Tommy's First Year at College Pt. 03

Chapter 39 An unexpected trip

Just before the end of their stay in Elba, Tommy said to Martin, "When we leave Elba for Pisa, we are not going to fly home! We are going to get a train to Trabizona, where I have booked us in at an hotel for four nights, so that you can meet the rest of my family. We can't stay with my brother Luke and his partner and their girlfriend, because they are staying at a friend's house until they find a house big enough for a family. Actually the main reason for going is to meet my new baby nephew, who is about three months old. One day we will also visit Luke and Sandro's mother and stepfather. We fly home via Pisa next Tuesday. Then you will have met all the human beings that I love!"

Martin was a bit surprised to hear how extensive the Italian branch of Tommy's family was, compared with his own few relatives. But he was self-confident enough to feel keen to meet all these new people, and curious to find out how two gays could have a baby son.

They said goodbye to the Dutch girls and exchanged E-mail addresses before catching the ferry and the train. They got to Trabizona about 5 pm, and Tommy telephoned his brother. "I shan't see you till I finish work about 11 pm," said Luke, "but Tom will come straight from work about 6-30 and pick you up in the car and take you to Arturo's villa where we are staying till our new house is finished. Arturo and his friend Bastian have invited you to dine with them. Isabella, their housekeeper will keep my food hot till I get home."

When Tom arrived, he kissed his brother-in-law and shook hands with Martin. "Nice to meet you Martin," he said. "We've arranged for a cab to come about midnight to take you back to your hotel. Tomorrow, Luke is going to show you round his opera house. We thought that Martin would like that. Then tomorrow night we're going to the opera to see Verdi's Macbeth. Unfortunately Giovanni's not old enough to be left with Isabella, so Olivia won't be able to come with us. He still wakens and needs feeding at odd times. On Sunday we are all going to visit Luke's mother and her husband."

They took Tom for a drink in the hotel bar. He only had a small beer, as he was driving. He explained to Martin how he and Luke had become fathers. "Olivia was got pregnant by a man whom she loved, but he wanted her to have an abortion and she refused, so he disappeared without trace. Arturo, my boss, who is also gay, suggested to Olivia that Luke and I become foster-fathers to the baby. Then he let us live with him in his villa until Giovanni was born and until we can find a house suitable for the four of us. The house is bought, but needs some alterations, and we hope to move in in December. Italian law does not allow us to adopt Giovanni, but we are his registered foster parents and guardians."

When they arrived at Arturo's villa, he greeted them cordially, saying that he was always willing to meet any gay friends. Olivia greeted them shyly but with a welcoming smile. Tom took their baby son from her and gave him to Tommy to hold. Giovanni was awake and smiled sweetly at the two visitors. "Meet Giovanni Ricardo Desperaldi, our son!" he said formally. Tommy held the baby as if he had been holding babies all his life and kissed him on the head before offering him to Martin, but Martin held him awkwardly, unaware of the need to support the baby's head, and he let out a yell before Martin could give him back to Tom, who continued to cuddle him while they talked.

Tommy went to talk to Olivia, and between her halting English and Tommy's awkward Italian, it was a bit of a struggle, but as Tommy was fundamentally more comfortable with women than Martin was, they soon established a rapport. "Your Italian needs a lot of practice," she told Tommy, "you must come again before your university course in Italian begins. We'll be in our new house by then. Giovanni will need a feed before we eat dinner. I hope you are not one of those men who gets embarrassed when they see a woman breast-feeding."

"Not at all," said Tommy, "but I don't know how Martin will react. Some men get very embarrassed to see a woman's tits, however discreet she may be. I hope Martin will be OK." Tommy was really proud that he knew that tette was the word for 'tits' in Italian. He knew that to enlarge his vocabulary he needed to talk more to native speakers. He realized that he stood no chance of getting a decent degree if he did not take his year abroad. However much he and Martin needed each other, in real life, short-term separations are always happening, and as Martin had pointed out, there was always Christmas and Easter to get together. He resolved to ask Luke how he had managed on his Erasmus year in Bologna.

