Carlo and Me

by Ken Cohen

Copyright © 2026 by Kenneth Cohen. All rights reserved. Carlo and Me is fiction. This story is the property of the author. No part or parts of the story may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author. For permission requests, contact the author as follows: kenwriting (at) icloud (dot) com, or through the folks who run the websites at which this story may appear.

What was my mother like? I often wondered about her.

Mom died right after I was born. It's always been too painful for my dad to talk about.

A guy I once knew said he didn't miss his mother because he never knew her. Maybe his mother just moved out one day—I don't know. But, that's not how I feel. I miss my mom.

Mom met dad here in Montreal. It was during the war. They fell in love. They were married.

A few weeks later, his squadron was shipped overseas.

He worked as an aircraft mechanic for two years at an allied airbase in the Imphal Valley, which back then was in eastern India. Today, in 1966, it's in East Pakistan, close to Burma, where British soldiers fought a terrible, seemingly endless battle with the Japanese army across the last three years of World War II, in the worst possible conditions.

As far as most of the world was concerned, eastern India was kind of a backwater of the war. But it wasn't that for mom or dad. Every day it must have been the centre of mom's existence, though it was unimaginably far from Montreal. If only the husband she loved, so far away, would stay safe and come home. Then she could be with him again.

Dad's job in India was fixing Dakota airplanes. The Dakota was a cargo version of the American C-47 transport. It was used by the Canadian and British air forces to drop supplies to the troops in central Burma.

Dad came back from the war with new skills and a few medals in early 1946. Mom and dad had nearly four years together. Then I was born. Mom never left the hospital.

I grew up in a red brick row house near downtown Montreal. I was cared for and raised by nuns at the nearby church, because dad worked at the airport as a mechanic. But he picked me up every day on his way home and dropped me off again the next morning. The nuns always treated me kindly. When I started kindergarten at the church, I already knew everyone there.

Our neighbourhood was a mixture of Catholic and Jewish people. The language you spoke at home depended largely on your ancestry. Most of us spoke French and English well enough to function in Québec's society, where French predominated but English remained well established among an influential Anglo minority.

Dad and I were Catholic, but I often played with Jewish kids. Mostly we all got along, but some kids didn't like Jews, so a couple times there were fights. The two-way name-calling was bilingual. The local priest and rabbi tried to fix things, but you know how it is, kids learn from their parents and that's what you hear from the kids.

There were synagogues, kosher food stores, deli restaurants. And lots of churches. The Catholic Church was still a dominant institution in Québec at that time. But we sensed that something had changed. The church had begun a slow decline.

At 16 I met a Jewish boy, Carlo. His family moved to our neighbourhood the summer before we began grade 11. In Québec, that's the last year of high school. University was next. The intermediate institution unique to Quebec known as CEGEP, similar to community colleges, was still a couple years away.

We were in the same class but didn't talk until we found ourselves playing ball hockey together at a street game one snowy Saturday afternoon a month before Christmas. Even though we lived eight blocks apart, Carlo and me, we started to pal around after that. He'd come to my place after school or I'd go to his. We'd play Monopoly or ball hockey, or go to the Jewish Y to shoot baskets and sometimes get pickup games with other guys. Over the Christmas holiday we were together almost every day.

Carlo was a sight at the Y when we changed, and I think he knew it. Maybe a little over 6 feet tall. Lean and taut. Short, wavy, light brown hair. His upper body had a nice shape, some muscle, not huge but nicely defined. His shoulders were rounded and prominent. Almost no fat on his waist or belly. Skin tinged pink everywhere. Other than pubes, no body hair but a few light brown wisps on his chest. His penis was striking, circumcised like most of the guys at the Y, and well hung. Hah! I was the odd man out that way, uncut, and it sometimes got me funny looks. Some of those guys just weren't used to it.

And Carlo's rear, an off-white sculpture, a pair of round, firm castles in the air. You could almost see the muscles flex as he strode naked to the showers. It brought to mind beautiful music and a whole lot more, a sight that really got to me, things began twitching and I felt something… attraction, I guess it was.

