, he could be strikingly philosophical.

But Armand wanted more, needed more, longed for more.

He wanted the surfer monk to be romantic, too.

Instead, as days passed under unceasing rain, and being confined to their rooms, perhaps just a little less wet than everything else around them, and to a monastic routine that demanded hours of immobility, made the tension and discomfort grow between them -- and not peace and camaraderie, that they should be cultivating.

During the brief intervals when the sun shone, in awe Armand observed Dave practice martial arts. With grunts and shouts, he cut the air with sharp punches and powerful kicks in continuous pirouettes, as if he were trying to bring down the bad weather with his violent fighting. When he couldn't, and the rain resumed, in frustration Dave would let out a cry of protest that sent shivers up Armand's spine.

One evening, weeks into their rain season's retreat, Armand had a dream. It was a welcome distraction, for he had been feeling sick -- though he could not precise how, since his stomach functioned normally, and there was neither fever nor any other symptom of any disease --, continually dizzy, tortured by constant headaches.

Not a complete dream, though. There was no action in it. It was just a scene, one that Armand had often fantasized about since Dave had shared with him about his days of hustling. Dressed in a tight tank top and jeans, that left little to imagination, wearing a cowboy hat and boots, Dave stood against a lamppost, waiting for clients. But none appeared, and he grew increasingly impatient and anguished, violent even, stamping his foot on the sidewalk. Until he found out there were no clients anymore, and the reason for that was Armand, who intently observed him from the distance, driving all other men away. 

For, in fact, in Thailand, on their floating monastery, they were indeed the only two men, living in enforced chastity.

Armand woke up suffocating, locked against the bottom of the hammock. On top of him, muscles bulging with rage, Dave weighed a ton.

*****

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Episode 68 | Interlude 1.13

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nudity and mild violence

Fabio was the first friend I had made ​​since coming to Europe. 

At school in France, I was shy and tried to isolate myself from the other boys, who were all aggressive, competitive and noisy -- or at least I felt so. Egress from my sweet tropical school where we had all been friends, I missed wearing uniforms -- to not only look the same, but to somehow even feel and think the same. Though in fact, despite being also born in Punaouilo, I was the only boy with European looks in my class. 

I hadn't felt any different from my peers on the island, even if they all had the exuberant beauty from the Oceania natives in contrast to my pale suavity; however, in France I felt completely alienated from all other French boys -- compared to whom my physical aspect was no different.

Despite the French citizenship, I was a foreigner in France. My birth in the tropics had predestined me to be an outcast. I did not care for the games the other boys played, I did not want to compete, nor wanted to choose the appropriate clothes that I should wear to display a certain style and try to fit and belong to this or that group. I was aware that opting for being excluded from all groups and banned from all social activities in a school equaled suicide, but I held tight to my convictions of originality and  inadequacy, seeing myself as some sort of a quiet rebel.

Apparently, my education in Punaouilo had been faulty, and I was set one year behind at school in France. Being thinner and taller than the other kids, one year older but not as bright, gave me the perennial awkward feeling of misfit.

In class, I was ridiculed every time I spoke -- beyond my lazy accent from the islands that elongated the words, my voice sounded nasal and feminine. And so did my way of sitting, walking, making any gesture -- compared to other children, I was too slow and delicate, and I was considered effeminate. I had been nicknamed 'La petite fleur des Tropiques', the small flower from the Tropics -- at first, I had been concerned that I smelled different from other children, but that was not the case. In French, flower is a feminine word, and that's why it had been picked. I used to cry whenever someone threw that at me. 

Nothing I did seemed appropriate, and even in doing nothing, just standing still, motionless, paralyzed, someone would still think that my posture was effeminate, and I'd be ridiculed and swore at. La petite fleur des Tropiques. Once, they had tried to force me to dance the Hawaiian hula-hula -- using the straw skirt. I had fought and escaped when they tried to dress me, ripping my shorts in the process -- and had to come up with some story for Catherine, to justify ruining it.  

There was nothing I could do. I came to the conclusion that I had been born completely wrong and flawed, inappropriate for socializing with my peers. I just wanted to be left alone, and during the breaks I sought to isolate myself. I would usually take refuge in the library, or, if it was being used for some other purpose, at the remote corners of the school where not even couples nor smokers used to go.

