Articles by: Marc edward Dipaolo

  • Op-Eds

    What Do College Professors Do, Anyway?


    Introduction

    I joined this college as an Assistant Professor of Communications this fall with a PhD in English, a background in journalism, and five years of experience teaching undergraduate literature and writing courses in New York and New Jersey. Since I was one of eight new faculty hires, I was able to make fast friends with several of my fellow neophytes, and the faculty, staff, and administrators were all welcoming and eager to “show me the ropes.” While I still have much to learn about campus culture and my responsibilities as a faculty member, I felt that my first semester went surprisingly smoothly. Aside from teaching a four-course load that included computer science, journalism, and mass media classes, my main responsibility was to assume the position of faculty advisor to the student newspaper. My student staff and I produced four issues on a monthly basis, which generated some constructive criticism and several positive reviews. I also attended a number of faculty workshops throughout the semester that helped me refine my teaching methods and improve my knowledge of computer science. In addition, I was fortunate enough to see my first book published by Pearson/Longman during this past term – a literary anthology and freshman composition textbook called The Conscious Reader (I became a full-fledged editor with this 10th edition). Next semester I hope to teach my students more challenging material and organize on- and off-campus events to improve my service to the college and to the community.

    Teaching Effectiveness

    While one of my courses this past semester, New Media, was comprised primarily of upperclassmen, the rest were essentially dominated by freshmen. As one might expect, the seasoned students, several of whom were majors, were remarkably easy to teach. They had a desire to learn and a solid work ethic. In fact, in certain cases I was pleased to have the opportunity to mentor students who wished to find rewarding internships and to go on to earn graduate degrees in their fields. When I have a strong rapport with students – as I did throughout the semester with the New Media class and frequently with my Writing for the Media section – I am able to lead the kind of low-key, discussion-centered lesson that my department chair correctly described as “Columbo”-like in her evaluation. When students are more reserved and less apt to respond to that teaching style, I am often compelled to revert to more of a lecture-style lesson, which is not a teaching style I prefer.


    The freshmen, especially those in Composition and Research, proved rather difficult to engage. It was a challenge keeping them interested in the lectures, enforcing classroom discipline, and assigning writing assignments to them when they had no real experience composing long essays and journalistic pieces. In an attempt to help these new students acclimate to life at the college, I proceeded at a deliberate pace through the curriculum, and provided extensive, walk-through directions for each of the assignments. Although a few of the students appreciated the “hand-holding” that I was doing, I found myself regretting the slow pace that I had set for my classes by mid-semester. In fact, several of the more advanced students complained that the material was not challenging enough and classes were not tightly structured. The six students that I had for upwards of three classes seemed particularly frustrated.


    Attempting to improve my ability to teach and mentor members of the “Millennial Generation,” I went to several conferences and workshops throughout the semester designed to help teachers improve student literacy, writing ability, and research skills. I attended Dr. Carole Wells’ presentation on “The Faculty’s Role in Student Research,” Toby Fulwiler’s “Writing to Learn/Learning to Write” local presentation, an end-of-term meeting of Composition and Research teachers led by the department chair, and The Alvernia Faculty Academy at Stirling in which discussion of student (il)literacy took center stage. Dr. Wells’ lecture helped me craft lessons that would improve students’ understanding of research methodologies and the importance of developing solid working thesis statements. The end-of-term department meeting suggested new strategies for encouraging students to use reliable sources and avoid plagiarism. I was particularly struck, though, by the ingenuity of Fulwiler’s presentation, which encouraged me to revamp my Composition and Research section in mid-semester, transforming it from a primarily discussion-oriented class to a workshop in which in-class writing was emphasized during each lesson. As I had hoped, several of the students responded to the workshop format, and their writing improved noticeably in quality. However, a few students were unused to doing so much writing with pen and paper and suggested that they would be more comfortable and more productive working with a keyboard. Since I intend to craft my next two sections of Composition and Research to be just as writing intensive, I have asked the registrar to grant me the use of a computer-filled classroom next semester in order to better accommodate the needs of such students.


    While Fulwiler’s method is particularly effective in making students more comfortable writing and in fostering stronger work habits, his textbook-free approach is limiting because it allows students to write primarily from their own personal experience and draw upon their love of popular culture. During the Alvernia Faculty Academy at Stirling, professors from both Divisions expressed the importance of improving students’ reading and critical thinking skills by assigning them more challenging readings and more historically significant texts. So my goal for the coming term is to keep my composition students writing a lot in class while doing extensive, difficult reading at home. The sacrifice of lecture time may well doom the project from the outset, but I am eager to see how many students are able to rise to the occasion when I raise my expectation level instead of watering down my curriculum to make it more “accessible.”


    In addition to attending conferences on student literacy, I strove to improve my use of computer technology as a pedagogical tool. I attended The Conference for Adobe Photoshop Users (a CompuMaster Seminar) as well as a series of workshops on Dreamweaver, Web CT, and Excel hosted by out IT staff. These courses will help me further integrate technology into my lessons and develop strategies to improve students’ ability to gather reliable information from internet sources.

    Addendum: I’ve just read my 2005 Student Feedback Forms and I think that they offer a fair evaluation of my classes this semester. Since it was my first semester at this college, and my first time teaching these courses, the term was as much a learning process for me as it was for them. Several students criticized an inefficient use of class time, cited unclear assignment parameters, and were put off by deviations from the syllabus. I am also unsurprised that my more conscientious students were irritated with me for being too lenient with disciplining and penalizing underachievers. All told, I was already aware of several of these problems, and anticipated these criticisms. I’ve already taken steps to offer more challenging material, more tightly structured lessons, and to enforce higher academic standards. However, I am particularly pleased with two recurring themes in my feedback forms. I was a little worried that my teaching style was a bit too “autobiographical,” and that I used too many personal anecdotes about my experiences as a reporter to teach journalism. However, my students seemed very positive on that score, and said that my stories were entertaining and informative, so I will not shelve my personal narratives after all. I was also very happy to see that my efforts to give lots of one-on-one attention to my composition students met with strong approval. Since this is my plan for the coming semester, it suggests that I am on the right track. (So, thankfully, it seems that my composition class may have been more successful than I realized.)


    Overall, I feel that I have learned a lot from my first semester teaching at Alvernia, and I am eager to do a much better job during my second semester.

    Advising and Service to Students

    As a faculty advisor to the student newspaper, I participated in every step of putting together each of the four issues of the paper published this past semester (Vol. 15, Issue 1; Vol. 15, Issue 2; Vol. 15, Issue 3, and Vol. 15, Issue 4). I began the production cycle of each issue by meeting with student editors to determine what stories “needed” to be covered. Then I approached my Journalism Workshop students and our freelance photographer with assignments, and allowed many reporters to select their own stories. I also worked with the president to create a monthly column. To make the paper even more “literate” and more “Catholic,” I created two new regular features, the Monthly Mission Moment and Poetry Corner, and my staff and I chose selections for these features while waiting for articles to be submitted. Once the stories came in, the student editors and I proofread them to improve content, grammar, and spelling. Then we decided on the two lead stories and the general layout of the paper. After the issue was laid out using the program InDesign, it was transformed into an Adobe Acrobat file, burned into a CD, and sent to our printer. The issue would arrive a week later, and I distributed it throughout the campus, sometimes single-handedly, sometimes with the help of students or staff members.


    I had a few problems getting used to organizing the paper. Sometimes students would hand in articles late, or not at all; other times editors fell ill or had major exams and were effectively unable to contribute much during the week we were in full production. However, I felt that I had a strong team of editors overall and my student reporters frequently surprised me with the high quality of the work they submitted. Our biggest obstacle throughout the semester has been in obtaining keys to the office from public safety for the editors and myself. After a few months of waiting, my editors are now all equipped with keys and I have been told that my key should be arriving shortly. Another disappointment has been that the press’ color printer has malfunctioned, so the issues this semester were all entirely in black-and-white, save for some red “spot coloring” on the cover logo.


    My last major contribution as an advisor to students was to organize the creation of an Internship database for communications careers. I asked each of my students in Writing for the Media to go on an “Internship Treasure Hunt,” and send me information on whatever they found. I then compiled the information, placed an electronic version on the T: drive, and printed out a booklet of internships for those who were too “Luddite” by nature to use the T: drive.

    Scholarly Research and Creative Work

    The tenth edition of The Conscious Reader (an anthology of literature, poetry, drama, and non-fiction prose designed for first-year writing students) was published in November of 2005. This was the first time I was presented as a full-fledged editor of TCR and my name appeared on the cover. In the two previous editions I was either thanked in the Acknowledgements or listed as an “editorial assistant” on the inside cover. For this edition, I was responsible for choosing many of the new selections, wrote the biographical head notes for the authors, and contributed classroom discussion questions to accompany the new texts. I also wrote the index, rearranged the order of the “returning” selections, improved the glossary, chose several pieces of artwork, and created a new section called “Globalism, Nationalism, and Cultural Identity” to give the book a more current feel. I was also responsible for revamping the Popular Culture section, and provided new texts on blogs, reality television, fast food, Harry Potter, and politically slanted talk radio programs. I also suggested including a short story by Sherman Alexie, rap lyrics, and a shooting script for the British television show The Office, but these ideas were not approved, so such selections do not appear in the book.


    Once my work on The Conscious Reader was complete, I began a quest to get my dissertation published. McFarland and Company turned down the manuscript for being too academic, so I went to the December MLA Convention in Washington, D.C. to make contact with other publishers. The SUNY Press based in Albany, Oxford University Press, and Blackwell all expressed interest in seeing a précis. However, I was surprised to discover that the service that published bound copies of my dissertation for me, ProQuest, began selling downloadable Adobe Acrobat versions of my dissertation on Amazon.com sometime in December. A ProQuest representative reassured me that I retain the rights to my work, and revealed that the company intends to begin selling bound copies through Amazon within the next few months. While I am glad for the exposure (and the promise of royalties), I am worried that the availability of bound versions of my dissertation from ProQuest will harm my ability to get my work published by a more scholarly academic publisher. It is an odd problem, but I will continue to seek publication for The Many Faces of Emma Woodhouse: The Film and Television Adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma as Readings of the Novel.


    While at MLA, I also attempted to sell my idea for an anthology of comic book and essay selections called Comic Books, Super Heroes, and Culture, geared towards freshman writing classes. The guiding principle of the book is that young people are primarily visually oriented and are more interested in discussing popular culture issues than contemporary politics and literature, so they would respond to a book about super heroes dealing with issues of race, gender, war, and technology. The proposed book combines primary sources (comic books from Marvel and DC by Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, etc.) with academic deconstructions of comic books by Umberto Eco, Gloria Steinem, Jonathan Lethem, Harlan Ellison, and others. Pearson and Bedford/St. Martin’s have both turned down the book, but I await responses from

    McGraw-Hill and Blackwell.


    Finally, I presented a paper, “Spider-Man, Authorship, and Adaptation,” at the Comic Arts Conference in the San Diego Convention Center (Room 7B, 10:30 – noon) on Friday, July 15, 2005. The paper was an examination of how the intimacy of various connections between character and storyteller have resulted in Spider-Man’s gradually, over forty years, becoming one of the richest and most complex science-fiction characters in comic books.

    Service to College, Profession, and Community

    In its “criteria for promotion in rank or the granting of tenure” the Department of English and Communication combines the requirements of “Service to the College,” “Service to the Profession,” and “Service to the Community” into one overarching category. The following represents my work in each of the three areas for the Fall 2005 semester:


    During the past two months, I have laid the groundwork for bringing guest speakers to the college next semester, and have begun to organize a free film festival at the Goggle Works. I am also hoping to speak with the music department about the possibility of bringing a classical music ensemble to the school for an evening or weekend concert. All of these events are on track to take place next semester.


    I worked with a fellow communication professor to organize a class trip to the local newspaper and brought my students to see guest speakers from the world of journalism.


    As I understand it, book reviews count as Service to the Profession, and I have contributed several book reviews this semester to CHOICE magazine, which is a periodical designed to help librarians determine which books they should purchase for their libraries. Of the five reviews I wrote, at least two have been published already and the other reviews will be published sometime next semester. My review of “Knox-Shaw, Peter. Jane Austen and the Enlightenment. Cambridge, 2004” appeared in the July 2005 issue of CHOICE. My review of “Dante and the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of Transgression. Wilfred Laurier, 2005” appeared in the December 2005 issue. My as-yet-unpublished reviews were for books called Intimacy in America, Imagining the Internet, and Internet Playground.

  • Life & People

    Interview with Marc DiPaolo


    An Interview with Marc DiPaolo

    By Mary Thacker ([email protected])


    I had been in his office a few times before, so to be seated across the room from Marc DiPaolo, flanked by Spider-Man and Indiana Jones posters on opposing walls, was a familiar scene. This is someone I have questions for, I thought to myself as I balanced my notepad on my leg and wandered down into my bag for the tape recorder. I found it and placed it on the desk, shifting my eyes up to pass over a black t-shirt with yellow chicks that read “Chillin’ With My Peeps.” I immediately laughed and said, “I like your shirt.” Appropriately, it was charmingly paired with a blazer and sneakers, which I think is a trend right now amongst Hollywood, but I doubt he knew

    that. It’s probably better he didn’t.


    A week later I was sitting at a table with DiPaolo’s boss, the head of the department of English and Communications, asking her what it was about DiPaolo that got him the job as Assistant Professor in her department. She cited his many achievements, including his experience as a reporter, which aided in making him an attractive candidate for being what she wanted from teachers in the department: excellent teaching skills, well read literary background, and experience in areas of communications. “He also brings interests and experience in film, media, and popular culture…in particular super heroes.”


    Dr. DiPaolo earned his doctorate in English in 2004, his M.A. in English in 1999, and his B.A. in English in 1997. He specializes in Medieval studies, 18th Century British literature, Gothic fiction, journalism, and Italian literature. If there were to be an area of study for comic books and fantasy writing, Dr. DiPaolo would undoubtedly be the first in line to earn a Ph.D. in that too.


    Before teaching, DiPaolo honed his writing skills as a staff news reporter and also freelanced for New Jersey TechNews and other publications.


    Since adolescence, he has been writing novels, short stories, and essays for pleasure and entertainment as well as academia. It seemed natural for an aspiring journalist to interview someone who was at one time a reporter himself, but that wasn’t the only reason I had chosen DiPaolo. Fall 2006 marks my third semester of taking classes from him, and I had always enjoyed his stories, reporter-related or not, and had questions. The following is classically DiPaolo-wordy, light-hearted, shrewdly entertaining, and euphorically honest. Enjoy.


    What made you want to be a reporter?



    I didn’t know that I wanted to be one. I knew that I liked to write, and I didn’t know what I could do with that talent. When I was growing up, everyone knew exactly what they wanted to do. In 5th grade everyone in the class wanted to be a dentist or a brain surgeon and I said, “Well I like to write and draw” and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with those hobbies. Mom was very practical, and she said, “Well, I know you’re writing novels and short stories and you have no agent, so you better become a reporter.” And I was like, “I don’t want to be a reporter. They’re all mean and in the movies they’re all bad guys. I have to ask people why they cheat on their wives and why they stole money and I don’t want to do that.” But then I became one and I was very glad I did because I was very lazy, and the deadlines made me work hard and refined my writing. It made me less shy, even though I’m still pretty shy, so I am very glad I became a reporter even though I didn’t want to at first.

    Do you think you fit in with the stereotypical reporter types who are more aggressive?


    I found out that even the aggressive ones are secretly shy. I had said, “I’m shy, I don’t know if I’m cut out to be a reporter.” And all the reporters said, “We’re shy too. We don’t like that people seem to hate us.” So I found I had all my kind of stereotypical notions tested when I became one. You know the idea that all the reporters in the same newsroom have the same politics? I don’t think that’s true.

