On a hot day in mid-July, I was making my way home from the bank. It was one of those swelteringly hot days in Rome where the ancient buildings and umbrella trees seemed to be bleeding into the golden haze of the scorching sun.
Like a melting Monet.
Waiting at the bus stop, Romans and tourists alike were performing various cool-down rituals: fanning, drinking, shading, stripping, complaining, cursing.
The bus arrived and I was hopeful that the ride would be quick and painless. Stupid, really.
There’s no quicker way to induce an anxiety attack, even in a calm person, than to walk onto a claustrophobic cattle trailer of a bus that has the air quality of a polluted bathhouse.
The bus would jerk, and all of us weary travellers would bump into and fall onto each other. Bodies overheated and limp, damp sweaty skin touching damp sweaty skin. Some of the passengers were panting like dogs. Others stood in trance-like states as sweat beads escaped down their faces, arms and legs. The shower-haters were stinking up the joint.
It felt like the entire caravan was breathing directly on me. An inescapable itch that can’t be scratched. At a particularly sharp turn, an old man sitting in front of me seized the moment and grabbed my inner thigh, using it as a thick pole with which to steady himself. His hand slipped however, because I was sweating even from my thigh. (ha!)
When we finally arrived at my stop, I emerged from the bus and was hit by the hot, humid outside air. I was feeling dirty, nauseous, violated, and incredibly happy to be getting closer to home and to having a cold shower.
In my hood – an area called Trastevere, which is across the Ponte Sisto from Rome’s historic center – people were sitting under the shaded umbrellas at outdoor cafes, and others were walking around as vendors sold trinkets, purses and 1950s still frame shots of stars from Italy’s golden age in cinema (Mastroianni, Loren, Cardinale, Lollobridgida…).
Making my way through the cobblestone streets, I looked down and noticed that my orange sun dress had turned red from a gorgeous combination of my sweat and the bus strangers’ sweat and I wondered if this sort of thing ever happened to Sofia Loren and Gina Lolllobrigida.
Sofia Loren
I stopped to light a cigarette, as I did from time to time in Rome. As I put my lighter away, a handsome man approached me. He was wearing a fitted, grey Zegna suit, white shirt & purple and green tie. His curly grey-flecked dark hair was slicked back, but in not in a greasy Ross from Friends way, more like Antonio Bandaras in Desperado. This man wasn’t melting; a heat-resistant anomaly in a sea of sweaters.
He stopped in front of me and asked for my lighter, which I gave to him. Handing the lighter back, he inhaled his cigarette deeply, smiled over at me and said “grazie, bella.” To which I said “prego, signore,” and got ready to walk away.
The beautiful man then stopped me, putting his hand on my sweaty arm. He leaned in close and poetic Italian words spewed out of his mouth in a sentancetoorushedtobeunderstood. I asked him to repeat a bit slower, so he did – still speaking quickly, but clear enough for me to understand. After I heard what the question was, I wished I hadn’t asked.
The rough translation of what Zegna suit said is: “will you come with me?” (he pointed behind him at a blacked out Mercedes waiting by the curb), “we’ll have sex and I’ll give you money.”
He continued smiling and smoking and eagerly waited for my response like he was Pat Sejak telling me the great prize I would soon be getting after I did that one little thing. Solved that one little puzzle. Had sex with that one random stranger.
How does a non-hooker respond to this?
I started laughing in a frighteningly shrill and uneasy way, and the man tried to touch my shoulders. I backed away and he looked at me the way a man looks at a woman after he offers her money in exchange for sex and finds out she’s not selling.
If the heat and the demonic bus ride had put me on the edge of losing my cool, this man asking for paid sex sent me flying over it. My laughter quickly turned into tears. Hugging myself, I began heave-crying like a Kim Jong Il mourner, which means I would make a very bad real-life hooker.
I asked him why he thought I was a prostitute. He didn’t answer. Passers-by began to notice as I, a sopping wet sweaty mess of a girl, cry-yelled at a very composed, well-dressed Italian as he calmly smoked his cigarette.
He started backing away from me, limp jazz hands in front of his chest that said: “I didn’t do anything, calm down.”
Then he said: “Allora, no?” Which, as you can surmise, means “so that’s a no?” “Stronzo,” I said. That means asshole. I was more mad at the fact that he was patronizing me than at the whole trying to make me a hooker thing.
The wannabe John (or Giovanni) walked back to his blacked out Mercedes. He turned around and waved at me as his driver opened the door for him. “Son of a bitch,” I said to myself.
Penis pointing to whorehouse, Pompeii
The walk home was a strange one. If I was hot before from the heat, I was on fire now from my frustration.
I wasn’t just mad at Giovanni. He was a pathetic moron, yes, but it was but one in a very long line of failures that were leading me to believe that romance was dead.
Even in Italy. The Italians, who supposedly invented the courting game, were seriously fumbling the ball. In fact, I had never been asked more to hook up than I had in Italy. A couple of my favorite lines were: “we can fall in love if only for one night,” (thanks, Pietro) and “why deny yourself the pleasure of using your body for what it was built to do?” (thank you, Mario).
I didn’t fall for either of the above, but I have had my fair share of romantic misjudgments. Had the act of choosing the guy who’s obviously devoid of any long term potential instead of maybe sifting through the rubble for something a bit more… connected? meaningful? significant?… turned up the dial on my desensitization to the warm fuzzy feelings romance, of love? Had I closed myself off to it long before I began wondering why I wasn’t finding it?
Maybe I have been prostituting my heart pro bono to men for the past 15 years, in which case, I am indeed a hooker with a heart of gold.
I went home and had two showers, one for the bus strangers’ sweat and my sweat, and one for the shame of being thought a prostitute. As I lotioned myself with some Nivea, I realized I had forgotten to ask Giovanni what he would have paid. Not that it would have mattered.
I washed my sun dress in the sink. I ate some cherries. I prepared for the unknown battle of my next Roman outing.
********
An aside.
Getting mistaken for a hooker didn’t make me feel like Pretty Woman but would you think I was a hussy if I told you that I contemplated Zegna suit’s offer for the briefest second? Not while it was happening, but after, upon reflection.
This is a part of the reason I was so upset by it all. Had Italy made me insane? Only if overblown romantic notions make a person insane (and they probably can). If romantic fantasies can’t run amuck in Rome, where can they? I wasn’t actually thinking about turning tricks, but here’s a snapshot of my totally unrealistic and possibly offensive after-the-fact daydream about it all…
I’m imagining this as a scene from Bertolucci movie come to life. (I have to switch to third person now because I’m a Catholic, failed, but still guilt stricken…)
Foreigner in Italy is approached by a handsome stranger after she is turned away from the store because her card was declined. The kind, hot man with his chiseled face and perfect suit offers the strapped-for-cash damsel cash money for an afternoon delight. She contemplates, accepts and brings the man home to her small, old Roman apartment. They don’t speak. They’re skin to skin, in a sweltering hot bedroom. The fan’s pulsing, the sheets have been kicked to the floor, sweat is dripping. They fall in love, for an afternoon. Afterwards, she falls asleep. He puts money and a handwritten note under a bowl of fresh cherries on the nightstand, kisses her forehead and leaves. They never see each other again.
I only thought about it for a second…
