Wandering in Italy
Definitely eating. Sort of praying. Loving?
All too often, we do not dare go deep enough into ourselves. We meet the gaze of the Other as an invitation. But we remain on the dock. Because the dock is the safest thing that exists, isn’t it? Terra firma.
_ Jean-Claude Izzo, ‘I Am at Home Everywhere’ Garlic, Mint, & Sweet Basil
Bologna, Italia - lunedì, 27 giugno, 2022
The first time I saw her, I was jet-lagged, deliriously hungry, and excited to be outside of the United States.
Prior to seeing her, I had taken a wrong turn off of Via Castiglione before a group of New England girlies guided me to my destination.
I was assessing pedestrians around me for approachability to get directions when the ladies caught my attention. They were boisterously speaking English but were not poorly styled like standard American tourists. Nor were they glued to maps on their phones or taking pictures without spatial awareness of others. Two more indicators that they weren’t typical tourists.
Plus, there was something ineffable about the way these women carried themselves and this something belied that no-one in the gang cared much for heteronormativity.
There go my people. I approached, “Are ya’ll fruity or just really cool?”
“Both!” All four of them replied gleefully before someone said “Jinx!” and everyone giggled.
The Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory (a now defunct collaboration between the University of Virginia, Duke University, and the University of Bologna) was holding its welcome reception for early-career scholars in attendance. I - being one of those scholars - was lost and late. Very Ivana™.
Lucky for me, my New England angels had been in Bologna for over a year and knew exactly where I wanted to go. They ushered me to the reception hall before going on their way and basically brought me right to her, another human who emanated that same ineffable freedom from straightness. I could sense it from across the room.
The welcome reception was casual. Other researchers, lecturers, and general guests moved between their small circles of polite chatter and a well stocked buffet, all while the welcome speaker made general remarks.
She was seated alone, frowning up at the welcome speaker then down to her notes. Occasionally biting her nails in-between note taking, or tapping her feet, she was deep in concentration and clearly not to be bothered.
My stomach reminded me that I was in a body, it willed me to turn my gaze from her and move towards the food. I glanced at her once more and prayed to Sappho that we’d have class together.
Martedì, 28 giugno, 2022
By the end of that first Tuesday I saw that we did not have any small group classes together. Though we were in the same room during the general morning symposium where all graduate scholars gathered for the first ninety minutes of each day.
That first morning of the general daily symposium I had assigned myself a seat in the front row. This was good for focusing on the scholarly matters at hand but was unideal for pining. However that did not stop me from craning my neck all the way around when during general introductions I heard a richly husky and warm voice introduce itself in halted English. The voice was hers.
Later that night I would journal to myself that it was for the best we didn’t share any classes together. I was in Italy to refine my possible methodologies of research and to network with potential mentors. My completed prefrontal cortex was still in the infancy of true adulthood, the last thing it needed was to be distracted by someone who sounded like honey.
Mercoledì, 29 giugno, 2022
Class ran from 8:30 to 14:30 and was out for the day.
I had just parted ways with a new friend who was taking the train home to Modena.
Rounding a corner away from where my friend and I had parted, I walked down some steps and almost fell into her as she walked up the steps in my direction.
Her name rolled out of me as if I’d always been saying it, emphasized at the right vowels, all consonants correctly enunciated. She smiled up at me and responded with “Sì” before assuming - I suppose - that such an affirmative is not almost universally understood, so she switched to “Ehh, Yes.”
We moved back down the steps together so we were now leveled looking at each other. I told her my name and said I was in the same program as her, “I know” was her reply. I asked where she was from and upon learning she was from Genova I made a bad joke about Columbus which thankfully went over her head.
As I saw my joke not landing anywhere on either side of funny/not funny I realized just how limited her English was. I played my only wild card, “Parli spagnolo?” Her body language shifted. She went from looking curious but guarded to open and fully present. It turned out that while her family was Italian, she had spent some formative years in Colombia so not only did she “parla spagnolo,” she was fluent!
She mentioned missing everything about her time in Colombia, especially the arepas. I told her Venezuelan arepas were better and that I knew how to make them. That made her laugh and she seemed intrigued. I went from blubbering with her in English to connecting with her in Spanish. I was expressing myself in the language of all my emotions, she was expressing herself in the language of her nostalgia.
Sappho works in mysterious ways. A match had been lit.
Insieme
I asked her where she was going and what she was doing the rest of the afternoon. She had no plans other than exploring the city. She had never wandered around Bologna before and wanted to get a feel for the place before classes and research picked up. I asked if I could join her in exploring, she lit up “¡Por supuesto!” Now we were in business.
We hit the streets. Walking and talking. Our strolling rhythms were is sync.
