Vanilla Sky - Umbrella (Rihanna Cover)

Vanilla Sky

One of the benefits of being an American living in Rome, is the type of people you can meet. By serendipity or some reason or other, I have been able to embed myself into the Roman music scene. I have encountered a ton of groups here because of it, met Ian MacKaye, Geoff Farina, Bane, and became friends with a guy named Vinx, who happens to now be the singer of a group called Vanilla Sky, obviously a name taken from the film featuring Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz. This band is taking Italy by force right now, I don't know if you've heard of them in the States or not, but they have been on Italian MTV, TRL, played all over Europe and Asia. And they even covered a really famous American song. Check them out.

Romesick

I haven't posted in a while, and for that I'm sorry. Though I highly doubt that any of my friends are actually reading this. Anyways, here's my update:

I am back in the cold, cold Pennsylvania, fending for myself once again while my grandmother puts me up for free... I guess that doesn't constitute "fending for myself", but fuck off. I work at Charlie Brown's Steakhouse as a waiter. Most of my coworkers are either just out of high school or 30+ years old and act like they're just out of high school. Either way I don't fit in. I keep entirely to myself, and have only managed to memorize a total of 3 people's names. Thank God for nametags! I was told before starting that it wasn't unusual to make 100 bucks a day, but so far the most I've managed to make in one day is 65, bringing my week's total up to 200 bucks. Still not half bad, but not as good as I'd like it to be.

My grandmother, for those of you who don't know, is an insufferable old wench who spends her days drinking vodka tonics and watching the news. She is certifiably insane, suffering alternately from agoraphobia, schizophrenia, vertigo, paranoia, etc. If no one is around to cook for her the most she will eat on a good day is a banana sandwich. Maybe she'll put peanut butter on it. Maybe.

Last week her alcoholism caught up with her. At 7am she called me on my cell phone. This wouldn't be unusual if it weren't for a) it was 7am, and b) I live downstairs. I answered it all groggy and confused and she told me she couldn't get out of bed. She falls sometimes, a culmination of all of the above listed symptoms, and so I got out of bed and went upstairs. She asked me to hand her some pants and I grabbed what were on the floor. They were wet, and not wanting to know why, I threw them aside and grabbed another pair. Then I helped her into the bathroom before going back downstairs to fall back asleep. At 10am (3 hours later) she called me again on my cell phone and told me she couldn't get out of the bathroom. I went back upstairs and helped her back to her bed. She asked me to bring her
a glass of water. I handed it to her, but her hands were shaking too bad and she shook all the water over herself. I grabbed another one and set it on her night stand before getting dressed for work.

On my way out I stuck my head back into her room. If you need anything, I said, you know where I'll be. Ok, she said.

A few hours later a police officer showed up at my work. It was my second day, and having a cop show up asking for you on your second day doesn't bode well. Luckily my manager stood there while the cop explained that Carolyn (what I've always called my grandmother) was in the ER. My boss let me off work early and I went to see her. Carolyn is a feisty woman and when I showed up she was swatting at the nurses and pulling out all the IV's they'd stuck in her, screaming the whole time about how she was going to "sue everyone". The nurse asked me about Carolyn's drinking and I obligingly explained. Then the nurse asked where Carolyn gets the alcohol if she never leaves the house. Well, I buy it for her.

How stupid I felt having to explain that I'm the one who makes her daily liquor store runs. But what am I supposed to do? I live in her house for free, and I drive her car every day. If I refused she'd most likely kick me out of her house and disown me. So I do what I can.

The next week she was going through detox. If you want to know suffering, go watch a 20 year strong alcoholic go through detox. She hallucinated for 3 days and, as the nurse told me, didn't sleep at all. During my daily visits she never even realized I was in the room. She kept calling me "Brother Renfro." I don't know who "Brother Renfro" is or even if he "exists", but I imagine he is someone from her childhood on a Blackbelt cotton farm in South Alabama.

For the week it was me alone in her house. I was at a new job where I didn't fit in, and in a town where there is nothing to do and I know nobody. My only companion was my grandmother's pet dog, a small toy poodle, black, and named after an Uncle Remus, "Song of the South" character, Briar Patch. Briar Patch was never house trained. She is a yippy, neurotic dog who pees on the floor every time I walk in the room. Then she runs away. I get the impression that she doesn't like me. She spent all of the week hiding somewhere in the house and peeing all over everything tangible.

