Sometimes you live with intention, and sometimes life just grabs you by the collar and shoves you in the boat and takes you to Shanghai.
I wrote that as I was leaving Centro d’Ompio exactly three years ago. (Turns out I also wrote something about “changing the rules in the middle of the game,” something Mr. Russ suggested might be behind my latest case of Male Flight Syndrome.) Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I did express trepidation to my friends, over and over again, that the longer I stayed here, not following my intention to live abroad, the more momentum I would lose, and the more likely it would be that I would become embroiled in some new drama on the local level that would suck up all of my energy and motivation. I wasn’t wrong. Candy-loving AlienBaby got a job working alongside some tasty boys, and wound up, once again, in a metaphorical Shanghai.
**
But there’s more to it than that. I realized something earlier this week when my cannabis-clouded friend was unusually clear-headed: there is something entirely palpable between us. I know that he has strong feelings toward me. I can see it; I can feel it. For my part, I simply soaked up that life-giving energy while it was present, adoring him right back (which wasn’t hard, as he really is fricking adorable). I’m glad I made the most of our time then, however, because he disappeared into a bleary-eyed fog the next day, before literally disappearing.
Within this certainty, I’m much more comfortable extrapolating that, as he never planned on having these feelings toward me, he’s not okay with them…or at least a significant part of him isn’t. At the risk of seeming like I’ve gone from one extreme (of severe self-deprecation) to the other (of insufferable conceit), I think the problem isn’t that Rick doesn’t want or care about me. The problem is that he wants and cares about me a lot more than he wants to want or care about me. And that is a problem. Just ask Psyche. It’s the age-old story…déjà vu all over again.
I was a little afraid, myself, at the outset; I felt vulnerable, overwhelmed by his radical differences in habits and lifestyle, and ambivalent about his appearance. But one of the most poignant things about this young man is that he has — throughout so many of the experiences that make men hard (and not in a good way) — retained a certain childlike wonder about the world, and an open, curious, friendly attitude toward other people. I feel as if I’ve had the rare privilege to have touched a heart that’s known far less love than it deserves, and is far less armored than one might expect. How could I not love this person, regardless of the package he came in? Sure, I may think he’s the most gorgeous thing alive now — but my faithful readers know he was not what I had in mind. And there were so many reasons for it not to work on any level. In spite of all that, when the moment came for me, I surrendered.
For a man, however, that kind of surrender may mean intolerable weakness, or public humiliation in the ignoble tradition of the hand-wringing Mark Sanfords of the world. The seductress Delilah cut Samson’s hair and robbed him of his strength; every worldly warrior since has been wary of her. She tied you to a kitchen chair/and she broke your throne/and she cut your hair/and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah, wrote legendary songwriter Leonard Cohen, a man who could easily be described by detractors as “whipped” and who actively savors that kind of surrender.
I mean Rick no harm — I mean him anything but harm (and I love those long black waves of his) — but the argument could be made that he’s better off not getting mixed up with me, a substantially older woman intending to move overseas. (I do have the occasional thought that he could always come along, as he wants to see the world.) Maybe it was better for James not to get mixed up with me, either. I don’t know. It’s just too bad if what was better for them didn’t involve me getting a little sumpin-sumpin.
Anyhow, without further ado, here are my reflections on that not completely dissimilar episode.
______________
PART FIVE: LEAVING OZ
I have stolen something from Centro d’Ompio.
A virtually useless item, cheesy-looking, and broken to boot, it has no value to anyone but me. It’s a Christmas mug with a broken handle. Most people drink their tea and coffee from glasses up at Centro; only Bisetti has mugs. But there was a certain working guest who absolutely had to take his tea in a mug, and this particular mug somehow found its way up the mountain, where it dwelt in a secret hiding place near the dishroom. And now I have taken it. HA.
Maybe it’s extremely third grade of me, but nevertheless. It’s all I have. No shirts no shoes no jackets no blues, to borrow from the old Mel Etheridge song “No Souvenirs.” I never even got a picture of the bloke.
*
Here’s one for the May You Live In Interesting Times file: I got an email from my mother, who has no idea what’s really been going on. As you may recall, she and my father are ultraconservative born-again Christians. She told me that they have been praying I’ll have “a very memorable experience” here. You can imagine the laugh that one gave me. Be careful what you wish for, Ma.
