Howdy Doody

The Program III

Mark's New Home

Chapters 7-8

Chapter Seven

Mark and Mario returned to school the day before Emily and Alexander left, and Adell had a very difficult time parting from Emily. It cost Stavros another car that was given to Lydia but that now allowed Emily to meet with Adell in Sestriere at least twice a month.

The twins had returned to school the day before Mark arrived, and promptly told the rest of the boys of their vacation adventures. Stuart went into an even deeper funk knowing he not only missed the party, but a spectacular one at that according to the twins. Jean-Paul wasn't all that happy either, but at least he had some good news for Stuart, he had talked to his Father and had received some advice that just might help Stuart obtain his goal of returning to his Father in New Zealand. He decided to wait until Mark returned and run the advice passed him first.

Monday morning Mark and Mario returned to class and were happy to see and be with their friends once again. The boys spent half the morning discussing the presents they received over the Holidays before they finally settled down to actual school work. After dinner and showers Mark and the boys from his room gathered in their room along with Sebastian to discuss Jean-Paul's solution to Stuart's problem. Stuart had gone home for the Holidays to his Grandparents home. His mother now lived there. Stuart got to speak with his Father on the phone for about five minutes with his mom both taping and monitoring the call. Stuart had an extremely miserable Christmas surrounded in a sea of toys. The boy didn't want toys, he wanted his Father.

"I told my Father all about Stuart and his parents. He suggested that Stuart start writing to his Court appointed legal guardian in New Zealand and tell him exactly how he felt and what he wanted to happen to him," Jean-Paul suggested. "What good would that do?" Mack wanted to know. "My Father said that the Court had to listen to the guardian of the children involved in a divorce, they carry a lot of weight, and Judges have to explain their rulings if one parent or the other gets custody," he told the group. "How does Stuart know who to write to?" Mark asked. Jean-Paul took out a piece of paper and handed it to Mark. "My Father said that this man is Stuart's Guardian in Italy and this man is his Guardian in New Zealand. My Father says that he should write to the both of them."

Stuart received a list of does and don'ts from Jean-Paul's Father regarding the letters including not telling either his mother or his Father he was writing them. He was also told to write regularly, and write exactly how he felt about the divorce and why. Stuart began writing weekly letters in January. The letters were his, but the 8th Grade of Turin, 1989-1990 had a whole lot to do with them.

Stuart had returned to school one very unhappy boy. With the writing campaign now underway, Stuart saw a small glimmer of hope. He felt like he at least was making his own feelings known and that brightened him up immeasurably. Once Adell heard about the plan, she liked the idea, but she also had another suggestion: send him back to his Father the same way the boy left him; as a virgin. Mark agreed and convinced the twins to go along with the plan. The boys in the dorm received the words directly from the twins. Fuck Stuart and you were fighting them.

The winter months practically flew by. Most of the boys skied, and the school regularly took the boys to the Alps for skiing on the weekends. Mark and the boys in his room along with Sebastian regularly went to Sestriere with Adell and many times, when Alexander and Emily came with Lydia, the chalet was very near bedlam. The usual weekend load was 12 people.

Besides the skiing, one of the biggest attractions was the outside Jacuzzi. The twins and Sebastian knew what they were all about as did Alexander, but it was a relatively new concept to Stuart, Jean-Paul and Mario. Sitting outside in a hot tub surrounded by winter snows falling all around them, seemed somehow weird to the boys. They very quickly learned it could also prove to be extremely stimulating when you added the Jacuzzi into the mix. Adell insisted on at least underpants to the dismay of the twins. Then again, they did have flies on the front of the underpants, so they managed.

On the first ski weekend after the Holidays, Sebastian had a football game he had to attend, and Alexander and Emily would come every other week. The chalet contained its smallest group, eight people. As luck would have it, Stuart woke up in school on Thursday morning with a sore throat. By Friday morning he had a hoarse voice and a runny nose and by the time the car pulled up to the Chalet Friday night, he had a low grade fever. With the exception of Jean-Paul, all the boys there were very used to Adell and her ways. The woman had a sick boy on her hands and none of them (except for Jean-Paul) were surprised when she took Stuart upstairs and had him naked and laying in a very warm bathtub within minutes. "What's she doing?" Jean-Paul very quietly asked Zachary as he and the rest of the boys went upstairs and prepared for showers. The twin was in his usual mood of mischievous behavior and decided to play with his friend's curiosity a bit. "Nothing, she does that every night. First, she'll give him a bath and then take him to bed. When she's through with him, she'll come back for the next boy and do him," Zachary told Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul looked at his friend. "She's going to fuck us all?" he asked wide eyed. "Sure!" Zachary replied with a very straight face. Jean-Paul said nothing, nor did he confirm any of this information with anybody else. For the next 15 minutes he watched the woman very closely as she tended the sick Stuart, first washing, then drying, and then taking his temperature. With Stuart laying in her lap with a thermometer stuck up his rear, Jean-Paul had little reason to doubt Zachary. In the meantime, Zachary informed the rest of the boys what Jean-Paul was imagining.

After giving Stuart some cold medicine, Adell picked the naked boy up and took him into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. "She'll be out in a few minutes, do you want to be next or should I go first?" Zachary asked the boy. Jean-Paul looked at Zachary like he was a frog. Zachary would have liked to have kept Jean-Paul on the hook for at least another five or ten minutes but the look on Jean-Paul's face prevented that. Zachary busted out laughing. "He's sick silly, she's taking care of him," the boy finally managed to tell his friend. Jean-Paul saw little humor in the prank as the bathroom erupted in laughter and his face turned red.

Stuart's weekend was pretty much a washout concerning skiing, but by Sunday afternoon his fever was gone and he was happily bathing in the wall to wall attention of Adell. His mother he was sure loved him, but she was never physically demonstrative of that love. Adell on the other hand didn't seem to know how to express herself unless she was holding, touching, kissing or embracing someone. At home, Stuart slept alone in his bed even if he was sick. Now, he slept in Adell's bed firmly attached to the woman as she monitored his body temperature through the night. Stuart had his first "Crush" at age 12, he was in love with Adell.

Stuart spent more than a few Thursday nights walking outside the dorm at Turin barefoot in the snow hoping he would catch a nice cold for the weekend. He didn't catch another cold, but he did seem to have more "Stomach aches" than usual and they always seemed to appear right around the weekends.

Both Mario and Stuart liked the ski weekends very much, but they liked weekends in Turin much more. For one, it was a lot less hectic and they pretty much had more time to spend with Mark one to one. They also had much more attention from Adell.

Towards the end of January, Mark learned that Maria was pregnant as planned and her baby would be born sometime in late September. With Emily's babies due in mid July, Alexander and Nicholas had a meeting with Stavros by telephone conference in early February. As the oldest, Nicholas reserved the right to name his first born son after Stavros. It wasn't yet known what sex the twins Emily carried were, but regardless, it was Nicholas's right to reserve the name. All of Stavros's grandchildren would be born on Corfu at home, and all would be baptized in the Grotto. Stavros's Grandchildren would not be circumcised (Adell would never allow it). Those were the ground rules, they hold for all of Stavros's sons and grandchildren.

Spring came early that year, and by the end of April the boys had had enough of skiing for the year. Mark was fairly proficient in speaking Italian, much less so in reading and writing it (or Greek). It would take several years before he mastered that, but he had plenty of time. Stavros was not unhappy with his progress and neither was Sergio.

Alexander's assessment of Sergio as a teacher was directly on target. Both Mark and Mario got used to the idea of being naked while taught and even managed to stop going erect every time Sergio held their genitals in his hands. Naturally, the boys would spring into action if something more than just holding them was done, but generally, Sergio's touch left both boys more with a feeling of security rather than a signal to start screwing their faces off. Mark was very curious about the man's methods and why they seemed to work so well, he concluded after two years with the man as their tutor that what the teacher had was their undivided attention. During lessons, Mark never remembered being distracted by outside influences like other boys playing outside, or any outside noises.

Mark's school year started with the five boys in his room and they were about to lose one of their friends. The loss of Stuart was pretty much going to tell Stavros and Adell just how solid a foundation Mark was standing on.

In late May the Family Court in New Zealand ordered Stuart's mother to produce Stuart in Court in New Zealand for a hearing. She refused. New Zealand gave Parental Custody to the Father. Two weeks later the Italian Court gave Custody to the mother, not knowing what transpired in New Zealand. Jean-Paul's Father, who was not officially involved in the case automatically knew that the decision of the Italian Court would not hold on Legal Grounds. But it certainly could "Muddy" the waters.

Both Stavros and Adell thought the world of Stuart but their chief concern was of Mark and his reaction to Stuart's loss. After being assured by his own legal representatives that Stuart's Father would prevail regarding Stuart's Custody issues, Stavros agreed to take Mark out of school a week early and meet his son in Monte Carlo.

Once Mark arrived in on the ship in Monte Carlo, Stuart's Father called the school and told them he had come to Turin and taken his son back to New Zealand and faxed them a copy of the Court Order giving him Custody.

In reality, Both Mark and Stuart were on the ship in Monte Carlo and Stuart's Father was in Portugal. The switch was done this way for two reasons. First, Stuart's Father did not want to get embroiled in Italian Courts. He didn't have the money, and if the Italians took Stuart away from him trying to leave the Country with his son even temporarily, the mother would disappear once again with his son. Second, Stavros wanted a smooth separation between Stuart and Mark, not a disappearance in the middle of the night.

The two day trip to Portugal would help with that transition, and Mario was along for support. The trip did exactly what Stavros had hoped it would accomplish. Mark wasn't the happiest boy in the world waving goodbye to his friend as Stuart boarded the plane with his Father, but he also knew his friend was a phone call away and maybe even a plane ride away in the near future.

To everyone's surprise the separation between Mark and Stuart went smoothly compared to the separation between Stuart and Adell. Stuart's Father stood there in the Airport and watched as his son basically fell apart in the woman's arms saying goodbye. Even Adell was surprised at the depth of the boy's grief in having to say goodbye to her. For at least a few months Adell was the nurturing mother the boy never really had. Goodbyes were not verbal, because neither spoke the other's language. However, the depth of feelings between the two needed no spoken language, they understood each other perfectly.

That night as the ship sailed past Gibraltar and re-entered the Mediterranean, Mark and Mario were just about to fall asleep when Mario noticed that Mark had his hand over his heart and asked him what he was doing. Mark explained the "Trick" he was taught by Michael and now two boys had a dresser full of little drawers in their heart.

Stuart would not return to Turin to continue his schooling. He stays in touch with his old friends and visits Greece every year. When he comes, he brings his wife and three children including his daughter, Adell.

Saying goodbye to his friend Stuart wasn't easy, but Mark knew that it was the very best thing that could happen to his friend. Stuart would now return to New Zealand with his Father and continue with his life. At ages 12 and 13 Mark had lost a great deal of people who were very important to him, but this loss had a meaning and it was for the good. Now, the ship was on its way back to Monte Carlo to close up the house in Turin and to pick up his brother Alexander and Emily for the return trip to their home in Greece for the summer.

It wasn't very often that Mark and Mario spent any quality time with each other totally alone, and Captain Sophis was told by Mark's Father that there was no particular hurry in getting the ship back to Monaco. The ship could steam at very close to 40 knots when it had to, it now moved at closer to 20 knots. The boys knew instinctively when the ship was being pushed, and without question, they knew the ship was in no hurry to get where it was going. Going back through the Strait of Gibraltar, Mark somehow felt an inner peace within himself. In the Mediterranean, he was safe and secure in his new home. Outside of it, he felt vulnerable and insecure. Beyond Gibraltar, lay America and Danamora. Beyond Gibraltar was hell. The two day cruise back to Monte Carlo for the boys was a journey that cemented their relationship not only through their school boy years, but through their young adulthoods as well.

Arriving back in Monte Carlo, Alexander and Emily rejoined the ship, and Mark and Mario were traveling back to Turin. Emily was now about six weeks away from giving birth to the twins and Mark fully expected her to split open and drop the twins all over the deck at any given moment. He had seen pregnant woman before, but Emily looked like she swallowed a blimp as far as Mark could tell. She was rarely comfortable sitting or standing, and spent hours a day in the pool which afforded her the only relief she felt from the strain on her back. The twins everybody now knew were both boys and seemed to spend their days and nights having a rumble with each other in Emily's stomach. She was going to be an extremely grateful girl when the boys finally decided to take a peek outside.

Alexander didn't have a clue how to comfort her, every time he tried, Emily got "Bitchy" at him and had him go away. Even Lydia sometimes caught Emily's wrath when things got really tough for the girl. Adell spent a great deal of her time explaining to those around Emily that things would get back to normal once the twins were born. "Boys don't really understand, but try to imagine you having a watermelon growing inside you and then double your imagination and you'll have an idea of what is happening with Emily," she advised the boys. Mark thought about it and cringed. He was very happy he was a boy.

Stavros too had a lot to learn, these were his first two grandchildren and the man had never before been in direct contact with a pregnant woman before. Like everybody else, he left Emily to the women to deal with as often as possible.

Closing the house for the summer in Turin went as scheduled and Mark and Mario were now ready to leave the school until the fall when both would return. Of the seven boys who started school together the year before, all but Stuart would return. Zachary, Mackenzie, Jean-Paul, Sebastian and Mario had become his very good friends and their return signaled something that was very important to Mark: continuity. The end of the school year meant separation, but it was temporary. And besides, Jean-Paul would be coming to Greece for two weeks during the summer vacation with Mark and Mario and Zachary and Mackenzie were returning to Europe a month early and would stay in Greece with Mark until they all left for school together. Adell watched very closely as Mark said goodbye to his friends and was very comfortable with his reaction. Once back in Monte Carlo, the ship slid past row after row of yachts as it made its way out of the harbor with Mark, Mario and Alexander all standing by the railing excited about returning to Corfu and home.

Morning broke for the boys with the ship sitting in the same Marina in Sicily that it visited on the Atlantic crossing almost nine months earlier. "Mario, we're in Siracusa," Mark said to his friend as Mario's eyes slowly opened. "We always stop here," Mario replied as he got up and trotted off to the bathroom. At about that time, with Mark headed to the bathroom with a choke hold on his penis trying to forestall the flood, Adell came in very quickly followed by Alexander. "Good morning," Adell said as she put down a pile of towels and turned on the shower. Alexander got into the shower as Adell put shampoo on his head and began washing him. "I'll wash your hair and your back, then you can finish," she told the boy as she turned him around. Mark was a little surprised to see his brother, he thought he would shower in his cabin with Emily. "Where's Emily?" Mark asked. "She's still in bed, I slept with Poppa last night," Alexander told his brother. "With Poppa?" Mark asked. "Yea, Emily threw me out last night," Alexander replied. "Don't be silly, she didn't throw you out, she just needed more room for her and the babies," Adell replied. "The bed on the ship is smaller than the one she's used to." "Nana, I haven't been allowed to sleep with her for a month now," Alexander replied. "That will change once the babies are born," Adell told him.

Mark listened to his brother and Governess and it didn't sound to him that marriage bliss was all it was cracked up to be. The more Mark heard about girls and babies and birth, the less he liked it. Maybe he would stay a bachelor like Poppa was.

As Adell finished washing Alexander, Mark and Mario were next and both boys had shampoo dropping off their heads in minutes. Alexander watched wistfully as his brother and friend experienced the luxury of being washed by Adell. She washed Alexander for very close to three years, now, he had to do it himself. Becoming an adult had its very harsh drawbacks Alexander thought to himself.

"How long are we staying in Sicily?" Mark now wanted to know. "We will be sailing this afternoon," Adell told the boys. "We're just here to pick up some food supplies and water," she told the boys. "Poppa does not want you off the ship." It didn't really matter to Mark, he had toured the Island with Adell and his brother nine months earlier.

By about noon, a commotion on the pier caught the boys' attention and to their surprise, a crane was lifting a huge crate onto the ship and it was being lashed to the deck at the bow. "What's that Poppa?" Mark asked as he watched the crate being strapped down. "It's a very special tub that will be installed at the Grotto," Stavros said. Mark and Mario looked at each other. "You're going to put a bathtub in the Grotto?" Mark asked his Father. "It's not for bathing. It's for having babies and baptizing them," he told the boys. Again, Mark and Mario looked at each other. "Having babies in a bathtub?" Mario asked. "Yes, Nana says that it would make the birth easier on Emily if she has the babies in water," he told the wide eyed boys. "But they'll drown in water!" Mark said. "That's what I told her, but Nana says no," Stavros replied. "She's been talking to a Doctor in France who runs a clinic and she says he is right."

At this point, Adell who was sitting there reading interjected herself in the conversation. "Do you remember Stuart's sex education lessons?" she asked the boys as she laid down her book. "Do you remember what the baby is in?" she asked both boys. "A baby will drown in water only after it starts breathing air. Until then, it's living in liquid just like a fish is," she said. "After lunch you will all sit down and watch the lesson again. You too Stavros!" At the age of 37 on his own multi-million dollar yacht, Stavros learned how babies are born along with his sons. He also watched the birth of a baby underwater. Like his sons he was very glad he was male.

With Emily's birthing tub firmly attached to the ship it left Siracusa bound for the Greek Island of Corfu. The Captain steamed particularly fast, the weather would be threatening if they dallied and the last thing anybody wanted was Emily any more uncomfortable than she already was. By the end of the trip, Adell had decided that Lydia was overwhelmed with taking care of Emily all by herself. Once Emily was ashore, Rachael would also be assigned to her until after the twins made their appearance and Emily was back to normal.

As a child Adell had already been present at the birth of babies, she had been there for three births of her siblings as had most of the girls in Stavros employ including Lydia, Rachael and Maria. Adell at age 11 was there at the birth of Stavros himself. This birthing thing was nothing new to her, nor did it scare her. For boys, it was a completely different matter. Seeing things on video was one thing. Seeing Emily lower herself into the pool naked was a tad different. Mark couldn't imagine in a million years why a woman would ever want to go through that stuff. Like his Father, he decided he wasn't going to get involved, let the women handle this stuff he thought to himself.

The boys loved the ship and spent the greater majority of their time on the bridge with Captain Sophis and the Officers. Each boy took turns at the wheel even though the ship had an automatic pilot that steered the ship better than they could. After dinner and showers, Mark and Mario decided that it would be really neat to take pillows and blankets topside and sleep on the Boat deck watching the stars as the ship sliced through the waters at almost 40 knots. The railings on the ship protected them from the wind and barely ten minutes after they laid down, Alexander came up with pillows and blankets of his own. Emily was cranky and he wanted no part of it.

Laying down next to his brother, Mark scooted himself over and laid his head down on Alexander's chest as Mario used Mark's stomach as his pillow. All three boys watched the stars and watched for shooting stars in between finding planes flying over head at 30 and 40 thousand feet barely visible except for an occasional blinking light. Before long Mark found himself getting very tired and he turned himself around on his stomach and saying goodnight kissed Alexander. Mario had lost Mark's stomach as a pillow, but he found something just a little softer as he laid his head down on Mark's ass and drifted off to sleep a very happy little boy. Just before bed, Adell came up and checked on the boys one last time before she herself went to bed. Putting comforters and blankets on the boys she looked at each of them laying there sound asleep and wondered to herself if she could possibly love them any more than she already did.

With the rising of the sun and the boat moving up and down by the bow in the waves, the boys awoke knowing why sailors don't usually sleep out on deck. While it hadn't rained, they were soaking wet, and it had nothing to do with the fact that both Mark and Mario were enuretic. They were soaked from the dew. Coming down from the Boat Deck, the boys passed by the Master Cabin and stopped in to see if Stavros was awake. Stavros was sitting on the toilet seat as Adell shaved the man. Seeing the boys standing their soaking wet and naked, Adell motioned them to shower in Stavros's bathroom as she finished shaving the man and cutting his hair. "We're moving really fast Poppa," Alexander said as he warmed up in the water as he washed Mario's back. "Yes, Captain Sophis wants us in Port before the weather changes," Stavros replied. "We should be there by around noon," he told the boys.