    What was it that drew you to teaching then?


    When I was working as a reporter I was taking Sunday Masters degree classes in English, and I realized I was having more fun in the classroom than I was on the reporter beat. Even though I liked reporting – it was fun seeing my name in the newspaper and I felt like I was finally finding out how society worked – I just really liked being in the classroom because I felt like we were talking about real issues, about what motivates people, and what are the problems in society, and how we might all get along with each other. Meanwhile, I felt like the articles I wrote were just kind of addressing symptoms and not the core of the issues. I also felt like, as a teacher, I could sense what my words were doing. If I could see students in the classroom, and I could have a real sense of if I was helping or hurting people. But, as a reporter, if I just blow a story out there I have no idea what effect it has, if I’m doing good or bad. So I like the smaller scale and the deeper discussions involved in teaching.

    Do you intend on remaining a teacher or do you have other career plans?


    I like being a teacher; I think I’d like to stay one. I guess everyone who works in English or communications wants to have that great best seller. All the journalists want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein, and all the English teachers want to be the next Updike or Atwood. In my spare time I try to write autobiographical fiction or essays and see what happens. But I enjoy teaching.

    What is your favorite thing about teaching?


    I like to get to know students. There are always the students who are forced to take the class because it’s a part of their core graduation requirements and they don’t want to be there. But every semester there are at least four or five students who really seem to be responding. More than that probably respond, but there are four or five who make it clear that you’re teaching them something, and they’re teaching you something. These are the students I get to know well, and I love that. That kind of connection is especially important to me since a lot of my interests are introverted: reading and writing and other in-the-house kind of stuff. The social aspects of being a journalism teacher are really important to me, especially getting me out of my shell. I try to learn things from my students whenever I can. What have you been doing lately? What’s the newest thing that I’m not up on because I’m out of it and I don’t have cable? Then they're nice enough to tell me about how much they like Saw or Dane Cook and I check out Saw and Dane Cook and feel really guilty when I don't like them that much. But I try...

    It’s interesting that you’re so involved and passionate about fiction writing, yet made a career in something very realistic like journalism. Is there a connection between the two?


    Definitely. Fiction is still a way of trying to make true observations about the world, even if the story itself isn’t technically true. Even if the story has dragons, or some obvious otherworldly element, the writer is still trying to reveal a personal insight or a truth about life and people and dreams.


    In general, I’m not sure what is harder, writing a gritty, realistic story, or writing a fantastic, fictional story. I will admit, I used to be afraid of writing non-fiction, and the reporter job gave me the courage to write more realistic stories. When I was a kid I didn’t feel like I knew people well enough to write realistic stories, so I hid behind fantasy stories. If I didn’t understand something from the adult world - like the tax code or prejudice or something – I’d set my story in a fantasy world without those confusing elements – a world without taxes or racial tensions – and that solved that. Now that I know more about people and the real world, I feel I can write about these issues. But I haven’t outgrown fantasy. I like watching movies like Spider-Man, which are escapist, and movies like Junebug, which are realistic dramas. I also like writing horror stories and human dramas.


    Actually, I feel like I owe a debt to fantasy stories like the Hobbit or the works of Poe because they got me interested in reading in the first place. They were fun. And I’m still interested in fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Now I enjoy looking back and trying to figure out how they appealed to me back then and why I’m still interested in them now. My dissertation advisor, Dr. Michaels, is irritated with me that I still like science fiction and comic books. I understand why. After all, I’ve read Paradise Lost…and I still read Spider-Man! Why didn’t I leave Spider-Man behind? It is actually a question I’m trying to answer in some of the essays I’m writing: what is it in these kinds of simple guys-in-masks-beating-each-other-up stories that I still like? The uncharitable answer, from feminist literary criticism or movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, is that I’m still a big kid, but I think there’s more to it than arrested development

    Did you ever get to write personality profiles?


    Editors start you off with obituaries and that’s kind of profile-like but they’re very boilerplate and very much the same from obituary to obituary, but I became very good at sneaking in fun facts and making the tributes more interesting. After a while, whenever there was any kind of profile to be done they’d assign me to it, but I had such narrow interests when I was younger that I didn’t know half of the famous people they asked me to interview until after I interviewed them. When they said “We want you to interview Bobby Thompson, the man who hit the most famous homerun in baseball history, ‘The shot heard ‘round the world,’” I was like “I have never heard of him,” because I never gave a damn about sports. But I met him and he was a really sweet guy and I got to interview him. He reminded me a bit of Jimmy Stewart. The sports reporters were mad I got that gig because they knew I couldn’t really appreciate the full magnitude of meeting the guy. But I was glad I got the story and that I met him. And I know have a story to tell my friends whenever sports comes up as a topic.


    When the editors found out that Elvira, Mistress of the Dark was coming to town - she’s a horror film icon associated with Halloween - they figured “we gotta get Marc to talk to her!” because they knew I’m a horror fan. But to me horror is so … natural?... that I didn’t think to ask her a question that any reporter who was not a horror fan would ask her. When I went back to the newsroom, the editor asked, “what did she say when you asked her about the weird connection she makes with sex and death?” and I said “I didn’t ask her that.” The editor couldn’t believe it. “Marc, she wears a teddy and lays spread out on tombstones holding skulls to her bosom!” I shrugged. “I never found that particularly strange that she did that.” That was when they realized they’d asked the wrong person to interview her.


    The worst people to interview are politicians up for re-election because all they do is say the same sentence over and over again. Because that’s the one they want in print. And they don’t trust reporters not to quote them out of context. So they speak like talking action figures to avoid accidentally giving reporters ammunition to use against them. So it doesn’t matter what the question is. I say, “How was your day today?” The politician says, “Well, I find it an honor and a privilege to be able to serve the American people as an Assemblyman for New York and I pray to God every day that they will find it in their hearts to re-elect me come the fall.” I say, “What’s your favorite restaurant to eat at?” He says, “Well, I find it an honor and a privilege to be able to serve the American people as an Assemblyman for New York and I pray to God every day that they will find it in their hearts to re-elect me come the fall.” I say, “Are you in favor of cutting taxes or against it?” He says, “Well, I find it an honor and a privilege to be able to serve the American people as an Assemblyman for New York and I pray to God every day that they will find it in their hearts to re-elect me come the fall.” It was terrible.

    Did being a reporter change the way you viewed politicians, or the country?


    I think the thing that really was weird about being a reporter was that I got into all these neighborhoods I never would have gone to if I weren’t a reporter. And I saw how poor people could get and how rich people can get. As I kid, I didn’t understand class distinctions. I thought everyone had a semi-attached house in the suburbs like I did. And you see these terrible rundown buildings in the city that seem to be earmarked for minorities and smatterings of white college students. And then you see these $100-an-appetizer restaurants in New York frequented by Wall Street executives and patrons of the arts, and you think “ah, these are the people running the country.” It was more of an emotional, gradual change than one shocking moment, but it realigned the way I looked at everything, seeing for the first time such stark class differences, and injustices in housing ‘for minorities.’

    What advice do you have for new journalists?


    Find out something that’s important to you, and research it and bring it to the public’s attention. While you’re doing that and covering other stories be professional. Even if you get pressure to be sensationalistic, try to avoid it. The truth is more important than selling papers. And if you get heat from the average person on the street because they think you’re a weasel since you’re a reporter, then just be professional and deal with them the best you can. If you’re yourself and you’re good most people will respond to that and figure out you’re “one of the good ones.” Because I had a manner that people did respond to. I got stories that other reporters didn’t because my interviewees would say, “Well you’re a lot nicer than that last reporter, so I’ll tell you a secret I didn’t tell him.” Being a bulldog doesn’t always work.


    The other thing I think is important in any job you take is to attach yourself to the people who are the most successful on the job, because the new person is always kind of seized upon by the lone wolf or the loser of the office because they’ve already alienated themselves from everyone else, and all they do is fill your head with gossip and bad stories about other people.

    Actually, that's really true.


    Isn't it?

    I've already had that happen to me.


    They go after the new person, because the new person is the only one who will listen to them. Because the newbie doesn't know any better. And, because these bitter veterans hate the job, and they’re losers, they’ll convince you (the newbie) to hate the job, too. You may wind up hating the job, but don’t choose to hate it because some burnout convinces you to. Instead, attach yourself to the victors. They’ll teach you how to really do the job right. And they’ll teach you the right outlook. Although these “Winner” types may not seek you out right away. You may have to prove yourself first before they’ll mentor you and promote you and give you the good stories.

    Time for a big change of topic … what is it like planning a wedding?


    If I had some real money to pay for the wedding it would be a lot of fun, because I have all of these ideas about not having a boring wedding. But boring or not, it still costs more than I got. But the idea of going around and picking out a place to have it, and figuring out who we’re going to invite is a lot of fun. I’m really impatient, so it’s practicality versus eagerness. I’d like to be married tomorrow, because Stacey is so wonderful. But, practically … it’s probably going to be March, or spring, or something.


    I wanna get a suit that makes me look as much like a Jane Austen character as possible. I’m really excited about that. Because at first, the clothes part, I really wasn’t excited about that. But then I saw the Mr. Darcy costume and I was excited about that.


    As for the ceremony. We want that to be special and original, too. I know I told Stacey I didn’t want the same old church readings from the letters of Paul. You know, the one about “love is patient, love is kind” and "I am become as sounding brass.” That stuff is heard way too often. At the same time, I don’t want my wedding to be too trendy or so non-traditional it isn’t recognizable as a wedding. I don’t want it to be too carnival-like. I went to one at the Renaissance Faire and it was a little too cute for me. I said to Stacey, “You know I thought I’d like to get married at a place like the Renaissance Faire, but this seems tacky, somehow.” She agreed and said, “Especially the belly-dancers and the fire-swallower.”

  • Life & People

    Curse of the Scalzo Baby


    They drank too hard, they smoked too hard, and they were far too cynical and hard-bitten to admit it in public, but the reporters harbored a secret fear that their newspaper was cursed.


    They had all heard the story during their first weeks on the staff of The Staten Island Advance, and had initially dismissed it out of hand as a luridly entertaining piece of modern oral folklore. The principal teller of the tale was the prematurely gray environmental columnist Bonnie Redgrave, whose only pleasure working in the newsroom was unearthing every scandal or tragedy that had ever rocked the paper and laying each one bare in hushed, reverential tones to all the new interns and reporters. In fact, one was not considered a bona fide member of the staff until one had already been briefed by Bonnie about who had snorted which drugs, who had screwed who in the elevator, and who had fallen prey to the eternally present curse of the Scalzo baby.


    The curse had its roots in tragedy that had taken place, appropriately enough for the mostly liberal staff of reporters, during the Nixon administration. Legend held that, on December 23, 1973, an old man had a heart attack while driving past Silver Lake Park and plowed through the front gate into a woman pushing a baby carriage. The young mother, Maria Scalzo, took the brunt of the hit trying to protect little Michael, but she was listed in stable condition while the baby had not been expected to live to see the morning. An Advance reporter named Morgan Levinson learned from the police that the child had died that night, and rapidly typed a story for the front-page of the Christmas Eve edition: Car plows through park, kills baby. Three hours after the paper began distribution the following day, Morgan received a furious phone call from the baby’s father, who explained in a tear-strained voice that his child was still alive, but in critical condition. Mortified, Morgan informed the editors and they collectively decided to write a front-page retraction of the story for Christmas Day. Little did they expect that, by the time the new headline, Baby mowed down by car lives, hit the streets, the child would have finally succumbed to its injuries. The next day, the headline read: Car Accident Baby Dies After All.


    Before the sun set the day that headline saw print, Antonio Scalzo strode into the newsroom, his face a gaunt, ruined mask of pain, and locked his hooded, bloodshot eyes on Morgan. “Curse you for what you have done,” he said, his provincial Tuscan accent, which he had failed to shed after ten years in America, adding an eerie weight to his words. He then cast his eyes about the newsroom, taking in the hive of activity, and all the reporters who were too engrossed in their own activities to notice his presence. “And curse you all. May you all live to see your dreams die as horribly as mine have.”


    Before Morgan had the opportunity to apologize again, the anguished man turned his back on the reporter and hastily stalked out. Not widely renowned for his emotional stability, the thrice divorced, alcoholic Morgan suffered a complete nervous breakdown not long afterwards and was committed to the local mental institution by his reluctant son. Unlike cartoon maniacs who need to be dragged away by men in white coats, Morgan went placidly, proclaiming in a steady voice that he had committed an unforgivable sin in his carelessness and offered the vain hope that the walls of the institution might protect him from the visions of the dead baby that haunted his dreams.


    Carmela Bellavita burst out laughing, making a feeble attempt to stifle the guffaw with her beautifully manicured hands after several nearby reporters cast annoyed glances in her direction. When she had recovered her composure, the novice journalist noticed that Bonnie Redgrave was scowling, looking as gaunt and disconsolate as the bereaved Mister Scalzo from her story. “It isn’t funny. The baby died, you know.”


    Carmela sighed, all mirth exercised from her face. “I know. But that doesn’t make your story about the curse any less silly. It’s vintage and campfire nonsense. And why is the bad guy in these tales always an Italian who can’t speak English pretty good?”


    Bonnie glanced warily over her shoulder to make sure no one was in earshot and then leaned forward until her nose was almost touching Carmela’s. “You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into joining this newspaper. Whether or not the curse is literally true, this paper has an odd black-hole effect. It sucks people in and never lets them out. You should leave while you still can.” She paused; still unaware of how theatrical she sounded, adding ominously. “Unless it’s already too late.”


    I was there, too, standing just off to the side, not wanting to crowd the two women. I was interested enough to listen, but too shy to take active part in the conversation. I was also far enough away to observe the women from a more objective standpoint. At that moment, I suddenly found myself fixated by the lines and wrinkles on Bonnie’s face, which seemed long and deep at this proximity. Although Bonnie was only thirty-two, terrible stress-lines had already branched out of the corners of her mouth, crow’s feet and heavy bags surrounded her eyes, and trench-like wrinkles had dug a jagged path across her brow. Her eternal sneer and frazzled, colorless hair did little to undercut the misconception that she was racing past middle age into her golden years. And yet, underneath all these unnaturally early signs of aging, Bonnie looked remarkably like Carmela. They both had oval faces and olive complexions, shoulder-length hair, voluptuous figures and a penchant for wearing navy-blue pantsuits, only Carmela’s countenance was freshly minted, while the stresses and disappointments of a career in journalism had already scarred Bonnie’s once beautiful face.


    “I’ve been here nine miserable years,” Bonnie continued. “And I’ve been sending resumes out for most of those nine years, applying to publishing companies, schools, offices, public relations firms, and other newspapers. Haven’t gotten a damn offer yet, so here I stay. And I thought this was going to be a stepping-stone to bigger and better opportunities – a job to take for a year or two before moving on to Times.”


    I chimed in. “Well, if you’re that miserable, there’s got to be something. There are jobs out there. I don’t mean to sound flip, but worse comes to worse, there’s always Pizza Hut.”


    “Pizza Hut.” Her tone made me wish I’d stayed safely out of the conversation. “With a husband and three kids. Pizza Hut. You know, this may be a rat trap, but it’s baited with great dental benefits and a 401K plan. You get comfortable here, and you get too scared to leave. That’s why you’ve got to leave before your first year ends and you’re eligible for the 401K plan.”


    Bonnie pointed over Carmela’s shoulder at a fellow who looked even paler and gaunter than Bonnie. He was hunched over an antiquated computer, soullessly typesetting one of the borough president’s blood drive press releases. “See that guy over there? Terry Bond. He actually managed to escape from here for a while, in search of becoming a Hollywood star, he soon found himself jobless and destitute, and had to come back to his original job, a broken man. Black hole.” Then Bonnie went on to point out three other obviously depressed reporters, and regaled Carmela with their failed attempts to escape the journalist’s equivalent of the Roach Motel.


