15. IN SEARCH OF EMOTIONS

/Charles/

“The image of his full mouth approaching mine is engraved in my mind. For a moment I was dazed like an idiot, I woke up at the last with a scream in my brain that said ‘CHARLES WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?’ and I moved away by reflex. He was almost to me.
What the hell had gotten into him? I’m so shocked that I can’t even think about the half-argument that followed.
My heart is in throat like a stupid teenager. I even x-rayed his lips. Which are quite full for a boy. And red. They aren’t always that color, his are.
Maybe he just wanted to take the piss out of me, get revenge because he thought I had spied on him. Go figure out what the fuck is going on in his head, he’s crazy, we’re too different, I’ll never be able to understand even one of his actions. He’s an alien, that’s what he is.
But I’m still leaning against the door of my room, standing in the dark. My heart is still beating exaggeratedly fast and I'm deliberately breathing deeply to calm myself down, but I can't do it well.
What's the point of trying to kiss someone to punish for some presumed but not real fault?
Maybe it's his way of reacting when he argues with Daniel. What the fuck do I know about what he normally does? As soon as I mentioned his name he went into a rage, but it's fair to think so. He argues with him and tries to kiss me. If that wasn't the case he should have been clearer and more explicit. If he started laughing and making jokes maybe I would have understood that he was joking. I would have said a shit joke, I would have made a very acidic joke and I would have shut him out of my life again, not that I've ever really let him in, but today I was high and so I simply acted instinctively.
Today we had a good time because I wasn't myself, it was my fault. Obviously he's just a psychopathic asshole like I always thought, trying to understand him is useless.
‘You don’t know shit about me!’
His voice comes back to me, his words echoing hoarse and harsh as I stand here in the dark in the doorway.
‘You’re the one who tried to kiss me. If I’m with someone, I don’t try to kiss someone else!’
I had to answer him like that, but why? Talk to someone if you’re interested in resolving, clarifying and fixing things. I don’t care. My high spirits have been abruptly swept away, now I’m back to myself. Normal, rational, who doesn’t want anything from certain people, especially to deal with them.
I raise my hand to the side and look for the switch but before I find it, crawling along the wall, I realize I’m shaking. Shaking for what?
So I stop and remain in the dark.
Hadn’t I come to my senses?
I move towards the bed that I glimpse in the dim light, the lights of the night city come in through the windows of which only the glass is closed. I sit on the bed facing those lights and think about a moment ago as if something had really happened.
Something I don't want to understand because I don't want to like it. Or because it didn't go the way I wanted.
What if he had really kissed me? Maybe he was playing, but if I hadn't moved what would have happened? Would he have really kissed me? And what would it have been like?
My mind transmits a fantasy that I can't control, it goes on its own. Everything goes on its own, while I imagine staying still there and receiving those lips that are extraordinarily soft for a man's. Ours that intertwine, tongues that meet and his taste that mixes with mine. And him that grabs me by the nape of the neck and pulls me into his room open there for me.
Him that leads me to his bed and makes me lie down on it, while I think about it I let myself fall backwards onto mine. As I imagine his hands sliding over my body I do it to myself without control.
His come without hesitation to my crotch, he opens my pants, slips into my boxers, grabs my erection and pulls it out. He masturbates me without embarrassment, he doesn't hesitate for a moment while we're still kissing and I do the same with him, I open his jeans and pull it out touching him in the same way and he ends up rubbing himself on me, he makes me feel his hardness against mine until he drives me crazy and with his tongue he goes down on my neck to lick and suck where I'm sensitive and I don't get to the rest because I come first, here and now.
The rest dissolves before I get there, but he wouldn't stop there. Oh, no he wouldn't stop. He would undress me and take me completely, or he would try, because no fucking way I would make him do whatever he wants.
Imagining our roles in bed a smirk appears on my lips that I suck greedily as if I had his between mine.
I wouldn't make you do everything you want, dear Max, because I have to put you in the right place so you don’t get too big for your boots.
I raise my hand after having freed myself in pleasure, I look into the darkness of the room to which my eyes are now accustomed, I glimpse the slimy sperm and with my heart still beating a thousand, me all sweaty as if I had really done it with him, I let my arm fall to the side being careful not to dirty the covers.
Damn, are you drunk, Charles?
Maybe you need a boyfriend?
I mean, I did certain things with Pierre because my instincts are now coming out and I think at this point it's clear. I'm gay. Or at least I like boys too and at this precise moment in my life I want them. I'm in that phase, maybe one day it’ll pass and I’ll go back to preferring girls, but for now it's like this.
