The Best Travel Writing, Volume 10

by James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger, Sean O'Reilly (ed) (retail) (epub)

  I’m confident that my son and his peers will find alternate versions of adventure, and I’m sure they will develop skill sets that my generation never had, prompted by changes in the world we can’t yet comprehend. But now I also know this: someday soon I’m taking my son on a road trip, with vague destinations and an outdated map, with an ear for advice from the locals and an eye for the subtle cues of fate, pulling us down and down some dusty road.

  Sarah Colleen Coury has worked as a small business owner, field biologist, park ranger, and gardener. Her poetry, prose, and nature and travel writing have appeared in a number of publications. She spent many years as a vagabond of sorts, traveling and living all over Europe and North America, while taking photos and writing things down. She now lives with her husband and son in their native Michigan.

  ELIZABETH GEOGHEGAN

  The Marco Chronicles: To Rome, Without Love

  It’s love that’s eternal and confounding, not the city.

  If Rome were a woman, she’d be a whore. The kind of whore who looks good from a distance or in just the right light. And while you are busy ogling her cupolas, she will deftly slip the wallet from your back pocket. She will deceive you, and she will seduce you, and she will be so intoxicating you will have a hard time letting her go.

  My anti-relationship with the Eternal City began by accident. I never burned for Italy the way so many others do. I never imagined idyllic afternoons, lolling supine beneath a vine-strung pergola, chatting in a foreign tongue to new friends. And I never bought into all those stories about the irresistible charm and sexual dynamism of that mythical creature, the Italian male.

  Instead, more than twenty years ago, a friend invited me on what was literally her dream holiday, not mine. She planned every detail, researched every facet. I never so much as glanced at a guidebook. But we both knew I needed that trip even more than she did. Staggered by the recent death of my brother, I landed in Italy and proceeded to ignore the place along with everything I was feeling. Then, one afternoon, alone in a café near the San Lorenzo market in Florence, I met a beautiful—and, it must be mentioned—non-Italian man who invited me to a dinner party in Fiesole, a village along a winding road, high above the city, the house just a stone’s throw from the birthplace of Galileo.

  That gathering became the eventual memory upon which I would later impulsively quit my job, sell my possessions, and pack my bags to construct a life abroad. It wasn’t the bougainvillea dangling above the door frame that did it. Or the homemade fettuccine, fresh fennel, raisins, and cream. Nor was it the view of Florence glittering below, those overly romanticized Tuscan hills unfurling in the distance. It wasn’t even the glorious golden light that gave way to the rising mist as evening suddenly surrounded us. It was the half-Puerto Rican, half-Trinidadian graffiti artist from the South Bronx.

  It was the guy. Not Italy.

  And it was the two of us wandering off, following a path of tangled rosemary and lavender to lie together on the still-warm stones beside the swimming pool, the distant conversations and laughter from the party punctuating our first kiss. And it was the next morning, waking in a Renaissance palazzo, spray cans scattered on the floor near the mattress where we’d slept, the walls of the room bombed with so much graffiti that I might have been in a New York subway.

  Looking back, I recalled the evening with that particular man as one of the first times I forgot—if only for a few moments—to be devastated about my brother. As a result, the memory of Italy was forever intertwined with that reprieve. It became for me a landscape offering sex and solace and roads as yet untraveled. Illusive, beckoning. But memories, like men, can be alternately sharp, then shadowy; they slip so easily from grasp. As it turned out, so did the artist. And after a stint there during graduate school, Florence faded, too. Italy, however, remained.

  And everybody knows where all roads lead.

  Sometimes I dream of Rome. Deep in the darkest moments of a fitful, “Should I stay or should I go?” kind of night, as I toss and turn on my Italian linen sheets, Rome comes to me and sits at the foot of my bed. She is overly tanned and decked out in something by, say, Roberto Cavalli—with a plunging neckline, maybe a leopard print. Whatever it is, it’s expensive and tacky. Nonetheless, she is smokin’.

  She tosses her dyed blonde mane and in a deep, throaty voice says, “All right, Elizabeth, here’s the deal. I will let you stay, but there are a few conditions.”

