Typography Note: Sentences in [brackets] represent the narrator's unspoken thoughts.
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http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html ----------------------------------- Coming of Age in Texas: Chapter 25: Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!
For Troy's Italian lesson on Thursday, we toured Duomo di Milano, Milan Cathedral, the largest cathedral in Italy and the fifth largest in the world. Nearly 600 years in the making, it is a masterpiece of Gothic architecture.
Thursday afternoon, I just went back to the hotel to work out and rest while Troy had his music lessons at the academy.
On Friday, the Italian lesson had a different venue. We took a cruise along Navigli Lombardi, Milan's 12th century canal, and took a leisurely stroll back to the hotel. Troy's lesson focused on commerce and the various items we saw for sale along the way.
That evening, Troy and I dressed in our new leather outfits. He wore the chaps with the black leather brief, vest (unbuttoned, no shirt), cuffs, and cowboy hat. I wore the tight black leather pants (commando), the sheer black T-shirt, and armbands. And, of course, we both wore our black leather boots. I hung a blue handkerchief from my left rear pocket to signal that I was cruising for hot Italian culo, and Troy draped one from the D- ring on his right side, indicating that he was cruising for cazzo.
To say that I was self-conscious walking through the hotel lobby and out to the street would be a humongous understatement, but it was Pride Weekend, which meant that the streets were filled with people dressed much more brazenly than we were. There were men in drag, men in dog collars being led around on leashes, and guys walking around in nothing but their underwear, much of which left hardly anything to the imagination. And whereas Troy wore briefs under his chaps, we saw a couple of guys wearing chaps with no briefs at all, only cod pieces, thus exposing their bare butts. Troy's briefs had a zipper in the back (for easy access), but at least his butt crack was covered—for the time being anyway.
When we arrived at the subway stop we were directed to, The Flirt met us, handed me the ID he had procured for me, and escorted us to the bar, where we met up with the other Outlaws. Just as Little Cherry had predicted, the doormen barely even glanced at our IDs. They just waved us on through.
Dante's was packed like a can of sardines—sardines in spawning season. It was impossible to go anywhere without getting groped, but I guess that's the idea. There was also no shortage of men offering to buy us drinks.
Dirty Boy led us like a teacher leading a class of first-graders, hand in hand, to the back of the bar, where we found a stairway leading down to a basement, and over the stairway was painted a sign that read l'Inferno. OK, I finally got it: Dante's Inferno. Were we about to descend into the Nine Circles of Hell? I didn't have to wait long for an answer.
It was almost pitch black when we entered the Inferno, but once our eyes adjusted, we could make out what was around us—barely. As we walked through the maze of narrow corridors, I got the feeling that I was losing my compatriots one by one. Feeling my way through, I realized that there were corridors off of corridors leading to all kinds of mysterious places.
Some of those places were rooms with men sitting on benches masturbating as they watched porn on TV—masturbating either themselves or someone else. Some rooms had walls with what I came to learn were called glory holes. Other rooms contained cushioned platforms capable of accommodating anywhere from two to ten men. Another room housed a crux decussata (St. Andrew's Cross), cages, and an array of BDSM furniture and gear, most of which I had never seen or heard of before. And a couple of rooms contained contraptions that I now know as slings.
As I fumbled my way through the darkness, I found myself constantly being groped, intentionally or unintentionally, just as I inevitably groped other men. Eventually, I came to a room with a large wooden frame with padded tops, not altogether dissimilar to some of the padded exercise equipment in gyms. Men bent over the padded beams with their asses up in the air, inviting pedestrians to take a stab at them. It appeared that about half of them had docked while the other half were still waiting for their ships to come in.
Suddenly, I was approached by one big hairy stud in biker's gear who backed me up against a wall. Actually, he backed me up against another big hairy stud with his back to the wall. "Sandwich?" whispered the man behind me into my ear as he massaged my crotch. "No grazie," I replied, as The Outlaws had taught me. I was certainly not averse to playing, but before I did that, I wanted to get my bearings.
I decided to try to retrace my steps and see if I could find Troy and The Outlaws. I found Dirty Boy naked with half a dozen other naked men on one of the padded platforms. The Flirt was sandwiched between the two guys who had propositioned me. I saw Dude entering the BDSM dungeon, but I didn't hang around to see if he was the master or the slave. And Little Cherry was handcuffed to a chair and getting bathed in an avalanche of cum. And Troy? I finally found him in one of the slings with men lined up to take their turns fucking him.
"Does it bother you seeing your boyfriend getting fucked by so many other guys?" a man next to me asked. "How do you know he's my boyfriend?" I asked.
"I saw you together at the dance club," he replied. "So, does it bother you?"
"Not at all," I answered. "I'm just glad to see him enjoying it. As long as he's happy, I'm happy."