Breakfast came none too soon for the starving boys but Emily was none to keen about eating. Maybe it was the rocking of the ship, or maybe it was just a routine kick boxing episode but the twins didn't really give Emily too much rest during the night. Weeks before she had given up all hope of ever putting on a pair of underpants or shorts again and she wore strictly very large robes. The twins were kicking the hell out of her inside and out Mark noticed. Her face, which was always clear and bright, was now splotchy and with pimples. Her hair, always manicured, looked like she was using it for a floor mop. When she walked, she walked holding up the bottom of her stomach like she was carrying a sack of potatoes. For the life of him, he couldn't even imagine that she would have four or five more of these things without someone having to hold a gun to her head.

That night during showers, Mark's curiosity had him asking questions. "Gramma, is this the way all babies are born?" he asked the woman. "What do you mean?" Adell asked. "Do all women have to go through the same stuff Emily's going through?" he asked. "Well, Emily is having two babies, not just one so that's a little more difficult for her," Adell told the boys. ""But yes, all babies are born this way and it's not easy or simple." Mark thought about it for few moments. "I think I'm going to be like Poppa and stay single," Mark finally replied. "Me too!" Mario said before Adell could respond. Adell smiled. "We'll see," she said and continued her washing.

The return to the house on Corfu was cause for a great celebration. The entire house staff was there and Stavros had completely renovated Alexander's bedroom. It now held two king sized beds and every conceivable piece of baby furniture known to the free world along with a double sized crib. He also had an elevator installed so that Emily and the wives who would follow her did not have to walk up and down the winding staircase. Mark and Mario spent the better part of an hour going up and down the elevator driving Maria the house manager fairly crazy.

Stavros also had a whirlpool bath attached to the pool for Emily. She could not go into a hot tub or Jacuzzi because of her pregnancy but a slow moving whirlpool would do for the girl what four people massaging her could do. Within 15 minutes Emily was sitting in the whirlpool mildly comfortable for the first time in months.

Adell's plan for the next few weeks was fairly simple; divert as much attention from Emily as possible away from the babies and onto the wedding plans. It worked pretty well except for when one of the boys decided to drop kick her.

For Mark and Mario the summer began that first day as the both of them got on their Vespas and rode down to the Grotto. Stripping naked wasn't all that cumbersome, all they had on was gym shorts anyway. Two days later the birthing tub arrived at the Grotto and for the next week workmen built it into the Grotto with the salt water as its water supply. Adell was there a great deal of the time, she had instructions from Doctor Odent and she was planning on following them to the letter. The boys' time was spent swimming in the lagoon and climbing along the hills and rocks that followed the shoreline. Both boys loved Hania, but their fondest memories of childhood growing up together were of them playing in and around the Grotto.

A week after Mark's return to Corfu, Emily's family returned. Her Mother, along with her baby sister and three brothers returned and they would remain for the summer. The little girl was three and pretty much stayed glued to her Mother. Emily's brothers instantly reacquainted themselves with Mark and Mario including the third brother, who had never met them before. George was 12, Adrian was 11, and Kyle was 10. The youngest boy was new to the group, but his behavior instantly told both Mark and Mario that he was fully educated by his older brothers and was fully ready to romp. Emily had one more brother who remained with his Father to work.

It was very apparent to Stavros that he was going to be running out of space very quickly. Emily and her Mother and little sister would sleep in Emily's room. Nicholas and Maria would be coming in the next day and would use their room. Much to the boys' pure delight, Stavros ordered the ship be anchored off the beach and house the children. A 175 foot Feadship is a very nice boat, it's an even better playground for half a dozen kids and assorted adults. Mark and Mario took up residence with Emily's brothers and the party began.

George and Adrian were known quantities to both Mark and Mario, Zachary and Mackenzie had both boys flat on their backs during Christmas, and both Mark and Mario knew that both boys knew how to make their bunk mates very happy. Kyle on the other hand was an unknown and Mark always tread very lightly until he knew where a boy stood before he dropped his pants. Within two minutes after lights out, Kyle was sitting on Mario's chest as Mario made Kyle a very happy ten year old. Less than twenty minutes later, Kyle sat on Mark's stomach as he guided Mark into him with a very impish grin on his face. Mark didn't know what time the boys finally got to sleep, but they awoke just past 9:00 in the morning, two hours late.

If Emily's brothers wore anything during the day, it was underpants and since they were usually wet from swimming, they didn't really count as something to cover up with. Even if they were dry, they were single layer cotton bikini briefs that were all but transparent and wet they were practically invisible. There was no guess work involved, they were very healthy and well endowed young boys.

Emily's little sister came with her Mother, and at age 3, stuck very close to her. Her name is Genevieve. Like her big sister Emily, the little girl was going to be raised as a virgin. Regardless of what her brothers did with each other or their male friends, the boys were taught that their sister was completely off limits to anyone. You could look, but touching would produce a four inch leather strap beating your ass bloody. George and Adrian had seen it done on a cousin and needed no further lessons.

Jean-Paul arrived in the beginning of July for his two week stay and Mark and Mario had never seen him looking happier as he stepped off the plane. He was staying for two weeks, and if he changed every stitch of his clothing three or four times a day for the next two weeks, he would still have some left over that went back home unused. He ended up staying four weeks and went home having worn one bathing suit and three pairs of shorts during that time. Adell did not unpack his bags, she knew better.

The twins at Christmas had described their vacation to the boys at Turin, but still Jean-Paul was un-prepared for the ship or the Grotto. Knowing that there were going to be children all over the place for the wedding, Stavros had extra bicycles purchased and within an hour of arriving, Jean-Paul was touring the grounds with the other boys in the pair of shorts he'd be in for the next week. Jean-Paul was a city boy from Milan. He instantly fell in love with country living.

Once again, language came in between the boys on the bike hike. Jean-Paul spoke Italian and English. Emily's brothers spoke only Greek. Mario spoke Greek and Italian and only Mark could speak all three. Mark once again found himself doing a hell of a lot of interpreting between Jean-Paul and Emily's brothers. Naturally, Jean-Paul's first question (in Italian) was where Emily's brothers stood. Jean-Paul's face lit up when the answer came back from Mario that they were Greek just like him and Mark. That exchange brought a question from Emily's brothers who wanted to know what the talk in Italian was all about. When told, they smiled. Basically, the language barrier was hurdled.

Jean-Paul figured he was going to have the best vacation of his life as he followed Emily's brothers down to the beach. The get acquainted session was very short lived. Immediately after the boys' bikes hit the sand at the Grotto so did their pants and Jean-Paul knew all three boys up close and personal in just under 30 minutes swimming in the lagoon just outside the Grotto.

By the end of the first week into Jean-Paul's vacation, Emily, her Mother and Adell were rarely seen. Mark didn't know how it could possibly be, but Emily grew even larger by the week until just before the babies were born. Periodically, the boys were allowed to listen to the baby's heartbeats through a stethoscope, but as Mark listened to the two drum beats inside Emily, he was paying more attention to her stomach fully expecting it to explode at any given moment. It scared the living shit out of him.

Emily had been taken to the grotto several times and each time the Grotto was emptied of the boys to allow Emily to use the tub since she would be naked. Being restricted from the Grotto just because Emily was going to be naked seemed strange to Mark, hadn't she been seen naked before dozens of times by everyone in the whirlpool? Hadn't he seen her naked on the ship? What was the difference between the Grotto and the pool at the house? Mark concluded that women were very strange creatures.

A few days later at lunch, Captain Sophis came to the table and told Alexander he was needed back at the house. "Emily's water has broken, she is going into labor," Captain Sophis told Alexander who left immediately. Mark and Mario pretty much sat there and looked at each other. "What the fuck does broken water have to do with having a baby?" Mark asked his friend. Mario shrugged his shoulders. "How do you break water?" he asked. Emily's brother George giggled. "Haven't you been to a birthing before?" he asked. "No," Mark and Mario said almost simultaneously. "We have, we were there when our sister was born," Adrian said. "What's it like?" Mario asked. "Pretty gory. A lot of screaming and blood and the baby pops out like a piece of toast!" George replied. Mark and Mario looked at each other as Mark tried to recall the videos from Stuart's sex education lessons. It wasn't all that gory and not all that bloody. Did these guys know what they were talking about?

By about 4:00 in the afternoon, Captain Sophis returned to the boys who were swimming in the pool on the ship. "Mark, your Poppa says to come to the house. Emily is going to have her babies soon." Mark would have much rather stayed on the ship, but along with the rest of the group, he put on a pair of shorts and the launch took them to the beach. As the cart with the boys in it pulled up to the house, Mark noticed that the house was all but deserted of women. One kitchen maid remained, but every other person in the house or outside was male. Stavros sat at a table by the pool with Maria Anna's husband and a few other workers and Alexander.

They also had more than a few bottles of wine and liqueur on the tables. "Nana says that Emily will be giving birth very soon," Stavros said to Mark. "What should we do Poppa, should we go down to the Grotto?" he asked. "Emily doesn't need or want men around her right now, she has her Mother and Nana and all the help she needs," he told his son. "This is now women's work, and we wait until they are done."

The scene at the Grotto was something that Greek males seldom see. It was a scene that most males in the world seldom see, and maybe sometime soon that will change, but for the birth of Alexander's first born sons they came into the world surrounded in a sea of female faces including a three year old child.

Emily entered the Grotto and stepped into the birthing tub just after 11:00 in the morning already in labor. The heated and filtered sea water had an immediate effect on her as the girl felt a huge weight being taken off her spine. Practically buoyant, Emily almost felt good. At Adell's insistence, Dr. Odent had sent a midwife from his clinic in France to assist in the delivery, and by 5:00 the first babies head was crowning. 15 minutes later, eight women were looking down at a baby in the bottom of the tub who was looking back at them wondering what the hell was going on as he stretched underwater. His eyes opened occasionally and maybe it was ridiculous to think that the baby was actually looking around, but Adell thought so. 30 minutes later his brother was born as he was lifted out of water and drew his first breath of life and his body turned pink from stone white.

Stavros received the word, and the men went to the beach a few minutes after Demetrius was born. With Alexander holding his first born, Stavros was handed his brother, Constantine. Demetrius was Stavros's Father's name, Constantine was his Grandfather's. Mark would see it many times in the future, but that night was the first time he saw tears flowing from his Father's eyes. Maybe he would Father a child himself some day he thought to himself.

The babies stayed in Alexander's and Stavros's hands less than three minutes before the women took them back. It was two days before anybody saw them again. By 7:00 Emily was back in her room and very quickly falling into an exhausted sleep. Many gallons of wine later, the men ended their night as the women tended to the twins. Mark and the boys went back to the ship and as usual at a party when a good deal of drinking took place; they had their share of the spoils and didn't quite remember walking back on board the next morning.

To a 13 year old boy, Emily looked like a whipped dog prior to the twins' arrival. After their entrance, she seemed to have a complete makeover. The blimp was gone, the pimples and splotches were gone and her hair returned to its previous sheen. She smiled again, she laughed again, and most importantly to Mark, she held his brother's hand again. Mark watched with very great interest as the two of them interacted together. He had thought that seeing someone else take his place by his brother's side would piss him off. Instead, he found himself really happy for Alexander who didn't look all that happy with his new life just days and weeks before.

During the day the boys spent most of their time either on the ship or in the Grotto which was once again theirs. Jean-Paul was especially happy. Mario was still the closest boy to Mark, but Jean-Paul didn't have to worry about Stuart also taking away Mark's attention from him. Jean-Paul had very few friends at home, at school it was another story. The twins were his very good friends, but they weren't his "Best friend" And that's what the boy was really looking for. He made plans for the ninth grade; he was going to make Mark his best friend.

Sometimes during meals when the children ate at the house instead of on the ship, they'd hear a cry or two coming from the upstairs, but for two days the twins were a no show as was Emily. On day three at Lunch it changed. Emily came downstairs on the elevator in a wheel chair as Adell and Emily's Mother carried the babies to the table. Laying the babies down on the table, Adell and Emily's Mother unwrapped the boys from their blankets and stepped back as the men looked over the new additions. Gone was all the white stuff and blood that Mark originally saw and the babies' color and eyes were now in sync with what he knew babies to look like. They still had a small black stubble attached to their stomachs, but Mark knew that would soon fall off and he'd be able to tell if they were going to be innies or outies.

Neither boy had a huge amount of hair on their head, but it was decidedly blond like their Father's. Whether or not their eyes would stay blue was not yet certain, but Adell doubted it. "They will turn gray like their Poppa's," she told the boys who stood around examining the babies.

Kyle was the first to speak. "They've got pretty big balls don't they mama," he said to his Mother. "All boy babies look like that when they're first born Kyle," Emily's Mother said amid a whole lot of giggles and laughter at the table.

What lay ahead for Alexander's twins was the same routine that all of Stavros's grandchildren would be raised by. For the next six years they would be raised almost exclusively by the females in the house, very closely supervised by Adell, who, as the Matriarch of the Family by Stavros's decree, ALWAYS had the last word in their upbringing.

By tradition, her authority superseded even the child's own Mother. Not unexpectedly, the twins would be raised exactly the same way as Stavros was raised by Adell when he was born;

All babies would be born on Corfu and have Greek Citizenship.
No child would be circumcised, boy or girl.
All the babies would be baptized in the Grotto.
The babies would not have their hair cut until they were at least five years old.
The children would be raised naked (weather permitting) until they were at least five years old.
The children would be breast fed until they chose to stop.
The children would be raised traditionally; the girls would be raised as virgins. Boys would be raised without interference as to their inter-personal relationships.
In the event of a divorce the children would remain in the custody of their Father's.
As with Emily and Maria before them, any girl not willing to commit to those terms would not wed any son of Stavros.

As to the legalities of those terms, the author couldn't say, but those were the terms agreed upon by Stavros and the Family of any girl one of his sons married. They successfully hold to this day without questions or reconsiderations on anyone's part.

Two weeks after the twins' birth the entire family gathered at the Grotto and the twins were returned to the pool they were born in and baptized. Mario stood by his Father very proudly as the man handed the twins one by one to the Archbishop, he was the twins Godfather.

The day they were born, they put up no fuss at all in the water, two weeks later, it was another story altogether as the shrieks echoed off the Grotto ceiling and walls when the Archbishop dunked each one in over his head and they came sputtering up to the surface. Constantine very promptly thanked the Archbishop for his third dunk by promptly peeing all over the man's robes (something the Archbishop said wasn't all that unusual).

Admittedly, Alexander jumped the gun a bit, but years of planning and spending by Stavros were coming to fruition, and Mark watched as he saw his Father shed tears for the second time in two weeks.

Following the Baptisms, Demetrius was re-dressed in his Great-Grandfather's Baptismal Gown and Constantine was re-dressed in his Great-Great Grandfather's Baptismal Gown and the entire group walked back up through the groves to the house for the Church wedding of Alexander and Emily. The wedding was a little smaller than the wedding of Maria and Nicholas: many of Maria's Family returned to Corfu, as did Stavros's friends and business associates. It was a very simple ceremony, and for Stavros and Adell as well as Emily's Mother, a very emotional one.

By tradition, once Emily married into another's family she was no longer a part of her Father's family, but a part of Stavros's family. He was now her Father. Stavros was damned proud to accept her into his household. Noticeably absent was Emily's Father who refused to attend. On her wedding day, Emily was upset. Stavros was pissed. There were definitely going to be repercussions.

The reception was smaller and quieter than Maria's but only because many of Maria's cousins, nieces and nephews who were at her wedding were not at Emily's wedding. But in Greek tradition, that didn't stop the wine and music from flowing and once again, the return to the ship for the boys was a fairly foggy affair sometime around midnight.

As far as Emily's Father was concerned, Stavros was of the opinion that the man certainly had the right to disown his daughter and if he felt that strongly about it, he should stay away. He considered the Father's rejection of Emily as a rejection of himself and of his son, Alexander. The day after the wedding he was sent a letter and told he was never to set foot in any house owned by Stavros and was forbidden to touch or hold Stavros's grandchildren. He never did.

The rift between the two did not extend to Emily's Mother or her brothers. They regularly came to Corfu and Hania but were always careful to never mention their Father to either Emily or Stavros. He died in 1999 never personally seeing or touching any of his six grandchildren by Emily and Alexander. Once their Father was dead Stavros accepted Emily's brothers into the family. By 1999, Genevieve was already a member of the family and pregnant with Stavros's 17th grandchild.

The day after the Baptism and wedding it was time for Jean-Paul to return to Italy. He had already successfully begged and pleaded with his Father to extend his vacation by two weeks but regardless, his leaving was very tearful and placed a huge stress on Mark. He knew exactly how Jean-Paul was feeling inside and it hurt. Neither Stavros nor Adell were very happy, they dodged the bullet with Stuart's separation only to be on pins and needles again wondering if this separation was going to send Mark on a downward spiral. "Next vacation, he comes when they all return to school together," Stavros told the woman. Adell watched Jean-Paul with very special interest.

"The boy doesn't cry for a departing friend, I think it goes much deeper than that," she told the man. Stavros spent his entire life listening to Adell and he regarded her evaluations as gospel. "And do you see Mark or Mario reciprocating these feelings?" Adell knew the real question being asked. "When the time is right, Mark and Mario will lay down with women," she responded. The man didn't reply; he had the answer he was hoping for.

After lunch, the boys had about two hours before the plane would leave and Mark, Mario and Jean-Paul took one last ride on the Vespas to say a private goodbye. Reaching a hilltop in the groves that overlooked the ocean the boys parked the bikes and sat down underneath a huge old olive tree. They were the only humans around and talked very openly. "September is only a month away and we'll all be back in school together," Mark began the conversation.

Looking out over the water Jean-Paul watched the ship as it lay at anchor and heard the faint yelling and hollering being put on by the kids on the ship as they swam and played. "We're all going to be in the same room together again right?" Jean-Paul said. "Of course we are!" Mark replied with Mario agreeing. Jean-Paul was silent again for a long time. "September is a long time away," he finally said. "No it's not, it's five Sundays sitting in Church with your Father," Mark said trying to lighten the moment up. "It's one trip to the barber," Mario said taking his cue from Mark. Jean-Paul smiled. Once a month the barber came to Turin to cut the boy's hair. Nobody allowed him to cut it, but he got paid anyway. "Who are we going to take to fill Stuart's place?" Jean-Paul asked. Mark thought for a few seconds. "How about Sebastian?" he suggested. Jean-Paul's back straightened. "No, not Sebastian," he said looking towards Mark. Mark was a little surprised; he thought Jean-Paul and Sebastian got along very well. "Don't you like Sebastian?" Mark asked. "I know he likes you." Jean-Paul looked down at the grass he was sitting on. "I don't have any really good friends. You and Mario and the twins are really good friends. If Sebastian comes in, he's going to be your really good friend too," the boy said.

Jean-Paul sat there picking at his fingernails which drove Mark absolutely crazy when he did it. When Jean-Paul first came to Turin, he had picked his fingernails clean down to the quick. He had no fingernails. It was December before they grew back and Mark hadn't seen him pick at them in months. Mark said nothing, but took Jean-Paul's hands in his. "Yes, they are my really good friends and so are you. If you weren't my really good friend, you wouldn't be here with us" he told the boy. "When we go back to school if you don't want Sebastian in the room, we'll find somebody else." Jean-Paul looked at Mark. "But he's you're really good friend," he said.

"So are you Jean-Paul," Mark replied.

In recalling the scene many years later, Mark and Mario didn't really remember anything else the boys may have said to each other, they just remembered hugging and holding each other for the longest time before it was time to go back to the house.

Jean-Paul boarded the plane slightly happier than when he woke up in the morning. He would go home to Italy to his parents and three sisters and spend most of his time either writing letters or on the phone to Australia. He also placed and received a few phone calls from Stuart in New Zealand who was very surprised to find a horse waiting for him when he returned to his Father's sheep ranch. The one phone call he didn't make was to Greece. While he wanted to talk to the people there very badly, he knew if he heard them speaking, he would lose it. Jean-Paul's time was so consumed by his correspondence with his class mates that by the time he was ready to return to Turin, he still had most of his fingernails intact and they would immediately start to re-grow.

