Ricardo

RICARDO by Andrej Koymasky (C) 2009 written on on June 2, 2002 translated by the author English text kindly revised by Randhir

USUAL DISCLAIMER

"RICARDO" is a gay story, with some parts containing graphic scenes of sex between males. So, if in your land, religion, family, opinion and so on this is not good for you, it will be better not to read this story. But if you really want, or because YOU don't care, or because you think you really want to read it, please be my welcomed guest.

Chapter 8 - DADO (EDO) AND VALERIO

He was the first to leave us. When I met him, he was twenty-four years old, five years younger than me. The same age that Valerio is now, the lover he had left after five years. No, I'm wrong, Valerio is twenty-six years old - in fact when they met he was sixteen, not fourteen.

Edoardo was a green grocer; he owned the shop that is now managed by Valerio. I met him in his shop. It was at mid-way between my home and the bus-stop so, when I returned home after work, I often stopped there to buy fruit and vegetables - the goods were of a good quality and the prices fair. Edoardo worked in the shop with his parents. It is rather strange that two people like them, his father quite ugly and his mother plump and dull, could create such a handsome and clever boy.

Well, to say that Dado was handsome is not totally right - he was just very agreeable. It was a pleasure looking at him. He was not the guy you look at and think - gosh, what a hunk! But you would never get tired looking at him. Even just before he died, in spite of his body being ravaged by his illness, his face retained a special quality - it was agreeable to look at.

I had just started my job as a lift technician so I could again leave my parents house and get myself an apartment, that as I said was not far from Dado's parents shop. When I stopped there to do my purchase, I always hoped it was Dado who would serve me. I liked his voice, his gait, and his quiet smile.

Yes, it's so - Dado was a quiet guy even when he discovered that he had become infected, he kept quiet.

It was only when he came to know that Valerio was also infected that I saw him troubled and worried for Valerio, "He's still so young!" he said me.

He was thirty-seven and Valerio twenty-one. He never asked himself if he passed the virus onto Valerio or the other way round. Even though he was a faithful guy, however Valerio at times indulged himself some casual affairs, even though he said he always took his precautions.

The casual affairs of Valerio didn't upset Dado, "He is so young." he went on to say. "And above all he loves me."

Yes it is true; Valerio really loved Dado and Dado him, in spite of all. Dado simply accepted Valerio as he was. When they became lovers Valerio was just sixteen, even though he. Looked three or four years older. In fact at first he said to Dado that he was twenty-years old. To be twenty, he seemed younger but surely not sixteen. He confessed the truth only when he came of age and could go to live with him.

I had known Dado for a year when his parents decided to leave him the shop and to retire to their village. He was twenty-five when he started to manage the shop by himself. Two or three times he hired some help but they lasted little time, as the job was heavy. It was necessary to be at the general market by six a.m. to buy the stock, to load the pick-up, go back to the shop, unload everything, settle it in the shop and be ready to open at eight o'clock. He then closed between one and three p.m. and he opened again until eight in the evening. He then had to resettle everything, load on the pick-up the empty crates, prepare the list for the morning after, and clean the shop. Afterwards one had not often still enough vigour to go to amuse himself. So his attendants, some just after a month, some after seven, eight months, dropped out.

We were talking about that, on a morning I didn't go to work as the offices were closed, I don't remember why . There were no customers so I stopped, like other times, to chat a little with him.

I asked him, "Why do you always hire only male attendants?"

I didn't ask him with a second thought, I simply was thinking that a woman attendant could be better for the women customers.

He looked at me in an odd way and said, "For two reasons, the first one is that I would like them to help me at the general market, and a woman will not be strong enough, and second, because I like males and can not stand females."

This time it was me who looked at him in an odd way, asking myself if he meant what I was thinking.

He understood what I was thinking and said with a smile, "Yes, I'm gay."

"And you tell me so?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "if you are an intelligent guy, nothing changes, and if something changes, you are not an intelligent guy. I want my friends to be open-minded, not wearing blinkers."

"Do you consider me a friend?" I asked.

"I would like to think so, therefore I told you."

I got the giggles.

He smiled and asked me, "Will you tell me what is so funny?"

"Just that I too am gay," I answered, "and I'm laughing out of mirth."

We became friends. If before I liked him, now I liked him more and more. He was twenty-five and I thirty-one. One evening he told he wanted me, and asked me if I would wait until he closed to go at his place. I accepted more than willingly, I can say even with enthusiasm.

