Again, this is how it was, believe it or not.
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In "pre-reserved" seats Ana sat waving out the window to Alejandro who would return later that afternoon to Rome in the car he'd had the driver come up in. The train didn't pause long for passengers to board, but it was long enough for me to jump in the right car and find her waiting there. I, too, looked out the window at them all, including the field boy, standing on the platform and felt a tinge of emotion, wanting to stay, yet wanting to go. Unfortunately I know absolutely nothing about wine business and thus had no reason to say. Life moves on.
Still, Ana rather quickly engulfed me in her knowledge of the art we would see, far beyond the normal tourist stuff I'd seen several times before, she kept assuring me. She filled me in with her excitement. I don't think she ever stopped talking for the rest of the trip up there. Then, once we arrived, it was hard keeping up with her pace! She knew her way around that place and several locals seemed to recognize her.
That next afternoon about 14:00 we were nearing a small plaza with a great fountain in the middle and lots of outdoor tables around the sides after we'd already had a full second day of touring and walking down the numerous small streets until we stumbled on to this place. At least that's what I thought.
Near the door of one of the cafe's I noticed a young man leaning provocatively against a door frame while casually attempting smoke rings. I know, I know, many of you are going to write back and remind me that they all lean "provocatively" in Italy, but this one was far more so than the usual, even for Italians. At least, in terms of my experience in Italy. This young man you couldn't possibly miss, unless you were blind.
With one arm crossing his chest to steady his elbow, and the other high in the air with the cigarette he was flauntingly drawing on while attempting unsuccessfully to blow smoke rings, he was wearing a loose plaid long-sleeved shirt, white T-shirt very visible where his plaid shirt was parted on his chest. Then there were the loose fitting "50's" style, stiffly creased Levi's 501's with a very thin and expensive-looking alligator polished black belt with gold buckle loosely holding them on his waist plus black penny loafers and white (believe it or not!) socks. His Levi's were even rolled up in a slight cuff! He looked the whole 60's image except for one important part. His black hair, slightly long, moved with the air in the plaza and it was anything but greased. Actually the whole image was one you noticed and did a double take on. Otherwise, well, overall, the guy's outfit and stance looked like something out of "West Side Story" or "Grease" as kids ran around playing with a ball in front of him. In fact all kinds of activity were going on in that plaza, but he was just leaning there puffing smoke rings, or at least trying his best to, and seemingly far, far above it all.
He looked good!
And, he suddenly smiled my way!
Unfortunately his smile was directed to Ana to whom he walked over to and began talking lively in Italian. He knew her, seemed pleased to see her, and they kissed as his hands flew around in the air as they spoke. Closer up to him, his stark facial features, especially his deep dark eyes, beautiful coal black hair with deep brows, striking lips and very white teeth, added to his mystique there in this small cobble stone street. His smile was beautiful.
Who was he?
Ana didn't say. No introductions were made.
Then just as suddenly as I'd noticed him, he disappeared as Ana motioned for me to sit down at a small plaza table near the fountain.
A few minutes later, though, he returned with coffee for one of the other four tables outside and two cups for us. He was working there, waiting tables.
A bit later still, a beautifully striking woman in careful make up came up to where we were sitting and shook my hand with the level of friendship I'd have only expected of a long lost friend. She was older than Ana, had that gorgeously dressed look of a successful woman about her even though right then she was wearing a soiled apron in which she'd obviously been cutting something in a kitchen and had wiped her hands. Now she was carrying a dish towel that she moved around constantly in her hands and using to cleaning our black marble table of a drop of two of water. She was wonderful, very lively, and animated. She was the owner. She and Ana were old friends.
She was constantly being asked questions by what was obviously kitchen staff, but she sat there talking to us and then barked out orders and soon, more coffee of a more specialty designer type in slightly larger cups appears for the three of us as we sat there talking. Yes, the coffee was served by the young man I'd noticed earlier and it was only at that point that I was introduced to him (who looked about 29 or so) by the owner as Ana's "American friend."
It didn't take anyone long to figure out my Italian's only so-so and thus then and only then did he begin speaking tourist talk in very basic English while both women lit up, smoked, and consumed themselves in discussions of who knows what in extremely rapid Italian that left me lost in the dust and didn't relate to me anyway.
Enjoyable for me to be left to converse with the waiter, for sure, but I focused only on the art and stupid tourist stuff with this younger man who seemed eager to try English. He got himself some coffee and sat down. Other tables were left in the care of a second waiter. Mostly I listened.
It has been a long day and I was tired.
