Crimi, For My Friends

I just wanted to meet that boy, just for to know in what hands my girlfriend was ending up. Very good hands. He was not a nerd at all: tall, strong, nice to feel my pants wet when I saw him. But serious, and really in love with my girlfriend. He just gave me an approving glance, and dedicated to me a not so long conversation. He too was able to recognize a nice girl when he saw one. But as for the rest, he only had eyes for her. And she for him. I would have bet not a cent of the maidenhead of my girlfriend, from then to a week later.

That boy came at the right moment, not only for my girlfriend: even for me.

I had lived that strange relation with my girlfriend with more than a bit of carelessness, without asking myself too much questions. Kisses, tenderness, intimacy, caresses, pleasure... I didn't even ask myself, whether that was REALLY sex, or what. Yes, we kissed and touched each other our breasts, and our sexes. Our orgasms were real, and sometimes really strong. But was it REAL sex?

And if so, what?

We both were happy to experiment the pleasure, at our ease, with our times, without the hassle of a male who want to poke his stuff inside you, and you don't know whether to say no, and what can happen if you say no... We could tell us that we were playing with our bodies, exploring our bodies, not making sex. But was it true? Was it not sex, just because there was no penetration? Unlikely!

And if it was sex, did we have to face the reality, and use the "L" word for to define us?

My girlfriend has solved the question for herself: she felt in love with a male, a nice, clever and quite correct male And I think he had been gentle with her, as I had been. Even when it came to poke his stuff inside her. And he surely poked.

But I didn't solve anything. What I really was?

Did I like dislike males? Well, those I saw, those of my age, were not my cup of tea. Young adults, or late teen agers, and you have said all. You know, young, dumb and full of you-know-what... And eager to discharge it down in the first available hole. Well, no, i was not "available"...

The younger? Even worse: "all dress up (physically, I mean) and nowhere to go", half would-be rapists, half poor kids who were looking for the mom... I was sorry for them, but my red cross girl's soul was not enough for get me to ease their pains. Not even with my hands, guess you with the rest...

The olders? Well, the best of them could fancy about my legs and my bum, when I walk around in jeans or mini-skirts, but their brakes worked all too well, and they never approached me less than politely. Sexually talking, for them, I was a "non-person" "Baby you're too young", as the old song says...

The worse of them... Thank God I never met someone REALLY worse, like that guy who wanted to deflower me with his fingers, but I KNEW they were... "Charlie can be wherever in this jungle"...

There was just ONE older male, with which I would have liked to do something. My father.

No, no "Elektra complex", or at least, noy ONLY that. I loved my father as a father, but I LIKED him as a MAN, and as a MALE. I would have liked to make love with him, not because he was my father, but because he was "the example of a man". Morally, esthetically, hormonally or what you will. I fully understood his girlfriend, the way she looked at him, with the eyes of a tamed mare. She would have never looked for another man, another male. Never. As I would have done, in her shoes.

Of course, even for my father I was a sexual "non-person". I was his daughter, after all. And of course I accepted it. And accepted that he made love with another woman. All as it had to be. It was my problem, not his own. Or hers.

On the other hand, yes, let's call a spade a spade: the woman of my father was MY kind of WOMAN. Morally and physically. Serious, faithful to the man she had choosen, and beautiful. Of course, I never teased her, not even joking. She was the woman of my father, and I think she would have been very upset to know that I had, say, such tastes, and that I liked HER...

As someone said, what you oppose can destroy you, what you accept, can transform you. If I was an "L" girl, well, so let it be, I would have lived as an "L" girl. Till new advice.

Since my father was even the example of a father, he had taught me that you can't always get what you want, and you cannot do what you want, in this world. Or at least, you can do it, till you don't bother too much someone else (or break the law, of course). So I imposed myself some limits in my haunts for another "L" girl. No engaged girls (no matter if with a man or with another woman), no too young girls, and no religious girls. I knew, in my school, a nice muslim girl, hijab and all the rest, and we were friends, but I cancelled her from my list of possible sexual partners. And I did the same, against the grains, with another very nice girl, whose mother was Russian, and whose father was Italian, because I knew that she regularly went to the Orthodox church.