His apartment was fine, original. When his parents left him shop and house, as he was the owner, he had all the walls between the rooms pulled down, besides those of the bathroom, and put at the place of the kitchen wall a glass wall one of them shifting at the side as a door. He so got an unique space of an irregular shape, divided in areas only by low furniture and bookshelves that gave a little the feeling of a furniture shop. It was anyway really agreeable. The bed was under a window, with a wall at one side and two wardrobes, wide and tall about two metres that made a kind of screen. It was a double bed without headboards, and under the window there was a long shelf with small drawers that served as a night table.

We started to make love in the shower - his body was surprisingly pleasurable, the clothes he normally wore didn't let me guess at such a well-built body. In bed Dado was quiet, as always, but not for that less hot and exciting. We made love for a long time and as we both didn't have any taboos, we felt very well together. He kept only an indirect lightning and a soft background music. He kissed in a delightful way. I remained to sleep with him.

For a year we met quite often and on the Saturdays we usually went to dance together. I was sleeping more and more often at his place even if he had to wake up at five thirty. He left me in bed and later I went to work directly from his home and I therefore moved some of my things to his place. After one year we decided to live together.

Anyway I didn't leave my apartment, a little for my family, a little because if I moved all my things into his apartment it would become something nearer to a storehouse than an apartment. And on the other side, I didn't feel like giving away all my things. But practically I was going to my apartment quite seldom, just to see if there was mail, to give air to the rooms, or to take something I needed.

We never swore to each other never-ending love. We were just two friends who liked each other and liked spending time together, and who enjoyed very much having sex with each other. And yet, in those three years, we were totally faithful to each other.

Then a Saturday night, back from the disco and after we made love, he told me that a boy we met at the disco had made a strong impression on him, and that he felt he wanted him and that he didn't know what to do. I had noticed it. I said to him that we weren't married, and that he was free to do what he desired. I said I could go back to my apartment.

"But it is not fair," he said; "I become infatuated with somebody and tell you to clear out? No it's not fair."

I told him it was not he who asked me to go away. I said that if he fell in love with that boy it was just fair I moved out, because I wanted him to be happy. He cried. It was the first time I saw him cry.

He didn't want me to move away, he said that if I could be patient, he wanted to think thoroughly about it. All right. But he was more and more in love with that boy. So, at the end, I told him I was moving back to my apartment. Without traumas, without tragedies, without grudges. I took away my belongings and resumed to live in my apartment. Anyway we were meeting every day as I passed his shop.

He started to live with that boy. For one year I saw he was happy. I then saw he was serene, then weirdÉ I knew him enough and I got him to open up to me. His boyfriend, he discovered, hustled. He had been in bed with many of our friends, for money. He loved him and wanted him to stop - what need did he have to hustle, when he would never make him miss anything? The boy answered that he loved hustling, he felt gratified - people paid just to have him in their bed, and paid him handsomely, he was a luxury hustler.

This situation dragged on for some months, but in the end I managed to persuade him to breakup with that boy who was making him lose his serenity. It was not worth it. It took me some weeks of brain washing, but I convinced him. So finally the boy went away. I tried to distract him, I succeeded quite well. On his agreeable face was back the smile.

Then, when he was thirty-two years old, a twenty year old boy walked into his shop looking for a job, so he said. The boy was Valerio. Dado had been left by his umpteenth assistant and needed a new one. The boy seemed serious and strong. Dado explained to him that it was a hard work, told him how much he was willing to pay him and at the end they agreed for a couple months probation.

Dado told him that anyway, even if he hired him, he would make him a legal contract only after at least one year, as he was fed up with doing all the hiring documents every few months - he wanted to be sure this time.

So, Valerio started to work with Dado. He was a hard worker, fast, precise and clever. Dado seemed happy with him and I too got a good impression. He was also skilled with the customers, especially with the housewives - he always remembered if they preferred firm or soft tomatoes, artichokes with a long stalk or without. Moreover they were happy when Valerio helped them to choose, and they bought more than they had planned leaving the shop happy and satisfied.

It was two years since Valerio started working at the shop, when Dado asked him if he could stay longer to help him to thoroughly clean the shop - he would pay for a taxi to take him back home. The boy accepted. But it took more time than foreseen.

When they finally left the shop. Valerio said, "Tomorrow morning at five thirty I should be ready to go with you to the general market and now it's very late. If I go home, I get really little time to sleep. Can't I stop at your place, tonight?"

Dado said, "Willingly, if you accept to sleep on the sofa, as I've just one bed."