Mark wasn't all that happy about Jean-Paul's separation, but two nights sleeping in Adell's bed solved the problem, or maybe it was the twins' upcoming arrival from Australia that pulled him out of his funk. From Stavros's standpoint, he gave all credit to Adell. Invariably, whenever Mark went into a possible crisis, he sought out Adell for security and comfort. The man understood the boy's feelings; he had been there himself as a child and way beyond. For Mario's part, he almost looked forward to Mark being upset, when Mark slept with Adell, so did he.

A week after Jean-Paul left, the twins arrived with enough baggage to sink the Titanic. From Greece, they would return to school in Turin with Mark and Mario after the end of summer and they were loaded with every possible piece of contraband that they knew the school would never allow them to possess. Even Adell was a little shocked at the porn magazines and fireworks factory they imported into Greece through Customs. She couldn't figure out how they weren't on their way to jail. Nevertheless, there they were standing in the terminal looking like two priests ready to take a confession. If anybody in the terminal didn't know that four boys hadn't seen each other in two months, Stavros didn't know why.

The month of August is hot in Greece, and Stavros opted for a cruise among the Greek Islands with the entire family. Emily's Mother had returned home with her little girl. That left Alexander and Emily with their twins, Nicholas and a very pregnant Maria and Mark and Mario with the twins from school plus Emily's brothers who revolted at the decision for them to return home.

Lydia and Rachael who were taking care of Emily and the twins, and Maria's house keeper, Sophia shared the sixth stateroom and the ship was effectively packed.

Sophia was hired by Adell four years previous when Adell and Nicholas first went to Spain to start the boy's education. She was a 16 year old Spanish girl, well raised and well bred, and now at 20, she was fluent in Spanish and Greek. While she was not Greek, she was raised fairly liberally when it came to boys and very little of boys behavior shocked her after four years of seeing Nicholas and Alexander together as well as her own brothers and male cousins. Then again, she had never met the twins before.

Zachary and Mackenzie had been to Corfu during Christmas vacation, so the first thing they lost once they arrived on board was their clothing as they dove into the pool. Sophia was a little surprised at first but she did note that neither boy had a tan line. She also assumed they were American children, since they were circumcised just like Nicholas, Alexander and Mark were and they could speak English. She wondered to herself why American Father's wanted their sons' penises cut down.

Observation told Sophia that being naked was their normal attire from where ever they came from, which was a mystery to her since all four of the boys opted for a common language amongst themselves which was Italian. Sophia kind of thought she was on a cruise put on by the U.N. Depending upon who was involved, people around her were speaking Greek, Italian, French, English and now Spanish to each other.

The twins' level of energy took Maria and Nicholas a bit of getting used to, but Stavros very much liked the boys. They were spunky, they were open, they were funny and both Mark and Mario reveled in their company. The tone of the trip was pretty much set by Mack's first look at Emily's twins as they were being changed. "Yep, they sure do have your dink Alexander," he said to the proud Father. Stavros damned near choked on the sip of wine he was taking at the time. After the interpretation, Maria wanted to know what a "Dink" was. A second round of laughter came with her blush.

One of the first housekeeping chores was how to separate the boys. seven boys in one Stateroom couldn't be done. It took some negotiating, but eventually, Mark and Mario kept Kyle with them, while the twins paired of with George and Adrian. In reality, it really didn't matter, while seven boys in one Stateroom couldn't be done, it usually was. Adjoining staterooms helped quite a bit.

The trip had no special set destination, Captain Sophis slowly cruised the Greek Islands. Periodically the ship would anchor off a smaller empty Island and the seven boys would promptly dive off the ship from the Boat Deck and swim to the beach for a time. Slowly, they made their way to the house on Hania which would be Alexander's home once he graduated school in three years time. Alexander, as the second son would receive the house on Hania, Nicholas as the first son would inherit the big house on Corfu to raise his family. Mark was unconcerned about houses for the time being, he was quite happy playing and having fun with his friends. Adell on the other hand was already making plans and Mark would meet plan A in a few days.

From day one on the ship the boys spent the greater majority of their time in the pool or in the game room on the ship. When they weren't doing either of those , they were pestering the crew to lower lifeboats and wave runners so they could zip around the Islands they would stop at. While the ship was running, the recreation available was fairly limited. Once the ship stopped, it opened up a toy box that had all seven boys busy from dawn to dusk. They could Sail, Water Ski, Snorkel, Scuba Dive, Swim, Fish and run around deserted beaches until they fell over which usually came after lunch. For two days the twins held out and waited for the Greek boys to awaken from a nap. On the 3rd day, seven very round, very tanned asses lined up alongside the pool on the ship with their owners sound asleep. The picture hangs in Hania on the staircase wall in Mark's house today.

During the trip Adell found herself studying the twins. She now had a set of her own to raise and it was the first set that she and the other women who would raise them ever had. She first recognized that there was a major difference between Zachary and Mackenzie and Demetrius and Constantine. Zachary and Mackenzie are identical twins. Demetrius and Constantine are fraternal twins.

Except for the pieced earring that Zachary and Mackenzie wore on opposite ears, they were fairly impossible to tell apart unless you knew each boy very well over an extended period of time. Even then it was the individual personalities that gave them away, not their physical appearance (unless you knew the secret of their testicles as previously explained). Mark and the boys at school could fairly readily tell them apart, except when they wanted to deceive you and take on the others personality style. Then you were forced to look to their groins if you really wanted to know exactly who you were dealing with.

As identical twins, Zachary and Mackenzie were inseparable. They were raised from day one together. They ate, slept, played, cried and fought together. Only once, at age nine when Zachary fell out of a tree and broke his arm did his parents ever try to not put the boys to bed together, and that was because one was in the hospital. By 11:00 at night Mackenzie had to be brought to the hospital and laid down to sleep with his brother before either would stop screaming. Adell observed both boys who now lay next to Mark and Mario at the pool. Even dead asleep they were in physical contact with each other and if one moved away, the other would very shortly rejoin him, even if only by touching his toe to the other.

The twins fascinated Adell and her twins would also be raised together she decided. They might not have the same "Connection" that Zachary and Mackenzie did, but just maybe she could foster it a whole big bunch and see how things turned out.

From day one on the ship the twins were in heaven. At Christmas time the ship just sat there at anchor. Now they were traveling through the Greek Islands and both twins figured they had somehow passed into a nudist colony about the size of a country. Just about every boat they passed or anchored next to had people on them who were usually naked. The funny thing was, so were they. "Doesn't anybody wear clothes in Greece?' Zachary asked one afternoon as a sailboat passed the ship with two boys on deck. One was about ten and the other maybe eight or nine and both were naked. "Not in summer on the water, it's too hot," Alexander responded.

Zachary looked around the pool. All the boys were naked and the women all had no tops on. Emily was breast feeding one of the twins and Lydia was holding the other. The twins were used to seeing a woman breast feed, their Mother breast fed all her children and the twins had a younger brother and two sisters at home, one still breastfeeding. This of course was slightly different, the twins' Mother wasn't looked upon by her sons in a sexual light.

On the other hand, Lydia, Rachael, Sophia, Emily and even Maria were not quite your average breastfeeding Mother. They were girls between the ages of 13 and 20 and all had a really nice set of tits according to the twins as they recalled the story later to the ninth grade class of Turin 1990-1991.

Much more so than Mackenzie, Zachary could control his thoughts and bodily functions which probably saved him some small amount of embarrassment, but daytime visions and nighttime recollections kept him busy and happy until well after midnight as the ship meandered through the Islands.

For Mackenzie's part, he was much less observant. He wasn't about to be able to engage anybody on a passing boat or on a beach and anybody sitting around the pool wasn't about to give him a tumble either. On the other hand, Mark and the Greek boys were really great to pal around and play with during the day and at night; he'd get lessons in very fine Greek traditions.

For about a week the boat traveled through the Islands and eventually found its way to Hania and docked at the beach in front of the house. Once again, the adults moved to the house leaving the ship to seven very happy boys.

Everybody ate Dinner at the house that evening, but after dinner Adell sent Rachael to the ship with the boys to prepare them for bed. As the boys showered, Rachael prepared the beds and was there basically to see that the boys didn't stay up until dawn. Rachael thought seven girls could put up a pretty good clamor taking showers and getting ready for bed, but these seven particular boys made any pajama party she was involved in pale in comparison. By about 10:00 she left the ship for the night, and the deck lights dimmed.

The stateroom doors were open and the boys lying in bed could all hear the very faint sounds of music playing and people talking and occasionally laughing way up by the house as all seven boys laid on their stomachs and listened trying to make out exactly what was being said. Eventually, Zachary turned his head sideways on his pillow and faced Mark. "Maybe someday you and Mario can come to Australia and visit with us," he said. "That would be great. Is it anywhere near the ocean?" Mark asked him. Mack giggled. "It's practically in the middle of a desert," he replied. Zack was a little pissed at his brother, he wanted to be able to get Mark to someday come to Australia, and Mack wasn't helping with his stupid jokes. "Don't listen to him. It's not close to the water but it's not far from Darwin," Zachary responded. "It's a big city with a big airport." "Maybe we can, we can talk to Nana," Mark said. Zachary smiled and then changed the subject. "We're all staying together this year right?" he asked his friend. "I want to," Mark replied. Both Mario and Mack concurred. "Who's going to take Stuart's place?" Mack now asked. Mark didn't immediately answer which caught Zachary somewhat off-guard. "Sebastian. Right?" he said to Mark. Mark again hesitated. "Jean-Paul needs to be with us to decide who else joins us," Mark finally told his friends. "We spoke to Jean-Paul on the phone, why don't we just call him and ask him if Sebastian is coming in?" Mack stated. "No, we can't do that!" Mark replied. "Why not?" Zachary asked. "Jean-Paul is afraid that Sebastian will take Mark away from him," Mario said. Mark was now a little ticked at Mario. Raising his head he looked at Mario. "Jean-Paul needs to be with us to make his own decision," Mark said

Much more so than his brother, Zachary was a thinker. He remembered very well the fight he had with Mark, and the thing that sparked the fight concerned another boy. He had a ton of questions about Jean-Paul, but if he asked them, would Mark go off on him? Zachary more than liked Mark, he regarded him as a very close personal friend. Zachary would never in a million years consider himself gay, but for some reason, keeping Mark very close to him was almost as important as keeping his brother very close to him. Zachary was also very observant. He saw the ring on Mario's finger that he knew damned well wasn't there before he left for Christmas. After Christmas, there it was, identical to Mark's. Again, as curious as he was, he wasn't about to ask questions. Questions were what started the first fight. "That's a good idea," Zachary replied. "We can figure out who comes in when we get back to school and everybody's together."

More than anything, Zachary wanted to talk to Mark but he really didn't want to talk to him with Mario and his brother there. He wanted him alone all by himself so that if he said anything that sounded funny or gay, nobody would know. A boy can't tell another boy he loved him. A boy couldn't tell another boy he really cared about him. Zachary didn't want to fuck Mark, he just wanted to hold him, but sitting there holding him meant he was gay. Zachary wondered who made up these crazy fucking rules of conduct. Unable to figure out how to proceed, Zachary lifted his head and saying goodnight, kissed Mark on the lips. A goodnight kiss, as every boy knows is a very quick peck. Maybe a second. Zachary took about three seconds and laid his head back down on his pillow as Mark turned his head and looked at him. Saying nothing, Mark put his hand over Zachary's chest and pulled himself closer to him and closed his eyes with his face alongside Zachary's rib cage. The morning time would come soon enough to play, it was sleep time.

Mark awoke to the sounds of the boys in the shower carrying on like a Brownie Troop seeing their first boy jerk off. Zachary was already awake, but hadn't left the bed as he lay next to Mark half on and half off him. Mark listened to the bathroom clatter for awhile and giggled a little. "They sound like they've got ten people in there," Mark said as he looked over to his friend next to him. Zachary smiled, but he was concentrating more on Mark as he slid his body over and on top of his friend. Mark knew very well where Zachary was headed and opened his legs as Zachary slid in between them and the two were now groin to groin and belly button to belly button. Propped up on his elbows, Zachary looked directly down on Mark's face as his arms came up under Mark's armpits and his hands rapped themselves on the top of Mark's shoulders. Neither boy said anything, but still both knew that the other was very erect. Zachary shifted his lower body a little and settled his tummy down when he knew that both their penises lay side by side. When either boy now flexed his penis, it was no secret to the other.

Probably like hundreds of other mornings, Mark fully expected to be engaged within seconds by his friend and then they would trot off to the showers and his day would begin. To his surprise, Zack made no move. "Do you think I'm gay?" Zachary asked his friend. "What?" Mark asked him. "I don't mean about the fucking part of it, do you think I'm gay besides that?" he asked his friend.

But for the fact that Zachary was looking down at him from probably no more than four inches away from his face and was looking very, very serious, Mark probably wouldn't have been unable to laugh at the question. He and his friend were balls-ass-naked laying dick to dick and if Zachary spun himself around, the both of them would probably have each others tonsils being tickled within seconds. In school they had fucked each other's brains out and they were about to do it again. By most people's definition, this was gay. But, how does one separate the fucking part of it?

Fortunately for Zachary, Mark had battled this question before and even asked it of himself. Michael knew the answer, Adell knew the answer, and most boys know the answer by about age 15 or 16.

"My friend told me that unless I was born gay, what I do before I am old enough to go out with girls and know whether or not I liked them or not didn't matter. Little boys play with little boys and little girls play with little girls. It doesn't mean they're gay," Mark told Zachary. "If you and me are still here when we're 18, we might be in trouble," he said smiling up to his friend. Zachary smiled, but he was very serious. "If I'm not gay, how come I like you so much?" he asked. "Because we're friends and that's what friends do, they love each other," Mark told him.

Zachary still had Mario's comment about Jean-Paul on his mind from the night before. "Is Mario right? Does Jean-Paul not want Sebastian in the room because he's afraid you'll like Sebastian more than him?" he asked. "Mario shouldn't have said that, it's Jean-Paul's private business," Mark replied. "If Sebastian came into the room would you like him more than me?" Zachary asked. Mark looked into the face of his friend. The question wasn't an idle one. Mark knew Jean-Paul was afraid of Sebastian. He also now knew that Zachary was too. Zachary wanted to know where his friendship stood with Mark and it was very important to him.

"I like Sebastian very much and he's a neat guy to play around with," Mark told Zachary as he held his friends face in both his hands. "But besides Mario, you and your brother and Jean-Paul are my very best friends in school and we always will be," Mark told him as he brought Zachary's face down and kissed him as gently and softly as Zachary kissed him the previous night. "Sebastian can't take your place," Mark told him as he wrapped his arms around Zachary's back and kissed him on his ear.

Neither boy moved and remained embracing as Mario and Mackenzie came back from the shower dripping wet and drying themselves off. "Are you two gonna take a shower or fuck all day?" Mackenzie asked. Mark giggled. "Do we look like we're fucking?" he asked the twin. The boy came over to his brother and lifted up one of his legs. "They look like two stiffies to me!" he said. And let his brother's leg drop back down. "Come on Zack, fuck him and let's get some breakfast, I'm starving!" Mackenzie said as the boy reached for some underpants.

Zachary was more in a talking mood, but that was now out the window for the time being. "Nobody's fucking. We're just talking," he told his brother as he rose up off Mark and headed for the shower. Looking to Mark who was still laying there with an erection, Mack just couldn't resist one more quip. "Shit, I'll fuck you if my brother won't," he said to Mark. Mark giggled again and threw a pillow at Mackenzie. "You'd fuck a duck if it stood still for you," he told the twin as he arose and followed Zachary into the bathroom. "Too many feathers!" Mack responded as he dropped the towel and put on a pair of shorts and sat down on the bed waiting for Mario.

Mario laughed as he sat down on the bed to put his shorts on. "What do you want to do today?" he asked the twin as he pulled up his shorts and stood up. "How about taking the bikes to the beach?" Mackenzie asked. Heading into the bathroom, Mario wanted to ask Mark what he thought. "What did he say?" the twin asked as Mario returned to the room. "Nothing, I didn't ask him," he replied. "Why not?" Mackenzie asked. "Because they're not talking anymore," Mario said with a faint smile. "Let's go eat, my brother can screw for hours," the twin said as he left for the Galley with Emily's brothers trailing very closely behind.

Halfway through breakfast, Mark and Zachary finally made an appearance with both boys in underpants. Within a minute of so, Adell came on board to find all of the boys sitting at the table eating and sat down. "I don't want you disappearing this afternoon Mark, we have some guests coming this afternoon and I want you to meet them," the woman told the boy as she was given a cup of tea by a steward. "Who?" Mark asked as he ate. "Friends of your Poppa's, and he wants you to be around when they arrive," she told the boy. Mark didn't think much of it as he shrugged his shoulders and went back to eating. "Be back at the house for lunch. They should be here by then," he was told.

Now finished his breakfast Mark stood up with the other boys and Adell looked at the boy. "What's that?" she said looking at his pants. Mark looked down at his underpants and giggled a little. "That's Calvin Gramma, haven't you ever seen him before?" he asked his Governess. Adell looked at Mark's underpants with a decal of Calvin pissing on the front of his underpants. Mark proudly modeled them for her. "Did you see Zachary's?" he asked the woman. Zachary turned himself around. His underpants had a pair of hands, one on each cheek on the back. "Where did you get these?" she asked. "The twins got them from Australia, aren't they really neat?" he said. "Some of them I can't even show you," he told his Governess. "That's probably for the better," she told him. "You won't be wearing these when you come to lunch," she informed the boys. Mark and Zachary giggled as the boys headed for the beach.

Adell watched as they left. Watching Zachary waddle out the door with his hand print underpants made her smile a little as she shook her head. It was going to be another spunky year keeping up with this group of boys she thought to herself. Even the normally very quiet and subdued Mario was much more outgoing and precocious. As the woman finished picking up after the boys with Rachael, they left the ship and went back to the house. Very important guests were arriving, and she needed to confer with Stavros before their arrival. Not only about them but about Emily also.

Stavros was finishing his third cup of coffee when Adell sat down in his office. "Emily won't be able to keep up with the babies in a few weeks once they start nursing seriously Stavros," she told the man. "Lydia is willing to be induced if that's what you want her to do." Stavros looked up from his paperwork. He didn't understand why he was even being told this. "What do I know about such things?" he asked the woman. "You're the woman, you decide what's best. Why not just get her a wet nurse?" he asked. "That would be a temporary solution. Emily returns to France in a few weeks, we can't find a wet nurse who's going to follow her all over the Continent," Adell replied. The man looked at her not really understanding the problem. "OK, so let Lydia do it if she agrees to!" "If Lydia nurses, she's going to need more help. She can't do both jobs all alone," Adell responded. "So get a French girl to cook and clean," Stavros suggested. Adell shook her head no. "Emily and Alexander will be in Sestriere regularly, we can't just bring in anybody, they have to be from here in the household. Mark and his friends from school will be there. Can you imagine a nice little French girl observing the twins?" Stavros cracked a small smile. "That would be one hell of an education for her wouldn't it?" he responded. "You haven't seen their new underpants yet!" the woman said. Stavros didn't know what Adell was talking about, but figured he would soon enough. "So I'm going to be sending three girls now back to schools?" he asked. Adell nodded her head. "Who are you taking?" he asked. "Maria Anna's daughter is now 16 years old and her schooling is finished. Her Mother says that she is willing to go to with Emily." Stavros sat back in his chair and rocked while he thought. "We're talking about little Athena?" the man asked. "Stavros, little Athena is 16 years old and stopped being little four years ago." The only memory Stavros had of the girl was a little girl of ten or so who was always riding a horse bare back and bare assed down to the Grotto. He didn't really remember when he saw her last. He pictured the girl in his mind and then Mark and Mario and the twins and then Jean-Paul and then Sebastian. The thought scared him a little. He truly loved Emily, but didn't really want another domestic relative. If the girl was 16 and living in France under his employ, he'd be responsible to her Father and Mother who managed his house on Corfu. Putting 13 and 14 year old boys in contact with a 16 year old very pretty girl wasn't the smartest thing a prudent businessman could do. "You'd be willing to put her together with those boys?" he asked. "She would sleep with Rachael when she was at Sestriere, Rachael carries a very big stick!" she told Stavros. "If that is what you want, make the arrangements with Maria Anna," Stavros told her.

