by Jennifer Cox
“But if you are asking about my heart, I am happy now, fulfilled. And even though people don’t understand and even if I meet someone else, Elena will always be a great part of my life. I feel happy with that.”
So I wished Davide and Elena luck and we all said good-bye. Eleanor drove me back to my hotel. Lost in our own thoughts, neither of us spoke much.
In the alleys off Via Cappello, in the shadow of Juliet Capulet’s house, pairs of Italian teenagers fall in love. Heads close, they talk and laugh quietly, locked in a private world of mutual desire, delighting in each other’s company. Randomly, conversation gives way to urgent kissing, moped helmet dangling from one hand, cell phone from the other.
Out on the main street, cumbersome knots of American and Japanese tourists mill by, oblivious to the teenagers. They are making their way to the structure symbolizing the only kind of Italian teen-love that interests and moves them: Juliet’s balcony.
In Verona everyone seemed wrapped up in their own desire. In a city famous for lovers who would rather die than compromise their feelings, maybe this was appropriate. Davide’s story had saddened and perplexed me, though: Even if he was happy, I felt troubled for him.
Unable to distract myself by shopping (all the clothes were either too small, too expensive, or too white), I felt preoccupied and restless. I didn’t want time on my hands with three gelaterias right outside my hotel (BRITISH TOURIST DEAD FROM FREAK ICE-CREAM OVERDOSE), so I rang Eleanor and we went out and got really drunk instead. It was great.
There was a courtyard around Juliet’s beautiful fourteenth-century house. Over the years, the courtyard walls had accumulated such a collection of graffiti that people now wrote their love poems on wads of chewing gum that coated every inch of wall, like rubbery, multicolored tiles.
Under the balcony was a bronze statue of Juliet. Folklore had declared it lucky (though possibly not for her) to touch Juliet’s right breast. The statue of the fourteen-year-old girl—breast corroded a pale orange by the acid sweat of a million would-be Romeos—looked on stoically, as a hundred stamping and baying tourists took turns being photographed groping her. Like the audience of Blind Date transported back in time, with each squeeze the crowd roared its approval.
I watched with a huge hangover, knowing that in about ten minutes, I was going to have to put on a velvet gown and dress up as Juliet.
Despite my misgivings, Eleanor took me into the house and persuaded me to go into the utility closet and change into the dress. It was a heavy red velvet floor-length outfit, laced up the front, cinched round the waist with a jeweled belt, and topped off with a red spongy headdress.
As I emerged, the crowd spotted me immediately. They poured in from the courtyard, pushing inside to get a better look, roaring replaced by quiet, rapt expectation. The first person who tries to rub my breast will quickly discover they are anything but lucky, I thought grimly.
Actually, as the dress trailed across the floor, I felt my spirits (and hangover) lift. I immediately understood the attraction of dressing like this, so voluminous and red that I could have spent my whole life living off croissants, gelati, and pizza, and nobody would have been any the wiser.
Then “Romeo” (Date #22) arrived. Sporting a deep-red velvet tunic, green tights, and a codpiece that made me instinctively avert my eyes, he was a hyperactive mid-thirties Italian called Solimano. He looked vaguely consumptive and a foot too short but had a mischievous smile. Solimano marched across the courtyard into the hallway and through the parting crowd, like Moses on a mission. Stopping directly in front of me, Solimano sank down onto one knee, snatched my hand, and kissed it passionately.
To my astonishment and the delight of the crowd, he declared: “I am here, your Romeo. Now we will be together forever.” He finished with a flourish, then, jumping to his feet, vaulted out the window, onto the balcony. “Come now, my Juliet,” he commanded. “Come to the balcony, so I may speak of my love for you.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” I sighed. My head was starting to throb again; the spongy headdress was itching uncomfortably. Back out in the courtyard, however, the remaining crowd had no such misgivings. Hands paused mid-gumming and groping, they let out a collective sigh. This was the romance they had come for. The floor show had begun.
