What the Hell is This?

I watched the Jarmuschian indie comedy “Wristcutters: A Love Story” four times this week. No kidding.

I won’t lie to you: I’ve become depressed again. And if killing myself could land me in Goran Dukic’s quirky limbo for lost souls, I’d be climbing into the tub with the hair dryer. Because even in that grey place that’s almost like planet Earth, “just a little bit worse,” friendships and road trips and great music and small miracles — even romantic love — are possible. (Besides which, you don’t have the usual paralyzing worries about getting yourself killed or starving in the street, because you’re already dead.) I wanted to get in the totally beat-to-shit station wagon with gypsy rocker Eugene (Shea Whigham, looking like Peter Krause’s mutton-chopped little brother) and take off for Tom Waits’ magical refugee camp in the desert where even the “crooked trees” among us are celebrated.

Of course, Waits’ character Kneller sums up my whole problem in one line. “Here’s the deal,” he tells the protagonist Zia (Patrick Fugit). “As long as you want it so bad, it’s not going to happen. The only way it’s going to work is if it doesn’t matter.”

I might be the best witness to that, having been brooding lately over a lifetime catalog of things I wanted so badly my ribs hurt, and to which I never even got close — attributing this outcome to ill fortune or my own baffling incompetence. But consider this: when all I wanted in the world was Sonny, I got the cash infusion that allowed me to go to Italy. When all I wanted in the world was to go back to Europe, Rick crept up like a wild creature to eat out of my hand. When all I wanted in the world was Rick, then Eli seemed to notice me. Whatever I was not intensely focused upon came easily, and what I desired most did not.

Of course now even scintillating Eli is gone (whose attentions I would have welcomed in lieu of my vanishing stoner’s), my pool of pretty young admirers has inexplicably dried up, and I have even less of a clue or a hope about how I’ll get to the other side of the lake. I’m in my own grey purgatory of solitary routines and ugly cubicles, consigned to a repetitive task that invites the hostility of strangers, living in a transient’s furniture-challenged crash pad, and sleepwalking through rapidly passing, oppressive summer days in which nothing new or interesting happens.

I seem to have jumped, as so often has been the case, from one of those delightful beginnings (where everything is new, and you can wind up playing pool in a hippie bar with an intriguing acquaintance at the drop of a hat) to a truncated end (where suddenly everything’s played out and exhausted), with no discernible middle. You’ve just gotten to first base on your first turn at bat, and now the game’s over. Rained out. So you sit in the window at home, gazing out at the drizzle, disappointed and bored.

Somebody please send Eugene over with the car! I want to hit the road and go see the Wizard. Although I think I know what he’s going to say. Still, I’d like to make the journey, because the journey itself is half the point. Besides which, Eugene — for all his skeezy antics — is damn cute. And he’s always horny. Seriously, I’d eat that little pirogi for breakfast.

But speaking of journeys…onward with the diaries…we’re almost done. This week I have a tale of Florence to tell.

Part 6.2: FIRENZE (FLORENCE)

The next morning I took a city train (as opposed to the faster Eurostar) and got to Florence at shortly after three in the afternoon. Without too much trouble I located the Ostello Archi Rossi on Via Faenza, off of the main drag Via Nationale. Faenza is like hostel central in Florence, with a number of small hotels along it as well.

The Ostello is clearly a youth hostel.  But I’m no longer a youth, and the staff was hostile.

They had gotten my e-mail, at least, and handed me the Visa slip to sign. Perhaps that had given them a prejudice against me already, I have no idea.

At first, I liked the funky feel of the place – noisy and vibrant in that collegiate way, with graffiti-covered walls that would have made my little anarcho-radical pals feel right at home (although the actual clientele looks much more American State University). When I got to my 6-bunk room I was glad to find it clean, and that I had a locker. They had assigned me an upper bunk, and I wondered briefly how I was going to climb up or down without stepping on the head of the person in the twin bed at the foot of the bunk. There were clean sheets, but no towel. Did they rent them out? I hoped so. I went down the hall to the “toilette” and noticed that there was a single shower off to one side of the toilet. Poking around a bit, I didn’t find a shower room, although I found one other similar “toilette” on that floor. I started to feel a little anxious, wondering how two such bathrooms were supposed to accommodate a throng of people who would be needing to both bathe and relieve themselves. I’d ask the staff when I went down to see about renting a towel. I decided, since the room was empty, that I could at least recharge my laptop.