Regardless the owner wouldn't take no for an answer. We were returning there for dinner, which was actually fine with me though I'd have preferred just to sleep and let them talk, and so we compromised and I headed back to my hotel, leaving the two women talking away quite happily without me. I'd return later by cab mid evening for dinner.
By the time I arrived back, the small cafe was filled with customers, but Ana had moved inside at table, the ashtray now filled.
Pleasantries began, a few more introductions of folks who already knew her at other tables, then before I knew it, the meal had already been selected by the owner and in record time (for Italy) of my sitting down, that younger man carefully poured wine while smiling but saying nothing, and, returning a moment later, dropped of bread and butter. Ana winked at him openly and he immediately looked embarrassed though for no reason I could think of.
After he left out table and went on to others, Ana leaned over and whispered in my direction.
"He's her lover of about a year or so, you know, despite the differences in their ages."
I was surprised, but I could easily see why he'd be considered attractive to many people.
I watched him as I could. He was moving with flair and style among several tables, handling things. He was still dressed the same as he had been this afternoon with the sole exception of having twined a long floor-length white cloth for an apron around his waist.
Dinner was lavish in that small place filled with customers. I lost count at five waiters and waitresses serving both inside and out. It was the kind of neighborhood place that seemed to have a following among artistic types and just local people who often knew each other and blended together well.
Ana and I sat solving the world's problems with good wine and then at the late end of a great meal later in the evening, a waitresses came over.
"Please with me come," she said, then turned walking away.
Ana nodded so as Ana started to light up again, I followed her through the tables where some were still eating though most were sharing coffee, wines, and just talking. She went to the rear of the restaurant, then at the kitchen area she stopped and look around to check if I was right behind her and motioned for me to follow her even in there. No one in the kitchen paid any attention to us. Finally she went up a narrow creaking steep staircase.
I followed behind.
At the top and down a back narrow hallway she opened a heavy wooden door and motioned for me to enter. I did as she closed the door behind me and left me suddenly standing in a room.
There in a beautifully feminine decorated room with lace curtains and lots of small things including the ever present crucifix on the wall, was that owner, no longer in her apron, but now sitting on a stark heavy wooden monk's chair off to the side of what was an attractive living area, if small, above the restaurant. Across her lap she held the exposed and naked bare bottom of the younger man from earlier. His long white apron was on the floor beside him and those well creased and cuffed jeans were now crumpled down at his ankles with his black silk boxers halfway down his calf's. He didn't seem as high and above-it-all now, exposed bare like this over her lap.
While I stared in surprise, if not shock, as I had entered, her hand was resting on his one red firmly clenched bare bun and she was looking down at his bare fanny as if she was about to slap it. Surely that was reason enough for how tightly he was clenched and also how rigidly he held himself over her lap.
His shirt tails had slipped down his back over his shoulders slightly higher than his white T which was also up high on his back leaving his back bare, possibly as he'd struggled - or possibly she'd pushed them up off his back in spanking him for her own reasons -- and his hair flopped down over his head so as to cover his eyes keeping his face, which he had further hidden in his hands, from view, as soon as I'd walked in on them. But there was no need to see his face to tell who he was.
The boy over her lap's nicely bared buns were at her pleasure as he hung precariously and unbalanced. Neither was saying anything when I walked in, though he was sniffling now as I stood there. Instead she then was caressing his red bare bottom openly with her bright red-painted finger nails, drawing small circles were she had spanked him. She'd done so fairly well and thoroughly too as she pressured his buns apart a little as if to show me she knew where and how to spank a young man his age and how to do it right.
I was surprised, more liked shocked, but I was not too comfortable.
"Ana mentioned your knowledge in what I prefer to call a little 'family correction'?" She said, still not raising her eyes from the young man's bare bottom over her lap.
I nodded though it really wasn't a question and she obviously wasn't looking my way or expecting an answer anyway.
She continued, "I thought you might like seeing how I handle this little one's fanny when I need to?"
I managed to stumble out a weak sounding "Yes, Madam. Interesting."
But I wasn't sure what she expected me to say or do, sit or stand, whatever?
I just stood there feeling uncomfortable.
She said nothing further, but putting her hand between his legs while her other hand forced his shoulders down toward the floor in front of him, she forced him to extend his hands to the floor in front of his face and raise his bare bottom higher, actually completely off her lap, exhibiting his extremely firm erection she took in her right hand.
Whatever her goal, he was now completely vulnerable with his buns spread open and his firm and very erect young _c_o_c_k_ and tight balls very ready for anything she might choose to give him!
