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The Immigrant
(A Love Story)
I'm an old man now, and I do a lot of reminiscing. I'm sorry if you think that it's a waste of time, but allow an octogenarian his conceit. I used to think a lot about my adult years, how difficult they were, and how wonderful they were. Lately, however, all my thoughts go back to my childhood in the late 1930's, and to a section of New York City, in the Borough of Brooklyn, called Bensonhurst.
All of us kids were first generation Americans. Almost all of our parents were born outside of The USA. The neighborhood was a pretty even mix of Jews and Italians. Because our parents were immigrants, none of us took America for granted. We were all avidly patriotic, and proud of the American Flag. Whenever we kids saw Old Glory pass by in a parade, we'd solemnly remove our caps and place our right hands, with dignity, over our hearts, and we all got lumps in our throats. The thought of someone disgracing that Grand Old Flag, was enough to make me barf.
Those immigrants, who had established themselves somewhat, were the first to offer a helping hand to the newbies. They not only befriended them, they helped them to join the melting pot. We kids learned from our parents. Sometimes one of the newbies was a kid, and we "Americans," as the world called us, helped him, as our parents helped his parents.
Here's how I met Anthony (Antonio) Carnevale. How could I know then that Tony and I were to share our lives; to make life's journey together?
I met Tony on the first day of school, when I was seven years old, and starting the second grade. The teacher, Mrs. Price, sat us alphabetically. My name is Michael Carlin. My grandfather anglicized our name when he came to The United States. It used to be Carlinsky. I was seated right next to Anthony Carnevale. As soon as we were seated, Mrs. Price asked Tony to stand up. The poor boy turned red.
"Class," she began, "I want to introduce Anthony Carnevale. He and his parents just arrived from Italy this past summer. I want you all to give him a warm and friendly welcome. He speaks very little English, so I trust you will all help him, and not make fun of his accent." All of our parents had accents. We weren't likely to make fun of Tony's. Still you know how cruel kids can be, and you never know for sure how they will act.
Another thing about those days was that we had no school buses and no school cafeterias. We city kids walked home for lunch. Our mothers served us a hot meal, and we were back in school within an hour. When we broke for lunch on the day Tony was introduced to us, I attempted to speak to him. I spoke English to him with an Italian accent. Somehow I foolishly figured he would understand, and somehow he did.
I asked him where he lived, and he pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket. It had an address on it. I assumed it was his address, and it was right around the corner from me. I made him understand that we could walk home together. That's when he smiled. Not only did his eyes shine, his whole face lit up. Tony had curly black hair, cut very short. His eyes were a deep brown. His nose was a tiny little pug. No stereotype there. His cheeks and his lips were full and rosy, and he had a dimple on each side of his lips. I didn't know that I was gay in those days, but the sight of Tony knocked me out. He had what I came to call, Mediterranean good looks.
We passed his house first. Before I left him, I told him I would be waiting for him after lunch, right where we were, in forty-five minutes. He didn't say anything, so I didn't know if he understood me or not. When I got to his front door on the way back to school, he was already waiting for me. When he spotted me, he broke out into a big smile. Looking at this beautiful boy, I was breathless. I found out one day that we were both breathless. Our futures were sealed.
I began to go over to Tony's house almost every evening. I was tutoring him in English and we were doing our homework together. Occasionally on the weekend, he would visit me, and we would play together. After we had known each other for about three months, I asked if he would like to sleep over at my place. I thought we could have a lot of fun. We cleared it with our parents, and arranged the first of uncountable sleepovers. We only stopped when we were teen agers, and our parents did not think it was appropriate any longer. Neither of us could figure out what was so inappropriate. Maybe that was true when we were twelve or thirteen, but by fourteen, we were well aware of why it was inappropriate. Our schoolyard education was in full bloom.
Just before we started Junior High School (that's what we called Middle School in those days) Tony and his family became citizens of the good ole US of A. I was the only outsider to attend the ceremonies. That evening, the Carnevales made a big celebration in their home. I was invited, along with my parents. I was happy about that, because I felt like I was a part of Tony's family.
During our sleepover days, we would hunker up to each other. It was inevitable that our growing cocks would eventually rub together. It felt so good that we grew bold, and began to fondle each other. One night Tony brought me to climax, so I returned the favor. After that, we rarely masturbated solo, but reserved that glorious chore for each other.
One enchanted evening, we were fooling around and Tony stretched out the foreskin of his uncut cock. He covered the head of my cut cock with it. It was so sensual that I took him into the bathroom, and asked him to pee while our two cocks were under his foreskin. He started to pee, and I had an orgasm. We were fourteen by then and getting more adventurous.
By the time we were fifteen, we both admitted that we were queer. Perhaps if we were alone, we would have freaked out, but we had each other. Surprisingly, neither of us gave a shit. We vowed to be a couple and live together all our lives. Once that decision was made, we began to experiment with male sexuality, which meant fucking and sucking. We had not yet been cut off from our sleepovers, so we reveled in our sexual experiments in our beds, and enjoyed our encounters more and more each time we were intimate. By then we knew who and what we were, and so be it. Needless to say, we kept it our deep, dark secret.