Needless to say, I was going a little insane.

Carolyn got back from the hospital yesterday, however, and is now back to her usual antics, drinking and accusing me of doing made up things. My week was strange and led to some interesting self-reflection, but it was the destructive type of self-reflection, not the constructive type that Rome was always giving me. My life is waxing and waning right now. I don't know what else to say. The album I am listening to is about to end, and when it does I am going to stop typing, even though my blogs never really have an ending. Just a bunch of build-up and then no release, or an anti-climactic release. Maybe I should put more thought into these things, eh? What's your opinion, reader (reader other than Jim, that is)?

The Sun Rises at 7 AM in Rome

"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafés."- Bill Grundy to Jake Barnes in "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway.

Last night, I went to a cafe with my friends and drank shitty European cocktails, when I came home, I opened a bottle of red wine and started to read "The Sun Also Rises." I came across this line this morning and decided to reevaluate my life.

My friend Eóin arrives today from America. Maybe we can go on a fishing trip in Spain.

"Life" Drawing "Lessons"

Being an artist fresh out of art school in Philadelphia can be a tough life. Being a recently relocated illegal immigrant artist fresh out of art school is another world in itself, filled with barriers, beginning with language and ending in all together bad days.

It seemed to start like this; I had been going around Rome my new home in Italy posting flyers that stated I offered private drawing lessons in English. I will save everyone the effort and do all the translating from Italian to English. I placed thirty of these around the city, and received two phone calls! Just two. The first was from a student, and he thought my 25 Euro an hour fee was too high, the other was from a man that worked near Piazza Barberini, a really swanky part of town. He didn’t seem to have any problem with the price.

I usually work as a tour guide at the Vatican Museums. When one moves to a foreign country illegally, doesn’t speak the language better than a three year old and has a degree in sculpture this is what you do. I work with artists from all over the world, all trying to get by on our meager income and the generosity of our clients.

The tourist season came to an abrupt halt the first week in November, forcing me to find other work to pay off my student loans, and keep my mind off the fact that I have been living as a quasi-illegal immigrant for the past 3 months.

It was Thanksgiving Thursday, and I was leading a tour through St. Peter’s Basilica when my phone rang. I didn’t give it much thought to whom it could be, but when I finished my tour and dropped off the headset system at Bernini’s colonnade, I pulled my phone out and realized it was a number I didn’t recognize. I immediately called it back, and in my horrendous Italian began a conversation with my first real potential student. He told me he was from Ciampino a town outside of Rome that developed around the airport. It is the only real suburb in this part of Italy. I associate Ciampino with a few things. 1. Ciampino is where I would wait most nights to get picked up when I missed the last train to Marino. 2. Ciampino is the home to coatti (Italian for meatheads) 3. Ciampino is where that cute communist girl Silvia that I made out with one night lives. 4. Other than Termini train station, Ciampino is my least favorite place in central Italy, due to the amount of useless time I wasted there trying to get home at night.

I give the man the benefit of the doubt though, and because he says he works near Piazza Barberini see only dollar signs, or maybe Euro signs, but I don’t think there is a saying for that yet. I address him in the “Lei” form, which shows respect. I am trying hard to use this as much as possible with people I don’t know because it is important, especially when talking to the guards at the Vatican. He immediately answers me back in the “tu,” which I find to be a relief; it lets me put my guard down a bit. He apologizes and then asks if it is okay that he addresses me that way. I tell him “of course.” We discuss a little bit about the lesson, where they will be held, and when we can schedule. Rome has so many beautiful sights; I put on my flyer that lessons can be held indoors or out depending on the student’s interests. We agree that if the weather suits it we will meet at Piazza Barberini, if not we can meet at my house, because there is no way in hell I would go to Ciampino if I didn’t have to. He asks me if I am free immediately. I say “no, but I am free every day after three.” He asks, “Well, it is almost three, why can’t we meet today?” I noticed he was being a bit pushy, but chalked it up to a business attitude. I told him “Today is Thanksgiving. We can meet tomorrow at three if you wish.” He agrees. I am more than excited, thinking about that twenty-five euro that is going to be in my wallet come Friday!

