“Mr. Gespardi has arrived, Evan. Come out into the living room and greet him.”

The words my father were speaking from the living area were the words I had been waiting to hear for two weeks, ever since they arranged to meet again here at our seaside villa east of Nice, on the French Riviera. It was some mystery of growing up I suppose for a fourteen-year-old boy, just turned that, for my vivid imagination, that a charismatic figure such as the impresario of Milan’s La Scala Opera, the questions attendant with puberty and uncertainly of preferences, and the discovery of the Arabian Nights all came together in one memorable event to establish the direction of my life forever.

We were Americans but we lived on the French Mediterranean coast. My father was an art dealer. Two weeks previously he had taken me to Monaco with him in a combined work and pleasure trip—just the two of us traveling from here, my father and me, which in itself was a momentous occasion. There were times—well, most of the time—when my father was so busy and preoccupied with his work that I wondered if he knew he had a son. But he’d taken me to Monaco with him. We were celebrating my fourteenth birthday and he was collaborating with the Ballets de Monte-Carlo, which was putting on a ballet, the “Arabian Nights,” by the Azerbaijani composer Fikret Amirov. My father’s gallery had a series of paintings of the Arabic folk lore collection of stories, “The Thousand and One Nights,” which I had just discovered because my father had given me that book for my birthday.

I was an inquisitive and impressionable boy and having this fascinating world of the Arabian Nights coming from me so suddenly from so many directions when my emotions were in a turmoil was only further enhanced by the overwhelming and commanding presence of Gino Gespardi. He was the conductor and impresario of the orchestra at the La Scala Opera in Milan, Italy, and was the guest conductor for the Monaco ballet’s “Arabian Nights” production.

While in Monaco, my father included me in a lunch with the maestro and the set designer for the ballet production, a rather flighty man who dressed flamboyantly and brought questions to my mind, something that may also have influenced me that day. When Gespardi found that it was my birthday, he commanded that I become the center of attention. He’d already been showing interest in me, taking the time to talk with me and show interest in me—and to touch me as he spoke, as my father said Italians were prone to do.

I don’t think, however, that my father was that aware of how much the Italian man touched me that day and where. He insisted on sitting next to me at lunch and frequently leaned into me. When my father and the set designer left to look at some sketches, I was left alone with Mr. Gespardi. He couldn’t get over my blond hair and blue eyes, or so he said. He spoke to in words and subjects that I had been longing to pursue, and when I did not shirk from him, he words became more explicit and flattering.

He touched me under the table and, at one time, took my hand and made me touch him too. He was a large, boisterous, compelling man, and it was all so overwhelming to me, especially with all of the connections being made to the Arabian Nights and the stories of the Princess Scheherazade, which I was so young that I didn’t realize were set on nights that she was summoned to the sultan’s bed. At least I didn’t know that before Mr. Gespardi told me. He spoke to me openly on subjects I was curious about that my father and teachers only spoke in whispers—and to each other, not to me, when they didn’t think I was listening.

Gino Gespardi and all of the new-found world of the Arabian Nights and of Princess Scheherazade’s nights with the sultan had woven so deeply into my mind and become mixed in with my emotions and latent desires—and questions that I could not ask my father or the man he lived with now about that I was put into quite a state over the two weeks between the lunch in Monaco and when I saw Gespardi again, who had come to our villa outside Nice to view the paintings my father had chosen to display at the ballet.

“There you are. Evan, is it not?” Gespardi said as I entered our living room. He was wearing evening clothes and looked quite elegant, even though he was a large man—both tall and a bit heavy. “Such an angelic boy—the blond curls and milky blue eyes. I could not forget them from our last meeting. You will make quite the rake someday. And you moved so gracefully the other day. You could be a lead dancer in this little ballet we’re putting together.”

He was effusive, as Father warned me all Italians could be. “It doesn’t really mean much of anything,” Father said. “He’s just a bigger-than-life figure in keeping with his position in the music world.”

And the touching as we came together. I knew that was just from being Italian, but, with all of the thoughts I’d had over the past two weeks, it made me tremble. Would he touch me “there” again? Would he take my hand and have me touch him “there”? I shivered at the thought.

“I did not know it was your birthday went we met in Monaco,” he said. “Every beautiful boy like you should be showered with birthday presents. You’re fourteenth, as I remember. I enjoyed talking with you about the Arabian Nights and you seemed so interested in the subject that I couldn’t resist bringing you a few gifts. It’s lovely to exchange presents. Perhaps you will have a present for me too one of these days. We talked of Scheherazade. Here is a recording of a very famous symphony written on that. Do you collect records?”

“No, sir. Thank you, sir.”

My father interjected with, “How very generous of you, Gino. This will be Evan’s very first record. We do have a record player. I’m sure he will want to be a record collector. This is a symphony by the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Evan. Probably the most famous use of these Arabian tales.”

“The music is mysterious and majestic,” Gespardi said, speaking directly to me, coming close to me and leaning over me—touching me on the shoulder and forearm. “You could say very provocative—sensual even,” he said, giving me a secret little smile. “You know what ‘sensual’ is, don’t you, Evan?”

