A friend wrote me an e-mail today about bathing habits in a country where he used to live, and it made me recall living on a farm in Italy many years ago. There was no electricity or running water anywhere in the countryside. Lighting emanated from candles or kerosene (paraffin) lamps, and water came from buckets lowered into neighborhood wells.

Bathing took place in the river nearby, where the women also washed the clothes, or you took a sponge bath in your bedroom -- no treat in winter when the only heat in the house came from the kitchen hearth where the water was warmed in an ancient cauldron suspended over the fire.

In cold weather, bathing in the icy river, or in your bedroom when its windows were coated with frost, was closer to trauma than to pleasure. Most people couldn't bear to endure it more than once a week. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" was not a maxim locally in vogue.

This custom, of course, could turn a gay man's oral sex life into an adventure in genital smells -- which was all right with some people. (See my story If You Can Get Past the Smell, You Got It Licked.) Sometimes, it was worth it, depending on the pressure level of your libido equated with the usually unexpected availability of a cock you'd like to suck.

A family lived across the road who did at least have a "bath house," i.e. a sort of hut connected to an outdoor brick-lined, wood-burning oven of the type used around the countryside for baking bread. A fire was built inside it to heat the bricks to the right temperature for baking or for whatever use intended.

In this case, it contained a stainless-steel cylinder for heating water, which was connected to a hand-operated pump that piped the hot water into a large container suspended from the ceiling inside. The bather stood under it and controlled the flow of water from a showerhead by means of a pull-cord.

I had been told that the bath house also featured a wood-burning fireplace to keep it warm. It sounded to me like a very sophisticated mechanism to have been developed out there where running water and electricity were conveniences that had not yet been extended beyond the nearby town.

This ingenious, Rube-Goldberg type of contraption was the invention of a handsome young unmarried man in the family, whom I would have given my right nut to fuck, but who paid almost no attention to me.

He paid me no mind, that is, until one cold-ass morning when I got up late and discovered the water in my pitcher -- placed on the bedside table by the housekeeper who got up with the chickens and brought my bathing water while I still slept -- was already icy cold.

Thoroughly pissed because the morning's hot water would already have been used up by other occupants of the house, I dressed hurriedly in warm clothing and stomped outside to nurse my angry mood in the sunshine barely warming the dormant vineyards and orchards surrounding the house.

At that moment, I caught sight of the young man who lived across the road. As usual, he offered no more than a perfunctory nod in my direction before proceeding on his way. I could see that he was headed for the village, probably to check his mail. We all knew he was expecting a letter from way up north in Milan that might call him to work in an industrial complex where one of his cousins already had a job.

Bearing the germ of an opportunistic idea (i.e. contriving a way to get invited to use the bath house), I ran to his side and fell into step as he marched briskly ahead.

"Buon giorno! Good day!" I said brightly in Italian. "Ché bella giornata! What a beautiful morning! May I walk with you into town? I have to check my mail."

With some surprise he turned his head toward me. "You speak Italian now?" he remarked in that language. "They told me you didn't speak a word!"

"Let us say I try," I replied, thankful for the private lessons I was getting from a professor in exchange for occasionally working with students on spoken English at the village school.

(The same professor had once been allowed the privilege of using the coveted bath house. It was he who had explained to me the intricate design of the place.)

While on our way to town, I could sense the young man's warming up to me as we took a shortcut through a field and vaulted over a low fence and leapt over a narrow stream before coming to the high hill at the top of which the little town had nestled for two thousand years.

Being much older than he, I was breathless by the time I stumbled into the village square. I collapsed on a bench outside the post office. Vigorous youngster that he was, he went right in and came back soon with my mail.

"The postmistress can see you through the window," he explained, "so she gave your letters to me. I got nothing. It must be nice to get mail from foreign countries. I would like to work in Germany some day. Lots of Italians go up there. Then I will thrill my mother by writing foreign mail!"

He had dreams and high ambitions I had learned on the way to town. On the way back, I mentioned casually that I had heard from the professor that he was already an inventor and an architect, as well. No denying he was thrilled that I knew him by such an exalted reputation, but his words belied his excitement and were suitably humble.

"Oh, that!" he said. "The professor exaggerated, I am sure. I am a country boy who knows how to milk a cow and trim a vine. Anything else I have learned from books. All I do is put together ideas I learn from someone else."

I shook my head. "Oh, no! The professor tells me you have always been clever and are not quite like anyone else he knows around here. He thinks you will go far in life. From the little I know of you now, I think so, too."

He nearly burst with pride at that one, but he laughed. "You and the professor will spoil me!"

"It is sometimes nice to be spoilt," I said.

He seemed suddenly thoughtful. "Let us stop here and rest," he suggested. "You are getting winded. You must not walk so fast. Come. Sit over here with me."