I had to be careful, though. At least once he caught me staring and smiled at me before he looked away.

It was no surprise, Carlo's physique, because he cycled wherever he went, on the sparkling Peugeot UO-8 10-speed racer his parents bought him as a birthday present a year before we met. A real racing bike with a friction derailleur. He kept it clean and shiny, even in winter. Boy, was I ever jealous of that bike—especially the saddle seat, what I wouldn't have given to be that seat.

But it was Carlo's face I loved most. There was this sort of laugh on his face all the time. He had to make an effort to look unhappy. Even sitting in school bored to tears there was still this look like he was about to break out in laughter at any moment. He had bright golden brown eyes, big and deep and shining. And full lips, lovely pink lips. If I didn't know better, I might've thought he applied lipstick. But he didn't. I know it, because once, in an intimate moment, I asked him.

I used to wish I wasn't in love with him. Being with him could be torment. Falling in love with a guy? Why me? Why isn't it a girl like it's supposed to be? I had liked looking at guys for a long time, going back to maybe 10 years old. But there had never been any special guy. And I liked looking at girls too, but, no special girl either.

After I found Carlo, it was no longer just a parade of people to watch. I was stuck on him.

I had no one to talk to about it. My dad, I trusted him, but it was out of the question, we'd have gone straight to the doctor. I might've spent the rest of my life getting treatments, for all I knew. That wasn't going to happen, because one thing I sensed deep down, my condition was untreatable. It just was. I can't imagine any treatment that can change how I feel. I didn't think dad could understand that, and didn't know if I could convince him.

Dad had a subscription with the Columbia record club. Five records for a dollar and you promised to buy another five at regular prices within a year. But we had only a record player to listen with, and the sound it produced was pathetic.

Carlo's parents had a real component stereo system. They mostly listened to jazz and Broadway musicals. Carlo invited me to hear it. It was a revelation. I persuaded dad to come downtown to the store where Carlo's parents got theirs. We talked to the salesman and ended up with similar equipment. The store delivered and installed everything on time for Christmas.

Listening to records with the new stereo, I fell in love with classical music.

I especially liked Tchaikovsky. Swan Lake, and the Nutcracker, of course. And then there's the Sixth symphony. I didn't understand at the time why that was, but I do now. I listen to the first movement and it gets to around the twelve minute point. How it builds to this terrible cry. A cry from the heart. The sound of despair, a plea to God asking, why me? Why did you make me this way? That's what parts of the Sixth sound like to me. A kind of back and forth of joy and pain.

I imagine that to many ears nowadays, the Sixth sounds dated, worn, melodramatic. One writer describes it as " even today Tchaikovsky can embarrass with his extraordinary weight of feeling ."

If you don't feel the pain the way Tchaikovsky must have, maybe it's because you're not the way he was. But if you're anything like him, you may feel his pain because it resembles your own. It's the pain of being different in one notorious way, through no fault of your own. In fact, there's really nothing wrong with being different that way, but Tchaikovsky couldn't see it that way. Most people didn't see it that way back then, and still don't.

Carlo invited me for dinner to his home. Then I got it into my head to introduce Carlo to classical.

Before dinner, Carlo showed me his room. On one wall was a big poster of scowling Muhammad Ali in the ring hovering over a stunned, supine Sonny Liston. Another wall held several drawings. One was a nice drawing of me. I was astonished.

"When did you draw me? I didn't know you could draw like that."

"I just did that one a couple weeks ago. I like to draw. I learned drawing as a kid and I've been doing it ever since."

It was an interesting evening. Carlo's mom made roast beef, baked potatoes, peas, broccoli. And they served us a small glass of wine with dinner. I never had wine before. Dad let me taste beer a couple times, but I didn't much like it. Wine was different. This one was a red wine from Italy. It tasted interesting with the beef.

His parents left to visit friends after dinner and took his younger sister with them.

I'd brought the Sixth with me, I wanted Carlo to hear it. Carlo knew a little classical and thought he'd heard the Sixth before, so it wasn't completely new to him. We listened to it for about 45 minutes.