But my invisibility had ended earlier in that year of 1987, when some of the older kids at school had found out that my dad was a famous painter and my mother a bestselling author -- and I, a weakling, timid and fearful boy. 

In fact, a happy occasion for me -- when Carlo had come to fetch me at school with his fast and fancy car, which was also very expensive -- had been my doom, as it stoked the interest of a bunch of bad boys on me.

They couldn't care less about my parent's fame, though they regarded them as an odd couple, too modern for the countryside community -- what had interested them was that I came from a wealthy family, or so they thought. That was the impression that the frequent trips abroad from both Carlo and Catherine gave, and their appearances in local newspapers talking about their careers, in addition to some foreign visitors who came on their foreign cars to our house, which was also too modern for that peaceful, somewhat old fashioned countryside. They couldn't care less about Mr. Chabrol or Mr. Leconte nor Mme. Varda, famous movie directors that were friends of Catherine and every now and then visited us. 

I did not have any reaction when the older boys began to drag me with them, during the class breaks, to the back of our school. There, they would take all my money, and even the fancy watch that had been a gift from my grandmother Celeste -- I had to lie to Catherine that I had lost it when they took it away from me. 

I had to lie at home about needing money to buy more books and do excursions with the school that never existed -- to be able to pay the daily toll to the boys who continually threatened me.

The school was the slaughterhouse at which I had daily to voluntarily present myself, to be massacred and humiliated, a renovated torture from Monday through Friday. I was afraid even to go to the bathroom for fear of what might happen to me there, and I spent all day with that urge, afraid that I would pee in my pants, which would have been the ultimate humiliation. 

But the guys from the gang would take me wherever they wanted, without asking me -- just pulling me by the ear or pushing me around, mercilessly.

The other students, seeing I was so weak as to be so easily mistreated, just laughed or mocked me, adding to my humiliation with more swearing. 'La petite fleur des Tropiques' had started sounding almost poetical, and I'd prefer to hear it rather than the daily slaps and smacks with which I was herded around by the gang that owned me. 

At that time, no one talked about bullying. I think even the teachers who saw me hostage might have thought it was "just boys being boys," and no one ever came to offer me help. I guess nobody perceived me as being terrified, humiliated, miserable. I was just the kid who happened to be the mocking target of the school, and everyone saw it as just a joke. And anyways, no one dared to oppose my tormentors, who were the worst boys in school. Punishments for the gang meant flat tires and scratched cars in the teachers parking lot, and no one would go as far as calling the police. It was convenient to leave the bad-asses their  distraction -- La petite fleur de Tropiques. Ecology was only to save the whales and the Amazon forest, and did not offer me any protection. I was fragile, helpless, and no one at school would really have cared about my extinction.

I had even stopped attending the library, despite my love and appetite for books. I did not go into any other room that was not the classroom, afraid to see myself ambushed. I used to cross all the corridors running, eyes on the floor to avoid anyone who would try to make me trip, as if running for my life and from the mockery that followed me in shouts and laughter.

"Are you eating well at school, Laurent?" Carlo had asked me one day. "You seem to be getting much thinner..."

The money I had to eat, it didn't stay with me. And if I took a snack from home, I had to devour it before entering the school, or it would also be confiscated. Later, even the imported food Carlo and Catherine brought me from their trips became a toll I had to deliver to the gang. 

"That's exactly how it's supposed to be!" Catherine had justified. "He is in a growth phase. Look how tall he is! And pimply! This boy needs to eat less chocolate, that's it! What's done of all that Swiss chocolate I have brought you, Laurent?"

But if it were only the financial blackmail, which forced me to repeatedly ask for money from my parents, it would not have been so difficult.

 The older boys, however, thought they would look older and way more cool by humiliating me. One of their favorite games was pushing me around among themselves like a ball, from one side to another, and back again, back and forth, until one of them would let ​​me fall to the ground. I had no courage to react, and I also tried not to cry in front of them, not even when I actually hurt myself from falling to the ground -- because crying was the worst shame and confession that I was not a real boy!

 I cried and sobbed like a little girl. Even Catherine had pointed that.

"Have you heard it said that boys don't cry?" Catherine had asked me one day, a bit annoyed with my tears. "That is nonsense!" She amended. "But boys cry like boys, not like girls! Please, Laurent!"