Except that none of the outlets in the room worked.

I sat down on the lower bunk, feeling defeated, and gulped water from a litre bottle I had bought downstairs from the ostello refrigerator. I felt considerably dehydrated.

That’s when the migraine hit.

I had not had a migraine since March. Not since I had quit the job I had come to hate. At the time, I had attributed my debilitating condition to stress, sinus congestion, and general unhappiness with my station in life. So in a way, this was a perfect time for a migraine. My sinuses had been screwed up since my Pettenasco cold, I was beaten down by heat, fatigue, and loss, and completely stressed out by my surroundings.

I wanted to talk to the staff, to relieve some of my anxiety, but I was in too much pain. I took two Naproxen tablets and climbed up into the bunk, where I grew groggy as the medication hit. My head throbbed softly and I lay there in a near-trance, hearing very clearly the voices on the patio outside. Somewhere down there, I heard a man speak in a broad, working-class English accent; his voice had a familiar, midrange tenor timbre. My heart started to race. I knew the reaction was irrational and physiological — he was gone, gone for good — but knowing this just increased the pain, adding a heavy ache in my chest to accompany the sharp ache in my head. I listened to the man’s voice, and tried to relax into the pain, “becoming the pain,” as the Buddhists would say, eventually losing consciousness for the better part of an hour.

Later, when I managed to wander down to the desk in my medicated haze, I asked about towels, showers, and the outlets. Yes, towels were rentals. They seemed affronted by my fairly neutral shower question, and addressed me with a tone of condescension. “This is how it is in hostels in Italy!” I begged to differ, telling them about the Rome YWCA. They had never heard of it. You want your own shower, the impatient gray-haired woman said, thoroughly misunderstanding me, with a you-spoiled-high-maintenance-American-princess tone of voice, you get a single. They were none too happy about my asking to recharge my laptop behind the desk, either, although they hadn’t known about the outlets in that room, so I actually did them a favor.

Exploring the hostel for myself, I found that there were six bathrooms total (one shower and one toilet in each), two per floor, for 140 people. (Does that sound reasonable to you?) I determined to get up at six the next morning to beat the rush.

It was six-thirty PM and I was feeling weak, having eaten only a foccacia on the train. I found ZaZa’s after a short walk, and Osteria Pepo next door, but the latter opened at seven, and I just couldn’t wait. I sat outside on ZaZa’s pretty terrace facing the piazza, but the experience was lost on my achy, druggy self. I remember eating seafood pasta (it seemed a good time to indulge, for once) and yet another subpar salad.

While I was waiting for my food, a black man driving a silver sedan got himself stuck between parked cars (they really were too close together) in the piazza intersection. Everyone behind him started honking angrily, and the onlookers on the piazza started laughing at him. Feeling surrounded by hostility myself, I squirmed for the man, who doubtless already had to suffer innumerable difficulties due to having dark skin in this white country, and now was the glaring focus of so much public ire and ridicule. I thought, things could definitely be much worse for me. (He finally managed to back up, and maneuver between the parked cars.)

The waitress brought my pasta. It was full of shrimp. The waiter at the wine bar next door called to the hostess: “Gina!”

Bleary-eyed, fighting back tears, I thought to myself: Florence blows, man.

What was it, exactly? It was that feeling of being vulnerable and unmoored, in an (at best) indifferent and (at worst) hostile world. Alienation: that sense of being alone, misunderstood, and cared for by no one. In other words, how many Western men, like a certain Anglo I know, experience life on a daily basis. What was it I told him that night in the kitchen? “I can’t explain it,” I said. “I just have so much love for people.” My sense of connection, so it would seem, originated within me. Where had it gone?

Well, first things first. I was feeling like a sick, abandoned child. Some grownup part of me was going to have to advocate for the helpless part. WWED? What Would (my grandmother) Ella Do? I asked myself. I was in Italy thanks to her, and she certainly wouldn’t want me to be feeling so ill and miserable. What would she tell me?

