Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2017 16:19:14 -0500 (EST)
From: HENRY BROOKS <hankbrookscc@comcast.net>
Subject: The Immigrant    Short Story

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                                          The Immigrant
                                         (A Love Story)

I'm an old man now, and I do a lot of reminiscing.  I'm sorry if you think
that it's a waste of time, but allow an octogenarian his conceit.  I used
to think a lot about my adult years, how difficult they were, and how
wonderful they were.  Lately, however, all my thoughts go back to my
childhood in the late 1930's, and to a section of New York City, in the
Borough of Brooklyn, called Bensonhurst.

All of us kids were first generation Americans.  Almost all of our parents
were born outside of The USA.  The neighborhood was a pretty even mix of
Jews and Italians.  Because our parents were immigrants, none of us took
America for granted.  We were all avidly patriotic, and proud of the
American Flag.  Whenever we kids saw Old Glory pass by in a parade, we'd
solemnly remove our caps and place our right hands, with dignity, over our
hearts, and we all got lumps in our throats.  The thought of someone
disgracing that Grand Old Flag, was enough to make me barf.

Those immigrants, who had established themselves somewhat, were the first
to offer a helping hand to the newbies.  They not only befriended them,
they helped them to join the melting pot.  We kids learned from our
parents.  Sometimes one of the newbies was a kid, and we "Americans," as
the world called us, helped him, as our parents helped his parents.

Here's how I met Anthony (Antonio) Carnevale.  How could I know then that
Tony and I were to share our lives; to make life's journey together?

                                         **********

I met Tony on the first day of school, when I was seven years old, and
starting the second grade.  The teacher, Mrs. Price, sat us alphabetically.
My name is Michael Carlin.  My grandfather anglicized our name when he came
to The United States.  It used to be Carlinsky.  I was seated right next to
Anthony Carnevale.  As soon as we were seated, Mrs. Price asked Tony to
stand up.  The poor boy turned red.

"Class," she began, "I want to introduce Anthony Carnevale.  He and his
parents just arrived from Italy this past summer.  I want you all to give
him a warm and friendly welcome.  He speaks very little English, so I trust
you will all help him, and not make fun of his accent."  All of our parents
had accents.  We weren't likely to make fun of Tony's.  Still you know how
cruel kids can be, and you never know for sure how they will act.

Another thing about those days was that we had no school buses and no
school cafeterias.  We city kids walked home for lunch.  Our mothers served
us a hot meal, and we were back in school within an hour.  When we broke
for lunch on the day Tony was introduced to us, I attempted to speak to
him.  I spoke English to him with an Italian accent.  Somehow I foolishly
figured he would understand, and somehow he did.

I asked him where he lived, and he pulled a slip of paper out of his
pocket.  It had an address on it.  I assumed it was his address, and it was
right around the corner from me.  I made him understand that we could walk
home together. That's when he smiled.  Not only did his eyes shine, his
whole face lit up.  Tony had curly black hair, cut very short.  His eyes
were a deep brown.  His nose was a tiny little pug.  No stereotype there.
His cheeks and his lips were full and rosy, and he had a dimple on each
side of his lips.  I didn't know that I was gay in those days, but the
sight of Tony knocked me out.  He had what I came to call, Mediterranean
good looks.

We passed his house first.  Before I left him, I told him I would be
waiting for him after lunch, right where we were, in forty-five minutes.
He didn't say anything, so I didn't know if he understood me or not.  When
I got to his front door on the way back to school, he was already waiting
for me.  When he spotted me, he broke out into a big smile.  Looking at
this beautiful boy, I was breathless.  I found out one day that we were
both breathless.  Our futures were sealed.

I began to go over to Tony's house almost every evening.  I was tutoring
him in English and we were doing our homework together.  Occasionally on
the weekend, he would visit me, and we would play together.  After we had
known each other for about three months, I asked if he would like to sleep
over at my place.  I thought we could have a lot of fun.  We cleared it
with our parents, and arranged the first of uncountable sleepovers.  We
only stopped when we were teen agers, and our parents did not think it was
appropriate any longer.  Neither of us could figure out what was so
inappropriate.  Maybe that was true when we were twelve or thirteen, but by
fourteen, we were well aware of why it was inappropriate.  Our schoolyard
education was in full bloom.

Just before we started Junior High School (that's what we called Middle
School in those days) Tony and his family became citizens of the good ole
US of A.  I was the only outsider to attend the ceremonies.  That evening,
the Carnevales made a big celebration in their home.  I was invited, along
with my parents. I was happy about that, because I felt like I was a part
of Tony's family.

During our sleepover days, we would hunker up to each other.  It was
inevitable that our growing cocks would eventually rub together.  It felt
so good that we grew bold, and began to fondle each other.  One night Tony
brought me to climax, so I returned the favor.  After that, we rarely
masturbated solo, but reserved that glorious chore for each other.

One enchanted evening, we were fooling around and Tony stretched out the
foreskin of his uncut cock.  He covered the head of my cut cock with it.
It was so sensual that I took him into the bathroom, and asked him to pee
while our two cocks were under his foreskin.  He started to pee, and I had
an orgasm.  We were fourteen by then and getting more adventurous.

By the time we were fifteen, we both admitted that we were queer.  Perhaps
if we were alone, we would have freaked out, but we had each other.
Surprisingly, neither of us gave a shit.  We vowed to be a couple and live
together all our lives.  Once that decision was made, we began to
experiment with male sexuality, which meant fucking and sucking.  We had
not yet been cut off from our sleepovers, so we reveled in our sexual
experiments in our beds, and enjoyed our encounters more and more each time
we were intimate.  By then we knew who and what we were, and so be it.
Needless to say, we kept it our deep, dark secret.

