PREFACE
If I wrote this book using my real name and giving the exact location of the facts I'm going to tell, I am certain that it would become a best-seller. But I didn't, and for several reasons.
The first is that too many of the people about whom I'll write are still living and well known, and they would possibly not appreciate the fact that things regarding them were made public. Some of them, moreover, are still very powerful and could also make me pay dearly for what I'm going to write.
A second reason is that I am not interested in writing a scandalous book, I want just tell my life, the reasons why I lived it in a certain way and, if this book is destined to become a best-seller anyway, I don't want it be so because of a morbid curiosity around famous names, that of my family (as the first), but because the content is interesting and the style, I hope, valid.
The third reason is that, very likely, in my place there could have been who knows how many scions of famous families, who could tell similar facts. In other words I have possibly the persuasion that, taking out the secondary details, this tale could in reality be something universal, objective and not particular and subjective.
Another reason is that I want to be free to tell everything, without fearing interpretation different from what I intend to give. If I gave the real names, all would be read with the deforming lenses of prejudice, favourable or unfavourable it would be, both towards me and the persons I name.
When I wrote down the draft of this text, for my own ease and simplicity, I used the real names. Then, reading it again, I substituted fake names for them, and here I faced the problem of what names to use. I don't like the use of asterisks or of fancy names, therefore, having at hand a telephone book of a city of the U.S.A., I chose the names. If somebody recognizes himself in those names, it is pure coincidence. Besides the personal names, I also had to change all those details which could make certain people recognizable, without altering the substance of the facts, as for instance the names of the places.
It has not been so easy, but I think I succeeded rather well. I also had to change some dates and other details, but I always did it so that the sense of the tale of my life was not altered. At this point, my patient reader, you could raise the question -- why did you decide to write this book? A question possibly legitimate...
Because I couldn't tell the things contained in this book to anyone, no, I have to correct myself, to almost no one. I had to live with a bundle of secrets which grew more and more heavy and I felt the need to tell them to somebody. So, I choose you, my reader. I don't know you, you don't know me, therefore the sincere confession of many details is easier for me.
I'm not asking your sympathy, even if I would like to have it -- anyway how could you show it to me? Perhaps you have a way to show it to me -- if you feel sympathy towards me, encourage your friends buy this book. I'm not asking you that out of a commercial reason, to increase my earnings, I don't need that. But simply because (I'm aware I am now belying myself!) I need your sympathy, unknown reader, and I have no other mean to get it unless this book has success.
After all I always have been lonely, even if, as you will read, always surrounded by so many people, possibly even too many. There is no worse loneliness that the one you can feel when physically you are never alone, or almost never. Who knows how my life would have been if I were not born into my family but in another? Well, this is a silly question -- it would no more have been me, but another person, wouldn't it?
My last question can make you think that I am unhappy with my life, and yet it is not exactly so. The temptation of the "if"s at times is strong -- if I was born in another family, if I was born in another land, if I was born in another time... or also, if I didn't meet that person, if I didn't make that choice, if I reacted differently in that situation... if, if, if... But I perfectly know that they are idle questions, absolutely useless.
My life went in this way, for good and for bad. A life that I don't know how much more can continue -- five seconds, five weeks, five years, or... I don't know what life has in store for me. On that point, I am not different from you, my patient reader. But I don't want to abuse your patience, my dear reader. Therefore I will begin at once to tell you the moments of my life I remember as important, at least to me.
I hope not to bother you further.
FIRST -- From my Birth to Puberty
I was born at the end of the war. My father was a young reserve officer, my mother a teacher in the high school. I was the fourth child and the third son. My father and my mother married very young so that, when I was born, they were respectively twenty seven and twenty five year old. My elder brother is just seven years older than me.
Instead of going back to his former job after the war my father, taking advantage from his notoriety (he earned many medals on the battle fields) decided, convinced by his friends, to devote himself to politics. I was three years old when he was elected mayor of our town, a small center less than three miles from the sea, with nineteen thousand inhabitants, mainly engaged in the handicrafts or in the small industry.
