logoMatt & Andrej Koymasky Home
an original story by Andrej Koymasky


RICARDO CHAPTER 9 - MY NEPHEW

It was the period when my relationship with Ricardo was beginning, but we still didn't express in words our love for each other, and he didn't still come to live with me. This was two years ago. I still had the feeling that I represented for Ricardo just an agreeable parenthesis to open from time to time. I was feeling that I was too old for him; I met him quite seldom, therefore at times I went to the park to look for an adventure to soothe my solitude and my desire.

Besides in that period, I was not at all a regular at the park, I never really liked to cruise, but for some months, about once a week, I started to attend it, at least partially gratified by those easy and mostly anonymous adventures.

I reached the park and slowly entered carefully looking around to single out a searching shadow like me, a soul in distress who wanted, for a few minutes or a few hours to share with me his desire. I liked that park because I heard that is was different to the other cruise places, there were no hustlers. I crossed a couple guys who did not interest me, and who were not interested in me. I went deeper into the park.

Almost at its centre there is a small lake and, near it, a kind of rotunda hidden between trees and bushes, with a kiosk that in day-time and in the good season sells coffee and drinks; the rotunda so becomes a kind of agreeable and fresh extension of the coffee shop. At night time, instead, it becomes a convenient meeting point, as the place is barely lit by a unique central lamp. You could come across other hunters or preys and cruise, and all around there were thick bushes where a couple can withdraw.

It was deserted. I thought that possibly it was too early, and checked my watch - it was eleven p.m. I decided to do another tour of the park and go back there later, when somebody entered the rotunda. From the silhouette and the gait it made me think it had to be a youth. I waited. He was walking towards me. He passed in front of me and I threw him a glance - he was rather appealing. He should be in his twenties, an expression of an outskirts hoodlum, but more of somebody who wants you to think he is a bully than of as real one. Very tight jeans, generously full under its fly. He threw me a serious glance and passed by me. I possibly was not his type, I thought with some regret. But the boy, after a few steps, stopped near the bushes, turned towards me staring at me.

I then drew near him and said, "Hi!"

"Hi!" he answered.

"Are you waiting for somebody?"

"No, not really..." he answered, and looked at me, serious.

I then asked him, "Do you feel like... doing something together?"

"What?" he asked.

"I like quite everything... besides the sado-maso. And you?"

"Do you take it in your mouth?" he asked.

Usually nobody uses that expression, I thought, but nodded.

"Come." he said and entered the bushes.

It was like if no places were good to him - I would have stopped already four or five times. He evidently wanted a more secluded place, possibly he didn't want to be seen, spied on, I thought, and followed him.

"Here." he said and stopped. He opened his jeans, took it out, "Come on, make me enjoy." he said, always serious.

I bent down and complied, hoping he will warm up a little - he possibly was just shy. I had just started to give him head when I heard a rustle. I looked and saw another big boy, with a black leather jacket, coming towards us with a cheeky smile on his face.

"He's just a friend, go on. He just wants to amuse himself a little." the boy I had followed said, seizing my head and trying to force me to restart my service.

That domineering gesture took me back of years, and upset me. I stood up and said, "I came here for you, not for him." and made as if to walk away.

But that boy seized my arm, and his friend who came near us the other arm and said, "Where do you think your going, shitty faggot?!"

I was about to violently react, when three more boys, who evidently were hidden there waiting for us, came out and the boy with the black leather jacket took out a knife pointing it at my throat.

One of the newcomers, who had to be their boss, went in front of me looking at me with scorn, "Hey, faggot! Piece of shit!" he said to me, then, addressing to the bait boy, asked him, "What does this one like to do?"

The other boy for the first time smiled, but it was a really unpleasnant smile. "Everything, that he says, except sado-maso."

"Ah, good, this time we got one who likes everything, boys! That's good, isn't it? But why not some sado-maso too, boys?" He then looked again at me and said, "As a starter you will make us five enjoy, then the others that are watching. That's good, isn't it? We will make our jizm come out also from your ears, filthy queer."