 And I tried to handle the violence and the humiliation without complaining, without exclaiming nor screaming, for I also knew that my voice at times sounded shrill like a girl's .

Still, there was a secret thing that terrified me the most, and that I could not understand so well, yet. 

Being constantly with the school gang, among those boys who smoked and drank beer and belched and were aggressive and noisy, I had realized how gentle I was, and quiet, shy, soft, fearful... and my perception was that I would never get to be a real boy like them. 

Not that I identified myself either with the futile girls' world of vanity and consumerism, gravitating around silly novelties and small, useless things. 

That's when I started wondering -- I do look like a boy, but I'm not like one of them... then, what am I?

Fagot... I had heard other kids call me that in France. The general abbreviation of my very special and unique nickname, La petite fleur des Tropiques.  Fagot -- that seemed to set me apart from the other boys, and define me. I was not sure what it meant, but the disdain with which it was said made me feel deeply ashamed, and different from all the other kids. It was also like a code that allowed others to disrespect me, like a confirmation that I was inadequate, unworthy, the worst and filthiest scum of all. They threw that swearing at me like stones -- fagot was the password to my daily exclusion from the school community.

Those holidays in the Apennines had also represented a break from that suffering -- and, in a sense, a redemption, to be able to befriend a boy who was older than me, and also much stronger, and tougher. But who was not the least threatening. 

I did not fear Fabio's company. He did not seem to judge me like the other boys. Beside him, I did not care if my gestures were boyish or sissy, I did not have to worry on how I looked, walked or sat, nor how I was talking and how my voice sounded to him. Fabio never looked down, condemningly on me, and never ridiculed me. Instead of stupid, wimpy, sissy, he just called me friend. Amico.

I felt loved, accepted, just as I was, without the struggle to try be someone else -- nor silence, bury who I was.

And a feeling I had never had before, and that I did not know how to name yet, had been born. It slowly grew in me, with each day I spent in Fabio's company.

One day, an accident happened. 

I was looking raptly at Fabio and not to the ground where I walked, and I stumbled on a root.  I had been so relaxed and enraptured with Fabio that I fell without anyone having set a trap for me, unlike school, where despite all my precautions I was frequently being led to trip and fall by the other boys.

I slammed my face against the ground, scraped my hands and knees, and my left foot immediately started hurting a lot.

Fabio carried me through the woods to the house -- and though I was in pain and even bleeding, I just remember the feeling of being supported in his powerful, strong arms and being held against his broad chest, feeling his intensely masculine scent invading me, that made me shiver with pleasure, his sweat wetting me -- and when I cried, it was not like a small boy, of pain or fright, but as a teenager, crying from happiness and love, on the discovery that, after all, I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the arms of men.

For the first time, I had the perception that I liked boys. 

My great-grandfather, after all, had been right, when he said that the mountains would make me a man. At that moment, in Fabio's arms, I stopped being a boy to start being the man that would forever be in love with other men.

But at that time there were no other men -- I cared only for Fabio, he alone existed, and it was with him that I was in love. But maybe a part of me remembered that at the end of the holidays I would have to go away from him, and that I would have to look for lovely Fabio in the other guys, among those who were aggressive, competitive and noisy -- and so I sobbed on his shoulders, nested in his arms.

It was the first time my heart broke from loving.

Nothing serious had happened with my foot, but neither Tarso nor Carlo let me go to work the following morning. I spent all day long in a familiar sad mood, that I hadn't cultivated in a while, and I only rejoiced when at the end of the day, Fabio came to visit me in my room.

For some days I was prevented from going to work, and so a new ritual was inaugurated between me and Fabio, who would visit my room in the early evening, before he went home. 

I made him sit on my bed on purpose, so that after he was gone I would still have the smell of him, and I'd become inebriated and sleep on it.

He visited me even during the weekend, when he had no obligation to present himself for work on the D'Allegro lands -- to me, that was proof that our friendship was real. We had agreed to do a tour together on the mountains, but when my injury got it canceled, he still came to be with me.

I was not expecting him, and he found me in my room, writing. It was some adventure from which I cannot remember the plot, but the hero was clearly modeled on Fabio, so beautiful and extremely kind, absolutely perfect and wonderful as himself.

I was embarrassed and wanted to hide my notebook, without realizing that he did not know French.