    Carmela looked incredulous. “You’re saying the Scalzo curse did this?”


    “Precisely. If I’d known of the curse beforehand, I’d have never taken this job.”


    As someone who has always secretly hopes that the world was overrun with ghosts and goblins, I was all ready to believe this. Carmela was clearly not. “Well, that’s absurd. For one thing, there’s Sylvia Knoblach. She’s the famous, auburn-haired cable sports reporter, she worked here in the ‘80s, and she’s ok.”


    Fort he first time, Bonnie looked briefly doubtful, wondering if she really was just using the curse as an excuse to justify her life’s failings. Then she resumed her cryptic expression. “No. Something bad is going to happen to that woman. I can sense it.”


    “Who the hell is that?” a gravelly voice demanded, and Carmela turned to see a spindly woman in a baggy sweater staring down at her.


    “This is Carmela Bellavita,” Bonnie explained. “The paper’s latest victim. Carmela, this is our health reporter, Judy Stammers.”


    Carmela offered to shake Judy’s hand but Judy kept her arms folded where they were. “I see our illustrious publisher still hires new talent based on the size of their breasts.”


    Carmela froze.


    “What?!” I cried, taken aback.


    Before either Carmela or I could do or say more in protest, Judy stalked off to photocopy a recipe for leg of lamb.


    “Nobody likes her much,” Bonnie whispered to Carmela.

  • Life & People

    The Great God Debate: 1995


     

    One of the many things that I didn’t like about Dr. Quentin Shepherd was that the professor never stood up when teaching but remained fixed to his desk and lecture his class with a permanent air of casual disdain.  The massive dry-erase board behind him was, as ever, devoid of notes.  A copy of the philosophy hardcover Shepherd had published remained open on his desk at all times.  I had come to class that day with bluebook and ballpoint pen in tow, prepared to take my written final exam.  Then the announcement came.

                “I know this is all a bit sudden,” Shepherd began, his Beatles’ accent stronger than ever, “but the exam will not be written as I had told you before.  There’s been a death in my family, and I intend to leave the country within the next few hours.  This means I won’t have time to mark your test papers and still be fair to all of you.”

                Shepherd did appear distracted to me, as he continued fidgeting with a number two pencil on his desk and tapping the soles of his feet against the gray tile floor.

                “Instead, what I want to do is have a class discussion, like we’ve always had all year.  It’ll be an oral exam testing what you’ve taken away from this class.  I’ll also gauge how much you have improved your abilities to debate an issue philosophically.”

                Uh oh, thought I.  This is not good for me at all.

                When I had first signed up for Medieval Philosophy, I had thought that the course would be about what the old philosophers believed, instead of about what the professor thought of what they believed.  Shepherd never once allowed the students to immerse themselves in the texts and truly experience them intellectually.  Instead, the texts were examined at arm’s distance and were passionlessly torn to shreds by Shepherd himself.  By the end of the semester, I could safely say I’d learned nothing about philosophers such as Boethius and Aquinas other than that Shepherd thought they were morons.  Oh, I had read the texts assigned, but I didn’t understand a word of them because Shepherd couldn’t be bothered properly explaining them.

                As I sat there, regretting ever signing up for the course, Shepherd chose to begin the class discussion in the way he had dozens of times before.  “Robin,” Shepherd smiled, once again picking out the prettiest girl in the class to give his attention to.  “Pretend you’re a man.  You’re in a bar on campus and you’re trying to pick up the girl next to you.  The problem is, she says she’s Catholic and says she can’t go to bed with anyone until she’s married.  Now, as a philosopher, how would you handle a situation like this?”

                I almost smiled.  Of course!  Brilliant!  Why talk about
    Saint Augustine during a medieval philosophy final when you can talk about bars instead?

                Robin Haiduc began her answer without a pause.  “Well, Quentin, in order to fight a belief like that, you have to go to the root of the problem – find out what her conception of God is, why it causes her to abstain from sex and attack that conception.”

                “Very good.  How?”

                Robin inclined her head thoughtfully.  “I’d point out that we had no idea what God wishes because he never speaks to us.  For all we know, he approves of sex outside of marriage.”

                “What if she said that Jesus is God?”

                “I’d say that God is supposed to be an eternal being.  As such, he cannot be born and he cannot die.  Jesus was a man.”

                “The typical Catholic response here would be, Jesus was God and man.”

                “That statement is unintelligible,” shot back Robin.  “It has no meaning.  He is either one or the other.  You can’t have it both ways.”

                Shepherd looked insufferably pleased that everything he had said during the course of the semester was being repeated back to him verbatim.  “If she’s a good Catholic school girl, she may be intelligent enough to challenge this by saying Jesus was an aspect of God that was infused into a human mother.  When his body died, his divine essence returned to the eternal God and lived on.”

                “How can an eternal being interact with temporal life?” Robin asked archly.  “The two planes of existence are entirely separate and cannot interact.  And that’s only if you accept the possibility that, as Plato suggests, that there is a realm of the Eternal.  In our experience, everything dies.  Belief in the immortality of anything, be it animal life, or a human soul, or an eternal God is implausible in itself.  I mean, can you picture what an eternal being looks like?  What would the Eternal Realm look like?  How can one exist outside of time and space?”

                I scowled.  I wasn’t about to argue the agnostic view just to get a good grade.  I’d feel as if I were betraying my religion.  Still, the moment I offered a contrary view, Shepherd would go after him with both barrels.  Shepherd was a philosophy Ph.D. with decades of sophist training and I was an English major who was flustered easily during classroom debates.  It wasn’t a fair contest.

                “Marc,” Shepherd said, and I almost jumped from my chair.  “You look tense.  Are you ready to go next?”

                I shifted in my seat.  Let’s get this fucker over with, I thought.  “Yes.”

                Shepherd leaned back in his chair.  “Tell me what you think of God.”

                “Do you want my personal opinion?” I asked.

                “I want your opinion as a student in a philosophy class.”

                “Can I use an analogy to start off?”

                “If you must.”

                “I write novels,” I began.  “None of them are published, but I’ve written two for my own personal enjoyment.”

                Shepherd raised his eyebrows in confusion.  “And?”

                “You see, writing is the closest I can come to playing God.  I am the God of the universe I create in my novels.”

                Shepherd seemed interested at last.  “Go on.”

                “Before I begin work on a novel, I flesh out the personalities of the characters involved,” I explained.  “I assign them strengths and weaknesses and I build vague plot outlines around them.  Yet every time I start writing, I find that sometimes the characters that I’m writing about develop a life of their own and take control of the story away from me.  Do you understand?”

                “No.”

                I felt the eyes of everyone in the class on me.  I wanted to explain my point as quickly as possible and then be quiet and invisible again.  “If I create a character that’s inherently brave or generous she has to act that way consistently, even if the plot might move more in the direction I want it to if she suddenly turns cowardly at one point.  But that’s cheating and unrealistic.  I have to respect the character and allow her to take control of her own fate and move the story forward in her own way.  I can create the situation she’s in and nudge her in a particular direction, but she can only go where I want her to go if it’s in her nature to do so.  I generally don’t know exactly what scene I’m going to write next until I know where she wants to go at the end of the current scene I’m working on.”

                I felt myself getting emotional and I didn’t understand why.  Maybe because all eyes were on me.  How many of them were friendly?  How many of them wanted to see me stumble?  Shepherd certainly did.

                “In this situation, I’m the Eternal Being,” I said.  “I’m an outside force interacting with my character’s limited world.  Sometimes I prod her, sometimes I leave her alone, but I love her because I created her, and she doesn’t even know for sure that I exist.  And that’s how I understand God.  That’s how I understand the relationship between an Eternal Being and a Temporal Object.  That’s how I reconcile human Free Will with God’s foreknowledge of events and ability to influence history.”

                I stopped, feeling drained by the explanation.  To my left, a pallid philosophy major with a low forehead nodded in approval.

                Shepherd cleared his throat.  “Well, Mr. Paul.  If you expect to pass this class by reciting that nonsense, then you are sadly mistaken.”

                “I liked it, actually,” volunteered the pallid philosophy major.

                “Good thing you’re not the teacher then, Roger,” Shepherd shot back, silencing any further rebellion.

                I cut in before Shepherd could go on.  “I’ve plenty more to say on the subject.  What were the problems with what I said?  I’ll address each of them as best as I can.”

                Shepherd leaned forward in his chair, looking directly at me.  “I’ve been asking you the same questions all semester and you continue to fail to answer them using proper philosophical arguments or terminology.  How can you say an Eternal Realm exists if you can’t picture it?  How can God exist if you can’t picture him?  If they did exist, wouldn’t we know about it?”

                “All it takes is a little imagination to conjure up images of these concepts,” I said.  “I’ve been watching Doctor Who for years.  They show the Eternal Realm all the time.  It’s a big, white void.  I don’t understand what’s so difficult to understand.”

                Shepherd recoiled.  “’Doctor Who?’  I suppose you think you’re being funny.  ‘A big, white void?’  That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.  You talk about abstractions as if they are concrete – as if I have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.  How can I visualize a void?  Why is it white?  Is any of this intelligible at all?”

                “We’re discussing concepts that are at the edge of human understanding,” I admitted.  “It all seems like hocus pocus now, but it might not in a few decades.  If we don’t imagine in our minds the possibility of an Eternal Realm, we can never investigate with science whether or not it exists.

                “It is like Professor Meizel, the astronomy guy told me.  Scientists didn’t know that neutrinos existed until a few years ago.  But the picture they had of space was missing a puzzle piece, so they posited the possible existence of neutrinos, went looking for them, and then found them.  But if they hadn’t posited the existence of neutrinos first, using intelligence and the imagination, they would have never found the neutrinos.  Maybe God is a neutrino.”

                “God is a neutrino?”

                “Maybe.”

                “Are aliens neutrinos, too?”

                “Maybe.  And maybe time travel is a neutrino, too.”

                Pushed to the limit of his patience, Shepherd finally stood.  “All I’m doing here is questioning the basic tenants of Christianity and demonstrating that none of them hold up to scrutiny.  The intelligent, open-minded person is capable of questioning his own faith.  You refuse to question your faith, so you are neither intelligent, nor open-minded and should not pass this class.”

                “By your method, the open-minded person only sees the bad in all philosophies,” I argued.  “At what point does questioning do more harm than good?  Happiness in his life depends upon people having hope and faith.  You don’t get either of these through only questioning.  The truly open-minded increase their knowledge by taking the good from everything.  You now, I’m tired of religious people telling me to never question and intellectual people telling me never to hope or dream.  They’ve both got it wrong.  You can have it both ways.  You must, or you’re not a whole person.”

                “You’re not a whole person if you allow the Church to think for you,” Shepherd countered.  “People who follow its tenants blindly are sick and need to be cured.”

                “All ideologies can become a sickness if people use them as an excuse not to listen to other points of view or to what their hearts tell them is true,” I countered.  “Catholics aren’t the only zombies.  There are plenty of atheist professors and party-line voters who need to start some serious self-examination before they just assume they have all the answers.”

                “As long as people continue to seek truth in religion or politics, our entire species will never progress beyond where it is now.  The very notion of a universal truth is evil and must be crushed.  You call my worldview bleak, but you, Marc, are the one with the truly bleak view if you think that people aren’t intelligent enough to make up their own truths.”

                “But-“ I began.

                Shepherd held up an impatient hand.  “This conversation is over.  I’m not discussing this anymore with you.  You’ve just earned a C- on your final exam.”

  • Life & People

    The "Martin Scorsese" Syndrome


     

     

                High school lunches are not renowned for their quality, and high school students are famous for making fun of them.  I take food very seriously, so when I ate school lunches, and detested them, I did not have the heart to complain in a funny manner.  However, I did like to laugh at how my friends skewered the food.  The jokes weren’t particularly subtle, but I thought it was funny when people like
    Griffin
    and Smiley would dub the plastic cups of apple juice “urine samples” and the obviously canned lumps of strawberry preserves on toast “jelly ca-cas.”  So we laughed off our disgust with the mass-produced, processed food.

                And then there was the weird pastry with the blue icing that appeared out of nowhere one day.

                “What’s with the blue icing on this desert?”
    Griffin
    asked.  “I’m sorry, but I don’t eat any blue food, unless it is a berry.”

                “Don’t worry,”
    Griffin
    said calmly.  “I’ve seen it before.  Your mom put that blue icing on my penis last night.” 

                Normally, my sympathies were more with
    Griffin
    than Smiley, but I couldn’t help but laugh loudly at that one.  I wasn’t yet used to Smiley’s outrageous humor, and it had not yet become tiresome.  At the time, I was friends mostly with the Irish, German, and Jewish kids in the school, and the Italian-American students, who I had ethnicity in common with, but little else, sat a few tables away.  My estrangement from members of my own cultural background was rooted in a variety of causes, all understandable, but the fact that the situation was understandable did not prevent it from giving me a small, but constant feeling of existential angst and regret.  My occasional, half-baked attempts to reconcile myself to the Italian-American community of
    Susan E. Wagner High School generally did not go well, and on this particular occasion, things went particularly poorly.

                It was during one infamous lunch period that one of the Italian guys, Salvatore Russo, was walking back to his table with a tray of food, staring down at the pastry desert as he walked.  It looked pretty good, except for the fact that the icing was blue.  He called over to his friend Rocco, who was already seated.  “Hey, Rocco!  What’s with this pastry, man?”

                “It’s good, Sal.  Just what a growin’ boy needs.”

                “But what’s that shit they put on it?”

                Overhearing him yell this out, in his angry tone, and thick
    Brooklyn accent, I couldn’t help but laugh.  Unfortunately, Sal heard me laugh at him.  He literally slammed his tray down on the breakfast table and stalked over to my side. “What’s so funny?  What, do I amuse you, or something?  Does something about me amuse you?”

                “Sorry, man,” I said.  “I hate the look of the blue shit, too.  So I’m laughing in agreement.”

                “Oh, you’re laughing in agreement?” Sal asked.  “Is that it?”

                He kept glaring at me.

                “What?”

                “What, what?”

                “I’m asking you if you’re laughing at me, huh?”

                “You were just funny, just then, that’s all,” I offered, feebly.

                “You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it's me, I'm a little fucked up maybe, but I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to fuckin' amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?”

                “I don’t know, man!” I yelled back.  “You were just funny just now, man!”

                “Whaddaya mean by that?”

                “You know what I mean.”

                “No, no, I don't know, you said it. How do I know? You said I'm funny. How the fuck am I funny, what the fuck is so funny about me? Tell me, tell me what's funny!”

                I was very afraid for a long moment.  Then I said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute!”

                “What?”

                “Are you quoting Goodfellas to me?”

                Sal stepped back.  “What?”

                My friends around me, who had been shrinking in their seats up until this point, not wanting to get involved or cause a rumble between the multiethnic table and the Italian table, suddenly sat upright in their seats.

                “He is quoting Goodfellas!” David Litvinov laughed.  “He is!”

                Sal looked more confused than caught out, as if he had unintentionally quoted the scene verbatim.  “I’m not quoting nobody,” he insisted.

                “You’re quoting Joe Pesci,” I said.  “Are we playing a scene here?”

                “No, I’m serious, man.  I’m mad at you,” Sal insisted.

                “I tell you what,” I said, “if you want to frighten me and threaten me, go back and write your own speech.  Don’t bite off Martin Scorsese.”

                “I’m not biting off nobody.”

                “Dude,” I said, “go write your own dialogue, then we’ll throw down, alright?”

                I was cocky there, but my friends were there laughing with me, so I was safe.  He sat back down and said nothing of it to his friends, not even to explain to them why we laughed off his threats.  They hadn’t heard the exchange, so they didn’t know how much like an idiot Sal had made himself look.