We were too young to have participated in WWII, but young men of eighteen were still subject to the draft. Tony was a few weeks older than I, and he received his draft notice before I did. We were expecting this day to come, so we were prepared for it. Years earlier I had seen a film called "Follow the Fleet," with Rogers and Astaire. Ever since I saw that movie, I wanted to join the Navy, so before they could draft me, I did just that.
It was difficult to be apart from Tony. But we both felt that it was an honor to serve the country which we had been so blessed to live in, so we never complained. Whenever I could be alone, I jacked off, and dreamt that he was doing the honors. We wrote constantly, and called each other when it was possible.
Then the Korean War began, and Tony was sent to that distant land. I have never been very religious, but I prayed every night for God to keep him safe. I was a Navy Hospital Corpsman. One day, I was transferred to the Marine Corps, and found myself headed to Korea also.
Our field hospital was strafed daily, and we were constantly under attack, but still, it was for Tony's safety that I prayed daily. I guess he was praying for me also, because we both made it through.
Tony was discharged about a month before I was. When I got home, he gave me a couple of days with my parents, and then he told me that he had rented a room in a cheap hotel in lower Manhattan for the weekend. We told our folks that we were going to a party in The City, and would be staying overnight. Thinking back to that weekend, we now refer to it as our honeymoon. The moment we entered the room, we double locked the door and drew the curtains. The room was quite dark, but we didn't put on any lights. We embraced, and did nothing more than hold each other for at least fifteen minutes. Tony's head was on my shoulder, and mine was on his. We kept whispering in each other's ears how much we loved each other. Finally, even though we were both fresh from showering at home, we decided to shower together and begin our foreplay. We were way too aggressive in what we considered foreplay, and we sucked and fucked in the shower.
We soaped each other's cocks until we had to stop, or we would have cum. I fell to my knees and started to suck my honey's throbbing penis. I loved nibbling on his foreskin, but eventually he begged me to stop. He said that if I didn't stop, he would get circumcised. I wasn't going to let that happen. We sucked each other dry in the shower. Finally we crept into bed, and stayed there until we checked out the next day. We each fucked twice, and got off in our mouths one more time. Neither of us will ever forget our "honeymoon."
We both enrolled in Brooklyn College, and graduated with honors. Tony got a partial scholarship to Fordham Law School. His folks and I helped him with his law school expenses. I got a promising job with a small but growing CPA practice. I took, and passed, the CPA exam, but I had to apprentice for three years until I could get certified. During those three years, while I did my apprenticeship, and Tony went to law school, we continued to live at home. Making love was a sometime thing.
Finally, Tony graduated and began to work for a prestigious law firm. As soon as I got my certification, I was given a hefty raise. Now, between the two of us, we could afford our own apartment. We found a great one bedroom in Greenwich Village. Neither of our two sets of parents found it strange that we only had one bedroom. From the way they talked to us, I became convinced that they were aware of our relationship, but nobody dared say anything out loud.
Once we bought furniture and moved into our apartment, our love making became close to obsessiveness. We sucked and fucked several times a night, until finally we slowed down and became very domestic. When we allowed ourselves to have time for things other than love making, we began to experience the gay night life in The Village. We zeroed in on one particular bar that we enjoyed the most. It was pretty quiet for a gay bar, and you could actually have a conversation there, without blowing out your vocal cords. But most importantly, we began to develop friendships with people we met at the bar. Before we knew it, we had a close, tight-knit circle of buddies.
By the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, Tony and I were middle-aged men. We lived very well, and lacked for nothing. Each of us made an above average income, and we had no children to raise and educate. We should have been exceptionally happy because life had been so good to us, but every day we sorrowed a little more. Not only was the world changing, but our country was becoming unrecognizable, and not in a good way.
Young people didn't seem to like anything this great country had to offer them. They protested at the drop of a hat. I didn't mind that at all; they had the right to do so. Perhaps Vietnam was questionable, but when they started to burn the American Flag, I cringed at their ingratitude for what this country was offering them. Also, as a combat vet, I resented their lack of support for our service men. God was no longer an entity. The only things the kids worshipped anymore were rock stars and athletes.
After a while Tony and I learned to live with the situation, just like the rest of the USA. After all, we were not directly affected. Our professions provided us with a good living, and we could work way beyond retirement age, if we so wished. It didn't affect us in the bedroom either. Each year our love making got more inventive, or should I say kinkier?
For instance, Tony had stretched out his foreskin to where he could now cover most of my cock. He did that one night, and then we masturbated. We both gushed beneath Tony's foreskin, and the result was mind boggling. After that, we did it often, until neither of us could get hard any longer.
Anyway, at some point we stopped worrying about the country's state of affairs. We settled into another period of wearing blinders, just as everyone else did. We became indifferent to the world around us. We accepted the fact that change was a constant, whether for good or bad. In short, we buried our heads in the sand.
The one thing we are most grateful for now, in our eighty-seventh year of life, is that we have each other. We don't often reach a climax anymore, and we certainly don't get hard, but in bed at night we cuddle and fondle, and we even have oral sex. Like I said, sometimes we cum, but most often we don't. It doesn't matter. We are simply grateful that we grew old together. We are ready to leave the world before the apocalypse occurs. It's just a question of "when."