The Blue Cat

by Roland Graeme

  “Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” Rupert told me. “Vittorio’s the one who keeps everything organized here. He takes good care of me, and he’ll take good care of you, too, while I’m gone.”

  “Vittorio? You didn’t tell me you have a lover.”

  Rupert snorted with derision at my assumption.

  “Vittorio isn’t my lover. He works for me, that’s all. Vittorio comes with the place,” Rupert informed me. “He’s a local lad, as ugly as sin, but he’s an honest, good-hearted sort. And wait until you see the schlong on that one. Believe me, it makes up for everything else. He’s a good fuck, should you be so inclined. So feel free to make use of all of his services.”

  With this sort of advance billing, I naturally wanted to learn more.

  Vittorio, I learned, was quite an entrepreneur. He had his own room in Rupert’s house, where, in exchange for his room and board and a modest salary, he acted as housekeeper, handyman, cook and valet. In addition, he did all sorts of odd jobs for other people in the town. For example, he owned a van and hired himself out as a delivery service on an ad hoc basis. Two or three nights a week, he earned extra money working as a masseur at Le Terme di Nettuno, the town’s gay bathhouse.

  This piqued my interest. I remembered my conversation with Pascal, back in Paris. “Oh yes, I’ve heard about The Neptune Baths. What’s it like?”

  Rupert shrugged. “It’s a convenience. I suppose it’s a cut above the average cum dumpsite. At my age, I tend to prefer my sex one-on-one and personal, instead of in large groups and anonymous. I’ve been in worse places, and I daresay so have you. You’ll have to check it out some night and decide for yourself.”

  “Is Vittorio a good masseur?”

  “He has big hands, and he knows what to do with them. He knows what to do with that big cock of his, too. So he makes out quite well at the baths, earning tips. After all, whatever goes on there in the massage room, behind closed doors is between him and his customers. But outside the baths, he’s not a whore,” Rupert cautioned me. “So for God’s sake, here at home, don’t offer him money in exchange for sex, at least not directly, or you’ll offend him. If you do want him to fuck you—”something about the way Rupert said it implied that, so far as he was concerned, it was a foregone conclusion—”just treat him to the occasional little gift, a bottle of cologne or a tin of biscotti, and he’ll be perfectly happy. And he’ll keep a smile on your face, as well.”

  Rupert and I were still talking when Vittorio arrived at the house, laden with groceries. Rupert introduced us and the three of us sat in the kitchen and had a drink.

  Vittorio was a hulking number, about thirty, who looked more like an athlete than a domestic. Rupert had exaggerated when he’d described him as ugly. Vittorio had a large, broken nose and features that were irregular and coarse, but decidedly masculine. His chin and cheeks were dark with beard stubble. He had the kind of a naturally curly black hair that seemed to invite caressing fingers to run themselves through it. I found him quite sexy, in a rough way. His personality seemed warm, genial and laidback. He simply accepted me, as though we’d known each other for years. It was obvious that any acquaintance of Rupert’s was Vittorio’s friend, whom he was delighted to serve.

  Rupert told Vittorio about the house-swapping arrangement he and I had made. Vittorio nodded and seemed pleased.

  I, in turn, had to tell Rick the bad news—that he’d be losing me as a guest, also the good news—that I planned to stay on in San Floriano, for an indefinite length of time.

  “We’ll miss having you as a guest here in the hotel,” Rick said. “But don’t be a stranger.”

  “I won’t be. I plan to drop in often.”

  “Please do. Remember that the sex therapist is always in, as far you’re concerned.”

  I hoped this was true. There hadn’t been a repetition of my night with Rick, if only because we’d both been so busy that we hadn’t been able to coordinate our schedules. I reminded myself to do something about that, and soon.

  * * * *

  Rupert left on his trip. I checked out of The Blue Cat and moved my things into Rupert’s house.