We were too young to have participated in WWII, but young men of eighteen
were still subject to the draft.  Tony was a few weeks older than I, and he
received his draft notice before I did.  We were expecting this day to
come, so we were prepared for it.  Years earlier I had seen a film called
"Follow the Fleet," with Rogers and Astaire.  Ever since I saw that movie,
I wanted to join the Navy, so before they could draft me, I did just that.

It was difficult to be apart from Tony.  But we both felt that it was an
honor to serve the country which we had been so blessed to live in, so we
never complained.  Whenever I could be alone, I jacked off, and dreamt that
he was doing the honors.  We wrote constantly, and called each other when
it was possible.

Then the Korean War began, and Tony was sent to that distant land.  I have
never been very religious, but I prayed every night for God to keep him
safe.  I was a Navy Hospital Corpsman.  One day, I was transferred to the
Marine Corps, and found myself headed to Korea also.

Our field hospital was strafed daily, and we were constantly under attack,
but still, it was for Tony's safety that I prayed daily.  I guess he was
praying for me also, because we both made it through.

Tony was discharged about a month before I was.  When I got home, he gave
me a couple of days with my parents, and then he told me that he had rented
a room in a cheap hotel in lower Manhattan for the weekend.  We told our
folks that we were going to a party in The City, and would be staying
overnight.  Thinking back to that weekend, we now refer to it as our
honeymoon.  The moment we entered the room, we double locked the door and
drew the curtains.  The room was quite dark, but we didn't put on any
lights.  We embraced, and did nothing more than hold each other for at
least fifteen minutes.  Tony's head was on my shoulder, and mine was on
his.  We kept whispering in each other's ears how much we loved each other.
Finally, even though we were both fresh from showering at home, we decided
to shower together and begin our foreplay.  We were way too aggressive in
what we considered foreplay, and we sucked and fucked in the shower.

We soaped each other's cocks until we had to stop, or we would have cum.  I
fell to my knees and started to suck my honey's throbbing penis.  I loved
nibbling on his foreskin, but eventually he begged me to stop.  He said
that if I didn't stop, he would get circumcised.  I wasn't going to let
that happen.  We sucked each other dry in the shower.  Finally we crept
into bed, and stayed there until we checked out the next day.  We each
fucked twice, and got off in our mouths one more time.  Neither of us will
ever forget our "honeymoon."

We both enrolled in Brooklyn College, and graduated with honors.  Tony got
a partial scholarship to Fordham Law School.  His folks and I helped him
with his law school expenses.  I got a promising job with a small but
growing CPA practice.  I took, and passed, the CPA exam, but I had to
apprentice for three years until I could get certified.  During those three
years, while I did my apprenticeship, and Tony went to law school, we
continued to live at home.  Making love was a sometime thing.

Finally, Tony graduated and began to work for a prestigious law firm.  As
soon as I got my certification, I was given a hefty raise.  Now, between
the two of us, we could afford our own apartment.  We found a great one
bedroom in Greenwich Village.  Neither of our two sets of parents found it
strange that we only had one bedroom.  From the way they talked to us, I
became convinced that they were aware of our relationship, but nobody dared
say anything out loud.

Once we bought furniture and moved into our apartment, our love making
became close to obsessiveness.  We sucked and fucked several times a night,
until finally we slowed down and became very domestic.  When we allowed
ourselves to have time for things other than love making, we began to
experience the gay night life in The Village.  We zeroed in on one
particular bar that we enjoyed the most.  It was pretty quiet for a gay
bar, and you could actually have a conversation there, without blowing out
your vocal cords.  But most importantly, we began to develop friendships
with people we met at the bar.  Before we knew it, we had a close,
tight-knit circle of buddies.

By the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies, Tony and I were
middle-aged men.  We lived very well, and lacked for nothing.  Each of us
made an above average income, and we had no children to raise and educate.
We should have been exceptionally happy because life had been so good to
us, but every day we sorrowed a little more.  Not only was the world
changing, but our country was becoming unrecognizable, and not in a good
way.

Young people didn't seem to like anything this great country had to offer
them.  They protested at the drop of a hat.  I didn't mind that at all;
they had the right to do so.  Perhaps Vietnam was questionable, but when
they started to burn the American Flag, I cringed at their ingratitude for
what this country was offering them.  Also, as a combat vet, I resented
their lack of support for our service men.  God was no longer an entity.
The only things the kids worshipped anymore were rock stars and athletes.

After a while Tony and I learned to live with the situation, just like the
rest of the USA.  After all, we were not directly affected.  Our
professions provided us with a good living, and we could work way beyond
retirement age, if we so wished.  It didn't affect us in the bedroom
either.  Each year our love making got more inventive, or should I say
kinkier?

For instance, Tony had stretched out his foreskin to where he could now
cover most of my cock.  He did that one night, and then we masturbated.  We
both gushed beneath Tony's foreskin, and the result was mind boggling.
After that, we did it often, until neither of us could get hard any longer.

Anyway, at some point we stopped worrying about the country's state of
affairs.  We settled into another period of wearing blinders, just as
everyone else did.  We became indifferent to the world around us.  We
accepted the fact that change was a constant, whether for good or bad.  In
short, we buried our heads in the sand.

The one thing we are most grateful for now, in our eighty-seventh year of
life, is that we have each other.  We don't often reach a climax anymore,
and we certainly don't get hard, but in bed at night we cuddle and fondle,
and we even have oral sex.  Like I said, sometimes we cum, but most often
we don't.  It doesn't matter.  We are simply grateful that we grew old
together.  We are ready to leave the world before the apocalypse
occurs. It's just a question of "when."