His fingertips pressed hard into my biceps and his head was buried in my chest. I kept my hands on his waist to keep him afloat until his breath calmed down, and then he pushed me away without even looking at my face. He swam back to the shore as fast as someone fleeing from a shark.
“Christ, James!” I screamed and followed him back, hoping my own little problem would go away before I reached the beach. James climbed back on the Rock to retrieve his t-shirt, which he wore ignoring the fact that he was still completely drenched. “James,” I called from the beach, “come here.”
He briefly looked at me with a mortified face that made me feel extremely sorry for him. “There’s no need to freak out,” I said, perfectly aware that he had all the right in the world to be freaking out. I would be freaking out in his place. Still, somewhere inside of me, I couldn’t help thinking the situation was somewhat fun. Francesco was right when he said that I could be a real asshole sometimes.
James’ cheeks flamed up with anger and humiliation, and he threw one of his shoes at me. I dodged it easily – I could tell he wasn’t truly trying to hit me – and screamed at him, “Hey, you know that you’re acting like a perfect Southern Italian right now?”
“Fuck you!”
I found myself smiling as I said, “Come on, it’s not such a big deal.”
He chewed on his lip nervously and threw his other shoe. This time he almost got me.
“It’s kinda flattering, to be honest,” I said.
He reached to the ground and grabbed my sneakers.
“I’m serious!” I said, and as a reward I got hit both times. The kid had good aim.
“Go away!” He screamed at me, and leaned down, taking his head in his hands and hiding it behind his knees. Maybe I had taken it a bit too far.
I waited a few minutes and then climbed the Rock. James seemed to have no intention of lifting his head up, but at least he had stopped trying to kill me. I sat by his side and looked into the distance.
All I wanted right now was to make him feel better. What was I doing? It wasn’t like me to try so hard to please another person.
“Do you mind if I share with you my own embarrassing story?” I said. James didn’t move an inch, so I decided to take it as a yes. “When I was twelve, mobile phones didn’t come with an internet connection,” I told him quietly. “Do you even remember a time like that? You were young, and this kind of technology was more advanced in America anyway. You probably learned how to use a smartphone before you learned how to use a fork.”
James finally looked at me. He was pouting but he didn’t seem as furious as before.
I continued, “We didn’t have a computer at home and, well… I really wanted to look at some porn.”
“Is this where you were going?!” He buried his head back into his arms.
“A few classmates had things: pictures from magazines, maybe some older brother’s VHS. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“I’m not that young. It was the tape-y thing. Before DVDs. Dad had a collection of them.”
I nodded my head and lifted my hand to brush a strand of his golden curls behind his ear. “Well, the stuff my friends watched didn’t do it for me. Because I was… different.” Now I truly had his attention again. “So I stole a gay porn magazine from the newsstand. It was my dirty little secret; I hid it under the mattress and… you know.”
“… and what happened?” He seemed curious now.
“One day I forgot to put it back in its place and my three-year-old little brother found it and brought it in the living room, where my whole family was having dinner. It was Christmas of 2006: the day I was outed by a toddler.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds and then, finally, James chuckled.
“Now,” I told him, “what happened earlier isn’t half as embarrassing as that. Not to me. Don’t feel bad about it.”
A little whine escaped his throat. “I came in my fucking pants!”
“While being held by a very hot man.”
“You’re so humble.”
“A man who, by the way, put his hands all over you without your permission, and wishes you’ll forgive his sorry ass for that.”
James’ mouth fell open. He spoke in a very low voice when he said, “You’re forgiven.”
ACT 2
Despite all the suffering
that fate decreed for human time,
if there were anyone on Earth
who truly loved you as my mind depicts you,
this life for them would be a blessing
Giacomo Leopardi, To His Lady
JAMES
The sad truth was that what happened at the Rock didn’t even make it to the top ten of the most embarrassing moments of my life. This time there was no police department involved, no social media shaming, no my-mother-taking-me-to-the-hospital-to-have-me-checked-for-STDs. So, overall, it hadn’t been all that bad.
Then, there was him. Roberto was baffling. First, he had flirted with me and rejected me immediately after. He said he wanted us to be friends and then that little accident happened. And since that moment he had stopped touching me completely.
Two days later, I was going insane thinking of how his arms felt around me.
At the beach, Roberto introduced me to his cousins and friends, who were spending the summer there until Claudia’s wedding. It was a huge group of people which I heard they called “compagnia.” Some people were more or less Roberto’s age, like Claudia and Francesco, and then there were the younger kids, like Marco and his friends. A few of them spoke English – some in a very interesting way – and everyone acted really friendly with me. Davide, Claudia’s fiancé, was a funny guy who always had a joke ready for every situation. He and Roberto got along well; especially when they both made fun of Francesco.
I decided I rather liked Francesco. He was laid back and cool, and he always explained to me the jokes and the cultural differences there were between North and South Italy. When Roberto wasn’t around, I spent most of my time with him and Claudia, who introduced me to her little sister Jennifer as well.
Jenn was eighteen, and she was so different from her sister. Claudia was really sweet and feminine, while Jenn was a punk; she painted her nails black with an indelible marker, the only makeup she wore was black eyeliner, and soon I learned she had her very own unique version of personal hygiene.
I thought she was crazy at first, but after listening to her speaking about leg waxing torture and the objectification of women for forty minutes, I was sold.
“James,” Jenn’s voice called me back to Earth. She had placed her beach towel right next to mine and had been lying there beside me for a while, while distractedly scrolling through her Tumblr feed. She had her curly, black hair tied in a bun over her head and huge-framed sunglasses were hiding her chocolate eyes. “You’re staring,” Jenn continued in a low voice, so that only I could hear her.
I had to force my eyes away from Roberto to turn to her. “Am I being that obvious?”
She smirked. “Somebody has a huuuge crush on my sexiest cousin.”
For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. I didn’t have a crush on Rob. I couldn’t have a crush on him. I just… I was kind of, sort of, mildly obsessed with Roberto, but that was just admiration for the amazing work Mother Nature did with how he looked. And probably also admiration towards the family who raised him into being how he was; open-hearted, kind, funny, mature and, oh crap, I did have a crush on him after all. I had a crush. I was feeling things for him that I shouldn’t… feelings, emotions and desires I shouldn’t have. I didn’t want to go through that. Not again. Not with him. Not with the person who had been so kind to me, who had held my hand ever so gently and caressed my face and fucking apologized to me even though I was the one who was all wrong. I took my head in my hands, swallowing the lump in my throat.