Fortunately, Eleanor took one look at my face and pushed through the crowd to where Solimano was now waiting expectantly beneath the balcony. “Come along, Romeo,” she said briskly. “Jennifer knows that bit of the story already. Let’s find somewhere more private for your date.”
Solimano looked dejected but trailed obediently after her. The crowd followed with their eyes, mutinously disappointed, like children told they could not throw their pet from the window to see if it could fly.
Eleanor found us a couple of thrones on the first floor and the date began.
Solimano was fun, sensitive without taking himself too seriously. We chatted about life on the road. He traveled all over Italy performing, but always played Romeo when he was home.
“Don’t you ever get bored of it?” I asked. Unexpectedly, a look of guilt and frustration stole across his face. Solimano quickly looked away to compose himself, then turned back. “I love Romeo,” he protested, “but the problem is that he is young and his emotions are not…” He waved his hand around, searching for the word. “…developed.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice in a conspiratorial manner. “I am not telling anyone this yet, but I am thinking maybe now I am more interested in Mercutio.”
He looked deep into my eyes, watching my reaction to his confession for signs of…I have no idea what. Outrage? Ridicule? He was clearly going through a bit of a character crisis and my question had unwittingly opened the floodgates.
Actually, most of my Romeos seemed to be at a crossroads, going through something (hey, who wasn’t?), but it never occurred to me that even the Romeo would be.
Fresh from my intense meeting with Davide, I knew how to keep a poker face. I also knew a reaction was expected. “So, why Mercutio?” I asked conversationally.
Solimano looked troubled; then, leaning in close again, pausing to assemble the words before speaking, he answered: “Mercutio is—how you say?—the central pillar of the play.”
All around us, cameras flashed incessantly as groups of tourists stood inches away posing for photos with us. I slapped away hands that tentatively snaked over my shoulder (this was the first date where I was actually more concerned about being groped by the passersby than by the Date). Of course, the crowd had no way of knowing that they were not witnessing perfect love in action. Juliet was halfway through a rejection—Romeo didn’t want to be with her; in fact, he didn’t even want to be with himself.
But Solimano was unaware of or immune to the crowd, and he continued to unburden himself: “You see, at first it is a play about life. But then Mercutio dies and it becomes a dark, brooding play about death.” Solimano sat up straight, his speech gathering momentum and intensity. “Mercutio is the play’s turning point; he is so strong, he can change the play from day to night, light to dark….” Solimano spoke with a feverish passion; he clenched his hands and arched his body in the chair. “…He is the most powerful person in Romeo and Juliet and I want to be him. I am sick of love, I want power. I have had enough of being Romeo. I want to be Mercutio.”
Reaching the climax of his speech, Solimano cried out this final pronouncement. He paused, suspended in the intensity of his realized feelings. Then a huge smile lit up his face and he collapsed back in his chair, sighing deeply, all tension gone from his body.
But I was busy having a revelation of my own: I’d come all this way only to be proven superfluous. Romeo was cutting Juliet out of the deal altogether and going straight to the afterlife on his own, as Mercutio. Love was passé; Death was in.
No wonder Davide had won the bloody Juliet prize, I thought bitterly. When it came to the most intense relationship, it seemed nobody beat Death.
“Thank you, Jennifer,” Solimano breathed.
“I have never told a soul this and now I have told you. You were sent to me: I know now what I must do. No more Romeo, I am to be Mercutio.”
The cameras continued to flash and Solimano leaned back, spent and content with his revelation. I sat with my mouth slightly open, trying to work out what the hell had just happened.
I said good-bye to Eleanor (without whom I very much doubt I would have got out of Juliet’s house alive) and embarked on a long cross-country train journey via Bologna to Florence. After two hours by bus through the soft green hills and vineyards of Tuscany, I arrived in Siena.
I had a date with Umberto (Date #23). He ran the traffic dating website www.motoristmail.com. I knew from our emails that the idea had come out of Umberto’s frustration at being cut off in traffic:
One night while I was driving inside a tunnel a fast car cut me off, and I couldn’t contact it (to tell him “how smart you are”), so I thinked what a beautiful idea if I could write to its license plate numbers by an Internet site.