                Of course, Sal was not the only tough who got most of his “dialogue” from Scorsese movies.  I doubt things have changed much since, but during my teenage years, in the 1990s, gangster movies were like a religion to Staten Island Italians.  Scorsese may have tapped into a really accurate portrayal of what Italians had been like during the 1960s and 1970s, but the modern-day, middle-class Italians had lost their edge and strove to regain the toughness of their parents and grandparents by doing impersonations of characters from gangster films.  It was really annoying.  Some of them were still tough, some were still blue collar, but it was often hard to tell where their real personalities ended and the characters from The Godfather and Saturday Night Fever began.

                Effectively, of all the thousands of movies produced during one hundred years of American cinema, only three counted as must-see viewing on
    Staten IslandThe Godfather, Goodfellas, and Saturday Night Fever.  And they were not only must-see films, but also a way of life to virtually all the Italian kids I knew growing up.  I wasn’t fully aware of the phenomenon until I reached junior high school, when the cult of the gritty celluloid Italian was at its most grotesquely obvious.  It seemed that everywhere I turned in Intermediate School 72, local Italian boys were dressing, talking, and behaving like the characters played by Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, and John Travolta.  I had somehow managed to reach my early teens without ever actually seeing any of these films in their entirety.  From the glimpses I did catch of the movies, they seemed tedious, depressing, and pretentious.  My mother had watched Saturday Night Fever several times when I was growing up, primarily for shots of “the old neighborhood” and the great dance segments, often complaining about how Italians were portrayed in the movie.  She really hated the spaghetti dinner scene, in which the father figure curses constantly and keeps slapping his son, Travolta’s character, in the back of the head.  The scene famously offended the Mormon Osmond family with its blue language, but it offended my mother for far different reasons.

                “My parents didn’t curse like this,” she declared each time she had to sit through the spaghetti segment when it was being broadcast on Channel 11.  “And we never sat half-naked at the dinner table smacking each other with wooden spoons.  This is ridiculous.  There’s no love in this movie.  Italian families love each other.”

                But the kids who went to school with me had no such objections.  They thought that all three films were very accurate portrayals of Italian life.  In fact, the kids had collectively decided to use the movies as a standard against which they measured how Italian they were.  If you didn’t dress like Travolta, curse like Pesci, and raise hell like Pacino, then you weren’t really Italian.  This caused me great consternation, since I was about as far from the movie stereotype Italian as one could get.  I possessed none of Travolta’s cool fashion sense, had been trained since I was an infant never to curse, and was far more concerned with getting good grades, reading comic books, and getting Melissa Venturoso out on a date than I was interested in raising hell like Pacino.

                Also many of the young boys at school liked to walk around claiming that their dad or their uncle or their cousin “Benny” (Benito) was in the Mafia.  They made it sound like a noble profession, keeping alive the Great Lie that all real-life gangsters were like Don Corleone, gentlemen of the old school who existed only to protect the Italian people from persecution.  If you believed these kids, who clearly didn’t know what they were talking about, nobody in the Mafia dealt drugs.  Gambling, prostitution, yes.  That was a service to the community, as these things should be legal anyway.  But no drugs.  And if they did deal drugs, it was only to other minorities who weren’t Italian, so that made it kinda okay.  They said.

                Now, nobody in my family or among my friends was in the Mafia, so I was again at a disadvantage.  So I found that I had two choices.  Either I accepted the verdict of my peers that I wasn’t really Italian because I wasn’t on a first-name basis with Santo Trafficante, or decide for myself that mob ties and a love of Martin Scorsese films does not an Italian make.  I chose the latter, deciding to forget about what everyone else was doing and be myself.

                To be fair to these wannabe gangster youths, I also enjoyed dressing and talking like my personal heroes, just as they did.  It was only the heroes who they emulated that I took issue with – that and the lack of any variety or creativity in their choices of heroes.  Instead of gangsters, I latched onto the heroism of the Doctor, the alien hero from the British science fiction series Doctor Who, and the cuddly, ubiquitous Spider-Man, who I knew from comic books, repeats of the 1967 cartoon, the series Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, and episodes of The Electric Company. I actually went to great lengths to figure out and emulate how the characters of Spider-Man and the Doctor would react to a given situation.  I also took to wearing a raincoat, like Lieutenant Columbo, the only Italian role model I could find on television who I actually liked (although my raincoat was never quite so crumpled).  Years later, the actor David Tennant would don a sort of raincoat in his portrayal of the Doctor, making the raincoat still more of an iconic piece of clothing for me to adopt.  And my thick, unmanageable hair would sometimes stick up like David Tennant’s Doctor, which made the resemblance even stronger.  To hell with Champion shirts and high-top Reebok sneakers, the raincoat was the perfect trademark for
    Marc DiPaolo.

                But since I didn’t talk the talk or walk the walk, a number of my young Italian comrades actually didn’t realize that I had Italian blood.  Since no real Italian would wear glasses or be caught dead reading novels on the bus ride to school, they mistook my Roman nose for a Hebrew nose and assumed I was Jewish, which meant that a lot of anti-Semitism was thrown my way.    

                “Why are you always readin’ all the time?” Salvatore Russo asked me one day, on the yellow school bus on the way to junior high school.  This was a few years before the blue icing incident.)  Russo tried and failed to pry the paperback copy of Jaws out of my hands.  Russo was always surrounded by a posse of about ten monosyllabic thugs who all dressed in sweat pants and had spiked hair. 

                “I like the movie a lot,” I said.

                “Then watch the movie,” Russo exclaimed.

                “The book’s different,” I said, not elaborating.

                “But reading ain’t fun.”

                “It’s about a shark that eats people,” I said. “Books don’t get much more fun then that.”

                Russo was beyond confused. “But yous’re reading.  It ain’t fun.”

                “It’s about a shark that eats people!” I yelled, the slumbering
    Brooklyn accent returned quickly to my voice with full force as I got angrier.  “Besides, the book has cool sex scenes that aren’t in the movie.  I was just reading about Brody’s wife fantasizing about having sex with Hooper in the car while they were driving to a cheap motel.  It’s a damn good sex scene, man, and you’re ruining the buzz I’m getting off it, so give me the book back and get outta my face!”

                Sal was unmoved by my description of the sex scene.  “Well, I just think its just like a Jew to sit reading on the front of the bus dressed in dorky Jew clothes instead of hanging out in the back of the bus with the cool Italians,” Russo said stiffly.

                “Huh?”

                “I said you’re a stinkin’ Jew bastard, DiPaolo. How about that, you fuckin’ Jew bastard?”

    Russo was clearly not someone who would benefit from a lecture on the evils of anti-Semitism, so I decided to respond instead by correcting their erroneous assumption.

                “I’m Italian, jackass.”

                “No way,” the Russo gentleman insisted.  “You can’t be.”

                “My name’s DiPaolo.”

                Russo looked confused.  “So?”

                “It’s an Italian name.  It ends in a vowel, and it ain’t Shapiro.”  By then, I had trained myself to use slang words like “ain’t” to blend in with the natives, but it didn’t get me far.

                Salvatore Russo blinked.  “What’s vowels got to do with it?”

                “Italian names always end in vowels.”

                “So yous ain’t Jewish?”

                “No!  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

                Sal was interested, despite himself. “So what parta
    Italy you from?”

                “My mom’s family is from Salerno and
    Naples
    .  We haven’t checked my dad’s family genealogy yet.”

                Salvatore looked triumphant.  “So you ain’t from
    Sicily
    , then?”  He clearly saw Sicilians as superior to mainland Italians.

                I shrugged.  “Well, you know what they say.  There’s two kinds of Italians.  Italians and Sicilians.”

                “Yeah?  Well, fuck that.  You don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about.  Fuckin’ Italian or no fuckin’ Italian, I’m gonna fuck you up all over this fuckin’ bus, you fuckin’ fuck.”

                My eyes widened.  “Try saying that five times fast.”  I looked at the thug standing next to Salvatore.  “Does he know any other words, or just the one?”

                “What the fuck is he talking about?” thug number one said.

                “Fuck me,” Salvatore said.

                “That’s what your aunt said last night while I was giving it to her doggy style,” I said, not knowing whether or not Russo had an aunt with honor to insult, but he obviously did, and he must have been really attached to her, because he got right up in my face about it.

                “Don’t you talk about my aunt!”

                I tried to remain blasé as I added, “I’m not talking about your aunt.  I got no complaints.  She’s a great lay.  As opposed to your mother, who’s kinda like fucking a dead rhino.”

                Since Salvatore Russo was told he shouldn’t hit a man wearing glasses, he knocked the glasses off my head, so that I was, functionally, blind as a bat and unable to defend myself.  Satisfied that it was now okay to hit me, since I wasn’t wearing glasses any more, and it was now a fair fight, Sal hauled off and punched me in the face. 

                The fight which ensued lasted 89 seconds.

    I lost.

  • Life & People

    Death Comes to Clove Lakes Park


     

    Climbing the tree had been easy.  My feet had slipped a few times on the way up, but its trunk was so twisted and angular that finding footholds was a cinch.  Even so, I felt a rush of accomplishment when I reached the top – a feeling I couldn’t wait to share with my parents.  I stopped and, holding firmly on to a thick branch with one tiny hand, turned my head downwards to find my mother and father.  I hadn’t expected them to look so far away.

                “Well, look at you!” my mother beamed, clasping her hands together in front of her chest.  “Very good!”

                My father nodded in approval, a smile of encouragement on his cheerful face.  I was used to looking far up to see dad’s face, and now he looked kind of small and funny.  The whole world looked funny.  I was up so high and the world was so low, and I knew I didn’t belong up so high.  Things that were up high were supposed to fall to the ground.  I would fall to the ground too if my feet weren’t well planted and I wasn’t holding onto the branch. 

                But what if my feet weren’t well planted? 

                Just as I had this thought, I could feel my tiny red shoes start to slip, and I reached wildly to grab the branch with my other hand.

                “Oh, Marc!” My mother gasped.

                I braced myself, knowing I only had to hold on another moment before my father pulled me down out of the tree.  I fixed my eyes on the bark in front of me, worried that if I looked down, the ground would catch me by the eyes and pull me down.

                “Ted, he’s going to fall,” I heard my mother say.

                “He’s not going to fall,” dad said, sounding only a little uncertain.

                I was afraid even to open my mouth, worried that the sound of my voice would sake the tree, but I risked it.  “Dad... help…”

                “It’s okay, Marc,” dad said.  “Just come on back down.”

                I almost moved my foot, but then stopped.  “How?”

                “Just do what you did on the way up, but go backwards.”

                “But Ted, he’s afraid.”

                “He has to try to do it himself, Cathy.”

                I took my eyes off the trunk and tried to find my father’s face.  If only dad could see how afraid I was, then he would help me.  But dad still did not move to help, so I realized that dad would never pull me off the tree and lower me to the ground.

                “I’m going to take him down,” Cathy declared, walking purposefully up to the tree.

                “Let him be,” dad said again, but made no move to stop mom.

                Mom now stood at the base of the tree, looking up at me.  She reached up with both arms, but her fingers could only get to as high as my feet.  “Dammit.”  She looked up apologetically at me.  “I can’t reach you, honey.”

                “Come on, Marc,” dad said.  “Just climb down a little bit.  Your mom will meet you halfway.  You go down a little bit and she’ll help you with the rest.”

                “I’m scared,” I said.  My face was red and tears were now starting to appear in my eyes.  I felt my palms growing sweaty and dirty against the bark. 

                “You have to at least make an effort,” said his father.  “You have to be tough like Spider-Man.  You like Spider-Man, don’t you?”

                I nodded, as the first tear fell.

                “Well, Spider-Man wouldn’t have trouble with a little tree like this.”

                “But I’m not Spider-Man,” I whimpered.

                “He doesn’t want to climb down the tree,” Cathy said.  “Could you just please help him down?”

                “Don’t you want to grow up to be tough and brave like Spider-Man?  Or do you want to be wimpy and too afraid to even climb a little tree?”

                “Ted,” Cathy hissed.

                “Not now, Cathy.”

                I was too weak to hold on any longer.  I didn’t want to play this game any more.  I didn’t like the rules and I didn’t like dad for making the rules.  I felt my fingers slipping and my head growing lighter.  It would be so easy just to let myself fall.  That way, the game would be over.  “I can’t do it,” I whispered.  And then I let one hand drop away from the branch.

                “Ted!  He’s going to fall.”

                “Alright!  Alright!”  Dad strode up to the tree as his wife moved aside.  Then he and grabbed me by the waist.  With a quick heave, he pulled me out of the tree, spun around, and placed me firmly on the ground.  No sooner was this done than I turned away from dad, and ran to mom, throwing my arms around her waist and burying my face in her stomach.

                “It’s okay,” Cathy soothed, stroking my short brown hair.  “It’s over now.”

                Ted’s jaw set hard.  “Well, that’s just fine.  He hates me.”

                Cathy offered her husband a kindly but reproachful look.  “Of course he doesn’t.  Do you?”

                I looked slowly at my father and saw that it was now his eyes that were pleading.

                “Well?” asked Cathy.

                Before my parents could react, I turned suddenly and dashed away, down the main dirt road of
    Clove Lakes Park.  I didn’t know why I was doing this, only that I had to get away and that I wanted to know if they still cared enough about me to chase after me.  I heard dad yell my name, and the cry only made me pick up speed – my short legs working as fast as they could.  Almost immediately, I could hear the sounds of heavy footfalls behind me.  Dad was quick, so I knew I’d be caught in moments if I didn’t duck out of sight.  I continued charging along, following the dusty path around a bend in the woods.  The moment I sensed that I was out of my father’s line-of-sight, I left the trail, dove headlong into the brush, and raced uphill.  My shoes sank into the muddy slope as I ran, slowing me down.  I grunted with frustration, trying to keep up my speed as I darted around trees and shrubs.  My feet slipped again on some wet leaves and I almost lost my balance.  I caught myself on the trunk of a thin tree and pulled myself back into my running stride.

                “Marc!” I heard my father call again.

                I hoped my father could not follow the sounds of the rustling leaves and branches as I pushed them aside.  Already I was feeling tired and breathing heavily.  The further from my father that I got, the more mortified I felt.  It was bad enough I had humiliated myself on the tree.  Why did I make this second mistake?  It was foolish to run.  I knew that already, moments after the impulsive decision was made.  But once started, something like this was no easily stopped.  I was afraid to turn back and go down the hill.  I didn’t want to get yelled at.  Maybe it was better that they didn’t find me for a while.

                The steep slope started to level out I soon ran into a clearing.  In the middle of the clearing stood two wooden picnic tables and a rusted barbecue grill.  There were no people to be seen.  The air was stale and dead.  I felt suddenly cold.  I stopped, looking back.  All I could see in the direction I had come was a brush.  I could not hear the sounds of my parents’ voices.  I had not gone very far, had I?  As I stopped, I realized how heavily I was breathing.  I  could feel myheartbeat racing.  I tried to steady myself, but my breathing came in gasps.  Still agitated, I looked past the picnic tables, and considered going farther.  But I couldn’t do that.  Any farther and I might get really lost.  The chill I felt grew still icier.  The sky darkened noticeably around me.  In the space of a moment, dusk had fallen like a cloak over the park.  It would be dark soon.

                “Why, hello there,” a woman’s voice said.

                I started.  Who said that?  I looked back at the picnic tables and saw a woman sitting at the nearest one with her hands folded delicately across her lap.  Dressed simply in a pair of tight jeans and a silky red shirt, she had a round, soft face and keen blue eyes.  Her black hair fell in buoyant curls about her shoulders, and her smile was a perfect white.  Some people who I met reminded me of my stuffed animals.  They were the people I felt an impulse to embrace the moment that I met them because they seemed so cute and cuddly.  They had a softness in their faces and eyes, their manner was gentle, and they spoke in a simple, affectionate way.  This woman was one of them.  Her sudden appearance had been very strange, but I soon pushed the thought aside.  Maybe she had been there all along and I just hadn’t seen her.  “Hello,” I said nervously, still trying to decide if I should keep moving or stay a moment.