"What about Karah," Stavros now wanted to know. "She is coming right around lunch. We will hold the meal until they arrive," Adell told the man. "And Mark knows this?" he asked. "Yes, I told him to be back for lunch." "Does he know who she is?" Stavros asked. "No, there's no need to say anything for now," Adell responded. "And what does the girl know?" Stavros asked. "Nothing, she's visiting friends with her parents, nothing more." Stavros nodded his head. "How old is the girl now?" Stavros asked. "She is eight years old and will turn nine in January," Adell told the man. "So if Mark marries at 18 she will be 12?" he asked. "Yes, she will be 13 when she carries his first child." Stavros nodded. "If you are successful in keeping him away from Athena!" he said as he went back to his work. "Athena is a virgin," Adell replied. "So was Emily!" Stavros responded without looking up. "There's a difference," Adell responded. "With Emily, I didn't know I had a hymen to keep intact." Stavros smiled and shook his head. He now felt a little sorry for Athena; he could picture the woman giving the girl a physical quite regularly and having a permanent shadow, at least until she married.

The boys left the ship and decided to ride down the beach and explore along the shoreline as they went. Their chatter centered mostly around the upcoming school year speculating on who would be returning and what their new house parents would be like. It was unanimous among the boys that they were hoping that their new house parents were as attentive and involved with their daily living as their 8th Grade house parents were. Besides the naked little Gabrielle, most of them forgot what the house parents looked like. None of the boys had a clue what to expect, Turin school life was so restricted regarding inter grade involvement that they had no clue what lay ahead for them in the 9th Grade. What they did know was what lay ahead in Sestriere when the snow started to fly again and they could once again strap on skis. In the meantime, with his shorts flying straight up into the air and landing on the beach, Mackenzie was the first tanned ass to greet the water as he dove in and swam out to the sand dune island in the middle of the lagoon.

Without Mark or Mario there with him, Mackenzie was unable to verbally communicate with George or Adrian, but verbal communication wasn't all that necessary anymore, instinctively the boys knew when it was time to play and when it was time to get serious. Eventually Emily's brothers along with Mario would learn enough English to communicate with the twins, but for now, body language served all the boys very well.

After Adell spoke to Stavros the woman went upstairs and told Lydia that she could begin putting the twins to her breasts. With nothing being withdrawn in the beginning, the twins wouldn't stay latched on to her for very long, but eventually, she would begin lactating just about the time Emily could no longer supply both babies by herself. The decision by Lydia to wet nurse the boys was not one that could be made lightly and Adell spent a great deal of time explaining to Lydia what was involved. For one, there would be an emotional attachment by all concerned including Emily and the babies themselves. There would also be some lifestyle changes necessary. Emily and Lydia would have to eat the same foods, drink the same liquids and even use the same soaps and shampoos. Their milk had to taste the same, their bodies had to smell the same, and the babies would even have to be held the same way in order for them to except both women equally.

Lydia never really thought of Motherhood before. Now, staring down at Constantine as he latched onto her breast for the first time and began to suckle, some tears came to her eyes. "Is he hurting you?" Adell asked. "No, it doesn't hurt, he's just so beautiful," the girl replied. Adell bent down and kissed the girl on her head. "Don't worry about it; I did the same thing when I first fed Stavros." Now going back to Emily who was feeding Demetrius, she bent down and looked at the face of the baby who was pressed hard against his Mother's breast and had a small trickle of milk sliding down his cheek. "I have spoken to Stavros Emily. Lydia cannot do both the house work and cooking as well as nurse the babies at the same time. When you return to France you will have Maria Anna's daughter to help Lydia with her work." Like Stavros, Emily hadn't seen Athena in a long time. "Isn't she a little young?" Emily asked. "Not any more," Adell responded.

Right around 12:30 a car pulled up to the front of the house and a man and woman got out followed by a little girl. Karah was a very pretty girl, with strawberry blond hair that flowed halfway down her back. She had brown eyes and brown freckles around her nose and cheeks and small little turquoise pierced ears. She had a yellow summer sun dress on and a yellow ribbon in her hair. Mackenzie was the first boy to see her; he wished he had underpants on under his shorts.

Lunch was held out on the patio by the pool and small talk by the adults had the usual effect on the boys which was to quickly finish eating and go play. The lunch was a strictly social occasion with no real significance put to it by either Mark or Karah. He thought she was a cute little kid, maybe a little chubby, but cute. To Karah, Mark was a big boy, and big boys don't usually pay any attention to little girls, so the meeting was pretty much forgotten about within hours.

After lunch, Mario and Zachary opted to take a swim and Adell thought it was a wonderful idea. Mark wanted to go horseback riding, but settled for the pool as he and Mackenzie jumped in. Karah's Mother in the meantime stripped the girl's clothes off and she walked into the pool as Mackenzie made damned sure he stayed in the deep end where she couldn't go. He spent the better part of the next 20 minutes trying to figure out how he was going to get out of the water without broadcasting his never relenting stiffy.

Karah was a cute little girl, and naked, she was a tad cuter. She had no tan line and obviously spent a great deal of time out of clothing. She also had a vagina that kept both Mackenzie and now Mario in the water at least chest deep at all times. Some little girls have a cute little sliver of a crack. but Karah wasn't one of them. She had a beaver that Mackenzie spent more than a few romps thinking about as he played with his school mates.

She didn't have breasts as such, but she was very definitely budding with small round brown tips that you wouldn't see on a boy's chest. Her ass even Mark had to agree was softer than a boy's when he lifted the girl to toss her, so his brother Alexander was correct: girls do have softer asses than boys. The afternoon swim lasted about 30 minutes as the adults talked around the table and watched the "Children" play. By 2:00 in the afternoon, the boys were riding off on horses down to the beach as Karah and her parents went home. Mark didn't know it at the time, but his first date with his future wife was now over. Adell was very happy with the way the meeting went, she was even happier with the little girl that she hadn't seen for a little over a year now. At eight, she was beginning to bud which meant by age ten or eleven, she would begin menstruating. After her third period, she could conceivably carry a child very safely. Since Mark did not turn eighteen until the girl would be menstruating for at least a year or two, she would be pregnant on her wedding night if the wedding was timed right. Karah also had wide hips and a well placed pelvis, something necessary to carry a child successfully and comfortably by the Mother. Adell could study a girl's body and tell if she could bear children well and Karah's body could birth many very healthy babies Adell was quite sure.

From the little girl's parents prospective, the arrangement agreed upon with Adell meant financial security not only for their little girl, but for themselves as well. Marrying into Stavros's family meant instant success for the little girl's Father, he was an Attorney. Stavros could keep him busy in drawing up legal documents for decades to come. All they needed to do was maintain her virginity until her wedding night just as Maria's Family had done.

Two days later, the ship was once again packed with passengers and Captain Sophis once again inched his way back to Corfu stopping at just about every deserted or almost deserted island he could find on the way. It pretty much became a game for the boys, as they would land on a "Deserted" island and walk bare assed naked around the place only to find out that there were usually several dozen other people from boats doing the same exact thing. By the minute, Mackenzie was falling in love with Greece; or at least that part that walked around deserted islands buck naked. Every night, Stavros would laugh like hell at the stories from Mark and Mario, Adell would just shake her head.

Getting back to Corfu, Emily was glad for the respite and the rest. Sailing was fun, but the Sun and the Sea can beat the hell out of someone, even sitting on deckchairs and in a whirlpool. Lydia began lactating about two weeks after the twins started to suckle on her, and she "Topped off" the babies with her milk as Emily supplied them with the bulk of their meals and anti bodies. They seemed to gain weight by the day, and their testicles receded to a "Normal" size but there was no question about it, they were going to be heavily hung.

One week later, the weather threw a monkey wrench in the return plans to Monaco as the Captain reported some seas could be expected. Rather than risk getting Emily or the babies upset, Stavros had them return by air with Adell. In the meantime, Mark and the boys along with Rachael would take the ship to Monte Carlo and meet Adell there for the trip to Turin. Just before Adell left for the airport she gave Mark and Mario several pills to take and put a patch on their arm. Zachary and Mackenzie declined the medicine; they didn't get sea sick. Adell tried to convince them otherwise but to no avail. An hour later, the ship left Corfu and Nicholas and Maria remained behind awaiting the birth of her baby with Stavros and Sophia.

The day's sail to Sicily went relatively smoothly, the boys spent the majority of the day in the pool. Mark and Mario ate very lightly as Adell had suggested and Zachary and Mackenzie feasted as she suggested they not. At about 2 in the morning the ship sailed past Sicily and the seas were now broadside of the ship coming out of the west. The rocking began gently at first and the twins were snug and secure in their bed. By daylight, the ship had a roll of roughly 25 degrees, to port and starboard despite the fact that it had stabilizers. Mark and Mario had a light breakfast; the twins were bent over the railing pissing off the crewmembers who would have to clean up the boys' previous days lunch and dinner. As Adell had done with him, Mark took Zachary and Mario took Mackenzie and spent the morning sitting in the shower trying to convince the twins they weren't going to die. Even Rachael thought it was very funny.

"When Adell suggests something to you, you might want to listen to her," Rachael suggested through Mark. Zachary was too green to respond and Mackenzie was convinced the next thing coming up was his liver. By four in the afternoon the ship was close enough to the shore for the seas to subside and by the time the ship docked at six the twins were on their third bowl of chicken soup and saltine crackers. Both twins vowed to never say "No" to Adell ever again in their entire lives.

Not extremely unexpectedly, the twins fell asleep fairly early and without any extra curricular activity on their part. Mario and Mark looked at the twins sleeping and giggled to themselves as they turned themselves around. The baby twins had Emily and Lydia's breasts to suckle on. They had something a little more substantial.

Mark awoke with the sound of the shower running and Rachael in the bathroom. Mario's penis was somewhere between his eyeball and nose and looking for some room to stretch as Mario slowly awoke to a full bladder. Coming into the bathroom, Mark stood in front of the toilet bending over it to keep the stream from running all over the bowl and floor. As he left for the shower Mario came in and sat down trying to convince his penis to bend a little downward. Rachael watched with a knowing smile, her little brothers did the exact same thing every morning. She was happy she was a girl because boys didn't seem to like bending their stiff cocks very much.

"When is Nana coming back?" Mark asked as the girl dumped shampoo on his head and began lathering him up. "She called this morning. She will be here about noon and we leave for Turin right after lunch," Rachael told Mark as Mario got in the shower. "Emily and the babies are fine and Alexander starts school on Monday," she continued as Mario picked up a bar of soap and began washing Mark's back. Just about the time Mario's feet were washed with him laying in the shower the twins arrived in the bathroom just in the nick of time to get rid of their bladder erections. With Mark almost dry and Mario well on his way, Rachael began washing the twins who had no objections whatsoever. Mackenzie lost his bladder erection and was now on to bigger and better things. Rachael tactfully ignored him while he searched for some kind of recognition all to no avail.

Unlike the day before, Mark and Mario joined the twins in a very large breakfast. "Why didn't you warn us about getting really sick?" Zachary asked Mark. "Would you have believed me?" Mark inquired. "Shit no," Mackenzie said in between forkfuls of scrambled eggs.

As the boys walked into the Pilot House after breakfast, Captain Sophis had to laugh to himself. Each boy had on a new pair of underpants that belonged to the twins. On the front, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam. On the back, that character bare assed. Like Stavros, he liked the boys, they had spunk! "Captain Sophis, can we take the wave runners to the beach?" Mark asked. Normally the Captain denied the boys nothing if he could help it. But here in Monaco, it was September and the beaches were covered in people and there were boats all over the harbor. He was in charge as long as Stavros wasn't on board, and if anything happened to any one of the boys, his ass was on the line. "I'm sorry Mark but the place is much too crowded. If you want to take a boat to the beach, we'll launch a lifeboat for you." The boys were disappointed, but agreed. 20 minutes later they hit the beach in front of the Casino and stepped ashore as the lifeboat waited for them off shore. At mid morning, the beach wasn't nearly full but it was loaded with children and adults and as Mackenzie quickly noted, a lot of the women forgot the tops to their bathing suits. A lot of the children forgot their suits altogether. Mackenzie wore Daffy Duck and not surprising to any of the boys, Daffy's stomach seemed larger than the others for some reason. The twelve year old girl who sported two little mounds on her chest and a very small patch of hair may have had something to do with it as she giggled walking past him. The twins liked Monte Carlo!

By about 11:30 the boys came back to the ship and just before lunch, Adell returned from Nice. Following lunch and goodbyes to the Captain and crew the boys were loaded along with Adell and Rachael and arrived in Turin just in time to get dressed for dinner at the Hotel. The hotel almost fell all over Adell, she had become a sizable amount of their annual revenue, and Mark watched as they fawned all over her. It reminded Mark all over again of Zabar in New York City. With the twins' tummies back to their normal size, the group arrived back at the house with Adell calling for showers right after phone calls home.

Bed time that night would be nowhere near as peaceful and quiet as the previous night on the ship, the twins were back and ready to party in earnest as Zachary buried his face in Mark's groin while Mario did the honors for Mackenzie. The ninth grade class of 1990-1991 was re-forming and the party had already begun.

About 7:30 in the morning the front doorbell rang and Mark awoke to low voices and a car running outside the house somewhere. A very short time later, Rachael peeked her head in the door. "Mark, there's a taxi driver downstairs who only speaks Italian. Find out what he wants," she told the boy. Mark got up along with Zachary and threw on a pair of underpants. At the front door was a taxi driver. "There is a boy in the cab who says you will pay for his fare," the driver said to him. "A boy?" said Mark opening the door and looking out. The driver had locked the door and in the back seat sat Jean-Paul looking out at him waving. "So let him out!" Mark told the driver. "You will pay for the fare?" the driver asked. "Of course we will," Mark told him. The driver looked at Mark and then looked at Zachary. To the driver, Mark was fine. Zachary he wasn't so sure about; He was still naked. Mark went to Adell's room to get some money as the driver released Jean-Paul from his captivity.

If anybody in the house was asleep at 8:10, they weren't by 8:15. Jean-Paul had come in the afternoon before and slept at school that night. At 6:00 he got up and got dressed and walked into Turin (about five miles) and found a cab willing to take him to Adell's. Slightly bleary eyed, Adell told Mark to call the school and tell them that Jean-Paul was there and safe. The school didn't know he was missing.

Adell called a halt to the hoopla downstairs and told the boys to go upstairs and begin showering, she would be up shortly. The trip upstairs went fairly routinely until the boys got into the room and Mark sat down on his bed. "How have you been?" Mark asked Jean-Paul with a smile on his face. Jean-Paul fell apart as he unloaded six weeks worth of loneliness. Even Adell came upstairs wondering what was wrong as Jean-Paul clung to Mark like he was the last life preserver on the Andrea Doria. "What happened?" Adell asked Mario. "Nothing, he just started crying," Mario responded. "Into the bathroom, Mark will take care of him," he said as she scooted the twins into the bathroom.

If not for the language barrier, Adell would have taken the boy on herself. But Jean-Paul spoke only Italian and English. She spoke neither. The woman didn't like the idea that Mark was put in this position, he wasn't the strongest personality in the world himself and maybe would even relapse under the right conditions. She didn't like it, but Mark would have to handle the boy himself. "Talk with him and find out what's wrong. Maybe something's wrong at home," she told Mark.

Jean-Paul and Mark were very close to the same size and weight. He wasn't a boy you could twirl around and sit in your lap or walk around carrying as you spoke to him. Mark layed flat down on his bed and put Jean-Paul next to him laying side by side facing each other. It took minutes before Mark could get a question in. "Did something bad happen at home?" Mark asked him. "No, I just missed you very badly," Jean-Paul finally said in between wiping away tears and sobbing. "Well, you don't have to miss me any more, we're all back together again," Mark said as he took Jean-Paul's face in his hands and kissed him repeatedly on the face and cheeks. "Why didn't you call if you missed me so much?" Mark asked him. "I knew if I did I would start crying," the boy said as huge tears rolled down his face. "I called Stuart and Sebastian, but I couldn't call you," he told his friend. "Jean-Paul, we're back together, we have another whole year of school, it's time to have fun again," he told his friend. Jean-Paul smiled faintly. "Do you think I'm a girl for acting so silly?" he asked his friend. "No Jean-Paul, I think you're a very good friend and you always will be," he told the boy. Very much to Mark's chagrin, the boy's eyes filled to the brim once again and rolled out when there was no more room. Mark was trying to get the crying to stop, not perpetuate it. "Jean-Paul, let's take a shower and then we can have some breakfast OK?" he asked. Jean-Paul nodded his head. Mark arose from the bed and half lifted the boy up with him. "He'll be alright Gramma, He's just glad to see us that's all," Mark told Adell. Adell got up from her chair and went into the bathroom. It was one hell of a lot deeper than just missing someone Adell instinctively knew.

"C'mon Jean-Paul," Mark said as he unbuttoned the boy's shirt and pulled down his pants. Adell decided she would let the boys shower and wash themselves. She would wash their hair (which no boy could ever do properly according to the woman) and they would finish the job. Jean-Paul needed some prime time with his friends without adults around, and the woman was savvy enough to know it. Going back downstairs, she told Rachael to hold breakfast. This could take awhile.

Like Adell, the twins and Mario knew that what bothered Jean-Paul went a lot deeper also. Jean-Paul didn't see Mark as an extremely close friend. It was very much deeper than that and something that could get a boy labeled. Fucking your friend's balls off was fine and dandy; just don't take it too seriously. There was a line, and Jean-Paul was very close to it.

Mark still wasn't sure exactly how he managed it, but he once again found himself being the protector rather than the protected. He enjoyed the latter so much more. Then again, his empathy for his friends like Conner, Sean, Stuart and now Jean-Paul was something he couldn't deny them even if it did tear his own security to shreds. Deep inside, he knew he was real close to where they were at, or at least had been in the not too distant past. Walking into the shower, he sat down as he usually did at school with Stuart and had Jean-Paul sit on his stomach. The twins looked at each other. Mario looked at Adell. Adell put shampoo on each boy's hair and washed it. As she left Mark picked up a bottle of soap and began washing Jean-Paul's shoulders arms and chest as he talked. "Let's all go over to the bridge this morning," he said as Jean-Paul duplicated his washing on Mark. "Great, and we can take a hike through the woods," Mario said. The twins had not been at the house with Adell before, they always went with Mark and the other boys to Sestriere for skiing, so they didn't know what the bridge, or the stream or the hiking trails were like. As Mark filled them in Mario observed Jean-Paul. From the year before, Jean-Paul had changed. He wondered if Mark also saw the change.

Breakfast came with a full loaf of French toast, a half gallon of orange juice and a gallon of milk disappearing before Adell's and Rachael's eyes and the boys were out the door. ten minutes later, all five boys sat along the bank of the stream with Jean-Paul telling them what to expect that afternoon when they went to school and put away their clothing for that year. "What's the new house parents like?" Mario asked first. "There's only one," Jean-Paul said. "His name is Mr. D'Angelo and he teaches fifth grade." "What's he like?" Mackenzie asked. "I just met him for a few minutes but he seems really nice," Jean-Paul responded. "What languages does he speak?" Mark wanted to know. "Yeah," Zachary instantly replied. "Italian and I think French," came the reply. Mark and Zachary looked at each other. It was always nice to know who spoke what so if you wanted to have a candid conversation…….

"Did you hear him speak any English?" Zachary asked. "Does anybody else in the class speak Greek?" Mark asked. Responding to both questions, Jean-Paul didn't know. "Only about 20 kids are there yet," he told the boys. "How's the food?" Mackenzie wanted to know. "It's still the same, the kitchen staff hasn't changed," he told the boys "Thank fucking God!" Mackenzie said as he laid back down. "Have you seen any of our new teachers?" Zachary asked. Jean-Paul shook his head. "Today and tomorrow," he replied.

