BOOK ONE. ITALY or 36 Tales about the Pursuit of Pleasure

CHAPTER ONE

I wish Giovanni would kiss me.

Oh, but there are so many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. To begin with, Giovanni is ten years younger than I am, and - like most Italian guys in their twenties - he still lives with his mother. These facts make him an unlikely romantic partner for me, considering that I am an educated American woman in my mid-thirties, who has just come through a failed marriage and an divorce, followed immediately by a passionate love affair that ended in heartbreak. This has left me feeling about seven thousand years old. This is why I have been alone for many months now. This is why, in fact, I have decided to spend this entire year in celibacy.

Giovanni is my Tandem Exchange Partner. He teaches me Italian and I teach him English. I discovered Giovanni a few weeks after I’d arrived in Rome, thanks to a big Internet cafe. He had posted a flier on the bulletin board explaining that a native Italian speaker was seeking a native English speaker for conversational language practice. Right beside his appeal was another flier with the same request, word-for-word identical in every way. The only difference was the contact information. One flier listed an e-mail address for somebody named Giovanni; the other introduced somebody named Dario. But even the home phone number was the same.

Using my keen intuitive powers, I e-mailed both men at the same time, asking in Italian, “Are you perhaps brothers?”

Giovanni wrote back: “Even better. Twins!”

After meeting the boys, I began to wonder if perhaps I should change my rule a bit about remaining celibate this year. For instance, perhaps I could remain totally celibate except for keeping a pair of handsome twenty-five-year-old Italian twin brothers as lovers...

But, no.

No and no.

I look for healing and peace that can only come from solitude.

Anyway, by now, by the middle of November, Giovanni and I have become friends. As for Dario - I have introduced him to my adorable little Swedish friend Sofie, and they’ve been sharing their evenings in Rome in a different way. But Giovanni and I, we only talk. Well, we eat and we talk. We have been eating and talking for many pleasant weeks now, sharing pizzas and gentle grammatical corrections, and tonight has been no exception.

Now it is midnight and foggy, and Giovanni is walking me home to my apartment through these back streets of Rome. We are at my door. We face each other. He gives me a warm hug.

“Good night, my dear Liz,” he says.

“Buona notte, caro mio” I reply.

I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone. Another solitary bedtime in Rome. Another long night’s sleep ahead of me.

I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone.

Grasping this reality, I drop to my knees and press my forehead against the floor. There, I offer up to the universe a prayer of thanks.

First in English.

Then in Italian.

And then in Sanskrit