                The woman beckoned cheerfully.  “Why don’t you come here and talk to me?”

                I hesitated.  I still couldn’t hear my parents.  They must be getting really worried by now – and really angry.  I didn’t want to be found near this woman.  They might both get in trouble.  The woman did not seem put off by my distracted state.  Instead, she slid off the bench and walked slowly over to me.  The only sounds that could be heard in the still air were the crunching of the dead leaves under her feet.

                “Are you lost, or exploring?” She stopped a few inches in front of me.  She had the reddest lips that I had ever seen.  Her face looked pale in contrast.  She was so beautiful, that I felt awe at the sight of her.  I avoided her eyes, and again chose to look over my shoulder at the woody slope behind me.

                “Are your parents down there?” she asked.

                I nodded, still looking away.  “I ran away.”

                The woman crouched beside me, sitting on her heels.  “Why?”

                “I don’t know.”

                “You don’t know?” she asked sweetly.

                “No.”  I looked at the ground and started idly kicking some leaves.  “I got mad.”

                “Oh.  They must be worried about you, then.”

                “Maybe.”

                “I’m sure they are.  I’m sure they love you very much.”

                I shrugged.  “I guess.”

                “I’ll take you back, if you like.”

                She slipped her hand into mine.  It was cold to the touch.  I looked down at her soft white hand, but not at her face.  I squeezed my fingers around hers, not wanting her to let go.

                “Okay.”

                “You’re so shy,” she said softly.  “Won’t you look at me?”

                She placed her free hand under my chin, gently lifting my head until my eyes met hers.  Her blue eyes shimmered hypnotically.  I had never seen a blue as brilliant or glistening as the blue in her eyes.  Her face was almost close enough to touch mine.  Her breath felt warm against my skin.  The coldness I had felt before was gone, replaced by a peace that I never knew before.  I felt loved.  I reached up to touch her face, brushing my hand lightly against her cheek.  Her skin felt smooth, smoother than the softest cotton or silk I had ever touched.  Unfamiliar emotions churned in me.  I wanted to hold her.  I wanted to kiss her, but in a way I’d never kissed a girl before.

                “What’s your name?” I asked.

                “Margaret.”

                “I’m Marc.”

                “I know,” she whispered.

                Slowly, she wrapped her arms about my waist and drew me closer, pressing me to her breasts.  She closed her eyes and kissed me lightly on the lips.  I stiffened.  At first, I did not know what to do.  Then my small arms returned the embrace, clutching tightly at her shirt; bunching up the silky fabric in my fists.  Margaret kissed me on the cheek and on the forehead.  The kisses were motherly and affectionate, sultry and arousing.  She unfastened the top button of my shirt, pulling it open until my neck and shoulder was exposed to the cool autumn air.  She kept pressing soft, wet kisses to my face, running down my forehead to my neck.  The feeling of the hot breath on my neck tickled me.  Smiling, I relaxed my body and closed my eyes, surrendering myself to the woman.  “I love you,” I whispered.

                “I love you, Marc.”

                She smiled again, exposing her wolfish fangs for the first time.  Then she clamped her teeth down on my neck, tearing open my skin and rupturing my jugular vein.  I half-screamed, half wailed, as tears of agony rose to my eyes.  Blood rushed from the wound, spilling into Margaret’s mouth.  She held me tight as I flinched, not allowing a single drop of blood to spill down my neck.  She swallowed, feeling a thrill of satisfaction as the blood slid down her throat.

                My pulse raced.  I could feel my heartbeat throbbing against my temples, hammering away, unrelenting.  My knees started to buckle, but she held me erect, keeping her fangs locked deeply into my flesh.  She hungrily lapped up spurt after spurt of blood, shivering with pleasure against me each time she swallowed the lifeblood.  Just at the moment I thought I would die if she continued, I felt her stop.

                The fangs slid free of the open wound.  My head lolled back and I once again saw her face.  Drops of my blood were rolling slowly down the side of her mouth.  She caught them lazily with her tongue before they reached her chin.  Her blue eyes looked warmly into mine and I felt my vision fading.

                “Sleep now,” she purred.

                Then I blacked out.

     * * *

                Ted held up the tape proudly and smiled. “I got a vampire movie to watch with Marc.”

                Cathy arched her eyebrow. Though she didn’t have the same fanatical devotion to horror films as the rest of the family, she still retained a mild interest. “Really” Which one?”
     
                “Oh…‘Lust for a Vampire,’” he replied as casually as he could. He was hoping her memory of films stayed as bad as usual, but he could tell by her expression that she recognized the name. They’d seen it when they were dating.
     
                “Is that one of those Hammer movies with Ingrid Pitt and the lesbian vampires?”
     
                Ted slipped off his coat and draped it over a hanger. “Yes, it is. Not Ingrid Pitt, but ... it is a lesbian vampire movie. Takes place at a girl's school.”
     
                “An hour and a half of full-frontal female nudity?” she asked, deadpan.
     
                “It isn’t that bad,” he offered feebly. “It’s just a harmless fantasy film.” Ted often referred to horror films as fantasy to water down their image of self-torture as entertainment. Vampire movies weren’t disturbing; they were fun. Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull, on the other hand…they were real horror films. Hammer movies were fantasy films, liked rated R versions of The Hobbit, with a healthy does of female characters added and some sex thrown in. These films almost all took place in 18th and 19th century Germany, featured romantic castles, formidable aristocratic vampires, charming villages, taverns with kindly old inkeepers who would warn travelers not to go to the castle... And the taverns would have buxom serving wenches with frilly, low-cut Swiss Miss dresses on. Hardly a horror movie at all! These films were merely an escape from the monotony of the remarkably un-sexy Staten Island suburbs and their legions of semi-attached, near-identically designed houses, small patches of perfectly manicured grass pretending to be front lawns and back yards, and parking spaces on the street too small to accomodate your average Volkswagen Beetle..
     
                “That’s not fantasy – that’s pornography.” Cathy looked back down at her book. “You think you’re showing that to an eight-year-old boy?”
     
                It was just as well she assumed he wasn’t planning on showing it to Brian as well. "I've already shown him a couple. We watched The Hunger the other night."
     
               "And you don't think that had a bad effect on him?" mom asked.
     
              "Well, he seemed to enjoy the nude love scene between Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve. But when I asked him who he'd rather be bitten by, he said Susan Sarandon. I was kind of disappointed to hear that. I would have preferred it if he'd said Catherine Deneuve. But he's young. He'll learn."
     
                "But these movies equate sex and death."
     
               "Sure they do. But they make it look like such a fun way to die. If you gotta go, there's probably no better way to go. If only we could all die that way. Instead of ... you know ... in some hospital attached to an IV and ... cancer. Vampire women are certainly preferable to cancer."
     
                "I don't know..."
     
                “But Marc loves these films.”
     
                "I think you love these films. Marc told me he prefers Godzilla."
     
                "But he loves vampire movies, too. Especially Salems Lot and Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter."
     
                “Oh, fine, fine.” Cathy sighed. She was tired of being the bad guy all the time and she really didn’t want to continue arguing. What she wanted to do was read in peace. “Just fast forward all the nudity.”
     
                Ted glanced at the orange box with a frown. “We can’t watch the tits?”
     
                “No tits,” she insisted.
     
                With an annoyed snort, Ted retrieved his coat from the closet and threw it back over his shoulders. Irritated, Cathy looked up again from her book. “Where are you going now?”
     
                “I’m going back to Monte's Video Warehouse and exchanging the movie for The Bride of Frankenstein. That one’s a harmless black-and-white. Not Rated R.”
     
                It was this sort of reaction that always exasperated her. “But I just said you could watch it. Just fast forward all the scenes with the breasts.”
     
                “If I do that, then there’s nothing left of the film worth watching,” Ted huffed, and stalked out of the house.
     
                Cathy sat there thoughtfully in the silence. A moment later she shook her head and chuckled and returned to her Bronte novel.
     
               At least Marc hasn't been having any nightmares yet, she thought.

  • Life & People

    Tears Over Giuliano


     

    It had been several days since Colin tinkered with the keyboards outside the music shop where he’d impressed the beautiful Italian babes. He’d grown weary of trying to recreate that success after several failed attempts, but he was sure this time he’d be able to draw a few hot chicks out of hiding. There was something in the air tonight. There was an atmosphere of change, as if everything was coming to a head, and he wanted to be a part of it. Besides, he needed something to do to amuse himself while his friend was fooling around with Eileen. (What a frickin’ bore that was.) And so, Colin decided to stop off in his room for some sheet music, totally unprepared for the sight that greeted him.

     

    The bedroom was a yin-yang of chaos and order, with Marc’s half of the room the picture of destruction, and Colin’s half as perfectly pristine as he had left it. The bedcovers had been violently torn off Marc’s mattress and hurled into the corner of the room, leaving three empty suitcases in sole possession of the top of the bed. There was clothing hanging from the bedpost, the lamp, the front door, the closet, and the end table. Souvenir posters, postcards, and miniatures were scattered about the floor like spilled bits of candy. One randomly tossed shirt seemed to land at exactly the midpoint of the room, refusing to stray any farther over to Colin’s side for fear of being accused of invading Colin’s sanctuary and dirtying it up. It was as if a violent storm had briefly erupted in the bedroom, focusing its entire wrath on Marc’s possessions while maintaining just enough self-control to stop itself from succumbing to the temptation to vent its fury on Colin’s luggage as well.

     

    In the midst of the wreckage sat Marc, his back turned against the side of his bed, his arms hugging his legs to his chest, his forehead resting on his knees. “Sorry about all that,” he muttered, his face still buried against his jeans. “Lost a bit of control there. Won’t happen again.”

     

    “Oh, man.” Colin looked first at his side of the room, then at Marc’s and scratched his head. He tried to figure out what might have caused Marc to go on this strange rampage. It didn’t take long for him to strike on the right answer. “Eileen running hot and cold again?”

     

    Marc looked up at the room, amazed at his own display of frustration. “Look at this place. It’s the work of a nut. I don’t do things like this normally. This is totally out of character for me. I’m going crazy, aren’t I?”

     

    “I don’t blame you.” Colin walked over to his end table and opened the drawer, rummaging through his music for songs to play.

     

    “Like Baldrick, I had a cunning plan,” Marc said, smiling to himself over an inside joke. “It backfired. I tried to provoke Eileen into pursuing me and all it did was chase her farther way.”

     

    “What happened?”

     

    Marc chuckled. “Let’s put it this way. Me and Eileen aren’t speaking each other’s language. I’m talking feelings and living for the moment, and she’s talking ‘reason’ and planning for tomorrow. Talk about sense and sensibility! I feel like Dr. McCoy trying to make love to Mr. Spock’s more stoic twin sister.”

     

    Colin pulled out the three pieces of sheet music he was most interested in and returned the others to the drawer. “Please stop with the Black Adder and Star Trek references so I can understand what you’re talking about.”

     

    “I dunno. Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I’m not handsome enough.”

     

    “Nonsense,” Colin scolded. Suddenly worried about his sword, Colin peered under his bed and found it resting where he had left it, concealed within a large plastic poster tube. Impulsively, he scooped the tube out from its hiding place and decided that he’d be taking his sword out with him. In case any girls showed up to watch him play, he could always impress them further by showing off this lovely weapon that he had purchased at a Florentine antiques store.

     

    “Is it?” Marc asked rhetorically. "Women have given me all kinds of 'reasons' they won't date me. I’m too religious. I’m not religious enough. I move too quickly. I'm too slow. I'm a member of the wrong political party. I don't like the tv show Friends and I should. Unless, of course, those are all rationalizations to explain away a lack of physical chemistry.... Unless, of course, those religious and political tensions are strong enough to defeat a genuine attraction... Unless … I don’t know! How is any of this supposed to make me feel good about myself?”

     

    “Now, I can’t stand talk like that. That’s stupid stuff.” Colin adjusted his collar, noticing at that moment how hot it was. The weighty conversation was not the only thing making the room stuffy. It was a humid night out. He went over to the window to let a breeze in. He hand was on the lock, primed to open it, when he saw Eileen standing on the street below talking to an Italian paratrooper. Although Colin couldn’t hear what Eileen and the soldier were saying to one another, their body language spoke volumes. Friends didn’t stand as close together as they were standing.  They were already more than friends.

     

    Uh-oh, Colin thought.

     

    “Maybe I’m just boring and sexless,” Marc thought aloud, trying to sound as if he were analyzing himself dispassionately, from afar, but each word was soaked in tortured emotion. “I’ve always known it. That’s why I hate reading stuff like Madame Bovary and The Awakening and A Room with a View. I’m the bad guy in all of them: the boring, nerdy bourgeois husband or suitor who the woman tosses over for the dumb handsome guy with the enormous ... sex appeal.”

     

    Colin had a moment of hope when the soldier grabbed for Eileen’s waist and she pulled away, pointing towards the hotel. Colin couldn’t tell if she was objecting to the advance because she wanted to be loyal to Marc or because she was afraid they’d get caught. Colin wondered if he should tell Marc what he was looking at. He didn’t relish the thought of being the one to break the news, but he certainly didn’t want to be the one to withhold it.

     

    “Unfortunately, it’s kind of hard to be an English major and not read four thousand books about why adultery is the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Marc rambled on. “Being a middle class nerd myself, these books sure don’t make me feel good about my prospects keeping my prospective girlfriend happy and sexually satisfied, that’s for sure. They’ve got me convinced the only way I can make a sexy, independent women wet is to toss her in a swimming pool.”

     

    The soldier grabbed Eileen again, seizing her roughly in his arms and kissing her passionately. All her prospects ended in that moment and her body melted against the paratrooper’s.

     

    Marc uncurled himself from his fetal position and pulled his protesting body off the floor. He was already becoming more himself again. It seemed that wrecking the room and complaining to Colin had the therapeutic effect needed to return him slowly to his old self. “But that kind of talk is ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s defeatist. I should just be happy that I had the time with her that I did. She is very beautiful after all.”

     

    And a very enthusiastic kisser, Colin thought, watching Eileen and the paratrooper continue exchanging lusty kisses. “Um, Marcus?”

     

    “Yeah?” Marc walked casually over to the window, curious to know what Colin was staring at.

     

    Colin held up a hand to stop Marc from going any closer to the window. “I don’t know if you want to see it, but Eileen’s outside making out with some Italian guy.”

     

    “What are you talking about?” Marc frowned and brushed past Colin to see for himself. He looked down just long enough to identify Eileen and get a good glimpse of the man’s face. Then he retreated from the window as if it reeked of skunk spray.

     

    “You’re right. I really didn’t want to see that.” Marc’s expression told Colin that the recovery his friend had been on the verge of making had just come to a crashing end.

     

    “Come on, man,” Colin said, frustration now filling his usually deadpan voice. “Don’t get depressed. Get angry. Women get depressed about stuff like this and blame themselves. Men get angry and blame other people. That’s what you should be doing. It’s her fault. It’s that frickin’ paratrooper’s fault. It ain’t your fault.”

     

    “I’m gonna go for a walk in a little while and get some air,” Marc announced. “I’ll wait until they’re gone first, of course.”

     

    “Wanna go to that Irish pub?” Colin suggested eagerly. “I haven’t been there yet.”

     

    “Nah,” Marc waved vaguely. “I figure I should just get some time alone.”

     

    “You can’t be alone at a time like this. Come on. Come out with me and get blasted. You’ll feel better if you’re drunk.”

     

    Marc sighed. “Maybe later. Maybe I’ll meet you there later.”