  I sit up and rub my eyes.

  “You can have the clutch apartment in Trastevere that everybody will ooh and ahh over whenever the door swings open.”

  She gazes down at her manicured red nails, bored.

  “And I’ll let you have the killer university gig, teaching just two days a week, and although it will never pay very well, at least it will pay in euros. I’ll even throw in four months of vacation a year.”

  At this point, I’m nodding and feeling sort of giddy.

  “Yes,” she says, “I will grant you all these things—the much coveted expatriate life in a European capital, the international group of friends, the good food, and the even better cappuccino.”

  And I’m still nodding and agreeing and not really listening to the rest as carefully and, of course, my Italian isn’t all that strong yet, but most of the vocabulary comes from Latin, right? So, no problem, and I’m thinking, perfect, sounds good. Go on.

  “But the price you will pay is this: You can only love me: Roma. You will devote all your time and energy to me and to me alone. You will never marry. You will never procreate. But your life will be the envy of everyone who knows you, capisce?”

  And I say, “Wait, wait, I’m not sure I caught that bit just before the envy—”

  But Rome doesn’t answer, she just gives me that oh-so-Italian shrug of the shoulders and a hand gesture that could either mean, “It’s late and I’d really better be going” or “You’re fucked.”

  And I rewind the Italian in my head, and now I’m not so sure what just happened, and I ask, “But what if I get tired of it? What if I want to leave? Then where do I go?”

  Rome just smiles and disappears in a puff of smoke.

  Is it possible to love a city and abhor half its inhabitants? It’s not that I don’t like Italian men. I like them fine. What I don’t like is dating Italian men. Truthfully, it has gotten to the point where I bristle simply hearing most Italian men speak, though that only came later. Luckily for me, I never envisioned myself marrying Giacomo della Something-or-Other and becoming mistress of a medieval monastery along the Appia Antica.

  To be clear, I didn’t consciously rule out the possibility of dating or even falling in love while in Rome. But unlike many of the women I meet here, especially the usual Americans, Brits, and Aussies freshly issued from the international terminal at Da Vinci Airport, I had never put Italian men at the top of my agenda. Not that I planned to remain chaste during my tenure in the Eternal City. Why would I?

  Nowadays, though, after wasting so much time on the men I now refer to as The Marcos, celibacy looks pretty good. For if Rome is a terrible place to get work done, it is an even worse place to find a man. Although find is the wrong word. It is incredibly easy to find an Italian man. You don’t even have to look. Italian men will find you. That part is as simple as sitting in a café. And although I don’t actively discourage men who are looking for a fling, I no longer count myself among the ranks of women who are remotely interested in such fleeting endeavors. Of the dozen or so years I have lived in Italy, I have spent the bulk of them avoiding encounters with Italian men. A brief year or so after my arrival, I swore off them per sempre—forever. I didn’t have a broken heart. The cause wasn’t anything that emotional. My decision wasn’t based on romantic anguish or misfortune or upon even a shred of heartfelt disappointment. I discovered that the cultural barrier was simply too vast to overcome, though it presented itself in ways I would never have expected.

  I think of Italian men the way I think about most things with the lab
el “Made in Italy”—form over function. Fabio may gleam like a sleek and stylish Ferrari—all smooth lines and the perfect finish as he sidles up beside you, motor purring, leather seats beckoning—but climb in, and you will soon discover the ride is more Fiat 500 than Ferrari. Not nearly as smooth as you might have hoped. At the risk of pushing the metaphor a bit too far, by all means, take Fabio for a spin, but do it in the same spirit with which you might rent a convertible and speed along the Amalfi Coast: Always keep in mind that there aren’t any guardrails, and the fall is a long, long way down. After all, even Avis won’t insure you if you plan to head “south” of Rome. Why? Because it’s dangerous, that’s why.

  First, there’s the ever-present mother figure and the Italian male’s penchant for living at home until he is forty or so. Not that this was really a problem in my “relationships,” because I couldn’t keep anything going with an Italian long enough to spend much time with the family. And though plenty has been written about Mammone—the Mama’s Boy Syndrome—for me that wasn’t the issue. I have to say that of the Italian mothers I have met, I usually like them better than I do their sons.

