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My Week, For What It Was Worth

On playing football with the Boys of Taormina…
I have never been attracted to German boys. They can be among the most beautiful, but the language itself has always struck me as cold and harsh. Yet Severin, from Bremen, changed all that. He has been with me for a week now, sleeping beside me in the small hotel on Via Don Giovanni Bosco. Alfio, the receptionist, seemed rather taken with him and turned a blind eye when I asked whether Severin could stay until he got settled. His new job as a waiter has been delayed for another week, though the restaurant promised that his room would soon be ready.

I learned that Severin had a boyfriend, a Spaniard called Estaban, who had remained behind in Turin. He spent a great deal of time on the phone to him, usually trying to reassure him that, although he was sharing a bed with another guy, nothing had happened.

That was partly true. We had both once been Pietro’s “boys”, and there was a reluctance on either side to go where a dead man had already been. It was as though Pietro still maintained some hold over us; we might almost have been brothers, and anything sexual felt faintly incestuous. Yet every morning, when I woke, I would find Severin with his arm draped around me, cuddling, it seemed, with someone he trusted.

Severin is easy to be around: always a few steps behind me wherever I go, yet never overstaying his welcome. He has told me much about his homeland, where his father taught at the University of Bremen and his mother at the University of the Arts. Bremen, he said enthusiastically, was a working-class city that had built its fortune on its port and shipyards — a fact not lost on the Allies during the Second World War, when the city was heavily bombed.

After leaving school, Severin worked at Beck’s Brewery, but was dismissed after being caught having sex with a fellow worker on the bottling line. His abrupt departure prompted him to travel across Europe, eventually ending up in Turin, where he met Pietro and became, in effect, a kept man.

Pietro had obviously singled Severin out for his Nordic looks — a twenty-first century vision of the Aryan “master race”: blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin. There was also the fact that Severin was athletic, and a devoted supporter of Werder Bremen.

Severin discovered that I too liked football and had once played competitively when I was younger. That discovery prompted him to buy a cheap football and seek out a patch of wasteland where we could have a kickabout. Before long, local boys began drifting over to join in, and soon we found ourselves playing fierce, high-intensity matches, with slabs of concrete serving as goalposts.

It became an Italo-Anglo-German affair, proof that football can be loved by everyone, regardless of nationality. Alas, the Italian boys put Severin and me to shame; too many years of smoking, drinking, and inactivity had rendered us ineffective against the tireless boys of Taormina. But it made me feel like a young boy again – innocent and carefree.

The focus is the big phallus…
Alfio had a night off and promised to take us to Castelmola, a picturesque medieval hilltop village perched directly above Taormina. “It will be the perfect night for you guys,” he said with a wink, though it seemed more likely that he fancied his chances with Severin, who remained entirely oblivious to his advances.

Alfio ordered a taxi, and a journey that should have taken ten minutes was completed in half the time. The dusty Mercedes hurtled up the steep, narrow, winding road, revealing breathtaking glimpses of Mount Etna and the Ionian coast below.

We arrived in a small square, from which Alfio led us up a short flight of stone steps into Bar Turrisi. Judging by the greetings he received, he appeared to know everyone there.

Alfio explained that Castelmola had grown around the ruins of a tenth-century Norman castle, its streets narrow, ancient, and full of charm. Bar Turrisi, however, was something else entirely. Opened after the war and passed down through generations, it was said to have been founded by descendants of families who had migrated centuries earlier from Pompeii, bringing with them the city’s ribald fertility symbols. The restaurant, Alfio told us with evident delight, still celebrated that inheritance.

At first, the significance of this escaped both Severin and me, but we soon understood. Across all four storeys, there were penises everywhere one looked: wall paintings, well-endowed statues, phallic liquor bottles, shot glasses, lamps, mirrors, even the plumbing fixtures above the bathroom sinks. The food menu itself was shaped like a penis.

“I knew you would be impressed,” Alfio said, guiding us towards a table overlooking Taormina below. “The people here never wanted to be part of Taormina. They value their independence. But Castelmola was founded to watch over and protect the town.” Unfortunately, night was already beginning to fall, and the views slowly disappeared. The blue sea darkened into a black mass, though the lights of Taormina still sparkled beneath us.

“They filmed The White Lotus at the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace in Taormina,” Alfio told us. “The cast used to come here regularly. They started calling this place ‘the penis bar’.”

Alfio ordered a Sicilian pizza, its ingredients largely a mystery to me apart from the cheese, though it tasted wonderful. We washed it down with a local almond wine, supposedly an aphrodisiac, which Alfio clearly hoped might improve his chances with Severin. As for me, I seemed excluded from his ambitions, though he nevertheless ordered another bottle — this one in a distinctly phallic shape, decorated with traditional Sicilian artwork — and insisted that I drink a generous amount of it.

As my stupor deepened, I found myself wondering how one might write about an overdose of penises without making it sound tacky — which, strangely enough, it was not. “They are symbols of sexual potency and fertility,” Alfio explained smugly, once again for Severin’s benefit, “and also of the virility of Sicilian men.” Severin, meanwhile, remained blissfully unaware of the attention directed at him.

It was only when yet another bottle of almond wine appeared, and Alfio insisted that I finish most of it, that I finally grasped his strategy: get me drunk enough, and he might have Severin to himself. By then, however, it was too late for me to do much about it.

The next morning I woke with a punishing hangover, Severin’s arm once again draped around me. My head throbbed, and Severin seemed in no hurry to wake himself. Still, I managed a smile. Alfio’s attempt to seduce him had failed.

On hearing a story that amused me…but shouldn’t have
At a restaurant in Taormina, an old man told us the story of his brother, Salvatore, who, back in 1958, had been abandoned by the woman he was supposed to marry. The humiliation drove him into such despair that he swallowed an overdose of sleeping pills. He was taken to hospital in Syracuse, where, still determined to end his life, he hurled himself from a window — only to land on a balcony below. Bruised but alive, he was carried back upstairs. Three hours later, he climbed to the very same window and jumped again. This time he missed the balcony and died.

“Oh,” I laughed awkwardly, “third time lucky.”

