In writing about Susan and Jack and the NY Times wedding stories last week....I couldn't help but reminiscence about my own stories.....I decided to write and share one.
~~~~~~~~~
Antonio.
Could there be a more perfect name for your first heart-crushing long distance love?
He was young and handsome and flipped burgers in a fast food restaurant in Italy.
Sally and I had spotted the Wimpy burger chain logo while walking down a quiet side street in the old section of Rome and suddenly needed a greasy American food fix. We sat down on the stools, grabbed the menu and studied it--like it had been years since we ate burgers instead of only a couple weeks.
We were in the Good Girl Group--the group allowed to explore the streets of Rome on our own for a couple hours without our
chaperon, Sister Theresa. She was the lone guardian hovering over 10 girls from my all girl Catholic High School in suburban Chicago.
Sister had her hands full-- ten innocent sheltered girls drinking too much red wine and paying too much attention to dark sexy flirtatious men who swarmed around us like bees to fresh blossoms. By the time we hit the Eternal City at the end of our 18 day trip, her reserves had dwindled. On our first day in Rome, the quiet, proper bride of Christ hit two men over the head with her umbrella on a city bus for groping her (she wore civilian clothes.) Her strategy for these last few days was to divide us into The Good Girl Group and the Ones-Who-Needed-To-Be-Watched-Group so she could better protect the ones who needed it most.
“
Heelllo, you are
Amareecan?”
I looked up from the menu. A young man in his early twenties with large liquid brown eyes, long eyelashes, symmetrical dimples in his cheeks and thick black curls stared down at me. He guessed the answer.
“You want
burrrrger?” He waved his spatula and cocked his eyebrow at me.
Until that moment, I
didn’t know eyebrows could be suggestively cocked. The only male eyebrows that had previously cocked at me belonged to Mr. Mazda, my small rail-thin anemic-looking Algebra teacher. His eyebrows did not suggest attraction but rather continued disappointment at my failure to grasp math word problems.
Sally elbowed me. Apparently, I had gone mute but my flaming red cheeks advertised just how busy my feelings were working inside me. Another young Italian man burst into the room via a swinging door carrying a rack of glasses. Fair, more cute than handsome, he winked at Sally.
As our two in-the-flesh Italian gods flirted with us….we had our bat-
mitzvah, our
quinceanera, our coming out as women moment right there on the bar stools at Wimpy’s.
I don’t remember what happened after this. Did we eat? Did we slurp our chocolate milkshakes through straws? I know we
buddied-up and combined our limited Italian, modest French and urgent hand signal to communicate with these bemused men. I know we gave them our hotel address and our names and they asked us to a soccer game the next afternoon. We had no clue how we would slip away from Sister and the rest of the Good Girl Group but we agreed to meet them.
We floated back to our hotel like Mary Poppins without umbrellas. We had finally discovered a place on earth where men (not boys) recognized our beauty and sensed our vibrant inner spirits.
All those pimple-faced suburban boys at home could go to hell. They were unworldly narrow-minded immature male specimens who fell over themselves running after The
Suzies ….the tall thin
blond girls with thick lip gloss…. who had no substance ….no souls.
That night, in the alley next to our hotel, our Italian studs called up to us and validated our dreams.
“Hey
Blond…Hey
Geeeeeena…..Hey
Sallll leeee”
Although Sally and I were not roommates, we found each other in the darkened pension’s hallway and grabbed on to each other.
“Oh my god…..Sister will kill us.”
We rushed back into a room and ran to the window.
“
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Stop it….Stop it!”
Sister knocked on the door. Our hearts froze as she came into the room.
“Enough of that,” she said in stern nun-speak. “get away from the window.”
She
mustn’t have deciphered the names. She thought the men were calling for girls, any girls and let’s face it…you can’t miss a gaggle of 10 American teenage girls in a small hotel.
The next day, Sally and I told Sister we were going to a museum. I have no idea why she believed us. We ran to Wimpy’s were Antonio and
Ceseare drew a map on a white paper
place mat. After changing into their soccer uniforms they would pick us up in their car at the X and we’d head off to the game.
Sally clutched the precious map. I watched the time. We ran down the street hunting for street signs and trying to figure out where the meeting spot was.
At the appointed corner, we climbed into a small, dirt brown, dented Italian car. Sally sat up front with
Ceseare. She was so excited she must have been talking a hundred words a minute. He probably understood two or three words tops. I slid into the back with Antonio. Our conversation went like this:
“Bella
Geena.”
“Oh Antonio.”
“Bella
Geena.”
“Antonio”
We really
didn’t need to say much more.
I moved over and pressed my body next to him. His silky soccer uniform showed off his hard trim body. He was short but had huge muscular legs probably from his life long addiction to the game. I touched his smooth firm thigh with a shaking hand… just below the cuff of his shorts…and held my breath …I realized in that moment….I was touching a man…an adult man…. and not a teenage boy.