We sat under a tree for an hour while he asked all sorts of questions about my life, unaware that the more he probed into my mind, the more he revealed of himself. He was becoming desperately desirable to me. I wanted to rip his pants off and pounce on him right then and there.

His directness had earned him honest answers. When I told him I had been married, he asked if I would marry again. I told him no, I didn't think I would. Sensing an open door in the conversation, I added that I did not need women anymore and that it would therefore be dishonest of me to marry.

That struck him to the core. "Why don't you need a woman?" he asked. Those beautiful words "una donna," which mean "a woman," rolled off his tongue in the lingering, loving way so familiar in Italian, making his simple question an exercise in incredulity. It could better have been asked as "How can you NOT need a woman?"

I sensed it was a thought which had never occurred to him before, going through life without women, without "una ragazza" (a girl) to ease life's pain. I toyed for a second with the idea of going ballistic with honesty and telling him it had to be a man for me, but I abandoned that quickly as it might alienate him before we had even begun. I had been guilty before of such foolishness and had regretted it.

Therefore, I answered obliquely, "Maybe I will tell you someday."

We set out on the road shortly thereafter. I had a sense of his mind spinning, that his thoughts about me were in a whirl. I had revealed enough of myself for him to understand that I was unlike any man he had ever met in his small world and that for some reason I liked him, but he couldn't imagine why. Our conversation became desultory. He was looking for words to express and sort out the confusion in his head about me.

As we approached our homes, his not far along a fork in the road and mine situated only a few yards from where I was about to leave him, he suddenly stepped in front of my gate as if to block the way. There was a glimmer of apprehension in his eyes.

"I am so happy to talk to you," he said. "Do you have to go inside? Listen, I want you to see my bath house for yourself. Then you will see how the professor exaggerates. I don't want you to think I am anything but a simple farmer because that is what I am. Maybe someday I will go out into the world and be more like you. I want to be a man like you."

"Your bath house?" I picked up on cue. "Of course I want to see it. When?"

His answer came in a heartbeat. "Now!"

There was no one home at his place he told me. His father and brothers had taken their two Brahma bulls to sell at a fair. We had a couple on our farm, too, raised from calfhood in a clean and cozy stall on the ground floor of the house, where other animals were stabled and where huge wooden vats aged the household vineyards' wine. His mother and sisters had gone with the men to spend a night with an aunt who lived in the old town where the fair was being held. Thus, we had the property to ourselves.

The bath house surprised me. I had expected a typically ramshackle local affair, but it was beautifully bricked and mortared as though built by professional masons and painted a refreshing blue. It stood in a grove of trees a short walk from his family's home.

"My father helped me make the bricks from our own soil and straw," he informed me with pride, "and my brothers pitched in to help with the construction, but every inch was according to my plan. My grandfather built a fireplace and chimney to keep it warm, while I painted outside. My family is very pleased about it, and to tell the truth, so am I. Maybe someday when I am in another country, they will look at this and think of me."

His honest pride in his accomplishment was touching. I let him see that I was impressed.

He then made the offer I had hoped would come from the first moment I had seen him on the road. "Would you like to try it out sometime?" he asked, not boldly, but in a sort of sweet and tentative way as if he thought I might refuse.

I jumped at the chance. "YES!"

God, but he was pleased! "When?" he asked.

"Why not now?" I answered. "We could use a nice bath after that long walk!"

I could not read what he was thinking when he responded, "We?", but I said immediately, "Yes, you have to show me how it's done. I want to see the whole operation, and nobody can show me better than you."

I don't think he knew quite how to handle it so fast. I had basically come at him hammer and tongs. I had got this close. I wasn't going to let him go without taking a stab at it.

More than slightly flustered, he checked the oven where the water was heated. "There's still plenty of hot water left after the baths my family took this morning before they went to the fair. I'll pump it into the tank. It will only take a few minutes."

I leaned against the outside wall and watched him get things in order. The day was warming in mid-afternoon, so we didn't need an interior fire. It would be warm enough, he said.

Ha! I could have told you that, I laughed to myself. Just looking at him move that hot body while jerking on the hand-pump was enough to burn me alive!

When we went inside, I saw there was a skylight in the middle of the small room -- no need for the kerosene lamp hanging on the wall. There was a chair, and hooks for hanging up clothes. I insisted he take the first shower so I could catch on to the technique.

Shyly, he disrobed, keeping himself turned away from me, while I also undressed. He stepped under the showerhead and wet himself down. What a beauty he was -- smooth skinned and fresh as a daisy, not a blemish on him anywhere. We chatted while he bathed.

It was when he was soaping his face and washing his hair that the question I had been half-expecting finally came. All I could see was his back. He didn't have to look at me this way. Perhaps that's what gave him the courage to ask.