The old man responded by banging his walking stick sharply against the table, which suggested that my attempt at humour had not been appreciated.

On not upsetting a Sicilian…
“The Cosa Nostra is still active in Sicily,” Alfio told us. “But these days it is discreet. Drugs, the pizzo, infiltrating businesses — that is where the money is.”

“What is the pizzo?” I asked.

“Protection money,” he replied. “Money extracted through intimidation or extortion. It comes from the Sicilian word pizzu — ‘beak’ in English. To let someone ‘fari vagnari u pizzu’ — ‘wet their beak’ — means to pay them off.”

The warning beneath Alfio’s explanation was perfectly clear: do not offend the Mafia. Fortunately, that seemed unlikely. I would soon be leaving Sicily — and leaving Alfio and Severin behind with it.

“But honour can be dangerous too,” Alfio continued. “Even an ordinary man in the street feels the need to defend his honour. So you must be careful not to insult him.”

Severin then recalled an unsettling story he had once read online, one that seemed to confirm Alfio’s point.

In 1993, a father, unable to bear the shame of having a homosexual son who worked as a prostitute, allegedly paid for him to be murdered. The son was shot in the stomach while soliciting clients in Messina. His father was later jailed for hiring an eighteen-year-old assassin to carry out the attack.

“There, you see?” Alfio said triumphantly. “That old man in the restaurant — the one whose brother needed three attempts to kill himself — was offended by your joke. But he only banged his walking stick on the table, when he could just as easily have paid someone to shoot you.”

And then he laughed.

On finding old illustrations…

On the cute and willing…

Michelange Bédard. Photo by Fernando Landin, 2026

My Week, For What It Was Worth

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On leaving Montescaglioso…
On from Montescaglioso—which I missed the moment I left on the small bus to Matera. I must return. The hilltop town exists in its own world, seemingly remote from the rest of Italy, yet it was warm and welcoming, and somehow managed to revive me.

It was really a minibus, stopping at every opportunity to pick up local women. For them, the journey to Matera felt like a day out—temporarily freed from household chores and feeding their families. They all seemed to know one another, speaking in rapid Italian, their voices rising and falling as they complained about the small details of their everyday lives. And yet, I couldn’t help feeling a quiet jealousy—that they could afford to live such ordinary, mundane lives.

There was only one other man on the journey, and he kept to himself, absorbed in his music. He looked about eighteen, and I imagined he was on his way to meet a girl in Matera. But then his phone rang, and the conversation turned to something entirely different: La Dolce Vita Orient Express, a new train service set to begin in May.

The route sounded almost romantic. It would begin in Rome, travel to Venice, then head down the Adriatic coast to Bari. From there, passengers would be shuttled to Matera—my destination—with its cave churches and underground water cisterns. Back on the train in Bari, the journey would continue towards Taormina in Sicily—which made my ears prick up—before heading on to Palermo and eventually returning to Rome.

It seemed the young man was being offered a job in Matera, one that would benefit from this new train service. He played it cool—neither accepting nor refusing—but you could tell he understood that opportunities like this don’t come around often.

The bus dropped me at Matera Centrale station, where I discovered that my train to Altamura was actually departing from Matera Sud, about two kilometres away. It required a short connecting train journey to get there. It was only once I was on that train that I learned Matera had once been derided as a symbol of poverty, yet had since reinvented itself as a creative hub—full of boutique hotels, buzzing cafés… and, of course, plenty of tourists.

On travelling to Taormina…
It was surreal, but we met like lost friends—two people who shared a past, yet barely knew each other. I spotted Severin, with his blond hair and Germanic good looks, as we waited for the ITA Airways flight from Bari–Karol Wojtyła to Catania. The airport name didn’t sound remotely Italian, and I soon discovered why—it was Polish, named after Pope John Paul II.

Severin was from Bremen and had spent the last few years living in Turin. He, too, had been one of Pietro’s “lost” boys, and after Pietro’s sudden death had found himself with a modest sum of money and nowhere to live. I had been more fortunate, receiving a similar amount but allowed to remain in the Verona apartment, thanks to the generosity of Signora Bruschi. But now my home is back in England.

We hadn’t seen each other since that Christmas when Pietro had taken us out for a meal at a restaurant in Milan. It was there we met Elio, who turned out to be Pietro’s favourite—and who had inherited the bulk of his estate, enough to ensure he would never need to work again.

Severin, now in his late twenties, seemed genuinely pleased to see me, and was delighted to discover that we were both bound for Taormina. He looked thinner than I remembered, and had begun to grow a small goatee—something Pietro would never have approved of. Good on him, I thought. I noticed a bruise on his chin, and he explained he had been caught up in Turin’s May Day demonstrations, when protesters tried to break through a police cordon. I hadn’t expected Severin to have become quite such a rebel.

On the aircraft, we talked about old times, each of us offering a quiet, tentative sympathy to the other. Once, we had been adversaries; now, we were something closer to conspirators. Severin had tried to contact Elio after Pietro’s death, but had been met with a swift rebuff. He had also tried to reach me, but hadn’t known where to find me. The chance meeting at the airport had clearly delighted him.

Severin was heading to Taormina to work as a waiter for the summer season. The money Pietro had left him had run out, and now he survived by drifting from one job to the next.

After arriving in Catania, we caught a train to Messina and got off at Taormina–Naxos. From there, we took the bus up into Taormina, where the heavens promptly opened. Inadequately dressed, we wandered through its charming maze of ancient, narrow cobbled alleyways, and along the bustling, elegant—largely pedestrianised—Corso Umberto. We dodged the hundreds of tourists clutching umbrellas, and after the calm of Montescaglioso, I found the crowds slightly overwhelming. Yet it was the smooth, endless stretch of the Mediterranean that held my gaze—and the uneasy thought that Mount Etna lay somewhere close by, hidden in the rainclouds.

It soon became clear that Severin had nowhere to stay. His plan had been to wander the streets of Taormina in search of something cheap. Until his job began—and with it, the promise of a room—the chances of finding affordable accommodation seemed slim. The town may once have existed in a kind of beautiful poverty, but ever since Victorian writers, poets, and artists had discovered it, its fortunes had changed. And soon, the La Dolce Vita Orient Express would be arriving too.