You go and spend some more of that money, dearie, came the answer. It’s ALL RIGHT. Pay whatever you have to. This ain’t worth the savings.

I returned to the Ostello and asked the unsmiling clerk about paying extra for a private room. I even tried to explain that I wasn’t feeling well. He looked at me as if I were telling him some bullshit tale of woe, and said that there weren’t any. Eager to be rid of me, he said I could tell him tomorrow morning if I found somewhere else to stay my second night.

I went up to the (still empty) dorm to burst briefly into hot tears of weariness, pain, and humiliation, and then, with renewed resolve (Archi Rossi can kiss my spoiled American princess ass!!!), went outside and wandered up and down the street, inquiring with hotels and hostels. I found a tiny third-floor hostel for women called Hotel Paula that looked lovely, painted in coral tones, but unfortunately it was full. Around the corner from the Ostello, the small air-conditioned Hotel Vasari had a double available for 100 Euro. The quiet front desk clerk was deferential and kind-eyed; his manner made me want to hug him. I reserved the room with my credit card and immediately felt a hundred kilos lighter.

There now, said Ella. Isn’t that better.

When I got back to Archi Rossi, I met Werner and Sita, young Toronto-ites, in the room, which (yet another surprise) was unisex. I told them my whole Ostello story, and they were not only sympathetic, but also grateful to get the information about the towels, the outlets, and the sucky bathroom situation. At least my troubles benefited someone. They were more than happy to let me have the ladder hanging from Werner’s upper bunk, as he could climb up without it. How good it was to see and to talk to these friendly young Canadians after dealing with the unfriendly staff! They went out, and I went to bed early in a still-empty room.

In the morning I felt much better, like a human being again. I showered (with lightning speed) at seven, packed and locked up my luggage, and took advantage of the hostel’s included breakfast and Internet (booking my Milan hotel) before heading out to the Duomo.

Brunelleschi’s famous dome, that is, topping the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Del Fiore. The Cathedral is huge, and an amazing sight to see, looking, with its green marble stripes, like it was made out of very dusty peppermint candy. It’s almost too flashy, outside, to be a Catholic church; it should by all rights be a mosque. The top of the dome is the highest point in the city of Florence, and you can reach it by climbing at least as many stairs as are inside the Statue of Liberty. I paid the six Euro for this particular torture, seeing as it was early in the morning and there was no line.

Speaking of torture, there are frescoes inside the dome that depict the torments of hell, in true Christian doomsday fashion. These paintings are almost kinky…they belong to that genre of religious art that seems downright salacious in its voyeuristic violence. Christian porn, more or less. Grinning devil-men with horns and tails skewer naked humans with pitchforks; one unfortunate man seems to be getting a flaming torch in the ass. Such visceral physicality the artist envisioned for an essentially spiritual punishment! The grotesque, graphic images of the destruction of the flesh made me wince. Is it any wonder so many people hate religion?

From the top of the dome — if you make it — you can see all of Florence, and the mountains beyond.  It was quite a panorama to behold, but unfortunately I had to descend soon after my triumphant arrival in order to make check-out time at Archi Rossi.

I got back before eleven to retrieve my belongings, and spent an hour and a half in the cafe across the street from the hostel, sipping a cappuccino and writing. I wheeled my suitcase around the corner to the hotel at half-past noon, but my room still wasn’t ready. The paternal white-haired man at the front desk showed me where to stow my luggage in the meantime. Bless the Hotel Vasari. God bless them, every one.

Now it was time for lunch. I headed for Trattoria Mario, on the same piazza as ZaZa, a lunch joint Let’s Go cited as having a rabid following among Florentines.

It was crowded and raucous, an Italian greasy spoon, and I was told to sit at a table with three strangers. Allora (so)! I did. They were all Italiani, two men and one woman. The studious-looking, bespectacled man and the pretty brunette woman were together; the good-looking green-eyed man with the shiny, wavy black hair who smiled broadly at me was obviously a regular. He knew the waitstaff, and kept talking to the men at the next table. I told the cute shorn-headed waiter (he looked like Andre Agassi) “Non mangio la carne,” and he brought me a bread and vegetable soup.