Satisfied that all of my buddies were accounted for, I decided to go back to the room with the glory holes to see how much cum I could accumulate in one night. After swallowing seven loads, I decided to move along in search of an ass to park my dick in. I crossed paths once again with the two hairy studs who wanted to sandwich me. I tried to explain to them that I wanted to lie naked between their hairy muscled bodies and that I would like to fuck one or both of them, but that I was not a bottom and didn't want to get fucked myself.
Stud #1 bent over the padded frame and pulled down his leather pants. I loved feeling his hairy chest with my hands wrapped around him, and I enjoyed the feel of stud #2 rubbing his hairy chest against my back as I entered the other guy. He wrapped his arms around me and rubbed my chest, playing with my nipples. As I continued to pound stud #1, stud #2 began rubbing my butt cheeks, even slipping his hands beneath the leather to rub my butt raw. Before I knew it, he had one finger stroking my butt crack and teasing my ass lips.
I had never been anything but a top, but I had to admit to myself that the finger probing felt pretty damn good. I had occasionally fantasized about the possibility of taking a dick up my ass when the time, place, and person were right, but this just wasn't either. So, when I felt his dick rubbing against my ass, I stopped him, pulled out of stud #1, and directed stud #2 to take my place in his hole. He did so reluctantly, but not angrily. I moved around behind him and began rubbing my cock against his hole, as he had done with me, only he didn't try to stop me.
I pushed my dick into him and began pumping him as he pumped stud #1. Yeah, we ended up sandwiching, but I didn't end up in the middle as they had hoped. When the three of us came, I licked up as much of the glory juice as I could, and we locked in a three-way cum kiss.
Then I remembered that Little Cherry was getting bathed in cum, so I stumbled my way around until I found that room again, and he was still there with a fresh group of guys unloading on him. I made my way through the crowd, got down on my knees, and began slurping up as much of the cum as I could.
Witnessing this, another hairy muscular stud who looked to be in his late 30s or early 40s knelt on the other side and mimicked my actions. Every so often, we leaned across in front of Little Cherry to swap cum in deep French kisses and to take turns feeding some to Little Cherry, who devoured it like it was his last meal. A third guy got down on the floor to suck on my growing dick, occasionally catching a drop of cum as it dribbled from my mouth or dripped off my chin. When I unloaded in his mouth, he got up off the floor to share some of it with me and some with Little Cherry. We ended up in a four- way cum relay.
When we entered The Inferno, we had agreed that we would meet back at the bar upstairs in two hours. I had lost all track of time, as I'm sure the others had too, but I thought it best to drag myself back upstairs to see if any of the guys were there. Everyone was there except Little Cherry, who, of course, was still handcuffed to that chair. I offered to go get him, but Dude said I should just leave him. "He's in paradiso," he assured me.
"Before we leave," said Dirty Boy, "everyone check to make sure you've got everything you came in with." We all inspected each other and everything seemed to be in order...except...one thing. My handkerchief was missing. Oh, well.
On Saturday, central Milan was a beehive of activity. An estimated 200,000 people poured into the city from all over the country and from every corner of the world. The big Pride Parade was not scheduled to begin until 4:00 p.m., so Troy and I slept late and had The Outlaws meet us at our hotel at 3:00, which gave us plenty of time to find a good spot along the parade route.
Milan's Gay Pride Parade is much like those in other major cities around the world except that Milan is the fashion capital of the world, and that heritage is obvious in the parade. All of the big fashion houses sponsored floats, exhibits, or events, and the parade featured some of the best-dressed drag queens ever.
The parade lasted a good two hours, just in time for an early dinner—early by Milanese standards anyway. So, we found a nice café with a rainbow flag flying over the door and enjoyed a leisurely dinner, after which we navigated the streets, looking for anything interesting, and there was plenty of that.
Gay bars that normally didn't open until the evening were still going full blast from the night before; shops, cafés, and other businesses were offering specials. Tents were set up for non-profit organizations to promote their services and for vendors to hawk their wares. There were also music pavilions all over the area. Where else but Milan would you find opera music featured at a Pride celebration?
As we strolled the streets, Troy and I both drew seductive looks from men we passed in the crowds, and we even got groped a few times. I attributed the actions to our sexy outfits, but then several people came up to Troy to ask for his autograph. He was as shocked as the rest of us. "Why would anybody be asking for my autograph in Milan, Italy?" he asked.
"Maybe they saw you sing the other night at that club where we first met," suggested Dude.
"Or maybe they recognized your ass," teased The Flirt.
Whatever the reason, Troy took it all in stride and graciously signed every autograph requested.
When we passed one of the pavilions, the band that was performing stopped right in the middle of their song, and the lead singer announced that he had spotted Troy in the audience. The crowd didn't exactly go wild, but there was definitely a stir among them.