There were some definite bright spots my last week. Last Saturday night we had a barbecue at Bisetti. Marjorie and I were drinking a potent dark rum with coke; she got “leathered” and fell out of the hammock, to everyone’s amusement. Eddie, the newest working guest, a student in international relations from Long Island who resembles the young Daniel Johnston (not that that may mean much to most of you), is now Finn’s roommate. He’s a funny kid, and he and Finn get along extraordinarily well. That night Cosmo (in typical Cosmo fashion) had called Eddie “Herman” by mistake, and Finn was especially tickled because “Her Mann” in German means “mister man.” Finn and Eddie started bantering back and forth drunkenly…Finn harassed his roommate about his tendency to snore, and Eddie countered by accusing Finn of yodeling in his sleep. Somehow or other, the two of them eventually decided that they should be in a band together called “Herman and the Yordeling Snodelers.” Maybe you had to be there, but the two of them made me laugh harder than I have since…well, you know. I was definitely inebriated, myself, but it was the first time I’d had such knee-slapping fun since before my escape to Orta.
Eddie’s got the New Yorker sarcasm that never fails to crack me up, but I’ve been most grateful for the arrival of Finn. The man is a blessing, like sunlight — his mere presence can make the difference in the tone of your day. He fixes you with these serene green eyes as clear and pure as glacier water, and grins widely before erupting into uninhibited laughter that jumps two octaves. Such unabashed, high-pitched giggling from a man betrays a striking cultural difference; Centro’s Swiss groundskeeper Gerhard has a similar unselfconscious titter. American (and English) men wouldn’t dare sound so “girly,” but truth be told, it’s completely infectious, and a joy to be around.
Finn’s girlfriend will be arriving at Centro on the day I leave Italy, and I regret not being able to meet her. She is undoubtedly an amazing person. Sitting beside Finn at lunch and watching him talk, I considered what an incredibly lucky woman she is. Socrates would have pronounced Finn kalos, a word meaning both beautiful and good (of the highest kind).
One day at the bar I told him, “We should clone you, and repopulate the world.”
His response was to giggle happily and to respond in his incomparable Viennese accent, “But who then would there be, to love Finn?”
*
We were talking about attachment at one point. He’s definitely on the side of the yogis and Buddhists, and believes that we cause ourselves unwanted suffering by clinging to our experiences. He never takes photographs for this reason. This is one way in which we differ, although I couldn’t precisely articulate my disagreement at the time. But while sweeping bamboo leaves from the gravel path outside Centro, I thought of the famous Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl, who founded the school of logotherapy. In Frankl’s view of the world, there is no doing away with suffering — what is important is the meaning we derive from it.
I realized then that I don’t believe it’s necessary, or even desirable, to try to banish suffering from our lives – it seems, to me anyway, to be an attempt to escape our inescapable humanness, much like what those Western White Males were trying to do in subjugating or denigrating the Feminine. What I find that I need to do instead, more than anything, is to make some sort of sense of what happens.
I suppose that’s why I started writing in the first place, and telling these stories. Every culture on Earth has its stories and its storytellers.
This is one thing that appears to be universally human.
*
Hanna and Alessandro, perhaps intuiting that I would want to hear them (there have been no open discussions of what happened), shared some James stories with me. Alessandro told me about their trip to Florence together early on, where they enjoyed bloody, juicy steaks (very welcome after Centro’s strict vegetarian fare) and spent the evening talking with a couple from one of the Dakotas. The man was a fan of British television, and he and James apparently had a fantastic time together. Alessandro said he’d never seen James laugh so much. “He seemed really happy that night.”
Hanna told me about going to the nearby Ameno blues festival with James and Robert. Robert told the ticket booth that James was a journalist from Rolling Stone magazine, and that he was the photographer. Hanna, of course, was a groupie. Unbelievably, the gullible staffperson bought this shameless bullshit story and let them all in, free of charge.
*
Cosmo left on Monday, and I forgot to say goodbye.