I had nothing against religion, thought I was as "secular" as I could be. If I banned the religious girls from my "hit list", it was just for not to embarrass them with my indecent proposals. I had some problems even to accept myself as an "L" girl. My conscience was a bit uneasy about it. I could figure how they could have felt, if I would have confessed them that I liked them, yes, say, "physically", and, even, God forbid, if they would have had to confess to themselves they have fallen in love with ME... Personally, an unexpected fact, morally, a sin, and not so menial...

Better off not to rock the boat...

For a long time, nobody rocked the boat. I met girls, we had "experiences", and then, all remained as before. Then a fine day, so to speak... something fatally happened.

You know how the English saying goes: "a gentlemen enjoys and keeps mum". Well, maybe some young "lady" had violated that wise rule. She had enjoyed, and did not keep mum. And the word leaked to some man, not a "gentleman" at all. He had tried to pick me up, in the wrong way, I had answered accordingly (raised finger, you know...), and he did not take it sportively. So one day the phone rang at my home. Coincidences, that day my father had a bad flu and did not went to work, so he got to the phone before me, and, maybe a bit stoned by the temperature and the antibyotics, he pressed the "speakerphone" button on the phone, together with the answer button. And I heard the voice of the man I had sent to get lost.

"Your daughter likes the women!" said that voice. My father thought about it for a second and answered.

"I like them too, you shitty faggot!"

Maybe due to the stern message, maybe due to the awful catarrhal voice of my father, nobody called anymore.

I was expecting something like a witch trial, after that. Or some gory psychodrama like "Where did I go wrong?", on behalf of my father. None of the above. He just asked me if it was all true, and I answered that, uh, yes, maybe, likely... Poor dad. I should have told him, directly, but I was afraid to hurt him. And so, some unknown fool had hurted him even more... Out of the blue...

Well, he took the blow quite well. No shouting, no beating, no crying. He let me talk, explain, what, when, with who and why it all began. And how it came along. I asked excuse for not to have told him, before. He shrugged.

"You have to have some defects." he says. "Better that one than many others."

"Do you mind many other people know about that, now?" I asked. I thought he was worried for my reputation.

"So what? If people have nothing to say about you, they invent. Let them talk."

"Are you sorry you will never have grandchildren? Is that the problem? You know..."

"It's your life, not mine... Just try to be fine with yourself:"

"I'm not so fine..." I admitted.

"But do you really don't like the men? No one?" he asked. I looked at him.

"The one I like is you!"

"Don't be toady..."

"I'm not."

My father raised his eyebrows, quite perplexed, pondering my words.

"Two mind-boggling revelations in the same day..." I snorted. And he hugged me. As a father, of course.

As we kept talking about that, my father confessed me that, if he would have had to choose, he would have preferred a daughter who liked women to a son who did NOT like them. Yes, you got the picture. In THAT sense.

I was not so upset by that. Everyone has his limits...

In the following days, walking in the streets, I had the exact feeling people were looking at me in quite a different way. I thought some people knew about "that". And soon many other people would have known.

But I kept my spine straight and kept walking. "Walk tall, or better don't walk at all". "Let them talk!"...

They say you know your real friend where things go wrong. Well, after my "tastes" became of public domain, I saw I had a lot of friends.

Both at the university, both at the dojo I kept attending, nobody changed its attitude towards me. As nothing ad happened. Only the girls, in the dressong room and under the showers, tried tactfully to know something more about the subject. Do you really like women? How can it be? It's good to make love with a woman? Is it real sex?

The most daring ones, blushing and asking my excuse, asked me "how did I saw them". I was puzzled. Do they wanted to know whether I could ever make love with them? Or maybe, they wanted to know, whether they could be "attractive" for a male, and I was the most "male-like" judge they could ask about that?