  On the very first night I spent there, the weather, which up until now had been monotonously fine, took a turn for the worse. I was browsing through Rupert’s collection of art books when a peal of thunder cracked overhead. Looking out the window, I saw that the mountain peaks in the distance had disappeared behind a bank of mist. From the direction of the sea, an immense mass of purplish-black clouds was approaching with alarming rapidity. The clouds moved steadily in toward the land until, as their shadow darkened even the white foam at the water’s edge, there came a bright flash of lightning and another crack of thunder. The rain descended in solid sheets, making the gutters of Rupert’s house and those of his neighbours overflow. It was as though the whole sky was a vast reservoir of water that the gods dumped onto the roofs. Courtyards became ponds and flights of steps transformed into miniature waterfalls before my eyes.

  The rain turned to hail, rattling noisily on the roof tiles and the pavements, while the thunder continued to resound like cannon shots from the hills. The electricity went out, plunging our neighbourhood into darkness.

  “It happens, signore,” Vittorio told me, in a soothing tone of voice, as he lit some candles and an oil lamp. “The power will be back on in a few hours at the most.” He began to make the rounds, placing old towels on the floor in front of the windows to absorb the leaks. I assisted him in this chore.

  The storm’s violence diminished. I went to bed early, taking the oil lamp and one of the books with me. Sitting up in Rupert’s bed, with the lamp set on the nightstand beside me, I felt warm and snug as I paged through the book, looking at photographs of Etruscan frescos. Finally, though, I put the book aside and blew out the light.

  In the morning, the sun shone and they restored the electricity.

  During the days that followed, Vittorio went out of his way to make me comfortable.

  Vittorio, I soon realized, was a jewel—the proverbial diamond in the rough, in fact. He was also a born member of the servant class, meaning that he was inherently bossy and took for granted that he knew what was best for those for whom he worked. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that during my entire stay in Rupert’s house the only things that Vittorio allowed me to pick up were my paintbrushes. Vittorio did not allow me to do my own laundry or to make my own meals or snacks. Vittorio was an excellent cook, and he drove a hard bargain with the local grocers and butchers, insisting that the finest, freshest ingredients they had in stock were none too good and that they should give him a price break on them, especially now that he was shopping for a member of the English aristocracy. His guest Il Viscontino, he boasted, was a gourmet, which in fact was far from the truth. Nevertheless, I ate very well indeed during my stay at Rupert’s place. Vittorio’s idea of a cena di magro, a light evening meal, was something like butterflied sardines, layered with thin slices of smoked mozzarella cheese, coated in eggs and breadcrumbs, fried until they were crispy and served with black pepper and lemon wedges. I enjoyed this treat so much that I asked he put it on the menu more than once.

  Vittorio had a fine physique, which he was not shy about showing off. He liked to be comfortable while he did his housework and the first thing he usually did whenever he stepped inside the house was strip down to his shorts.

  Vittorio told me that he had often posed for Rupert. He had modelled for drawings and paintings that he proudly showed me, displayed on the walls throughout the house. They were all nudes, and Rupert had captured Vittorio’s facial features and his cock with an accuracy that made him instantly recognizable.

  Vittorio had more of these pictures of himself on display in his own room. These were pictures that Rupert had given him and with an innocent narcissism, Vittorio had used to decorate his private living quarters. Among them was one painting that he described as the best birthday present I have ever been
given and so generous of Signor Rupert to give to me.

  My curiosity was naturally aroused, so I accepted Vittorio’s invitation to inspect his bedroom. It was a comfortable, airy room with walls, indeed, covered with Rupert’s images of him. He had his own bathroom and he even had these walls filled with naked pictures of him. In anyone else, such a display of narcissism would have seemed obsessive. But Vittorio took such an innocent pleasure in the paintings that it was hard not to share in his enthusiasm.

  The pièce de résistance was indeed a large canvas, about six feet square, hung on the wall opposite Vittorio’s bed. In this oil painting, he was not only lying nude on his bed—he was masturbating, with his legs spread, his head thrown back and one hand industriously finger-fucking his anus while his other fist pumped away on his grossly swollen prick. Rupert had indeed gone a step farther and had captured Vittorio for posterity in the very act of coming. His semen was escaping from the tip of his tormented penis and was raining down upon his sweaty belly and chest as he grimaced in the throes of orgasm.

