Finding the Thing Within Read Online Free PDF

he was talking to a girl.
    “Uh…Ok then, I’ll see you tonight. Yeah, ok, after dinner. Yes, first I’ll pick up Tullio and Patrizia and then I’ll come and get you…Ok, yes bye.” He turned back to Rosario.
    “Sorry that was my friend, she wants us all to go out tonight.”
“Do they know about you?”
“Who?”
“Your friends?”
“Know what?”
“That you’re gay?”
“But I’m not ‘gay'. To tell the truth, I don’t really know what I am.”
“So what were you doing on the forum of a gay site then?”
“Curiosity...only curiosity.”
“What? Do you even like guys? Have you ever been with a man?”
“Well quite a while ago, I had a bit of an encounter from this boy. We were at the beach but I left when he started getting heavy.”
“So you’ve never actually been with a man?”
“Not at all! But I can’t say that I don’t look when a nice looking boy walks past, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you for sure whether this means that I definitely like men. Anyway, tell me about you.”
“Yeah well like I told you I’m thirty-nine and I’m a sales rep and I like to get about…I get on with guys your age and I love music and electronics. I’m fairly interested in politics and television. You can learn a lot from the television, you know?”
“Yeah about how to be even more nullified...”
“Come on, that’s not true. Obviously, if you just watch demented things on TV, you end up demented yourself, but if you follow quality programs you can learn things. So sex isn’t important for you?”
“Of course it’s important, but it has to come with everything else. I’d say, about fifty percent of what it is. Anyway look at the time, it’s getting late.”
“Ten past eight.”
“Yeah it’s late, we’ll stay in touch right?”
“What’s your surname,” asked Rosario.
“Why d’you want to know?”
“Doesn’t matter!”
“Ok, see you later then, ciao.”
“Ciao.”
Rosario headed slightly discontentedly back towards his car. Lorenzo hadn’t been so bad after all. He hadn’t really been all that bad looking and he had had a nice way about him and spoke intelligently. That beautiful
    voice was the thing he liked most. Shit…doesn’t matter, doubt I’ll hear from him again. He won’t call and I’m damned if I will.
***
    When he got back home though he found himself in front of the screen typing an email:
“Ciao, Well I suppose now that we’ve met we can discuss things more openly, don’t you think? A while ago you were saying that at any eventual meeting, looks wouldn’t be important because it would only be for interesting talk. Anyway, I think a better description of myself is in order. I’m (I’d like to say a boy, but it’s clearly not the case) a man with good points and bad points, like everyone. I’m an Aquarius and so I’m moody, exuberant, friendly but serious. One day insanely happy and the next equally pissed off, for no reason whatsoever. I don’t like to be too tied down. With my interest in electronics, I’ve come up with some nutty things which ultimately only I liked them. A couple of the really good ideas I’ve had patented, but alas they bore no fruit (did I tell you I was unlucky!). I see music as a branch of my interest in electronics and I really love classical. The only music I can’t stand is those awful melodic Neapolitan songs. I had a car-stereo shop for ten years and then one day a salesman said to me, ‘How much do you earn buttoned up in here? Come with me and be a sales rep!’ But this was all in 1991 and from an economic perspective everything was rosy until 1993’s crash.
Everything went wrong. Then, three years ago, I lost my
father and my mother made it loud and clear that she was
scared and wasn’t staying alone at home. At that time I
was leaving home at the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning and coming back to Palermo late Friday evening, so I
had to change jobs for something more…normal, and I
took a job in a shop. The