Phases, yes. It's just a phase, but I’ll never ruin things with Pierre just because of this, we’re too close. I mean, I could do it with him without any problems, it's obvious, but then I'm afraid that something would get ruined and I don't want to. He’s precious just the way he is.
Max is just someone I had an erotic fantasy about, maybe I would do it, but the problem is that as soon as he opens his mouth he irritates me and we argue, maybe not always, not 100% of the time, but sooner or later it always happens. Pretty quickly, to be honest.
So what?
I want to go with a boy for reasons unknown to me, because yes, because there’s not always a reason to want something or someone. Sometimes you just want it and maybe it takes you a while to understand it, but sooner or later you get there. But in the end what counts is what you do in reality and mine is that I don't even think about going with the first guy that comes along.
First of all because even if I'm surrounded by a lot of boys, Pierre and Max were the only ones I tried or wanted, it means that I'm not okay with just anyone. And then because I'm demanding. I know I am. I don't think I'm the type to have a squalid one-night stand with someone I picked on one of those shitty apps or who knows who I met who knows where.
Now I'm coming to my senses.
I thought I was already, but I was wrong.
It’ll be enough to ignore Max and stay away from him. Regardless of everything, he’s with Daniel; even if I wanted to try to satisfy me with the idea that the second time we'll fight and we'll tear each other apart, he’s with Daniel, a wonderful person who I’m also a friend of and I don't want to hurt him.
And anyway I think we would fight over who is on top.
He’s an asshole and I hate him, there’s no way to do this, so if I ever meet someone else who can turn on my retarded gay sexual instincts, I hope he’s free and not even my friend.
Everyone has their roles, I have already said it and I repeat it with extreme conviction.
Pierre is my best friend, Max is my rival. They can't be anything else.
Now take a cold shower and calm down. Although I must say that now after this nice solitary treatment I feel extraordinarily better, I’m much calmer.
I have to remember this method. If I feel like I'm going crazy with too many inappropriate instincts, one hand is temporarily enough.
I get to the bathroom thinking about this and finally turn on the light that bothers me a little, I turn on the shower faucet that I deliberately leave warm tending towards cold, then I turn to the mirror and before undressing I look at myself.
Yes, but how long do I think this temporary solution will be enough for me? What if I go back to this state of hallucinated horniness that I almost jump on Pierre or worse Max?
The fact that I’m in this state despite Giada demonstrates exactly what is rather obvious. It's not a question of sex in general, I have a specific desire that I cannot satisfy. My hand is a palliative and one day will not be enough.
But how the hell can you have a desire like that so suddenly? Since dad and Jules died I have lived as if in a constant dream, but not a good one. It wasn't even a dream. It's just that I was constantly in a fog and I couldn't feel good or bad. So when I had strong emotions, good or bad, I would suddenly find myself awake and not knowing how to handle those emotions. And that's fine. Maybe I just need to find a normal outlet or something to shake me up.
But the point is my reactions in those moments of abrupt awakening.
Why sex? Why specifically with a boy, not even a random one?
I can't find answers and as usual I think too much without being able to stop.
Maybe I just need to distract myself. I need to start doing other things, find hobbies, pastimes, distractions. Up until now it's always been all about racing to get where I wanted to go. I had to keep the solemn promises I made to dad and Jules, now that I've signed with Ferrari, maybe I can calm down or I'll really go crazy. One day I'm going to end up doing something I'll regret like a madman, like actually kissing Max.
So I have to find something else to distract me from these weird, brutal awakenings and these damned specific desires. More than anything I have to find something that doesn't make me get to these levels.
It's like I've never allowed myself to live adolescence like everyone else because I thought about duties and dreams and career and promises. I had other things to think about and I couldn't allow myself anything to distract me, I took everything super seriously, as if it were a matter of life or death, especially the races.
Now instead I have suddenly realized that the stages I suffocated are still there and need to be lived; moreover, I don't need girls at all, right now.
I further lower the level of the water that covers me and gives me an immediate shock to then give me mental relief and suddenly clear my thoughts.
I cup my hands over my face leaving my hair alone that doesn't get wet.
Ok, good analysis, right, complete and very clear, but it's still not worth a damn to know that I should have realized I was gay sooner and that I wanted to go with boys and live my adolescence in a normal way. Even if now I know that I want to do something or I need it, it's not that I do it because yes.
I’m not a child or even a teenager, that time is gone, I didn't live it but I have grown up anyway. I’m a twenty-one year old boy, now I’m an adult. Things are done if you can, otherwise you file them away and move on.
I turn off the tap and put the towel on my face and chest staying like that for a moment, with my eyes closed.
