The Glass House

COME and Work with Me

I watched the beautiful young man rise from the pool on the terrace of Dante's rented Lake Como, Italy, glass house overlooking the lake, pick up a leaf skimmer, and walk gracefully around the pool, skimming the surface. The villa, essentially a two-story completely glass cube sitting on a rock-walled, partially underground ground floor, which hovered over the edge of the lake, had been a real surprise to me. Dante had enticed me to Milan, where he was an impresario of the Milan Opera, but he had rented this eye-arresting modern-design house north of the city, on Lake Como, for a month for us to stay at. He had said we could be more creative in our planning away from the city. And he'd included three handsome young men, two of them the almost-irresistible age of eighteen, to, he said, "get our juices going."

The young man at the pool, who was twenty-one, frequently looked up to where I was sitting in a canvas-bottom chair, trying to look at some opera stage set drawings. I frequently looked at him too. Renzo was nude, his willowy body moving as if in a languid dance. He was the amante maschile--male lover--of my host, the Italian opera impresario, Dante Carmello. There was no embarrassment with Dante or the three young men he'd brought to The Glass House in either the nudity they practiced at the house or the sexuality they indulged in. That was no surprise to me. Dante and I had a long, if now somewhat distant, history of such indulgence. I thought I had outgrown it over the years; obviously he hadn't.

I couldn't concentrate on the drawings. I watched the graceful blond Italian move around the pool. He seemed to be purposely doing a sensuous, slow dance for me to watch. My hand went below the waistband of the swimming trunks I was wearing and my mind went to dreams of "what if?" Renzo had been flirting with me for days and I'd been resisting. I'd been there before; I didn't want to fall into that again. I'd have to go back to the States where it was out of the question and could only frustrate me.

Renzo put the skimmer down and climbed the stone stairs to the covered porch that I was sitting on overlooking the pool. He knelt before me and his hands went to the waistband of my swimming trunks. Guiltily, I withdrew my hand, but of course he had seen me--had known what I was doing as I watched him at the pool.

He looked up into my eyes and smiled, his sensuous lips parting and the tip of his tongue darting out to moisten them. He tugged at my swimsuit and, as in a trance, I lifted my buttocks off the canvas seat of the chair so that he could pull the suit off my legs, which he did. Now I was as naked as he was. He clearly could see now that I was in erection. I had been hard for some time, even when I was watching him swim in the pool. I had gone hard when he'd walked by me from inside the villa and glided down to the pool, naked. Everyone at the villa other than I had been going naked: Renzo, the two houseboys, Dante himself. I had been resisting the siren call, although there wasn't anything wrong with my body, even at thirty-nine. They had all teased me for resisting going nude and had taken my stripping off as a challenge. Never being out of sight of a sensuous young male body in a house in which all of the walls on the living level were glass and floated above a blue lake kept me ever on edge.

Any resistance I might have had was eventually being eroded by the setting and the beautiful, desirable young men.

Renzo's head lowered to my lap and he took my cock in his mouth, letting his hands slide up my chest to rest on and toy with my nubs. Giving a deep sigh, I ran the fingers of my hands into his blond curls, holding his face to my groin, and leaned back in the chair, looking up to the glass ceiling of the porch, and dreaming.

The temptation had just gotten to be too much. I gave in to it.

Renzo rose from his kneeling position and moved over my seated body, straddling my pelvis and draping his shapely legs over the arms of the chair. I did nothing to stay him. I found myself clutching his waist, helping him to go into position. I had dreamed of him; I had dreamed of the houseboys. But I had made no move on any of them before. The houseboys were only eighteen, almost too young to touch in the States--certainly too young for a man my age with my public profile to touch--although Dante had laughed and said that, as the age of consent here in Italy was fourteen, the young men he was providing would raise no eyebrows. He was legal even in the States. Renzo was Dante's amante maschile and had been for three years, I had been informed. And Dante was my host, and, at the moment, my collaborator. I could not be doing this with his servants or young lover, even though I knew that Dante himself covered them all and obviously was quite loose in his attitudes.

