AlESSANDRO DemAriA
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Preface
I met a boy. Gay as me. We only met friendly, casually in the ER. In Frankfurt. Him, the classic Neapolitan beauty: black hair, black eyes, an enviable tan, a slightly rounded body, but not excessively, like any classic Italian who loves good eating. And an exciting smiling. Theoretically he could conquer anyone he desired with his fascination. But with a problem. Completely deaf. Which also affected his speech. While he waited to enter to be visited, he told me, as he could, that he would like to live in Frankfurt. I asked him if with labial he could understand other languages, besides Italian. "No," he replied. I looked at him without being able to not be surprised. I watched him seeing me when I was much younger than his 33 years. I looked at him, thinking about people were debating whether or not he was right to be called "Fagot", if he could legally marry, if he could entrust him with a number as parent. He needed something else, much more concrete. Regardless of his sexual orientation.
He needed help to enter social life and the world of work. He needed to be accepted not as gay, but as a person with a serious handicap. In a city where even gays are homophobic with each other. Because, let's face it, we gays that organize Prides, demonstrations and ask for respect, we are not very tolerant among us. And I speak from experience. By attending chat rooms where if you give even just a compliment to someone that you find fascinating, 75% of the times you are attacked with insults, if you don't fit the tastes of the other person. And I thought about the period I started living my homosexuality. At the turn of the 80s and 90s. When was unthinkable to confide it to someone, but you also had to hide it at your family. When there was no internet, easy sex, or when I still believed that I would meet someone special and it would be my "happily ever after". I smiled thinking that now they want to change the characters in our fairy tales, the way of life, the way to call us, because they think that "accepting a gay" is that. Maybe I'm a counter-corrent voice in the gay world. But I don't feel the need to be accepted as gay. Because I'm gay only in sex, with my partner. I want to be accepted as a person. Hence this book. My testimony, which just wants to make people understand what a gay needs, already from his adolescence. That the people, the family, the parents understand that before being homosexual, a boy is a person who would like to confide his infatuations. That he would like to introduce his boyfriend to his parents and invite him to dinner at home. He would like loved ones to care that the partner is the one that will make him happy. Today I don't know if this is so, in my time not.
Basically our life is parallel to any other. We fall in love, we break up, we work, we study, sometimes we also have couple problems, in our relationships, more or less serious.
I dedicate this book to those who, for better or for worse, made it possible.
And to you who are no longer here!
Prologue
That day with the school we would go to visit the historic center of Genoa. I was very happy for that, a little less because the Crone had decided to take me to school because she wanted to talk to the teachers, since she had put in the head the Cobra that I skipped school. I had nothing to hide, I wasn't skipping, but the idea of letting my friends see me together with that woman mortified me. In fact, we arrived at the school entrance just before the ring of the bell, and Milena and Simona, two my friends with I always talked before entering, looked at me with questioning air, seeing that I was keeping aloof. Milena asked me softly "But is she your mother?" I looked at her back answering softly “But who ... her ...? I hope you are kidding! " The bell rang and we arrived at the school hall, and the Crone said she wanted to talk to my teachers. I watched them while argued about my alleged absences, without intruding me, because I sensed that their conversation would change my life, on that same day. In fact, instead of reporting to the Cobra (the one who a mocking fate has assigned me as father) of only one absence, however due to a medical examination that she herself
had accompanied me, she talked about three. Without even making me eat I was loaded on a train and sent by my mother. As a package. This was the reason why I didn't speak that morning...!
It was February 1, 1989. In those two hours by train something exchange.
I wasn't even 13. And at that age I decided that the Cobra would never be my father again. And despite the various unloads from one side to the other, like any child of divorced parents, despite the various "Is my son must stay with me ... No, better if he stays with you because he is unmanageable ... " both on the one hand and on the other hand; unlike my mother, he wasn't never again my father! And everything becames parallel to reality for me.
II seem to hear my mother's voice on the phone. “I read your diary ... now I know everything! You go to your father! ". My answer was the stupidest possible in that circumstance. "But how did you dare to interfere in my business?". My mother had just discovered that I was gay, she had read my fantasies in my diary (right fantasies, because in the 1991 Mondovì it wasn't that much practice!), She had read about my friction with my stepfather ... and I I was pissed off because she had read my diary. I was on vacation with Angela, a former Cobra companion, with whom she had Roberto. We had spent 2 heavenly weeks. Every day at the beach, Angela filled me with gifts and her family treated me as if I were their grandson, Roberto. After some discussion, in which Angela also took over, who did not understand how my mother could dump me like this, we finished the phone call. I turned crying to her, and I said "In that house no ... Can't I stay here with you?" she painfully replied "We can't, if your parents have decided differently", "... my parents ..." I replied with irony. I spent that last evening with her trying to understand why among all
those who loved me, my parents were abstaining. Okay, I hadn't considered the Cobra my father for years now, it was mutual anyway. For him I have always been "something that happened". This was what I sensed from his way of treating me. But with my mother it was different. For me my mother has always been my idol, for better or for worse. Through thick and thin. We had spent my first eight years of life together, her and me. I had seen her cries, her difficulties, I had rejoiced in her pampering ... in the years in which a child forms his own affections. Years later, I believe that the things I confided to that diary I would have preferred to confide to her. Maybe in our times, because in 1991 homosexuality was still a taboo, especially in a politically right-wing family like ours. Especially, I guess, a 15-year-old boy who worked seasonally in hotels, so he didn't stay at home and was not controllable. With hindsight many things would change, but the reality of that evening was the one just described. Roberto, my little brother, who looked at me sadly, because at eight years old he didn't understand why our holidays had been so abruptly ruined, why I had to go to those people who made everyone suffer, why I kept crying ... On the other hand I was trying to understand why I was always the wrong one, why I always had to pay for my parents' compromises, why I couldn't be a kid with a normal life like all my friends ... At every age there were different questions that evening.