The unfair pact.
(December 18, 1998).
- Christmas is coming soon, Gianni: what will you do?
- What a question, little one! I'll stay home with Massimiliano. Christmas is spent with family.
The answer was obvious: I was stupid for asking. I'm not saying anything.
- Who will you spend it with? Your little one and his mom? Or your parents?
I'm silent for a few more seconds before deciding to answer.
Neither one nor the other, I think. I think I'll spend it with Carlos and Mayra this year: they're my real family, the only ones I feel truly comfortable with. Even Bella, my big dog, feels the same way.
"Yes, it's true you have a female dog. I can't stand females, but maybe it's different with a dog. You really like animals, huh? Sure, you're capable of taking care of the little creatures entrusted to you: not like me, who strangles them."
- Please, Gianni, let's not touch on this subject: I have some very painful traumas in this regard.
"Sorry love, I didn't mean to make you feel bad. You know I once plucked a turkey alive at my grandmother's house? It would have been fine, if it hadn't been for the winter. But then I knitted him a turtleneck sweater."
What a nice thought, Gianni.
Why this sour and gruff tone? What's wrong?
- Nothing.
- What, nothing?
- Nothing, really. It's just that...
- That?
"It's just that we're not really together, Gianni! We make love one-sidedly, I can't even see you naked, you spend Christmas with whoever you want!…"
Whoever I want??! He's my partner!
I know he's your partner, damn it!!! The question is, what am I?!? Tell me, what am I to you??? Practically nothing, some kind of plaything, I don't know. It's only because I'm an idiot that I like making love to you like that. I think I'm communicating who knows what, but I'm only communicating with myself. I might as well jerk off.
- Baby, forgive me: you're talking a lot of bullshit. Some pretty offensive, too.
- Maybe, Gianni, but try every now and then to understand how I feel.
Gianni sits up in bed.
"Emmanuel," he begins, unusually calling me by my first name, "I have to be very careful about what I do. I can't afford certain mistakes, and you can't expect me to make them."
The harshness of his tone alarms me: suddenly I feel his body tense, his muscles hardened; I take his hand.
What do you mean? , I ask him.
"If you cross that threshold, I'll have to do without you. Yes, you understood correctly: I'll have to do it, even if it costs me my life."
Those words, and the tone in which he said them, hit me like a punch in the gut. I want to take back everything I said.
What threshold, Gianni? Tell me, please: I don't understand. Tell me what I shouldn't do and I won't do it.
He remains in a dark silence that worries me.
"Sorry," I tell him, "just pretend I didn't say anything to you. It was childishness, as you call it."
He shakes his head.
- No, it wasn't childishness: you told the truth. And now you're forcing me to set things straight for you once and for all.
- Oh no, Gianni, leave it alone: really, it's okay like this.
- No, darling, it's no longer okay at this point. You have to listen to me.
I resign myself to listening, calling myself an idiot a thousand times.
- Baby, I'm having an impotence crisis.
Impotence crisis??!? But why?
- Because I want you, but I can't have sex with you. The result is that I've become impotent.
I look at him in shock.
- I… I don't understand, Gianni.
- And yet it's easy to understand: I've been with a man and I've loved this man for many years. He was and still is the great love of my life, and I am the great love of his. We've had mutual betrayals, but never anything serious. Then you came along.
I feel a lump in my throat.
- I understand, Gianni. I'm sorry.
"So sex for me is a finished experience: I can't experience pleasure with anyone else anymore, but if I experienced it with you, I'd explode into a thousand pieces. I know I'd enjoy it too much. I have horrible fantasies: in my dreams, I experience you as male and female, I take you in every way, almost always brutally and violently, and every time I feel like I'm going crazy. I can't experience pleasure except in dreams, and it's such an intense pleasure that it wakes me up. I lie there staring into the darkness with my heart in my throat, then I try to fall back asleep so I can meet you again in my dreams and do everything I can't do to you while awake."
"I understand, Gianni," I repeat hastily, trying to interrupt the series of images he's projecting with his eyes fixed on the opposite wall. But Gianni isn't listening.
(The sound of a cuckoo clock is heard.)
- But… this cuckoo clock?
- It belonged to my grandfather. I found it in the cellar and had it restored. Do you like it?
- Yeah, I mean... pretty much. I mean, it's nice, but it seems to chime the hours randomly, doesn't it?
"Yes, my love: that's the beauty of him! He doesn't care what time it is; he just goes by feeling. If he feels it's seven, he rings seven. And then he constantly changes the tone, almost never repeating the same sound. Don't you think we should be like that too?"
- Yes, maybe... Maybe you're right. It's certainly a little annoying, though.
- No, puppy, not annoying at all: he keeps us company.
- Okay, let's go for the company…
If I gave in to my temptations with you, the guilt would be devastating, unbearable. It already is, because to cope, I have to close my eyes and imagine being with you. I wouldn't know how to explain my impotence to my lifelong partner; I don't want to offend or hurt him. So, to be able to make love with him, I imagine being with you. Do you understand what that means?
Yes, of course I understand, I repeat, mortified.
Gianni inhales, but can't exhale: he holds his breath. Then he continues.
So now listen to me carefully, Emmanuel: I can't live like this.
A stiletto pierces my heart, but I answer him calmly.
Do you want me to leave?