It was only room temperature — appropriate, I suppose, on such a blistering day — but it was the best thing I’d had in days. Hearty and deliciously seasoned, it possessed the perfect balance of flavors — not too salty, sweetened by the bread. I ordered an insalata verde, too, and I got a plate of crispy dark greens with radiccio in a simple but tasty olive oil dressing. Bravo, Trattoria Mario!  Write that one down, folks.

The green-eyed hunk kept glancing at me while he and the others talked, and I finally said to him, “Non capisco niente. Non parlo l’Italiano molto bene.” (I understand nothing. I don’t speak Italian very well.) He laughed uproariously (had I actually fooled him with my ordering?), and asked where I was from. I told him, and he explained things to the others. Everyone introduced themselves, but I can’t for the life of me remember their names. Still, I loved the whole noisy, elbow-rubbing, familial feel of it all. What I told James is true. It’s the gente, man. Il popolo. You can be connected regardless of lingua.

From the trattoria I went straight to Accademia, the museum housing Michelangelo’s David. The slowly creeping line stretched around the block, and for once I joined an endless queue of sweaty tourists. If I was going to get into only one museum in Florence, it was going to be Accademia. What other sight in Italy was more up my alley than the great master’s timeless monument to male beauty??!

Behind me, I heard Spanish being spoken. Thrilled to hear a language other than English that I understood, I turned around. “De donde van Ustedes?” (Where are you from?) The three twentysomethings were from Mexico: Ana, Michaela, y Jose. Ana was a raven-haired beauty with a pierced nose; Michaela was cute, lively, and petite, with glasses like mine; and Jose was a stocky jokester with an interesting birthmark on his right temple. He gave me sips of their McDonalds Coke, and the four of us braved the unforgiving, humid heat together for an hour and a half.  Jose knew English, and Ana asked me a lot of questions in simple Spanish. I also chatted intermittently with the affable middle-aged Australian man in front of me. Time flies, or speeds up, anyway, when you’re in good company.

Finally we were in. Upon entering the museo, I was greeted by the spiral of the three figures in The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Giambologna: an older, defeated protector on the bottom, overcome by a younger, stronger man in the middle who is carrying away the gaping woman at the top. It’s necessary to walk all the way around for full effect. In the next room are Michaelangelo’s slave sculptures, appropriately still imprisoned in their stone, and his similarly imprisoned Saint Matthew.

The plaque by this last sculpture called attention to the strain of the figure in opposite directions, denoting the opposition between the temporal and the eternal, between the flesh and the spirit, the ongoing dualistic war within a man. Well, I thought. There you grand old Western patriarchs go again! Who decided we needed a war? What’s so compelling or unavoidable about splitting yourself in two?

Then there was the domed, high-ceilinged room at the end, where David towered in all his naked glory. It was necessary to walk all the way around him also, just to behold his three-dimensional perfection. Such attentive care was given to depicting the musculature of his chest and belly, his thighs, his back, the veins in his hands, the curve of his buttocks. Has anyone ever accused Michaelangelo of being queer? It seems to me (but you know how I am!) that one would have to love the male body to create such an appreciative tribute.

Beneath a discreet, sleeping member, his balls are plump, perfect globes. It’s amazing to me that after all these centuries David has managed to hang onto the entirety of his manhood. So many other statues, including the men grappling beneath the Sabine woman, have been emasculated by the ravages of time. A stone hurled during a riot in 1873 broke David’s wrist in two places, but otherwise he’s managed to survive, magnificently intact, with all delicate extremities precisely as they were created.

After staring at David for a while, I looked around the rest of the museum — it was mostly church triptychs and commissioned paintings dating back to the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. There were many madonnas with child, as well as assorted crucifixes, apostles and saints. Daddis and Gaddis and Peruginos. That these things have survived is impressive, but I’m not a huge fan of Christian art.