She told me about her readings of bell hooks in translation, I told her about my readings of Monique Wittig. We talked about decoloniality and the fungibility of borders; what dialoguing across difference actually meant to us as social practice and not just as performative posturing within the academy.
Depending on where we were walking to next, she would always orient herself on the outside of the sidewalk while I stayed on the inside. This was new to me and I liked it, though in the moment I could not verbalize why. Only later would I realize that it was my first time walking with a crush where I felt safe with her so I was relaxed as opposed to feeling responsible for her and being on alert. She glided with a mesmerizing air of chivalry and that made her beautiful to me.
Every now and then, to pause the flow of conversation she would touch whichever arm of mine was closest to her and point in the direction of this, that, or the other happening around us. An interesting architectural detail, kids being silly, elders being silly, a unique signage, wait let’s turn here, oh let’s go this way.
On more than one occasion, she would put her arm in my way all together in order to save me from oncoming traffic because on this day I had forgotten all about looking both ways as I was occupied looking at her.
The casual yet confident arm touches were great, I wanted all of them, until I began to worry that maybe there was a limit before I would spontaneously combust from the contact. This could not happen, especially in a new country. What would the Italians think? What would she think?! Worse still, what if she got caught in the flames?! Absolutely not. I had to keep my atoms together. I would keep my atoms together. Wait, how do I keep my atoms together?!
Entonces me hice la loca. Nothing was happening here. Surely she had a playful air placement tucked away in her chart somewhere and that’s just how she was! I began to say several silly things out loud to distract myself, none of which I remember, but I remember the sound of her laughter.
We kept walking. We kept talking. About the weather, about the summer school, about our schedules, about our excitement to hear Denise Ferreira Da Silva speak, about our respective research methodologies of interest.
We talked about politics, about art, about travel, about food, about domesticity. I asked her how she liked her sandwiches cut. Diagonal, down the middle, or not at all? She had no idea because she avoided making sandwiches if she could help it. She was absent minded in the kitchen and always burning something, including toast.
I imagined making well-layered and perfectly proportioned sandwiches for her over the course of several days and varying the cuts - or lack thereof - each time so we could get this very important detail sorted.
I learned she was an anthropologist conducting ethnographic research related to migration, commerce, and the ecologies of fishing communities on the periphery of the Mediterranean. I imagined writing up a syllabus for myself so I could keep up with her brain.
She mentioned practicing muay thai in her free time. I was besotted. Is that why she walks like that? But wait, she had only just picked up the sport and her walk was a seasoned one, not a recent affectation.
Her walk had character. It was the walk of an adventurer: attuned, attentive, ready to consume all the world before her and more. I wondered what kind of life she had lived that made her move that way. I imagined what it would feel like to walk with her forever, all over the globe.
She shared that as pride month wrapped up she felt anger over pride because she was tired of the Italian state and its lies. It was all dolce vita pink washing while the reality of queerness in Italy was still a tenous one. There was still so much work to be done she said. Still so much to resist. Still so much to fight for.
Her hands were in fists as she spoke about her frustrations. I imagined a timeline where we had grown close enough that her hands would relax as I held them.
It was revealed she had strong earth placements. I was a gonner at this revelation. She could have asked me for anything and I would have said yes, but instead, she wanted to give me something - a snack!
So off we went for my first ever aperitivo.
L’apertivo
She set my first ever spritz down in front of me and pushed a bowl of chips my way.
I wanted to cry.
Usually I was the one who bought the drinks and got the food. It had never occurred to me that someone I was interested in would want to do the same for me after having just met. No one ever had.
While enjoying our aperitivo, the conversation made its way to questions of etymology. Specifically regarding encinta (Spanish) and incinta (Italian) which are old school euphemisms for pregnancy, most commonly said under hushed tones in an out-of-wedlock occurrence.
We contemplated why embarazada meant pregnant in Spanish versus embarrass in English which is a true cognate of imbarazzare in Italian and embarrasser in French (she was also fluent in French) while being a false cognate in Spanish that comically trips-up both Italian, French, and English speakers who are learning Spanish.
With an online search we found out that all these words are in fact connected by a common origin from the Portuguese word embaraçar. “Em” is Latin for “in” and “baraça” is Portuguese for “noose”, as in “in a noose.” We revisited the phrases encinta and incinta, both literally mean “wrapped in a thread/ribbon.”
Together, we thought our way through connections between the imagery of pregnancy as a state of being that could potentially have shame attached to it depending on different sociological factors. We noted the ways in which that shame or even just pregnancy in general could possibly be experienced as a kind of noose.