I said nothing, I understood that they were just looking for a pretext to bash me - I could feel it. They would possibly bash me all the same, I thought, anyway...

The boss said to me, "Undress, piece of shit. Naked!"

I didn't move.

"Undress or else we will tear your clothes into rags." he said taking out a jack knife and making it go off.

I started to slowly undress.

"Hurry up!" the boss barked at me. After a while he added, "Naked I said. Off with the socks too!" and laughed.

I couldn't do anything - they were five, armed, besides the others on watch around there.

When I was naked, they made me go on all fours. The gravel under my hands and knees was hurting. And without any gentleness, they fucked me, one in front and the other back.

A third one picked up my belt and started to lash my back, "Go on, slave, make them come!"

The first one, at my back, came, stood up and another took his place.

The boss said to that one who just finished, "Go to stand on for Nico."

Also the one who fucked me in the mouth came and the boss ordered another to take his place then said to that one to stand on for... Piccì! I told myself that who knows how many Piccìs there are in town, that it is not possible... while the new two were violently tossing on me and another went on to lash me on my back methodically and ferociously.

I then heard a voice, I knew even too well, shouting, "The police! The police!"

My assailers disappeared fast like lightning, leaving me there, naked, trembling, and aching.

But I felt above all shocked by three things - Piccì, his voice and, when I turned after the alarm shout, the glimpse of an arm with a gold bracelet that I knew even too well. I realized I was bleeding. I was beaten, aching, embittered, in despair - even Piccì! This was what ached me above all. I dressed up. I didn't want to meet the police in those conditions. I left the bushes going towards the rotunda - it was deserted. I left that place, crossed the park, and went back home.

My shirt and vest were soaked with blood. I needed to have a shower, then to dress my wounds in one way or another. The shower would burn, but I thought it was better to take it. The blood stained also my trousers and underpants. I was about going under the shower, when I heard the doorbell ring. Piccì! I thought at once. I quickly wore a bathrobe and went to open the door, feeling the blood pulsate at my temples with rage, and my stomach squeeze in pain.

I found in front of me Ricardo, beautiful, smiling, delightful. For a moment I felt just melting, and he did as entering and asked, "Am I disturbing you?"

"I didn't wait for you..." I answered, torn, but at once I decided I had to send him away - I didn't want him to see me in those conditions.

He looked at my bathrobe and hesitantly asked, "You aren't alone?"

"That's so." I lied, grateful he gave me the good excuse to send him away, but at the same time a thought blocked me, "but in this way I'm risking to lose him completely, and I don't want that".

I was thinking how to resolve the problem, when I saw his eyes widen, becoming round, and he said, pointing behind me, "What's that?"

I turned to look and saw the bundle of my vest and shirt I let in front of the bathroom door, stained with blood. And while I turned even though just a little, Ricardo saw the bloodstains that were wetting my bathrobe on my back.

He then entered decidedly and asked, "What's happening? Who do you have with you? What happened?"

He was troubled, alarmed, I understood that I couldn't do anything else but tell him the truth. "Come in, Ricardo. There is nobody with me." I said.

He shut the door behind him, lightly touching my bathrobe he asked again, "But what's happening? This is blood!"

"Yes, don't worry - nothing irreparable." and I told him everything, including my suspect-certainty that in the group of hoodlums alluring gay people, raping and bashing them, and surely also robbing them, there was also my favourite nephew.

Ricardo wanted to wash and to treat me and I had to let him do that. I felt grateful for his help and even more just for his presence. He was really gentle; he almost seemed like a professional nurse. He treated me, and then made me lay on my bed on my belly.

He sat near me and, caressing my arm, gently asked me, "What need do you have to go around for adventures? And mishaps?"

"I don't know." I answered, unable to tell him - because I miss you!

"A splendid man like you..." he resumed saying.

"Stop it." I said.

"No, it's not me who has to stop it, it's you!"

"I'm an adult man!" I answered back, not to say him - I need you!

He said, "No, you aren't an adult man - it's months that I'm waiting for you to decide to tell me that... what you have to tell me. You need me, and this night you are just showing me that I'm right."