  It was the most luridly pornographic painting I had ever seen, and I have to admit that my reaction to it was one of shock, mingled with envy. To reproduce a moment of such raw sexuality with such immediacy couldn’t have been easy, and I instantly felt inspired and challenged to try to emulate the achievement.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. “I’d like to paint you like that.”

  “Would you, signore?”

  “Hell, yes.” Privately, I told myself that anything Rupert could do, I could do better—and hotter!

  “I would gladly pose for you, any time you wish.”

  “Tomorrow morning. We’ll take advantage of the strong morning light. I’ll do some preliminary sketches of you, then several paintings of you, in different poses. And if they turn out to be any good, I’ll give you the best one of them, to add to your collection.”

  “I would be honoured, signore.”

  “The rest I’ll sell, to a gallery I know in London that specializes in male nudes. How’d you like to have a picture of yourself hung on some gay man’s bedroom wall, Vittorio, for him to look at and jerk off over at night?”

  “I would be honoured by that, too, signore.”

  Before we began our first painting session, Vittorio helpfully showed me his personal cache of Italian gay porno magazines, colour photos of muscular naked men, displaying their erections, masturbating or performing sex acts together. The bluntly explicit captions provided a crash course in obscene Italian slang.

  “I can duplicate any of these poses, signore,” Vittorio assured me. “Well—any of the solo ones, certainly. The others would require a partner.”

  We set to work. He was a good model, almost as good as Geoff, and he had a complete lack of inhibition. Not only did he pose for me while masturbating and while fingering himself—we did one painting showing him squatting over the floor tiles, with a dildo selected from his personal collection of sex toys inserted halfway up into his anus. I worked hard, if I do say so myself, to reproduce the tension in his muscles, the sweat dripping down his sex-flushed skin and the look of frenzied erotic abandon on his face.

  I ended up making two versions of this picture. I kept one to sell and presented the other to Vittorio as a gift, as I’d promised. He seemed pleased.

  We were in fact working one hot afternoon and Vittorio had the dildo jammed up his ass, when—gasping a little, because he was aroused and short of breath—he caught my eye and smiled at me, through the film of perspiration coating his face.

  “Signore,” Vittorio said, “you and I must have a serious talk, one man to another.”

  “Must we, Vittorio? Right now? About what?”

  “About your sex life,” Vittorio specified, with a frankness, which I must admit startled me. “You have lived in this house now for four days and four nights. In all that time you have slept alone in your bed, have you not?”

  “Ah…yes. In Signor Rupert’s bed, to be precise. I’ve been very comfortable.”

  “But you have been celibate. Have you masturbated?”

  I couldn’t see why this was any of Vittorio’s business, but I was willing to play along. “No, I haven’t, as a matter of fact. I’ve usually been quite tired out by the time I got to bed at night and I’ve fallen asleep the moment my head hits the pillow. Why do you ask, Vittorio?”

  He shook his head. With an admirable concentration on the task at hand, he continued to ride up and down on the dildo, not breaking his pose for so much as an instant. “It isn’t good for a man your age, in the prime of his life, to go without sexual satisfaction. It isn’t healthy to allow the seed to build up inside the balls. You should release it regularly, at least once a day.”

  “I see. Is that what you do, Vittorio?”

  “Of course. Twice a day, sometimes. And as you see, Viscontino, I am not frustrated in the least. I am very healthy and happy.”

  “Indubitably. So what are you recommending? That I jerk off every night before I go to sleep?”

  “Either that, or you should find yourself someone suitable to amuse yourself with. I know many boys and men here in the town who would be glad to accommodate you. Who would be willing, indeed eager, to get down on their knees and open their mouths and suck your cock or bend over and spread their asses wide open, for you.”