They went to Dado's.

When Valerio saw the double bed he said, "There is enough room for both of us."

Dado was feeling rather attracted to the boy, therefore he was afraid that sleeping on the same bed would make it difficult to control himself, therefore said, "But during the night I kick out, you would not be able to sleepÉ"

Valerio laughed and said, "I've a very deep sleep, don't worry."

They went to bed together. They took a shower, first the boy than Dado, who saw him naked and thought he was more than desirable and that he should do a real self-control exercise not to surrender to the temptation and he didn't want to lose an assistant who was a precious help. When he got into the bed, the boy was already under the covers. Both were wearing only their underpants.

He switched off the light and bade him a good night - they both needed a good sleep, he said. But after a moment the boy's hand brushed his side. Dado thought it was a casual movement but got aroused and held back his breath. Valerio's hand moved to his chest and caressed it. Dado was almost trembling. Valerio's hand went to his belly.

Dado finally asked him in a low voice, "You want to do it?"

"YesÉ and you?"

"To die forÉ come hereÉ"

The boy took off his underpants in the dark and went to lie against Dado who felt he was already hard.

The boy sucked his nipple and said, "I desired this from the first day I came to work with you."

"Did you understand that I too desire you?" Dado asked, moved.

"Yes," Valerio said taking away Dado's underpants and intimately caressing him, "take me!"

When the day after I saw Dado, at once I understood that something beautiful had happened.

He took my arm and said, "Come, I'll offer you coffee." And so he told me about Valerio.

The boy, as he was living with an uncle, because his family lived in a small mountain village, and that uncle didn't have for him any affection and just tolerated him and would have just been glad to get rid of him, moved to live with Dado. The fact that Valerio was now Dado's boy didn't change at all his commitment at work; he rather seemed to be even more efficient than before.

Soon it was clear that both were in love with each other.

Dado said to him that he wanted to regularly hire him, but Valerio answered he preferred to wait out the year as they had agreed at the beginning, "Don't mix work and friendship, " he told him with a smile.

The fact is that Valerio had lied to him about his age, he was not yet of age and he didn't want Dado to discover it. Dado told me he never suspected the real age of the boy - also physically he really could pass for a twenty year old boy. Also his cock, he confided to me then, was that of an adult, surely not that of a boy!

When the year had elapsed, Valerio managed, always saying yes and always delaying from month to month, to let pass also the second year, until he finally was eighteen. When he confessed his lie, I too was with them - for his anniversary Dado had organised a little party at home and had invited me too to eat the cake with them during the lunchtime. I asked at my work to have an extra hour for lunch and went. I also brought a gift for Valerio.

Dado lit the twenty-two candles on the cake and brought it at the table, "Blow out them!" he said to Valerio with a wide smile.

The boy looked at him, looked at me and I felt he was a little tense. I though he was just emotional. He took out four candles from the cake.

He then said, "Good, now they are right."

"What's that? Are you lowering your age?" Dado asked, amused.

"No, today is my eighteenth birthday. I told you a lie, forgive me." Valerio said and looked at Dado so serious, so tense awaiting his reaction, that I at once understood he was not joking.

But not Dado. "All right, then I too am only thirty years old!" he merrily said, "I too lied to you."

"Valerio," I then suggested, "Show him you identity cardÉ"

Now Dado understood it was not a joke and asked me, "Did you already know?"

"No, but I understood he was serious."

"Why?" Dado asked him.

"You could have hired me even knowing I was sixteen, but would you have accepted me as your boy?"

"No, possibly not." Dado admitted.

"You would never have had sex with a minor, am I wrong?"

"No, of course."

"Therefore I had to tell you a lie, because I wanted to be with you, to be yours. I hope you are not too much angry with me, nowÉ"

Dado looked at him, and then gradually smiled, embraced and kissed him and said, "No, I love you too much. Now blow out the candles. But you have to make me a promise."

"Sure."

"You will never again tell me a lie, not even as small as this." he said putting near thumb and index leaving between them a space of less than a centimetre.

"Did you forgive me?"

"Make the promiseÉ"

"I promise!"

"Good. Happy birthday, my love."

Valerio said never again not even the smaller lie. A couple of years later Dado had to go to his village as his father was dying. He thought to close the shop, but Valerio said he could keep it open without problems even alone - in fact it was a year since he got the driving license, so he could go with the pick-up to the general market. Dado had to stay at his father's bedside for three weeks, and then there was the funeral, so he went back home about a month later. In all that period they could just telephone each other.