     

    Colin shook his head slowly. “Okay. If that’s what you want. I’m going to tinker with the keyboards a bit. I’ll head over to the Irish pub around . We’ll meet there, okay?”

     

    “Maybe,” Marc replied. “Maybe. You go out and have fun. Forget about me for now.”

     

    * * *

     

    Eileen slipped furtively into the hotel, casting her eyes about to see if anyone was about who might have caught her with Giuliano. She hadn’t intended to kiss the swarthy soldier, even though she had been attracted to him from the outset, because she didn’t want to do anything that would make her feel as if she’d done something unfair to Marc. She had dodged several of Giuliano’s advances, including his none-too-subtle invitations to go straight to bed, out of respect for Marc, but her resolve had broken down at the last possible instant in the worst possible location. Giuliano had pleaded for a goodnight kiss, and she could not turn him down, no matter how hard she tried.

     

    Much to her dismay, Eileen discovered Drusilla and Adnan dining together at a table right by the entrance display window. Given that they were both staring at her with odd expressions on their faces, Eileen knew that they had seen everything. “Hello,” Eileen said bashfully.

     

    “Hi,” Drusilla said.

     

    Adnan remained silent.

     

    “That was Giuliano,” Eileen explained.

     

    “Looks like a handsome guy.” The coolness in Drusilla’s tone brought all the nausea that Giuliano had dispelled from Eileen’s stomach return in one great rush. She thinks I’m scum, thought Eileen. She thinks I’ve betrayed Marc. But how could she jump to that conclusion without hearing my side of the story?

     

    Knowing that the longer she lingered in the restaurant the more panicked she’d become, Eileen left the couple behind and proceeded upstairs to her room. She wasn’t looking forward to it, but she knew she’d have to finish things with Marc, break it off cleanly so that she could pursue Giuliano without any feelings of guilt. Giuliano would only be able to receive her for the next two days before having to return to his post, but that would be enough. She had arranged to meet him in two hours before the D’Uomo and she hoped her conversation with Marc would be over before then. Giuliano had promised to write to her when she returned to
    America
    , so even though it would be a long distance relationship, and somewhat impractical, she was already planning to fight to keep in contact with him once she returned to
    America
    .

     

    Her mind was still reeling from everything that had happened to her when she met Colin on the steps. He was clutching a large plastic tube in his left hand and had a folder of music pinned under his arm. She tried to squeeze past him with a mere, “hello,” but he blocked her with his arm.

     

    “I just want to say, you really are a dumb slut, you know that?”

     

    Eileen’s breath caught in her mouth and her eyes widened. “What?”

     

    “You think that guy’s interested in anything more than just screwing you and dumping you out on the street?” Colin sneered. “There’s no difference between him and all the other horny Italian guys that have been muscling in on you and Drusilla all month. ‘Hello, beautiful American ladies.  Would you like a rose for a beautiful American ladies?’  He’s only handsomer than those oversexed stalkers, that’s all.”

     

    What, did the whole hotel see me with Giuliano? Are they all going to vilify me and stand in Marc’s corner? Am I going to get crucified for this one little mistake? "You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eileen shot back. “Now let me pass.”

     

    “All Marc wanted to do was make you happy. And he would have. He’s a real gentleman, with a real interest in getting to know who you really are. This other guy doesn’t give a flying frig about you. He won’t be buying you flowers, I can guarantee it. He ain’t the type. But you’re willing to ditch Marc for this gigolo. You’re a real moron, you know that?”

     

    “You have no right to say those things to me!” Eileen yelled. “Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?”

     

    Colin leaned forward, nearly touching his enraged face to Eileen’s. “Did I hurt your feelings? Good. I want to see you look crushed and miserable.”

     

    Eileen grit her teeth together angrily. “You bastard.”

     

    “What? Do I sound mean and heartless? Maybe it’s because I saw the look on Marc’s face when he found out about you and the soldier. It’s kind of hard to feel anything but disgust for you after seeing the consequences of your stupidity firsthand.”

     

    “Consequences?” Hot tears flushed Eileen’s eyes. “He knows already? It just happened!”

     

    “He knows.”

     

    Eileen slumped against the wall, mortified that she couldn’t stop from crying in front of her antagonist.

     

    Colin paused to look with satisfaction at her miserable expression. Then, scowling again, he walked down the rest of the stairs and headed outside to play his music.

     

    * * *

     

    Twenty minutes later, when Eileen knocked on Marc’s bedroom door, he wouldn’t answer. She tried for several minutes to get him to open up, but he was resolute.

     

    Distressed, she left the hotel and took a long evening walk once again, speaking to no one as she went out into the night…

     

    * * *

  • Life & People

    Italian Women are Difficult to Get Into Bed


    "Italian women are very difficult to get into bed," Patrick Dolan said.  "They want you to meet their families first."

     

    The red-headed Irish bartender placed a large Guinness in front of Colin as he said this.  There was no humor in his voice, but loneliness and resignation. 

     

    "Is that true, Marc?" Colin asked me.

     

    I shrugged.   "I never had any luck with the Italian girls in Staten Island, but I always assumed it was because I don't look like Ray Liotta.  I didn't think their reluctance to go to bed with me meant they had any problem with shagging the guys who lifted weights in gym class at Susan E. Wagner High School."

     

    I was sitting at the bar, on the stool besides Colin, and we were the only two patrons in the Irish Pub in Siena.  Since there wasn't a lot of business, Patrick seemed annoyed that I wasn't ordering anything.  He had placed some pretzels before me, and as I nibbled on them, I realized that they were his ploy to get me to buy a drink.

     

    "Is it the Catholicism?" Colin asked.

     

    "Can't be," Patrick declared. "I had my fair share of sex with the Catholic girls in Carryduff.  It must be something about Italy."

     

    "These pretzels are making me thirsty," I said.

     

    "You want a drink?" Patrick asked.

     

    I had never ordered a drink before and wasn't sure what to ask for.  Then I decided to order James Bond's favorite drink.  "Vodka martini, shaken not stirred."

     

    "The Vesper!" Colin beamed.  "Good one."

     

    Patrick continued his monologue on sex and prudery as he prepared my drink.

     

    "Now the women in Sweden and Denmark and Holland are a different story.  The liberalization there is unbelievable.  No problem getting laid there.  In Italy.  Forget it."

     

    He placed the Vesper in front of me and I sipped it.  It was dreadful.

     

    "Don't like it?" Colin asked.

     

    "No."  I downed it in one gulp to get it out of the way.  "How about a Sweet Vermouth on the rocks, with a twist of lemon?"

     

    Patrick nodded and went to work.  As he mixed the drink, I noticed his T-shirt for the first time, which read 26 + 6 = 1, which I assumed was a plea for the unification of Ireland.  I wondered what his position was on the IRA, and whether he preferred Michael Collins or Eamon de Valera. 

     

    "Now, of course, Italians are also not big drinkers, as you can see."  Patrick gestured about him to the empty bar.  "They just don't understand beer."  He looked at me as he said this, and placed the drink before me.  Was he annoyed that I wasn't ordering Guinness?

     

    Colin eyed the concoction.  "Dare I ask what movie that drink is from?"

     

    "Andie MacDowell orders it in Groundhog Day, and that is one of my favorite films.  I've always been curious to try the drink."

     

    I closed my eyes, said a prayer for world peace, and sipped the drink.  I grimaced.  I downed it with the next gulp.

     

    "Didn't like that one either?" Patrick asked.

     

    "Nope.  Andie MacDowell is hot.  Groundhog Day rules.  Sweet vermouth is crappy crap.  And it doesn't make me think of Rome, either."

     

    "There's always Guinness," he suggested.

     

    "The beer that drinks like a meal?" I asked.  "Nah.   Too heavy for me.  I'll have a White Russian."

     

    "I know what movie that one's from," Patrick said, cutting off Colin.  "The Dude's favorite drink from The Big Lebowski."

     

    "I'm hoping the Dude has better taste than James Bond and Andie MacDowell."

     

    Colin smirked and looked at Patrick.  "I should tell you something about Marc, here.  He's a junior in college and he's never been to a beer party and never been drunk.  He once let slip to his friend Smiley that he didn't know what time happy hour was and Smiley went ballistic.  'Are you or are you not in college?' he kept screaming at him.  'What are they teaching you over there at Geneseo?'  So we better watch him.  He should slow down a bit."

     

    "I'm fine," I said.

     

    As Patrick made me the White Russian, Colin took another look about the bar, which was decorated in a traditional Irish mode.  "I finally feel at home," Colin observed.  "This place feels safe.  Italy is so weird."

     

    "I wish you two Irish guys would stop shitting on my homeland and on its women and its people's ability to hold its liquor," I retorted.  "And really.  Let's lay off the women, in particular.  It is ungentlemanly."

     

    "You've got to admit," Colin said slyly, "Italian women are hot."

     

    "They leave me cold," Patrick said.

     

    I tutt-tutted.  "Oh, you're just mad they won't sleep with you."

     

    "Am not."

     

    "They beat Irish women."

     

    "Do not!"

     

    "Be honest, who'd you'd rather go to bed with, Maureen O'Hara or Sophia Loren?  I say Sophia Loren."

     

    "Neither," Patrick said. "They're old ladies now."

     

    "I think Sophia still looks good," I declared.  "You see Grumpier Old Men?  va-va-va-voom.  But anyway, okay, okay, okay, okay.  Some ... um ... I can't think of  a new Irish actress.  Okay, some modern Irish actress you can think of that I can't ... or Monica Bellucci?"

     

    "I'll take any attractive modern Irish actress over Monica Bellucci," Patrick declared defiantly.  "I don't want to meet Monica's family first."

     

    "I'd meet her family first!  Hell, yeah!  I'd meet her family first!  In fact, I'd meet Monica's entire bloodline, her neighborhood, and every member of her entourage and political party to have a crack at her," I said.  "I'd climb Everest for her.  I'd drink Guinness for her.  I'd watch Friends for her.  I'd listen to Air Supply for her.  I'd re-read The Bell Jar for her.  And The Sun Also Rises.  Two most depressing books ever written.  I'd read them again.  With relish.  For her."

     

    "I'm not a fan of your knocking Irish women," Colin said suddenly.  "My mom's an Irish woman."

     

    "And my mom's an Italian woman," I said sternly.  "Still ...  I shouldn't run down Irish women cuz Patrick here run'd down Italian women.  I actually love Irish women.  They are the only ones who are consist-- consist--- they are always nice to me.  As opposed to women of other ethnic and racial persuasions.  Oh.  Except for Eileen.  I guess she's Irish.  Whatever man.  Eileen may stink, but I'm ga ga for Julianne Moore.  And she's got red hair, so let's assume she's Irish."

     

    "This bar is really awesome," Colin declared.  "I'd love to own a bar like this."

     

    "That's my job, really," Patrick explained.  "I go around the world, going from country to country, opening up authentic Irish pubs in all kinds of really, really not Irish countries.  I've been to Eastern Europe, Europe, the more liberal countries in the Middle East, parts of Africa.  Everywhere.  I spend a few months setting the place up, make sure it is on its feet, and I go on to the next country.  And I'm so good at it that every bar I have ever opened had been a huge success.  EXCEPT THIS BLOODY BAR."

     

    I raised my eyebrows.  The White Russian was really good.  I downed it in one gulp and ordered another one.

     

    "What's wrong with this bar?" Colin asked.

     

    "Nothing," Patrick declared.  "It is Italy that is the problem.  And the Italians.  They drink wine with dinner.  Like soda.  They don't get beer.  I opened this bar up two years ago, thought it was doing ... okay.  I got called back from Sweden, and my five wonderful Swedish girlfriends, back here to try to save the place from ruin.  Back here, to struggle in business and live a celibate lifestyle in Siena.  God save me."

     

    "Have you tried marketing and sales and raffles and tag sales and half-offs and all that?" I asked.

     

    "Oh, I've tried.  I lowered the price of the large beer to the price of the medium beer to try to hook Italians on drinking mass quantities of Guinness.  You know what happened?  An Italian guy comes into the bar and asks for a medium beer.  I say to him, 'You know, the large beer is the same price as the medium beer.'  He says to me, 'No kidding.'  I says, 'No kidding.'  You know what he says to me?  He says, 'I'll have the medium beer.  The large beer is too much for me.'  And every frickin' Italian who came in after him, all day, I have the same god damn conversation with all of them I have with him.  They all buy the medium beer, which is the same price as the large beer."

     

    "Wow," Colin said.  "I don't get that at all.  Who doesn't like beer?"

     

    "I get it," I said.  "I hate beer.  You should put wine and White Russians on sale.  They'll go, I'll bet.  I'll have another White Russian, by the way."

     

    Patrick passed me another White Russian.  "Cheers."

     

    I lifted the White Russian in the air and made a toast.  "This is to you, Patrick.  May you find a nice Italian girl to go to bed with.  And may Colin and I find ones of our own.  And may we not have to meet their families first.  And may Doctor Who come back to television after being cancelled and may it not be campy or crappy, but Gothic and good.  And here's to a safe and satisfying end to the Troubles."

     

    Patrick nodded, but did not smile.

     

    "I want to hear some Irish drinking songs," I announce.  "You got any Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem?"

     

    Patrick looked apologetic.  "Music is on the blink."

     

    "Damn," Colin said.

     

    There was a long pause.

     

    I started to sing.

     

    "Maybe some day I'll go back again to Ireland,

    if my dear old wife would only pass away.

    She nearly got me heart broke wither her naggin'.

    She's got a mouth as big as Galway bay."

     

     

    Colin sniggered.  "Nice impression of an Irish accent, dude.  But good memory of the lyrics."

     

    Patrick gestured towards me.  His eyes weren't twinkling, or anything, but he seemed pleased.  “Continue.”

     

    “I forget the next lyrics.  It is the bit about Pabst Blue Ribbon, right?”

     

    “Yes.” Patrick cleared his throat and took up the reins for me.

     

    “See her drinking sixteen pints of Pabst Blue Ribbon,

    And then she can walk home without a sway;

    If the sea was beer instead of salty water,

    She would live and die in
    Galway Bay.”

     

    “Oh, my God.”  Colin was now laughing so hard he was crying into his sleeve.

     

    “I remember the next part,” I said.

     

    “See her drinking sixteen pints at Pat Joe Murphy's,

    The barman says, "I think it's time you go."

    Well, she doesn't try to answer him in Gaelic,

    But in language that the clergy do not know.”

     

    Then Patrick joined in and finished the song with me.

    “On her back she has tattooed a map of
    Ireland
    ,

    And when she takes her bath on Saturday;

    She rubs the Sunlight Soap around by Claddagh,

    Just to watch the suds go down by
    Galway Bay.”

     

    Colin slapped the table with his palm laughing.  “That was frickin’ beautiful, men.  Bravo.”

     

    * * *

    In the lobby of the Locanda Garibaldi, Drusilla was connected, long-distance, to her boyfriend, Bobby, via the pay phone.

     

    “Hi, Bobby. It’s Drusilla. I just wanted to let you know that I’ve decided that you’re too possessive and I need some time to find myself.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “No,” Drusilla said, “We’re not breaking up. I just want a hiatus. I just would like to see other people for a little while.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “You see, I’m in
    Italy
    and I’m planning on having a fling. Then, when I get home, we can talk about how you need to give me some more ‘me’ time and stop being all possessive.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “An example?” Drusilla asked incredulously. “You wire-tapped my dorm phone to make sure I wasn’t cheating on you.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “Dude! A friggin’ wire tap! What are you, 007 or something? No wait, he isn’t so insecure around women he wire taps their phones. He only wire-taps frickin’ enemies of the state and such.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “Yeah, I found the wire tap alright. Last week.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “It’s too late to apologize. That wire tap ticked me off.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “It showed a lack of trust. I didn’t cheat on you before, but the wire tap is driving me to it. To make a point.”

     

    Pause.