To Tommy's relief, Martin showed no sign of a negative reaction when Olivia began to suckle Giovanni. In true feminine fashion, she was very discrete. Only one breast at a time was exposed, and the only time a nipple was visible was when it was not in Giovanni's mouth. While this was going on, Isabella was serving the meal and in a few minutes the baby burped contentedly and Olivia put him into his carry-cot and they all sat down to eat.

Arturo now had a chance to practise his English on Martin, who asked him how he liked having a family with a young baby in the house. "I don't mind at all, and it makes Isabella very happy. She dotes on young Giovanni. The only person who gets impatient sometimes is Bastian."

Tommy, who found himself next to Bastian at the table, asked him what he did for a living. Bastian replied that he was a lawyer. "I hope that my nephew doesn't disturb you in the night by yelling," Tommy said.

"No, he is very good at night, and this is a big house, so that the rooms are well separated," said Bastian. "What do you hope to do when you've got your degree?" he asked Tommy.

"I'm not sure," said Tommy. "I had always thought of becoming a teacher, but Martin reckons that I would not be able to deal with teenage children."

"You could always consider getting a job in Italy like your brother," said Bastian.

"But that would mean Martin having to get a job here too," said Tommy. "That would not be easy: Luca and Tom had a terrible time trying to find jobs together when they graduated. Besides, Martin doesn't know any Italian words apart from capuccino and lasagna!"

"But in Luca's case, it all worked out beautifully," said Bastian. "Arturo always says that Tom is Camford's best export. He learnt Italian in six months!" That was rather an oversimplification. In fact, Tom had spent some time in England having Italian tuition, while waiting for Luke to get his job in Italy fixed up and had had a big struggle to get his Italian up to standard in his first six months in Trabizona.

"Although they both love it here," said Tommy, "I sometimes think that Tom still hankers after Camford. Sorry, do you know the word 'hanker'? It means 'to long for'. But bringing up a baby here means that they are bound to get settled here for good. Tom does not have many relatives in England, so he is bound to enjoy living in Italy. He only has one sister whom he sees. His father and the other four sisters have ignored him for years. But I can understand how he misses Camford. It exerts the same magnetism over its inhabitants as Venice does." He then went on to tell Bastian that he would have to spend a year in Italy as an Erasmus student, and was trying to decide where he should study. "All my relatives think that I should definitely not come to Trabizona," he said, "but I know that Luca was not a hundred percent happy in Bologna. He said that it was too big and faceless a university. So maybe I should go somewhere smaller and less historic."

"You might consider Padova," said Bastian. It's also historic, but it's smaller than Bologna. I was a student there."

At 11 pm, Luke came home. He kissed Tom, then Olivia, then his brother. He shook hands with Martin. "You're still being evaluated, Martin," he said. "Once we get to know you properly, you'll get kissed. All this man-kissing is due to my completely straight grandfather, who always kissed his sons as well as his daughter. You'll have to undergo his scrutiny when you go to Rockwell's Barn!" While Luke ate his late dinner, the others drank Marsala, a sweet Sicilian fortified wine. He said to Martin and Tommy that they should make their own way to the opera house the next day at 10 in the morning. At midnight, a taxi arrived to take the two visitors back to their hotel.

When they had gone, Luke asked Tom and Olivia what they thought of Martin. "I think he's just the partner that Tommy needs," said Tom. "Tommy has yet to find his way in life. He chose to major in Italian because everyone in his family could speak it. Unlike you and me, Luke, he has no fascination with Italy. I think Martin could help him decide what he wants to do. The Italian language is not a particularly good speciality for school-teaching anyway."

"I think that he is a very sweet loveable boy," said Olivia, "but terribly immature. Martin, as an experienced gay, can teach him a lot, and not just about what to do in bed!" Olivia was Luke and Tom's resident expert on straight sex, and she was an amazing judge of character. Not many women would elect to spend their life with two gay men. But she knew her two men well enough to know that neither of them would abandon her and Giovanni.

"You know, Olivia, what Tommy's background is? Up to the age of nine, he was savagely beaten and ill-treated by his biological parents. He ran away from home and was found and rescued by Sandro and Dom when they were students in Camford. He was taken into care and eventually adopted by David and Jon. Tommy really wanted to live with Dom and Sandro, but they were too young to adopt him. Since then, he has led an over-protected life. His fathers should have insisted on him going to study in Oxbridge like my sister, rather than staying in his home town," said Luke.

