by Fabio Volo
“Something strange happened. One morning, while I was still living with Paolo, I woke up but I couldn’t get out of bed. My legs didn’t want to work. It was as if I didn’t have any muscles. I didn’t have the strength to stand on my feet. I was in the hospital for a week. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I think they ran every test they could, but nothing. One night I couldn’t breathe and I thought I was dying. Actually, I was certain of it. I called for the doctors and they gave me a sedative. The next morning, when I woke up, I still had the distinct feeling I was about to leave this world. I don’t know why. What I do remember, however, is something else, something weird. Suddenly, unlike the night before, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I felt ready. A strange sensation of peace, of calm, came over me. I was serene. I thought I was dying, but I wasn’t afraid. Then I got better. But I’ll never forget what I felt that day. I got better, but to this day, nobody knows what was wrong with me.”
I liked my girl and I liked her stories. It was nice listening to her. All the emotions I felt seemed so very new.
17
Brunch
Sunday morning we woke up late. We had a light breakfast and then we went to a spa, the Rehoboth Spa Lounge, at the corner of West 14th and 6th Avenue.
Michela got a manicure and a pedicure, and I a foot massage. After all that walking, I immediately accepted when she mentioned it. I also saw a magic trick performed by the woman who gave the massage. After she had poured some soap into the basin where my feet were, the foam was about to overflow. She grabbed a small glass bottle, and poured a few drops of its content in the basin. As soon as that liquid hit the water, the foam disappeared immediately. I was afraid my feet would disappear, too. The massage was a masterpiece. She pressed her fingers against the sole of my feet and although she was a small lady, rather fragile looking, she had the strength of Hercules in her hands. The magician. At first it felt like she was running my feet through the machine my grandma used to make pasta. When I left the place I felt light as a feather. I held Michela’s hand as I was walking, because I was afraid I would float away like a little balloon.
We went to have brunch at the Café Orlin, on St. Mark’s Place. I ordered some orange juice, toast, scrambled eggs, potatoes cooked in a hundred different ways and fruit.
With my hair uncombed, wearing sunglasses in order to enter the world in the softest of ways, sitting at the table outside, I was looking at Michela and thinking about what I was experiencing. I would catch myself staring at her and feeling as if time and space had ceased to exist. She noticed I was looking at her. I spoke with my hands using the sign alphabet. I had a hard time remembering how to sign the “h,” but then I remembered. Staring into her eyes, I signed, “Michela I am very happy. Unbelievably.”
She smiled. She seemed embarrassed. She got up and kissed me.
She had given me a little balcony from which I could look at the world. She had brought games back into my life. Thanks to her, I started playing again. I hadn’t done it in a long time. Before meeting her, I thought that games were something for children or artists. One day I even read something that said, “We don’t quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.”
“You know what would be nice after this meal? A nice cigarette,” I told her.
“Do you smoke? I’ve never seen you smoke.”
“I don’t. But as an image, if this were a movie, I think that now would be the time when he would light up a cigarette.”
“Let’s bum one from somebody.”
“But I don’t smoke.”
“Smoke one now, it’s not like it’ll turn you into a smoker immediately.”
“Okay, I’ll smoke one… Would you like one, too, or in your film is he the only one who smokes?”
“She can smoke, too, if she wants.”
We bummed two cigarettes and then lit them, sitting on a bench that wrapped around a tree, right in front of the restaurant. We couldn’t smoke at the table, even though we were outside. After three drags we looked at each other and we put them out. They were disgusting.
That afternoon we went to the Moma on West 53rd, between 5th and 6th Avenue. I enjoy walking through museums. It feels good. I also enjoy the gift shops at the end of the visit, where they sell postcards, catalogs, pencils, and a bunch of other things. We didn’t buy anything, we only had a tea in the cafeteria inside the museum.
Then we took a stroll toward downtown on 9th Avenue and stopped in a pastry shop. It had two benches painted in light green right outside, on the sidewalk. It was called Billy’s Bakery. It looked like the one Michela took me to on our first date. I asked for a chocolate-chip muffin. Every time I think about it, I can still taste it and smell it. Michela only ordered a coffee. It’s a good thing I walk a lot when I’m in New York, otherwise I would end up rolling around. We sat on the colorful bench.
“As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
“A veterinarian. How about you?”
“A school teacher.”
“Wow! How smart and hard-working we were as children: neither of us wanted to become an astronaut, a ballerina, a soccer player, a hair stylist…”
“It means we have betrayed our own dreams or that they have changed over the years. Do you remember when you stopped dreaming of becoming a vet?”
“No. At a certain point I started remembering that there was a time in the past when I wanted to be one, but I don’t know when I stopped. How about you?”
“I changed my mind when my sister told me she wanted to become a school teacher, too. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No, I’m an only child.”
“Are your parents divorced?”
“My father passed away.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry, he had moved out long before. He left my mother and me when I was still very young. I believe that’s the reason why I can’t have a stable relationship with someone… Aside from temporary engagements.”