  Still, romance-wise, I had done pretty well the two times I’d passed through Florence, and it never occurred to me that Rome would be any different. On my first trip, I met The Graffiti Artist. Gorgeous. Not Italian, but about as hot as they come. And where did I meet him? A café, of course. A few years later, in Florence for the second time, I met Pasquale. Again, in a café. He was a Mediterranean dream—a musician with glossy black hair and sea green eyes, his face a kind of map of southern Italy, the intersection of Greek and Moorish, French and Italian. Too exotic for his own good. Pasquale quickly proved himself incapable of fidelity, though to his credit, he also proved that he was capable of admitting it, an uncommon trait among his compatriots. I still admire him for it.

  Who knew Rome was going to be such a romantic wasteland? In some ways, La Dolce Vita seems to blame for the misconceptions about life in the Eternal City. The Italy-obsessed bandy about those three words, willfully ignoring the utter lack of romance and the undertow of desperation in Federico Fellini’s masterpiece, which coined the phrase. Stripped of its irony, la dolce vita implies that, in Rome, a sweet life exists—and, of course, in some ways, it does. Or it can—especially if you are just passing through. But the afterglow of a wholly Roman moment—a blissful afternoon whiled away on a shaded terrazzo or a gorgeous meal shared with an equally gorgeous man—is fleeting. Rome has always been, and remains, a labyrinth of complex social mores, indiscriminate etiquette, streetside histrionics, and daily indignities set against the backdrop of the city’s enduring ancient relics, all a timeless testament to her magnificence.

  That bitch.

  So, I may not have arrived fantasizing about some princely heir to an olive oil fortune or a marchese with homes scattered along the coast, but neither was I searching for bartenders who pretended to be painters, junkies masquerading as furniture designers, electricians who were actually coke dealers, or flight attendants claiming to be pilots. I also wasn’t interested in has-been filmmakers who lied about their age and spent the better part of a day sitting in a crummy plastic chair at Bar San Calisto, rolling joints and talking smack about American politicians.

  Perhaps I am just a magnet for fuck-ups?

  I am willing to admit that this is a distinct possibility.

  Did I mention that after Pasquale, nearly all of them were named Marco?

  Marco Uno. I met Marco Uno during my first winter in Rome. We got to know each other thanks to my daily ritual of giving myself a caffeine injection while reading the Herald Tribune at the café just around the corner from my house. He had sparkling brown eyes and a great smile, a rugged type who looked superb with a three-day stubble. Watching him make cappuccino was a pleasure. Simply put, he was un bellissimo barman.

  Marco Uno courted me for more than three months, which in the modern world is a long, long time. And I mean courtship in the traditional sense. For an entire season, he flirted and tried desperately to make conversation with me. He persisted through halting discussions laced with cappuccini and panini, the dictionary on the table between us passed back and forth, back and forth, his long lashes grazing high cheekbones, as we tried to discuss subjects far beyond the scope of his English or my Italian. Topics such as the contemporary art scene in London, or politics—the low-flying planes that were then departing daily en route to Kosovo—or why the Americans were so upset that Bill Clinton had bonked Monica Lewinsky. For the record, Italians couldn’t understand the whole Clinton scandal. They weren’t taken aback by the infidelity; that is every Italian man’s birthright. What offended their sensibilities was that Monica, according to them, was brutta, pure cicciona—ugly, and chubby, too.

  So there I was with Marco Uno, exchanging confused conversation. I feel like an idiot for saying this, but I really did believe he liked me. Who would bother to keep up such a labor-intensive friendship? Our get-togethers weren’t part of a language swap or some special yen on his part to learn English, so it seemed clear that he was motivated by the usual combination of sexual tension and an old-fashioned desire to get to know me. I thought it was sweet that it took him so long to make a move.