Next day, Luke showed Tommy and Martin round the Teatro Musicale and introduced them to his boss, Cornelio Sirigante. The artists were rehearsing Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Martin was able to watch them rehearsing while they drank coffee with Cornelio. In the evening, Arturo and Bastian joined them for the performance of Macbeth. A box was available and they all had an excellent view of the stage. Martin reacted very enthusiastically. "Next summer, after our exams are over, let's go for an operatic tour of Italy!" he said to Tommy.

Next day, Tom and Luke took Tommy to an early mass at their local church. There was no time to go to the English church in Bologna. Then the six of them set off in two cars to the town where Luke and Sandro's mother lived with her husband Massimo Mascagnoli. On the way, Luke told Tommy and Martin how he went to find his mother when he was a second-year student at Buckingham. It struck Martin that the one thing that he had in common with all Tommy's family and his namesake Tom, was that they had all grown up without a mother.

Since he had met his mother and come to live in Italy, Luke had drawn progressively closer to her, and she had been a valuable help at the time of Olivia's confinement. Women need female help when they are having a baby. Olivia's own mother had not at that time been fully reconciled to Olivia moving in with two men. However, the sweetness and charm of little Giovanni were slowly winning her over, especially when she could see how Tom and Luke doted on their new son.

When they got to Dorothea and Massimo's house, it was lunchtime. Dorothea made a great fuss of Tommy and welcomed Martin warmly. She said to Tommy, "Tommy, if you need help in Italian literature next year, please give me a ring. I don't know whether you know that I am a Dottora di Ricerca in Italian poetry. Since Bianca left home for university in Paris, I've done some part-time school-teaching." Six visitors plus Bianca, Sandro's sister, were too many to cook for, so Dorothea had booked a table in a restaurant.

Bianca helped Olivia to keep little Giovanni entertained while everyone except him was eating. Olivia had fed him just before they went out to the restaurant. He was old enough to sit in a high chair, even when not eating.

After lunch, they loaded Giovanni into his pushchair and went for a walk along the route of the old town walls. The sun shone, and Martin and Tommy were filled with envy at Tom and Luke's family life. "I can't imagine an English girl being ready to live with two gay men," Martin whispered to his friend. "Jealousy would poison passion, in the words of Dryden in King Arthur!"

"Well, in any case, it will be quite a few years before we can consider a family of our own," said Tommy.

Late in the evening, they drove back to Trabizona. The boys were dropped at their hotel. Next day, Tom took a day off work to show them the sights of Trabizona. After seeing the Cathedral and the Roman baths, they went out to Arturo's villa to say goodbye to Olivia and Isabella. The day after, they took the train back to Pisa airport and flew home.

Chapter 40 Martin tells how the men's first year comes to an end

Back in Camford, I thought that the trip to Italy had gone very well. I had made Tommy do all the arrangements, and it had proved very good for him. He had learned more about interacting with other people and his hesitant Italian had been tested and not found wanting. By the end of our stay, his Italian was markedly more fluent. I felt that he was slowly making progress to cope with life on his own in a foreign country. It seemed to me that a year in Italy might make him more assertive as well as more adult. I was rather worried that everyone who knew him felt that he was too non-assertive. I hesitate to use the word 'submissive' because I did (and do) not consider the man I love to be submissive. I knew from his lovemaking that he was as male as I was. He had given me my first ever fucking, and had managed it without any difficulty. In my eyes, what he lacked, indeed all that he lacked, was ambition and career drive. I was convinced that if only he could find his vocation in life, he would make rapid strides as a person. I loved his sweet and loving personality and his delightful body, which filled me with both tenderness and desire whenever I looked at him.

Soon after we got back from Italy, on a wet Saturday morning when we were not going swimming, as we lay in bed, I commented to Tommy about the obsession of straight people with the sex roles of gays. "They seem to think that the bottom man in gay sex must be effeminate and the top partner a hyper-male. They totally ignore the fact that in many partnerships, the men exchange roles regularly. I get the impression that if a big celebrity in the world of industry, music or the media comes out as gay, people implicitly assume that he must be the active partner, and his obscure friend the permanent bottom. That's why I hate the use of heterosexual terms like 'husband and 'wife' to describe male or female partners in the gay relationships of either sex. OK, so some men prefer to be fucked and others to do the fucking, but it's undeniable that most males want to fuck sometimes, even if they prefer the bottom role."

