I remember that night well, the night I turned 21. I had just come home from one of the coolest birthday parties ever. I had booked a night at a disco with a pool. Needless to say, before midnight I had ended up in the water with half of my guests, and the new CK clothes my mom had decided to give me were all ruined from too much exposure to chlorine.
I loaded Telépopmusic’s “Breathe” onto my CD player and started thinking about life going by, four o’clock in the morning, what I had done and what I wanted to do and be. And I remember very well that there was that little voice, deep down … that I didn’t want to listen to and that I said to myself, “no to this thing I will never give space and it will never be part of me” just ignore it and I will be like everybody else.
At that time I was dating more than a few girls in college, yet I felt something was wrong, I was watching all the people close to me starting relationships, kissing and being happy. I somehow got off to a good start, at least at that time, but then when things started to get serious, I would run away, and in fact … no … I would just run away.
In life I always had the strange feeling that I was a bit of an observer. I would see others forming bonds and being happy, feeling a bit like the observer in Renoir’s “Dance in the Country” painting. Have you ever found yourself looking at a happy couple and thinking, “I wonder when it will be my turn?” or “I wonder what that feels like?” here … my life in those years could be told in this way, an eternal waiting to become the protagonists of one’s own life. Let’s not get it wrong, I am outgoing and I have always bonded a lot with people, I have been a class representative, an institute representative, founded clubs, been a PR person, yet (now I know) it was as if I didn’t really know myself.
So, we were saying… Around the age of 25 I stopped dating girls in college. I had realized that there was something that wasn’t for me… I told myself that if things weren’t working out, it was only because I hadn’t met “the one” yet. But the problem was me, I was the product of years of Catholic beliefs, conservative relatives and Venetian sloth. For those who don’t know, Veneto is a bit like Italy’s Texas, densely populated and full of rather petty people who obviously think they are intelligent by speaking in platitudes or raising their voices to assert their own, sterile, opinion-in short, the worst place to be “different.”
Between 25 and 30, I started working and began to explore Italy and the world. I remember writing a lot, in blogs, and meeting people very easily, everywhere. I was discovering things about myself, in others, and by writing I was putting thoughts together. I noticed that my attentions fell much more often on the sculpted male bodies, instead of the magnificent female forms. I was a kind of ascetic, hungry for curiosity, but chaste and pure in soul.
Then 30 years marked a turning point for me (fortunately). I felt that I had to shake up my career and my life and decided to go and live in Dubai (without knowing anyone and without a job) and this experience, which experienced from the inside seemed difficult and complex to tolerate, was instead a real godsend. Not knowing anyone, I soon discovered that in Dubai I was completely free to do and be whoever I wanted.
Yes, in Dubai, where homosexuality is illegal, I discovered who I was, what I wanted, and what I liked. But this deserves a separate article because really the 4 Dubai years represent a rebirth and a strong change that deserves its own space.
Sometimes I wonder who I would be today if it had not been for the 4 years I spent in Dubai.
There I was able to love, date who I wanted, met people from all over the world, even fucked people from all over the world, and miraculously came out STD-free….
The point, however, is another. It is that back in Veneto I find myself again in contact with a lot of people who are “hiding.” Who I understand why they are hiding but who only continue to ruin their lives while trying in every way to deprive themselves of the happiness that each of us deserves in order to safeguard a fairly worthless reputation.
Recently, the moment of greatest sadness I felt was when I heard a person I loved a world of love “you know, I fell in love with this guy, also like me he is Bisexual.” I thought about his list of 120 male contacts (and growing) within the dating portal through which we got acquainted and got yet another proof that common morality made it more socially acceptable for him to have an ongoing relationship with another bisexual man (the other one is also gay eh! don’t get confused) rather than with me, openly gay. The reasons then may have been other, I don’t doubt, and he probably didn’t like me enough, but the point is that there are those who wallow in these silly labels, and that we are all chained in a dumb game that is made up of lust and mismanaged fears.
My mom after I told her I wasn’t really straight, she said, “you handled all this on your own, that can’t have been easy!” : (
Eh no, it isn’t. Sometimes I wish I had handled it better, I wish I had been less conditioned by my surroundings, I wish I had been more confident.
And at the same time, I wonder who will ever give me back the time spent, all those tiring years spent to understand who I was, who will be able to give back the time to all those people who still today, one step away from love, one step away from happiness, give up, because of the fear of being judged by a society that is still not very mature, and in the meantime I continue to feel some pity, for all those who still hide, but try, try to come out and become someone else.
I then turn to those today who still have not quite figured out how to “break free” from all those constraints that life gives us (because it is true, we are human and we love to be in groups, but we must also and first of all understand who we are!).
If there is a little inkling, a tiny possibility, a tiny doubt that dwells in you that you like people of the same sex, know that it is not something you can delegate to someone, that there is no escaping from this, sooner or later life asks you to come to terms with who you have been, and that the best advice I can give you, from someone who has been through it, is that the time that goes by will not give it back to you, so make good use of the time you have, use it for you, to go deep, because in the end, when you come out of it, the only anger you will feel will be for all the time you wasted watching others be happy.