Somewhere along the way our drinks and chips had been moved aside so that we were both leaning over the small table, inside each other’s personal bubbles, hovering over her phone, peering intently at our search results. Eventually we both leaned back and returned to our bubbles. While leaning back into her seat she asked me “¿Te gusta investigar la etimología?” and as she spoke, the Sun enveloped her in its light. She was radiant.
As I noted her radiance, for the first time in my life I felt the urge to propose marriage. My proposal being that I am a good cook and yes I do enjoy etymological research, endlessly so. I would make a great match for a muay thai fighting anthropologist. She burns a lot of calories, I can replenish those calories. She is very smart, I can match her smart. We could bond daily over breakfast by doing an etymological search together and every Sunday I would write her a love letter using all the words from our findings the week prior. Would she like to marry me?
I quelled the proposal and instead answered with “¡Sí, me encanta!” followed by my toothy and wide wonky smile. She smiled back at me and we stayed smiling at each other for what felt like cien años pero sin soledad. She then remembered her phone and went back to investigating further linguistic connections. I returned to sipping on my spritz, munching on chips, memorizing her face.
La sera
Weaving our way around the city, something made her pause. She started beaming and pointed, “Mira, donde nos conocimos.” We had arrived back to the steps of our first meeting. I of course hadn’t noticed where we were because she was my only clear sight of vision while the rest of Bologna was a halo of soft focus around her.
She asked me if I wanted us to stop here and go our separate ways.
“No, para nada.”
“Perfecto, yo tampoco.”
We kept walking. We kept talking.
Sometimes silence would weave itself into our stroll. Other times we would pause to quietly contemplate a new detail about the city before commenting our observations to each other. Stillness and movement. Silence and conversation. All of it glistened because it was happening with her.
She mentioned how the mosquitos at her hostel were dedicated to her demise, “me están crucificando” so we went in search of bug spray at a CarreFour Express.
Stepping into the convenience store with her felt familiar, as if we had lived a thousand lives together and running errands in this iteration was an everyday thing between us. She found her bug spray and then she guided me through all the curly hair products listed in Italian which I made note of for a product run on my own a few days later.
We left the store, ducked around a few blocks and this time it was me who paused because something had managed to pull my gaze away from her: the window display of a camera shop. I had a three year background in analog film production, photography, and darkroom development. However with starting grad-school it had been over a year since I’d touched a rented camera or stepped inside a darkroom. With my birthday being on Friday maybe it was time I bought myself a camera of my own…
“Ya veo, ¡eres artista! con razón hablas así” she exclaimed. I cringed as though I had been caught naked, exposed in an unintentional ruse. I did not consider myself an artist then and did not want to misrepresent myself to her.
It was unnerving to hear someone call me what I wanted to be but was too scared to say out loud. I wondered if maybe I had shared too much of my inner world with her in that moment. How dare she stare into my soul like that? We only just met!
She said that we had to go in given my interest. I told her I didn’t speak Italian and that I didn’t want to get roped into a bad sale. She chuckled and reminded me that she was Italian and could translate.
We went inside, perused, then settled on a Nikkormat camera that the shop owner said was sturdy, within my budget, and good for a beginner who desired a camera that could be pushed with time as an amateur progressed. I wanted to think about it before purchasing and the shop owner said he would hold it for me but only for a few days.
I was so elated as we left the camera shop that I wanted to kiss her but that would not have been appropriate to our context. Instead, throughout the rest of our walk I would effusively interject with “mil gracias por traducir” over and over again. At one point I was saying thank you for translating as if we had just left the shop five minutes before when in reality two hours had gone by and we were on the subject of something else entirely.
La cena
The Sun began to leave us.
We kept walking. We kept talking. It was dinner time.
She took me to a spot where she introduced me to piadines filled with spinach and squaquerone, paired with her favorite beer.
Though she emphasized it as her favorite beer I cannot remember the brand for the life of me. But I do remember every detail of her drinking it because I found myself envying both the beer and the glass it was in.
La notte
The Moon found us.
We kept walking. We kept talking.
The energy was winding down. She was clearly fighting sleep but kept answering all my questions and asking me questions. Once again, we ended up back where we had started, near those steps. She recognized them, yet again, while I was still stuck on watching her.
It was late. Almost midnight. She offered to walk me back. I declined. It was beyond bedtime. We both had class in the morning.
She seemed incredulous about me knowing my way back and teasingly reminded me that every time I had tried to direct our walk earlier we would just loop in circles until she took over again. How could she be sure that I would actually get back ok when I didn’t even have a map downloaded for offline use? Would I please let her know when I got back in safely?
Yes of course I would and I wanted her to also let me know when she got back to her place safely. Deal.