It was then that I discovered Fabio's other beauty. He was not only a handsome and muscular young man, who was helping me overcome my fear of older boys. He would also bring a new meaning to my school learning -- when he marveled at my writing, and was enthusiastic with the fact that I wrote stories, and at my ease in learning Italian, and so many more things that I knew and had studied. All that I usually took for granted in my education, it was Fabio to teach me how to appreciate and value.

I was happy when he asked me to teach him all that I could. More Maths, more Geography, whatever I wanted and could remember, even if it was in French, he was eager to learn. I was surprised and embarrassed by the difficulty he had in reading, and I suddenly realized how much effort could there be in doing something that I considered so easy and simple.

Thus, we were also getting together after his shift, in my room, where I enjoyed the freedom of looking at him at length, without the fear of being observed by my father or great-grandfather -- without my wandering presence around the house, now limited to the upper floor, Carlo and Tarso finally dedicated themselves to the complicated bureaucracy that was threatening the farm.

One afternoon, the last of my enforced rest, I went in search of Fabio, wanting to invite him to study outside in the woods instead of my room, which was too hot.

And what I saw that afternoon buried forever the boy Laurent had been -- and put definitely in his place the teenager who would become Laurent, the man.

From behind a bush, I watched Fabio bathing, preparing to meet me.

And if until then my love for Fabio had been idealized and mixed with friendship, although some sensual elements had been there, like trembling when he touched me, or when I aspired his sweat -- that evening, upon seeing Fabio naked, my sexual desire sprang to life.

Recalling that occasion, I have to think that it was not Fabio's nudity that made me stay hidden behind a bush watching him.

 That would have seemed natural to me. I had seen my father naked before, and sometimes we had even showered together. 

It was the first awareness of my own desire, caused by his nakedness, that kept me behind the bush, my body and senses having awakened in a sudden burst.

I had an intense erection as I had never before experienced, and when I got up to leave, seeing that my friend had turned off the shower, I had my first ejaculation. 

I froze, not knowing what to do, not knowing what had happened, feeling scared but also pleased with that new sensation, that was not the same thing as a nocturnal, unconscious emission, but so much more pleasurable, and clearly caused by Fabio and his male beauty.

From that day on, I started looking at Fabio in a different way.

It caused me to feel doubt and guilt, because my friend did not look differently at me -- he seemed different, but just to me.

Just looking at Fabio and inhaling his manly smell was not enough anymore -- I now wanted to touch him. And without any malice, but perhaps with a bit of pride and vanity, he often allowed me to touch his muscles.

"You are so handsome, Fabio..." I felt unsure in praising him, for it sounded almost like a confession of my love. I was suddenly afraid that maybe Fabio would estrange me, starting to ridicule me like the other kids at school had done. "You could be a model and earn money!" That was the biggest compliment I could conceive, and it still felt wonderful to be so sincere in my admiration for him, if a bit risky.

  "No." I actually had nothing to fear from Fabio, no rejection, no violence. He had just laughed at my proposal. "I don't need that! I want to own a farm!"

"You are so strong..." I had started to praise him openly, anchored on a courage that was absolutely new to me, grounded as it was on my desire, and I was even bold enough to propose games in which we would have physical contact. "I bet you can carry me easily to the top of that hill..." All I wanted was to be back in his arms, only this time I might as well embrace him.

Now that I think about it, Fabio never realized my desire simply because homosexuality was not part of his repertoire. He never had considered its existence, I think, and so he was never suspicious at my constant and exaggerated praise on him. I also think he did not care about being beautiful or strong, since the goats and tomatoes that had been his daily companions didn't care about his beauty either.

"You are also getting stronger, Laurent!" he had replied. But unlike my praise, Fabio's contained no lust for my body. He did not notice my provocations, and was completely oblivious to my desire. For him, there was no other healthy feeling between two guys that had not been friendship, brotherhood.

And indeed, not only had my body developed with the work on the fields,  along with a natural and enhanced nutrition, but I was also actually feeling stronger. If at first I had been cautious in carrying an empty bucket, I now felt confident to carry a stack of wood into the house and until the fireplace. 

The force that I felt was also interior -- and along with it, a new sense of incredulity directed at my own past, at how helpless and passive I had been before my classmates.