But I was doing it--or rather Renzo was guiding it. He reached under his buttocks, grasped my erection, put the bulb in place, and descended into my lap with a little moan. His lips went to mine and opened for me. Taking his head, covered in blond curls, between my hands, I moved my tongue into his mouth cavity, hungrily feasting on him. He was so sweet, so supple, so tight. My hands glided down his body to cupping his pert buttocks mounds, and I lifted and lowered him on my buried cock. I did nothing to stop this. We were fucking. The young man took the cock deep. He was a little whore and knew how to move on a shaft.

I had seen him do this with Dante. I'd wanted to do it then too. Now I was.

I pulled away from the kiss and involuntarily cried out in a strangled voice, "Yes, yes. Ride me. Take it. Take it!" My need and my desire were drowning my good sense. I grasped his buttocks and spread them open, giving me more depth. The tease could not leave me now. I must have my completion.

Lifting him and slamming him down; lifting him and slamming him down. I went straight to heaven.

Renzo was stroking his own cock as he rose and fell on mine. At length he gave a little cry and released on my belly. But we fucked on until I felt myself rising. I embraced him close, panting, murmuring of the beauty and wonder of the young man.

He whispered in my ear. "Ora. Ora. Dammelo adesso--Now. Now. Give it to me now," and I tensed, jerked, and released; tensed, jerked, and released, bathing his channel deep with my pent-up cum. Never had I had so much cum to give. Never before had I climaxed this well. He had been whispering, "Si, si, si," as we both experienced my rolling ejaculation, breeding the young man.

Renzo collapsed on top of me, panting and moaning softly. "Si, si, si. Sei così grande. Sei così buono con me--You're so big. You're so good to me."

I whispered, "Oh, you beautiful boy. But I'm so sorry. This should not have happened." This was only a momentary pause, though. He gave a little laugh, bounced off my lap, gave me a saucy look, and, snatching my bathing suit out of my reach, ran down to the pool, twirling the suit like a trophy he'd won--which it, in fact, was--and dove in.

They had won. I now was as naked as all of them. Embarrassed and chagrined, ashamed of myself, I rose from the chair, scattering the sketches on the stone floor and stumbled back into the villa. En route I passed Dante, who was standing in the doorway into the villa. He smiled a benign smile at me as I passed him. I have no idea how long he had been standing there. Of course, he could have seen Renzo with me from anywhere in the upper two stories of the all-glass house. The full exposure of our lives here--not only our living conditions but our very bodies--or at least those of the other four men in the house--was maddening. But then Dante had had a distraction of his own. He was naked, dripping cock in his hand, and crouched at his side, an arm around Dante's leg, dribbles of cum on his face, knelt one of the eighteen-year-old villa houseboys, Vincent.

"Are you ready to take Vincent and Cosmo to your bed now, Julian?" Dante asked in my wake. I didn't answer. I just kept walking. I should never have confided my plight in fleeing from New York to Dante.

When I came back moments later to retrieve my sketches, I saw Dante, laughing, pulling Renzo into his bedroom. Renzo was laughing as well. Were they laughing at me for showing I was frustrated and embarrassed? What had I gotten myself into in agreeing to come to Italy? The interior walls of The Glass House did have internal blinds one could cause to turn opaque. I did block out the one on the wall between my bedroom and Dante's. Otherwise, with what was going on on Dante's bed--not just with Renzo, but the houseboy Vincent had joined them as well--I could not have concentrated on my work.

* * * *

Dante Carmello and I had been at Oxford together. We'd become fast friends there both because we both were studying branches of the music arts--Dante on conducting operas and me on putting sets behind them--and because we weren't British. I was American and he was Italian. We always found ourselves in the "foreign student" groupings, and, having found we both were gay but were not compatible gay, both being tops, we cruised together. As neither one of us wanted to seem gay in the college environment, though, we held secrets together and cruised well beyond Oxford. I suppose, when we both became infatuated with the same young man, and when neither of us was upset that he was eighteen, five years younger than either of us at the time, this only solidified the bond. That and the fact that we shared the guy on a double bed in a sleazy Bournemouth resort hotel for an entire weekend and thus were bound in a way no two other men would be.