I always loved the town where I am born and where I lived until I was seven year old, but where I went back every summer with my family until I came of age. It lies on the top of an pleasant hill, gently sloping down, sunny, windy, whose climate is sweet in winter and mild in summer. The city is bounded on the west by a river and on the east by a wide but shallow stream. On the shore there is a village mainly inhabited by fishermen. The beach is not fine enough to attract tourists, even if it is good enough for the local people to take baths, especially the small cove that is on its east side.
When I was four years old I got secretly engaged with the three years old daughter of our neighbors. Of course we were just aping the adults, as we certainly didn't have any idea about a real couple relationship, even less on the sexual level. I also remember that I took her with me to explore the rocks on the north of our town, and that I promised her I would find a cave for us where, in my opinion, we could live undisturbed.
Our "elopement" was soon discovered. My father mobilized the city police and my mother her students to organize a round-up to find us. They tracked us down by mid afternoon. My parents didn't scold me, they were rather understanding. They just made me understand, gently but clearly, how much havoc my prank had caused. And yet, that was just the first of a series of "runaways", but I did the others by myself.
Why those flights? Certainly not because I felt bad with my family, not at that time, at least. I think that they just came from a strong desire for adventure, for a life outside the daily routine. I always had a remarkable imagination, I could say almost boundless. My mother told me I had too much imagination and that I had to learn to live with my feet on the ground. In reality I was living, I always lived with my feet well on the ground, in my opinion even too much. My fantasy simply allowed me not to die inside, not to become desolate.
My parents were what you can define as an exemplary couple -- handsome, intelligent, united, socially engaged. The fact that my father became a central male character in the world of politics imposed on my family the requirement to create, protect and conserve a social image, and also we children had to conform ourselves to that image. My father had very great political ambitions and he formed, already at the beginning of his career, a staff of public relations men to shape and care precisely this image... and we all became slaves of it.
I do not ascribe this kind of slavery to the fact that my father felt the exercise of power as a duty. I credit it to society, that claims to evaluate the value of a political man from the image that not only he, but all his family shows. But I reached this evaluation only in my maturity years. At that time it just burdened me like an unfair sentence, and at least internally, I rebelled as I could to this cruel circumstance.
Cruel because it didn't allow me to be myself, but imposed on me to act out a script carefully prepared by my father's advisers, with his consent and that of my mother, at least until we became of age. In fact then, also our opinion was (in moderation) taken into consideration. One of the things that were part of the "script" was the fact that we children always had to attend the public schools, we had to only use the public means of transportation, we had to always be diligent, gentle, complying, perfect in everything we did.
I didn't dislike the fact I had to attend the public schools nor do I dislike it now. I think that my school mates were much more interesting than the average of the children of the upper classes who attended the private schools. Anyway, we also had a kind of staff of "personal tutors" who guided, advised, directed us in our life and choices with competence and skill.
I had to quickly learn to "behave properly", as my brothers did before me. On the whole our parents were happy with us, and this paid us back, at least when we were children, for the unavoidable sacrifices that the proper behavior imposed on us. At least compensated my elder brothers and sister. And eventually also rewarded my father who, when I was seven year old, was elected at the regional level and became a member of the regional government. So, we moved to the capital of the region.
It was a little trauma to me. I had to abandon all my childhood friends and I found myself among new, unknown, alien people. However I bonded quite soon with my new school mates and made a new circle of friends. To tell the truth I don't remember any of them in particular, except for Johnny, a school mate, thin and gentle to whom I was particularly tied, and who died when we were ten years old.
When I heard he was dead, I wanted to go to see him but, I don't know why, I was prevented from that. I cried very much, I felt it was an unfair thing -- he was my friend, I had the right to see him once more. But I was not allowed. They possibly were afraid it would be a too big trauma for me, at that age, to see the face of the death, I don't know. I just remember that I cried inconsolably, not so much for John's death, but for the fact that they wouldn't let me see him a last time. In their piety and wisdom, grown up people are able to be cruel towards the children. I am sure that the trauma would have been less if they allowed me to see him again.
Another thing I remember of that period is that I had to start to appear in public at the side of my parents. The PR men carefully prepared us children about the things to do or not to do, to say or not to say. At that time it seemed me almost like a game, like when I was rehearsing for the school plays, but having a lot wider audience, and that preparation wasn't too much of a burden to me. It started to become heavy later, when I entered the adolescence period.