But Umberto was a businessman and he soon realized his website could be put to better use as one of the labor-saving devices for busy single people. It was now a dating website custom-built for Italians who spent most of their lives stuck in their cars in traffic. Rather than registering the license plates of bad drivers on the website, it now allowed you to register your own license plate if you were single and looking to meet someone. So if you saw someone you fancied in a traffic jam but couldn’t get to talk to them from your car, you just went to Umberto’s website and, if their details were registered, emailed and asked them out on a date.
The idea had caught on, and Umberto’s site now got six thousand posts a day.
This and all Umberto’s other businesses kept him so incredibly busy, however, that he could only spare the time to date me over lunch. So we met at a teeny pizzeria and chatted at a table outside in the bright Tuscan sunshine. I was fascinated to hear about the site and really liked Umberto, who was shy but charming. But he seemed a total workaholic. I was sad for him but not surprised to hear he didn’t have a girlfriend. “I’ll get one when I have more time and lots of money,” he said matter-of-factly before having to rush back to work.
After our pizza date, I caught the train to Pisa and flew to Berlin. As the plane taxied for takeoff, I took one last look out the window at Italy. Another country done. It had been fascinating and I had met some lovely people, but I was now more than twenty dates into my journey—a quarter of my potential The Ones met—and I was still no closer to finding my Soul Mate. Was I doing something wrong, or was it simply that I hadn’t yet achieved the critical mass that statistically contained my new man? What were my Soul Mate odds: one in how many?
How many more before I met him? Was I close? What more could I do to speed up the process, or be confident I was even on the right path? If I held my breath until we took off, if the man next to me finished his chapter before the captain said we could undo our seat belts, would I meet my Soul Mate in Germany? Was our meeting a matter of such superstition or random luck?
Did I have to work harder at finding my Soul Mate, or did I have to work harder at trusting Fate? I wasn’t exactly losing hope, but it was a surprise that so many people had yielded—and I don’t mean this in an unkind way—so little. And in the meantime, I seemed to be loading up my romantic mystery tour bus with a huge number of people who all quite understandably expected my energy and attention. Was I in danger of becoming so busy picking up passengers that, when the time came, there wouldn’t be room for the one person I wanted on board?
This was a very real possibility.
Although Berlin had regained its status as capital of Germany, most airlines had yet to build this into their schedules and fly direct. As a result, although travelers might just make the tight connections, their bags generally weren’t so lucky, and lost luggage had become the norm.
Sure enough, I got to Berlin but my bags didn’t. And I’d made the mistake of agreeing to meet Ede (Date #24) in Arrivals. Even on a normal day, I like to arrive at my own pace. Today, with makeup and dating clothes in my lost bags, I felt particularly unprepared.
Ede was waiting with a single yellow rose (which, unlike Willem in Holland, he gave me straight away) and didn’t seem at all troubled by the fact that we couldn’t leave until I had reported my bags missing. There was a huge line at the lost luggage office, so we went for a coffee.
It was to be my first—and, I hoped, last—airport date.
I sneaked a look at him as we queued: mid-thirties, tall and slim, with long legs and a slightly mysterious air. He was nice and easy to talk to, but I struggled to concentrate on the conversation; all I could think about was my bags and if I’d ever see them again.
Four hours later, we finally made it to the front of the line. The clerk assured me that my bags would be delivered to my hotel by 5 p.m., although “there may be a delay as all streets are being closed for the Love Parade.”
I knew all about the Love Parade. It was the reason I was here.
Since 1989, Berlin’s Love Parade has been the world’s biggest techno street party. It might take two to tango, but it took up to two million to techno, as big-name DJs on flamboyant carnival floats pumped up the volume in Tiergarten Park, surrounded by huge crowds of ravers. I wanted to see if I would be lucky in Love in Berlin.
