Last summer, I returned to Rome for a brief, six day visit, which I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog. There are stereotypes about how Italian men react to American women, and while these stereotypes are far from universally true, they exist for a reason. There was one day when my traveling companion S and I did everything touristy. She had never been to Rome, and seeing the Coliseum, the Forum, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps is almost mandatory for a first-time visitor. It wasn't exactly taxing for me to see these things again, either. This also happened to be the day when it seemed like All The Men came out of the woodwork. Of course we were obviously American tourists. We weren’t pretending to be otherwise – that never works anyway. We had lunch right off of Piazza di Spagna, which is Tourist Central. That’s where we met Nimo (pronounced just like that rascally little fish in the Disney movie Finding Nemo). Nimo was our waiter. He was pretty cute, I have to admit. And I had forgotten just how little encouragement is necessary sometimes to cause one to be perceived as flirting. I had spent the past two weeks in France and Switzerland, where I didn’t speak the language, and I was just so happy to be somewhere I could speak the language a bit, that I was eager to use my long-dormant Italian skills, and use them I did. My vocabulary is limited, but my pronunciation, thanks to my undergraduate Italian professor drilling it into us, is impeccable even more than a decade later. The happiness my linguistic abilities seemed to provoke in Italian waiters seemed really out of proportion to any actual achievement on my part. Nimo seemed especially susceptible.
So
Nimo asked me to go on a date that night. He offered to bring a friend for S. I
was seeing someone at the time and turned him down on those grounds. Nimo didn’t give up. He kept coming back and asking several
times as we were eating our spaghetti pomodoro, and even sent a friend to act as his emissary at one point. In
America this would be considered harassment. In Italy, I remembered, it was to
be expected and taken in stride. We continued to say “thanks but no thanks,” and Nimo seemed crushed when
we left. I’m absolutely certain he got over it minutes, if not seconds, after
we departed, and probably found a date for the evening before too long. Part of
me felt a little bad for turning him down, but when I expressed as much to S,
she responded: “Do you want to go find Nimo? We can go find Nimo if you want to.” I think I gave her an evil glare
and that was the end of it.
There were other, similar experiences on that
particular trip – I had an almost-date with a man named Stefano, whom I met while
wandering around the Aventine Hill by myself while S braved the summer crowds at the Vatican. Stefano and I explored some churches
together. He showed me around, and I pretended I didn't know where I was going, since he seemed so pleased to show me. Stefano had a girlfriend from Japan, but proposed that it would do no
one any harm if we made out for awhile. Again, faithful girlfriend that I was,
I turned him down, but we parted on good terms.
One
of the reasons I turned Nimo down, besides the fact that I was in theory at
least seeing someone, was that the whole scenario had a “been there, done that”
feeling to it. When I was studying in Rome in 1999, at the age of nineteen, I
dated a 22-year-old Italian man named Giuseppe, who was doing his mandatory military service in Rome. Giuseppe and I met at a club. The first night we met,
we ended up dancing – he had a lot of
energy. Before I left, he told me he loved me, in English. I think it was the
only English that he knew. Even at nineteen, I knew better than to believe it.
But I didn’t quite know not to give him my contact information. So he would
come to the Hotel Tiziano where I was living with my classmates, and he'd phone my
room. Italian law, in its great wisdom, prevented him from coming upstairs, not
being a registered guest at the hotel. So I would come down instead. Giuseppe
didn’t speak a word of English, and my Italian was a work-in-progress, to put
it mildly. Cue clichés about the language of love, etc. In actuality, most of
our dates consisted in taking very long walks around Rome, occasionally
stopping for coffee or hot chocolate, and making out by monuments. We would try
to understand each other, but more often than not, kissing was more expedient.
It was fun. Rome itself is intoxicatingly beautiful at night, the ruins silent
and mysterious, the cobblestone streets reflecting the streetlamps, the smell
of roasted corn and chestnuts in the autumn air. The whole thing felt like a
wonderful adventure, and though some of my friends made disapproving remarks, I
didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, and I still don’t. I think it was also
the first time I saw myself as dating someone just for the fun of it, and knew
it wouldn’t go anywhere – I’m sure he saw it the same way. In fact it died a
natural, painless death when I left Rome for a month over the Christmas
holidays to travel around Italy and visit London. My one regret is that I lost
the only photo I had of him, taken of the two of us in a bar in Trastevere by a
man who was selling flowers. I do sometimes wonder what Giuseppe is like now –
if he’s still in Rome or if he went back to his town in Campania – if he is
married – has kids – etc. I hope he’s doing well, whatever it is.