I went back to New York and managed to work my way into being a set designer in several realms, from Broadway musicals to Cathedral Christmas concerts. My love remained with opera, but there were limited opportunities in the States for me until I became well known enough to have a crack at sets for a Met production now and again. Dante returned to Italy and quickly, thanks to a series of lover-mentors, rose to premier standing as an opera conductor in Milan, home of La Scala.

Dante continued bedding much younger men, and our connection remained through writing largely because I had tried to give up the younger men and turned to living vicariously through his description in his letters of his hedonist sex life with older teenagers. But then I had an eighteen-year-old boy myself and made the possible mistake of writing Dante about it--probably to compare with what he included in his letters, a new young lover in each letter. Italy was so much easier than the States was for that.

The young man's name--the name of my dalliance in New York--was Noah. I didn't seduce or entrap him. He came on to me, and I've always been sure he had been active before me--and simultaneously with having sex with me, actually.

Noah was the son of the conductor of the New York City Opera's production of "La Fanciulla del West," a modern opera on the California Gold Rush, which then was in production. As they practiced, I was designing their sets. I sat out in the hall and imagined and sketched as they practiced, and Noah, whose prep school was nearby, came to the theater and sat in the hall and worked on his homework until he could go home with his father.

He was a beautiful, small Jewish teen--olive skinned and with dark hair and eyes and a perfectly formed body. He also was hyperactive, quick witted, and a bit of a smart aleck, spending more time moving around the hall and flirting and engaging in chitchat than in concentrating on his schoolwork. He flirted with me too, slowing down my design work because he was attention getting. I wanted to talk with him--and flirt with him. He was so alive, so attractive. He talked suggestively to me, but I thought a lot of that was just that he was being raised in the city--in New York City.

Noah made the move, although I'd been thinking about him in that way for a couple of weeks. I went to the men's room one afternoon--not behind the stage to the restrooms the practicing orchestra members and working stage hands would use, but out in the theater lobby, which was closed to the public then. That restroom was near where I was sitting and imagining and sketching ideas for sets for the opera. I'd saddled up to a urinal and was urinating when Noah came into the men's room. He came to the urinal beside me and unzipped and took his cock out. He looked over to mine and I looked over at his. We stood there after we'd both pissed. I was half hard, just from the thought of the situation and of the youth and smallness of him. I hadn't been brave enough to go that young since my Oxford days--when I myself was relatively young.

He reached out and touched my cock, tentatively at first, but then more purposefully. I leaned forward, my arms spread and my palms against the wall behind the urinal as he wrapped his fingers around it and we both focused on it getting hard just being held by him. He unbuckled me with the other hand. My trousers slid to the floor and Noah pushed my briefs down. I stepped out of them. He had a thumb on my urethra slit and I moaned for him. It was all him. I don't know if I'd have carried through with it if he'd given over the control and the preparation, but he didn't. He put his free hand to unbuckling himself and stripping off his trousers and briefs as well.

Neither of us said anything to the other. We savored the moment. I think if he'd said something, it would have broken the spell and I would have managed to retreat. He touched me on the hip, I turned toward him, he went onto his knees, and took me in his mouth. I held his head of unruly raven curls between my hands and guided him rather than making any effort to push him away. He was led in his attentions by my sighs and deep moans--and by the throbbing hardness of me in his throat.

There was a bit of an antechamber at the entry of the men's room, with a table against the wall. That's where I fucked Noah, putting him on his back, with his legs raised and spread. I crouched between his thighs and feasted on his puckered hole and his pert cock and balls before nestling in between his thighs, gripping his hips with my hands, penetrating him, and pulling him back and forth on my cock. All the time I had the feeling that he'd done this before. He certainly had no reluctance to doing it now. I don't think I could have done it if he hadn't just moved it along.

We fucked that way for a couple of months until one day when Noah wasn't in the hall, I went to the men's room off the lobby to find him under one of the stage hands. This was getting too risky I then thought. And I realized that it was tawdry and slightly pathetic. He was only eighteen; I was pushing forty. I had finished my design work anyway.