I’ll do something else, simply. Other things, just like I said before. I’ll distract myself and try to live without remaining in a constant foggy dream. I’ll try to always stay awake and I’ll look for emotions to live them normally, without getting upset when every now and then I’m hit by those too strong that then destroy me.
Here is what I will do.
Instead of running away from emotions or suffocating them, I’ll look for them to live them and get used to them.
I leave the towel in the bathroom and go out, returning to the bedroom, I lower the shutters leaving a few cracks through which tomorrow morning a little light will come in and I go to bed as I am, completely naked. Without turning on the light I throw myself on the mattress, opening the covers, I turn over and let myself fall asleep slowly thinking about the final concept that came to mind.
How do you live on emotions? While I ask myself this, Pierre's cheerful and pleasant face appears before me and a sweet smile with it.
If there's anyone who knows, it's definitely him. But I won't tell him about Max. Next year he'll be his partner and he's a chatterbox, he can't keep his mouth shut. He would definitely end up telling him something he shouldn't.
No, this thing about tonight with him and all my absurd obsessions, I won't tell him. That I want to satisfy my instincts with boys maybe yes, there's nothing wrong with that.
But not about Max, definitely not.
Thinking about it, I fall asleep.
I'm still rolling around in the sheets with Max with whom I rigorously did the top, when a noise insinuates into my dreams. A noise that it's out of tune because doesn't come from inside my head, but from outside.
My consciousness resurfaces and the repeated images of the wildest sex with Max fade with regret. I remain still with my eyes closed refusing to understand that I'm waking up and to accept it, I hope to pick up where I left off, from his tongue on my buttocks curved for him, but to the noise that makes me understand the presence of someone in the room, a not at all masculine cry is added easily recognizable and in associating it immediately with Pierre, I open an eye to understand what the hell he’s doing in my room.
I gave my second key to Joris and Andrea who are in the room together and manage me in tandem like a pair of parents staying strictly in the same hotel, even if in the less VIP rooms.
Without even having to move to see him, I focus on right where he is: still in front of the door, the breakfast tray and the look of someone who has just caught a live porn show.
Pierre is the most expressive and spontaneous creature on this planet and you can immediately understand what he feels and thinks, for me it's even easier because I've known him since he was little.
He's red as a tomato, still stiff as if they'd just stuck a broom between his buttocks and he literally remains impaled with the tray in his hand staring at me. His eyes wide open, his mouth too and the most drama ever seen.
I wanted to see what the hell he was thinking of doing, but I think that if I don't do something he'll stay there dead forever, so I open the other eye too and turn over on my back rubbing my face to wake up and take away the sleep that was still a little on me.
I yawn lazily and bend one leg sinuously, I don't do it on purpose.
- What's wrong? What are you doing here? - I ask hoarsely.
Pierre doesn't answer so I sit up with my back leaning on the headboard of the bed and only when I do I realize that I’m completely naked and still with the memory of the erotic dream about Max.
From today I’ll ignore him and walk away and everything will be fine again, especially my private conditions.
With the second train, as soon as I wake up, I realize that he must have been impressed by my hard erection and with a: - Oh. - guilty and aware, I take the sheet and pull it over my groin covering myself. The little mountain remains, but at least he’s not without clothes.
- Sorry. - I then add. I don't think he has actually ever seen me naked, even though when I received the famous call from Arrivabene a few weeks ago, I did a certain job with both of our penises, but I don't think he did anything to me or looked.
That moment is a bit blurry, especially because now I only have Max and the dream in my mind. A really nice dream I must say, I think that if we had serious sex it would be like this. A fight to see who is on top. With me obviously taming him well thanks to that demonic side that apparently he likes so much.
With a mischievous smile that I don’t even know if it’s aimed more at Max or Pierre, I wave one hand while I run the other over my short hair, further messing it up.
- Are you there? - I call him back. He’s still standing there staring at me in shock, but at my call he nods and jumps on the spot, almost knocking over what’s on the tray.
- You never sleep naked! - he exclaims. We’ve slept together before, he’s right, but no striptease, I always keep my boxers on. I can’t tell him that yesterday I was thinking about Max and I felt like sleeping naked, that would be a strange association.
I shrug my shoulders as if to belittle something that doesn’t matter.
- It was hot. - but it's obvious that it wasn't possible given the air conditioning, Pierre however seems to take my fake explanation for granted and finally reaches me placing the tray on the mattress, he takes care not to sit with me, he goes to the windows from which rays of sunlight enter partially illuminating the room and turning his back to me he opens them. He probably takes advantage of this to breathe.
I give another amused smile.
Does he like me in that sense? It's hard not to understand Pierre even if maybe being gay he finds me a good-looking guy and is simply not insensitive to beauty. Maybe I fit his tastes, everyone has them. I think he also fits my standards, all things considered.
