On a hot summer Sunday in Pescara, a group of young Italians came to one of the Mormon meetings. At the end of the meeting, a young man named Gianni approached Tom, commenting on the music that was played at the beginning and end of the meeting. He pointed out that the song that had been played was the theme song from 'Death in Venice', a movie about an older gay man who falls in love with a young boy in Venice during a cholera epidemic. Gianni and Tom were very different from one another, but perhaps that's what made their love so electric. While Tom was in Italy on a Mormon mission, Gianni was a young, Italian communist with a European state of mind.Īs a rule of thumb for Mormon missionary trips, you must constantly be with a companion on the trip. This was hard for Tom because he and Gianni wanted to be together all the time, so in an effort to make things work, they got creative.
Tom and Gianni would spend hours arguing about communism versus Mormonism just so they could spend time together. One night, their argument got so loud and so heated that they were asked to step outside.