The boys spent the rest of the morning walking on foot trails that were probably centuries old. The tips of the Alps were already dusted in snow and before long the boys would be back on the mountains. Mark walked and talked with his friends and occasionally wondered at his good fortune. He hoped he wouldn't awaken and find himself back in New York State. As the boys returned to the bikes, they heard a bell ringing. Adell had the caretaker install it during the summer. Mark smiled to himself, the dream continued.

After lunch the car was filled to the max as it pulled into the Courtyard of school and the yard was full of parents, cars, trailers, students and faculty. Getting out, Adell kept either Mark or Mario very close to her at all times. Without one of them, she was speechless.

Jean-Paul saw his house parent and together they made their way over to the man. Mr. D'Angelo was a tad upset at Jean-Paul and started berating the boy in front of the woman. "Tell him that Jean-Paul was supposed to spend the night at our house and I ordered a taxi to pick him up," she instructed Mario. "Nana, that's not the truth," the boy said to her. "No, but he doesn't know that!" the woman told the boy. The teacher listened to Mario and looked at Adell. "Madam, I'm responsible for the child and I need to be informed of his whereabouts at all times," the man had Mario translate to Adell. "Which is why I had the school called," she responded. It was fair to say that Adell and Mr. D'Angelo got off on the wrong foot. Mr. D'Angelo protested the incident to the Headmaster who contracted an immediate migraine headache.

Sergio's arrival on the scene temporarily defused the friction between Adell and the house parent as both Mark and Mario greeted the man enthusiastically. Even Adell's spirits rose as she greeted an adult that knew her language. Zachary stood by as Mark greeted his teacher, but his most pressing question for the moment was what languages his house parent spoke. Mark relayed the message. Mr. D'Angelo spoke Italian and French period. Zachary and Mackenzie broadly smiled.

By 4:00 in the afternoon, all the boys who would be attending the ninth grade were there. Mark was a bit dumfounded. There were over 50 boys. Unknown to Mark or the twins, the Upper School as it was known contained boys from all over the world who would be going on to University, most probably in England, Germany and France. Up until now, grade school was easy going and fun. Now, it was a race for families to get their boys into a superior school so they could make the grades for their higher education. In the words of Zachary, "OH FUCK!"

Chapter Eight

The ninth grade class of 1990-1991 was split into two classes and Mark and Mario were separated as were Zachary and Mackenzie. Adell left the school with the boys in tow including Jean-Paul with instructions to Sergio to meet her at the house in the morning. They were returning to Greece or rearranging the class assignments. Sergio really wasn't too upset, it happened every single year. Returning to the house, Adell was on the phone with Stavros within seconds of arriving. Stavros very patiently listened as Adell vented and the man promised he would tear the Headmaster's balls off in the morning. With Sergio coming over, Stavros went back to his paperwork.

After Dinner and showers, the boys quietly played some video games and read some magazines that the twins imported from Sweden by way of Australia and by 8:30 or so, they were ready for bed. During the summer the house had been repainted and the beds were separated when the room was put back together. Zachary and Mackenzie studied the situation and rectified the problem of the beds in zero time as they removed a dresser in between the beds and slid them together. Mark now had two queen sized beds side by side; ample room for five or even six boys.

Despite the fact that it was mid September and a very nice warm night with the windows and sliding glass doors all open to the night air, the fire place was ablaze and as was their custom all five boys lined up with their heads on their pillows laying flat across the bed on their stomachs with five fat round asses shimmering in the reflection of the fire as they watched it burn. The fire attracted the boys like a moth to a flame and conversation was unnecessary for at least five minutes or so as they watched the sparks periodically pop and fly up the chimney. Eventually, not so much out of boredom, but out of a desire to converse with Mark, Jean-Paul turned himself around and stared up at the ceiling as the reflective glow danced off of it. "What are we going to do if they separate us?" he asked Mark. "I don't think that will happen. I think it's illegal to separate twins from each other, and if they separate me and Mario, Nana will take us home," he told Jean-Paul. Almost the moment the words came out of Mark's mouth, he wanted to shoot himself. Even Mario and Zachary picked up their heads and looked at Mark. "Go home?" Jean-Paul said sitting up in bed. Mark reached up to Jean-Paul and brought him back down and wrapped his arm around him. "Nobody's going home Jean-Paul, my Father will make sure they put us all together. The school wouldn't dare try to separate us," he said as he realized how badly he fucked up. "Don't worry about it Jean-Paul, Mark's old man has enough juice to tell the school what to do. And if they don't, he'll just buy the fucking place," Mackenzie said. Mark sincerely doubted that it was true, but it got him off the hook for the time being.

Mario and Zachary giggled at Mackenzie's remark and that got Jean-Paul giggling too. "I vote we let the school piss off for the night and get on to better things," Mackenzie now said as he got up and threw his pillow to the head of the bed and started to crawl over bodies. The boy had turned 14 during July and from the year before he and his brother had grown probably close to an inch. At about four inches, it was a stunner that made him and everybody he came into contact with real happy. As he lay there he looked down and watched it rise toward the ceiling as his testicles responded by rolling around knowing what was very quickly on its way. Reaching over to a night table, he pulled out the drawer and took out a small packet and tore it open with his teeth. "Our Dad sent us with boxes of these," he said as he pulled out a condom and held it up in the air over his chest. "He says we'll be fucking girls now, and we better not come home with any babies or pimples on our cocks." While Mark had seen and even used them before, neither Mario nor Jean-Paul ever did and the boys now shifted themselves from the side of the bed to around Mackenzie who was going to be demonstrating the fine art of condom wearing. "This is how it works ladies," he said as he put the condom on the tip of his penis and let it sit there like a hat. Taking his hand away all five boys watched as his penis twitched with his pulse. "That's all you do?" Jean-Paul said after nobody moved for about five seconds or so. Mark giggled a little. "No, it has to be rolled down his shaft," he told his friend. "How?" Jean-Paul asked. "Either by a hand or by mouth," Mark responded. Jean-Paul looked back down at the condom still sitting there like the Mexican hat on top of Pedro of South of The Border. "How's he going to get his mouth down there? He can't bend over that far!" Jean-Paul said. "Not his mouth, anybody's mouth!" Mark said, "Watch." Mark got in between Mackenzie's legs and put his lips on the rim of the condom and let it roll down as he swallowed Mackenzie's penis. Backing out the condom was in place. "My Dad never showed us that trick!" Zachary said. Mackenzie said nothing, his penis was dancing around too much to let him. Jean-Paul was about as wide eyed as he could get. "How did you learn to do that?" he asked his friend as he grabbed his penis and squeezed it. Mark didn't answer, he just smiled a little. "How come that little tube is still there?" Mario now wanted to know. It holds his stuff when he shoots," Zachary said. "We tried it jerking off. It looks really cool when it fills up."

Almost simultaneously both Mario and Jean-Paul wanted to see it in action for themselves. "Let's see it!" they said. After a very quick game of "Odds or Evens" Jean-Paul won the honors of jerking off Mackenzie and in just around two minutes, Jean-Paul and Mario were both intently watching the condom tip fill with milky white fluid as Mackenzie's balls were pinned hard against his abdomen working overtime. Once the tip was filled his sperm lightly coated his head as it searched for a way down his shaft.

Mario decided he was next and he filled his condom tip in probably less time than Mackenzie. Jean-Paul and Zachary sat balls to balls as their turn at bat came and Zachary appeared to have bettered his brother in the sperm department. It traveled almost a quarter of the way down his shaft before it gave up the swim to freedom. Jean-Paul enjoyed the mutual, but he was not yet ejaculating and he got to sleep in his clean condom through the night right up until about 3:30 when he learned that condoms don't prevent wet beds. On the boys' second night back to school, they blew a full box of a dozen condoms and Mackenzie was writing home for more.

Once the balloon festival was over, the boys settled down, and as Mark had expected, Jean-Paul wasn't about to let him out of arms reach. Mark fell asleep with Mario's penis in one hand and Jean-Paul's balls in the other. Mark would have been happy to be holding the boy's penis for him, but Jean-Paul had that honor while keeping his condom in place.

The next morning Adell received a phone call. Mark and Mario, Zachary and Mackenzie, and Jean-Paul would share a room in Mr. D'Angelo's house. Adell wasn't overjoyed with Mr. D'Angelo, but then again, he wasn't overjoyed with knowing he was going to be dealing with her for the next year either. Both parties called it a draw.

The morning activities went fairly routinely until Rachael presented Adell with some leftovers that were found in the sheets and the boy's morning began with a lecture on proper condom disposal. The only red face in the crowd was Jean-Paul's as the woman tied a condom and flushed it down the toilet. Lesson over, it was time for breakfast and then a trip into town for some clothing. The greater bulk of the clothing went to Mario and Mark, but enough came home for the twins and Jean-Paul to make the morning exciting for all five boys. By 1:30 and only 4 ½ hours late, the boys were back at school and began the job of unpacking their clothing. As ninth graders, they would now be wearing long pants rather than shorts and felt mighty grown up about it.

Mr. D'Angelo's house was a bit smaller than the house they had the previous year, but it was still a three story affair with the teacher's living quarters downstairs, a study and play area on the second floor and five bedrooms and a huge shower/bathroom on the third floor. Mr. D'Angelo himself was a mystery to the boys and the twins found that situation intolerable. Mackenzie took over putting his stuff and his brother's stuff away and Zachary took off to go find a ninth grader from last year who was in the man's house.

There were going to be 25 boys housed, which meant five boys to a room. Since Mark, Mario, Mackenzie, Zachary and Jean-Paul made up a full room, they opted to pick a room as far away from the showers as possible. Anybody who's been close to a shower room with 25 or 30 boys aged 12 to 14 years old knows why.

Sebastian arrived late due to weather and at 4:00 he was sitting on Mark's bed. He was disappointed that he wasn't going to be bunked in the room, but he was also very pragmatic about the situation. It really didn't matter where a boy's bed was, where he slept had nothing to do with room assignments. Sebastian found three boys who shared a room with him the year before and he would make his bed in their room, and sleep in Mark's. Jean-Paul didn't look overjoyed at Sebastian's plans but remained silent as he put his clothes away.

Zachary returned just before Adell was ready to leave for the Hotel for dinner. Sebastian, a known entity to Adell was invited to join the boys and she informed Mr. D'Angelo that he would be joining them. Mr. D'Angelo smiled and bowed slightly to the woman. Very slightly.

The boys liked eating at the hotel mainly because it catered to an International crowd. The twins and Mark liked beef; they had the best Prime Rib north of Genoa. Jean-Paul and Rachael liked fish; they had Swordfish swimming in butter and lemon sauce that melted in their mouths.

Mario and Adell were into Lamb; they had Stuffed Lamb Chops that Adell dreamed about. Sebastian could eat pork three times a day, seven days a week; the Roast Pork made by the hotel was known throughout Italy as some of the very best on the Continent. Rarely did the boys save enough room for desert, it was usually carried home and devoured sometime between eight at night and nine in the morning.

Dinner itself was a bit of a torture for Zachary. He had lots to tell his friends, but the only way he could converse with all five of the boys at the same time was in Italian. If he did that, Adell and Rachael were left out in the cold, which he figured was a bad thing. Not to mention, extremely impolite. He opted to wait until they arrived back at the house and speak to his friends privately.

School would begin the following morning and Adell had all six boys going upstairs directly to showers as soon as they walked through the door. With stomachs ready to burst, Mark and the boys offered no resistance. Bed sounded like a really great idea to Mark, Mario and Zachary, the other three could take it or leave it. The boys showered by themselves, but since the first day of school was the following morning and Adell wouldn't see any of them for five days, it was time to clean and clip things she knew wouldn't be getting any attention for the next week. One by one, as the boys left the shower, they had to submit to either Adell or Rachael and have their ears cleaned, their fingernails and toenails clipped and their heads inspected (one of the boys knew why). Again, things went routinely right up until it was time to clip and preen Sebastian which fell to Rachael. The girl had seen Sebastian the year before so she knew he was fairly well endowed, but his summer growth took her a little by surprise. Her Father didn't have a cock or set of balls that big! Adell watched as Rachael seemed to look a little flushed as the girl clipped the boy's toenails with a very clear view of his groin under the towel.

20 minutes later, six robust asses lined up side by side watching the flames in the fire place as Zachary unloaded his information on Mr. D'Angelo. "I spoke to a boy who had him last year and another boy who had him two years ago," Zachary began. "He only speaks Italian and French, one of the boys thinks he understands some German too," he told them. "When we speak English or Greek, he's clueless," Zachary said with a smile. "Did the other kids like him?" Mark asked. "They said if you leave him alone, he leaves you alone. He's OK, but he's not the warmest fuzzy they ever met."

"But there's more," Zachary said. Mark looked at Zachary. He had a strange smile on his face. It usually meant trouble ahead. "What?" Mark asked. "He takes one boy every year and keeps him," Zachary told the boys. "What do you mean keeps him?" Mario asked. "He keeps a favorite boy with him who stays for the whole year," Zachary said. "Stays where?" Mark asked. "Stays with him downstairs in his apartment." Mark considered the thought. "Where's the boy who stayed with him last year?" he asked Zachary. "He's in the 10th Grade now," Zachary replied. "Have you spoken to him? Do you know who he is?" Mark asked his friend. Zachary shook his head. "I asked, but both boys told me it was private business and they wouldn't say anything more," he told Mark. "They both said private business?" Mark asked. Zachary nodded. "What's that all about?" Sebastian asked Mark. "It means we'll never find out who the boys are. It's a dead end."

Mark knew he had a shark swimming with the minnows. He looked around, the only minnow among them was Jean-Paul. He knew everybody else could take care of themselves. "How much does he get involved with the rest of the kids," he asked Zachary. "You'll never see him upstairs unless there's a riot going on," Zachary reported. "Good, so we don't have riots!" Mark said as he laid back and took in the information Zachary brought back.

By the time the conversation was over, it was close to 10:00 and the boys were going to be up at 7:00 getting ready for school. A lot of the conversation went over Jean-Paul's head, and his most pressing thought was to stay in close proximity to Mark. It annoyed Mark a little because he was trying to figure out how to keep Jean-Paul from becoming his house parent's bitch, and Jean-Paul was oblivious to his predicament and more intent on getting into Mark's pants. Maybe Mark just needed to lighten up and let nature take its course he thought to himself.

"It's a long day tomorrow, I'm going to sleep," Mark told the boys as they settled down on their pillows. Mark reached over and gave Mario a kiss on his lips as he always did at bedtime not even thinking about it. Laying back down, Jean-Paul came over and kissed Mark and laid his head back down. Mark turned the boy around and curled up in back of him. "Good night Jean-Paul," Mark said as he pulled the boy's body into his as close as he could get it. Not that Jean-Paul would have objected, but Mark wasn't looking for sex, he was looking for security; for Jean-Paul.

There was a drizzle outside when the boys awoke to the sound of the shower that Adell had turned on. High up on the mountains it was snowing and Mark looked to them. In a very few short weeks the lower trails would have snow on them and the ski season would begin anew. Mark looked forward to it but first he had to begin the new school year. Mario woke up in his usual fog and Mark prodded him along by tickling the boy with a leaf that had blown in through the open window as Sebastian and Jean-Paul watched. Mario finally gave up all hope of staying asleep with the stem of the leaf being probed up a nostril.

One year after they entered Turin for the very first time dressed in school uniform shorts, the boys now left the car dressed in long pants and feeling very adult. The feeling lasted about ten or 15 minutes. As eighth graders the year before, they were at the pinnacle of their social prominence in the Lower school. Even though they had very little contact with the other grades except during General Meetings and at meals, they were the "Big boys" on the block. Now, they were ninth graders; the babies of the Upper school. They had to climb the social ladder all over again from the very bottom. The twins were pissed off and wanted to go back to the Lower school.

The boys' day began in a General Assembly which was rare at Turin and an occasion when you might see an old friend in another grade, or even your younger or older brother in another grade. Mixing of grades rarely if ever occurred. Even the ninth grade, which now had two separate houses would rarely merge, and Mark looked at boys he played with and studied with the previous year in the eighth grade and knew he would most probably not play with them again.

The Headmaster's speech was as exhilarating to the boys as it always was, and Mark awoke Mackenzie just before it was time to go to classes and pick up the year's books. The boys had six areas of study for the fall session and somewhere in the vicinity of 20 textbooks by lunch time. Mark didn't quite understand the logic in all these books, just to take the time to read them all cover to cover would have consumed every minute of class time between then and Christmas, but what the fuck did he know he thought to himself.

The noon meal that first day of school was the first time every single boy attended, and the school used it to introduce the boys to that year's non-academic staff. From house keeping to grounds keeping to janitorial to clerical, the boys very politely welcomed each team with appropriate applause. Lastly, the kitchen staff were introduced which in past years, very barely exceeded the applause for the janitors. In 1990-1991, the same staff hired the year before by Mario's Father received a thunderous ovation into the Dining Hall.

Boys who had never been to Turin before thought it was just another meal in good old Italy but veterans like Mark and those who came before him knew the Italian Buffet luncheon that greeted them signified a continuing robust waistline for the school year ahead.

The afternoon session ended with Mark knowing he was just as fucked as he was the year before. It was true that he now spoke Italian (somewhat), but he neither wrote, nor read it. He was gaining ground in Greek reading and writing thanks to Sergio and Mario, but he wasn't about to decipher Homer anytime soon. Zachary had the only plausible solution to his problem; "Who cares, just hire secretaries to do the work when you get older!" Mark didn't think his Father was going to go for that solution.

By the end of his first day, Mark sat on the floor of the shower room with more than a few of the newer boys looking at him as the water fell down on his head wondering who or what he was. Once Zachary and Mario came in and sat next to him, the new boys finally figured out that they were in the minority. Of the 25 boys in their house eight of them were new to Turin. Of that group of 8, 4 had never been to boarding school before. Mark and every other boy in the house knew that that meant that they MIGHT have four virgins among themselves. It was automatically assumed that any boy who had been to a boarding school previously fucked his little brains out. If he didn't, he was about to in short order or be on a plane bound for home.

For one thing, there was almost zero privacy. If you got undressed, you were undressing in front of at least three to five other boys. When you showered or went to the bathroom, you usually had an audience. When you slept, you slept with at least five boys in the same room. You were never alone, morning, noon or night. Sooner or later, when you choked your chicken, you were doing it in company like it or not. Boarding school on average took from one week to ten days to either eliminate or include a boy in the groups activities.

The only place that held out even the possibility of privacy was a small room off the shower room that contained a bathtub. It had a door and the door had a lock on it. However, it also had one wall with a full length mirror on it. Some of the boys immediately declared that they never took showers at home, only baths. Mark and the boys in his room looked at the little room and opted for the showers instead. "I'd bet you a 100 pounds there's something behind that mirror!" Zachary said as he and the other boys in the room inspected this potential for privacy. Nobody took the bet.

Showers that first night were fairly quiet mostly because the new boys did a lot of observing and very little talking. There was also a language barrier that needed to be overcome, six new boys spoke no Italian and as usual, English became the common language. Half way through Mark's shower, Sebastian came in followed by Jean-Paul. Sebastian was a known quantity to senior Turin boys, but the new boys had never seen him naked before. The year before, Sebastian measured out at 20 centimeters. He was now 23 centimeters and his penis grew but his foreskin didn't. The year before he was halfway out. Now, his head was enjoying the light of day flaccid or not. He looked like he was circumcised.