I owed this new confidence to Fabio. 

Not just because I adored him. He had actually respected and valued me -- although I was no more than a twelve, almost thirteen years old boy, he saw in me all the things I had already learned and knew, and he valued my talents and abilities that I had taken for granted.

And it was with guilt that, even during our study sessions, when he was so serious and concentrated in his readings, trying to learn everything I could teach him -- perhaps far more aware than I was of our imminent separation --, it was with guilt that I bent over him, rubbing against his muscles and his hairy skin, drunk with desire, wanting to awaken in him an interest in me that would be bigger than the one he manifested for the Urals or even for Punaouilo, and for everything else he did not know across the planet. 

There was guilt, and also fear that he would finally realize my lust, and that it would put an end to our friendship, so sincere and pure on his part.

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Author's note: if you are reading this, and you are being bullied, and the burden is too great on you, you can find help and solace, right now. For English speakers -- in the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255 and the Trevor Project’s Lifeline is 1-866-488-7386; in the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 08457 90 90 90; in Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. For other countries, please check these hotlines. Please, don't let bullies win. YOU are much more precious. I hope this helps. Like Laurent, I am a survivor myself.

Episode 52 | Love and enlightenment

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nudity and sex


'Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.'

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I almost decided on making a new bonfire and burning all my paintings, unconditionally, when I realized that the answer to Catherine's question was that they had no value at all. Not worth anything to absolutely no one -- except, perhaps, for Armand? But even that, now that he wanted to become a monk, was indeed useless. I would leave him a single painting, that which was hanging in his room, the one he had 'bought' from me. 

And since he also wanted to leave the Île, I did not try to paint the walls, nor did I resume working in the garden, that had again become so desolate. It no longer seemed worthwhile to try to take away that ruined look from things -- soon, the house would be empty, occupied only by the wind, sand and spirits, and the garden would be nothing more than a wild tangle, without no one to look at it. So why should I care, why bother at all?

Was I still genuinely concerned about Armand's well being, when he did not show up for lunch? Or did I seek him in the corner of the island where he had fled to take refuge, simply because I desperately needed the money?

He had spent all day meditating at the beach, sitting on the edge of the sea. Hours and hours sitting straight without moving, without anything to eat or drink. How could he? I was unaware about that concentration skill from my friend -- as for myself, I had never managed to stay motionless for more than two hours, and after that, all the peace and contentment I would have felt with the meditation was extinguished, and there was only boredom and discomfort. 

I was a little worried that he might have a heatstroke because the coconut tree shade he had chosen was not exactly a good protection against the sun, as I had warned Catherine.

I came to check on him a few times during the day, wondering what levels of contemplation he would have achieved to remain so long in meditation. And I finally realized, with a shudder, that the shade of that coconut tree beside him... It hadn't moved! Just like Armand himself. I felt goose bumps... The shade had stood all day long on the same exact spot where Armand sat.

All other shadows on the island had logically and naturally followed the solar motion. But not that one, which was fixed on Armand, providing him protection from the sun during his meditation.

Not without fear, I approached Armand. Was it me who was having a sunstroke? Upon approaching him, I felt a very intense scent of flowers -- but there was no nearby bush on that corner, nor was the wind blowing to bring that wonderful aroma from another part of the island. Anyway, that was a perfume like none I had smelled before, and it did not seem to belong to the Île du Blanchomme.

I went away, intrigued with that strong yet delicate scent, and truly scared with the immobilized shadow.

I knew how the story of the Buddha -- the prince who leaves his palace and kingdom, turning his back on a life of pleasures and ease, abandoning his beautiful wife and a newborn son, to undergo severe spiritual practice until finding enlightenment in his own Middle Way, that lead him to a definitive way beyond and out of illusion and suffering --, had impressed Armand. I knew how my friend had identified himself with the great spiritual master. Armand was almost a prince himself, and he too was willing to abandon his family, a life of luxury and hypocrisy, for a noble cause -- as an architect, he wanted to build quality housing for the poor. And he had come a long way already, living a simple life on the Île. And now, he wanted to move further on the path and become a monastic.

That night -- and only after having verified that Armand was still meditating at the beach -- I again made love to Catherine. Especially since it could be the last time, on the Île du Blanchomme. I was still horny from the morning, when I had tried to assault Armand. I tried as hard as I could to push that episode of violence away from my mind, as I concentrated on exploring Catherine's body.