     

    "No, the point is not that you were right not to trust me and right to put the wire tap."

     

    Pause.

     

    "Well, if you don't know what you did wrong, I can't tell you. I tell you what… take the wire tap off my dorm phone and I’ll be faithful to you from now on.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “After I get back from
    Italy
    , that is. I’m having a fling while I’m here. But if I get back and you behave, then you’ll have nothing to fear and you won’t feel like you have to spy on me any more.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “I’m not having this conversation. I’m just letting you know. Tonight and for the rest of the trip, I’m single. Just FYI.”

     

    Pause.

     

    "Well, if you must know, I do have my eye on someone already. I’ve found a nice Italian boy I intend to spend a lot of time making out with.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “No sex. Just a lot of smooching. Scout’s honor.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “Why am I telling you? So you can hire a private detective to follow us to make sure it is only just smooching and take photos so you can look over them with a spy glass to check and see if any penetration is going on.”

     

    Pause.

     

    “Yeah, and f-you, too, Bob.”

     

    Pause.

     

    Adnan appeared behind Drusilla, "Tell him what you told me before about the 'long lead off of third base.' He'll like that."

     

    “Talk to you later, Bob,” Drusilla said.

     

    Drusilla hung up.

     

    She smiled at Adnan. “I’ve decided to take your advice.”

     

    “I can tell,” Adnan said. “Who’s the lucky Italian guy?”

     

    “Well,” Drusilla smirked. “Technically he’s Italian-American.”

     

    “Ah,” Adnan says. “Swooping in and saving our friend Marc from Eileen, are you?”

     

    “Yep.”

     

    “Something tells me he can use the company tonight,” Adnan said.

     

    “Me, too,” Drusilla said. “I’m going upstairs. See you in the morning.”

     

     

  • Life & People

    Giuliano Stole My Girl


     

    The next day, Eileen was once again cold to me.

     

    I was stumped.

     

    I thought about it all day.

     

    What to do?

     

    Then it hit me.

     

    Flowers.

     

    This would be the first time I ever bought roses for a girl outside getting my mother a bouquet on Mother’s Day, and I was looking forward to stepping into the role of boyfriend. What fun. And so, I ventured out into passegiata, enjoying the bustle of people. 

     

    On a side note, since I was no longer new, or burdened by luggage, I was able to appreciate passegiata for what it was: a great nightly tradition in which the Sienese would take a stroll after dinner to work off some calories and be social with their family members and friends they happen upon in the street.  There were no traditions like this in the American suburbs.  Suburban Americans were too scared of their neighbors, whom they assumed to be Charles Manson or Ed Gein.  And urban Americans were too rich or too poor to be bothered with such things.  They were too afraid of looking undignified, or walking into a neighborhood controlled by the Bloods or the Crips. 

     

    Yes, Americans hated and feared one another, and were not as cool as Italians.

     

    Having mentally established this, I decided to enjoy passegiata more than dwell on American antisocial customs. 

     

    Anyway, my spirits were lifted by the plan to buy flowers. I remembered vaguely a flower shop nearby a local “fast food” pasta outlet and found my instincts to be correct.

     

    As I explained my mission to the friendly proprietress, I discovered that I was becoming quite good at conversational Italian by now. The woman was very impressed by my attempt at the language, kindly ignoring my rather large oversight of addressing her in the informal “tu” instead of the formal “Lei.”

     

    The bouquet she presented me with was uncomfortable large, considering I assumed I had only paid the equivalent of twenty dollars worth of lire for it. It was not the kind of thing I could make invisible by tucking under my arm as I walked into the hotel, and I knew that the last thing Eileen would want is for me to broadcast to the rest of the students that I was buying her flowers. It would embarrass her. So I slipped my raincoat off and started to drape it over the bouquet. No. The coat would crush the flowers. The large set of red petals and long green stems wrapped in a clear plastic vase would have to remain visible. I decided all I had to do was walk casually as I approached the hotel and hope that nobody saw me.

     

    As I walked past the Palazzo Pubblico down the sidestreet where the hotel rested, I found himself crossing paths with Drusilla Horowitz and Adnan Elshenaway, who were headed out for a walk. Much to my mortification, Drusilla asked in a teasing, sing-song voice,

    “Who are the flowers for, Marc?”

     

    “Nobody,” I smiled as I walked past the two and continued up to the hotel entrance.

     

    “I’m sure Eileen will love them,” Drusilla called back.

     

    ***

    [WARNING: A Sudden Perspective Shift is Coming.

     

    I have decided that too much of the action that follows involves events that I did not witness myself.  This leaves me with two options: 1) tell you only what I saw myself, resulting in a narrative that reads much like P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Bertie novels, in which important things happen and the narrator is, amusingly, never there to see it.  2) Jump into the heads of real people, and composite characters, and give you my sense of what they (probably? somewhat probably? not remotely?) were thinking and doing while I was elsewhere.

     

    I have chosen option 2.

     

    After all, this autobiography is only 87% true, leaving me the leeway to make stuff up at this juncture.  Enjoy the somewhat accurate account of what followed that overcast January in
    Siena
    in 1997.]

     

    * * *

     

    After I disappeared into the hotel, leaving Drusilla and Adnan alone to continue walking towards the Campo, Drusilla turned to Adnan and said, “Why don’t you think my boyfriend back home ever buys me flowers?”

     

    [Remember readers: Drusilla looks like Liv Tyler, if you need someone to picture.]

     

    Adnan shrugged. “Bob? He’s a loser. That’s why he doesn’t buy you flowers.”

     

    “I’ve been thinking of giving him the heave-ho lately,” Drusilla said. “He’s clingy and possessive and he clearly has decided that I’m some kind of mother replacement for him. He makes me feel like I’m on a leash 24/7, you know? Like I’m his to own and command at a given moment.”

     

    “You wouldn’t be much of a feminist if you kept dating a guy like that,” Adnan observed.

     

    Drusilla nodded decisively. “You said it. From now on, I take crap from no one. Least of all Bobby.”

     

    “You’re in
    Italy
    ,” Adnan said. “Love is in the air. Be reckless. Cheat on the loser.”

     

    “I dunno,” Drusilla sighed. “It wouldn’t be nice. I should go back home and break up with him first. Then it would all be on the up-and-up if I went off with someone else.”

     

    “Yeah, but then you wouldn’t be in
    Italy
    any more,” Adnan said. “And it would be too late for a romance in
    Italy
    .”

     

    “Yeah.”

     

    “What, are you married to the guy, or something? Go have a fling!” Adnan commanded. “You wouldn’t be much of a feminist if you didn’t cheat on him. Remember A Doll’s House? The Awakening? Lady Chatterly? Your favorite books!”

     

    [By the way, Adnan looks a little like Ajay Naidu from the movie Office Space.]

     

    “I like Anna Karenina better than all of those.”

     

    Adnan spread his arms wide. “Well…”

     

    “Yeah,” Drusilla shrugged. “You’re right.” She paused. “But I don’t want to dump him. I’m not ready to dump him. I may keep him yet. I just want to set some new ground rules when I get back. Like giving me some space.”

     

    “Fair enough. But before you go back to him … while you’re here … do me a favor and have some sex with a hot Italian guy.”

     

    “No sex. But I’ll make out with one for a good five hours. Maybe third base. Or a long lead off third...”

     

    “Okay,” Adnan said. “Good enough.”

     

    They fell silent for a full minute as they walked.

     

    “I’d make out with you if you weren’t gay,” Drusilla concluded.

     

    “And I’d make out with you if you were a guy,” Adnan said diplomatically.

     

    * * *

     

    Whenever a problem preyed on Eileen Harris’ mind, she began to feel the tension build in her stomach. The greater the problem became, the tighter the knot in her stomach was pulled. By now, the nausea had risen to a crescendo, sapping her of all her strength, keeping her too dizzy to stand. For the past sixty-seven minutes she lay on her back diagonally across the double bed that she and Drusilla shared, pressing a damp white cloth to her forehead.

     

    Marc, Marc, Marc. It was so wonderful when she was with him. He was so sweet and funny. He made a wonderful friend. So why did he have to go and ruin it by kissing her? Now everything was so complicated.

     

    It wasn’t that Marc was a bad kisser. It wasn’t that she wasn’t attracted to him. He was fairly good-looking.

     

    That wasn’t the problem.  So what was the problem?

     

    It wasn’t that he was a little overweight.

     

    It wasn’t that he had a few too many pimples.

     

    It wasn’t that his glasses were too large and lacked style.

     

    It wasn’t that he kept ordering the same five Italian meals over and over again since he got to
    Italy
    , showing a distinct lack of adventurous spirit and a rigidity of taste.

     

    It wasn’t that he talked too much about Doctor Who and was a little self-absorbed.

     

    It wasn’t that he had some symptoms of arrested development and liked comic books too much.

     

    It wasn’t that he was poor with money and spent it too quickly and would probably not be a good provider.

     

    It wasn’t any of that.

     

    But she couldn’t stop thinking, even when he held her in his arms last night, first outside the D’Uomo and then back here in the hotel room. She enjoyed making out with him tremendously, but she couldn’t stop her mind from racing through every possible ending to their relationship.

     

    When they weren’t in school together during the semester, she lived near
    Buffalo
    and he lived six hours away in
    Staten Island. Six hours. After they graduated, would he have to drive six hours each weekend just to see her? And, for God’s sake, the boy was allergic to cats. How could she date anyone who couldn’t set foot in her house without breaking out in hives? Would he drive six hours to see her just to spend the entire visit talking to her on the front steps of her house? And where would he sleep? In a sleeping bag on the lawn under her apple tree? In a hotel? The hotel bills for the first month of their relationship alone would be enormous.

     

    How could she allow herself to fall in love with him when the dynamics of their relationship would be so complicated? Besides, it was destined to end badly, of that she was certain. She had always vowed never to get married, never to have children, and that was what Marc wanted from her more than anything. If not now, then if their relationship really went somewhere…

     

    Ridiculous. Patently absurd. The deck was stacked against them and Eileen was not much of a gambler to begin with. She liked to be in control. She liked to be prepared for every possible contingency, and there were too many variables. Her logical mind was on the verge of a short circuit.

     

    She would have to talk to him about it. But what could she possibly say to him? He seemed so excited about this so-called relationship. Colin was just saying this morning that Marc was giddier than he had ever been during his entire college career. Would Marc even understand what she was talking about? For an intelligent person, he could behave very illogically, very melodramatically.

     

    Well, hopefully Marc’s romantic streak will take a rest, she thought. I’m sure he noticed I gave him the cold shoulder on the bus ride home. That was a clear enough message that he’s pushing me too hard. He’d have to be an idiot not to realize that I need some space. If he keeps his distance from me for a few days, I’m sure our feelings for each other will die down and we’ll be able to go back to being just friends. That’s much easier. Much safer. It’s the only logical decision.

     

    There was a timid knock on her bedroom door.

     

    “Yes?” she groaned.

     

    Marc poked his head in. “Can I come in?”

     

    Eileen sighed and sat up. “Yes.”

     

    “I noticed you weren’t yourself today, so I got you something to help make you feel better.” At that, Marc jumped dramatically into the room and, striking a heroic pose, presented her with a giant bouquet of roses. “Ta-da!”

     

    Oh, shit.

     

    Beaming, Marc handed her the bouquet. “Here you go.”

     

    Eileen turned the bouquet over in her hands, staring at the vibrant red flowers. They were lovely. They also looked expensive.

     

    I’m definitely going to throw up. Any second now. Puke all over the place.

     

    “What do you think?” asked Marc, who was starting to look nervous.

     

    “Very…nice. Pretty.” Eileen tried to smile, but it came out more like a frown. I think I’m gonna die. Dear God, I’m gonna die.

     

    Marc shuffled from one foot to the other. “So, I was worried about you. I don’t like to see you looking so glum, you know. You’re very cool and you should be happy.”

     

    “Thanks,” Eileen murmured. Go away, please. Go away, go away, go away, go away, go away, go away. I can’t take it anymore.

     

    Marc looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. First he put them behind his back, then he put them in his pockets, then he dropped them at his side. “I hope I haven’t offended you by getting you these flowers.”

     

    Eileen didn’t respond right away to that one, and the tension level in the room jumped four hundred percent. Marc, fully aware that he was losing ground with each passing second, tried to find the right words and failed.

     

    “I know you don’t like it when I open doors for you and pull chairs out for you. I’m not really sure what the etiquette is these days for…you know…hanging out with…women who think old-fashioned stuff like flowers is repressive and all that jazz.”

     

    “No, no,” Eileen said, too quickly to sound natural. “They’re fine.”

     

    “So I got you flowers, because I figured it was what I was supposed to do, and I wanted to do it because I like you, but I hope that you’re not someone who reacts badly to flowers, you know? So if the gift is bad, then I’m sorry.”

     

    “They’ll need water.” Eileen stood up and walked over to a large thermos of water on her bureau. She pulled the roses out of the clear plastic vase they were in and slipped them into the thermos.

     

    “Do you need water?” Marc blurted out. “I mean, if you’re not well, I can ask Marcello to make you some tea. I can get you some cookies, or something. Or aspirin.  Or earplugs”

     

    Eileen smiled weakly at him and sat down again on the bed. I’m torturing him. I’m tearing him to pieces and all he did was buy me a present. Why am I doing this? Does he deserve this crap I’m giving him? Why can’t I smile at him? Why can’t I give him a real “thank you” for these lovely flowers? What the heck is wrong with me, anyway?

     

    “No, no aspirin,” she said. Damn, she thought. That was a mistake too. I should have given him a mission. Something to make him feel useful. Something to help him save face and give him a graceful escape from this horrible, stifling room.

     

    Now sweat was gathering on Marc’s brow. “Well, I can see you still look a little sick, so I’ll let you get some rest.”

     

    “No.” Eileen jumped to her feet and grabbed Marc by the wrist. “Wait.”

     

    Marc was afraid to look her in the face. “Yes?”

     

    There was a lump in Eileen’s throat that made it hard for her to speak. “I want to thank you. Really. Thank you for the flowers. I do like them. I really do. You look like you don’t believe that, and I don’t blame you, but I really like them.”

     

    Marc looked at her, searching her eyes to see if she was telling the truth.

     

    Then the thought, unbidden, jumped into Eileen’s mind. Kiss me again, Marc.

     

    He saw the invitation in her eyes and brought his lips up to hers.

     

    ***

     

    Marc and Eileen were rolling around on top of the bed covers, kissing each other amorously. With the pleasure came relief, for Marc knew he’d been granted an eleventh hour stay of execution and he was enjoying every moment of it. Terrified of doing anything to end this bliss, Marc fought the urge to try to take her clothes off, contenting himself with exploring the curves of her body through her clothes. The night before they had made out for minutes at a time, pausing a few times to rest, holding one another and stroking each other’s hair, before beginning again. He knew she had enjoyed it last night just as he had, and he expected that they would spend at least as much time together tonight.

     

    He knew he was wrong when he felt her start to fight him. He couldn’t believe it. She was still fighting him. Why? If she didn’t want him to kiss her, then why didn’t she pull away the moment he tried to make a move? Why stop now? What was the problem?

     

    He remembered what had happened last time they stopped kissing. She gave him the cold shoulder for nearly a day. What would happen if he stopped kissing her now? Would she ever let him kiss her again? He decided he would try to ignore her wriggling for as long as possible. Maybe if he could make his kisses and caresses all the more pleasing to her, focus all his energy on electrifying her senses, she wouldn’t break away from him. It was what he had been trying to do all along, but he redoubled his efforts, knowing that he only had a few moments to prove himself before her protests grew too great.

     

    “We have to stop,” she whispered between kisses.

     

    Jesus Christ.

     

    Marc stopped, burying his face in the covers.

     

    “Can you - ?”