“Yes, sir.” I looked beyond him to see if my father was hearing this—not that I wanted it to stop; I was in the man’s spell—but Father had been pulled off by one of his gallery employees who was still working on putting up the artwork display for Gespardi to view. Of course I knew what “sensual” meant. It meant when I saw my father with his friend, Jacques, in moments together when they didn’t know I was watching—when they were doing something that interested me and that I wondered if was for me too. I had done some research of my own and discovered some words for what they did. “Sensual” was one of those words. Words for it that weren’t so nice included “fuck” and “screw.” I didn’t find them disgusting or scaring. I found them interesting.

It was interesting that this fascinating, bigger-than-life man, who conducted orchestras, had been willing to use such words with me when we first met. He even asked me about Father and Jacques. I told him what I knew—what I had seen.

“And, I’m told you’re a very imaginative and creative boy—a beautiful young boy.” Gespardi looked around to see if we were speaking in private now, which we were. “Such a well-formed body. Ah, the joys I could teach to experience with this body. You could be in our ballet. I thought about you these last two weeks and of your new interest in the Arabian Nights. I found a costume at the ballet that I think would fit you beautifully. With your imagination, perhaps you would enjoy wearing the costume while you’re reading this book of ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ I brought you.”

“A costume? A book? I do have a copy of ‘The Thousand and One Nights,’” I said. “My father gave it to me for my birthday.” He had pushed a box at me containing material of brilliant-colored brocades and gauze. I pulled the material out: a vest and billowy trousers and a turban.

“Not like this book,” Gespardi said. “I think you will really enjoy this version—unless I have surmised incorrectly—best, since you already have a version of the tales, that you not let your father have this one, though. Try on the costume and read the book while I am discussing business with your father.”

My father even then was calling Gespardi over to start looking over the artwork.

Before leaving, Gespardi leaned over me, though, palming one of my buttocks with a hand, and whispering, “I do believe you are interested in me. I could tell from some of the questions you asked—and even more from some you didn’t ask and when you let me touch you and you touched me—that you are seeking experiences that I can help you have. If you wish to weave a thousand and second adventurous tale with me, my car will be parked in that seaside park just east of your father’s villa for a spell before I return to Monaco tonight. Come to me there and I will fulfill your dreams. Read this book. Wear the costume.”

And then he was gone, in a swirl of light and majesty, across the living room to view the paintings my father was having put on display for him.

The symphony on the record he had given me was titled “Scheherazade.” I had the record player in my bedroom, so I changed into the costume he had brought and put the record on. The music, indeed, was stirring and exotic, and I moved into the mode of Arabian Nights immediately. The costume helped. It didn’t cover much. The vest was brocade, but on my bare chest it wasn’t much more than a hint of the mood. The pants were gauzy and almost transparent. There was a cloth rope belt in the pants and rather than having a fly, the panels in front just overlapped when the belt was tightened. The turban matched the material of the vest. There was no footwear provided, but I had slippers that went well with it.

I pulled pillows off my bed and chairs, put them on the floor beside the record player, and settled down to listen to the music and pretend I was in a harem. That was the part of the “Thousand and One Nights” story that kept floating through my mind—that the sultans had harems and slept with a new woman every night—or at least the one of this tale did until the Princess Scheherazade had been brought to his bed and wove these tales to keep herself alive, since the legend was that the woman was killed after sleeping with the sultan.

At lunch the other day, in a conversation just between Gespardi and me, I had asked what the sultan and Scheherazade had done those nights after she told him the stories with open endings that made him want to hear more. Gespardi had told me what they did and he also told me that there were harems with boys in them at the night. I told him that I could understand that because my father and Jacques slept together at night and Jacques was a lot younger than my father.

Smiling, Gespardi then whispered to me what a man and boy could do in bed at night—what the sultan was probably doing with boys in his boys harem. This was interesting and arousing information for me, told to me while Gespardi was touching me under the table and causing me to touch him. I’d been on edge ever since.

In just the brief encounters with Gespardi, he had told me things that had stirred me—things I was thinking a lot about at my stage of life and that I felt I couldn’t talk to anyone else. He also touched me where I felt pleasures I’d never felt before—pleasures I wanted to have more of. I had been touching myself. I’d learned, by myself, what pleasure could come from touch—and stroking, and making myself big and the glory of a release. When Gespardi touched me, I came to believe that men could give this pleasure to each other.

That and more was confirmed when thinking about the “Thousand and One Nights” book I had received for my birthday, that I remembered that Gespardi had given me one as well, a version that he said would be different from the one I had, a version he advised me to read only in private. When I opened it, I understood why he’d said that. In the version he gave me, Scheherazade was not a princess, Scheherazade was a teenage prince. And the illustrations with the text made quite explicit what the sultan and this boy Scheherazade did in the night. I couldn’t put the book down, even when the record stopped. I turned the record over to the other side and kept reading the book, only pausing twice because I was stroking myself and had to clean myself up those two times.

This was a whole new world opening up for me. What entered my mind now was what else Gespardi told me this evening—that there were experiences he could give me, more, deeper ones than he had by giving me the recording and this book. I ached for the experiences.