I was staying at a small hotel on Via Don Giovanni Bosco, its balconies overflowing with flowers, and—true to my nature—I offered Severin a bed until he found his footing. At the very least, it meant I wouldn’t be entirely alone as I tried to settle into a strange town.

On never trusting Mount Etna…
Everybody in Taormina wants you to visit Mount Etna. It is one of the highest volcanoes in Europe, and one of the most active in the world. Alfio, who works on reception at my hotel, suggested that Severin and I take a guided tour. But we both look at Etna and feel quietly relieved by the forty-five kilometres between us and its summit. Never trust an active volcano.

From Taormina, a plume of white smoke drifts from the summit, with no immediate sign of eruption. Yet, according to Alfio, Etna has entered a new eruptive phase that began at Christmas. The crater, he says, is emitting lava, ash, and the occasional flow. He tries to reassure us that Etna poses no real threat to Taormina. Apart from the light dusting of ash that sometimes falls when the wind turns, he tells us to follow the advice of the locals—the Sicilian way is not to worry.

He recalls that, as a small child, he once saw flames suddenly shoot up from the crater, only to subside just as quickly. The same thing happened again the following morning.

Alfio doubts we’ll manage to get up at dawn, but suggests taking us to a hill above the ruined amphitheatre to watch the sunrise. Despite getting to bed at two in the morning, and waking with the lingering effects of strong wine, we let ourselves be dragged through the narrow streets.

The sun rose from the southern edge of Italy and caught the white dome of Etna, tinting it a soft, rose-pink. The colour spread quickly down the snow, deepening until the whole summit glowed like a ruby instead of pale white. Night’s shadows slipped off the slopes, giving way to a rich purple that sank into the valleys and over the orange groves, darkening as it went—until the morning light washed across everything, and the mountains returned to their steady, familiar greens and browns.

That was as near to Mount Etna as I cared to be.

On a poem about Taormina…
I found a poem about Taormina on All Poetry which was written by someone referred to only as ecekaradag13, and who appears to have a fondness for Italy.

Taormina
Above the Ionian Sea,
this teatro of pretense
where German tourists
photograph Greek ruins
through the lens of their prosperity,
never seeing the Sicilian boys
who sweep their marble steps
for coins that disappear
into foreign pockets.
The ancient theater still echoes
with tragedies more honest
than the comedy performed daily
by boutique owners
selling “authentic” Sicily
to cruise ship pilgrims
seeking enlightenment
at duty-free prices.
Etna smolders in the distance,
that honest mountain
which at least admits
its capacity for destruction,
unlike the hoteliers
who smile in four languages
while their housekeepers
scrub other people’s dreams
from Egyptian cotton sheets.
In the shadow of San Domenico,
where Wilde once walked
his particular exile,
the local boys still gather
at sunset, their beauty
a currency more reliable
than the lira,
their bodies maps
of an economy
the guidebooks never mention.
The bougainvillea blooms
in violent purple protest
against the limestone walls,
while below, the working class
of Giardini-Naxos
send their children
up the mountain
to serve aperitivos
to those who mistake
privilege for culture,
consumption for communion
with the divine.
This is paradise
built on the backs
of the invisible,
where even the gods
have learned to speak
the international language
of tourist euros.

On the cute and willing…

Julien Rondard. Photo by Wanderley Da Costa.

The David Problem: Notes from a Life

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Giacomo crowned with passion-flowers. c.1890-1900. Wilhelm von Gloeden

Art, Innocence, and the Burden of Looking Back

David was in a quandary; the problem was of his own making. It was a friend of Joshua who wanted a name — a name that would read ‘curated by’ and command attention. Of course, David had agreed, but now he had his regrets.

An email from Pamela Hutchinson had been the source of it all. This exhibition is inappropriate and offensive. When David failed to respond, she went to the media, who were only too eager to champion her cause.

“Fucking do-gooder,” he had moaned to Joshua.

But it transpired that she knew far more than he had anticipated.

“The boys he used were underage and exploited by an unscrupulous man.” Those were the words a journalist from The Standard had used over the phone.

“How does anyone know that?”

The exhibition at the McDonald Gallery on Wellington Street was to include sixty photographs taken by the German, Wilhelm von Gloeden. The concept mirrored a similar exhibition mounted by the photographer in the 1890s.

Back then, there had been no objection to von Gloeden’s work.

“The Victorians were either more accepting or considerably more naïve,” David reflected. “His work has been displayed all over the world, and I doubt they faced the kind of problems I’m dealing with now.”

David wasn’t selecting the photographs — that responsibility lay with Nathaniel Wilson, the American who had approached him — but he had agreed to write a critical essay for the catalogue. Yet as the backlash grew, it was David whom people sought out. Mail Online had already published a particularly damning article, one that threatened his reputation as a credible writer.

Joshua had researched von Gloeden and discovered that his notoriety only emerged in the latter part of the last century. Before then, his work had received glowing reviews from newspapers around the world.

“Count von Gloeden is very clever in the way he introduces nude figures of Sicilian boys into his landscapes. It is something quite out of the ordinary, and for those who appreciate artistic work, the figure studies — with their almost classical subjects — will be found of especial interest.”

He read this passage out aloud to David, who noted that it came from a newspaper published in 1909.

“I suppose it’s my fault,” Joshua reasoned. “I must admit, I didn’t realise the subject matter might be considered objectionable now.”

The story of Count Wilhelm von Gloeden had always fascinated David. He had first encountered his work in an old book — The Spell of the Southern Shores; or, From Sea to Sea in Italy — written by Caroline Atwater Mason in 1915. It had been illustrated with landscape images taken by von Gloeden.

Von Gloeden had been born into a well-heeled Prussian family in 1856 and later travelled to Naples, where his cousin, Wilhelm von Plüschow, a photographer who also specialised in pictures of young nude men, encouraged him to take up photography. In his early twenties, suffering from tuberculosis, von Gloeden moved on to Taormina, then a remote village, only accessible by donkey, in Sicily.