I wake up that Friday, and have a lunch appointment with my friend Yashar at one. After getting dressed, and eating a small breakfast consisting of a cornetto dipped in milk, I head out to buy materials for the lesson. I also said that I would supply the student with the first set of materials. I buy a pad of paper, pencil and eraser, totaling nine euro. My twenty-five Euro is now down to sixteen. I get on the metro, and meet Yashar at Piazza Re di Roma, where we usually meet for lunch at a place called Dominus. We eat; discuss finding an apartment together, and the upcoming weekend. He says, “Hey man, I’m proud of you, you moved to Italy and got a good job, and now you have private students too. Awesome man!” After lunch Yashar and I go to the supermarket and I buy some fruit for setting up a still life. My sixteen Euro is now reduced to eleven.

I get back on the metro and start thinking about how I will run the lesson. When I get close to my house, the man calls. He says, “Meet me at the Piazza, I think the weather will be nice today. I am wearing a black hat and a black scarf.” I get to my house and pack up my book bag with all my materials, and some examples of my own work. As I exit the front door, I run into Elena, my landlady and the girlfriend of Jordan, my only American friend in Rome. Jordan is the guy that gave me the idea to give private lessons. He makes a lot of money giving English lessons to kids. Elena is an interior designer, and owns the studio apartment I live in and also the house above me. (We live in a community of buildings built between the 17th and 19th century. In the early 20th century this place was brothel community. Pasolini also made parts of his movies here. The people that live here now are all related to the art world in some way.) Elena offers me a ride on the back of her motorino (scooter) into the center of town. After riding the metro more than five times already that day I hastily agreed.

I had never ridden on the back of a motorino before, and had never been on one at all in Rome. The only feeling I could compare it to might be something like being Audrey Hepburn in "Roman Holiday". It was the giddiest I had ever felt. We passed by Rome in a flash, jetting across streets and staring at monuments. I remembered why I moved here, and was excited to be giving an art lesson to a real Italian.

Elena dropped me off at Piazza Repubblica, and I jumped on the metro one more time to go one stop to Barberini. I exited the metro and looked at my phone. I had three missed calls from my student. I had put him in my phone as “draw,” because I didn’t understand his name. I called draw, to see where he was. He informed me that he just received a phone call from some out of town friends and he had to go to Termini Station. He would be at a place called Bar Bruno, and would be ready for me when I arrived. Frustrated I got back on the metro for my seventh time that day and went to meet him.

I exited the metro, walked through Termini to the Via Marsala, and found the bar. Walking passed some shady looking characters and to the back of the bar, I realized there was no one in the place except for those shady characters. I walked back to the front of the bar, and asked saw the man in the black scarf and black hat. He didn’t resemble the man I had talked to on the phone at all, but his voice matched perfectly. I thought maybe something was up, but I didn’t want to judge anyone based solely on appearance. He was missing his bottom row of teeth, and his nose was covered by broken blood vessels. I put my hand out to shake hands, he took it, squeezing firmly, and then moved in to kiss me on the cheeks, a very normal thing for friends in Europe to do, but I was to be this man’s drawing instructor, not his friend. I began to feel the slightest bit uncomfortable, and thought maybe it best to leave. He gave me the opportunity, asking if I could wait outside for him while he spoke with his friends. He told me he would be ten minutes, and since I had already spent the money on his art supplies, I decided to call my friend Yashar, and ask his advice on if I should stay or go.

Yashar didn’t really have a chance to say anything, because when he answered. I had already decided that I would leave the man there by himself, because he had already wasted an hour of my time, but by the time I got these words out, I could see the man leaving the bar. I told Yashar “If you don’t hear from me within the hour, contact the police.” He seemed frightened and concerned, but the man was approaching. I hung up on Yashar and decided I would stick out the lesson.

We got on the metro, and rode the two stops to the Piazza Barberini. On the ride, I started asking him basic questions about drawing. I ask him why he wants to study drawing and what type of drawings he would like to make. He says, “I’m not sure, but five years ago, there was a man that made portraits atop the Piazza di Spagna. He made a portrait of me, and it cost me thirty Euro. I would like to be able to make the same type of portraits for my friends. Do you know how to make portraits?” I let him know that I specialize in portraiture and figure drawing. He tells me “I want to take pictures and make them larger.” The man has obviously never studied drawing before, but I have a good feeling that I can teach him enough that he will be able to one day make a decent portrait from a photo. I tell him to bring a photo he likes next time, and we will learn how to enlarge it. We exit the metro.

