I arrive. I am early but, because of my little joke about ‘tell me an exact time…I am English so I will be there then…’ I wait outside until the clock I can see at Piazza Loreto hits 9.45……and then I call. He doesn’t want to give me his buzzer name, I guess. I understand. We don’t actually know each other.

I cannot explain how different I feel about him. I mean, the pictures are good. But it’s also the chats we have had, easy, not forced or difficult or sleazy or anything…..I look forward to his replies in a way that I hardly feel about the others. Every word he writes seems just that little bit different………..but, is it, as he says, all fake?

He’s shorter than I thought. He’s supposed to be 2″ shorter than me but it seems more. He’s just in jeans and a T-shirt, nothing special. He doesn’t look like the other 40-year-olds that I have met so far – he seems younger. But there’s no immediate connection, I feel. Maybe because of what I wrote before. Maybe because, even before I’ve seen him, I have already discounted this as being anything more than friends. I don’t know.

He pours some wine. We sit, drink, smoke, talk. He’s as funny as he is on the chat. In fact, he is the chat, only for real. We talk about crap, about gay people, about relationships, about, well, crap.

At one point, as he is refilling my glass, he comes over and kisses me. It’s not like Venice. It’s not something that I don’t want. I want this. I want him. He goes back to his chair, opposite me, across the low coffee table. Across the books all about some Viennese actress, Romy Schneider or something. The wall on the right is almost some sort of shrine to her. He tells me about her.

We kiss again, several times, I run my hands up his back, and he likes that and I like it too.< He's very clear. There will be no sex. Sex on a first date means that you don't really like the person and it's just sex. That's OK. I like that. There's some restraint, something that I can look forward to, some purpose to seeing him again. Later....we go to the bedroom, we explore. He doesn't want me to go and nor do I. We don't have sex, but it's all nice and sexy and cool. His body, though a few years older and with a little bit more weight, is just as it was on the can (or, rather, as it was in the photos). I feel slightly out of my league. I wonder what the hell he can see in a 51-year-old - but he sees something and that something is something he likes. And I like that he likes it. We talk, caress, kiss. We enjoy the warmth of each others bodies. We both want much more but we don't. It's like some sort of game where we try to save so much. He tells me he never kisses guys. Well, he never kisses them much and not on a first date. And , not only has he done that, but we have gone much further than he feels is right - but it's not something that feels wrong or bad or that it will mean we never see each other again. We sleep. I hate sleep. I don't want to waste this time; this time to look at him; to run my fingers down his back (which turns him on in a way that I find incredible and fun and interesting). I want to stay awake and look at his face, see his eyes, run my fingers over his short hair, play with his ears (another 'special' zone). I am Top. I hold him in my arms, curl up against him, kissing, loving, etc. He takes the piss out of my accent. All his previous boyfriends have had blue eyes and are Taurus. Apparently. His previous relationship was with an English guy. And that means......? We sleep some. We get up. We go to have coffee across the road at a fabulous place with the most delightful array of croissants (called brioche here). I've never done this. Got up, gone out and had coffee (breakfast) in a bar. It's new for me. It's different. It's more Italian. We won't see each other for about a week, until after he comes back from Brussels. This is good and bad. But the feelings seem mutual and that is perfect. I don't know where this will go; how it will end; if it will end. But, so far, I am enjoying the journey. And that’s what counts.