She had spent the whole day teasing me, and I thought it was out of her insecurity in face of my relationship with Armand, and because of her desire for revenge. After all, why hadn't Catherine separated from me when she found out that I was poor? Or hadn't she understood yet? Why didn't she leave me behind on the Île? Not because she loved me, nor because she needed me to return to France. Just like she had arrived on her own, she would have returned alone.

The truth was simple -- she decided to keep because I had been her brother's love. She had confirmed her suspicions, upon seeing us together on the beach in the morning. And in the lifetime competition with her half-brother, the official son of Monsieur de Montbelle, for the first time Catherine had beaten him, by taking something from Armand that was very dear to him. 

Me. In fact, while I was worried about losing Catherine and getting separeted from my son, she in turn was keen to retain her brother's ex-boyfriend to herself, like a prize. 

For the rest of our lives together, Catherine was never convinced that I had never had a romantic and sexual relationship with Armand -- in fact, she had to believe that it had been indeed lovers that she had actually separated, to make her revenge the more enjoyable.

Despite the inexperience and selfishness that I had revealed in our first time, she wanted to believe that it had been my first time with women only.

"We are much more demanding and hard to satisfy, darling! No wonder the sex you had before with Armand did not help much when you made love to me." Catherine's theory was that men who loved women had to be much more competent than men who loved other men. Thus she explained why gays had such a strong fetish in seducing straight men.

She herself, however, seemed to have a fetish in seducing a homosexual. For she felt content thinking I was gay, and that she had seduced me and 'made ​​me a man'. It was another fantasy of power and control for her. And also following that track, Catherine went ahead with the pregnancy -- it was another way to keep me on her side, since she realized my attachment to that child. 

To keep her trophy on the shelf became so important just because she had snapped it from her brother's shelf.

"Come to me... please..." Crawling across the night, a whisper entered my consciousness. Not a distant voice, but as if it were whispering in my ear... Or rather, inside me. I slowly crept out of sleep, amazed.

"What is it?" Catherine was angry when I startled, terrified, waking her up too.

"Did you hear that?" I asked, still scared, shaking. Was the island actually haunted? The unborn spirits... Or had the deceased Herr Weissmann being watching on us all the time? I checked that there was nobody in the room nor on the porch or in the bathroom, and I felt goose bumps. Had I listened to my own son, or one of the spirits trying to incarnate as him?

"Hear what? There is only this boring silence all day long..." Catherine was sleepy, and that's why she wasn't actually more upset when I said I would take a blanket to Armand on the beach. "Will you cover him, will you? Just go, then!" She sounded terribly jealous.

"Please... come..." I heard it again, and this time, being wide awake, I was sure it was a voice inside my head. "We need to talk..."

I'm not the kind of person who hears voices, much the less voices from within my head. I am the kind of person who won't even believe such thing is possible -- and yet, I was listening to... Armand's voice inside me!

Fearing that maybe my friend had already died from starvation, I went down to the beach. Even from a distance, I could smell that intriguing yet delicious scent of flowers coming from his direction.

I found him in the exact same place and position where he had been sitting since that morning, in deep meditation. Gently laying a blanket over his shoulders, I noticed how his face was illuminated by such peace and contentment as I had never seen before. I had never seen a monk meditating -- and apparently I'd go away from that part of the world without having had the chance -- but Armand's expression reminded me of nothing less than the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini.

"Come sit here with me... Do not be afraid, my friend..." I heard him say, but no sound came out of his mouth.

"Armand... You're scaring me!" I babbled.

"Don't talk. Just think." His commands raised softly from within my own mind. "Yes, speak with your mind. And do not use your ears to listen. Listen with your heart. In silence, our communication will be immediate. Inexpressibly perfect and clear, as it always is between minds..."

And despite the sweetness and calm in his voice, I almost ran away when my friend turned on himself -- first, his head and neck faced my direction, and then his whole body, as if it were smoke, twisting towards me, and he began to rise from the sand and up into the air.

Armand had begun to levitate. Was it an hallucination? An aberration? Another apparition?

As if expanding, he seemed disproportionately larger than me, and yet so intangible and diaphanous.