13 and 14 year old boys have a tendency to never allow anyone to see them peeking a look at another boy's Johnson while in the showers. With Sebastian, that really didn't work. The only way you missed looking at Sebastian's tool was if you were Ray Charles. Before he walked in, the shower had a low buzz. After, the sound of water hitting the floor was all you heard until he came over to the wall and sat down next to Mario and grabbed for the soap. It took a few seconds for the buzz to return, but then Jean-Paul sat down on Mark's lap and Mark picked up his legs as Jean-Paul sat back on them while Mark soaped him up and started shampooing his hair. Probably the only one of the boys in Mark's company who noticed any reaction from the new boys was Mackenzie, who started to giggle to himself. "What's up?" Zachary asked his brother as he looked over. "The new boys are looking at Mark a little sideways," Mackenzie said in Italian. "What?" Mark said. "I think they think you and Jean-Paul have a thing for one another," he responded still chuckling. Mark was in a playful mood. "Well that's one way to keep them away from me," he said as he reached out for Jean-Paul's face and bringing it to his kissed Jean-Paul on the lips. It wasn't a huge kiss, but it was enough for several of the new boys to turn their bodies away from Mark and his group. "Holy shit, I can read those letters going home tonight!" Zachary chuckled as the rest of the group giggled and went back to showering.

Once everybody was showered and dried off, there was a general meeting in the study, and Mark's group arrived in the study with the twins' new underpants on. Among the senior boys they were the hit of the house as the boys modeled them to an appreciative audience. There were a few small smiles, but for the most part, the new boys watched in silence as their classmates' chief conversation centered on underwear.

Once everyone was gathered, Mr. D'Angelo was called, and began the meeting. Mark studied the house parent as did all the rest of the boys. He was a very well kept man, Mark guessed he was about 45 or 50 and had a little gray hair around his temples. He smoked a pipe and surprisingly to Mark, it didn't stink like most pipes, it smelled rather nice Mark thought. He was soft spoken, but he spoke with authority. He spoke in Italian, but also spoke French to several of the newer boys. One of the new boys asked him a question in English and he had a senior boy translate for him. Mark and Zachary looked at each other. Zachary broadly smiled.

Most of the rules and regulations were the same as the year before and involved housekeeping stuff and rules of conduct. Pointedly, Mr. D'Angelo told the boys that if there were no problems, he saw no reason to journey up the stairs. If there were problems, somebody was being moved to a new house or back home.

Last on Mr. D'Angelo's list was to speak to each boy personally. He had a file on each one in his lap and he asked each one fairly generic questions. Mark guessed that most of the answers to his questions were in the files anyway. Maybe this was his way of putting a face to the name, Mark thought to himself and let it go at that. When his turn came, it was the usual, how long have you been in Turin? Do you like it? What are you planning to major in? Do you expect to go on to University? Mark answered the questions truthfully and politely and stood for a few seconds after the man finished asking him questions while the house parent studied him. "You're one of our Greek boys aren't you?" he asked. "Yes sir," Mark replied. "I understand you also speak English as well," he said. "Yes sir," Mark replied.

"There is a Greek boy in Mr. Gianetti's house that speaks only Greek. No other boys in his house speak Greek. Perhaps you would care to assist him and be willing to be moved to Mr. Gianetti's house?" he asked Mark. Mark was taken by surprise by the request. Mr. D'Angelo wanted to dump him and probably because of Adell. "You mean all of us?" Mark asked. "No, just you, the others don't speak Greek do they?" the house parent replied. "Well, Mario does, but the five of us have always been together," Mark said with a growing sense of panic. "Well, OK, what if you and Mario go to Mr. Gianetti's house to assist the other boy?" Mr. D'Angelo said as he relit his pipe and sat back in his chair. "And Zachary and Mackenzie and Jean-Paul?" Mark asked. "Two boys can be transferred, we can't transfer all five," the house parent said.

"Why can't we just transfer the other boy in here?" Zachary asked. Basically, Mr. D'Angelo wanted to dump Mark and he damned well knew it. The house parent ignored Zachary's suggestion and remained focused on Mark. "Don't you want to help this boy?" he pressed.

Mark was out of ideas. "I want to telephone my Grandmother. Now!" he told Mr. D'Angelo. The room fell silent. The teacher knew that any boy had the immediate right to telephone his relatives on demand. It was school policy. "You don't have to move if you don't want to," Mr. D'Angelo said trying to diffuse the situation. "I will be happy to move to Mr. Gianetti's house but will not be taken away from my friends," Mark told the man. "If I move, they move with me. I want to speak to my Grandmother Mr. D'Angelo," Mark repeated. Every boy in the room that spoke Italian knew there was a showdown going on.

The twins' first year in boarding school was in France. Both spoke some French. Zachary, even at 14 was a cunning little boy, he was savvy enough to realize that if Mark pulled off the Nuclear option and brought Adell into this fight she would leave Mr. D'Angelo in tatters, but the boys would still have to live with the man for the next year and that could get uncomfortable for everybody if the man wanted to "Get even".

Speaking very softly, Zachary told Mark to "Clam up" in English and speaking to the teacher in French, pulled the only rabbit in his hat he had. "Mark's Italian really isn't that good Sir. I think he doesn't understand."

For the boys in Turin and probably in any other International boarding school, it was the "No comprendi" excuse. If Mark would keep his mouth shut and the teacher would stop pushing Mark into a corner, Adell wouldn't be arriving in school in the next 15 or so minutes to jump up and down on Mr. D'Angelo's head and the boys would have a comfortable year.

The teacher shifted his focus to Zachary. After a slight reflective pause he spoke to Zachary in French. "You and Mark have good communication skills?" the man asked the twin. "Yes Sir," answered Zachary. "Good, we will discuss this tomorrow morning. Does your friend always rely so heavily on his Grandmother to nurse him through life?" the teacher asked. Zachary was savvy enough to know that the teacher was being sarcastic. But at the same time, he had opened the door to diffuse the conflict. "Mark is Greek Mr. D'Angelo. His Grandmother is the Matriarch of his Family and she governs him very closely. If he has a problem, he has always been taught to go to her," Zachary told the teacher. "Do you think he has a problem?" the teacher asked. "That's probably why he wants to speak to Nana," Zachary replied. The teacher sat back deep in thought. He now had six boys calling the woman "Nana" in his house and wondered why.

Returning to English, Zachary addressed Mark. "Sergio can fix this shit in the morning; tell him you don't need to call home." "Why?" Mark asked. "Let's talk first," Zachary answered. Mark nodded his head. Without waiting, Zachary spoke again to the teacher in French. "He doesn't need to call his Grandmother tonight Sir," Zachary told the man. "Fine," the teacher responded.

The balance of the meeting went uneventful except for the fact that Jean-Paul was a little upset by the notion that Mark and maybe Mario we're being moved. He didn't like the idea and moved closer to Mark and took his hand in his. The move didn't escape Mr. D'Angelo's attention.

When the meeting was over, the real meeting began; the one between the boys themselves. There were 17 "Senior" boys in the house; those boys who were at Turin for at least a year. Going back upstairs more than a few wondered what the hell was going on. Their house parent was "Inviting" Mark out the door, and Mark was pushing a panic button calling for his relatives. Calls home were made when something was seriously wrong and a boy wanted to screw a staff member to the wall. It was a very radical move on any boy's part.

"Why shouldn't I call Nana?" Mark asked Zachary as the boys climbed the stairs to the bedrooms. "Mark, Sergio arranged with the Headmaster to have us all together. We don't have to fight with Mr. D'Angelo to stay together. If you bring in Nana, we're going to have to live with him for the next year, not her!" he said to his friend. "Tomorrow morning you tell Sergio what's going on and let him piss off Mr. D'Angelo." "What if he splits us up?" Mark asked his friend. "Then we call Nana and let her cut his fucking balls off!" Zachary replied with a very big grin.

"Do you know anything about this Greek boy in Mr. Gianetti's house?" Mark asked Jean-Paul. "I don't know. How can I tell if a boy is Greek or not if I can't speak to him?" the boy asked. "Good point!" Mackenzie said as the boys all gathered in the only room big enough to hold all the boys; the showers.

By tradition the most senior boys took "Control" of a house by reason of their seniority. Two boys who had been there since Kindergarten became the ninth grade boys unofficial "Leaders". The twins considered them largely symbolic because after all, if they didn't like a given "decision" they could always beat the shit out of them and do what they pleased anyway.

The boys' most pressing concern, at least on the senior boys' part, was continuation of the care packages from town. It was the boys' lifeline to contraband and had to be explained to the new boys. If you wanted candy, gum, soda, cigarettes, magazines, condoms or whatever, there was a system in place and deliveries came every Saturday like clockwork. All you needed was money and a little imagination.

The balance of the boys' meeting was to figure out which senior boy needed to assist a new boy in language. The house had boys who spoke Italian, French, English, Spanish, German, Dutch, Greek, Swedish and Japanese. As with every year, somehow all the boys managed to communicate.

Bedtime on that first Monday night couldn't have come fast enough for Mark. Despite what Zachary told him, he wanted desperately to talk to Adell. Mr. D'Angelo was authority and authority scared the hell out of him. Be it teacher, house parent, guard, judge or prosecutor, Mark trusted very few, especially ones he knew little about. Zachary was his very good friend, but Zachary knew very little about Mark or his past. By 11:00 he lay there and worked himself into a frenzy and got up, got dressed and phoned for a cab to pick him up. Just before the cab came, he woke up Mario.

Tuesday morning broke for Mr. D'Angelo's house very quietly until two or three minutes after the boys awoke. Mark and Mario were gone, Jean-Paul was very nearly hysterical and Mr. D'Angelo was staring at Zachary. Within moments, Zachary watched as Sergio came into the house and the tutor and the house parent disappeared into his apartment.

Adell was sound asleep as the doorbell rang and she listened to muffled voices. Coming out of her room, Rachael was paying the cab driver and closing the door. "Mark and Mario are upstairs," Rachael told the woman and sat down on the living room chair. Adell didn't have the faintest clue about what was going on and climbed the stairs. Mario was already in bed tucked under the sheets and Mark was getting into bed. "We have to go back to school tomorrow together Gramma," Mark said to the woman as she came over and sat on the edge of his bed. "Why?" she asked the boy. Mark didn't answer her; he wrapped his arm around Mario next to him and closed his eyes. "Tomorrow Gramma, I'm very, very tired," he said. Adell watched as the boy embraced his friend and watched the tears roll down the boy's nose and across his lips.

Adell was a very simple county woman, unsophisticated by most standards, not all that educated. But she knew when to dig for answers and when to hold her tongue. For the woman, the morning couldn't come soon enough. She took a blanket out of the closet and sat down in a chair next to the boys' bed. If Mark awoke in the middle of the night, she would be there.

As Sergio knew from years of dealing with Adell concerning Mark's brother Alexander, she was a very early riser. He awoke at 5:30 with his phone ringing and the woman telling the man that both Mark and Mario were back with her, and that the boys would be returning to Turin AFTER any problems were resolved, IF THEN.

Mark opened his eyes and lay in the bed for a long time. Mario was lying next to him and the windows were open and the sounds of the woods came through the window as he lay there. He wasn't going back to Turin without his Grandmother and he wasn't going back unless he was going to remain with his friends.

Mark hadn't wet the bed for probably three or four nights and the bed was now soaking wet. Mark thought about that. What the hell did pissing have to do with anything? A phone rang downstairs and took his mind off the wet sheets. Mario stirred and turned himself around to Mark. Mark thought his friend would have a million questions and he didn't have an answer to one. Mario asked no questions. Between Zachary, Mackenzie, Jean-Paul and Sebastian, Mario had taken a back seat for many, many days and nights saying absolutely nothing. Mario did not question his friend, he followed him and he would for the rest of his life.

Very little of the conversation between Sergio and Mr. D'Angelo was ever disclosed to outside parties which is really not surprising. Boarding school teachers and house parents typically run independent little fiefdoms of their own and rarely intermingle, unless there is a common interest. In all probability, Sergio advised the teacher to steer well clear of Adell, she could bring him tons of grief if she got pissed off and the spotlight of attention from the Administration was something nobody wanted.

Sergio's next meeting was with Zachary at breakfast who related every single detail of the meeting the previous night. "Did you know he was going to leave the school?" the tutor asked. "No, he didn't say a word. He was very quiet after the meeting, but didn't tell anybody he was splitting," Zachary informed the man. "Jean-Paul is freaking fucking out!" Zachary told the teacher unemotionally. Sergio was a little surprised, he of course knew that the boys cursed like drunken sailors in each other's presence, but rarely did a staff member hear any of it unless the boy was very upset or involved in a fight.

"Where is Jean-Paul?" Sergio asked. "My brother and Sebastian are with him. He won't come out of the room," Zachary told the man. Sergio returned to the house and left the school with the boy for Adell's before 8:30. As Zachary had said, Jean-Paul was "Freaking out".

Just before 9:00 Sergio pulled up to the house and Jean-Paul was out of the car before it stopped rolling. The boy opened the front door without knocking and headed straight upstairs to Mark's room. Both Mark and Mario were in the shower getting washed as Jean-Paul headed straight for Mark without even acknowledging Adell's presence. The boy's swollen face and red eyes told Adell that he had obviously been crying, but she really didn't expect what came next. Jean-Paul lunged at Mark and grabbed him around the chest and latched onto the side of his neck with his teeth and bit down as Mark started screaming in pain. It happened so fast even Mario was caught by surprise as blood started flowing down Mark's neck as he tried to punch the boy off him. The only way Sergio finally got Jean-Paul to release his hold on Mark's neck was to jam his two thumbs between Jean-Paul's cheeks and teeth to open his jaw. With his finger nails digging into Mark's back and chest as he was pried away, the boy finally collapsed on the shower floor crying incoherently. Mark's neck was flowing blood down his side as Adell brought him out of the shower and sat him down on the toilet top. "Get him out of here!" Adell screamed at Sergio as she went for a washcloth.

Notwithstanding the pain Mark was in, he still knew why Jean-Paul had attacked him. Two years previous in Elmira, Conner had attacked Michael in almost the same exact way, and the attack came from the boy's perceiving he was being abandoned by his caretaker. Now Jean-Paul had attacked him for leaving him at Turin while taking Mario. "No Gramma, it's not his fault. Don't send him away!" Mark pleaded with the woman. "He thinks I abandoned him!" he said. Mark got up off the toilet and went over to the shower and sat down with Jean-Paul who was laying face down crying into his arms. Picking him up, Mark cradled Jean-Paul in his lap. "I'm sorry Jean-Paul, I'm sorry," he repeated over and over. Adell watched fully expecting the boy to sink his teeth back into Mark but instead, the boy wrapped his arms around Mark's waist and cried all the harder as the two of them sat in the shower. It was close to an hour before both boys were cleaned up and dried. Mark needed no stitches, but the bite Mark had on his neck was deep enough to leave a permanent scar that can be faintly seen today, nearly 16 years later.

Breakfast came very late in the morning and then Sergio addressed the problem from the night before. "There will be no more talk from Mr. D'Angelo about your moving out of the house," he began. "If the other boy needs to have you or Mario interpret for him, he will be moved in with you. Nobody is making any plans to separate you from your roommates, that issue was completely settled by the Headmaster," he told all three boys. "Mr. D'Angelo apologizes if anything he said yesterday made you upset," Sergio told Mark. "Maybe it would be better if the whole room was moved to another house," Adell suggested. "I'm not sure I have too much confidence in this man," she told the teacher. "We could probably do that, but we must also consider that Mr. D'Angelo is much less of a hands-on manager than Mr. Giovanni and his wife are," Sergio told the woman. "What does that mean?" Mario asked. "It means that you'll be seeing a lot more of the Giovanni's than you would Mr. D'Angelo," Sergio replied. Mark looked at his friends. "Let's see what happens with Mr. D'Angelo," Mark said. Sergio smiled a little. He figured that would be the boy's response.

Against her better judgment, Adell agreed to allow the boys to return to school with Sergio. Waking past the woman on the way to the car, Jean-Paul hesitated at the door. Adell knelt down and gave him a hug and a kiss on the neck. "No more biting," she told the boy as she patted him on the ass and sent him on his way. "What did she say to me?" Jean-Paul asked as he got to the car. "She said you have a very cute little ass," Mario said. Mark looked at his friend but said nothing. Jean-Paul looked back at the woman.

The boys' return to school came without fanfare. All three rejoined the class with no questions asked from staff. That evening on his way to dinner, Mr. D'Angelo stopped Mark as he passed the teacher's room. "I apologize for getting you upset about my suggestion; I didn't realize the depth of your concern for your friends," the man told Mark. "I hope you don't think I made the suggestion maliciously, I hope we can become good friends," he said extending his hand.

Mark knew bullshit when he heard it but he regarded the man's remarks as sincere. Shaking his houseparent's hand, he replied. "I'm sorry I ran away but I had to see my Grandmother," Mark told the man. "If you feel the need again, I'll call the cab myself for you," the man said. Noticing the bandage on Mark's neck the teacher asked him about it. "It's OK, Jean-Paul bit me," he replied as the teacher felt the bandage. "He bit you?" the man replied. "Yes," said Mark. "Why would that be OK?" Mr. D'Angelo asked. "Because he thought I betrayed him by not taking him with me last night. We are friends and we won't be separated," the boy said. The teacher said nothing, he marveled at Mark's acceptance of being attacked by his friend. He also noticed the boy's defiance and protective attitude towards Jean-Paul.

Dinner couldn't come soon enough for the three boys since the only meal they had was the late breakfast. An Italian buffet of lasagna, meat balls and spaghetti and tossed salad had very many round bellies taking showers that night. Sergio had brought back with him antibiotic cream and fresh bandages from Adell and Mr. D'Angelo was given the task of putting a fresh one on morning and evening after showers. Going downstairs and knocking on his door, Mario, Jean-Paul and Mark entered the man's room for the first time to get Mark's bandage changed. "You boys have a very strange way of showing your love," the man said as he took the old bandage off and looked at the bite mark. "If you come to love me in time, please warn me in advance," he said as he looked over to Jean-Paul. Mark and Mario giggled a little, Jean-Paul turned a little pink.

Mr. D'Angelo's apartment was a three room affair, a living room, bedroom and large kitchen and dinette. Now and then Mr. D'Angelo would eat in the school's Dining Room, but usually, he cooked for himself and ate in the apartment. The boys were attracted to the place mainly because the teacher was heavily into trains, and had rows and rows of trains mounted on the walls and a track layout in the living room. All the trains ran, and all could be quickly taken off the shelves and put on the tracks to run. Pictures of trains and rail road memorabilia were all over the apartment and the place was a boy's dream. A magnet might be more descriptive. "Once things are settled down for the school year, you may visit if you wish," he told the boys. Jean-Paul liked the idea. He also liked the teacher.

There wasn't that much opportunity to talk during the day, but by lights out, Zachary had more than a few questions for Mark. "Why didn't you tell me you were planning to skip?" he asked his friend. "I really didn't plan on doing it," Mark told him. "I woke up in the middle of the night and had to get back to Nana," he told his friend. "Why the fuck didn't you wake us up too?" Zachary asked. "I didn't want you to get into trouble." That's why I didn't take Jean-Paul with us," Mark replied. "But you took Mario!" Mackenzie said. "Mario is completely different," Mark said. "Mario and I are brothers as much as you and Zachary are. Besides, Mario can't get into trouble by going with me, his Father expects us to stay together and so does mine," he told the room. "What happened to your neck?" Zachary asked. "Jean-Paul accidentally bit me," Mark told the group. "Accidentally? How the fuck does someone accidentally bite you?" Mackenzie asked. "It's a closed subject," Mark responded. Mackenzie looked at Mark and looked at his brother. "Drop it," Zachary said. "What do you think Mr. D'Angelo is going to do now? Is he pissed at you?" Sebastian asked. "No, Sergio talked with him and it's all over," Mark said. "Sergio talked to Zachary too," Mackenzie told him. "Yea, he's kind of cool, he sure did bail out our bacon last year," Zachary replied.

With the ringing of the 9:00 bells, the boys settled down. "I'm glad we're going to be all staying together," Zachary said. "Yea, now we need to put it to some good use," Mackenzie said as he flipped himself to the foot of the bed. With Sebastian, the boys were six. One by one, the boys found their partner and alternated positions. A circle jerk was a nice activity, but the boys had long ago perfected the circle suckle, and it was their preferred nightcap to the end of a busy and hectic day. Mark wasn't exactly sure who was on him, but he knew he was on Jean-Paul and if he wasn't mistaken, Jean-Paul had his very first orgasm albeit an extremely small one. When the days tension was released by all six boys, their heads again came back to the top of the bed and with Jean- Paul on one side of him and Mario on the other, Mark slept like a baby.