The exit of the metro is also the beginning of the Via Veneto, the same street that houses the US Embassy. He says he knows a park near us, where we can have the lesson. I try and stay away from this part of town because the food is expensive, and I usually want to steer clear of US officials, but I am unaware of this park he speaks of, and since Rome has so many beautiful parks, I am eager to see a new one. We get on the 53 bus, and travel up the Via Veneto. He informs me “I used to be a boxer, I come to this park to practice sports.” In my mind, I think “Okay, that is reason enough for his missing bottom row of teeth, and battered nose. Maybe this guy isn’t all that bad.” He asks me if I every played sports. I told him I rowed crew for seven years, I had to explain crew by making the rowing motion. He asked me if I had ever boxed, I told him “no, but I had taken Karate.” he asked if I had a black belt, I said, “no, it became too expensive, but I had studied both American Kenpo and Goju Ryu. Like the Karate Kid.” He didn’t understand. He begins to tell me about this problem he has with his leg that has been impeding him from running lately. Asks me if I know anything about muscles, I tell him “I know anatomy from studying sculpture and karate.” He goes on to tell me that he had to go to the pharmacy and purchase a cream that needs to be applied, to get rid of the inflammation. Our bus ride ends.

As we exit the bus, I immediately know where I am, we are at the North East entrance of the Villa Borgese, a park about as large as New York’s Central park, and filled with some of the best museums in Rome. I tell him “I know this park very well, over there is the Galleria Borgese, with all the most important Bernini sculptures. Why didn’t you tell me the name of the park? We could have met here, everyone knows where this is.” He kind of ignores me, his mind seeming to be on other things, asks me if I want a cigarette, I let him know I don’t smoke. He lights up. He asks, “So you’ve done karate, then you know how to give massages?” To this I really get back on my guard, my adrenaline had been pumping since I encountered this guy, but now I was really wishing for my knife. I had left it at home, because when I work at the Vatican I can’t bring it. I emphatically told him, “No, I do not know how to give massages, I know how to give drawing lessons!” I had been sizing the guy up since he asked me if I had ever done sports, and when he told me he was a boxer, I thought it was an intimidation tactic. I figured I could take him. He was smaller than me, and smoked a lot. He also seemed to be in his later 40’s. I knew I could take him, and I really wanted my money, I figured even if I had to fight for my money, I would get it, but this was the first time I had the feeling that this guy didn’t want to mug me, he wanted something a little more personal.

We continue our trek through the park for about three minutes, it is filled with people, and I am comfortable with my surroundings, I know I will be able to get away if need be. I tell him I don’t want to go any further, and if he wants his lesson, we should stop walking and begin. He reassures me that the place he wants to draw is really close by, and points to it. It is close, and also close to the highway. The Villa Borgese has a highway running through it, and is raised a good seventy feet from the road. He points to a staircase. This staircase leads down. There are lights; it resembles the type of staircase one would find in a parking garage. He motions for me to follow him down the steps. I exclaim “I do not feel comfortable following you down the steps, and I would like to hold the lesson outdoors in open air!” He says, “No, come here there is light, and it is clean.” I let him know that he has to go down at least fifty meters ahead of me, because I don’t feel comfortable. He agrees, I take this as my chance to disappear, but out of curiosity, I begin traveling down the beginning of the staircase searching for the bottom. I can’t see it. I know he is far beneath me, and have no real sense of danger. Then, I look up, and he is right next to me. He says, "Leave me here, I have to pee." The staircase reeks of human feces, and now I am really scared. I look over the stairs, and see a disgusting mattress and a locked door that leads to nowhere. My only way out is passed this man, who has covered the three steps in front of me with urine. I try to calmly say, “There’s a problem.” He replies, “Is there someone sleeping there?” I say “yes!” “Hold on one minute while I piss, then I will fix the problem!” He reassures me. I take my chance to escape as he is still urinating. I leap over the piss covered steps and run for my life. He screams after me, “JIM, JIM, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?! IT’S CLEAN!” I scream back, FUCK YOU! I’M NOT GAY! I GIVE DRAWING LESSONS, NOT BLOWJOBS ASSHOLE!” I keep running, passed groups of people, onto the Via Veneto, and into what looks like metro entrance. I slide down the escalator, movie chase scene style, pushing Italian women out of the way, and keep running. The hallway is lit red, and is so ominous feeling that I am about to cry, I realize that I made a wrong turn and I am in a parking garage and not the metro, I frantically search for the exit, I find it, and go up. I am back in front of the park entrance. I did all that running to end up closer to the fucking crazy sex solicitor than I was when I started. I tried my getaway again, this time straight down the Via Veneto, running like the illegal immigrant I am passed cops, and into waiters, almost knocking one over. I get to the real metro stop assured that I am out of any danger, and call Jordan. I start screaming, ”The motherfucker wanted to solicit sex from me!” Jordan lets me know, “I was meaning to tell you, I just forgot, there are a lot of crazies in the city, and a lot of people that just want blowjobs, you have to be careful.”