When Dado was back, the evening in bed, before making love, Valerio said him, "I went to the disco."

"You did very well."

"No, I didn't do well at all."

"Why?"

"Well, because IÉ" and confessed him that he had had sex with a boy he met at the disco.

He was an American boy of the same age, passing in town. Valerio told Dado that he was really sorry, that he would never have thought he was so weak. Dado forgave him and to show that they made love. Later Valerio told him that he loved him very much, and that he would never leave him.

"I don't ask you so much." Dado answered. "Never and always are two too big words."

"Then I hope to never leave you, is it better, this way?" the boy asked.

Yes, they were really a beautiful couple. Even though Valerio fell some more times even though not very often. During the ten years they lived together it could have happened three or four times. Considering that the first time happened about four years since they were together, and that the last was five years ago, it is three or four times in a couple of years.

Dado always told me everything; we always remained very close friends. He, Carlo, Silvia and my sister Clara are the four persons with whom there has always been a relation of total confidence. Well, of course now also Ricardo and, gradually also Picc". When Dado recounted to me the little adventures of Valerio, he always did it with a lenient smile, and always excused him.

Then, five years ago, Dado went to do a check up for some trivial problem, I don't even remember what was the reason so much insignificant it was. But he discovered he was HIV positive. I had been the first to know it. He called me at my work, he never did that before. It was pure luck that I was not around for service. He asked me when we could meet.

His voice tone was normal, so I said, "This evening when I came back from work, I'll stop at your shop."

"No, also Valerio will be there. I need to talk with you before."

The fact that he called me at work, that he wanted to talk with me before meeting Valerio, made me guess that something serious should have happened.

"Do you want me to ask for a leave, and meet now?" I asked him.

"If it's not a problemÉ" he answered lightly and, in spite of his quiet tone, I understood I guessed right.

I didn't have any difficulty to leave the work - it was the first time I asked for a leave.

Dado was waiting for me at the gardens near the theatre. Also the place was unusual. We met. He took me to sit on a bench.

"I've got it, I'm HIV positive, I'll die of AIDS." he quietly told me.

I looked at him, unbelieving. "Come on! Are you sure?"

"Yes, even though they want to do a second check. I have to stop making love with Valerio, I have to persuade him to leave me, I don't want to infect him."

In his words there was pain, even though his tone was apparently serene.

"You have first to be sure, and anywayÉ that's a decision he has to take, in case, not you for him." I told him. I was feeling a terrible impulse to cry, but I tried to control myself. "From when?" I asked him.

"It's impossible to know. Anyway at least six months or else they would not have found it, but possibly for years, who knows?"

"But how can you have got it, and by whom?"

"Who knows, as they can't say when I got it. And then, what's the importance of that? Who infected me surely didn't know."

"It could have been ValerioÉ his adventuresÉ" I said.

"It could be and it could not be. I rather I'm scared at the thought I can have infected himÉ"

"If it's not important if it has been him to infect you, it should not be important either the other way round." I said.

"Eh no! I love him. I wouldn't have harmed him, not even unwillingly, can't you understand?"

"Yes, I understand. I said a silly thing, didn't I?" I said and was feeling a knot in my throat and was not sure to be able not to cry.

No, not Dado! My sweet Dado, as good as gold! Why life was so unfair?

"I hope I didn't pass it to you." He said.

"I don't think, when we were together there wasn't still the AIDS."

"Don't be silly - we just didn't yet know there was. Do a check up please. And I have also to see if I'm able to find those with whom I had sex. Luckily they are few, but I don't know if I will be able toÉ"

We talked for a long time. He told me he wanted to register all his properties in Valerio's name.

"But if he leaves you?" I asked.

"It doesn't matter, and I would rather he left me. He has nothing, nobody, and my things to whom will go? He deserves them, to say the last. He is young, he has all his life in front of him."

"If he is notÉ" I started to say and bite my tongue.

Dado smiled and repeated, "He deserves them."

"But if you fell ill, you would need some money to care for yourself."

"Medical care is free, the doctor said. And money has to be used and is useful to live, not to die."

"It isn't said you will dieÉ"

"Sooner or later we all have to." Dado said.

"Yes, butÉ"

"But, nothing. I can die even before for some other cause, who knows? DeathÉ no, I'm not afraid of death, at least for the moment. When it will comeÉ I don't know if I will be scared or not."

I accompanied him to his shop, and told him I would wait for him at the nearby bar. After about an hour, he came.