Speaking Italian, of course, the singer asked Troy to go up and sing something, and the crowd didn't need much coaxing to urge Troy to the stage. He finally gave in, went up, and greeted the lead singer and every member of the band individually. Then, much to my surprise, he broke into a rendition of Michael Jackson's "Beat It," a perennial favorite among gay crowds. I suppose I should not have been surprised that he chose that song, but I was.
The phrase "beat it" occurs 47 times in the song, and Troy had the crowd joining in on every utterance of it. Even though the phrase is meant to be synonymous with "scram," many gay people like to superimpose a masturbatory connotation on it. So, every time Troy sang "beat it," many in the crowd mimed jerking off, and a few guys actually pulled out their dicks and pumped to the rhythm. A couple of dudes knelt before two other men in leather and began blowing them, whereby the crowd around them began chanting:
Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!
Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!
When the song and the leather men approached their climax, the dudes kneeling pulled back at just the right moment to catch the spewing nectar in their half-full cups of beer. They then swirled around the mixture, took a sip, traded cups with each other, and slurped down the resulting cocktails.
At the end of the song, the crowd erupted in applause, cheers, whistles, and even some well-meaning catcalls. Troy thanked the band and the crowd and walked to the portable steps when the crowd started chanting "opera" and "aria," at which point the lead singer pulled him back to the microphone. In keeping with the theme of debauchery often associated with Pride events (last night was a good example), Troy chose a song about drinking and philandering, "Fin ch'han dal vino" from Mozart's Don Giovanni (libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte). He began by asking for two volunteers and selected a very butch lesbian and a bearded drag queen, and as they approached the stage, he asked someone in the crowd to hand each of them a beer. (The actual song is about champagne, but nobody in that crowd was drinking the bubbly.)
Troy positioned a volunteer on each side of him, took a deep breath, and launched into the short, rapid-fire, tongue-twisting song, acting out the scene as he sang. The aria concludes with the following lines:
In the meantime I shall have my own fun
Making love to this or that girl
Ah, my list tomorrow morning
Shall have at least ten new entries.
When he got to "making love to this..." he grabbed the drag queen's crotch, sang an arpeggio up to a very high note, and held it for what seemed like an eternity while rolling his eyes at the crowd, who laughed so hard it's a wonder they didn't wet their undies— those who were wearing undies anyway. Then, with a short pause, he finished the line "...or that girl," pointing to the lesbian with fear and trepidation. And when he sang, "...at least ten new entries," he pointed to various "girls" in the audience—only he repeated the line over and over and over, pointing to a hundred different people.
When Troy finished the song, he thanked his two volunteers, directing all the attention to them instead of himself. I wondered at the time if he had learned that kind of modesty from the way Maria had deferred to the students at his annual high school concert or if it was something that just came naturally for him. Either way, it was very impressive.
As Troy began to descend the stairs again, the crowd shouted, "Encore! Encore!" Troy tried to beg off, but neither the crowd nor the band would have it, so Troy got back on the stage, conferred briefly with the members of the band, and sang Queen's "We Are the Champions," another favorite of gay crowds everywhere. Rather than perform solo, though, he pulled the lead singer up to the microphone with him, sometimes singing harmony and sometimes just backing off and letting that guy take the spotlight. Of course, many people in the crowd knew the lyrics and sang along, and everybody sang along with every repetition of "we are the champions."
When the crowd again burst in applause and cheers, Troy once again had the members of the band take the bow and he went around singling out each one in turn. Never before and never since have I seen an entertainer absolutely steal the show by stepping out of the spotlight in deference to others.
When Troy finally managed to get off the stage, he was mobbed by people asking for his autograph. Since most of them did not have paper with them, he ended up autographing T-shirts, bras, briefs (mostly at the crotch), and even a box of condoms.
By the time we all got away from that gathering, Troy was so wrapped up in the experience that he seemed to have forgotten all about why he had become so famous all of a sudden. As we hopped from bar to bar, passing music stage after music stage, Troy continued to be approached for his autograph, and the scene on the bandstand was repeated three more times, and each time, Troy sang a completely different set, often segueing seamlessly between Italian and English and back again. He sang songs from Culture Club to Andrew Lloyd Webber, from Enrique Iglesias (in Spanish) to Wagner, from Hughie Thomasson ("Ghost Riders in the Sky") to Gershwin. Altogether, we estimated that he had just given a three-hour concert.
By the time Troy and I got back to our hotel, it was well past the witching hour. The night manager told Troy as we walked through the lobby that he had received several messages. "I'll collect them in the morning," Troy said.
As we lumbered into our hotel room, Troy asked, "What's that?" It was a note that had been slipped under the door.
"Oh, boy," I said. "Looks like we may be in trouble." The note read:
We need to talk.
Breakfast in my room, 9:00 a.m.
Both of you.
Mike
Despite being very tired after a long day, I tossed and turned wondering what could have gotten Mike upset. Maybe he had found out that I used a fake ID to get into a gay club, or maybe he had heard from someone what I did in that club. [Oh, my god. I'm a dead man.]