23	TAKE A KING AND THRASH HIM

The first great loves have also been examples for me as well. All the unconsummated ones, I mean.

Between the fourth and fifth grades in middle school, I desperately desired a classmate named Renzo. I went to Rome with him during the holy year in 1950. We were fourteen. We slept at Santa Maria where the cardinals live now, in cots separated by curtains. We talked all night, telling each other we were in love with the same little girl, but male friendship came first, so it was “I leave her to you.” “No, I leave her to you.”

In fact, it was him I wanted. The thought of kissing him all over drove me crazy. I suffered the torments of inferno. I admired him a lot too; he was beautiful, rich, good at sports; he could jump higher than me. I saw him recently and I said to him, “Do you realize I have always been in love with you?” And he said, “No, I’ve never had that problem.” What kind of answer is that? I’ve never understood it. Who knows, maybe if I had been more daring it would have been a great love.

Alberto was a great climber; he later became a director of the Italian Alpine Club.

He had a beautiful Moto Guzzi on which we used to go to monarchist meetings singing a song in dialect, “Prendere un re e bastonarlo” (Take a king and thrash him). We would glide through these meetings singing and then take off, because otherwise they would have beaten us up.

I went to the mountains with him, to the shelter at Grandes Jorasses. Him I was tempted to seduce, we two were alone there, beneath the Jorasses. I had brought Aristotle’s Poetics because I was working on my thesis, and Alberto had a little book of Leopardi’s poetry, one of those little pocket editions. There were mice running around at night, I could easily have jumped into bed with him from fear. I never had the courage to do it.

He joked about it, called me Tadzio, the beautiful boy from Death in Venice. Why? I don’t know, never will.

I tried once with Sergio, also in the mountains, also without getting anywhere, one night when we were sleeping in the same sleeping bag.

Sergio and Alberto . . . I call them my two friends stronger than me. They were really presences, I don’t know how else to put it.

One night when a hustler threatened to blackmail me, taking down my license plate and saying he was going to phone me at home, it was those two I called. Right away they said: let’s go find that son of a bitch and beat him black and blue, the bastard.