We both smiled.
“There isn’t an answer for everything. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Maybe you’re not cut out for that kind of relationship. Period.”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it quite a bit. I like reflecting, looking for answers. Maybe things seem scary when you don’t understand them, because if you don’t understand them, they are out of your control. I think that my problem is the fact that I’m still my mother’s son.”
“You didn’t feel loved enough?”
“No. Too much, actually. My mother followed my every move. She loved me very much.”
“The fact that she followed your every move doesn’t mean that she loved you. On the contrary. She should have been right next to you. Plus, it’s also a matter of the second message.”
“What do you mean by the second message?”
“The second message people have. Everybody sends out a second message. For instance, my mother seems like a nice person, actually I’m sure she is, but from her behavior I also receive a second message. A message of fear, of submission, of lack of courage, of disgust toward others, of resignation. Even though nobody speaks about it explicitly, children unconsciously absorb the second message as they grow up.”
When she said that, I remember I thought about Margherita.
“A bunch of conditions and problems teenagers have are often caused by the second message given off by parents.” Michela continued, “I, for one, have struggled with anorexia in the past.”
We remained silent for a bit. I was trying to understand what my mother’s second message was, and instead I realized what Dante’s was.
I remembered that, on that Sunday, we spoke about the least happy moments of our lives. My childhood, her adolescence. That evening we had dinner at home.
“Is there something a man can say or do that turns you off completely? Has something like that ever happened to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that maybe yo
u went out with a guy, and he said or did something that made you dislike him, made you cross him out.”
“Well… Phrases or things that completely turned me off… Yes. Once a guy called me “love” on the phone right after our first date, and then he gave me a small pink stuffed animal that looked like a frog and told me he had bought it because it had big sweet eyes that reminded him of me. I never wanted to see him again. He kept messaging me for weeks. Another guy, at the end of dinner, when the check came, divided up what we had ordered. He then added that he was going to pay for the wine. He would have been better if he had asked me to pay for the whole thing. I would have preferred that. Another thing that has always bothered me, even when I was younger, is that when you went out with a guy, after five minutes of making out, he would take it out and you would find it in your hands. That always bothered me, even when I liked the guy a lot. However, it’s not entirely the phrase itself, it’s who says it, how he says it, and what the context is… How about you? What’s something you don’t like to hear from a woman?”
“Other than, ‘I’m pregnant?’”
“Yes, other than ‘I’m pregnant.’”
“Well… The question all women ask when they’re happy with a man.”
“And what question is that?”
“‘… Are you like this with all women?’”
“And how do you answer?”
“All women? What women? You’re the only woman in my life.”
“There, that could be one of those phrases that makes me want to go home. But I know you’re kidding. You are kidding, aren’t you?”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding… More or less. Something I don’t like in a woman is when she uses her name when she talks about herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“One time I was dating this girl named Sandra. When she talked about herself she would say things like: ‘I told myself, Sandra, you have to be stronger, Sandra, you shouldn’t do that, I know you can do it, Sandra…’ It drove me insane, almost as much as the ones who use baby talk in bed.”
“And what do you like to hear instead?”
“‘You fuck like a god.’ No, I’m kidding… Sort of… Not really. Let’s say that my favorite phrase is ‘When I’m with you I feel free to be who I really am.’ When I heard that, it always made me feel good.”
“It’s true, you give off that impression. People don’t feel you’re judging them. But does that mean you’re like this with all women? Just yesterday I was telling myself: ‘Michela, this boy is really cute.’”
“If you say stuff like that, it doesn’t bother me too much. But don’t do it anymore. What do you mean when you say I’m cute? What do you like about me?”
“It’s so annoying when you ask me what I like about you. Anyway, I like that you never use what you know as a weapon.”
“What do you mean?”
“So annoying!”
“Fine, I won’t insist anymore, but at least tell me one thing you like about men in general.”
“I like a man who can surprise me. I like it when he can take my breath away, catch me off guard. Many men, after you have gone out with them for a while, are like songs on a CD.”
“How so?”
“That you already know the exact sequence. And when a song ends, in your head, you are already singing the next one. They start talking and you already know how the conversation is going to end. Even when you’re making love to them, as they kiss you and touch you, you already know where their hands will go. Anyway, let me think… I like the ones who, on the first date, try to hook up or make it understood that they like you, but don’t insist.”
I immediately thought about our first date. I didn’t try to hook up, and I wondered if I made her understand that I really liked her.
“I like a man who understands when I feel like being alone. I don’t like jealous men. The only kind of jealousy I liked in my life was my father’s, when I would come home late. I really liked that one; it made me feel like I was his woman. Plus, something I like in a person, and not only in a man, is when they have an inclusive idea of what ‘us’ is.”
“And what’s that?”