Cosmo was frequently unintentionally, side-splittingly funny with his misunderstandings and mangled versions of English expressions. He was an offbeat character to begin with, having gone through younger incarnations as a hippie and a Rastafarian; earlier this month he even visited an Aquarian community. James thought he was a total flake, naturally — when Cosmo and Mila were having problems in the kitchen, he said “Mila doesn’t seem like one who suffers fools gladly” — but I got a big kick out of him. And he coined my favorite catchphrase of all. One night when I broke a beer glass in the dishroom (much to Robert’s dismay), Cosmo came in, surveyed the mess, and pronounced sagely, “Shits happen.”
He didn’t understand my ensuing hilarity, but at appropriate moments thereafter, I would turn to Eddie (who had been my dishwashing partner) and repeat Cosmo’s wise words.
Christian and Marjorie left Monday as well. On their last night, I found out from Marjorie her actual age, which is thirty-seven. I couldn’t believe it. She’s almost twice Christian’s age. She could be his mom, for crying out loud. But that didn’t stop them from embarking on their little foreign affair.
Now I’m truly envious. Some people I know have trouble with a decade.
Alessandro stayed another day, and left at five in the morning by taxi. I didn’t get to say goodbye to him, either (though I imagine we’ll be in future contact). The night before, Gina was in Bisetti again, and I just had to get out of there and away from her. The last time I saw Alessandro, he was sitting beside her on the stairs. Her shiny black curtain of hair fell over one shoulder as she smiled up at him, almost leaning in to him. I wondered if she meant to give him a similar sendoff, the incorrigible little puttana. In Alessandro’s case, I actually hope she did. He could seriously use the boost.
As long as it didn’t come with a rash.
Me-ow.
*
On my last night at Centro, the group on retreat known as “The Libido Group,” who had been doing primal dances in the pavillion all week, had their going-away party. It became my going-away party, too. Robert played his best dance music, and I got decidedly drunk on a bottle of wine. Elke, Bettina, Finn, Eddie and I all danced to Marvin Gaye and Tom Jones. I even let a soused Hanna cuddle me and tell me I was “so cute.” She confessed drunkenly that she and Robert have been carrying on all this time (which everyone knew anyway), but my fifty bucks says she’ll be living with another woman before she’s thirty.
After most of the staff and working guests had gone, things got kind of wild. Juanita, one of the retreat-goers, a sprite-like African-American woman from Santa Barbara, got up on the bar with a slim blond German man, a German woman named Marta (who can’t be a day under forty-seven, but has a firmer body than I ever will) and a cute Indian guy named Ajit, and started dancing. Marta was the first one to take off her pants, and the others followed suit (or un-suit, as the case may be). Soon they were all topless, and by the end of Tom Jones’s cover of “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” they were all as naked as the day they were born. Robert had offered me a toke of some quality weed earlier, which I had, for once, smoked, so the entire thing felt completely surreal. And yet it wasn’t that sensational once you got used to it. Yeah, naked people. Dancing. Hey, this is Europe — big deal.
*
Finn was up early the next morning, and made me a cup of Earl Grey tea. I sat on the smokers’ porch with him eating cornflakes as some of the others roused themselves and started moving about. Eddie, Hanna, Mila, and Elke all came to hug me goodbye. Finn carried my luggage to the car and gave me a long, tight squeeze and his card. It was like he was kinda attached to me, or something.
Bettina drove me down to Pettenasco station. The train was twenty minutes late, and the waiting and waiting was a déjà vu. I felt nostalgic, there on another bright Italian morning, at that abandoned stazione. I knew I would never step in that river again. It was bittersweet as I hugged Bettina goodbye.
I had to change trains at Novara, on the way to Milan. There was so little time between trains, I wasn’t able to buy as much as a postcard. I wish I had gotten at least one, to commemorate the place where I was so beside myself with joy, if only for a day. Novara. Mia Novara. I don’t have any photos, and I disagree with Finn about them. I want to remember the place – how it was, and what it looked like, that one summer when I was thirty-eight and met that beautiful young Englishman in Pettenasco, the one who accidentally stole my heart. “It all goes by so fast,” I tried to explain to him, that long night in Bisetti’s kitchen. Ten years are nothing. When I come back here — if I ever do — I may have blue hair and dentures, and romance of any kind may be a distant memory.