Half way through morning classes the next day, Sergio arrived with a boy in tow, a boy none of the class had ever seen before. Speaking to the teacher, he motioned for Mark and Mario and the four left the class and went to the Library. "This is Julian boys, he only speaks Greek and you two are the only other boys in the ninth grade who do," Sergio told Mark and Mario. After introductions Sergio continued. "We'd like to transfer him into your house. Unless it doesn't work out, it would be best if he moved into your room," the teacher told the boys. "But our room already has five boys in it," Mark told him. "Yes, we know. There is enough room and we could put another bed in there," Sergio told the boys. At this point, Mark switched from Greek to Italian. "Is he going to be one of your pupils? Has he been raised traditionally?" Mark asked the man. Sergio knew what Mark was getting at. "No, he's not one of my tutored boys, I don't know what his background is, I became involved only because I can speak with him," the teacher responded in Italian. "Has he been to boarding school before?" Mark asked. Sergio shook his head no. "Sergio, he could be a virgin. Nobody in my room is a virgin!" he told the man. "We went through all that stuff last year with Stuart, now we have to start all over again?' he said. "Suppose he freaks out about what we all do?" The teacher understood the boys reluctance, but the fact was, they were the only two boys who spoke Greek and the school would not allow interaction between grades. "Get him to basic skills in Italian as fast as you can and if he doesn't work out, we'll move him to another room or back to Mr. Gianetti's house," Sergio requested. "Please do this for the boy's sake; he has nobody who understands him besides you two." Mark looked at Mario. "The twins are going to have a stroke," he told his friend. "Forget the twins, what about Jean-Paul!" Mario responded. Mark temporarily forgot about Jean-Paul. Mark thought for a few seconds. "I'll take care of Jean-Paul, you concentrate on this kid," Mark told Mario. "Fine, welcome to our room," Mark said to Julian in Greek as he extended his hand to the boy. The house keeping staff brought in another bed and put it in Mark's room during afternoon session and by late afternoon all of Julian's belongings were delivered to his new house.

Mark's first goal was to find out as much about Julian as he could as quickly as possible. Specifically where the boy was at sexually. However, one doesn't walk up to a boy and nonchalantly ask him if he fucks or not. At least not unless you happen to be one of the twins, and Mark was determined to keep the boy away from them until he figured the new kid out.

Julian was 13 ½ and lived with his family in a town called Kaminia on the Island of Limnos. His Father owned a restaurant on the island and Julian lived with his parents, a younger sister (10) and a younger brother (3). His family restaurant catered to an International crowd, and Julian would be attending Turin for two years to study Italian, and then would attend an English boarding school for two years to study English.

Physically, Julian was an average sized boy, well proportioned and fairly athletic. He played Football (Soccer), swam like a fish and skied. He had long sandy brown hair that hung almost to his shoulders and generally covered his ears. He had brown eyes and a smooth complexion and what most people would call a "Baby face". His two most striking facial features were his eyes and his mouth. He had eyes that emoted warmth and full red moist lips that invited a kiss. Julian was a very beautiful boy and there was no question he was going to be a very handsome man if his complexion cooperated passed his teens.

As with Stuart, Mark wanted to first find out where Julian was coming from sexually before the twins threw him on the bed and screwed his balls off. Mark never considered himself a "Do gooder" and he'd fuck with anybody at the drop of a pair of pants, but he never wanted to be responsible for turning anybody else out either against their will or without their full knowledge and approval. Mark knew that 80 % of boys fucked. He just didn't want to have anything to do with the 20% that didn't.

Everybody in the room agreed and Julian's first night began as he was observed in the showers. Mackenzie immediately regretted the agreement. The majority of the boys in the house were well into puberty and had at least a faint patch of hair and testicles that were obviously doing more than just sitting there biding their time. Julian on the other hand was as bald as a baby and not all that much bigger. What he didn't have up front, he did have in the rear. The lack of a tan line told Mark instantly that the boy swam suitless. To Mark, that was a very positive development.

As all the boys did, upon entering the bathroom their underpants went down the laundry chute unless they walked in naked and Julian's slid off him and were deposited with little apparent regard on Julian's part; another positive development. As he usually did, Mark and the rest of the boys in his room were sitting down in the shower against a wall washing and Julian stood close, but he didn't sit down. There wasn't all that much conversation between Julian and either Mark or Mario during showers, but Julian did take notice of Jean-Paul when he came in and sat down on Mark's lap in his usual position. He also noticed that more than a few boys had erections, something very few other boys seemed to be aware of.

Once all the boys were back in the room, Julian put on a fresh pair of underpants and noted that he and Sebastian were the only two boys in the room who did. Julian observed as Zachary and Sebastian played a Gameboy sitting on the bed, and observed Mackenzie and Mario as the two read a comic book, or at least looked at the pictures. As Mark asked Julian about his home history and told Julian about his, Mark combed Jean-Paul's hair and struggled to get some gum out of it. Julian said nothing, but did take notice that Mark was laying on his bed propped up on his pillow and Jean-Paul was sitting in between his legs with his head on Mark's chest while he worked on his hair. Julian came to the conclusion that none of these boys cared much about clothing or the fact they were naked. He liked the practice but he was concentrating 100 percent on keeping his appreciation from becoming visual.

Mark had never heard of Limnos before, but Mario did. Mark decided he would have to discuss the place with Adell, she would know everything about it. With the dimming of the lights, the boys headed for bed and as pre-arranged with the other boys, everybody had agreed to cool their jets for the night until Julian was a known quantity. With Julian, there were now seven boys sleeping in the room which included the "Unofficial" Sebastian. When the house keeping staff brought in the additional bed for Julian, they place it separated from the other five beds. The twins took one look at that scenario and immediately placed all six beds side by side. Now, with seven boys in the room, there was ample bed space, but you needed to be very compatible with your neighbors.

As the lights turned off, Julian watched as Sebastian got into bed along with everybody else. "Doesn't he sleep in the other room?" the boy asked Mario. "That's where all his stuff is, but he usually sleeps with us," Mario responded. "Why?" Julian asked. "Because he's our friend from last year and we always sleep together," Mario told him. Julian looked over to Sebastian who had dropped off his underpants and got into bed between the twins. "He's naked," Julian said "They all are." "That's the way most of us sleep," Mark told him. "Do you wet the bed?" he asked the boy. "Wet the bed? Of course not!" Julian replied very wide eyed. "Then if you don't want to get wet you probably will want to sleep on the end bed," Mark told him. "You mean they pee the bed at night?" Julian asked. "No, they don't, but we do," he told the boy.

Mark was now on a mission; how sexually active was this new boy? The best way to find out was to let the other boy talk, but steer him in the direction you wanted him to go to. Julian was on the end bed, Mario was next to him, Mark was next and on the other side of Mark, Jean-Paul. Julian laid his head down on his pillow as Mark reached over and first kissed Jean-Paul goodnight and then Mario. The shower scene with Jean-Paul and now the kiss had Julian's mind spinning. "You kiss other boys?" Julian asked. "Sure, we're very best friends," Mark replied. "Haven't you ever kissed your best friend back home?" "No. Aren't you afraid people will think you're gay?" Julian asked him. "We don't care what people think, we are best friends and we love each other that's all," Mark told him. "Do you think people would think you're gay if you kissed your friend?" Mark asked. "If they saw me," Julian responded. Mark knew he now had the keys to the kingdom. Julian was still in the closet sexually. Now he had to be drawn out.

"Here at school we all have a code. Nobody sees anything and says nothing about it outside of this house," he told Julian. "If a boy wants to play with himself, it's his private business," Mark told him. "I once saw two boys playing with each other. Don't you think that's disgusting?" Julian asked. "No. I think it's their private business," Mark responded. Pointing to the twins and Sebastian Julian asked "Do they kiss each other too?" "That's their private business and you'd have to ask them about that," Mark told him. Julian thought about Mark's last comment for awhile before he had a new question. "Why did you let Jean-Paul sit on your tummy in the shower?"

"That's where he likes to sit," Mark replied. "He's been doing that since last year." "Aren't you afraid the other boys are going to talk?" he asked. "About what? Jean-Paul and me washing?" "No, you're both naked!" Julian said. "So what? Everybody in the shower is naked," Mario said. "But they're not sitting on each other," Julian countered. "Give them time!" Mario said with a chuckle. Mark giggled. "Nobody in the house is going to say or think anything," he told the boy. "You'll see a lot of stuff, just remember it's all private business," Mark told him. Again Julian fell silent for awhile and was very deep in thought. "How did Sebastian's thing get so big?" Julian finally asked. "He was born that way. His Father is very big and his will be too." "You don't think it got so big because he played with it a lot?" Julian asked. Mark giggled. "If playing with your cock made them bigger, Mario and I would need to carry ours around in a baby carriage." Julian was a little shocked, but Mario giggled. "You don't think it's disgusting to play with yourself?" Julian asked. "Every boy does it, why would we think it was disgusting?" Mark asked. "I don't play with myself!" Julian declared. Mark took his finger and put it on the tip of Julian's nose. "Then you're the only boy in this school that doesn't," he told the boy. "Most of us started when we were five or 6. If you started later, you missed out on a lot of fun," Mark told him.

Not waiting for any response, Mark told Julian he was tired and it was time to sleep. Julian said goodnight and turned himself around. Mark knew that the other boys in the room were waiting for an ending to the session between him and Julian, and were waiting only for Julian to fall asleep. Mark cuddled up with Jean-Paul and waited too. Unfortunately, he fell asleep before Julian. If the boys outlasted Julian, Mark didn't know about it, he fell sound asleep.

Somewhere in the middle of a very erotic dream that Mark couldn't quite remember the next morning he awoke in the middle of the night. It wasn't the first time he awoke to what he knew was someone sucking on his penis and it took him a few seconds to fully realize that was what had awoken him. He knew very quickly that he was very close to an ejaculation, once he was finished, he'd figure out who presented him with the gift. Mark concentrated not on climaxing, but on seeing how long he could prolong it. It became a battle of the wills in Mark's mind. He concentrated on relaxing his erection, while whoever was on the other end was coaxing his testicles to relinquish his seed. Mark's testicles won as the boy felt the rush through his prostate and down his penis. Getting up, Mark saw the dark figure go back to his side of the bed and slip in under the covers. It was Julian. Mark lay there for a few seconds not really knowing exactly where to take the encounter next. Should he go over to Julian? Should he just go back to sleep and build on the information tomorrow? He really didn't know until he felt the very telltale shaking of the bed that told him Julian was masturbating alone on the other side of him. Mark's libido had flowed out of him seconds before, but leaving Julian to take care of himself was something Mark knew as a very lonely endeavor. He got up from the bed and sliding down to the end went around to the end of the bed and slid in alongside Julian. Julian was almost frozen in position with his underpants down around his knees and his hand on his penis as Mark slid in back of him and with his foot, took Julian's underpants down and off. "This is private business," Mark said to Julian very quietly and took the boy's hand off his penis and wrapped his own around it and masturbated him to a dry climax. "Goodnight," Mark said to a silent Julian as he kissed the boy on his neck and laid his head down on the boy's pillow.

Julian was now one of the boys and neither Mark nor any of the rest of the boys ever heard Julian begin a sentence with the phrase "I once saw" again. He was out of the closet and into the open free air. Mark had absolutely no problems falling to sleep that night, he was sleeping minding his own business, not the other way around.

Julian awoke the next morning between Mario and Mark and immediately realized that the boys hadn't bullshitted him about wetting. Julian hadn't ever wet the bed as long as he could remember, and he was not a boy into golden showers. "You do pee the bed!" he said as he scooted himself across Mark and off the bed. "That's what we told you!" Mario replied as he got up. "Hey, what happened to your underpants?" Mario asked as he looked at Julian. "Private business," Mark responded before Julian got a chance to say anything. "Oh," said Mario and headed out for the showers with Jean-Paul in tow. "Do you think he knows what we did?" Julian asked Mark very quietly as both boys headed out. "He knows that private business is private business and you'll never hear anything about it again," Mark told him. "I've never done anything like that before," Julian told Mark. Mark didn't skip a beat. "Yea, I know. I never jerked anybody else off before either," he said with a very straight face. Julian looked at him. "Really?" he asked. "Not!" Mark said. Mark heard Julian giggle for the very first time in his life. Julian was on a learning curve.

"Why do you sit down in the showers?" Julian asked Mark as both boys moved over to Mario and Jean-Paul and Mark sat down. "For two major reasons," Mark said to Julian in a very serious tone. First, I'm tired and it's easier to sit down. Second, it would be tough to wash Jean-Paul with him climbing all over me." As Mark sat down, Jean-Paul sat down in his lap. "See what I mean?" Mark told the boy. Mario instantly started laughing. As Julian sat himself down next to Mark, Sebastian and the twins came in and formed a circle on the floor in front of Mark. "How's it going?" Zachary asked Mark in Italian. Mark figured the time was right to ask the big question. "Julian, all the boys in the room want to know if you understand what private business is and if you can keep their privacy. It means that what we do and what we see in the room and in this house stays here among us. Can you do that?" he asked the boy. "Yes," Julian said. Mark leaned forward and kissed Julian on the nose. "He's one of us," Mark said in Italian. Julian understood only Greek, but he knew that whatever was just said, he was accepted. The boys were very nice to him the previous day and evening, after morning showers, he knew he belonged and was fully accepted.

Of the 26 boys who were now a part of Mr. D'Angelo's house, all went very smoothly except for one boy of German descent who was what most people would call a product of his upbringing which was about 70 years outdated. He hated Jews, queers, moral inferiors and weaklings. Mark came into contact with the boy a few times; he wondered how a parent could so poison a child's mind and still sleep peacefully. Rolf was a formidable boy who most probably would have dominated the ninth grade at Turin except for one factor: the twins. As a new boy, Rolf laid fairly low during the first few days of school, but by the first week had determined for himself that he was most probably the strongest boy there. He probably was. As the week progressed and he became aware that most of the boys there were more into having fun than starting World War Three, he started picking on boys who didn't agree with his view of the world. Rumors circulated, and boys appeared with unexplained bruises. Thursday night in the showers, Rolf and the twins hit the fan.

Zachary never looked for a fight, but on the other hand, he never backed down either. His brother Mackenzie would rather fuck than fight, but if his brother was in a fight, he'd fuck up the other guy before he let his brother lose. Together, they never lost. Rolf came into the shower and bumped into Zachary who the Nazi knew as a "Flamer". Superman had observed the twins and the rest of the boys in the room together and concluded he was observing a gaggle of fags who could be run over at will. Zachary was unsuspecting and said excuse me concerning the bump and Rolf took that as a high sign of weakness on the twin's part.

Rolf straight-armed Zachary and sent him flying to the floor of the shower. Mackenzie was following his brother into the shower and watched as his brother's ass hit the floor. By the time Zachary was back on his feet, Mackenzie was wrapped around Rolf's neck in a choke hold and doing some dental work on the tot. Zachary proceeded to make sure that Rolf wasn't using his balls for anything but to groan over for the next few months. The fight might have lasted 15 seconds and Rolf was throwing up on the bathroom floor holding onto his jewels and looking for some teeth.

The following morning, three boys' affidavits to Rolf's humanity to man sealed his fate and he was shipped back to Düsseldorf to spread the good cheer. Rolf probably could have skated away from the misunderstanding, except for the fact that the boy was convinced he was assaulted by "A pack of Jew fags" which he very vocally proclaimed to the school Administration in his defense. Rolf was convinced the twins and Mark were Jews; why else would they be circumcised? Not willing to relive that tired old dog, the Administration waved goodbye to Rolf and removed the twins from room restriction.

The school didn't celebrate the fact that the twins created the necessity for the boy to wear a truss for the next six months of his life but it most certainly eliminated any future disagreements or grievances anyone might have against either twin or anybody they were associated with.

The first weekend of the year came and the twins felt that a kind of "Greek conspiracy" was growing around them. Mark and Mario would be gone for the weekend along with Jean-Paul, but now, Julian would go as well. "Shit Zack, what the fuck are we supposed to do; leave him here with nobody to talk to?" Mark said as Zachary put on a very long face. "That's exactly what you said last year about Mario," the boy responded. "He speaks Italian now, but he's still going home with you!" While Mark knew what Zachary said was true, he also knew that Mario wasn't just another boy. "You know me and Mario are a hell of lot more than just friends," Mark told the twin. Still, Zachary was feeling very much left out. "And Jean-Paul?" he retorted. Reverting to English, Mark looked at his friend. "Can you figure out a way for me to leave him here without him going bullshit?" he asked his friend. "We just spent the last month together on vacation. As soon as the snow flies we'll be back in Sestriere every week-end. If I had the space I'd take the whole room, but I don't! Please be reasonable," Mark implored his friend.

Zachary said nothing for a time, his 14 year old brain rarely stopped thinking. "What about Australia?" he asked his friend. For a couple of seconds, Mark was completely lost. "Australia? What about Australia? "Next summer come to Australia for holiday," Zachary said. "What's that got to do with what we're talking about?" Mark asked the twin. "Everything. If you're my friend, you'll come to Australia," Zachary replied. Mark didn't quite understand the logic. "I am your friend but Australia is halfway around the world. I don't even know if my Father would let me go!" Mark replied. "But we can ask him?" Zachary replied. "Sure, if that makes you happy," Mark told his friend. Zachary smiled. He would begin working on his parents immediately. As Mark left the room, Zachary looked over to his brother. "That was a bloody right trap off," Mackenzie said as he looked up from his magazine. Zachary smiled; for whatever reason getting Mark to Australia was very important to him. He loved his home and he wanted to share it with his friend.

After their tutoring session with Sergio, Mark, Mario, Jean-Paul and now Julian all sat at the curb waiting for Rachael to pick them up. To Rachael, Julian was a total surprise. "Does Nana know anything about this?" the woman asked Mark. "Don't ask," Mark responded as he got into the car. As the boys stopped for their care package and Rachael picked up some groceries, the store keeper was practically giddy with excitement. He had not seen the group since the spring when school got out, and the boys usually spent in excess of $250.00 (US) weekly. Without question the school boys were his biggest and best customers. The list still began with the same two items; a tin of anchovies and a box of tampons. The storekeeper couldn't understand for the life of him what the boys were doing with the items, but he bought them by the case to increase his profit margin.

Arriving at the house, Adell stood at the door and as she watched Julian get out of the car, she folded her arms. "You're in trouble now," Rachael whispered to Mark as they all walked up the walk. Mario gave the woman a big kiss and a hug and the woman even bent down and took a kiss from Jean-Paul as he sneaked past her. Rachael ducked in behind Jean-Paul to get out of the way. "Gramma, this is Julian," Mark said as he approached his nanny. "Mark, don't they have telephones at school? Can't you call me and warn me you're going to bring home another problem from school?" she asked the boy. "Say hello to my sweet kind Grandmother Julian," Mark told his friend. "Hello, I'm happy to meet you," Julian said a little timidly. Probably for the first time in his life Mark saw the woman turn a little pink. "He speaks Greek!" Adell exclaimed. "That's probably because he is Greek Gramma," Mark told the woman. "I had to bring him home because he would have nobody to talk to all weekend long. He only speaks Greek."

Grabbing the boy by the arm, Adell turned around and walked into the house with Julian in tow. "Please forgive my Grandson, he likes to make a fool out of his Grandmother now and then," Adell told the boy. Mario giggled as he followed Jean-Paul up to the bedroom. Mark figured the woman just gave someone the best personal apology they were ever going to get from her.

