NOVELS: Dante Alfonso

 

Dante Alfonso: Italian God of the Silent Screen

The story of Hollywood’s Gay Golden Boy of the silent era!Aged nineteen, and legally still a minor, Dante Alfonso lives with his family in a small village in Southern Italy. When they learn to their horror that he is having an affair with Roberto, the nephew of the local priest, they eject him from the family home and send him to live with estranged relatives in New York. On board the ship, he enters a paid-for-sex relationship with Jean-Paul, a French entrepreneur, and upon his arrival in New York lives with him instead of with the family he does not know. He gets a job as a waiter at Harry’s Place, a dance-hall known for its “button-boys”—gigolos who also tout for sex from its mostly middle-aged female clientele, with the management taking a cut of their earnings. When Jean-Paul is arrested and deported for embezzlement—on Dante’s twenty-first birthday—Dante moves in with Martin, one of the dancers, who becomes his lover on the rebound. By way of a wealthy client, Evadne Cooper, he attends an audition at Wilson Pictures, and gets a bit-part in a film. Success follows, but the path for Dante is never easy. To curb the rumours, he sleeps with the leading lady, Mary Maxwell. In Hollywood, he is assigned a publicist, Bob, who is the image of his lost love, Roberto, and they become lovers. Dante, muscular and exceedingly handsome, becomes a massive star almost overnight and a heart-throb, but steadfastly refuses to submit to peer pressure and the dictates of the censorship brigade, who want him to marry to stop the stories circulating about his sexuality once and for all. But can a prejudiced Hollywood make Dante change who he is, or will he find a way to stay true to himself and his principles? WARNING: contains adult material of a sexual nature.

“Take a look, Dante,” Roberto said, extending one long arm towards the horizon. “Did you ever see anything quite so beautiful?” They had stopped in a desolate spot, some two miles from Salerno. Below them, beyond a grassy bank, lay a wide expense of deserted beach—beyond that the sea, almost as one with the cloudless, azure sky. “I’ve seen something much more beautiful,” Dante responded. “I’m sitting next to him—the man I love, with mixed feelings of happiness and misery—wondering how I’m going to manage without seeing him every day, once next week comes.” Roberto leaned across, and licked away the little tear that had started to course down his lover’s cheek. “We’ll have none of that, for starters,” he remonstrated. They got out of the car, and on the grassy bank paused to admire the view. Roberto was about to say something when Dante grasped him in his powerful arms and kissed him passionately. He felt more reckless than he had ever felt in his life. There was not a soul in sight, but it would have made no difference if they had been in the market-place at Gragnano, or in the village square. In four days’ time they would be separated for an entire week—an eternity when one was hopelessly in love—and he wanted every moment of this day to count, to be filed away in his mind, for it to be re-lived when he was alone in his room waiting only for the weekend to arrive. “Come on,” Roberto said, breaking free and grasping Dante’s hand. “Let’s go for a swim!”