Ede was lovely but he didn’t have my attention. It was no one’s fault. I liked him and in a different situation we might have clicked, but not this time. I felt bad when he dropped me at my hotel: I halfheartedly said maybe I could see him later but secretly hoped he wouldn’t be too disappointed when I didn’t get back in touch.
I was staying in Prenzlauer Berg. Part of old East Berlin—one of the few areas to resist Hitler’s rise to power—this was where the radicals, intellectuals, and students lived. It felt like a place only you know about, and it was fascinating to stumble across quirky galleries, stark buildings with beautiful features, plus loads of funky bars and cafés.
I was staying here, but apparently my bags weren’t; there was still no sign of them.
I went out to see an art installation in the cavernous and scary basement of a water tower up the road. When I came back, there was still no sign of my bags. I went for a long walk round the Berg, poked round shops, found a great bar, and settled down with my book until 11 p.m. The bags were still not at the hotel when I returned. “Maybe midnight, maybe tomorrow?” the receptionist answered without looking up from his paper.
I knew there was no point in getting angry: It would just give me a headache and the Tylenol was in my lost bags.
I came down to reception the next morning. “Any sign of my bags?” I asked in a monotone.
“No, we have no idea where they are,” the receptionist replied cheerfully.
Sometimes I think there is nowhere more foreign than Europe.
I went back to my room, drank some coffee, turned my knickers inside out, then set off in two-day-old clothes and no makeup to join some of the most beautiful people in the world dancing for joy.
It was a shame I wasn’t at my best, as I had quite a tricky dating day ahead of me. I was to go to the parade with Paul (Date #25), a raver I’d met via one of the Love Parade websites, then date DJ Frank from Holland (Date #26) on his float, then Franz-Philipp (Date #27) on his float. I knew from my BBC Radio 1 days how incredibly resistant club people are to being nailed down; any arrangement was going to be fluid.
At school, I was always very sporty. Love Parade gave me an insight into how it must feel when no one wants you on their team.
I made myself up in a department store using the testers on the cosmetics counter. I then met Paul, who was very young and completely hyper on E. Ten minutes into the date, he scaled a lamppost and that was the last I saw of him (I was wearing a skirt and two-day-old knickers; I wouldn’t have joined him even if I’d been able to). DJ Frank’s float had been detained at the Dutch border, and the bouncers on Franz-Philipp’s float took one look a
t my appearance and refused to even pass on a message saying I’d arrived.
And the whole time, a psychiatrist called Wolfgang followed me around asking me out for a drink. I was worried that since I’d had a couple of no-show dates, Fate might think I wasn’t living up to my side of the deal to date eighty men. So to appease the Numbers God, I went for a coffee with Wolfgang. Apparently he had just moved from Brussels and didn’t know anyone. He’d come to the Love Parade because “I’m at a crossroads and I thought I might meet someone here.”
I felt a bit sorry for him but also worried that, in his own way, maybe he felt just as sorry for me. Did I also appear an unconnected outsider, randomly jumping into the slipstream of other people’s fun, hoping to be swept up and carried along with them?
I’d given it my best shot, but every fiber in my body told me that as hard as I tried, I was not going to find my Soul Mate hanging with the ravers at the Love Parade. I’d tried it, it hadn’t worked. It was time to go home and regroup my energies and those of my Date Wranglers for the next stage of my journey: America.
Oiled and toned in leather bikinis, plastic dresses, and pink fur boots, ravers blew their whistles and savored the narcissistic tang of dancing and being watched dancing. I let the crowd push past me as I forced a path through the oncoming tide of revelers, back to the station and my hotel. “Oh, Ms. Cox, good news: Your bags have arrived,” the receptionist announced, beaming at me as I walked into the lobby.
“That’s lovely,” I responded with an empty smile. “I’d like to check out, please.”
I flew back to London. As I walked through passport control at Heathrow, one of the officers asked where the flight had just come in from.
“Denmark,” I replied blankly.
The man behind me laughed.
“You’re a bit lost, love—it wasn’t Denmark, it was Germany. Sounds like you don’t know where you’re going.”