For months afterward, I walked around as if on ice, waiting for something to happen, for what I'd done with Noah to be discovered and come back at me. It never did, though. The only one I related that too at all was Dante. If anyone used it against me, it was the Milan Opera impresario Dante Carmello, and he only did so to help us both.

A worldwide pandemic flowed across the world from east to west and closed down all arts venues for several months as it plied its trade. I didn't have work. I wasn't in financial straits, but there was little for me to do in a creative way. Italy was back in business before they were in New York, and Dante proposed that I come out to Milan and work with him for a while.

"I have rented a villa on Lake Como with room for you," he said. "You'll love it; it is open to the world as we are, but, like you and me, it has its secrets." I didn't know until later what he meant by that. "I have several operas in the planning stage," he continued. "They all need sets. We've worked well creatively before. You must come out and work with me," he said.

"I don't know, Dante," I answered. "I don't speak Italian."

"We all speak English here, Julian. Set creation is in my responsibility. I don't need anyone's permission to bring in anyone I want. I want you."

Still I hesitated.

"You've gotten my letters. I fuck young men--very young men--and can get all of the ones I want. I got your letters too. I know you've returned to that yourself--or did so at least once. You said you were inspired in your work when you were covering this older teenager you had. Come to Italy. We'll have older teenagers at the villa whenever we want. Don't get old before you've lived the life you want, Julian."

Dante was forty. I was thirty-nine. I think that facing forty helped decide me. But I told myself that it was something I should consider doing for the international experience--that might help my career take off. Doing the sets for an opera or two in Italy would be good for my résumé. And that's what I wanted to make clear with Dante.

"I don't really want to get into anything but the design work, Dante. But maybe work in Italy for a short time before New York is up again would be a good idea. Thanks for the invitation. When would be the best time for me to arrive there?" I asked.

Dante laughed. I had given in to him. Dante liked winning after a struggle. That's what he liked with the young men he broke in--wanting them to struggle a bit before he won.

* * * *

We had a supper meeting in Milan that evening, Dante and I, to discuss the production of Richard Strauss's Salome that Dante was putting on at La Scala. I was designing the sets for it, and I was nervous about my first meeting with his financial backers for the production. The sexual interlude with Renzo at the pool early that afternoon, the culmination of several days of dancing around the issue of sex with Dante's boytoy, had made me even more nervous. After finding that Dante was being sucked off by one of the houseboys while Renzo was riding my cock and had, undoubtedly, been watching us, I went directly to my bedroom, locked myself in, opaqued the interior wall of the room to separate myself from the openness of The Glass House, which I suddenly had found repressive, and tried to escape mentally into going over my sketches yet again. That wasn't a good idea, because no matter how many times I had scrutinized them earlier, now, when it was too late to make any changes, I was finding changes I wanted to make.

At length I decided to discuss these with Dante in the hope that he would talk me out of my concerns. Finding him only added to my concerns and frustrations, though. Earlier I had come upon the eighteen-year-old houseboy, Vincent, having just finished giving Dante a blow job. Now, when I finally found Dante, I came upon him fucking the other eighteen-year-old houseboy, Cosmo, in a bound doggie position on his bed, in the ground-floor servants' room.

This had been the secret of The Glass House that Dante told me about. Whereas the upper two stories of the house were all glass--even the bathrooms were walled in glass block--the ground floor was rock walled, the only windows being horizontal, barred slits high on the walls. The surprise was that the main chamber below the glass cube was an exercise room with unusual equipment--an X-frame, a sling suspended on chains, a prayer bench with stocks for the head and wrists. It was a sexual torture chamber. When Dante showed it to me, he claimed that he hadn't known such a chamber was included when he rented it. He was grinning, though, so I couldn't be sure.

On the other side, hidden under a mound separating the house from the street, was a garage, with a bedroom and bath behind it and a small, sunken patio beyond. This was where the houseboys slept when they weren't in Dante's bed. It also, I now was to find, an auxiliary room to the sexual torture chamber. The beds in this room had restraints at the four corners. When I finally came upon Dante here, He had Cosmo restrained on the bed, on his belly, and Dante was riding his ass. The young man didn't seem to be objecting, though.