However, it was an awkward situation. What could I say? Sexually talking, most of them were not so attractive for ME. And those who were attractive for me, sometimes did not ask me anything. In both cases, I preferred NOT to say the truth. "Well, you are nice". Standard answer, good for all the purposes

There was a girlfriend, with which I felt myself not at ease: the Russian girl. She too went to the dojo. And since all know that I was an "L" girl, I tried not to meet her. She had no guilt, surely she did not spread the news about my "tastes": she did not know it then. And she did not say a single bad word about me. But I felt that maybe, if she knew what I was, she had a bad opinion about me. Orthodox church has a very severe position about such matters.

One evening, she met me alone, and asked me why I was trying to dodge her.

"Do you know what they say about me?" I asked.

"I know. And then what?"

"And then, it's true."

"And then what?"

"And then..."

And then I told her everything. That I liked her, that I know his Church had a stern position on the subject, that I wanted to be her friend all the same, but I feared her judgement, in a nutshell, maybe I did not declare my love to her, but I fell just a bit short of it. I expected to see her boggling, making a sign of the Cross and shouting "Vade retro Satana" or thereabouts. But she just smiled.

"Maybe you're just a bit confused."

"Confused?"

"Sure! You have had some experiences, bad with the boys, pleasurable with some girl. But that does not mean so much. And however, even if you are what you think you are, there's no reason to feel uneasy with me. Yes, I'm trying to be a good Orthodox Christian, I went to the church, but hey, I'm not the Mother of God of Kazan! I'm a sinner as anyone else! I have my falls from grace too! I know how sweet can be the caresses of a woman's hand. Even if it's your hand..."

"MY hand?" I asked, I had NEVER touched her... I mean, not with sexual intentions...

"No: MY hand!"

"You mean, you too..." I say, almost laughing.

"Well, sometimes... There's no man, or woman, who lives and does'nt sin... But we are not made for that..."

"And what are we made for? "I don't do it for my lust, but for give a son to Cr..."..."

"No, no, that's another mistake... I mean, I want to marry, to have children, I will do nothing for preventing it, at least until they will be two, or three... But if me and my husband will have a good time in bed, I will never feel guilty! I will ask him what he likes, and I will do it to him, and let him do it to me, if it's not against nature. And I will tell him what I like. After all, children can come or not. Even if you don't use any protection, the chances are more or less fifty-fifty. I want to be happy in bed with my husband!"

"I thought your priests said that the pleasure came from the devil..."

"There are foolish priests and good priests... Our "bàtyushka", the priest of our church, says that pleasure can't come from the devil, the devil can only destroy, not create. Even less, create such a good thing... The pleasure comes from God. It's the way He gets us to make children. And in the process, it makes us feel good. It helps us to forgive each other, to stay together... to not to "go to the left"..."

"Go to the left?"

"It's the Russian catchphrase for "To cheat"..." she smiled. "I want to be a good lover for my husband. So he will not look for another one. Or at least, I will know I have done all I could!" she snorted. "And I will teach him to be the best lover for me. I will tell him what I like, and when he does something I like, I will tell him and reward him, so he will remember. There ìs nothing to be ashamed. In the room of the spouses, there are just the spouses, not the priest, or anyone else..."

Look at that gall! I though she was a half-nun, as cold as a fridge, and instead...

"But to make love with a girl... It's not part of the plan..."

"Well, it's not..." she shrugged. "It's like to steal the jam... The jam is there, you can eat it at the right time, or not... But the jam is not bad. So it's the pleasure..."

"Well presented. But now, I could not think to make love with a man. If I fancy a guy who struts and frets over me... I get claustrophobia..."

"You still haven't find the right guy..."

"Indeed, I have stopped searching him, looking for him..."

"And you can find him all the same..."

I looked at her, snorting.

"Are you thinking on a little bit of a miracle?"

She smiled, shrugging. She was beautiful, two beautiful eyes, a beautiful face...

"And you? Have you found the right guy?" I asked. She looked up, with her most enigmatic smile. A Russian girl's smile...

"Hm... maybe..."

Of course she had found. She was nice, a good character, a body to die for, a religious feeling useful for focusing herself, for to have a balance, but nothing neurotic, no phobia... She was discreet about him, and she had the right to be. But I was sure. There was a boy. A boy willing to wait, to marry her in an orthodox church. Just to live with her, to make love with her, all night long, all life long...

And I understood that boy...