He was one of two men credited with turning Taormina into a tourist destination.

The first was Otto Geleng, a Prussian painter who, having fallen ill in Rome, travelled to Taormina in 1863 to convalesce. When three Parisian critics came to visit, the only local inn — the Bellevue — proved inadequate, and Geleng transformed the house in which he was staying into a hotel. It became the Hotel Timeo, still thriving today. When the critics returned to France, the articles they wrote drew the first wave of tourists from Prussia and France, soon followed by visitors from Holland, England, America, Russia, and Poland.

The next was Von Gloeden, a member of the German nobility, who was wealthy, extravagant, sociable — and more than a little eccentric. He kept a large collection of birds — ravens, parrots, nightingales, canaries — and delighted in teaching them to talk and whistle military marches.

He began taking photographs as a hobby, but when his stepfather was accused of treason by Kaiser Wilhelm II and stripped of his possessions, the flow of money to Taormina dried up. Von Gloeden was forced to rely increasingly on photography for his income.

He installed a studio and laboratory in his villa and printed images of local landscapes and architecture as postcards and souvenirs.

The baron also set about persuading shy, nubile young boys to pose in the manner of Greek statues.

“Many of the pictures have a fascinating charm that recalls the odes of Horace and other classical poets of these sunlit lands. All his models seem to the manner born, their graceful lines and quiet, expressive faces harmonising so perfectly with surroundings of luxuriant foliage, abundant flowers, and sunlit glades.”

That, along with their easy smiles, was about all they wore.

David rang Nathaniel, who seemed to be keeping a low profile in New York.

“The problem,” David said, “is that people now see the photographs as child pornography.”

“They’re of their time,” Nathaniel replied. “They belong to a particular moment in photography — when people were still working out how to handle flesh in strong light and shadow. And you must admit, for such an early stage, it’s handled with real skill.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I mean,” Nathaniel went on, “you’re looking at sun-darkened skin under a harsh, blazing light — not the pale tones you’d get in England’s softer sunshine.”

David was none the wiser. It sounded as though Nathaniel was reading from notes laid out in front of him.

“And besides,” Nathaniel continued, “this was when photography was beginning to supplant fine art. Visitors wanted clarity — every detail sharp, everything evenly lit. That was what they valued.”

If David had been hoping for reassurance from Nathaniel, he wasn’t finding it.

“But the nude photographs appear to be of underage boys,” David suggested.

“They’re not underage boys,” Nathaniel replied. “They’re dark-skinned, classically proportioned lads — fine-limbed peasant boys. I’ll grant you, the work does come under scrutiny from time to time, but we are talking about art.”

“If that’s the case,” David said, “then I’ll forward all media enquiries to you.”

He ended the call and turned to find Joshua hovering with fresh information.

“I came across something about a von Gloeden exhibition in Sydney — in the nineties, I think. Detectives were sent in after a complaint, quite high-level, claiming the photographs amounted to child pornography. But in the end, they decided the images were harmless.”

“Exactly,” David said, warming to the argument, finding himself cast as an unlikely devil’s advocate. “Why do people take offence at something so trivial? The models themselves hardly seem troubled by any sense of impropriety.”

“But…” Joshua hesitated, choosing his words carefully, “there’s no getting around the fact that von Gloeden used these photographs of nude boys not just as art, but as a kind of advertisement — for the sort of clientele Taormina began to attract.”

“That’s a bit harsh,” David replied, though he was aware that von Gloeden had been openly homosexual and known for his late-night revelries, both at his villa and in the surrounding meadows. It spoke to von Gloeden’s charm — and his influence — that the people of Taormina tolerated his unconventional behaviour, even when it involved their own sons. The town, after all, had prospered, riding a wave of economic growth driven by the very visitors he helped to draw there.

Joshua continued.

“I don’t think we can deny that von Gloeden was a gentleman who liked young boys and took a great many photographs of them — mostly nude.”

That night, David resolved to look more closely into von Gloeden’s life and work. What he found would help him reach a decision: whether to withdraw from the exhibition or stay and weather the criticism.

He trawled through old newspapers and discovered that attitudes had shifted in the latter part of the twentieth century, and that von Gloeden’s reputation had suffered accordingly. The tone had hardened. One writer dismissed him as “that poor old homosexual, the Baron von Gloeden, who hid lust behind an academic glass.” Another claimed the photographs seemed “designed for a market of privileged oglers,” while a third described him as “an artful dodger whose work slipped past the censors.” Even the more measured critiques carried an edge, suggesting his images gratified “three desires at once: art, classical tranquillity, and the sanctioned glimpse of desirable bodies.” One publication went further still, branding von Gloeden a charlatan.

Von Gloeden’s work seemed almost tame by today’s standards, yet he could not ignore the fact that his steady production of homoerotic images had proved immensely profitable, earning him admiration across Europe.

Most of the photographs, he noted, were sepia-toned, printed on gold-hued salted paper. The boys posed with a certain taste and deliberation: a dark-haired youth stretching eagerly sideways and upwards to peer through a window; a group of boys reclining along the rough parapet of a height overlooking a lake ringed by mountains. Both compositions made full use of their romantic natural settings. The wider body of work followed similar themes, many images featuring boys whose graceful bodies were adorned with wreaths of laurel and flowers, set against pale masonry or slender columns. In some, distant bays appeared through arching boughs heavy with white blossom.

One journal compared von Gloeden’s photographs to the paintings of Lawrence Alma-Tadema.

But, as he delved deeper, David discovered a great many photographs of completely naked boys that left nothing to the imagination.

He also came across a reference to Pancrazio Buciunì, who had died in 1963, a year before David was born. At fourteen, he had entered von Gloeden’s service and later became one of his most frequent models — known as Il Moro — and, likely, his lover. Von Gloeden had taken more than 7,000 exposures and, upon his death in 1931, left them all to Buciunì.