- What are you doing here?
- I accidentally intercepted Joris who was bringing you breakfast in your room. They treat you like a little prince, huh? - he says teasing me to ease his tension.
I instead frown at this information and only now do I realize that I was still sleeping while he’s actually already ready to go out.
I look at the time and see that it's late, then I look for my phone and discover that it's actually turned off because I forgot to charge it. I roll my eyes and curse.
- Last night I forgot to charge my phone and set the alarm! Lucky I have the two of them! I think I would have died without them! I would definitely lose my job! - Pierre laughs.
I don't talk much because of my personal embarrassment, in truth I’m perfectly comfortable being naked and provoking certain reactions in him. The idea of ​​physically pleasing him surprisingly excites me, but I think it's the fault of the conversation I was having with myself last night.
I need to live my adolescence as a maniac gay boy like all teenagers who discover they are gay, even if I'm not a teenager anymore. I think I'm bisexual since I can go with girls without having to force myself, although until I try with boys I can't know if it's the same thing, but in fact this side of me is there and I've never experienced it and now that I've started to relax having reached the most important step of my life, one of my big goals, I think I'm eager to fulfill myself in other ways too. It's a phase, as I was saying last night.
Pierre has a short life if he's not careful. I know that with Max there are no problems, I mean... rather than do something with him I'd shoot myself, but Pierre is too sweet and cute and these spontaneous reactions of his feed me too much.
He leans against the window that he opens arbitrarily, his shoulders to the outside and watches me with his hands in his pockets that widen his pants in a strategic way, to prevent anyone from noticing how tight they are.
Wow, he really likes me!
I hadn't realized it until now, he's always been the same with me. Very friendly and affectionate. He never had any changes in his behavior, nothing that would tell me anything. Either he always liked me or he just realized that I'm a nice, well-developed boy. Maybe.
But I'm thinking about it too much and I remember well that I decided not to ruin our friendship, so Charles be good.
- So what? - he suddenly asks after a while since I started eating breakfast.
I raise my eyebrows eating the croissant. 
- Did you understand why Max and Daniel were fighting?
When he mentions them the mouthful goes down the wrong way and I almost choke. I drink the orange juice that was there in one go and my face feels like it's on fire.
- How the hell should I know? - I ask with some anxiety. Pierre stares at me in surprise as if it were obvious.
- Well, your room was close to them, you must have heard something before you came in! What did you hear?
My mind tries to replay what I heard between them, but I practically erased it right away. I'm not even sure I actually heard anything, but I remember very well what happened next.
Shut up Charles. Don't tell him Max tried to kiss you! Don't you dare!
- I didn't hear anything, he was just pissed at him. They didn't sleep together, they went to their own room.
Good. You're very good. You're still exceptional at controlling yourself if you try. Get yourself together or you won't survive. He's Pierre, he understands you too well.
In fact, he stares at me inquisitively, as if he knew perfectly well that there was something else.
- What are you hiding from me? - he then asks directly and accusingly. His thin eyes trying to read my mind. Luckily he can't.
I shrug and start eating again, cowardly looking away.
- Nothing.
I'll tell him about my instincts but if I do it now I'll be wrong. There will be a better time, I want to talk to him about it.
- Come on, I know you. - Pierre insists. And damn, how do I distract him now? It's exhausting, when he stares at his prey he won't let go of the bone.
I try to stay calm and eat my breakfast in a totally commendable way, as if there was absolutely nothing there.
- Pierre, you watch too many TV series! You see mysteries everywhere!
I insist on my line and he on his until I finish and finally I have the right opportunity to make him run away.
At his umpteenth: - Look, I won't give up until you tell me! - I move the tray, open the sheet and get out of bed, deliberately sinuous and still naked as before. As soon as I do it Pierre suddenly shuts up and turns burgundy again and with his eyes bulging he openly tells me to go fuck myself and saying: - Fuck you! See you later, asshole! - he literally runs away leaving me alone.
Well, if I needed confirmation here it is.
I enter the bathroom with an amused and absolutely satisfied smile.
He likes me, at least physically. This makes me very happy and suddenly here is another thing about myself that I didn't know because I've never been a normal teenager.
I like to please and I'm vain.
At least.”

NOTES: I imagined Charles as a thinker, for me he’s someone who does a lot of mental wanks, who thinks and analyzes, plans, does and destroys. Maybe I'm wrong, but the impulsive one who never reflects is definitely Max. I loved psychoanalyzing Charles, he’s a particular and complex character even if obviously this is only my version of him and we’re just at the beginning of his long complicated journey. See you next time. Kisses Akane