From there I went south, to the Bargello, a less touristy museum that houses sculptures by Donatello, but it was closed for the day. So I headed for the river and the Uffizi, home of Botticelli’s Venus, as well as works by Fra Angelico, Da Vinci, and Caravaggio. Alas, there was a daunting line, so I wandered the little plaza between the two branches of the building, which was a combination of buskerfest and art bazaar. Living “statues” posed for photographs with tourists, and artists lined the thoroughfare selling their original art. I bought a small original for the wonderful woman who covered nearly all of my work shifts from an inobtrusive artist who resembled Stephen Rea. (He struck me as having a better eye than some of his fellows, whose attempts at realism or impressionism tended to be between generic and cheesy.) I was sorry when the police chased off a group of youngsters who looked like our anarchist kids at home — they had illegally put down a blanket to hawk their stone and bead necklaces, and I had wanted to scope out their wares.

I had a quick look around the courtyard of the medieval Palazzo Vecchio next door, with its 15th century frescoes, and checked out the cluster of statues outside, including a smaller copy of the David and an attempt at Neptune by the student Ammannato which Michelangelo had historically slammed. (The Florentines apparently call it “Il Biancone” in derision, or “The Big White One.”) Across from the Palazzo, facing onto the Piazza Della Signoria (a wide-open and truly lovely piazza), is the stone stage Loggia dei Lanzi where some actual treasures are on open display, such as Cellini’s Perseus holding the head of Medusa. No tickets, no waiting.

From there I walked back through the plaza to the Arno river, to check out the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence, which was built in 1345. These days it’s a tourist mecca of boutiques and jewelry shops, but it still maintains much of its ancient charm, and the view from the east side of the bridge is a postcard.

But now it was gelato time. I headed back toward the Bargello to find Vivoli, which Let’s Go says is a long-standing contender for the best gelato in Italy. With a little bit of wandering I found it — it’s so easy to get turned around in those skinny cobblestone streets — and discovered a creme caramel flavor that beat out even the chocolate mousse.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped in at Florence’s smaller Santa Maria Maggiore church. Like so many buildings in the city, it had undergone many incarnations.There were still faded paintings on the original pillars that dated back to the 14th or 15th century, and then there were the Renaissance and post-Renaissance religious paintings on the walls, and then there were the modern touches at the altars. At the altar along the left wall, candles were burning for the dead, and I gave my 30 cents to light a candle for Ella. I thought of how she had made all of this possible for me, the good, the bad, the ugly — and the beautiful. Thank you, Ella, I thought, for my Italian aventura. I was quickly choked up with emotion and with gratitude and with missing her, the plucky little farm woman from Pennsylvania.

Arriving back at the Hotel Vasari, I discovered my double room to be minimalist, but bright and clean, with a gleaming toilet, bidet, and shower all my own. There was even a hair dryer. I nearly fell on my knees and wept with gratitude, but instead I stripped off every stitch of my sweat-soaked clothing and proceeded to unpack every single item from my suitcase and backpack. I plugged in my laptop, and threw out all the random bits of paper and receipts I had accumulated, along with used-up toiletries and my grungy box of soap. I re-folded all of my clean clothes. Then I took a long sandblast of a shower, after which I dried my hair and applied makeup, two things I hadn’t done in a very long time. When I walked out into the evening I felt regenerated, and more attractive than I’d felt since leaving the States. Three young Italian men passing by on Faenza seemed to concur.

I went straight to Osteria Pepo. Stepping inside, I found a warmly lamp-lit, classy interior with wine bottles lining the back bar, and was greeted — much like at Arancia Blu — with a gratis glass of sparkling wine. They had me at hello.

The crostini I ordered were superb — one topped with Tuscan white beans, another with a zucchini pate, another with a classic fresh tomato sauce. The liver one I didn’t eat, for obvious reasons. And it was here, at last, that I got the good gnocci, swimming in tomatoes and fresh melted mozzarella. (I finished with a cappuccino and tiramisu, which was good, but not oh-sweet-Lord-in-heaven good, which tiramisu really should be.)

I went back to my room to write for a while, and heard the shouts and cheers begin when Italy defeated Germany in the latest football match. Long after I’d gone to bed, the honking and the yelling and the screeching tires continued.