(Warning:
this post contains some generalizations about Italian men. This is not in any way intended to be
offensive, nor does it represent and inflexible prejudice on my part – I’m
perfectly happy to amend my judgments at any time. These views are mine alone and are based only
on my relatively limited experience of traveling in Italy.)
“It’s going to be your ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’!” “You’ll never come back because you’ll fall
in love with a hot Italian guy and have his babies and live there
forever!” “It’s just like ‘Eat, Pray,
Love’.”
Well, first of all, if it were the latter book it would be
titled simply “Eat.” Or maybe “Eat,
Write, Maybe Make Out.” But overall comments
like those above, which represent the great majority of reactions to my
announcement that I’m taking three months off from work and moving to Italy to live off savings and write, have left me with a sardonic half-smile. I usually say something dismissive about how
Italian men are usually too short and far too aggressive/chauvinistic for my
taste, but the nagging feeling underneath such brush-offs is that maybe I won’t
be their shot of espresso either.
I’ve been to Italy at least a dozen times in my life, as far
north as Lake Como and as far south as Naples – I’ve stayed for as little as a
day and as long as six weeks. Without
fail, every time I’ve visited I’ve felt like a walking cone of gelato
surrounded by hot, tired kids; the catcalls were sometimes lewd, as were the
liberties taken with my body in public spaces, and even the cutest boys were
far too forward for my liking. I used to
complain about it, and I was certainly legitimately scared at times, but I also
have to admit that as a girl who didn’t get a lot of attention in most places
it felt good to be singled out among my girlfriends as the sort of
publicly-acknowledged bee’s knees. I
nearly followed through on a flirtation one time, in Venice with a group of
friends, when a cute, young waiter bought me a rose from one of those sellers
we’d been brushing off all evening and asked me to meet him for a drink after
his shift. These days I think I would
go, since he was pretty respectful and I thought he was attractive, but back then
I was still pretty new to flirtation actually resulting in anything, and I
chickened out.
This time around, although I joke that I’ll have to carry
pepper spray* and I won’t get a minute to myself at any coffee shop I go to,
the lurking fear is that I’m no longer the Italian version of manna from
heaven. Maybe I’m too old. Maybe I’ve lost that youthful glow and the
innocence they always seemed to see in me.
If I don’t blush as easily, perhaps they’ll tire of me quickly.
When I first traveled in Italy without my parents I was 20:
too young and inexperienced to do anything with any interest I might feel, and
not confident enough to properly deter interest I didn’t reciprocate. In the interim I traveled with my ex a lot,
and while I still did get a lot of looks and the odd flirtation (which he was
usually too clueless to notice) I was largely left alone out of respect to him
(don’t even get my feminist rant started there). Now, I’ll be on my own again, but not so
naive or afraid as I once was – one of my ‘phrases to learn’ is ‘go fuck
yourself’, so you know I’m preparing for the catcalls – and I find myself
worried they might not ‘like me’ as much as I always complained they did.
It’s funny, because my experience with my body in Italy has
always straddled a divide: even as the men were all over me, the clothes never
fit, and the slim, chic women around me made me feel painfully insecure. The catcalls and aggression, however
disrespectful or even frightening, provided a sort of barrier to the feeling
that I was huge and therefore disgusting.
And now that I might not attract them, I know I should feel relieved but
instead I feel somehow abandoned in advance.
It’s dumb, and I’m the first to admit that, but it seems as much as I talk
about having no fucks to give I’m still looking for outside approval, even in
the form of grody come-ons.
Ah, well. The ‘Eat’
part of my journey will wait for no man!
I leave tomorrow and I know I’ll have a wonderful time (between bouts of
loneliness and depression and anxiety, because, you know, I’m not delusional),
regardless of whether or not I meet my swarthy soulmate over there. I may not be writing much while I’m abroad** but
you can always find me on my Facebook page or on Twitter, where I’ll post links
if I do blog at all. And where I’ll also
announce any interesting Italian-dude encounters ;)
*I’m still totally going to carry pepper spray. Hey, I’m traveling alone and I don’t even
know anyone where I’m going!
**Side note: I’m sorry I haven’t written more this summer! I feel like most of my thoughts were more
appropriate for the author blog than this one.
Please forgive me.
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