"No. In any case, you wouldn't leave my mind. The only moments I'm at peace are when I'm awake with you beside me and I can't do what I want to do to you. In person, so to speak, you manage to inspire an angelic calm in me, and I feel even less guilty because I physically feel nothing, I don't even let you touch me."
Now it's all clear to me, Gianni: the only way we can have sex is this, if we really have to.
If we really have to? Does making love to me make you that disgusted?
I sigh in resignation: is it possible that I can never find the right words with him?
Gianni, you know I love it. It's just that sex makes everything so complicated between us that it'd be better to do without it: you'd be more relaxed, and I'd feel better, seeing you relaxed. It worries me to see you like this: how do you think I can let myself go, knowing it has this effect on you?
It doesn't affect me at all. In fact, I told you: it calms me down to see you in those moments. It's like watching a great movie without being personally involved, if you get the idea.
Yes, you captured it perfectly. Thank you for being so honest.
- Wait before you thank me.
-What else is there?
If you want us to be together, you have to accept my pacts.
What pacts?
"I can't let you fill me up that much, Emmanuel. Three-quarters of me needs to be filled by my man. So I can only reserve a quarter for you at most."
- Yes, Gianni, I already knew that. Let's just say that quarter you're reserving for me is very satisfying, so that's fine.
That's not all, little one. What I'm proposing to you is an unfair deal: you'll never have me completely, but I want you all to myself.
All to yourself in what sense?
I can't stand the thought of you sleeping with someone else, okay? I'd go crazy just thinking about it. I'd rather end the relationship and accept the consequences: I'll die of grief, but it's better than torturing myself with doubt.
I laugh.
"But Gianni, you don't have to torture yourself: I'm faithful to you. Honestly, I don't want to sleep with anyone else at all. I just don't want to, I don't have to make any effort to achieve it."
He strokes my hair with a little emotion.
You are only mine.
At this point I'll allow myself a hint of irony:
Is that why you wanted to send me to bed with Aaron?
"Darling," he replies dryly, "I thought you'd figured it out: sending you to bed with Aaron was a way to get rid of you. If you'd done that, I'd never want to see you again. It was a desperate but suicidal move: at the time, I hadn't yet realized I couldn't do without you. And it was terrible for me to realize. You wouldn't believe how terrible it was."
His forehead is beaded with sweat. I shake him affectionately.
Gianni... , hey, Gianni... Come out of that bad dream: I'm here... with you...
He presses my hand without saying anything.
"But," I continue with a smile, "I can't give you all of myself. Let's say three-quarters: still better than the quarter you give me."
- Three quarters? Why only three quarters?
- Because in the other quarter I have to fit my loved ones, my son, my friends, my dog, my work at the nursery... I have a life too, Gianni: I hope that's clear to you and that you're willing to accept it.
- Sure, love. As long as…
I complete his sentence:
- As long as I don't want sexual relationships to be included.
No, you don't understand; not just sexual relationships, but also romantic ones. It's not fair if you fall in love and don't have sex: I know you, I know you can do it. That's also cheating, perhaps worse than sexual betrayal.
He turns to look at me with a very black light in his eyes.
Baby, I'm deathly jealous of you, you know that?
Yeah, I think I figured it out, I don't know why... But you don't have to worry: I already told you, I'm a faithful guy.
"But how can you be faithful to someone who isn't faithful to you? And mind you, I'm not saying I won't be faithful to you physically, but not morally or emotionally either: I can't and mustn't be faithful to you, do you understand? You're not my man. And that's what makes the pact absolutely unfair."
I think about it for a few seconds.
- Yes, I understand.
"Massimiliano mustn't know anything about this, he mustn't suffer. My poor old love mustn't suffer because of me. Besides, he's not been feeling very well lately, and I want to make him feel as calm as possible."
- Gianni, that's fair. If you want, we can break up.
Break up? Are you crazy?
Don't get me wrong: it'll hurt a lot, but I'll get over it if it makes you feel better. For me, it's enough that we see each other: we can still meet, we can take pictures together, we can be friends, we can try to…
He covers my mouth with his hand.
No. I don't want to. I can't do without you. God knows I've tried, but I can't.
I understand the difference between us: without him I suffer, without me he dies. For Gianni, I represent something different from the feelings, however sincere and profound, I have for him: I am a primary need, an existential necessity, something like eating and sleeping; what Epicurus would call a "natural and necessary pleasure," were it not for the fact that it is actually a pathological need. Furthermore, I am also something akin to a son, the son he will never have and whom he misses so much, his "little marmot": and this also gives our relationship a certain incestuousness.
I imagine all this should scare me, but instead I feel calm, because I truly have no desire to betray him: everything else in my little universe has nothing to do with the erotic sphere, not even with Antonia anymore, so I can allow myself to fully experience my affections without colliding with the dimension he lives in. In my daily life, I'm perfectly at peace, and I'm sorry he isn't.
Gianni continues:
- In short, I'm asking you to be faithful to me while I'll be unfaithful to you. Or if you prefer, you'll be mine while I won't be yours. I'll never be yours, because I belong to someone else, is that clear?
- Yes, that's clear to me.
- And you understand that this isn't right?
- Of course I understand.
(The sound of the cuckoo clock is heard again.)
- Gianni, though, this fucking cuckoo... I mean, we're having a serious conversation...
And he's doing his best to lighten the mood, sweetheart: we should thank him. So what's your response?