     

    “Yes, yes,” Marc grumbled, rolling off of Eileen and sitting up on the bed. Eileen sat up and traced her fingers through her hair, combing the wild strands back into place. She had that long-suffering look back on her face. The one that made him feel like he was as pleasant to be around as an eighty-year-old vicar with roving hands and a massive erection. Well, he wasn’t about to let her tear his heart out for the third time in one day.

     

    Marc stood up abruptly and shot Eileen an angry look. “Look, if I make you feel that uncomfortable, then I’ll stay out of your way.”

     

    His fists balled at his side, he stalked across the room and stopped in front of the door. He looked at her again, waiting for her to stop him from leaving. She was staring glumly down at her own hands, folded on her lap.

     

    “I’m tired of pushing you. I’m tired of being the bad guy.”

     

    Eileen didn’t say a word.

     

    “It’s your move now. If you want me, I’ll be upstairs.” Furious and humiliated, Marc tore open the bedroom door and strode outside, almost crashing into Joachim’s barrel chest.

     

    “Marc, I wanted to –“

     

    Marc continued past Joachim and head up the stairs to his room. “Not now, Joachim. Please.”

     

    ***

     

    Does he want me to follow him? Eileen wondered. Or am I the last person he wants to see right now? No. He wants me to follow him.

     

    Eileen started to stand up, but her nervous stomach replied with a nauseous lurch that dragged her back to her seat. No. She was in no condition to go chasing after him. He’d made her too upset. He’d done this to her, made her sick with worry. The bastard. If only she could lay down a little while, until the nausea passed, but her room seemed smaller now than it had been even a few minutes ago and now she was beginning to understand where the cliché “the walls felt like they were closing in” came from.

     

    Decisively, she fought the sickness in her stomach and stood up, tossing on her long emerald coat and darting out of her room. She raced past a taciturn Joachim, who was loitering like a lost soul in the second-floor parlor, and proceeded down the spiral staircase to the main floor restaurant. Thankfully, there was no sign of Marc or her archenemy Colin. She couldn’t take any sniping at this particular moment. She had to get some air. She had to get to the D’Uomo. Maybe if she stood outside the church, a place she had found so inspiring in so many ways, the place where she and Marc had first kissed, she might know better what to do.

     

    She crossed the Campo, navigating past several picnicking couples and groups of friends standing in ill-defined circles talking with one another in various and sundry languages. From what she understood of Italian, she overheard one bald man insisting that Savonarola was a great man and didn’t deserve being executed on the spot in the past, just missing the substance of his friend’s rebuttal.

     

    Marc’s right. I’m being unreasonable. Why won’t I give him a chance to prove himself? What am I so afraid of? What if Marc and I can work something out? What if he’s willing to make the commute to see me each week? Maybe, for once, I can have a boyfriend who possesses some small degree of intelligence instead of having to settle for some of the terrible boys I went to grammar school with. Or is this what I’m afraid of? Have I been alone so long that I’m afraid to take the risk of being with someone?

     

    Eileen was so consumed with self-doubt and self-reflection, psychological and romantic analysis of Marc’s motivation, and strategic planning of how their next meeting would go that she barely realized her feet had carried her to the D’Uomo until she came to a stop in front of the black-and-white striped giant. Once the sight of the mammoth structure sank in, Eileen felt the tears start to fill her eyes. She realized that she couldn’t think her way around this problem. She had to clear her thoughts and see what her heart told her. She had to pray. Before she could begin her invocation, she was distracted by the approach of a handsome Italian soldier.

     

    “I hate to see someone so beautiful look so depressed,” said the young man.

     

    Eileen rubbed the tears away from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m not depressed,” she protested, ridiculously.

     

    “Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked, his noble brown eyes searching out hers.

     

    Eileen laughed humorlessly. “I wish there were.”

     

    “Is it your boyfriend?” the soldier asked without irony.

     

    “He’s not my…,” Eileen began hastily, and then realized she might be lying. “Well he’s…it’s my…it’s…well, I suppose he’s something of…unless he just broke it off, or unless I did. I don’t know what he is. I don’t know what we are.”

     

    “And that’s the problem?” said the man, as if he now understood the situation completely. “You do not know how you feel about him yet, and he’s run out of patience.”

     

    “Yes, that’s it exactly,” Eileen confessed miserably.

     

    “It’s too bad he’s felt the need to put so much pressure on you,” the man said sadly, pressing a hand on her shoulder. His touch was cool, but reassuring.

     

    Eileen turned to look at the tall man. “It’s just all happening so fast. I didn’t expect anything like this to happen. The last time I came here with students they were all so insipid. I never expected to meet another student who affected me the way Marc does. It all came as a total surprise to me.”

     

    “But that is a good thing,” the man smiled.

     

    “Is it?”

     

    “But of course. Surprise is the greatest gift life can give us. It keeps things exciting. It keeps us off balance. If we were able to predict everything that would happen to us before it happened, wouldn’t life be the most colossal bore?”

     

    Eileen shifted her eyes sideways, avoiding the soldier’s searching gaze. “I don’t know.”

     

    “Well, I love surprises. Take now, for instance. I’m on leave from my assignment for the next two days. I was just going out for a little while to enjoy the night. The last thing I expected to see was a woman as lovely and enchanting as you standing outside the D’Uomo looking for a friendly person to talk to. I didn’t expect any of this, but it’s a surprise, and it’s a wonderful one.”

     

    Eileen felt herself starting to cry again and didn’t know why. “It’s a wonderful surprise?”

     

    She didn’t expect the Italian paratrooper to place his hand gently under her chin and lift her face slowly up to his. His deep-set eyes were filled with affection and concern. Eileen felt herself start to blush.

     

    “A wonderful surprise,” he repeated, smiled a perfect white smile.

     

    Eileen smiled back. “Thank you.”

  • Life & People

    A Case of Vertigo at Castle Montalcino


     

    The next major outing was to see a castle in Montalcino. Olansky chartered a bus to take us all to the structure, which stood in the middle of the most beautiful scenery I had ever seen in my life. Describing it is virtually impossible. I try to put it into words and wind up falling back on “rolling green hills covered in mist.” Such clichéd words never fail to conjure up an image for me of a misty-eyed Irishman talking about the old country. But the words do fail to conjure up Montalcino.

     

    I wonder if I had ever really seen a horizon before that day on Montalcino. Growing up in the crowded suburbs, I’ve rarely had an opportunity to see a clear sky, or miles of undeveloped land. Before that day, the closest I got to seeing untouched land was watching farm houses go by as I drove along the expressway to my college in upstate
    New York
    . And both the farm and the highway were there to spoil the expansiveness of the grass.

     

    The castle was obviously man-made, but it was so old and made of stone, which is a very natural material, so it seemed almost as if it grew out of the ground. Olansky gave us some time to wander around the castle, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Colin so happy in my life. He ran up and down the battlements whooping out with joy. As a lifelong Dungeons and Dragons fan, as well as a devout worshipper of the move Braveheart, perhaps he had felt that he had come home.

     

    I, on the other hand, was moving very carefully along the crumbling battlements, wondering how anyone could stand guard on such a precarious position, let alone defend it during a siege. One false move and you were a bloody pancake on the floor.

     

    Colin stopped running around long enough to notice how unsteady I was on my feet.

     

    “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

     

    I smiled sheepishly.

     

    “You got to be kidding. This is the coolest thing ever, and you’re scared?” He laughed and then continued running around, pretending to brandish a sword.

     

    Eileen appeared with Drusilla at her side and the two began exploring the part of the castle I had already discovered. At each corner of the castle there was a tower that rose another fifty feet above the level we were standing on, which was already very high. Eileen made her way to one such tower and stared up at a very long ladder made of sturdy pieces of wood.

     

    “That looks scary,” she said.

     

    She started hesitantly up the ladder and stopped halfway. She looked down and laughed at herself, embarrassed at being afraid.

     

    “It’s okay,” I said. “Just head on up. Don’t look down.”

     

    She nodded and crept her way up. When she disappeared through the hole at the top of the tower, a series of thoughts ran through my head. If I darted up the ladder as quickly as I can, I can impress her by being extra brave. I can also be alone with her at the top of the tower. Maybe that would be a good time to kiss her. I can kiss a lady in a tower. Colin’s Arthurian Romance high was becoming contagious.

     

    Without looking down, I climbed the ladder as quickly as I could. Reaching the top, I leaned through the hole and landed on what was probably the smallest elevated platform I had ever stood on. The half-ruined tower was missing large chunks of its wall, so there would be no barrier preventing anyone who wanted to from simply walking off the edge. Everywhere I looked, I saw a huge drop. I front of me there was a sheer drop along the side of the castle. On my left was another drop where I could splatter myself all over the castle interior. Behind me, I could fall to my death down the ladder.

     

    Eileen tossed her arms back and breathed in the open air. “What a wonderful view!” she cried.

     

    “Oh, my God,” I murmured.

     

    I was feeling dizzy. I didn’t want to move my legs because any step would take me closer to the edge. But not moving my legs made me feel wobbly. Each time I wobbled, I saw the drop. Maybe I should just go back down the ladder. I got up it, I could go down.

     

    I looked at the ladder, and realized that the first run was so far down that I’d have to lower myself waist-deep into the hole until my feet found support. Then I saw the drop past the first rung.

     

    I dropped myself to the floor and hugged my knees to my chest, too afraid to do anything but stare off into nothingness. I wouldn’t allow my eyes to register the sky around me. I had always been afraid of heights, but I’d never had such an attack of anxiety. I’d never felt so vulnerable.

     

    “Are you okay, Marc?” Eileen asked. She rested a hand on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

     

    God, why does she have to see me like this? Why do I have to be so weak in front of a woman? I have to be strong. I have to impress her so she loves me. I want to be worthy, but how can I be if I’m so afraid?

     

    Drusilla popped her head up from the hole in the ground. “Ah, it’s nice up here.” She hoisted herself up off the ladder and out of the hole onto the tower.

     

    “What’s wrong with Marc?” she asked as she got settled.

     

    “Nothing. I’m okay,” I said.

     

    Two more people climbed up, including my fellow Blessed Augostino Novello fan, Mark Newcomb, and I wondered how we could all fit on such a small tower. As they walked around the hole in the floor, they had to avoid bumping into one another. None of them seemed scared.

     

    “What a beautiful view,” said Colin, when he joined us.

     

    Eileen moved closer to me and said as gently as she could, “Do you want me to help you down the ladder?”

     

    “Yes.”

     

    “Do you want me to go down first and you follow, or do you want me to help lower you down?”

     

    “I don’t know,” I said, my voice wavering. As mortified as I was, I tried to be big about it and laugh at myself. I managed a smile and a small laugh.

     

    “You have to tell me, or I can’t help you,” said Eileen.

     

    “I’ll go first.” I moved slowly towards the hole in the ladder and then stopped abruptly.

     

    “I can’t,” I said.

     

    “Do you want me to go first?” Eileen whispered.

     

    “Yes.”

     

    “Okay.”

     

    Eileen walked over to the hole and tried to figure out how to lower herself onto the ladder. She sat on the edge of the hole, dangling her legs in the air over the first rung. She then planted her hands on either side of the hole and pushed her bottom over the edge. She hung in the air a moment, supported only by her locked arms. Then she bent her elbows and her feet found ground. Once this was done, she had to do an awkward maneuver to turn herself around so she could back down the stairs.

     

    After a moment, she was ready and climbed quickly down the stairs. Several seconds went by.

     

     

    “Marc!”

     

     

    “Yes?”

     

     

    “I made it down.”

     

     

    “Okay.”

     

     

    “Come and see.”

     

    I slowly leaned forward and peered into the hole. She was at the base of the ladder, looking up at me.

     

    “You can do it, Marc.”

     

    Colin, who was still on the tower with me agreed. “You can do it, man.”

     

    I exhaled sharply through my nose. “Okay.”

     

    I stood up and tried to will myself to the ladder. I was posed as if I would start walking at any moment, but I wasn’t moving. A long moment passed with me standing there.

     

    “What are you trying to do, use the Force?” asked Mark Newcomb. “Just go down the fucking ladder.”

     

    I laughed, and that joke was all I needed to break the tension. I’d had it with looking the fool in front of Eileen.

     

    Focusing only on her face, I duplicated the same maneuver she used to find the first rung of the ladder. The moment my feet reached the rung, I knew I was home free. I went down the ladder as quickly as I could. Suddenly, I found myself at Eileen’s side again.

     

    She gave me a thumbs up sign. “There you go. You made it.”

     

    “Thanks,” I said. “That sucked.”

     

    She pointed up at the hole in the tower where Colin had appeared to make his descent. “You looked so cute when you’re head appeared up there, looking down on me. You had this adorable, frightened chipmunk face on.”

     

    I pictured it in my mind and laughed. “Good lord, I can imagine.”

     

    On the bus ride back to
    Siena
    , Eileen was oddly cool to me. We sat next to one another, but she seemed to not want to speak to me at all. Saying she was no feeling well, she placed headphones over her ears and started listening to her Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band CD. She didn’t speak the entire trip back.

     

    After reaching the hotel, I complained to Colin about her for twenty minutes. He agreed with everything I said about her, but no longer opposed my continued passive pursuit of her. He just couldn’t care enough to oppose it because he didn’t want to see me with a girl he hated so much. I would later feel the same way about his girlfriend, Monica, so I can no longer fault him, in hindsight.

     

    Shortly after nightfall at , I went to Eileen’s room. I sat on her bed beside her as she made up a list of all the Mets games of the current season and tried to calculate how many she’d be able to realistically see commuting from
    Connecticut
    . She spoke rapidly and nervously as she told me about it, once again an odd mixture of tension and eagerness in my presence. Half of her seemed to be screaming out for me to kiss her while she other half just wanted to make me go away.

     

    “Do you want to take a walk?”

     

    It was two hours earlier than we would usually walk with Drusilla and Colin, so the request was definitely special, especially considering what had been going on with us over the past few days. I had also failed to mention asking either of our friends to accompany us.

     

    She considered it for a moment before giving an only slightly hesitant, “Yes.”

     

    It was a cold night out. The two of us walked side by side to the D’Uomo, the main
    church of
    Siena
    . It was her favorite building in the city, and we would often include it on her walks, but she was particularly insistent that we head directly for the church. It was a none-too-subtle way of telling me she was still confused about our relationship.

     

    When we reached the church, she asked that we go to the other side of the main square and sit on a low all across from its façade. I sat next to her on the cold stone and looked with her at the dozens of saints’ statues on the Gothic structure. She looked like she was considering saying something about the artistry of the church, but stopped.

     

    As I sat there with her, looking at the church, I knew there would never be a better time. She was ready and so was I. This would be something I would remember for the rest of my life.

     

    I reached down and gently placed my hand on hers. She lowered her head and smiled in muted disbelief.

     

    I laced my fingers through hers and moved closer to her.

     

    “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “There must be so many things you’d rather be doing than sitting here with me.”

     

    “There are,” I said, and I leaned forward to kiss her.

     

    She lifted her head to mine, letting my lips touch hers. I placed my arm around her waist and pulled her closer to me as I kissed her. I felt a rush of excitement as I felt the warmth of her body through her coat.

     

    Once the kiss started, we abandoned all the inhibitions that had been crippling us from the beginning and let ourselves let in the moment. She put her arm tentatively around my neck and kept kissing me, not doing anything to push me away as she had done so often over the past weeks.

     

    I wondered how it was that this was happening to me, even though I had helped make it happen. How was I with this wonderful person? What did I do to deserve her?

     

    I shoved the unwanted thoughts aside. Even though I knew that Eileen and I might never be together again after we returned to
    America
    , I felt happy, and I felt alive. For the first time in years, I wasn’t afraid of living.

     

    As we kissed, I was aware of the D’Uomo beside us, standing there as it had always stood, every day for the past five hundred years.

     

    And it was good.

Pages