"Will you tell me...why...you do not need...uh...women anymore?"

That was a big one. I could have lied, but I wanted him to know, even if I never got invited to the bath house again. Instinct told me he was the kind of man who would not tell others after he knew.

"I am homosexual, a buco," I said, adding the secomd word for clarity, a denigrating term for "gay" I had learned in a bar faraway in another town.

He stopped scrubbing his head, his hands frozen in place on his hair. Then, silence.

I cleared my throat. "I hope you are not frightened," I said, "but I want to be honest with you. I don't want to lie."

Silence.

I fell silent, too, for what seemed a very long time, then I got up to put on my clothes. "I am sorry if I disturbed you," I apologized. "I will go now. I would appreciate it if you do not tell anyone what you know." As I went to put on my shirt, he broke his silence at last.

"Please do not go," he said in a calm, steady voice. He rinsed himself quickly and reached for a towel which he wrapped around his waist before turning to me. "I am really your friend now that you have told me this thing. Take your shower. There is no rush. No one will come here today."

I didn't look at him while I wet myself down and then washed with the rough, homemade soap, but I talked, feeling it was a good idea not to make too much of what I had said.

I had an idea I thought he might want to hear. "You told me on our walk today that you want to go to work in Milan and make enough money to immigrate to Germany and build a better life, right?"

"Right," he echoed from the chair where he sat -- still naked, but with a towel draped across his lap.

"I don't think you need to go to Milan to make money, You can make all you need right here."

I sensed a sudden interest, like a current of electricity in the air. "My housekeeper is a wonderful cook, as everyone knows," I continued. "Her scamorzza lasagna and anisette biscotte are famous for miles around. She doesn't have an outside brick-lined oven like the rest of you do. It's too much for an unmarried woman to handle alone. When she must bake, she prepares the dishes and stacks them on her head and walks into town. She rents space in the corner of the village bakery's huge gas-operated oven for baking her food, then carries it home to serve. She tells me many women do that for their delicate pastries."

"I didn't know that," he said, seemingly in awe of the knowledge.

"For every service there is a customer somewhere," I explained. "The trick is to take something you use yourself and make it available, at a price, to others who don't have it, but who do have the same need. Everybody around here takes baths in the most primitive conditions. You have a bath house as good as anything in Rome. Do you get my drift?"

A light blinked on in his head. He leapt from the chair, cast aside his towel, and ran over to me in the shower.

"You're a genius!" he cried. "I can rent it by the hour and maintain it myself! I can make the money right here! Oh, Ben, grazie! Thank you, my friend!"

He grabbed me in his arms and danced me around, kissing me on the lips and hugging and squeezing me till I could hardly breathe. His naked body set me on fire. I hugged him back. My rising dick knocked against his thigh.

Calming down, he backed away and returned to sitting in the chair, but I noticed that his eyes looked me up and down.

"You have a beautiful shape, Ben," he said admiringly. "You are not skin-and-bones like me. Maybe someday I will look like you, too."

I could have laughed it off, but this was the time to strike. I had uncovered gold. The next logical step was to mine the lode.

Patting myself with a towel, I walked slowly toward him, not bothering to hide my erection. As I came closer, his dick began to rise until it stood straight up to his flat belly. He had shifted one foot up to the edge of the seat. A hand rested on the knee. The other arm was lifted behind his head. He was staring at me intently, with a look I had seen in men's eyes many times before. He was ready to make hot love.

I crossed over to him and knelt before him so his cock was at my eye level. He said nothing and made no move. That was up to me.

I lowered my head and took him all in. I felt his body stiffen. He let out a gasp. The foot he had lifted came to rest on my shoulder. The hand moved from his knee to push my head downward. His pelvis thrust upward to meet my hungry lips.

He smelled of the soap, pungent and clean. I lifted my head from his dick and lathered his balls with my spit, roling them on my tongue one by one. I draped his legs over my shoulders. My mouth moved lower to his tightly puckered hole.

When my tongue penetrated it, he murmured, "O, Dio! Oh, God!" again and again. "O, Dio! O, Dio!" His fingers clutched his buns and held them apart while I forced my tongue inside.

Rivulets of spit ran down his ass. "O, Dio! O, Dio! It is SO good!" His voice was taut with sexual tension. I reached up and pinched his nipples lightly. "O, Dio! O, Dio!" he moaned. My mouth moved back to his penis. I swallowed it whole, driving down on it so fast I could feel the rapid plunging generate heat.

His hands grasped me by the ears. His "O, Dio!"s became inchoate, melding into a series of deep groans rumbling out of his guts with increasing intensity until with what constituted a scream, he came in spurts of semen that struck the back of my throat like volcanic bombs.