At least when I was a child, I was performing rather well in my role of an exemplary son. And I got used to considering the members of the PR staff almost like family members. In fact they were always present and active with their advice, and after each public appearance of us children, they critiqued with us our behaviour, distributing praises or criticism. My sister, Mary Ann, was praised the most of us all, she was perfect.
Much later I became aware just how much it really cost her to control all she did and said so that she could appear as an exemplary daughter, following the PR men's instructions. Only later I understood how really free she was inside her soul, notwithstanding the appearances of conformism with which she acted in public and in private.
The one who was reprimanded more often, at least at that time, was our elder brother, Ray Junior, whom we simply called Junior at home. And yet, looking at him with my present eyes, he is the most integrated of all us brothers. Not by chance, he is today an appreciated and well known Senator. I think he changed when they induced him to become engaged to the daughter of a rich industrialist. In part because he was really in love with her, but in part because he understood that it was convenient to do what he was requested...
My father, being a leading representative of the party that had in its name the word "democratic", all our life had to be marked in a deeply "democratic" way. From here the choice of public schools and means of transport, the invitations of our friends to our home, they could be of any social extraction, without apparent distinction. In reality they were carefully screened by the service, but I discovered that only much later.
And from this "democratic" image came also a lifestyle characterized by the greatest simplicity, without ostentation of luxury or wealth, even though my family was for sure anything but poor. Also the house personnel was always reduced to the minimum, and my mother, especially when she decided to stop teaching, really did the main part of the house chores, at least until my father was just a senator.
The almost booming career of my father, for us children became the synonym of an increasing control on our behaviour, on our friendships, on the smallest details of our life, not only public but also private. The fact was that we were more and more in the forefront of attention, not only of the mass media, but also of the prying eyes of the political opponents of my father, so that if they could find something less than "correct" would notice, and make public their knowledge, and would have done it without any scruple whatsoever.
Therefore, when I started to become friendly with a mate at school, or on Sunday at the church, or elsewhere, the PR men found him, then told me "this one yes, that one no..." and the reason for the "no's", more than for the boy himself, were his family, the ideals they professed, the life style they held and so forth. I felt many of those "no's" as an heavy imposition, mainly when I started to grow up. Boys that seemed to me splendid, and could not be my friends just because, for instance, their father was in jail for drugs smuggling, or their mother had a too promiscuous sexual life, or a brother had been a deserter at the army call up, and so on.
Not even a speck of dust could tarnish the image of our "perfect family". I remember that they forbade my sister to become friends with a girl, just because her brother was a Gay activist. That was the first time I heard the word Gay, I was eleven year old. The PR men painted a black picture of Gay people, saying they were perverted, corrupters of minors, half men without spine, only worth, if not being despised, at least being pitied, but with whom one had absolutely nothing to do.
Also in our church the Gay people received the same bad consideration so that, at least when I was a child, I was persuaded that in reality Gay people were a kind of by-product of society, to carefully avoid. Gays, drug addicts, gamblers, alcoholics, the sexually promiscuous, communists and fascists, and the people supporting our opponents' parties, were to us all outsiders...
Junior desired to become an actor, but our parents stopped him from doing that. The justification was that in the entertainment world there is too much depravation, sex and too many drugs. And yet at times among our guests there were also famous people from the show world... It was not easy for me to understand, in spite that they explained us that for the famous actors it was different... To become famous, didn't they begin like my brother desired to do?
But Junior renounced his dream, without argument. In reality it was hard to fight against that stone wall of our parent's will, corroborated by the PR men opinions. They never faced up to us, they always managed to "persuade" us, discussing reasonably, agreeing with us, for that matter, that it didn't stop them from forbidding us to do something, or to bring us to do differently from what they decided.
Among us brothers we are rather united, and yet there has never been among us a real and deep communication except in rare moments. Possibly an exception, at least in part, has been the relationship between Martin and me, and even with him it never happened that we could talk really with an open heart. We love each other, of course, but among us there never was that connivance that sometimes happens among brothers.
How many times I would have liked to be able to confide with one of them, ask an advise, confront... but it almost never happened, perhaps because I felt them too much "conformist", that is too much acquiescent with what our parents demanded us. Today I think that they also must have felt, at times, really lonely.