Entering Mark's bedroom, Julian looked around. His Father was quite a successful businessman, but Julian knew the difference between successful and rich. Mark was rich. Mario and Jean-Paul were already on the bed taking off their school clothes and neither was in a great big huge hurry to get back into anything. As Mark came in the room, Mario giggled. "Still got your balls?" he asked his friend. Mark smiled but didn't answer. Taking off his uniform, Mark looked over to Julian who was looking out the windows at the Alps. "Probably by November we'll be going to Sestriere for the weekends. Then the twins and Sebastian can come with us," Mark told the boy. "They have downhill?" Julian asked. Mark laughed a little. "Straight off the mountain if you can hang on," he told the boy. Julian liked that idea. "Why didn't you call your Grandmother ahead of time and tell her I was coming?" Julian asked his friend. "Once she knew you were Greek, I knew she wouldn't object," Mark replied. "Besides, she loves me and will do what I ask her to," he told his friend. "Yes, she does love you, but you might not want to take advantage of her very good nature," Adell said as she came into the room and plunked down a pile of towels on the bed. "Rachael has cooked a very special meal, wash for dinner," Adell said as she exited the room with Mario rolling around the bed in giggles.

Rachael served up Arni Eksohiko and the after-dinner gathering of the boys with extremely round bellies in the parlor in front of the fireplace was a scene that made Rachael very proud of her cooking abilities. The boys chose to have desert in the Parlor and bowls of ice cream topped off a very early night.

In school, seeing Jean-Paul sitting on Mark's lap in the shower seemed out of place. Now, with Jean-Paul not only sitting on Mark's lap, but actually laying with him chest to chest seemed somehow right to Julian. The two weren't having sex or getting it on, they were two people who cared very much for each other and weren't ashamed to show their love for each other. Julian felt a little jealous of Jean-Paul. He wondered how such a friendship physically felt. The boy also watched as Mark's Grandmother washed Mario. Julian marveled at Mario's ability to allow the woman to wash him without apparent reaction. Julian was controlling himself, but only because he would have been extremely embarrassed if he didn't. When Adell was finished washing Mario, she approached Julian. The boy said nothing, but he was very nervous about allowing the woman to touch him without his reacting. "I'll shampoo your hair and then you can finish if you wish," Adell told the boy without making eye contact. Julian breathed a great sigh of relief.

The bed time ritual came with Adell drying off the boys' hair and then putting some medicine on Mark's neck for the last time. He was as healed as much as he would ever be, and the woman knew he had a permanent scar. She looked at it with a bit of sadness but without anger towards Jean-Paul who watched her as she smoothed out the cream. "Do you think it will go away?" Jean-Paul asked very softly as Mario interpreted for the two. The woman looked over to Jean-Paul. "Mark will know you love him for a very long time," she told the boy as she got up and put the medicine away.

"What does she mean by that?" Julian asked as the woman turned out the lights and closed the bedroom door behind her. "Nothing, its old business," Mark said to the boy as he watched the fireplace. "Is that like private business?" Julian asked. "Same thing," Mark replied. Julian shook his head a little. The boy had a great deal to learn from these boys. He liked to do the same things they did, he just had to learn what the rules were. "When you kissed me on the nose, what did you say to the other boys?" Julian asked him. Mark thought back a few nights. "I told them you were one of us," Mark told the boy. "Does Jean-Paul know what we did?" Julian asked. "Did you tell him what we did?" Mark asked as he looked at him. Julian shook his head no. "Then he doesn't know exactly what we did, but he knows it was private business just like Mario knows," Mark replied. Julian looked at Mario who was watching the fire listening to the conversation that was going on in Greek. Jean-Paul also heard the words, but understood none of it.

"You didn't say anything to Mario?" Julian asked. "We all talk about what we do with each other, not about what we do with other people," Mark told the boy. "Mario doesn't think we were playing chess, but he hasn't asked and wasn't told anything about anybody else's private business." Mario giggled. "No, not chess," he said as he continued to watch the fire.

"What's so funny?" Jean-Paul asked. "We're teaching Julian the rules," Mario answered. "About sex?" Jean-Paul asked. Both Mark and Mario now giggled. "What did he say?" Julian asked Mark. "He wanted to know if you were learning the rules about sex," Mark told him. "It's up to you if you want to do it with anybody else or not," Mark told him. "Should I?" Julian asked his friend. "I can't tell you that. But I can tell you that nobody in the room would talk about private business," Mark told him. Julian looked at Mario. "You know what we're talking about don't you?" he asked. Mario smiled at him. In Italian he spoke to Mark and Jean-Paul. He figured it was time to break the stalemate and the ice. "We're going to be here all night at this pace, Jean-Paul, want to flip?" Jean-Paul looked at Mark and giggled a little. Saying nothing more, he lifted his legs over Mario and laid down head to toes with Mario and before Julian figured out what was going on, both boys were buried in each other's groins. "Now you can talk to them about private business whenever you want to," Mark told the boy as he flipped himself and eliminated any future questions or concerns that Julian might have about engaging.

Less than five minutes later, all four boys again lay across the bed watching the fire. Jean-Paul was falling asleep fast but Julian was far from ready to sleep. He was about as happy and relaxed as he could remember being in months, if not years. Still stark naked, but no longer aroused, he was ready to open up and talk and for the next hour or so, he did exactly that. His youth on Limnos was a very happy, but very secretive one. He was not raised traditionally by his parents, but they did look the other way when it came to his relationships with his friends. He was caught a few times with his pals with their pants down either by his parents or by his friends' parents, but nobody really freaked out. "Go take showers" or "Go play sports" was about all that happened to him or his friends. Still, Julian always felt he had to sneak about in the shadows. Now the shadows were gone. The boys he lived with thought and behaved as he did and he very much liked the new way of doing things.

Mark was extremely envious. In America, two ten year old boys found jerking off together get arrested, go to court and get labeled as sexual predators for the rest of their lives. Sneaking about in the shadows wasn't an option, it was always big news on radio, TV and the newspapers and made bigger bucks for the media than owning a whore house in Nevada.

With the sunrise gleaming on the Alps in the background, the boys awoke to the caretaker offloading more wood for the fireplaces and stacking it in the sheds. Julian got up and looked back at the boys in the bed. How can you just lay there in pee like that?" he asked. Mario and Mark looked at each other. Maybe it was the influence of the twins, but Mario spoke first. "Well, we can lay here on our stomachs, or we can lay here on our backs," he said to Julian who thought the boy was being serious. "Or we can lay here on our right side, or we can lay here on our left," Mark chimed in as both boys rolled in giggles. Julian shook his head as Adell came into the room. "Good morning," she said as she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. "How can you just stand there naked in front of my Grandmother?" Mark asked as he got up out of bed and walked into the bathroom. Mario got up and giggled past Julian. Jean-Paul got out of bed next and took Julian by the hand as he walked him into the bathroom. His day would begin as most of his school days would at Turin, the boys in his room were full of humor and took great delight in teasing each other; he would just have to get used to it.

As Adell and Rachael washed the boys the plans were being laid out for them by Adell. "Next week we will be going to Sestriere, so today we buy ski clothing for the winter," she told the boys. "Maria is going to be having the baby very soon and I have to be there when the baby comes." "Are we going home too?" Mark asked. "No, there is nothing for you to do when the baby is born, you will return to Corfu for the Baptism," the woman told the boys. "Your Poppa said to tell you that you may not bring the entire school back to Greece with you Mark." Mario giggled as Jean-Paul tried to figure out why. "Try to keep in mind that it is a private family affair," Adell told the boy. Mark was very deep in thought. "Mario isn't a friend right?" Mark asked the woman. Mario looked at Mark a little funny as the woman smiled. "You mean he doesn't count as a guest don't you?" she asked. "Right, Mario is family," Mark replied immediately. "Mario is family," Adell replied as Mario calmed himself back down.

"Then the twins, Jean-Paul, Sebastian and Julian wouldn't be too many friends right?" Mark asked the woman. Adell looked at Rachael. "You missed one!" she told Rachael. "But nobody knew about Julian!" Rachael protested. "He has to go Gramma," Mark protested. "I know, I know, he has nobody to talk to!" Adell said. "Just remember, if five more Greek boys show up in Turin next week, they're not going to Corfu!" she notified the boy. Again, Mario giggled.

"The Baptism will be on a weekend, so you will not miss school, but each boy needs to have their parents' permission to go," she advised Mark. Have each boy contact their parents and send your Poppa written permission to travel. If your Poppa has no permission, there will be no plane ticket for them," Adell told Mark. At the translation Jean-Paul's blood pressure rose.

Both he and Julian decided they would begin working on their parents that morning by phone.

"I am leaving for Corfu after next weekend and will stay there until the baby is born. Rachael will be here for you if you need her, and when it is time, you will all return together," Adell told the boys. "Your Poppa has arranged for a plane to pick up Alexander and the family in Nice, and then come here for you. The plane will be full Mark, so if you invite anyone else, make sure they can swim," Adell told the boy. Along with the other boys Julian laughed as the boys were being dried and prepared for breakfast. He liked the atmosphere around him. The tone was warm, loving and casual, always laced with just a bit of teasing. It was a nice way to start off the day he thought to himself.

Following breakfast, the group headed to Turin and shopped for well over four hours with lunchtime spent in the Hotel. Once back at the cottage, clothing was separated and as usual, Adell found a few sweaters and jackets for Jean-Paul and Julian to take to Sestriere with them so the boys didn't feel left out of the buying spree that she took Mark and Mario on. By 3:00 the boys were heading down the road on bikes to the stream and their "Private" place. Adell watched as all four boys peddled away. "What's your opinion of Julian?" the woman asked Rachael who stood beside her watching the boys disappear down the road. "He seems very nice and very polite," Rachael responded. "Do you think he's been raised traditionally?" Adell asked the woman as she closed the door. "I don't know; he seems to fit right in with Mark and Mario," Rachael replied.

Mark and his friends opted to hike up the foot trail and show Julian their favorite vista of the Italian Alps from the cottage. The leaves on the trees were beginning to turn, but it was a warm fall day with just a hint of burning leaves somewhere off in the distance. The sun was still just over the mountain tops, but it would soon fall below them and illuminate the blowing snows on the tops of the taller mountains to the west. The snow line was still above any ski trails that could be seen like great scars on the mountains and Julian, like Sebastian, was an avid skier. He looked at the mountains with great longing.

Julian would have been a very happy camper if the afternoon was spent discussing the coming winter, the slopes at Sestriere, the trip to Corfu, but instead, he found himself being tutored in Italian by all three boys. The faster Julian learned Italian, the sooner the necessity of constant translations could end. For Julian, he considered it both ways. If he learned Italian very quickly, there would be no need for him to be in constant proximity to Mark and Mario. Julian's solution was to drag his feet a little on learning Italian.

After dinner calls home went fairly smoothly for Julian. His Father wished to talk to Mark's Father and after speaking with Adell, Julian felt he had a seat on the plane. Jean-Paul's Father didn't seem that enthused about the trip. His son had gone to Corfu for a month in summer, and came home very quiet and moody. The man thought it more important for Jean-Paul to remain in school with his entire class to socialize, not just be friendly with a select few. When Jean-Paul got off the phone he didn't fall apart, but he wasn't the life of the party either. Not even a large slice of Spumoni picked up the boy's spirits and Adell decided after about an hour that she would have to intervene. After showers, Adell took Jean-Paul into her room with Mario while Mark and Julian looked through a telescope at the moon and stars out the boy's bedroom window. Sitting Jean-Paul across her lap, she combed and brushed the boy's hair as she instructed Mario to translate the entire conversation with his Father to her. The talk lasted well over an hour and when finished, Adell had a plan of attack in mind. Once again, the woman would seek out Sergio's assistance.

The boys' return to school on Monday had Julian bubbling over with excitement which the twins did not appreciate. They knew what they missed out on, and really didn't need to be reminded of it on a minute by minute retelling. Eventually Mark had to tell Julian to curtail his enthusiasm or risk the twins' wrath. While they weren't happy about not being allowed to go with Mark, they were delighted to accept the care package of "groceries". As scheduled, they arrived on Saturday and were signed for by Mr. D'Angelo. "You're fucking kidding!" Mark said as he was told. "No, Mr. D looked in the boxes and told us not to smoke in the house and handed the boxes over," Zachary told him. "He looked in the boxes and still gave them to you?" Mark asked. "Yep!" Mackenzie said with a grin on his face. "Did he see what was in them?" Mario asked. "Joey bought a box of rubbers and they were sitting right on top!" Zachary replied. "No shit!" Mark said as grins sprung up all around him.

They also learned of the impending trip for the Baptism and were on the phone at lunch time on Monday to Australia. The hurt of not going that weekend was lessened by the knowledge that they had two seats on the private Lear Jet.

By Monday evening, Jean-Paul was called to the phone. Sergio had phoned his Father in Milan, and Jean-Paul had permission to attend the Baptism. Sebastian thought that somebody in Jean-Paul's family had died. The boy hung up the phone and sat down and cried.

For Sebastian's part, his family was a little reluctant to let him go. Not because of school or anything, but because they felt their son was playing "Out of their league". Letting Sebastian romp with people who had millions was something they were leery of. "What are you going to do when we can't give you the same things these people can," his Mother told the boy. "We're very simple people, we can't compete with them," she told her son. Sebastian wanted to be a world class skier. That was his dream and that was his parents dream for him. "Momma, we go skiing every week in Sestriere, I can't throw that opportunity away!" he told his Mother. "They've invited me to Corfu and I can't insult them!" he pleaded. Sebastian hung up the phone knowing he was on his way to Corfu.

With Rolf now history in the house, the ninth grade was a very cohesive group. 80% of the boys' activities in the house was to get the non-Italian speaking boys up to speed. 100% of their activities in school were geared to teaching them Italian, and dragging feet or not, Julian picked up Italian by the hour. Naturally, the first words learned were the curse words, quickly followed by foods and then toilet articles. It's surprising how fast a boy can learn to ask for toilet paper in Italian when sitting there with an empty roll in his hands.

Mark was no scholar, and school work beat the hell out of him on a daily basis, but between Sergio his tutor and the boys in his room, he was gaining ground. He was never going to be on the Honor Roll, but Mark was happy he wasn't flunked out. His work load became so time consuming that he barely noticed that he saw less and less of Jean-Paul and when he did see his friend, Jean-Paul was usually asleep. He also noticed Jean-Paul smelled of perfume. Since finding out he was going to be allowed to go to the Baptism he was in a good mood, so Mark attributed Jean-Paul's behavior to being secure in his position with the group.

The weeks generally passed slowly for the boys, but that second week passed much slower than usual. By Friday afternoon, a van pulled up in front of the house and everybody except for Jean-Paul was ready and waiting. Mark went back into the house where Jean-Paul was doing home work in the library. There wasn't going to be any skiing yet, and Jean-Paul elected to stay in school and catch up on homework and play with some other boys in the house he told Mark. "You don't want to come?" Mark asked his friend. "It's not that I don't want to come, but I have some reports that I haven't finished and unless I get good grades, my Father won't let me go to Greece with you," Jean-Paul told his friend. "Why didn't you tell me that earlier?" Mark asked his friend. Jean-Paul shrugged his shoulders. "Are you sure?" Mark asked him. Jean-Paul smiled and shook his head.

Mark is certain that it wouldn't have made a bit of difference, but he spent many years thereafter wishing he would have insisted that Jean-Paul get in the van and left with him for Sestriere. However, he didn't and Jean-Paul returned to the house and went to play with the trains for the weekend in Mr. D'Angelo's apartment.

It was much too early in the season for the slopes and lifts to be operating, but the resort was buzzing with activity as the van of boys and the car pulled up to the chalet in Sestriere. The chalet was located in the Principi di Piedmont area of town and Julian was caught off guard once again by the chalet as he had been by the cottage back in Turin. The cottage was large by anyone's standards. The chalet was the biggest the boy had ever seen, and he had seen quite a few. As he walked up the walk to the front door, he looked up at the high peaked roof and the glass fronted wall that was the upstairs loft area. It was like looking into a doll house, as Mario pointed out to him that he was looking at the boys' bedroom.

As with the cottage in Turin, the chalet was repainted and the entire second floor boys' bedroom area was redone into more of a dorm type situation to accommodate the growing number of friends who would be joining Mark and Mario. The usual load of seven boys from Turin had to be taken into consideration in addition to the six people that now constituted Alexander's family. In all, room had to be made to fit a total of 15 people.

Since there was no way the babies were going to be getting any sleep if they were upstairs next to the boys' room, Rachael, Lydia and Athena would be living downstairs with Alexander and Emily, while Adell's room would be switched to upstairs next to the boys.

Like a thundering herd of cattle, the boys entered the house and carrying and dragging their baggage behind them climbed the stairs to the loft with Julian following looking up at the ceiling of the chalet that seemed higher than a church steeple to him. Once in the boys' loft, he looked down at the scene below into the living room and parlor through the banister wall. Julian said nothing. He just shook his head. "Nice isn't it?" Mario said as he came over to Julian with Zachary trailing very closely behind him. Julian looked up and out the wall of glass at the Alps in front of him. "He seems so normal," Julian said. "Who?" Mario asked. "Mark," Julian replied. "Mark? Mark is normal, what are you talking about?" Mario asked. "Mark's Father owns this?" Julian asked. "No he doesn't own it, he just rents it," Mario answered. At that point Zachary wanted to know what was going on and Mario told him the conversation. Zachary smiled as Mario explained Julian's very strange reaction. "Tell him he ain't in Kansas anymore!" Zachary replied and giggled as he went back to the group.

It was very close to dinner time by the time the Turin group arrived and Adell was determined to dine at the Belvedere. If she couldn't eat at home, that was her target. Alexander had yet to arrive with the family and leaving behind a note, the van and car were reloaded and headed for the Hotel. Just after soup, Alexander and Emily arrived and everybody in the Dining Room knew that the Greeks were back in town. With a year now under their belt of Adell, the Hotel staff was only too eager to make sure they pleased the woman and Adell, being no fool knew that. Mark smiled as he watched the Hotel staff treat his Grandmother like a Queen; she deserved it he thought to himself.

Arriving once again back at the house, the house was ablaze in lights and every fireplace glowed red as a very full and tired troop of boys climbed the stairs to the second floor lofts. Downstairs, the talk was Greek. Upstairs, almost exclusively Italian as the boys shed their clothes and paraded into the bathroom for showers.

Carrying a pile of bath towels each, Adell and Rachael came into the bathroom to wash the boys' hair and leave them to the rest of the shower to fend for themselves. The twins were use to the routine and by this time very use to it. Enough to get frisky. "Where's Athena?" Mackenzie asked Rachael who didn't understand a word the boy said. Adell heard the girl's name being called and asked Mario what the twin asked. Mario translated and the woman looked over to Rachael and spoke to her in Greek which Mackenzie didn't understand. The twin asked Mario what she said. Mario giggled a little. "She told Rachael to go get her a butcher knife!" It was probably a good thing the babies were downstairs sound asleep as the bathroom erupted in laughter. Adell had made her point! Mark fell asleep that night almost completely content. Still, there was Jean-Paul.

With the slopes still closed, there was no skiing and the morning was spent getting new equipment for the coming winter. With the exception of Sebastian and Julian, the boys weren't all that fussy about which skies and which boots they bought, but for Sebastian and Julian, it was a very critical point, and one which took hours to decide. By now, all the boys were skiers, but Sebastian and Julian took their skiing just a little bit more seriously than the rest of the boys, especially Sebastian. He had been on skies since he was three years old, and it was both his and his Father's complete passion. His Father was a World Class skier, and he wanted his son to be an Olympic Skier.

Maybe in the very beginning Sebastian did, or did not, share in his Father's ambitions for him, but by age 12, Sebastian's vision merged with his Father's and the boy was on a mission of Olympic Gold. His training ground lay in front of him. It really did not matter the country, the Alps held the key to his success and in this neck of the woods, Kandahar piste drew the boy like a magnet.

Julian also shared in Sebastian's quest for skiing excellence, but not because of any family driven reason. Julian loved to ski, he loved to compete, and he loved to come down the mountain the fastest. As two 14 year olds, a Swiss boy and a Greek boy would begin their competitive relationship in Sestriere in 1990. It would continue on for many years, concluding in Lillyhammer.

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