In 1936, Buciunì was prosecuted by the Fascists for possession of “pornographic material,” and many of the Baron’s plates were destroyed under court order. Yet he had the foresight to conceal around 1,500 of them beneath the stones of his floor. While von Gloeden’s photographs had already travelled widely across the world, it was largely thanks to Buciunì’s intervention that many of the surviving images — including those now destined for exhibition — had endured at all.

But David’s thoughts kept circling back to the present.

Pamela Hutchinson, who had first raised concerns, spoke for a wider audience — those whose views were shaped by a more modern moral framework.

The ages of the boys had never been definitively established, and David discovered that many may have perished in the 1908 Messina earthquake, though Taormina itself seemed to have escaped the worst of it. In truth, the extent to which minors were depicted erotically might never be fully known.

There was also the question of power: von Gloeden, a wealthy aristocrat, and the impoverished peasant boys who lived at his mercy. In Sicily, young boys commonly went nude at the beach, and across much of the Mediterranean, homosexuality was often regarded as a passing phase in adolescence.

For struggling families, payment in exchange for their sons posing for von Gloeden would have been difficult to refuse. Yet it was equally hard to ignore the likelihood that he exploited these boys, his images serving, in part, the interests of sexual tourism.

David could not deny that, throughout the twentieth century, von Gloeden’s work had frequently been labelled obscene. What unsettled him was the realisation that earlier generations had not seen it that way at all — to them, it had been art: a new form, even, one that threatened to unsettle the dominance of traditional fine art.

Joshua interrupted.

“Have you made a decision yet?”

David toyed with a ruler, buying himself a moment, as though the answer required more thought than it did.

“I have,” he said at last. “For all the criticism, the exhibition matters. I need to write something that acknowledges everything we’ve uncovered — the admirable and the troubling — and accept that some will find it distasteful. There’s a temptation to sanitise the past, to smooth it into something more palatable, but ignoring it doesn’t make it disappear. It happened. The least we can do is face it honestly, from all sides.” He paused, then added, with a faint shrug, “Besides, as they say, even bad publicity has its uses.”

Giacomo garlanded with passion-flowers. c.1890-1900. Wilhelm von Gloeden

My Week, For What It Was Worth

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On chilling out in a Southern Italian town…

Montescaglioso is where a story ends. But I picked a week when the Italian weather was unwelcoming: fine by day, but extremely foggy by night. It is to be expected, because Montescaglioso sits high on a hill.

And then the winds came—strong Sciricco and Maestrale winds that brought heavy rain and quickly sent it away again. For this reason, the locals were happier to stay indoors until conditions improved.

Montescaglioso is where the heart beats a little slower.

Where there are people, I watch them… observing their character and capturing their mannerisms. Most are unaware that this old town was once inhabited by Greeks and Romans.

Some of them will end up in a story.

There is the young boy who is inconspicuous in the corner of a café; he drinks Coke with lemon and reads a paperback copy of Black Run by Antonio Manzini. Every few pages he stops and scrolls through his iPhone. He appears to have friends, but at that moment is bored with his own company.

Then there is the handsome boy, whom I watch with curiosity until it becomes something closer to obsession. He eats pasta with one hand, while the other rests inside his underwear, absent-mindedly playing with himself. He stops when he realises I am watching, and I am immediately disappointed. I want to tell him it is none of my business what he does, but that feels like a perverse thing to say.

The teenagers who congregate beneath the tall statue of San Rocco, the patron saint of Montescaglioso, in Piazza Roma. They are immaculately dressed in smart jeans, designer puffer jackets, and new trainers, because the nights are chilly. They talk for hours because there is nothing else for them to do. I do not understand what they are saying—they speak too fast—but they seem friendly.

The man who pulls up in a Grande Panda and sees me sitting on a bench outside an old building, its yellow paint faded with time. He speaks remarkably good English and educates me on the history of the town: the stories of local people who left at the beginning of the last century and moved to New York and Toronto. He tells me that Francis Ford Coppola is a second-generation Italian-American, born to parents of southern Italian descent. His paternal grandparents emigrated from Bernalda, which is only a few miles away, and the director now owns a hotel there.

The old man who walks his dog every evening and stops to talk. He points to the Chiesa di San Rocco and tells me it was badly damaged in an earthquake that struck Montescaglioso in 1827, and was later restored with the construction of stone vaults and a new façade. He tells me that ancient Greek tombs were once discovered beneath the piazza, and that the church once stood outside the town—there is the possibility of undiscovered graves beneath the surrounding houses.

I decide that there is much history to be found, but I am only interested in the present, where the young people appear permanently sun-tanned, animated, and possessed of an easy, unstudied allure that feels particular to this part of the world—especially to someone from northern Europe.

On lusting over Benjamin Voisin in The Stranger…

I know somebody who claims to have met French actor Benjamin Voisin. It may or may not be true because that person has a tendency to tell lies. But the story he tells is a good one because he said that Voisin smoked a lot, wasn’t completely fluent in English, but came across as a nice chap. And he was convinced that he was gay, but that bit has yet to be confirmed.

I first saw Voisin in François Ozon’s Summer of 85 (Été 85), and at the time I thought the director might have chosen a better-looking boy. But then came the trailer for Ozon’s The Stranger (L’Étranger), along with the publicity stills, and I kept finding myself asking, “Who is that good-looking guy?”

It has felt like an age waiting for The Stranger to arrive. Based on Albert Camus’ novella, it was originally shot in colour, though Ozon ultimately chose to release it in black and white—a decision that feels entirely right.

There is a scene in which Meursault (Voisin) kills an Arab boy. He studies the body on the ground—first the armpits, then the lips—before firing… several times. It’s one of Ozon’s familiar devices, turning something ostensibly straightforward into something quietly, disconcertingly homoerotic.

“I wanted to make everything erotic,” Ozon says. “The girls are erotic. The boys are erotic. The nature is erotic. Everything has to be erotic and sensual. That’s what I wanted. And the choice of the black-and-white [cinematography]was a way to show this sensuality in the world.”

If that wasn’t enough we see Voisin’s naked body a few times, a pretty bum that requires squeezing, and even get a glimpse of his manhood.