His soft lips devoured mine….his hands were knowledgeable. His flimsy uniform accentuated his arousal. Suddenly,
Ceseare tapped on the window and then pointed to the field. Antonio pushed me back and muttered something in Italian. He glanced down at his shorts, shook his head and grabbed some Kleenex out of flattened dirty half-torn box.
I found Sally on the sidelines…staring at the field. I’m not sure where she and
Ceseare had gone after exiting the car…but her lips were puffy and the rings in her long black hair were frayed.
I pulled her aside. “I have to go to the bathroom and then I need to talk to you.”
She nodded.
I came back from the bathroom …scared….my heart racing.
“Sally…something’s wrong with me.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Sally, I’m all wet. My panties are drenched. It’s not pee; I’m not having my period but I’
ve totally and completely wet.”
Tears welled up in my eyes. Sally was clueless too--neither of us understood how a woman’s body prepares for intercourse. I had a boyfriend at home, a sweet guy named Steve, but in our modest make out sessions…nothing ever happened like this to me. Sally hugged me. Perhaps I should use a tampon till it stopped she counseled. Wait and see what happens but she looked worried.
We had to leave at half time. We kissed the boys on the cheek and ran back to the hotel. We raved about the museum. I slipped a tampon in, crossed my fingers, and checked myself every hour.
The next day, we were scheduled to leave for home. Sally and I somehow managed to sneak away from the group so we could say good-bye to Antonio and
Ceseare.
We met them at Wimpy’s and exchanged addresses….promised to write….promised to return next summer… “on our own.” …..hoping the men would understand the promise of intimacy inherent in those words.
My heart felt gashed open…I could hardly speak…I began sobbing. Antonio gallantly took off his cook’s hat and offered it to me so I could wipe my tears. Snot and mascara left stains and smudges on the soft cloth. I handed the hat back to him…..he folded my hand back around it. “Go home with me.”
When I returned to the hotel, I went through the motions of packing but I schemed how to ditch the group and run back to Antonio. He asked me if I could stay longer….
didn’t that mean he wanted me? Perhaps forever? I visualized my idyllic life as his American wife in Rome. If only I could get my passport….I’m sure he’d let me stay with him. But Sister swept me and my passport off to the airport with the rest of the girls. She
didn’t notice I was a woman in love and contemplating my eternal union with a man who could barely communicate with me.
I was herded into the middle section of the 747. I sat next to Sally and cried on and off for twelve hours…remembering his kisses …thinking of how cute our children would look.
At home, I penned long …probably incoherent…letters in Italian to Antonio. It took me hours to look up all the words in Italian but I knew if I just got the words to him he could piece my thoughts together.
Isn’t that what lovers do…read each others minds? I’d stare at the clock at school….and tried to visualize the mailman putting his letter in our mailbox. The first thing I did when I hit home was to nonchalantly ask my parents, “Any mail for me?” and then hold my breath… waiting for an answer.
Love sick poems filled my journals and collages of airplanes and kissing couples and phrases like “he looked at me” were pasted in my scrapbook. My words, my pictures, my daydreams wanted to believe this man desired me and saw me as beautiful desirable young woman.
I found a “marriage manual” behind a stack of my mother’s cookbooks and figured out why my panties were wet. I took the manual’s advice and furiously put my body through it’s sexual paces so I could move from
squeezy kissy sex to adult sex when we there “on our own.” I dumped Steve…I needed a real man….which I now defined as someone who could make my panties wet.
Over the next few months, three short letters on onion-skin paper arrived in white crinkly envelopes with beautiful Italian stamps. I’d retrieve them with a poker face from my parents then run to my room to absorb them. I’d call Sally and we would spend hours deciphering the significance of every comma, spot and stain on the paper. I
couldn’t decipher his handwriting so usually the only words I could read were “Hello
Geena” and “
Amore, Antonio”…but somehow it seemed enough.
Before I headed off to college, I decided to permanently change my name from Jeannie to Gina to reflect my new desired woman status. Sally stayed behind in Chicago but we still plotted our return to Rome.
I never made it back to Italy the next summer.
My university was one of those places where every one was
pre something…
pre med,
pre dentistry,
pre law…and I began to wonder if
Anotinio had a degree? Or even with to college. I also discovered a set of blue-green eyes which gradually trumped Antonio’s brown ones.
I wrote a few more letters because no one wants to lose their dream even though you know time is up. I saved the mascara-smudged hat and keep it in a music box which plays “
Arriverderci Roma.” I lost his picture in the last few years…and it pains me…because looking at him….let me see myself at the tender age of 17.
Of course most of you guessed how this story would end….the story arc is familiar only the characters are unique. But there is another reason I
didn’t return to Italy.... Sally died.
A broken ankle that
didn’t heal, a diagnosis of cancer, a sudden fatal reaction to her first bout of chemo a few short months before our “next summer.”
Like a vine that wraps around a tree, her death wraps around this story for me. I can tell my Antonio story, it’s one of my favorite life stories, and leave Sally’s death out…but if I include her death in it….the story changes shape… when death wraps around love…it’s not such a silly story anymore…...time ….or the lack of time….always reminds us…to kiss with gusto...now...
Sally ....on the train towards Rome.
~