Before walking away I asked if she was open to a hug. She tilted her head to the side, radiated a broad grin and said that normally she wasn’t a hugger but a hug from me, yes.
I felt as if I had just discovered a new galaxy and we were the only two stars in it.
Giovedì, 30 giugno - lunedì, 4 luglio, 2022
Thursday we emailed each other reading list recommendations.
Friday she wished me happy birthday via WhatsApp audio and said she would reach out as soon as all her work was done for Monday.
I told myself she was just being nice and that I probably wouldn’t hear from her again. She was busy, I was busy, different classes, different activities, different social groups. Timelines diverged. Focus.
I segmented the memory of Wednesday off into its own little corner. Severed it completely from the rest of my time in Bologna. Focus.
Snippets of Wednesday would sneak into the forefront of my mind and I’d say to myself that I was embellishing. Surely it couldn’t have been as sparkling a day as I remembered it. Tall sapphic tales. Nothing more. Focus.
Martedì, 5 luglio, 2022
Tuesday evening I received an audio from her. She apologized for not having reached out sooner. Her days had been jam-packed. She caught me up on her weekend. Told me what she had been up to with her cohort. Asked if I was still thinking about going back to the camera shop and if so, she wanted to go with me. Some of her friends had come in from Rome, they were going out in a bit that Tuesday night, did I want to join them?
I listened to that audio. Stunned. She’s real?! Last Wednesday happened?!
I listened to the audio again. Ok, so baseline she definitely likes me platonically. Why else would she invite me out with her friends and follow up on the camera shop?
I listened to that audio on loop.
My bonnet was already on, nightgown on, nighttime skincare freshly done, a slice of left-over pizza hung in my hand, and I had a documentary on Bolognese stained glass windows whirring in the background. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Ay Ivana…
If I could go back in time and fairy godmother myself into a second chance, I would toss the pizza out of my hand, turn the damn tv off, rip the bonnet off, rip the nightgown off, throw on something fabulous, brush and floss and rinse my teeth, refresh my curls, put in some gold hoops, brush up my brows, gloss-up my lips, push myself out the door and GO!
I look back at who I was then and it aches to remember my inner monologue as I listened to that audio over, and over, and over.
The case I made to myself against going out:
1) I did not speak Italian. What if I made an American style fool of myself in front of her friends and they didn’t approve?
2) If things did go well, what if I was drawn to her even more? What was I supposed to do with all those feelings? Feel them? *Scoffs.* Please.
3) I liked her too much already and my liking her was disproportionate to the fact that we had only just met and that I was leaving soon anyways.
It felt safer to assume that the longing was unrequited and that going would have fueled a fantasy best kept in check.
I responded by letting her know there was no need to apologize, it had been an intense week for everyone in the program. I expressed gratitude for the invitation and shared I was already winding down for the night. I caught her up on my successful solo return to the camera shop on Friday, July 1, my birthday. I told her that I was stoked by my purchase and reiterated how grateful I was for her translation earlier.
I stayed in, bonnet on, nightgown on, skincare soaking in, munching on my pizza, watching pixilated stained glass windows with a voice over in a language I did not yet speak.
From inside a self-made echo chamber, I shattered my own heart and told myself that it was the logical thing to do.
Today
Those two weeks between June and July were an incandescent sliver of life.
Every day there were new ideas, new conversations, new foods and new drinks.
Top two new foods and a favorite drink: maritozzo con panna, squaquerone cheese, café d’orzo. Favorite restaurant in Bologna was Sfoglia Rina.
New shops like Double Trouble Bologna, an Afro-Italian family owned leather goods gem.
New friends from around the globe, new readings, new realizations, new sparks of so many thoughts that I am still mulling over today.
I ran into a Pulitzer Prize winner whom I had met the year before at UVA and to my fan-girly surprise, this historian remembered me. I had the opportunity to engage one-on-one with so many intellectual heavyweights whose words I still revisit in my notes today and whose feedback made me feel like I belonged in that world for good.
My second week in Bologna, I skipped class for an impulse booking that would result in my fourth tattoo and it is still one of my favorites. It is based on my own design and inspired by my moon sign plus tarot birth cards.
Most nights, I could be found watching a movie as just another face in the sea of people gathered at the city center for the public outdoor movie nights done every summer all around Italy.
One night, I got so miserably lost on a solo stroll that I didn’t get back to my place until 2am. It is still one of my greatest personal achievements that I navigated a new city, alone, at night, phone dead, on foot. 10/10 do not recommend, but I did it.
I remember those flashes of experiences and I marvel at the dexterity with which I was able to lean into so much while determinedly leaning away from what I wanted most back then: more time with her.
