As I begin to eat my dinner, I hear a man speaking an amalgamation of what I assume to be Italian and English. I don’t understand him, so naturally I am drawn to him. He has skin clearer than water and is dressed like a man but has an absolute baby face to an almost cartoonish extent—big head, little body. And to top it all off, he’s vaping an e-cigarette, a small and strange device that not even I, with five years of nicotine addiction under my belt, have never even seen. He seems happy and drunk (though those are synonymous here) and he eats his pizza with his pinky halfway risen. I don’t think it’s on purpose, but it’s funny nonetheless. Whenever he talks to his friends, he puts his hand on their shoulders. I can’t tell if it’s a kind Italian gesture or rather a patronizing man thing, if they’re just trying to make each other smaller. But after a few more moments of what I can only call an incredibly obvious people watching kick, I see it in their eyes, I see the kindness that coincides with the care.
When E-Cigarette Manboy turns his head, I notice that he has one pierced ear, a little diamond stud on his lobe, and now I’m really holding back from speculating on his sexuality. ‘Brotherhood’ here would be called ‘queerness’ in America and I know this because my sisterhood often gets caught up as a qualm to my religious mother. Men are not afraid to be friends here, especially these men, this man. He clinks his beer with his buddies and says a phrase in Italian that I am actually familiar with, ‘I love you, my brother.’ I can’t believe I ever doubted the genuine kindness they share. I think about my guy friends back home and it does not take me long to conclude that never not once have they shown their love like that. American brotherhood is a combination of last-names and drunken handshakes. Here, I am enamored by their closeness with each other. Not in a weird way, at least I don’t think so. And I am certainly not enamored by the men I spectate, that’s far from how I operate, but I just can’t help but love good love. And that’s Umbria: a region of love that you can smoke, drink, and sink right into.
There’s good love everywhere here, and it’s not just exchanged between drunk men, I promise. The region loves its residence, and shows it through the weather, the conversation, the food. Jesus, the FOOD! I suppose in a few weeks I’ll be fat, but fat is a word and happy is a feeling. I will be fat and happy. In previous travels I thought those were mutually exclusive, but after six croissants filled with ooey-gooey chocolate, I am happy to announce that I really do not care.
I spend about twenty minutes a day wondering how everyone stays so slim here, and then I spend another reflective twenty minutes realizing that a proper Italian diet consists of not six croissants but about six thousand billion trillion cigarettes. Obviously that’s hyperbole, but from where I’m sitting, which is a packed outdoor cafe in Assisi, it miiiiight not be. Let me tell you the craziest sight I’ve seen so far, ok? Picture this: two women chatting over ‘lunch’ (which I’ve come to find out is just alcohol for the first hour), splitting a pack that I can’t identify by name which surprises me, but I digress. They’re just two women, except one has only a small tuft of hair and the other has an oxygen tank. Both are smoking a cigarette.
I want to be surprised, but if I had to define Assisi by smell I would say a not-so-healthy mix of cigarettes, alcohol, and meat. Metaphorically speaking, I can smell prayer here, too. Two of my own I left in the church and millions of others they scattered on the streets with them. I am coughing now and doing so without a cigarette and that garners stares. I want a cigarette as a prop so my cough would blend in, but after all, I am the Frankenstein of Marlboro Reds. Give me a dead end and I’ll make it an open space.
So, what the hell am I doing here? Not to quote Radiohead (but not to not quote Radiohead) but seriously, I don’t belong here, and I’m running out. Well, ok, let me think… I am eating, I am praying, and I am loving. Isn’t that what the whole of everything is? Aren’t I doing everything right? In Umbria, no matter how sick I am, I can say “life is good” and I can mean it. I can admire brotherhoods and chainsmokers and church-dwellers and prayer-whisperers. I might be a hot mess, but Umbria is just hot. So very hot. Actually, no, I think I just have to get used to it more. I think sometime soon, it’ll be juuuuuust right.
I love some of the dense images here–some I couldn’t fully unravel, like when you write that you are “the Frankenstein of Marlboro Reds. Give me a dead end and I’ll make it an open space.” I have no idea what that means, but the saying of it and the surprise of it make me want to! I also appreciate that this is an essay framed through your own complicated, humorous, blunt, sometimes self-deprecating, talky, digressive character and feeling out of place and out of sorts–sick and a “hot mess” in this moment of italy–and a few finely rendered and often hilarious reflections on those around you. You make a lot out of a little here!