Tommy replied, "There are primitive societies, and ancient Rome is a classical example, where a man who allows himself to be fucked is regarded as socially inferior, and unmanly. To fuck a man is regarded in those communities as a way of humiliating him. One of the reasons slavery flourished is because male slaves were regarded as arsehole donors for their owners. There was no shame in a man fucking his slave: that was one of the reasons for keeping them. You could bugger your slave whenever you felt in the mood, and he could not object!"

"As long as men love one another," I replied, "there's no reason except habit for one partner always to assume an active role. It's just a question of being flexible. Moreover, although penetration is very nice, people often overestimate men's desire to fuck. Kissing, cuddling and sleeping close together are often just as enjoyable. Indeed, there are gay relationships not involving penetration, though I think both parties in such relationships are undersexed! But of course anything said about gay sex can be applied to straight sex. Maybe people spend too much time thinking and speculating about sexual relationships rather than just enjoying them!"

"But why are we getting so academic?" Tommy said, "Just reach out and feel my cock!" I did so. Not only was it hard, it was wet with precome. Tommy rolled over and pulled me up against him and started to kiss my face, while at the same time caressing my arse with his left hand. "Climb up and sit on my cock," he whispered. He reached out and opened the condom packet with one hand, and as I rose and straddled him, he quickly rolled it on to his prick. "Get the lube!" he whispered. I unscrewed the bottle and put some on my fingers. I reached behind and pushed a dollop of gel with two fingers up my arsehole. Tommy then pushed the dildo that lay ready up my hole to stretch me further, and I then lowered myself on to his pole, kneeling straddling him to take the weight off my knees. His monster slimy dick slipped into my gut and filled it nicely. He began to push upward while I worked my rear end up and down. Once or twice his cock slipped out, but without loss of hardness, he reinserted it and resumed the fuck. He reached out and began to fondle my dick, which responded rapidly and soon my precome was oozing plentifully over his belly.

"This is amazing!" I said. This was a position I had never tried before, and here was my novice boyfriend leading the way! "Only a couple of weeks after popping my cherry, and here I am riding your dick as if you were a deeply experienced fucker. You are a quick learner where buggery is concerned!" I bent forward and began to kiss all the parts of his upper body that I could reach. "I love you, my darling fag-boy. We continued moving smoothly. Every so often Tommy would hit my prostate and send shivers of delight through me. After what seemed no time at all, Tommy started to grunt and suddenly convulsively came, his hot load filling the rubber inside me. A little achy in the knees, I lifted myself off his steadily shrinking tool and fell to the bed beside him, whereupon he grasped my tool and began gently playing with it until I muttered, "Get on top of me! I'm ready to shoot!" He did as he was told and now it was only a matter of seconds before I was spraying jism over his belly and chest.

He kissed me tenderly and said, "You are the best thing that has happened to me since Sandro and Dom rescued me!"

There were now only two weeks until the beginning of term, and both of us had a backlog of vacation reading to catch up with. We had the choice of staying in the flat and living off frozen ready meals or takeaways, or going to Rockwell's Barn and being cooked for by Jon or Mrs Scarborough. Perhaps wisely, we elected to stay in Camford and planned a regular regime of reading, other academic work and a daily walk or quick trip to the Men's Fitness Centre. After two days, we got settled in and began to make good progress. There were no social activities to distract us, and our respective piles of books to read gradually diminished. We regulated our coffee-, lunch- and dinner-breaks strictly, and worked till 9 pm, after which we watched television or a DVD. One night a week we dined at the Sparrowhawk, but never had more than a half-pint of beer each.

In Tommy's first year, he had made enormous steps in his personal development. He had identified his sexuality, lost his virginity, increased his knowledge of classical languages and finally adjusted to the academic environment. He had developed increased confidence in speaking Italian, and most important of all, met and fallen in love with me, the man who hopes to play a major role in his future life. The continuation of the story will follow soon.