On coming upon an unwelcome adversary…

The boyfriend of the love of your life stands before you. What are you supposed to do? Granted, he’s good-looking. But he lays claim to someone who should be mine. For that reason, I can’t ignore everything that’s wrong with him. I want lightning to strike him dead. There is a solution to this jealousy—but it’s not one I dare to consider.

On reading an anecdote from Rufus Wainwright…
“What’s the best thing a cabbie has said to you?”

“Well, my handle on Uber is just the letter R, and I went into a cab once and the driver said, “R, what’s that stand for?” And I said, “Rufus.” And he said, “Oh, like Rufus Wainwright? I wonder what happened to him?” I just went along with it…”

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods…

“He was a thin, brown-eyed, sad-looking boy, one of ten children of a poor Italian fisherman who had been drowned at sea. Sometimes he begged a little, and sometimes he stole, but hunger grew in him every day. There was no more salt in the home, only garlic to help the long loaves down. Garlic or one of the half-rotten tomatoes that the wasteful spaghetti-makers threw away, and it was a race in the mornings to get to the garbage cans before the dogs and the other starving scavengers.”

I found a parcel on the doorstep. Tearing it open, I uncover a battered copy of The Wanton Boys. I am beside myself with excitement. It’s an early birthday present from a friend too impatient to wait for the day itself. This ragged mass-market copy, improbably, is worth a small fortune.

The blurb is enticing:

“A shattering novel about Italian street gangs, their hates, lusts and perverse and brutal ways in a world that scorns and damns them.”

I love a book about lust – and perverse and brutal ways.

On the cute and willing…

Stolen Words: Pasolini – The Projects

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This iconic photograph captures the Italian film director and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini at the Monte dei Cocci (also known as Monte Testaccio) in Rome, 1960.

It was there that I had met, or in fact only seen, another youth, Nino, who was reduced almost completely to his pure image. It was a sunny day, and everything shimmered, the garbage and weeds, tall buildings and shacks. He was standing in the sun in a purple shirt, his deep blue eyes filled with a strange, almost cruel innocence. He was a boy like so many others, with a job, or perhaps in search of a job. I saw him some time later, grown up and somewhat thickened, on the train to Ostia, with his father and mother, and probably some younger brothers and sisters. His gaze was somewhat cloudy, but it was still pure and innocent. He joyfully introduced me to his parents. His father was robust, still young, and seemed like an honest factory worker, and his mother, who also seemed young, showed the brusque tenderness typical of Roman mothers just slightly softened and mitigated by the fact that her son already had the bearing of a young man. A year or two later, I’m not sure, I crossed paths with a friend of Nino’s called Bruno and asked about the boy. Bruno thought for a moment, comically knitting his brow. Then he came to a decision and raised his hand in front of his face, with the fingers apart. He meant that Nino was in jail, at Regina Coeli.

From: Chronicles of Rome, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1961.

The Distance Between Us Was Never Truly Death

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“Paolo went to your country to die, and now, Harry, you have come to his country, where you will also die.” Harry arrives at the small Italian town of Montescaglioso, where it is time to make peace with the person he once loved. The final part of an unlikely story. (Parts 1 to 24 are available to read in the menu)

Perfectly Hard and Glamorous – Part 25

April 2026

The clock struck twelve at the Chiesa di San Rocco in Piazza Roma. The warmth from the Easter sun was unfamiliar, but as shadows crept from the old buildings and advanced towards the monument, the coolness of the spring afternoon would follow, and remind us that where we came from didn’t matter. One place could be much the same as another.

Piazza Roma was mostly deserted except for a handful of pedestrians who emerged from between these crumbling buildings and went about their business. The peace was only shattered by the noise of a scooter which entered from Corsa della Repubblica. On it, a ragazzo, wearing short sleeves and crash helmet, noticed me standing alone, revved its engine, and circled several times around me. All the time he watched, as there would be other people watching too.

High above the square, on top of an unlikely building, was a webcam; its five cameras pointing in different directions. Somebody in a cramped New York apartment or a hotel room in Bali, was able to see what was happening in sleepy Montescaglioso. The views were familiar. I looked at them every day, and now, I was also one of the strangers on the screen.

The ragazzo eventually pulled up beside me and cut the engine. He removed his crash helmet and revealed himself to be in his late teens, with black curly hair and neat stubble on his chin. “Sei inglese?” he asked. “Sì, io sono,” I replied. “Then you must be Harry,” he said with broken English.

He introduced himself as Tino and retrieved a second crash helmet from the sottosella. “Put this on,” he advised, “and get on the back.” I did as I was told and placed my arms around his waist. The engine kicked into life, and he sped off down Via Cavour; through cobblestone lanes that twisted and turned, both sides lined with old houses painted in shades of pink and yellow that the southern sun had slowly faded.

The farther we rode out of town, the wider the roads became, and the houses grew larger and newer. When we reached the petrol station at Strada Provinciale, Tino swung right and came to a stop beneath huge Italian cypresses leading to the gates. We dismounted, and I took in the panoramic views of the surrounding Basilicata. I noticed that the area below the cemetery had been used as a dumping ground for builders’ waste from the construction sites we had passed. Tino opened the sottosella, deposited both helmets, and retrieved a plastic bag.

“Paolo went to your country to die,” said Tino. “And now, Harry, you have come to his country, where you will also die.” An exchange of the dead. I was the lad from the working classes who had sunk to the bottom before being gifted a chance to rise again. I was about to confront my past again.

Tino took me into the Cimitero Comunale and along corridors of loculi, multi-storey rows of concrete vaults stacked several levels high. The sight was striking; each grave was decorated with vases of fresh flowers. It was a Catholic tradition, an artistic expression, and a practical solution to space limitations. Italian culture maintained a strong, ongoing connection with the dead.

“My family were upset when you asked to visit,” Tino told me as we walked along. “The older ones are still angry and did not want you to come. But it was the younger ones who were able to change their minds.”

“Please thank them for doing so.”

“They call you the ‘English Boy’—the one who came from the projects. Our elders believe that Uncle Paolo did something gravely wrong, and that you were the cause of it. It is the only way they can forgive him. Blame you. Maybe the younger members of the family have more compassion and understanding, and we are more interested in seeing the boy who became the source of such hatred.”