I remember once when my parents denied me something (today I don't even remember what it was) and I went to my room and started to cry. After a short while Martin came.
He came near me, gave me half a caress on my head and said, "Don't carry on so! Now you are sorry that they said you a no, but then you will understand they did so for your good."
"For my good!" I sullenly retorted. I felt like I was hearing in him the echo of the words of my father, my mother, the men of the PR and I was disappointed by that. And yet, he really was trying to comfort me...
I chased back my tears and told him that I didn't care at all. I was learning to be a "good boy" that is to lie about my real feelings. Possibly, if Martin had told me "it is not fair, I understand you even if I can't help you", I would have felt better, I would have felt understood, backed. I would perhaps renounced the same to my desire, but I would have felt less lonely. But at that time the attempt of my brother to comfort me, seemed absurd to me, useless, and probably this also stopped me later on, to confide in him with an open heart. I felt he was "one of them".
Possibly even the fact that we children all had our personal bedroom prevented us to shape that "connivance" that I would have liked to have with them. I don't know. Or possibly simply the fact that we were all so controlled by "them" that we quickly had to learn to control ourselves.
I remember well that from when I was a kid, I began to ask myself "if I do this, will they be happy? will they leave me in peace?". I was not really interested in making them happy with me, in reality, but just that they leave me in peace, that they didn't criticize me, that they didn't start with those terrible words (always said with a smile) "you really are a good boy, but..."
I also remember that I was still a kid when on one day I was possibly sadder than ever, in the secret place of my heart, I decided that it was better not to have children, if they were to suffer as much as I was. I decided I would never marry and therefore I would never have a child. "Grown up people don't understand how much we children are suffering, and perhaps I too, when will be a grown up man, will no more be able to understand it, therefore I swear I will never make a child be born from me!" I swore with great solemnity.
It really went this way, but for different reasons.
When I was twelve we moved for the third time, always because of my father's career. My mother ceased teaching and now took care, at my father's side, of social and beneficence problems. My father's PR men's staff cared with attention to the nth degree, details that could seem incredible and, amongst others, even our way to dress.
I remember my first clash with them right on this matter -- I wanted to have some clothes that were in fashion at that time among the kids of my age, but "they" decreed that it was not suitable, and therefore...
My mother tried to persuade me that it was for my own good, "Wouldn't you be ridiculous and to embarrass your father just to follow a passing fashion?" she concluded.
I didn't care at all about being ridiculous, much more that I didn't find absolutely anything ridiculous in that way of dressing, on the contrary, I found it fascinating. But, as usual, I yielded.
Quite honestly I only yielded halfway -- a school mate gave me one of his shirts painted with flowers and jeans with bands of bright colours, so that when we went to play near the little lake, where no one would see us, I changed and enjoyed the delightful feeling of the misbehaviour. Of course before going back to town I had to change back, and I hid those clothes on the bottom of my gym bag, and was back to acting the "perfect and obeying" son as my parents expected me to be. This school mate was George and was a very likable black boy, and he taught me another "very transgressive" thing.
When we arrived at the little lake, I took out the clothes he gave me from my bag, pulled mine off and was carefully folding them and putting them in my bag. I was wearing just my briefs. George was looking at me.
"Have you gotten bigger yet?" he asked me.
I looked at him without understanding. He then asked me: "Are you getting hairs around your bird?"
"No." I answered somewhat puzzled.
I knew what he was talking about, I knew that growing up meant hairs started to grow under the armpits, around the "thing" (how I called it, even if I knew another half dozen of names for it, from my school mates) and then also on the legs, on the cheeks.
"I have some!" he said with real pride.
"Ahhh, really?" I asked, not knowing what to say at that news.
He probably thought I did not believe him, so that without a second thought he opened his trousers and lowered them with his boxers, enough to let me see. It was true. While I was looking at him, I also noticed another thing -- it was becoming bigger, pulsing.
He smiled, not at all embarrassed, and asked me: "Don't you ever jack off?"