"I need you?" I asked him, telling myself he was perfectly right, then asked him, "But you?"

"And I you, of course. But I don't go around looking for others. How silly you are - I love you, is it possible that you didn't understand it?"

"You love me?" I asked him feeling disbelief and exalted at once. "No, I didn't understand it... You never showed it to me..." I complained.

"I didn't want to be a burden to you, I didn't want to... jump on you. But why do you think I searched for a job here in town? To be nearer to you, to have more time with you. I have been wrong, I had to instead jump on you to make you realise this and thus making you avoid all of... of this. But enough is enough. From this night on I will be here with you. Tomorrow morning I will call your work place and tell them you are ill. We have to find a doctor to get a sick note. I will go and fetch my things to..." he said, then stopped, looked at me and asked, "but you agree, don't you?"

I did more than agree, I was exultant, but said, "What can you do with me? I'm so much older than you. What can I give you?"

He stared at me and asked, "Aren't you in love with me?"

"Yes, I am..."

"And don't you want me here with you?"

"It would be wonderful..."

"It will be wonderful!"

"Thank you."

But the question "Piccì" was gnawing at me, tormenting me. The day after I had some fever and Ricardo didn't want me to move. He called Marcello who came, visited me, tended me and thanked Ricardo for what he did for me, and wrote down a medical certificate for my job - intestinal congestion with fever; two weeks of sick leave.

Marcello was kind; when I explained to him what happened to me, he caressed me and said, "It's a little also the fault of us so-called right-minded straight people, who force you to meet each others in those dangerous places..."

The following evening I decided to go to my brother's house. I did not know how to face Piccì, what to say to him, but I was determined to face him. I had just to take him out of his home; I didn't want to kick up a row in front of his family not only not to reveal to my brother my homosexuality, but just because I wasn't sure I wanted his parents to know about their son, about the nice champion they had grown up! I was in part also blaming my brother and his contempt for the gay and other people. Who knows if Piccì was also implicated in the assaults that for a couple years were happening against the immigrants, especially the Arab ones?

Tana opened the door, and greeted me with her usual affection.

Trying to put on a merry voice, I asked, "Is Piccì home?"

"No, that boy just comes for supper, eats and hurries out again, you know how he is. Do you want to stay with us for supper?"

"No, thank you. I wanted to invite him out to supper..."

"Ha, you always spoil him! Well, I'm glad, I hope he will go out with you. Since yesterday he's been acting weird, I'm afraid he got into some trouble."

"Ah, really?" I asked and for the first time I did no attempt to minimize my concern as I had done in the past, I was now aware. "And why?" I asked her.

"I don't know, he's so nervous... If the doorbell rings he gives a start and looks as if... like if... like if he were afraid it could be the police!" she said, really worried.

"Well, I'll try to understand, even though I'm not sure I can." I promised her. I then said, "I'll go to wait for him in his room. When he comes don't tell him I'm here. I want to surprise him."

Tana smiled. "All right." she said.

I went to Piccì's room. And for the first time I went to rummage in his things. Nothing special, just the usual mess of a teenager. A box of condoms hidden inside a chocolate box, then a tin box. I opened it.

Three first-class watches, two expensive almost new valets, a silver cigarette case, four gold rings... I slipped everything into my pockets, closed the tin box and put it back to its place, empty. I then went to the wall, tore down the poster with the swastika, folded it up and also tucketed it into my pocket. I went on searching. I found a jack knife, identical to one with which I had been menaced just two nights before. I put into my pockets also it, and I then heard he was entering the apartment.

"Hi!" he shouted.

When he entered his room I was sitting on the edge of his bed, he would not see me when he opened the door. In fact he closed it, turned and went pale - if I still needed a proof, he just gave it to me.

"Hi, Piccì. I came to have a chat with you. I said to your mother I wanted to invite you out for supper. Come."

I didn't ask him, I ordered him. He remained there standing still, staring at me; he seemed a wax statue. I stood up and went towards the door.

"Come!" I ordered him again, passing in front of him.