"It's interesting music," he said to me, "so sad in many places."

"Yeah, I know. It says on the back of the album, he was supported by a wealthy woman, so he'd be free to write music. They wrote many letters back and forth. Then, maybe because of social gossip about him, she broke off her support and stopped writing. That must have really hurt Tchaikovsky.

"Then in 1893, the Sixth was performed for the first time. Soon after that Tchaikovsky drank unboiled water and died a few days later from cholera. It might've been suicide, no one knows for sure. It's just that, in those days, in that part of the world, you never drank unboiled water."

"What's cholera?"

"It's a disease you got from drinking water. The water supply was full of germs until cities started putting stuff in the water to kill the germs. It's one way people got cholera and other diseases. It was a long time ago. I think it's why when you read a novel by Dickens, they're always drinking beer, ale, or tea, they never drink water. And they only bathed at public baths where the water might first be boiled."

"Why did he do that, drink bad water?"

"He was a homosexual," I said, "so there was gossip. He must have been humiliated and couldn't live with himself."

Carlo seemed to think about that for a moment. "I wouldn't mind reading a book about him, you know, something that might explain his life and his music. I'll have to look in the library at school to see if they have anything."

"I might have something like that at home. I remember once seeing one at home about Tchaikovsky. I'll let you know if I find anything."

"Thanks."

We sat silently for a few minutes. I didn't know what else to say. I felt a little embarrassed. There was some quiet thing unsaid between us. Me with my unspeakable secret. I had to leave.

"I guess I should get going." I picked up my record and walked to the door to look for my coat.

"It's okay. You can stay if you like."

"Um, I think I'll go. I still have homework to do."

"Okay, if you want to go, go."

"Sorry, I just…"

"It's okay. Really. Look for that book for me, I'd appreciate it."

"I will. See you tomorrow. Thanks again for dinner, and thank your parents. I really liked this evening. I won't forget it."

I don't know why I left that way. This uneasiness.

I walked home through the old streets. It was a dark, cold winter night a couple weeks past Christmas, and, typical of Montreal winters, mountains of snow were piled everywhere. At least they managed to clear the streets. Sidewalks were hit and miss.

I finally walked into the house, shivering. "Hi, dad."

"Hi, Robby. Have a good evening?"

"Yeah."

I wanted to find the book. We have a bookcase in the living room, but it wasn't there. None of mom's books were, only newer ones.

Dad was in the kitchen. "Dad, where are mom's old books? I think you had them upstairs once a long time ago."

"Somewhere in the basement. I can't recall exactly what I did with them. You'll have to go down there and look around."

"Is that okay? Can I look?"

"Yes, just put everything back the way you find it."

I went down. I didn't go there much. It was cold in the basement. One bare light bulb, and no windows. Ancient brick walls, dim and spooky, dark, damp and musty. A few pieces of old furniture lay about amid the spider webs and dead sow bugs. A little rocking horse I remembered playing on when I was young. A tattered old reddish brown couch covered by a layer of dust. The oil furnace off in one corner. A small workbench with a lot of tools.

One last look around. Behind the furnace, I found a small pile of boxes under a dusty old blanket. I lifted the blanket. Boxes of books. And notebooks full of handwriting, with mom's neatly written name, Joanne Murphy , from before she was married, on the covers. Some worn old text books. Lockyer's Bookkeeping. Walsh's Business Arithmetic. Essentials of Commercial Law.

I looked through one notebook. December 8, 1946, notes about something called A Passage to India , what's that, a geography book? I shivered a little. She was maybe 25 at that time, a young woman. This was what remained of her life.

What was I feeling? My mother, I felt my mother. I felt her with me at that moment, staring at me. Maybe wondering who I am. I felt the heaviness above my eyes before tears. What was she like?

Dad must have loved her very much. He doesn't talk about her much. I wonder what he thinks. He must be so lonely. Like me, but different.

There. Under the notebooks, more books. Ancient Times, a History of the Early World . And then, Tchaikovsky , by Edwin Evans.