The boy he referred to was no longer a boy. I was now in my sixties and had waited far too long to come here. Tino looked at me, and I could not help noticing his delicate brown eyes, which seemed to be searching for answers.

“I am older than Uncle Paolo was when he died. He will remain a boy forever. In the same way, you have not aged either, Harry. You are still the boy who was responsible for sending him to his tragic death. It is the boy that people will condemn.”

Like Paolo’s family, I had also believed that Paolo had taken his own life. The shame of being arrested and exposed as a homosexual had been too much. But Frank Smith had taken forty years to tell me otherwise: that Andy, my best friend, had blamed Paolo for coming between us—for ruining my life—and had sought revenge by sending him to a horrific death from the top of an abandoned factory.

It had taken me twelve months to process that news. Those last seconds, when Paolo knew that he was going to die. What had been going through his mind? Those intense emotions—fear, love, regret. Had Paolo thought about me in those last moments?

I was about to tell Tino the truth but didn’t get the chance. He had stopped in front of a small, rectangular niche on the bottom row and pointed.

I noticed the flowers first—chrysanthemums, alongside a mix of vibrant and white blooms, carefully arranged in small glass vases. There were also tulips, symbolising the freshness of spring, new beginnings, and hope.

And I saw Paolo again—for the first time in forty-one years.

There was a black-and-white photograph: a headshot of him looking at the camera, that nervous expression, expressive eyes, thick black hair with the same curl that always fell across his forehead, and a half-smile. Paolo was looking at me. A look of surprise. I had finally come to see him. The years of regret washed away, and we were back together again. I saw him smiling. “I loved you, Harry, but I was taken away. The years were long, but you found me again. Ti amo, Harry.”

It was a moment where grief, memory, and love converged.

Tino reached into the plastic bag and handed me a white rose to place in front of the photograph.

“I shall leave you to make your peace,” he said, and slipped away to a bench at the end of the avenue.

I put my hand on the marble slab that had been used to seal the tomb. It felt warm in the afternoon sun. I traced the inscription with my finger—Paolo Antonio Moretti—Amato da tutti coloro che lo conoscevano—beautifully carved in italics by an Italian craftsman.

“Well… Paolo. Here I am. I never imagined that I would speak to you again. The last time I saw you was at that big house, when we were all arrested. My last recollection is of you looking terrified and shouting my name. I’ve replayed that moment every day for over forty years. Shouting my name because you were scared, and I couldn’t do anything. Do you know how painful that memory has been?

“I tried to speak in the days afterwards, but everyone hated me and wouldn’t let me anywhere near you. They said that I had corrupted you. I suppose your parents were trying to protect you… and they told me that you didn’t want to see me. That hurt, and I’ve tried to come to terms with it ever since, but I never believed it.

“And then you were gone. Forever. Do you know how that felt? The realisation that you love somebody so much, but can never see, touch, or love them… ever again. It was the most painful thing that ever happened to me.”

A tiny sparrow landed on the ground beside me. In Italian folklore, these are seen as a sign from the dead, and it hopped around my feet before flying up onto Paolo’s grave.

“Last year I saw Frank Smith. He told me that you didn’t commit suicide. That was a relief to me—for a while, anyway—but then I found out that it was Andy who killed you. It meant that your parents were right to blame me. My best friend killed you because he was jealous of us. That is something your family needs to know.

“What happened afterwards? I went to pieces. I nicked a car and drove to London, where I stayed for years. I worked as a rent boy and then became a writer. Can you imagine that? A small-time shit from Park Hill who couldn’t string a sentence together. But I’ve written books that proved I could do something with my life. I also met a guy called Scott, who I thought I loved, but now I realise that I probably didn’t.

“I went back to Sheffield—to Park Hill—which had completely changed and wrote about our past. It is the most successful book I’ve written. Everyone thinks it is fiction… but everything in it was true. About growing up, the Geisha Boys, meeting you, loving you, and the things we did.

“But I had to leave again. I didn’t belong there anymore. Many ghosts were laid to rest, but I couldn’t exorcise the memories.

“And now I’m here in Montescaglioso, where I can stay close to you. I’ve brought Tom with me and we’re buying an apartment on Viale Europa, not far from here. It’s modest, but for someone who lived at Park Hill, it will herald a new start.

“Tom is Jack’s youngest son and was a bit of a tearaway—a bit like I was. But he’s attached himself to me and will look after me as I grow older. Growing old is something you won’t know about, but it’s very overrated.

“And I met Jack again. I needed to know that he had forgiven me, but it turned out that he wanted my forgiveness too. The tragedy is that we wasted years feeling guilty. Both of us were afraid to make contact.

“Most importantly, I needed his blessing about Tom, and do you know what he said? When we were teenagers, he thought there was something different about me, but couldn’t pin it down. When it all came out into the open, he expected me to make a move on him. If I had, he said that he wouldn’t have said no. That floored me. He gave me his blessing about Tom because he knew that I’d turned his life around.”

Tino was approaching, and the small sparrow flitted between the flowers with a burst of energy. I stopped talking but couldn’t leave it like that.

“I must go now, but I shall return soon. Ti amo, Paolo.”

“I heard what you were saying to Uncle Paolo,” Tino said. “Did you love him as much as you say you did?”

“I did,” I confessed, “and it was a relationship that should never have happened. Did you know that the first night that I met Paolo, I punched him in the face… and immediately regretted it. He was incredibly sweet and beautiful. I wish you could have met him.”

“And this Tom that you spoke about—he has come to Montescaglioso with you?”

“Another unlikely relationship. Tom is much younger than me, and the story is far too complicated to explain. But he is a link between the past and the present.”

Tom was waiting for me when I returned to Piazza Roma. He smiled—a dazzling grin that showed his face had already tanned under the Italian sun. I explained that Tino had promised to visit us at the new apartment and that he had also asked for a copy of Perfectly Hard and Glamorous.

“But the book is in English,” he replied.

“I know,” I said, “but he wants it because that book is part of his family history.”