The young man being very obedient to her was struggling with balance. His face was still hidden in his flopping hair. By now it was obvious he'd been spanked and for sure he was still whimpering.
"You see," she continued, "he'll perform nicely now."
She paused, though continued stroking his erection, then looked up at me for the first time since I was shown in there and said, "Maybe you weren't aware that women know such things, but we do, my American friend, we do!"
With his attractive and somewhat red bare bottom extended higher in the air off her lap like that now, her right hand forcing his thighs apart as her middle finger tweaked his cherry and her other hand came up between his thighs and grasped his nuts.
"Ah," he moaned as he struggled to keep his balance.
I wondered momentarily exactly what he had done or what exactly she meant by "he'll perform nicely"?
He was struggling more with balance, but he wasn't objecting or fighting her in any way.
Instead, as that red nail applied some pressure to his pucker, the young man from the afternoon moaned what had to have been the Italian equivalency of "OK, OK, I'll do it!"
"See," she said, "I have ways of seeing to it my needs are met too."
He was completely under her control. If he was focused on anything but her, it was unlikely. A small switch also lay on the floor where she could have easily reached it had she needed to.
"If you would excuse us now."
For sure! I was happy to do so.
I left the room, embarrasses at hell, quietly shutting the door behind me, letting them to their pleasure, and I retraced my steps making my return to the table as quickly as I could and a bit star-struck with what I'd just seen.
Ana smiled when I got to our table and sat down. "Why, my, look at you. You're so red! I thought you'd enjoy her; he, by the way is 27; she's 47, but doesn't look it does she?"
I shook my head "no."
I had nothing to say.
Upstairs the boy had to be performing well. No other choice he could have had but to do so.
Downstairs, the few tables left in the restaurant around us were all finished their meals, drinking wine and coffee as smoke billowed and those few of us left continued talking. After what I'd just seen, Italian wine proved to be a great "relaxer" at that moment and I poured myself more and tried to get back into things with Ana at the table. While I'd seen many things in one place or another and a guy over a lap for a spanked is no big deal, I had never seen anything like that! And, to top it off, I really didn't know Ana that well and had no real idea what Alejandro might or might not have told her. For sure, I did not want to find out!
Ana smiled at me and pouring her own, joining me in more wine.
"As long as I've known her, she's always had a young stud, I think you call it, around here. She's an art historian by training. Quite a lady, isn't she?"
That was the understatement of the year. Ignoring upstairs, conversation moved to other things as quickly as I could get it to something else, anything else. I did not want to talk about this.
But the conversation at the table did finally change and we moved on to more usual things.
Later I noticed him waiting on the few remaining tables now still there and drinking. He looked the same as he had earlier in the evening, though he seemed avoiding our table or looking at me.
Later still as the restaurant cleared out almost completely and really slowed down to two tables he joined us, sitting between Ana and me. This time he came with a beer, his cigarettes, and though he didn't initially look at me, he did talk on to Ana.
"Espresso?" he finally asked me and when I nodded he disappeared and reappeared with it.
By the time he came with it another one of Ana's friends had sat down and was talking to her rapid fire about something or other.
Sitting down and giving me my espresso, he leaned over to my ear and half whispered in basic English, "I do not let her do it often much. I know how treat a woman!"
He smirked in a man-to-man way while he raised his beer bottle in a mock toast and almost appeared to wink. He was proud and boastful.
I smiled and toasted him back with my half empty wine glass, but I did not want to talk about this, especially with Ana and another person I didn't know also at the table.
"No problem," I replied, drinking my wine then turning to my espresso. "Forget about it."
He seemed fine now. He clasped me on my shoulder and laughed with me.
I certainly had no problem with it in retrospect. It was as if it hadn't happened as far as I was concerned.
He was seductively attractive, but so Italian, almost flirting with everyone and everything, trying to be macho! His bravado in recovery only somehow made him more attractive. He seemed unaware, though, that Ana also had heard out of the corner of her ear and, as he and I talked, had left the table.
Ana returned. This time she had a fresh wine bottle in hand, corked it herself while talking to her friend, and poured some for me too without asking if I wanted more.
"Wanted" more? I didn't. But I acknowledged her, raising my glass with thanks and continued normal conversation at the table.
Not too many minutes later the owner appeared, behind him, towering above him ordering, "Antonio! Come with me!"
Pausing to speaking in English clearly for my benefit she added, "You come, too!"
and after we both rose, she looked right at me.
"Typical male arrogance. I've warned him about it before. He only said it because you are American!"