I carefully removed it from the box and opened it. Published in 1906. No dust cover. The binding still intact. Neatly printed on the inside front cover, Joanne Major . Another shiver.

I thought of her framed photo on the little table in the living room. The photo with its brownish tinge. A beautiful young woman. She must have been gazing directly at the photographer when it was taken. Now, here downstairs, I felt her spirit looking directly at me from her notebook, as though whispering something loving to me, something I longed to hear.

I thumbed slowly through the thick, yellowy pages of Tchaikovsky . It says nothing directly. Of his marriage that lasted a few days, " grave circumstances caused him to regret the step he had taken… a few more days of such life would have driven him mad… Life together proved intolerable…The circumstances which brought about this crisis… one does not like to discuss them at any length. Rumours…circulated in and out of Russia…"

Published in 1906, I thought. An era like today when sexual stuff was stifled to the point of obliteration. Read between the lines.

I brought the book upstairs.

"Dad, what was mom like?"

He looked up from his newspaper. We sat looking at each other for a little while.

"She was the most beautiful woman I've ever known, inside and out. She was quiet, bright, loving in every way. She waited over two years for me while I was away. That was a very hard thing, being alone that long, especially during the war. I know she lived with her parents for a while, but eventually she found her own place. The day she died, I just…"

He covered his face with his hands. I sat next to him and put my arm around him. He wept quietly. "Sorry, Robby, I'm sorry."

I put my arms around him and held him. "It's okay to cry, dad. It's okay to cry."

"I love you, you know that, don't you? She would have adored you. You're the best young man you can be, and I'm very proud of you in every way.

"The thing is, when she died, I didn't know how to feel. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. But at the same time, the best thing that ever happened to me had just happened a few hours earlier, that moment you were born. I persuaded the doctor to let me be in the delivery room to watch. That was almost unheard of in those days, but he was an old friend of mine from high school and so he let me in. They put a gown on me and a mask and head covering, all that stuff. It was hard to watch, but I watched as you were born. But a couple hours later she went into this terrible crisis, and they couldn't save her.

"They had been worried about her. She never saw a doctor until late in the pregnancy and they found she had high blood pressure. So they were worried about it. Afterward, she had seizures, it was just terrible. I couldn't believe it when he came out and told me she had died. I couldn't believe it. It felt like the world had ended. In a way it had."

He began crying again. I sat with him, with my arm around him, until he calmed down.

"But it hadn't, Robby. It hadn't ended. Because I had you."

I wondered what he would say if he knew the truth about his son.

Eventually I stood.

"I found this book. Is it okay for me to read? Carlo might want to look at it too, if that's okay."

He looked at me for a moment. Then, "Oh, yes, of course."

"Thanks."

"Robby, was there something else you wanted to ask me?"

"No. I guess I'll go sleep now. Good night, daddy, I hope you sleep okay."

I left the room and went upstairs to my bedroom.

The next day at school, I gave Carlo the book to read.

Then it was February. Carlo's parents were going to Florida for a week, they had a hotel reservation. Carlo would take care of his little sister Theresa while they were away.

I went there on a Sunday night. Carlo phoned and ordered a pizza. A large with four toppings. $3.50 with delivery.

He said, "Hey, let's have some wine with it."

"Would that be okay with your parents?"

"I don't know, but they're gone, and we're here, so why not? I doubt they'll miss it, there are something like 50 bottles in the basement on a big rack. One bottle less won't make a difference."

"Okay."

I was curious. This could be fun.

"What about Theresa?"

"She's going to bed soon. We can wait till then, won't be long."

We watched the Montreal Canadiens against the Detroit Red Wings. Montreal trailed 2-1 at the end of the first period. Theresa went to sleep. The door bell rang, it was the pizza guy. "Give him a 50 cent tip so $4.00 total, I'll pay you half."

"Okay."

I watched him open a bottle of red from France, with a corkscrew. "I've never done this before, Robby, but I've seen my dad do it. It doesn't look that hard."