  Finally, after a particularly raucous dinner party orchestrated by a dear friend of mine determined to get Marco and me in a room together after hours, this beautiful man and I ended up going back to my place arm in arm. He was more than a little bit drunk. I was sober. I unlocked my door, and he sauntered into my apartment, all swagger and self-assurance, immediately unbuttoning his white shirt, pulling it off, and tossing it over the chair.

  Promising, I thought.

  While not so sneakily checking out his rather well-formed body, I noticed the tattoo—a less-than-precise rendering of the Madonna placed strategically over his heart, the ink gone green, her face wet with tears—an image that, for me, pretty much sums up the essential problem with dating Italian men: The Madonna/Whore Complex.

  Most Italian men draw a very bold line when they think of women. There are the women you marry, and there are the women you have sex with, and these two types of women are rarely one in the same. And if you are an American woman living in Italy, everybody knows how easy you are, so forget about it. The die is cast. You may as well just roll over.

  Of course, I wasn’t thinking about any of this as Marco Uno pulled me toward him and we tumbled onto my bed, not difficult to do since my remarkably tiny studio was dominated by what the Italians call un letto matrimoniale, or “marriage bed,” aka a double. And there we were, after months of coy conversations and flirty lunches. Finally. As he fumbled with my shirt and edged up my skirt, pushing my thighs apart and beginning to grope around, it became more and more apparent that this was not going to be the tender culmination of three months of bilingual foreplay. Next thing I knew, he’d straddled my shoulders with his knees and practically cracked me in the teeth with his belt buckle, before yanking down his jeans and getting busy trying to shove his manhood into my mouth.

  We hadn’t even kissed.

  My Italian wasn’t quite up to snuff for this intimate situation, or maybe it was perfect for the rather compromising position I found myself in. After all, it wasn’t conversation he was angling for. But things weren’t quite moving at the speed I’d imagined. I wanted him to slow down and kiss me. It wasn’t as if I thought he was truly going to be my boyfriend, but there had been so much build up—how about at least a hint of romance? Even if the life expectancy of our relationship was destined to be just a few more hours, who doesn’t like kissing? Who dispenses with it altogether? I managed to wriggle out from underneath him and muster up the wherewithal to ask.

  “Perché non mi baci?” Why won’t you kiss me? He looked at me, a bit stunned.

  “Dai, Elisabetta, sei troppo sentimentale.” Come on, Elizabeth, you are way too sentimental.

  Sentimental? I almost laughed out loud. Now there’s an adjective no one had ever use
d to describe me. Cynical, yes. Caustic, often. Even blasé. But sentimental? This could only mean my language skills were sub-par. Surely sentimentale was different from sentimental, or else this was a clear misapprehension on his part, like when Pasquale’s buddies had referred to me as dolce.

  Sweet I am not. (Even Pasquale got a giggle out of that one.) Besides, it isn’t all that hard to be mistaken for sweet when you’re incapable of uttering more than two syllables of Italian. But sentimental? I don’t happen to believe a kiss is a sentimental act, especially when I am already in bed with a man who has been chatting me up for months. Sensual, yes. Sentimental, no. Suddenly, Marco Uno had turned into the Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. Evidently, there would be no kissing on the lips.

  It was, at the least, discouraging. Even when prompted, he didn’t relent. He had no intention of kissing me. Ever. I reflected for a second, briefly weighing the pros and cons of continuing on in the direction we were going. The situation was disappointing, yes, but there I was with an attractive, young guy in my bed, a guy who was clearly good to go. Why quibble over the details? I’ll admit, though, that something still bothered me, something didn’t add up. If all he had wanted to do in the first place was to fuck me, he could have managed it months earlier, dispensing entirely with the Italian-English dictionary, the coffees, and all those halting conversations. I liked him from the start, and I would have slept with him because, like I said, I am not sentimental.

  The next thing Marco Uno did became a recurring theme in my Roman life. He refused to wear a condom. Again, it seemed, Pasquale had been an aberration. Not only had my first Italian lover admitted that he was unfaithful (actually, he admitted that he never had the least intention of being faithful to anyone), but Pasquale had also been willing to wear condoms. This one, the first of The Marcos, was insulted that I’d asked him to sheath himself, much less kiss me.