"Yes..." he said with an almost imperceptible voice.

"We are going, Tana!" I shouted from the corridor.

From the kitchen she shouted back, "All right, amuse yourselves!"

"Yes, we will for sure amuse ourselves, this evening. Thank you!" I answered with a perverse pleasure.

When we were on the street, he asked me, "Were are we going?"

"To my place."

In fact I asked Ricardo to go to the movies so that I could be alone with my nephew.

"All right." Piccì said.

I didn't have my bike, so we took a taxi - I was in hurry. We didn't talk at all during the trip to my apartment and. He was staring at his hands.

"So, then?" I asked him when we sat in the living room.

He didn't look at me, he didn't answer.

"So, then?" I asked again in a higher tone.

Nothing.

"So, then!" I almost yelled, giving a punch on the table.

He gave a start and looked at me, scared.

I then noticed his gold armband, "Take it away!" I said, pointing at it.

He took it off and put it on the table. I let it there. My anger burst out, I seized him by his shirt and started to slap him.

"Do you regret that your turn didn't come? Do you? What would you have liked best, putting it in my mouth or in my arse? What? Do you want to try it now? But now you haven't your knife, have you?" I asked leaving him, took out of my pocket his knife and made it click open. Piercarlo shuddered but didn't move. "With this you all feel strong, don't you? Aren't you feeling strong? Aren't you feeling proud? Powerful? Macho? What are you feeling? But it wasn't you who came to lure me in your trap, right? You sent an accomplice, because you are a coward! You are a bastard and a coward!"

"I didn't want to... I didn't know that you... that they took you. Really. When I recognised you... gosh, I would have died, uncle, I swear! That's why I shouted out that the police had arrived, I didn't want them to hurt you!" he said and started to sob.

He didn't move me. On the contrary, I was feeling even more furious than before.

I took away my jacket, my shirt and made him look at my back all bandaged, then went to take my vest and shirt stained with blood and threw them to his face, "You didn't want them to hurt me, right? And this? And this?" I yelled.

"I didn't know it was you..."

"And what does that have to do with it, bastard? What has it to do? If I were another man, you could fuck his arse, you could thrash him to blood, rob him? What's the difference if it was I or another man? Where is the difference, fucking bastard? Should I thank you because you said there was the police? If you recognised me before, you would have said - not him, he's my uncle, let's bash another guy? Let him be bashed by another gang of gay bashers? I despise you, Piccì. I despise you! I don't hate you, no, you don't deserve either my hate!"

He sobbed and sobbed.

I pulled out all the things I took in his tin box, "And these, are they your hunting trophies? How many did you rape then rob? How many? How many?"

He didn't answer and I was seized again by fury, I tugged him, I beat him yelling ten, twenty times "How many?" until I left him and he fell onto the floor, shaken by sobs.

He moaned, "Forgive me, uncle, forgive me!"

"Forgive you? Do you think you can get off so cheaply? Oh no! No, no and no!"

"Punish me, anything... but forgive me..." he sobbed.

"No!" I answered, furious.

He took out his shirt, vest, pulled out his belt and gave it to me, "Thrash me as much as you want, thrash me!"

"And then?" I asked him, sarcastic, "And then? What should I do, then? Should I rape you? Should I come on your mouth? What?"

"All you want, uncle, but forgive me!"

I looked at him and felt cool down all my rage, sudden as it came before. I pitied him, commiserated him. I took him by his arm and made him sit again on the chair. His body was shaken by sobs. I sat also, and let his belt fall on the floor.

"What can we do, at this point?" I asked, dejected, "At this point the evil is done. Also if I threshed you to the blood, at this point the evil is done. How many did you thrash in that way?"

"I don't know..."

"You don't know! Did you lose the count? My god, how much disgusting you are, Piccì."

"No..." he moaned.

"Yes, Piccì, yes - disgusting! Do you think you are so much better than we faggots, to thrash us? After having fucked our arses before robbing us?"

"No..." he repeated shaking his head, without daring to look at me.

"Good Lord, I should report you, send you all to jail!"