He was patient and careful. Shortly, with a little 'pop,' out came the cork.

He filled two glasses with wine. "Mmm, yum. This'll be fun."

"Yeah, definitely."

We sat in the living room munching pizza and drinking wine, watching the second period. It was 3-3 at the end of the second period. Most of the pizza was gone. Most of the wine, too.

"Gee," said Carlo, "we only had, what, two glasses each and a little more. Goes down real smooth, doesn't it?"

"Yeah." I felt funny. My head was light, I felt happy. My stomach was full.

We sat on the couch. He put his arm around my shoulder.

"Hey, Robby, I think I need to lie down. I'm going upstairs for a few minutes. Wanna come with?"

"Um, sure, I guess so." We forgot about the hockey game.

We go up to his bedroom. He sticks his head into his sister's room. It looks like she's asleep, snoring gently on her side.

Signalling "Shhh," with a finger to his mouth, he quietly closes her door and we go to his room. He closes the door behind us, and we're alone except for Muhammad Ali.

Carlo lies on his bed and says, "Here, Robby, come join me," as he pats the mattress next to him. So I sit on the side of the bed, lift my feet and lie back next to him, on my side, propping up my head, looking at him.

He reaches over and places a hand on my left hip as I'm facing him. He looks me in the eye and says, "Please don't blame me for this, I'm a little drunk like I never been before, but please would you kiss me?"

So I give him a little kiss on the cheek.

"A proper kiss?"

I draw him to me and lean over and kiss him full on those delectable, delicious pink lips.

And he says, "Again?"

So this time, I draw him close to me and then reach around his neck and pull him toward me and kiss him again, full and gentle on those sweet lips, and I hold it, hold that sweet kiss for a long time as he responds in kind and wouldn't you know it, soon we're wrestling desperately together on that mattress, on that bed.

Then, without another word, he stops and begins to unbutton my shirt, to which I say nothing, just lie there watching. As he gets to the bottom he reaches inside my shirt and pulls me tight to him, we press together in another long kiss and this time our mouths are open and we touch tongues and continue together for several more minutes, rolling about, his hands wandering all over me, kissing desperately, wanting and needing more. I feel his hardness through his pants and he must feel mine too. I can hardly breathe.

He starts in on my pants, unfastens the belt and slides down the zipper and unbuttons the top, and slides them down and slips the fingers of both his hands deep into my underwear until one hand feels my penis big and hard and my balls all silky warm, while the other hand wraps itself lightly around my right buttock and begins to caress me. Then it's kind of like we're kids again, except I never did this as a kid, 'cause my hands are in his pants and then our pants are off and we're playing with each other's parts like newly unwrapped toys all fun to look at and handle and get working and working and working and working until, like a kind of weapon, his suddenly reaches the firing point and with one last great squeeze it explodes with a scream of delight and explodes and explodes and explodes yet again just as mine blows sky high like a rocket that bursts and explodes and explodes, until finally he exhausts his last effort and I mine, and with gigantic happy sighs we recede from high tide slowly back to our normal selves, still holding each other close, with lots more little kisses and nary a worry in the world.

And just like that we were lovers. Without a word spoken or a worry in the world.

We stayed together on that bed a couple more hours.

The next day was Monday, St. Valentine Day.

On the way to school I bought a card for Carlo. I wrote in it, "Feb 14, 1966, to Carlo, happy Valentine Day with love from Robby."

I saw him at lunch and gave him the card. He read it.

"Thanks, Robby. I have one for you, too."

He handed me a little home made card with a stunning miniature drawing of me. It looked very much like me. Below the drawing he'd written "For Robby, my happy valentine, with love, Carlo."

School days eventually reached their end. That was many years ago. Carlo and I drifted apart to our separate lives.

My dad died a few years back. I have mom's books and photo. And dad's medals.

And I have Carlo's card. I take it out and look at it sometimes. It brings back memories. As it does today, another Valentine Day. Wherever you are today, Carlo, I hope you're happy and in good health. Love, Robby.

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Carlo and Me

by Ken Cohen