Richard and Franco 06
One couple, two Weddings
Bisex-MMF
My name is Richard. I'm 28 years old and and I've lived with my husband, Franco, La Spezia, Italy, for five and a half years now. I work as an accountant. I grew up and went to college in the U.S. Since college I lived in Haiti and France, each for eithteen months. We swing but don't do anything without the other present and consenting.
My husband now, and my lover since I left the U.S. is a Spanish man one year older than me named Franco.
He's worked in hotels and resorts and now he's managing the biggest hotel in town; he reports to the owners in Berlin, and they leave him alone as long as it makes money.
Franco and I got engaged about six months after we moved to Italy, and we had made excited calls to our families that day, before finding a jeweler and getting rings.
The woman at the jewelry shop looked like she was on some committee to bring back the Latin Mass, but by the time we left she was beaming at us as if we had proposed to her.
Our morning routine usually starts with a quickie at sunrise. Franco tops me about two-thirds of the time and I'm the top the rest of the time.
We leave in workout clothes, with work clothes in backpacks. We are on our second Citroen.
I drop Franco at the hotel he works at, and park in a spot between my gym and my job.
I work out for about thirty minutes, swim laps for ten or fifteen, then shower and dress for work.
I wore nice slacks and a shirt I'd bought in Milan.
After I felt brave enough, I started wearing Italian sandals to work with my long pants and shirts, I think I saw co-workers staring at my feet twice, but never the customers and nobody said anything.
If I wanted to wear shoes I wouldn't have left home in the first place.
After I'd been in this job for about a month a guy and a girl I worked with started flirting with me.
I flirted back a bit but I was careful to make it fun and not serious.
I also made damn sure that they knew that my engagement ring was serious.
I'd started counseling at the local LGBT advocacy center one evening a week. Mostly middle school-aged kids were sent to me, and usually by public school counselors or nurses.
This was a lot easier than other places I'd been. Back home kids were sometimes scared of their parents or churches, and in Haiti kids too young to comprehend sex were diagnosed with AIDS. The first thing I did was just listen while a kid told me what they were going through. Sometimes it was two boys or two girls. Usually they were dealing with internal conflicts or situations where their heart told them one thing and their brain told them another.
Since these were nearly all Catholic kids, I used what I'd learned from an LGBTQ-friendly priest in college; when you strip away all of the commentary, the whole point of Christ's teachings was the Golden Rule, and the stuff that was making them feel guilty was usually a case of old men trying to hold on to power.
I gave them a five minute summary of the Kinsey report, and told them that everybody they saw in the market, everybody in their school and church and everybody that ever was landed somewhere between "straight" and "gay". God loved all of them.
They still had to go to Mass, and I wasn't going to turn every kid in Italy against the Church, but I told them to love themselves, be themselves, and if they had to button it up for an hour on Sunday, they needed to remember that a lot of other people in that church is hiding it and the guys that were the meanest about it were terrified and fragile. I told them that if they felt really brave, the could hug one of these people and tell them the words, "God loves you".
That speech often got tears or caused a kid to run up and hug me. I forget how many times I gave it.
One afternoon I got a visitor that was older than me, though only by a little. I don't know if anybody wearing a Roman collar had ever come into the Advocacy center before, but he asked if I was Richard, and when I told him that I was, he closed the door and sat in a chair meant for a twelve year-old.
Father Theodore, as he introduced himself, was about thirty, and was the junior of two priests at the closest Catholic church.
He clarified that he wasn't gay or here for himself, and he liked the work we seemed to be doing though he couldn't say so in public, the Church's official line being what it is.
He asked me what would happen if the Catholic school sent a student to me that was troubled with his sexuality.
I told him how I handle students sent from the public schools.
He nodded, then asked how I would handle a student that thought that God was punishing them, or that they were going to hell for being gay.
I gave him a condensed version of my speech where the point of the Bible is the Golden Rule, and that everything else is just commentary. His eyes lit up.
"Where did you get that!" he asked with a grin.
I told him that I never went to church till college, and that a woman priest told us that in an "introduction to church" class. I told him that she smirked like it was an inside joke, but I didn't know why.
Father Theodore then told me that at the same time that Christ was alive, another man, a rabbi, worked at the Temple and was known as the world's best expert on Jewish law.
The story is that one day a man tried to challenge the rabbi by asking him to recite all of Jewish law from memory while jumping up and down on one foot. The rabbi looked at him and said, "Treat other people the way that you want to be treated. The rest is just commentary", so all of these years later I finally knew what that priest was smirking at.
I thanked him for that. He told me that the Mother Church makes progress a thousand years at a time, and not always forward, but that he wanted to send a couple of the Catholic school's students to me, quietly for political reasons, but now he felt good about doing that. We hugged, and when he left we both felt a lot better.
By this point, Franco and I spent all of our holidays with Franco's family in Valencia, Spain, and I soon felt like I'd grown up with them.
I quietly found an open and affirming church near his hometown, which is a real trick in a Catholic country, and we set a date for our Spanish wedding.
Franco found a band, and the plaza next to the church was big enough for Franco's close family, about 300 people.
They are Catholics.
Last month, we flew to the U.S. for another four days.
This time we stayed at a motel.
We went to Bill and Betty's to pay off an outstanding debt: Bill and I watched Sam, who was now about six months old, while Betty finally got to ride Franco's fantastic, uncircumcised cock. Betty was really noisy, and Bill and I got aroused listening, but we worked to keep our focus on Sam. Bill had introduced us to Sam as his Uncles Richard and Franco.
Our American wedding was neither big nor fat. Bill was my best man. We were married at the church by our college, a few hours drive from our hometown. Bill re-wrote the speech I'd done for him and gave that at the reception. We had a DJ and catered barbecue, and we dressed as we had for work. No suits, small budget. My parents and those of Betty and Bill were there, Sam was mostly quiet. Monty and Ann were there, too.
The trip felt too short, especially considering flight time across the Atlantic, but we had gotten married.
Somewhere over the mid-Atlantic in an Airbus, we moved our rings back to our other hands, because in Italy, we were still only engaged.
We went to Franco's hometown the follwing Friday after work. We were put into Franco's boyhood bedroom for the night. We skipped sex but I don't think that we slept well.
The next morning we showered one at a time, then an emberrassed Franco was dressed in a rented tux by his Mother, aunts and female cousins while Franco's Dad, uncles and male cousins dressed me, which was also emberrassing. When we were done we looked like mariachi's without sombrero's, but I kept that impression to myself. Tuxedos are different in Spain. From there a long, Catholic caravan of minivans went from Franco's hometown to the gay-affirming, not-Catholic church I'd found. The caterers were at work on the plaza, and inside the church was a scene that would make you expect to smell insence, but in fact it smelled like barbecue.
Father Theodore was there in a dark grey suit. I was the only one who knew that this was a Catholic priest attending a gay wedding.
Franco and I were married for a second time that morning. The service was in proper Spanish with only a few Catalan words. I had been concerned that all the guests and details were taken care of back in the States, but here in Italy, this time, my heart felt too big for my chest, my soul was doing backflips, and I was crying.
I didn't want to have my voice crack, so I enunciated "Faig", "I Do" in Catalan, a little too loud the first time, but we got through it, heard applause when we kissed and walked out to be the receiving line. When I introduced Father Theodore to Franco, they both looked impressed.
There was food and dancing. We made sure that there were a couple of gypsy songs. We went to Granada for our honeymoon.
We had a couple of tourists take a photograph of us kissing inside of the Alhambra palace. I thought the Moors who built the place would have a heart attack if they could see us.