"What are you doing, Armand?" I still whispered, unable to just think in silence like he had asked me to. "Are you trying to scare me?" I was afraid that my friend was actually disembodying before my eyes.

"I just want to pacify you..." His voice was indeed soothing. "I asked you to come here so that we could talk without anyone knowing it, without anyone seeing it, nor listening..."

He could only be talking about Catherine, the only other person on the Île du Blanchomme, who was asleep... Or was he talking about the wandering spirits of the Birth Island? Was Armand... not one of them, I hoped... seeing them?, I thought, and I felt shivers.

"I have to ask for forgiveness..." Armand's first sentence astounded me so much, and though I thought it was exactly the other way around, I was too confused and scared to grab that last opportunity to speak my heart out, to sincerely try to apologize... I just sat there in awe, listening to his beautiful, wise words that followed. 

"I've created a fantasy of love, I now discern it. I impinged an ideal picture over you. Maybe that's why I haven't truly seen you, Carlo. I had my expectations about you. About us. Too many. And they collapsed not because of you... But just because I had created them in the first place. 'This is, because that is.' Such a simple teaching by the Buddha, yet so complex to grasp. 'Where there is sign, there is illusion.'  I can now perceive it."

"I thought I desperately needed you, Carlo, in order to be able to finally overcome the suffering of my mother's death... it was so hard, so painful for her... And sometimes it seems that it was even harder for me... And that kiss, yesterday, made ​​me so happy! Even if that happiness lasted only for a few minutes, it was a balm for my heart... It was then that I realized... You had already helped me overcome... Everything! Being present, in my heart and mind, since the day I left the Île until my return."

"During the whole time I was away, I remembered your last words... 'Whenever you feel lonely please think of this beautiful island ... think of me here, taking care of it for you... waiting for your return.' And you made ​​me dream of this house made ​​our home... 'When you face difficulties please think of how the breeze runs free on this island, and unreservedly wanders into all rooms of the house... that will be illuminated from within, painted white as you have envisioned it... Can you see it, already?' I haven't forgotten..."

"Neither have I, Armand! It was all true!" I could finally think only, and I had no doubt that Armand could hear me, because our minds were not two different entities anymore, and our voices occurred in the same place, neither inside nor outside of us. Just too immediate and interconnected to seem still split, or to be placed in time or space. "I was not lying... At the time--"

"I know that." Armand replied sweetly, trying to reassure me. "But what was it that went wrong, I thought, when I returned and your words hadn't come true? For a moment, I thought of confronting you with your own promises... Our house painted, a garden full of flowers like a vision of our beautiful life together as a couple... But who confronts God in prayers? What is the difference between the comfort of God and the comfort provided by praying to Him?"

"That's what I've realized today, while sitting here. Your loving words on our parting helped me cope with my mother's death, and again when I confronted my father about my future, and when he left for good to live with that..." He paused. "...with Catherine's mother... Until this morning, I thought of that woman with hatred... I thought she was responsible for my mother's death... Now I see she was my mother's best excuse to give up her own life, her struggles, her pain, her suffering... Having lost my own mother, how can I hate another person's mother, wish her any ill? And especially when that person is my sister... None of us is to blame for the lack of scruples of the man who unites and separates us... Nor am I going to blame my father for my own suffering, nor anyone else's... I have finally understood how much he must suffer himself. How he is like a tree bearing fruits that consist of the same suffering he is rooted into."

"My sister waiting for me on this island was a great surprise, and a great blow... and the greatest lesson of all! I should have looked for her earlier... She must have interpreted my silence, when we found out about her family's existence, as plain despise. Despise on top of rejection... Catherine must have suffered unbearably all her life, but until today I was too lost in my own selfish suffering to actually care about hers... When I came out to you, Carlo, a heavy burden was lifted from my shoulders and the healing began... Just by listening to me, by not rejecting me at that moment, for being as welcoming as you could have been... You've liberated me from my deepest suffering. What else can I expect from you? Sex? When you have already shown your love to me, to the limit of your capacity... Now the main question is how can I love my sister? And how to love her mother? How can I go from hatred to love?  How to love, simply, thoroughly, in essence? I thought I knew love until I had met Catherine, but so far it has been just a romantic illusion... I have placed a huge burden on you, Carlo, and only upon you... I'm so sorry about it."