It was the first time I heard that expression, therefore I asked him what he meant. So, after making me swear I would absolutely not talk about it with anybody, and especially with the adults, he explained to me, practically showing me how it was done. On that day it ended, when his "thing" or "bird" as he called it, decidedly more developed than mine, erupted, with his obvious pleasure, a string of pearl-like drops that twirled shining in the air. That was the seed about which I heard, that if it goes on the right place makes babies be born...
I had smattering of sexual education like all the boys my age because in school they explained to us the "mysteries of life". However, to see that phenomenon for the first time, fascinated and made me very curious. Above all because, of the fact that my friend George made me solemnly swear I would keep the secret, I understood that that thing was even more forbidden than just wearing the banned clothes.
So, when on the following occasion George proposed to me that we amuse ourselves in that way, I accepted without any problem. Mine was still small, but when I manipulated it, it became bigger and hard. Even though at that time nothing yet come out of it, it gave me a faint pleasurable feeling. All the while masturbating myself I looked in fascination at George's big, chocolate coloured "thing" waiting, with some longing for the time that mine would grow and react like that of George.
I don't think that George was gay, although I can't know it with any certainty because at that time I knew nothing about these things. Besides, we never did it to each other, we just did it together and when I too started to spurt my seed, we did try to see who could squirt it farther, or who made more jets, or who could do it first, or last...
I lost contact with George when he, I don't remember why, moved to another school. I was then fourteen and hairs were starting to grow in the right way and in the right spots, and I was rather proud of that. I took part in a lot of physical training and sports, and was growing coordinated and strong. I was rather good at school. I had several friends, not really close, but pleasant company.
The PR men decided I should enter the Boy Scouts, so I enrolled. All things considered it was rather amusing and was a perfectly acceptable way to live the adventure that always fascinated me, all the while remaining within the permitted frameworks. So, my days were rather full -- school, sports, home work, scouts. I certainly didn't have time to get bored.
On Sundays, when I was not out with the scouts, I went to church with all my family. I was part of the choir -- I liked singing well enough but most of all I liked the blue and white tunic we had to wear for that occasion. It had something medieval that fed my secret fantasies. Inside my head, mixing that cloth with my scout activities, I fancied that I was a kind of roaming knight, a prince in incognito, or something similar.
I also continued to masturbate myself, but I did it without any peculiar fantasy. I simply found it pleasurable, therefore I did it. I knew that religion considers it a sin, but this didn't upset me at all, rather gave me the pleasure to transgress without anybody being able to suspect it at all, and his made me feel more free, more a master of myself, more adult. Especially when I discovered that also my brother Martin, the second of us sons, who was then nineteen year old, did it. I didn't really see him doing it. I just found his wet briefs on the laundry basket more than once, and from their smell I understood why they were wet...
I never felt the desire to masturbate with somebody else. Although when I could see the organ of some school mate, when we changed in the locker room or when taking a shower, I stealthily looked at them with some pleasure, especially if he was more developed than me. But, at least on a conscious level, there was not yet anything sexual in my glances -- it was, I think that I simply looked at them because I was developing and I hoped that mine would become like those of some of my mates that nature had generously endowed.
I think that there was still nothing sexual also because, during that period, I never felt the desire to even touch, to brush those members I saw and admired. When, from time to time, as I recall, they were in a state of erection, even partial, I liked them even more... Well, I don't know. All considered, I was still a kid, a quiet kid. Even if others, at that age, are more than weaned...
When I masturbated, as I said, I didn't have sexual fantasies. Also the organs I admired, perhaps just a short time before, never did come to my mind while I was masturbating. I was thinking of nothing in particular, I simply enjoyed the pleasurable feelings that that exercise gave me. I felt the pleasure growing in me and was careful to gather all my seed with a paper handkerchief I always had at hand, so that I didn't leave stains on my clothes or on the sheets or pyjama. Afterwards I carefully threw away the paper handkerchief and prepared a new one for the next time.
At times my school mates hinted at masturbation with jokes, and I smiled but I never gave an inkling to anybody on that subject. And, after George and I did it together, nobody propositioned me again. My mates also made lot of jokes about girls, at times rather nasty, explicit. Also to these I just smiled.
Girls didn't awaken in me any sense of attraction or of repulsion. They just... existed. Some were likable, some were not. That's that.
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