"I had to go home." I said. "May I kiss you? Three times, the Russian way?"

She smiled, and let me kiss her cheeks, two time on a side, one on the other. Without any malice.

"But don't pick up the habit!" she smiled at me. ""Ot grekhà podàlshe", steer out from the sin!"

I smiled at her, and went away.

Some days later, a boy joined our "dojo". He was handsome, serious. Our "sensei", our teacher, told me to train with him, to help him to learn the moves better. In our dojo, girls and boys trained together. No frills. What happened out of "dojo" stayed out of "dojo": inside, we were just fellow "judokas", or "karatekas", or the like. And our boys followed that rule with care: respect and hands off, if not for training. And even that guy did so. Even more scrupulously than the other.

He was very "structured", so to speak. Self-disciplined, focused, something military, although he never served in the army or elsewhere. And he was a good pupil. He taught fast and well. Without any fuzz about learning from a woman. I was more experienced, so I could teach him. Logical.

For a while we studied each other, as Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in that movie of Sergio Leone, you know, "For a few dollars more", that one with the carillon... Then I decided to break the ice. I asked him why he joined the "dojo", and he said it was to learn how to defend himself. A bit too obvious, but it was acceptable. You know how to do it, quite enough, I said. Better more than less, he said.

I don't think he had some mystic of the superman, Nietzsche for hoodlums or the like. Not the kind of guy who rapes a girl, eventually after pounding her untrained boyfriend. He was always correct with the other people, low voice, no bragging, never looking for a fight. I recalled a tango my father liked: "he never scorned anyone, he hated to contest, but when it ever happened, he always sought to waste..."

We started to go around together, to the bewilderment of many people who knew my "tastes". No romantic implications: we liked the same things, and we went to see them. Movies, exhibitions, sport and other events. Together.

Even out of the "dojo", he kept his hands away from me. I had the doubt, whether he did it out of correctness, or because he too knew my "tastes". So I asked him. Yes, he knew. And no, he had no problems about that.

One day, we had gone at a concert at the stadium, quite far fro were we both lived. When we got out of the stadium it was not so late, or at least, there was the light of the dusk in the sky yet. We had almost get the car we had rented, when two guys come across. They were looking at me with interests, and till that point, nothing bad: you can look, but you better not touch. We both were keeping calm. But they started to say something not proper about me. Yes, they were looking for a fight. We were not in the skid rows of the town, but when somethings have to happen, well, they happen.

My escort remarked that they, guys, were talking quite roughly to a girl. And they, of course, did not get the message and turned their attention to him, always in a not proper manner. From there to the physical contact there was a little way. As someone had said, when you fight, you have no time to take note of every single move you did. But we knew more moves than them.

Just to balance the discussion, each of them drew out something you can even call a knife, but a self defense course that does not teach you what to do in certain situation is not a serious self defense course, and we had attended a serious one. Especially I have attended, for more time. But my escort too hat got the picture enough. Attack from above, from below, from a side, and how to react, moves repeated again and again, till you do it also automatically. Shortly, the knifes fell on the ground, without causing any damages, but we caused damages enough to get those guys to leave the square, in a hurry.

We get in the car and moved away. I was driving, and looking at him. He was calm, although a bit panting and sweating yet. He seem even more a soldier. A soldier after a fight, looking around, enjoying the panorama, and the fact to be alive yet. No exaltation.

"You got away well, with it." I said.

"You too..." said he. I snorted.

We got to his house. I asked it. I wanted to have a shower and put myself in order. If I would have come back as I was, likely my father would have thought I came straight from a war front.

Because it has been a dirty little war. Trained or not, we have fought barehanded against two armed guys. Armed with something more than a cutter. And some cutters had been enough to seize some planes, on September eleven... Yes, we could be proud of ourselves. But we had been lucky. They did not expect to face two trained "victims". Never undervalue the enemy...

We faced each other, after having undressed a bit. Both sweating, short of breath, adrenaline still flowing in the blood... We stopped playing the brothers in arms. I was looking at a man, he, at a woman. And I liked the man I was seeing. Having his body over mine? Nothing to say, no complaints. No "claustrophobia"...