"As you want, but forgive me!" he repeated.

"But why? Why? Why?" I asked him, feeling my heart torn apart for the enormity of what he had been doing, possibly for years!

"Because... because... because the faggot is me, uncle! Me, do you understand? Me!"

I looked at him nonplussed, "You, Piccì? No, I don't understand."

"I was seventeen, it happened two years ago. I was with my friends, the brother of our boss, a boy of sixteen... I liked him. I tried with him and he... he said to stop and told it to his brother. They seized me, immobilized me, and asked - are you a faggot? No, I said. Then demonstrate it... All started in that way, uncle..."

"And you, to avoid being thrashed, you thrashed people that had nothing to do with you? What a coward!" I said, "This doesn't justify you at all, don't you understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Are you sure you are gay?" I then asked him.

"Yes."

"Since when?"

"Three years."

"Did you ever have sex with a man?"

"Besides... never."

"And with women?" I asked him remembering his condoms box.

"Yes, with the gang. Afterwards... we all go to whores."

"And you?"

"I too. If I didn't it would be like saying I'm a faggot."

"But do you like it?"

"No."

"And fucking your victims?"

"No."

"So, then, why you do it?"

"I can't step back, at this point." he said, dejectedly.

"Why can't you? When you go out of here, then, you will go on?"

"No, no... but..."

"So, then, what do you think to do?"

"I don't know."

"If they didn't take me, you would have continued!" I said, embittered.

"I don't know... I wanted to stop, I swear, but didn't have the strength."

"And now?"

"Now... I fear I still haven't it."

"So, then?"

"Help me, uncle!"

"Shouldn't you have asked me for help some three years ago? Or two years ago? Isn't it too late, now?"

"Uncle, please..."

I felt like seeing again the Piccì little kid, I felt an unlimited tenderness and felt the impulse to embrace him, to cuddle him, but I didn't.

"Uncle..." he moaned again and for the first time he raised his head and looked in my eyes, and in his I saw a deep despair that made me feel pain.

"Fucking shit, aren't you aware of what you did?"

"Now I am..."

"Only because you took me?"

"Also before, a little, but... but I justified myself, tried to justify myself."

"Your mother told me that she had the feeling that yesterday you were waiting for the police."

"No, I was waiting for you. I knew you would come. I hoped you would come."

"Why didn't you come here? I too, that night, was waiting for you... but possibly you went to whores with your friends to celebrate... didn't you?"

"No, I went back home. I couldn't sleep..."

"I neither could sleep, that night, Piccì."

"I don't want to see them any more. I don't want to do it any more..."

"It's up to you." I said him.

"But three are my work mates and one is our neighbour... How can I do?"

"Piccì, do you want to grow up, once for all? To become a man? Assume your responsibilities, if you really want me to forgive and to esteem you again."

"I understand."

"Mend your ways, Piccì, as long as you have time!"

"I'll try, uncle."

"No! No I'll try - you have to change, fucking hell!" I exclaimed.

"I don't know if I'm able..."

"Then, never show up in front of me, until you determined to change. You raped me, Piccì, even if you didn't touch at me. I would like to forgive you, but it depends only on you."

He went back home. I put his knife, the gold armband, the poster, and the stolen goods in a box, waiting for the evolution of the question. I really hoped he could find the strength to draw out - if the violence I had undergone had at least that result, it would have been worth.

Ricardo came back home and I told him everything.

"He will come out of it, my love, you will see." he said, self-assuredly.

In bed we didn't make love - I was way too shattered. He caressed me until I fell asleep in his arms. Four days elapsed, during which I was feeling bad, not so much for my wounded back, but for Piccì, because I loved him too much. Then just as Ricardo left for work, I got a call and it was Tana.

"Last night Piercarlo was attacked by a gang of hoodlums. They beat him badly, they stole everything he had, and they even tore his clothes to pieces... he's now in the hospital! What world are we living in?" she said.

"Did he report them?" I asked.

"He says he doesn't know who they are, but of course he had to report the fact, as he got to the hospital. Sergio cannot leave the bar, I'm calling you from the hospital."