"The love I felt for you... A romantic love... so limited, so narrow that it included so few people... that is, if it didn't exclude everyone else but you, and especially my sister and her mother... who seems to be the love of my father's life... So much delusion, and so much suffering derived from it, involving so many beings... While I wished and longed to be back in your arms, Catherine was here, filling them already... That was no coincidence. And I finally realized that all you had already done for me... was everything that you could do! Being satisfied and content with that is my problem, not yours."

"In times of greatest pain, I could reenact and again feel your embrace, and I was relieved. In times of trouble, I could recall the smell your body, and that secret pleasure gave me strength. And in times of loneliness, feeling your beard brushing against my face while your strong arms embraced me, always made ​​me smile and dissolved all the difficulties... You were there all the time, next to me, behind and beside me... Inside me. Even before my father's eyes, in his presence, when I confronted him, you were there with me... Do you remember that line from Malle's 'Le souffle au couer', when Lea Massari tells her son Laurent... 'I don't want you to be unhappy, or ashamed, or sorry...' Do you understand what I'm saying, Carlo?"

"Last night, that kiss seemed to be a beginning, when it actually was a closure. To my romantic life. Finally! I now want to experience a greater love, the love for all beings... true love, unconditional, unrestricted love. And for this practice, the new challenge is my sister... How to love Catherine, who hates me so much? How to make up for a lifetime of frustration, rejection and inferiority complex on her part, and so much prejudice, ignorance and misunderstanding from my own?"

"I cannot give her this beautiful island since it does not belong to me, but I could transfer the government concessions for you both. But no, she doesn't want to stay here, I know it. I can help you two return to France, though, if that's what you want... You can take all the money you need from my office. There is plenty of it hidden in the false bottom of a box, the third from the top, at the stack closest to the corner..."

"And while waiting for your ship to France at the Elder Sisters Islands, you can stay at the hotel next to the harbor on my account... That's where I usually stay... Room 8. Not those noisy ones at the front, who are turned towards the port, but at the back, with a nice view of the city beach. Just give my name at the reception, and I shall pay the bill the next time I go there. And I don't think it will take long for me to pack here and to leave for Thailand... As a monk I won't be needing much, so that I could almost leave it all behind..."

"Carlo! Carlo! How much longer will you sit there? Carlo? Are you pretending not to hear me? Carlo!!"

Finally, as if coming from another world, Catherine's voice reached me.

I jumped off the meditative position. "I'm sorry, I hadn't heard you before!" I apologized. There was an urgency in her voice that made me stand up at once. Curiously, after having sat in meditation for so long, my legs and back did not hurt at all.

"How come? I've been calling you from the veranda for a long time! Have you guys gone mad? Do you like evading reality, is it so?" She accused angrily.

It was strange that she had dressed one of her finest Saint-Laurent dresses just to come down to the beach to fetch me. Was she ready to leave already? Because I knew she was eager-- but I had other concerns at that moment. "Meditation is not escaping reality... It's confronting it, instead... Calmly confronting reality..." But she seemed the more annoyed with my words. "Catherine, aren't you seeing it?"

"Seeing what? That idiotic man sitting there and pretending to be a statue since this morning? Is he in a trance or something?"

"Catherine! It is... a miracle!" I had never talked to her about spirituality, and I did not know how to introduce the subject, which was of great importance to me... She had mentioned her studies about that eleventh century orthodox monk, but she was primarily interested in him because it might have been a woman, and in the style of his/her writings, not in fact about that monk's spiritual practice... what would Catherine think and understand if I said Armand was achieving enlightenment?

"It will be a miracle..." she replied sharply, "if you don't catch a cold, having stayed almost naked for so many hours out here! And do not point your finger, ever... That is so rude!"

"Catherine..." I tried to make her see it "Don't look with your eyes..."

"Quit that bullshit. I'm still sleepy, Carlo!" And angry she was, too. "I've had enough of this nonsense! I'm going back to bed. I shouldn't have worried about you..." But in fact, Catherine's only concern was what I could be doing with Armand on the beach, for so long... in her imagination, she feared that she would find us naked on the sand, in the arms of one another, like lovers reunited...

Love.

Love, Catherine.

True love, Catherine.

Pure love.

Don't look with your eyes.

Look with your heart...

Can you see it?

next episode

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.