Bettina and Finn both expressed the opinion that Mezza Coda chose her “time” because she was incredibly happy. Several of us were picking her up and cuddling her on a regular basis, Finn had taken to feeding her and keeping the other cats away until she’d finished, and Padma had gently cleaned her dirty fur on the day that she disappeared. According to them, the little kitty more or less said to herself, “It doesn’t get any better than this,” and gave up the ghost. It seems like a feasible theory. I wonder: is it possible for us two-legged mammals?
I mean, think about it. I don’t know about you, but if I could choose, I’d prefer to throw in the towel after a day like Novara.
The problem is, how do we know when we’re done?
*
Before I left the U.S., life seemed better than ever. I was (finally) focused, hopeful, living with intention, cultivating new and thoroughly healthy habits, feeling like I was getting somewhere. I started to experience a sense of trepidation (and some outright anxiety) about my Italy trip at some point, as if it were a tangent, or worse, something that might derail my fine progress, change everything that was good.
In a way, I turned out to be absolutely right. I mean, here I am, slacking off on my yoga and meditation practices, drinking more than I have in the last six months together, depressed, a bit lost, a tad hateful even.
Would I take it all back? That’s the million dollar question.
Probably not.
Sometimes you live with intention, and sometimes life just grabs you by the collar and shoves you in the boat and takes you to Shanghai.
I actively resisted going. I did. I remember trying hard to keep my pulse down, that one day early on, when the cute English guy flipped up his shirt to show me what was apparently a newly flat and muscular stomach (he was so proud of the recent loss of his “loov handles”). That trash-talking rascal could look so inexplicably hot in a dishwashing apron, showing me how to turn the glasses over to let them evaporate, and giving me hysterics all the while. Jesus, there was just no way I could have ever helped myself. I was doomed, totally doomed, from day one. And secretly so thrilled, later, when he took to calling me “loov,” an endearment English women usually take as insufferably patronizing, like being called “honey” by your male boss. No matter. It made me unbelievably happy, James calling me this, with a tone of affection behind it. Almost as if he meant it.
Riding from Novara to Milano on the train, I had time to contemplate how often I’ve found that the old stereotypes are a lot of bollocks, and that it’s straight men who are frequently constrained by some kind of internal chastity belt. Put simply, you can’t get into both their hearts and their pants. At least not in that order.
My roommate Elke, as it turned out, understood a lot more that one might have thought about what happened, despite the language barrier. She had seen everything. She knew without my having to tell her, and I have to say I was gratified that she had only distaste – grimacing and shaking her head – for Gina. “Sometimes the men, they just want the sex,” she offered tentatively.
I had to laugh at this. That’s exactly where I got myself into trouble. It was me who wanted the sex, Elke dear.
It was my fault, in a way. I went and got greedy. Coming back from Novara, I experienced a kind of bliss, simply being there with James while he dozed. We were in the process of developing a quite wonderful bond, but I was the one who started to want more. I relished that growing ache of lust, that hunger that makes you weak with anticipation and need. It’s a bit addictive, no? I thought I could have his warm body as well as his warm regard. But with men like James, you just can’t have both. I’ll never forget his nervous laugh when I told him outright that I wanted him — how young he looked all of a sudden, and how uncertain. It was as if I had betrayed him by changing the rules in the middle of the game. How dare I, indeed. First I make him start to give a fook about me, and then I want to touch his willy. Dirty play, that.
But by the end I didn’t even need it. I just wanted him to know how much I cared for him, which was the most unforgivable sin of all.
It amazes me, in retrospect, how little time it took to fall so hard and to have it end so abruptly. At the risk of exposing my abject geekiness — I feel like Jean-Luc Picard in that episode of “Star Trek” where he lives out an entire accelerated lifetime in another dimension, while unconscious for only fifteen minutes on his ship. Centro d’Ompio has been like that other dimension, and returning home will be like waking up. This has all been an episode in a parallel universe. Or maybe a technicolor dream I had, after getting smacked on the head during a tornado.
*
But now I’m in Rome, and I’ve been walking all over town looking at all manner of buildings and eating all manner of food. I’ll try hard to make number six about my final aventuras in the citti d’Italia, since I know you’re probably getting weary of hearing me go on and on about my beautiful lost limey bastard. You know how I am, though. Such ruminations are part of the package. And besides, I never planned on any of it.
You know how it goes. Shits happen.
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