“Not us as in ‘he and I,’ or as in ‘my family, my friends, and I,’ but an inclusive us, composed also of people you don’t know, an us that includes those human beings that have yet to be born.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I know. I can’t explain it properly. As soon as I find the right words, I’ll try again.”
She never managed to explain it to me.
Every time we talked, it always seemed like she knew exactly what she thought. But I, on the other hand, tend to discover what I think about an issue only as I am talking about it. By talking, I find out my own opinions at the same time as those who are listening to me do.
We went to bed. She asked me, like in the movies, to help her with the zipper on the back of her dress. She gathered her hair and then put it up. That image remained impressed upon my imagination and to this day, without any good reason, it often comes back to my mind. Her neck, her hands that put up her hair, and the zipper that, sliding down, revealed her luminous back. It looked like a painting by Schiele. I often wondered if a man can undo a woman’s zipper without kissing or biting her neck and shoulders. I couldn’t resist. I lay in bed with her, waiting for her to fall asleep. I wanted to leave after dinner, but she asked me to stay until she fell asleep.
“Would you tell me a story?”
“Which one?”
“Why don’t you make one up?”
I was silent for a few moments and then I made one up. I spoke with my eyes closed, imagining what I was describing, and at the same time I caressed her head very slowly.
After a little while, she fell asleep. I kept caressing her and then I fell asleep myself. It happens. I woke up, got out of bed, and went to wash my face. I took the marker I had bought and wrote on the shower tiles, “It’s nice to walk through the places you showed me.”
To reassure her, I added below, “The thought is permanent, the marker isn’t.”
Everything in the house was asleep. I leaned on the bedroom door to look at Michela. I was already dressed to leave. I had my backpack on with my computer in it, and my headphones in my ears with my iPod playing. As Radiohead played Creep, the unplugged version, I watched her sleep. I stood there for the duration of the song. A baby. Her face, her hand next to her mouth. On a trip of images and sounds, I wondered, “Who are you, who are you really? Why you? Why now? I’d caress you this instant if I were sure I wouldn’t wake you, I wouldn’t take you away from your dreams. Why do you make me feel this way, and why does everything between us seem so natural?”
I reached the street. It was almost morning. At that point Radiohead was playing Nice Dream. The sky wasn’t dark anymore. It was turning blue. You could still see a few stars. As I walked I felt good. I was happy. I was walking as the light shyly began to illuminate the city. It was chilly that morning. It felt as if I had slept for hours. The air caressed my soul and I could feel the stars in my hair. Strolling through New York makes me feel good. I feel like I’m leaving part of me behind and like I’m walking toward my destiny, toward a new self. I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve seen that city in a million movies, or because it’s part of my imagination, but all these streets, these smells, all these different things please me and put me in a good mood. This walk, instead, seemed to be part of a new birth. I felt like a virgin again. Perhaps it was what St. Paul called metanoia, the change due to a spiritual rebirth. In those days, I was supposed to abandon the armor that had helped me win the battles I fought during the first phase of my life. There are people who can’t manage to build themselves an armor, others who can’t manage to leave it behind. I wanted to live this new phase of fragility, emotions, pain, and joy.
It was as if life was a board game and I didn’t have the courage to open the box. One thing, however, kept bothering me and it still does, “How c
ome I feel like this? Can two people really plan on loving each other or being happy together?”
Actually, we didn’t plan on it, but we had always mysteriously searched for each other. Somehow we chose each other on that tram. Between us there had always been a sort of unspoken agreement. On the tram, from the beginning, out of all the other people, she was the only one I noticed, the only one I could see. Her and everything she did, even her smallest actions. To me the other people were only masks; she was the only face. Maybe the secret is that you have to open up only for a moment. Like those walls you see along the road: a plant grows out of a small crack. I had become that wall. From a small opening inside me grew the plant of an emotion, of curiosity. It was as if the other women, the other stories, were just colorful bunches of flowers you take home and put in a vase. You change their water everyday, but little by little they wither and die. Michela, instead, was a growing plant.
The sense of freedom I felt that morning was something I had never felt before. Everything looked different. I felt like I could do anything I wanted. Life, my day, my destiny, were in my hands. Everything was there.
Having a whole day in front of me, without responsibilities, without schedules, without deadlines, made me feel like God. I sat on a bench. The view wasn’t particularly pretty. I just wanted to see what was happening on that street. I thought a lot about what I was experiencing, about Michela, about the time I spent with her. About the fact that this stupid game, this ridiculous trick was actually working. In the end, through her game, Michela had found the password to access and free me from my fears.
“Do you want to play with me?”
“Yes.”
On that bench in New York, as I waited for the sun to rise, I reorganized my thoughts. Sometimes it’s nice to have the sensation that you’re quitting and about to change. In those days, I wasn’t thinking about the future. I wasn’t thinking about “forever.” Like the angel in the Wings of Desire I wanted to say, “With every step, with every gust of wind, I wanted to be able to say NOW, NOW, NOW and not forever and for all eternity.”