He fell away from me panting like an exhausted dog while I knelt with my head in his lap and gasped for air. As we both gathered breath, he caressed my head and shoulders. His were a farmer's hands, rough and worn with hard labor, but their touch was as gentle and loving as lambs.

Directly, in a low voice, he said: "Ben, can I do something for you? I would like to help you cum somehow, or did you already?"

"No, I didn't," I confessed. All my efforts had been concentrated on him.

He arose carefully without pushing me aside, and spread our towels on the floor. "Lie down here," he said. "I want to look at you, Ben."

I did as he asked, lying on my back. He knelt between my legs and leaned over my tummy and rubbed his body against me. All the while, he looked into my eyes. "I could not do this with any other man," he said. "You are so special, Ben. You care about me and gave me this great idea to rent the bath house to people. I will do it. I will be grateful to you all my life. I don't know if I am homosexual, Ben, but I will do anything for you. What do you want from me now?"

I smiled up at him. "What you are doing is fine. I will guide you when I am ready to cum."

I lay there loving his caresses. He stroked my legs and my belly and my ass and kissed me in private places once or twice, but he never took my penis in his mouth. I did not expect him to.

Finally, I rolled over and got to my knees. "Kneel in front of me," I said, "with your ass toward me. I will not hurt you, but I want to do a special thing."

"It's all right, Ben," he responded. "Anything you want."

I knew there were certain limits beyond which I should not push him. I doubted that butt fucking, which was what I really wanted to do, was a good idea, so I soaped my still stiff cock and held him by the hips while I rubbed it between his buns. His buttocks were soft and warm. I burrowed into the crack and could feel his sweet asshole beneath me. I could not help but sigh with pleasure as he, in turn, moved against me.

Gradually, his thrusts backward became more insistent. His breathing grew harder. I reached down and around him. His cock had turned again to stone! He was getting hotter by the second.

Suddenly, his right hand shot behind him, and he grabbed my dick and guided it to his asshole. Before I could protest again that I didn't want to hurt him, his fingers had grasped the shaft firmly, and I was plunging it inside.

He cried out sharply in pain but begged me to continue. I drove it home in a fit of passion and had barely hit bottom when I felt the semen rising from my groin. I went off like rockets on the Fourth of July, loudly crying his name.

He shouted, too. "O, caro! Oh, beloved! I feel your cum shooting inside me!"

He bucked, snorting like a bronco. We rolled over on our sides with my cock still spraying up his backside. His body shook violently. He was jacking himself off. He came in the next instant, his sphincter squeezing my dick to keep it inside him as his ass pushed backward against my pubes in uncontrolled spasms of ecstasy.

We separated from each other, gasping. By the time his panting had subsided, he was sleeping like a child. I cradled him in my arms and kissed him before falling asleep myself.

We woke when the chill of evening set in. He roused himself to lay a fire. We rested near the crackling twigs, toasting ourselves on the towels, and talked.

He confessed that he had been once with a woman, a whore forced on him by his brothers, but it had proved to be an unpleasant, even disgusting, experience. He hadn't cum, but faked an orgasm to fool his siblings, who were watching, and then pretended to have enjoyed it. "I didn't want my brothers to think me strange."

The evening wore on. The glowing fire made the shadowy room cozy and romantic. He kissed me on the shoulder, then moved on to my cheek. I turned my face and touched his lips to mine. He accepted my tongue. His rampant penis rubbed hard against my belly. He pulled me closer and reached around to feel my butt.

"Will you let me do it to you there?" he asked softly.

"Yes," I murmured, "but not with soap. Use your spit for lubrication.

I lay flat on my stomach. He stretched out on my back and worked his dick into me slowly. Heavy sighs showed he relished it all the way.

At first, he moved so gently for so long that I could almost have gone to sleep again, but then his strokes quickened, and his hands tightened around my shoulders, and hot, gasping breaths replaced his tender kisses behind my ear. He began driving at full speed, as if determined to win the Grand Prix.

He swung to the left, then to the right, then drove hard up the middle lane. The friction of his cock hammering into the depths of my ass generated enough heat to make a bonfire of my bowels, numbing my sensitive tissues to the blows.

Crossing the finish line, he sprayed his semen with an ear-splitting grunt. I swore I felt a million sperm spew into my guts, rioting to swim upstream.

It was over. The lust knitting us together had come unraveled at last. Our strength was in tatters. We lay quietly together through the rest of the night, a peacefulness broken only when he got up three times to replenish the fire. We kissed farewell in the morning when I went back to my house, but I saw him many times again after that.

We continued our affair in the utmost secrecy because we would both have been ruined if anyone found out. He did indeed rent out his bath house as I had suggested, and it was a great success until running water and electricity became available on the farms in the next couple of years, and everyone installed bathrooms in their homes.