  “Ah—thanks, Vittorio, but no thanks. I prefer to find my own sex partners.”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders again. “As you wish.”

  I stroked the canvas with my brush, blending the colours to improve the bulge of the painted Vittorio’s shoulder muscle. I was having some difficulty focusing on the subtleties of paints and brushwork, with the sight of Vittorio’s flesh-and-blood anus caressing the shaft of the dildo only a few feet in front of me.

  “And if I were to try to find a sex partner here in San Floriano,” I said, on impulse. “I could certainly do a lot worse than you.”

  Vittorio might perceive this as a backhanded compliment, but thankfully, he didn’t interpret it as such. His homely face lit up.

  “Oh? Am I to your taste, signore?”

  “You’re very manly.”

  “Is that what you like in your lovers?”

  “Of course. What’s not to like?”

  “Some men prefer effeminate young boys. Their assholes are reputed to be tighter.”

  “Not me. And not you, either, I’d be willing to bet.” After all, I’d seen Vittorio’s choice of reading material. The magazines he’s shown me were all one-hundred per cent twink free.

  “You’ve guessed correctly, signore.”

  We fell silent for a moment, but we both continued to stroke—me with my brush, Vittorio with the hand he now had loosely clasped around his very erect penis.

  “It’s getting very hot,” Vittorio observed. “There is no breeze today. You are sweating. Don’t you think it’s about time you took a little break?”

  “Maybe. Are you getting tired of posing?”

  “Not at all. I can go on like this all afternoon,” Vittorio boasted. “I was thinking about you. I really think we should go to your bedroom and have a little siesta.”

  “We? Both of us?”

  “Certainly, I will gladly keep you company, if you wish.”

  “If you’re talking about the two us lying down in bed together, Vittorio—then I seriously doubt that either of us would get much rest.”

  He grinned at me, a brawny brown satyr eager for an amorous romp. “One doesn’t necessarily have to sleep in order to become rested. Sex can be very invigorating.”

  “Would you like to have sex with me, Vittorio?”

  “Yes. I have thought about it ever since Signor Rupert introduced you to me. And now I am getting very excited, as you can see.”

  “Yes, I’d have to be blind not to notice. But I don’t want you to feel obligated. Whatever arrangement you happen to have with my friend Rupert—that doesn’t mean you have to carry it o
ver to me, just because I’m staying here temporarily.”

  “I hope my work has been satisfactory?”

  “Much more than satisfactory.”

  “Thank you, Viscontino. What I do when I am not working, I do by my own choice. And I think you will find it much more than satisfactory, as well.”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  “Come, then.”

  “I have to clean my brushes.”

  “Clean them quickly, then. I will get everything ready and I will wait for you.”

  “Very well.”

  “Shall we do it in my bedroom? That way I will not have to change the sheets on Signor Rupert’s bed, afterward.”

  “That makes sense.” I have to admit I felt a perverse thrill at the prospect of having sex with Vittorio in his bed, surrounded by all those images of him jerking off. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

  “Hurry.”

  His impatience was flattering, although part of it, I supposed, stemmed from sheer pent-up physical need. However, if that was the case, he could have simply masturbated. Like a lot of Italian men, Vittorio probably didn’t think of masturbation as real sex, but as a makeshift substitute for it.

  I cleaned my brushes in record time, then went upstairs to Vittorio’s room. He had turned down the bed and was lying on it, naked and still very much erect. He’d drawn the blinds and closed the curtains against the fierce afternoon sun, so that only a soft, lambent gold light filtered into the room. On the nightstand beside the bed was a freestanding crucifix with a rosary draped over it, along with a box of condoms and a tube of lubricant. This casual juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane struck me at once. I thought it would make a good subject for a still life.

  I shed my clothes.

  “Perhaps I should take a shower first, Vittorio. Not only am I all sweaty, I smell of turpentine.”

  “Don’t bother on my account. I like another man’s sweat and I like the way you smell.”

  “You’re what we call in English the earthy type. A natural man, a man of the soil.”