She pushed him into the kitchen, into a back room with an extremely heavy looked wooden door. Inside when the door slammed shut, the room looking like a storage place as I followed her. She was pushing him forward toward the far end of the narrow room. He seemed concerned but baffled until she pulled a paddle down off a higher shelf and stood before him.
"So, you know how to treat a woman, do you, Antonio? Well, I also know how to treat a boy! Take off your cloths, everything!" She spoke in English clearly for my benefit, but then she was yelling at him in rapid fire Italian.
Antonio also was arguing with her in rapid Italian, but his whole face had turned scarlet as he fired back as she stood there holding that paddle. Still, there in the privacy of the very back of that back storage room piled high with boxes and things everywhere, with the restaurant now almost completely empty, Antonio was also starting to take off his cloths. Arguing was one thing. Disobedience was not happening!
Antonio had almost ripped of his plaid shirt and cotton T-shirt and then it didn't take him long to drop his jeans and step out of them and his penny loafers while yanking off his white socks, too. He was moving fast though still arguing furiously. Regardless Antonio was quickly standing there naked and proud. He seemed to be apologizing. His face now showed real concern and was still very red as they both loudly argued at each other, but he showed no concern about being completely naked standing there. His hands were moving so furiously as he talked that he didn't bother tying to protect his _c_o_c_k_ from view, but then again his _c_o_c_k_ was now limp anyway.
She stood there, holding her ground. She stood there holding that paddle.
Antonio kept on talking as she forced him over a stack of boxes, adjusted his bare, a bit rosy bottom up high, stroking it and his thighs as he continued talking while struggling for a more comfortable position over the box's edge. Then when she was good and ready she paddled him as well as anyone might ever have done in this situation. This time he was crying and jerking violently despite of his age and that bravado image he had been trying to project to me earlier. He cried openly and freely as he tried with no success to avoid that punishing paddle.
After his paddling had gone on far long enough she stopped and left him hugging the boxes there and sobbing as she was feeling the heat on his bare bottom.
"Here," she said, "You feel!"
I did and he was very hot!
When she acknowledged that and I stepped aside, she torn into him again and paddled him furiously. I have found out before that women in a real punishment situation are much more severe in punishing a "boy" than most men might be. She certainly was!
If there was anyone left in that restaurant or kitchen beyond that closed old thick heavy wooden door, there would have been no doubt he was getting the paddle. Antonio was crying and yelling loudly and kicking and squirming to boot over those boxes as he got his bare bottom paddled but good! The paddle reddened him everywhere, including on his upper thighs. He screamed then!
"Go to my bed! Wait for me there!"
Her Italian for this one, even I understood!
Antonio, his eyes flowing with tears, paused only to grab his jeans, nothing else, holding them before him for protection, while with tears constantly streaming from his very read eyes, he tore out that store room and up those back kitchen stairs where they had been earlier.
She, in turn, returned with me to our table, poured Ana and myself an after dinner drink and talked leisurely and freely with her old friend in Italian and with me in English. It was as if nothing at all had happened.
My espresso from Antonio sat there almost untouched and cold on the table.
Antonio did not reappear.
- - - - - - - - - -
I saw Antonio only once again, only briefly.
Mid-morning, several days later, we had stopped by for coffee and when Antonio served us he said pointedly and openly to me in front of Ana, "I'm sorry I spoke badly. Please forgive me."
"No problem," I replied. "I understand."
He smiled and put his hand around my shoulder openly and smiled.
"Thank you, my friend."
He sat down beside me again this time, reappearing with some coffee for himself and the owner; but this time when the two women went into the kitchen to look at something, Antonio spoke much more carefully and much more deliberately.
"What can say? My life it is."
Then leaning over the table and speaking far more quietly, he continued.
"but if I had job away from here I'd go."
What the hell! I gave him my business card.
Antonio sat with the card in his hand raised off the table as he studied the word on it.
"There, you live there?!??" he exclaimed, "It beautiful there! I saw pictures!"
Jeez, would I like to follow up with this one.
The rest of the stay was uneventful. Getting to know Ana more and seeing a more human side in Alejandro was good, but overall I spent too much time working in Rome! Paolo and Rual re-bonded nicely and were comfortable with being together again even in these "family" circumstances. Nothing more. Guiermo was as impressive as ever, and even Paolo, when he got over his humiliation, loosened up a bit. Ana had immediately returned to Madrid and the three of us, plus Alejandro and his nephews, finished out the stay. I was glad we had come and comfortable about Rual now coming back home with us.
As for Rual, I gave him every opportunity to stumble and earn his first lesson in Italy, but his conduct was fine. Paolo actually came a bit more close to getting it again there.