"How did he take it?"

"We both cried. But he doesn't want to leave me, absolutely not, and he wants to go on making love with me, but I cannot."

"If you take precautionsÉ" I suggested.

"No, you can never be sure. If the condom breaksÉ No, I can't even if it would be difficult. I feel I would have to quarrel with him, tonight. Anyway, tomorrow morning he will go to do the analysis. He says he want to buy a book on AIDS to understand how we have to doÉ to live with it."

Dado asked me if I felt like talking with Valerio to persuade him to leave or at least not to have sex any more with him. I told him yes, but that it would be difficult do such speeches there in the bar.

"Then go at our home." Dado said.

We did so. Valerio was unyielding about both the points and when I insisted that he had at least not to make love with Dado, he stared at me and determinedly said, "I hope to be HIV positive I too! At least we can make love like before."

"Dado would like better you weren't as if you are HIV positive he could think he passed it to you."

"Or I to him, isn't it so?" Valerio said.

"Remorse is of no use for anybody." I said.

"Correct." he concluded. "I hope to be HIV positive, with all my heart, because I love himÉ even though I have not been able to be faithful to him."

"I know, and he too knows." I said.

His hope was fulfilled - he too was positive, and he was glad. Dado instead cried. He didn't cry for himself, he cried for Valerio. But they went on to make love - it helped both of them to face the lifeÉ or the death. Dado started at once his care with the AZT, his T4 were very low. For Valerio instead was not necessary to start assuming drugs, and after five years he still doesn't need them. In a first moment Dado's T4 increased, then lowered again. The doctors made him pass to the DDI, then AZT and DDI, but it seemed an unequal struggle.

"I feel all right, and it makes me an odd effect thinking that inside me they multiply in billions, and try to destroy me. And they are idiots, because when I will die, they all will also die." a day Dado told me when still the opportunistic infections didn't yet start.

For three years he seemed in good shape. Both were serene and more united than ever. Valerio didn't ever again have adventures. Dado registered all his properties in Valerio's name, and I had to persuade the boy to accept. Then, two years later also Dado's Mum died.

"I'm happy, at least she will not see me die, poor mum." He told me after the funeral.

A little after that, his first problem started. He thinned at eyesight. For one more year he managed to go on working in his shop, then gradually less. He passed his last months at the hospital. Valerio hired two boys at the shop to be able not to close it, but to remain near Dado - the money was running short.

Dado was at the death's door and yet he was serene - I never saw him angry with anybody and nothing, not even with the life. It was not fatalism, resignation, it wasÉ real, deep serenity.

"I lived well, I got much from life. I have Valerio at my side, what can I desire more? Be near him, when I have to go, he will suffer very much. He now his plucking up so much courage for me. He has nobody else in the world, you know it. Promise me you well be at his side." He gently said me as long as he was lucid, in the few moments when Valerio was not in the hospital room.

I spent almost my entire rest days in the hospital, also to give some rest to Valerio.

He died filled with sedatives to lessen his pain. His hollow face remained agreeable to be seen even in the pallor of death. We accompanied him to his last resting place, with all our friends. Then Valerio, when I accompanied him home, let go himself in my arms and cried.

"Why I don't still have nothing and he went away so quickly?" he asked me, and I didn't know what to say.

What can you say in front of grief, in front of death?

I persuaded Valerio to close the shop for mourning for a week and to come to my home.

The night we were sleeping embraced, and he was saying to me, "Good Lord, how much do I miss him! What will I do? What meaning has my life without him? He was everything to me!"

"As you were for him," I said him, "You made him happy, Valerio, and this is the important thing."

He managed to fall asleep. But at times I woke up hearing him cry, in the dead of the night. I pretended not to notice, to be still asleep, as he needed to give vent to his grief, not to control himself, even though he didn't try too much to control himself with me.

In those days Ricardo decided to leave us alone and went away with the excuse he had to do a journey, and instead he went to sleep at Carlo and Silvia home. I was grateful to him, I deeply appreciated that gesture. Ricardo has a gold heart. Also Picc" wanted to go elsewhere, but I explained he had to remain with us, or else Valerio would have understood Ricardo's lie, and I didn't want.

Valerio opened again the shop, resumed living at Dado's home, his home. He is recovering, very, very slowly. Work in the shop helps him. Dado is helping him from up there, I'm sure.

Ricardo, or Picc" or I, we often go to keep him company.

CONTINUES IN CHAPTER 9

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