I asked her what hospital he was in and I flew there.

Tana was in the corridor. "The nurses are tending to him. They sent me out because I could not stop crying. Poor Piercarlo, how badly they hurt him!"

When we were allowed to go into the room, I was shocked - Piccì was all plasters, bandages even on one eye, and the little that we could see of his skin was dark bluish, The only open eye looked at me and I knew he was still asking me for forgiveness.

"Tana, go back home, I can stay here. Go home and prepare the meal for Sergio, I can stay here also all the day long."

"Yes, thank you. I will come later to pass the night..."

"It's not necessary, Mum..." Piccì groused.

Tana went away; I took a chair and sat at his bedside. I took his hand under the sheet and felt that his hand was also bandaged.

"Can you talk?" I asked him.

"Yes, uncle."

"You can tell me the truth - what happened?"

He went to look for his friends and told them he would never again go with them. They asked him why, they said he couldn't step back if he wasn't a faggot. And then he said them, "But I am a faggot and don't want to be part of your dirty, filthy games any more." They then seized him, dragged him into the garage of one of them, and all eight of them raped him for hours, then bashed him badly as they did with the others, then threw him onto the street while telling him that if he reported them, they would take revenge on his family. "Your old man's bar will be the first to blow in air." they told him. Therefore he said he didn't know who attacked him, and neither that he had been raped.

"Now that I underwent it, uncle, I understand what I did, I really understand. And I'm so sorry, and what they did to me should have been multiplied for all the times I did it to the others..." he said, and cried.

I caressed him.

"Will you forgive me, uncle?" he begged me.

How not to forgive him? But I said, "You have to do one more thing - you have to report them. Even if doing so you will be involved. As clearly they will tell you were one of them. You have to tell the whole truth to your father, and then report them. I know it will be hard, but I think you have to do so. You have to stop them, to make them all pay."

"Yes, uncle, if you want. But stay near me, please."

"Of course, Piccì, now more than ever. You are always my favourite nephew." I whispered, moved.

He cried, but this time quietly, in relief.

I went to see Stefano to ask him if he knew a good lawyer for my nephew, and told him what happened. I told him I was ready to spend all my savings. He directly called a lawyer, one of his gay friends, a rather famous one who said he was happy to take care of my nephew's case. And, after examining the question and as it was Stefano who had asked him, he told me I would have to pay only for the procedural expenses, as he would not emit the note of counsel's fees.

When Sergio and Tana came to know the truth about Piccì, they were deeply shocked.

As I had guessed, my brother Sergio said to his son, "I love you; if you need me you have just to ask... but look for a place for yourself."

Fatherly love! Tana wasn't able to change his mind. I told Piccì not to worry - he could come to live with me, if my lover agreed. Differently I would help him to find another place. Ricardo agreed at once.

Piccì reported all his mates, and handed over to the police all the stolen goods I had found in his room. All the boys were sentenced, also because I and several other victims, as they read the news on the media, came to testify against them. But thanks to his lawyer Piccì, as he was a first offender, and helped the justice to catch all the others, was the only one who got probation, and didn't do even a single day of prison, not even before the trial, as he was in the hospital. The lawyer used also his clinical records to have the justice scales bend in his favour.

After the trial Piccì said to me, "I went out of it even too easily, uncle. Thank you."

It took almost two months to have all the signs of the fierce bashing he had undergone to disappear.

We settled Piccì in our living room on a sofa bed. He changed his work as his work-mates despised him for what he did. We are well with Piccì with us, and we are planning to find a bigger apartment. Piccì and Ricardo became great friends. My nephew is shyly starting to live his sexuality in a serene way.

Ah - and I gave back to Piccì the gold armband.


Previous page
back
Cover
ToC
8thShelf

shelf

Next page
next


navigation map
recommend
corner
corner
If you can't use the map, use these links.
HALL Lounge Livingroom Memorial
Our Bedroom Guestroom Library Workshop
Links Awards Map
corner
corner


© Matt & Andrej Koymasky, 2015