Renato writes:
"Evelyn's naivety led her, in the beginning of this sad adventure, to share with excitement what she discovered and verified in chat rooms of the time. She then, subsequently, exposed the false origins and untruths of the much heralded "homosexuality" of Valentino.
Two characters immediately unleashed themselves publicly, who still today spit poison and defamation both at Evelyn and at me.
The characters in question, ça va sans dire, are Tracy Ryan Terhune and David Bret. They accuse us of their own behavior, of which there is very little more shameless than theirs.
We have no interest in and no use for lying, for hating, defaming, ridiculing anyone, opening hate blogs under their book's titles, and just want to be able to deliver to the true fans of Valentino what we have found and documented.
Evelyn is a person of great integrity and kindness and there is little else she can do but defend herself from the poisonous broadsides of those two, who would like her to be forever silenced and perhaps dead.
Tracy says we are not liked and calls us, "persona non grata", it would be more correct to say "personae non gratae" but I am aware of his cultural limitations.
I ask him, disliked by whom? How can people dislike us if they can not even mention our names in Terhune's subjugated Facebook groups, Mad About the Boy and We Never Forget? How can people dislike us if our long series of honest books is banned from a list compiled by Donna Hill, which she claims to be all-inclusive of everything ever published on Valentino?
Bret and Terhune have made me a particular target of their name-calling and personal insults. I want to say that I have always worked honestly, in many fields, and this for me has been my great reward.
I add that both Evelyn and I do not lie because we don't need to. Unlike like the professional liar, David Bret, who literally invents incredible characters.
I was curious about his latest claim that a French chansonnier Claude Rambeau was a gay lover of Valentino. I really searched and searched and now believe Rambeau never existed. Bret publishes, as a great scoop, a photo of this non-existent fellow.
I searched the photo and found it comes from a collection of vintage gay images, with no identification. I also add that the image will appear on a gay culture calendar in publication for 2023 and that it will be the iconic image for the month of August.
It seems all Bret needs as “proof” someone was a gay lover of Valentino, is a cropped head shot of the person and nothing more. Does he now just sit with a pair of scissors and decide who will be the next “lover” of Valentino? Snip. Snip. Is that his research?
Perhaps he could share more about this person Rambeau, some documentation, and more than a clumsily cut head shot from this publication. Here I share the original image, which is so poorly cropped by Bret, from the 'Nakayoshi gentleman photo series from the latter half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century collection.' "