And that is the end of this long story.

The journey from a bleak northern city that had little going for it in the 1980s to the present, in a small Italian town that nobody has heard of. Tino was right when he suggested that Paolo had travelled to another country to die, and that I had done the same. And that is what will happen.

We are both happy here and will never leave.

Sometimes, when I stand on the balcony of our new apartment at Viale Europa and look at the house across the street, I imagine that I am seeing Park Hill again. And then the laundry tries to break free with the help of the strong wind that blows from the distant olive groves and wheat fields, and the memories evaporate.

I watch people going about their business—the animated, loud conversations, the frequent gesticulation, and that strong personal style. Both the young and the old, slipping into cafés, shops, and gelaterie. Walking between sun-drenched, ochre-washed buildings and piazzas, with the noise of Vespas weaving through the narrow streets. They are blissfully unaware of that sensory blend of ancient history and modern life; unaware that historic architecture is now adorned with contemporary graffiti.

The Italians are wonderful people.

I also think about everyone who shaped that journey: those who are dead—my parents, my best friend Andy, whom I may never forgive, and Paolo, whom I visit every week. I even think about Frank Smith and Billy Mason. Then there is the living—Jack, who will make regular visits to Italy and remind me that I was once a Geisha Boy, who swore, fought, and offered my body to anyone who wanted it; and Tom, who one day will replace Paolo as the love of my life.

Straight Out of Verona – Part 2 – Cola

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When I crawled into bed, it was so hot and humid that I struggled to sleep, making do with an electric fan and open windows. But Verona came alive early and just as I was about to drop off, the traffic, and sirens from the ‘ambulanzas’ on route to Borgo Trento, denied me the pleasure.

I blinked through the morning until there was a polite knock. Fragmented dreams stumbled into consciousness. I tried to ignore the short taps, but whoever it was wasn’t going to go away. I climbed out of bed, with eyes that felt like sandpaper, and opened the door.

It was Cola. “Buongiorno,” he quipped. “My mother told me that you had returned.” I let him inside and noticed how tall he had become. He frowned at my unruly appearance and held up a bag of fresh cornetti. “I shall make coffee, and you must tell me where you have been for so long.”

I had known Signora Bruschi’s son since he was fifteen, from days when the skinny boy sat on the front doorstep and made cheeky remarks to ladies who passed by. His mother warned him that it was not how good catholic boys behaved but she already knew that Nicola was a lost cause. “He takes after his father,” she had confided, “and has such a violent temper.”

Cola had taken a shine to me after I’d stayed here the first time. He waltzed in and out and helped himself to the contents of the fridge. Then he would beg me to play football with him on the campo giochi until the light started to fade. “He treats you like a big brother,” Signora Bruschi told me. “You are a hero to him, and I pray to St. Gianna Beretta Molla that he will follow your good ways.” The fact that I hadn’t kept in touch bothered me.

Cola was eighteen now, still skinny, but he towered above me. I pulled on a tee shirt and sat at the table while he made coffee.

“What have you got planned for today?” I had hoped to wander through the day without an agenda but sensed that this might be about to change.

“Nothing,” I volunteered.

“Then let me take you out in my new car.”

Cola’s strong coffee wasn’t to my taste. I would have preferred a latte but Italians regard this as sacrilege and so I accepted it without comment.

“My mother says that you have a French boyfriend.” He waited for an answer, but I didn’t respond.

The truth is, I’d argued with Charlie before coming here and was annoyed with him. When he snapped at me, I’d matched his gallic temperament with a dose of Anglo-Saxon home truths. Afterwards, he had sullenly caught the Eurostar to Paris, and I had come to Verona, to the apartment that was rarely used.

Buckle up, hot shot. Time to take flight… and land with impact.

Cola’s new car turned out to be a bright yellow Abarth 500 that he drove too fast. I tried to ignore his erratic driving as I did the alarm bells that were hammering inside my head. How many teenagers could afford a car like this? As far as I was aware, Cola didn’t have a regular job, and I feared that he was mixing with the wrong people, something that was easy to do in Italy.

Straight Out of Verona – Part 1 – The Arrival

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The apartment has stood empty for fourteen months. Now I return to it, in a city smothered with sunlight and heat, a place where distractions fall away. Here, I will write of the world I have just left, the world to which I must soon return—dragging up stories from a cemetery of memories. I have always written best from the outside, peering in.

At night the air thickens, heavy and damp. Through the high windows of this old townhouse I look out, remembering what happened here long ago. A man stabbed in the heart with a kitchen knife, left to rot for weeks before anyone noticed, the flies devouring him first. Signora Bruschi, who has scoured the floors and scrubbed the walls, insists it was not in these rooms.

I do not believe her. Yet under the pale wash of moonlight, in a room fragrant with flowers tumbling from the iron balcony, the truth hardly matters. I hum softly to myself, listening to the percolating hiss of coffee on the stove, until the first birdsong threads through the great London Plane outside—the one whose trunk carries the carved names of lovers and bored teenagers.

I take my place on the terrace beneath its green-striped awning, my Chromebook open beside a steaming bowl of carrot cream soup from the little shop on Via Giuseppe Cesare Abba. Overhead, a man and woman murmur in their rooms. Strangers still, but as the night deepens their voices taper into silence.

Sometime after midnight, Charlie’s message arrives from Paris. He is staying there with his family for a few days. Tonight he tells me he walked to the site of the old Hôpital Broussais – not in search of medicine, but to stand on the ground where Jean-Paul Sartre once drew his final breath.

“No matter what happens, always keep your childhood innocence. It is the most important thing.” – Federico Fellini

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“My great grandfather was good friends with Fellini,” said Aurelio who looked at the books I had bought. “They both came from Rimini. If you needed to know anything about Fellini, then Gio Carmello, with the tattoo of a boy on a dolphin, was the person to see.

“It is said that my grandfather was called Federico after his childhood friend.

“And now, you have bought a book about Fellini which makes me sad because I think of my family.

“But, if I am honest, I have never liked Fellini, because he came from an older generation, with primitive movies, and an Italy that was black and white and different to the one that I know.”