A Philadelphia Story

I can never get the smell of clay out of my clothes. (this was originally posted on Artjaw.com)

It was late on a Saturday night in mid-February and my cousin, a car freak and anything- stripper-related enthusiast, raced up to Philly. He dragged me to a local strip club to make sure that I didn't spend all my time in the studio.

The Saturday night crowd is a rowdy one, full of sports fans, guys from over the bridge, and no one I am overly inclined to chat with. So when my cousin left to go get a lap dance, I became totally introverted. I'd been drinking water all night, and being sober and alone in a place filled with half -naked girls made me totally self-conscious.

One by one, a parade of strippers came up to me to ask if I wanted a dance. They tried to say things to make me think they were interested. I got shyer with each passing dance proposal. After a while, the eyes of one girl caught me. She approached me nicely enough, wearing the most conservative outfit of all the girls, a long black dress that went down to the floor. She seemed different than the rest. She told me her name was Amber.

She brought me over to the side the club and gave me what started out to be the best lap dance of my life. She began with her head in my crotch and ran her face up my hoodie until we were face to face. Then, looking directly at me, she said I smelled like photo chemicals and asked if I was an artist. I let her know it was actually oil-based clay
she smelled. At that point the lap dance changed from being really fun into being an informative lecture with the occasional arousal.

Turned out I got a dance from a stripper who came to Philadelphia to work at an area museum, but as sometimes happens, the job fell through. While at a prestigious university in New York, she studied metalsmithing and photography, hence the reason she could smell that I was an artist. She talked enthusiastically about arc welding as she jammed her knee ever so slightly into my crotch.

She made fun of me for being at the strip club. When I told her about my cousin trying to loosen me up, she didn't buy it and asked me to justify it art-historically. I told her Toulouse-Lautrec had a fascination with Burlesque dancers; he drew a lot of inspiration from them, and if she needed proof, she could go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She laughed and told me it was very different back then. Strip clubs as we know them today didn't exist during his time. Apparently, those women had a tad more class.

While she was still on my lap, I told her about my upcoming senior show. She whipped out her cell phone and typed in the information. We exchanged some more artistic ideas, and then she told me her name, -- the real one.

Disappearing Acts, Escape Artists Part III

So we all shat, and then refreshed reconvened. Our plan was this. We had about a little over a half-month to find an apartment. We being three American guys that didn't speak Italian or know anything about the Italian culture didn't think it could be so hard. After all, we had the money and were ready to spend it. That is, if anyone was actually in Rome during August.

We started our search by asking the people that worked at the hostels where to go and look for flyers. They recommended a few places. The first was a newspaper called Porta Portese. This is a classifieds ad heaven, if you can read Italian, if not, you are 100% fucked. That's what we were. We were also told to check out a pizzeria called Forno La Renella in a part of town called Trastevere. This place allowed people to post bulletins. It also has the best pizza in Rome. I could write a book about the variety of flavors this place offers, but lets narrow it down to this little anecdote. When Brandon went to school in Rome, he attended John Cabot University. He had classes five days a week, and ate at La Renella everyday. When he didn't have class he would call me and ask me to meet him in Trastevere. We would drink some beer or wine, and then go to La Renella. The boy made a habit of eating there at minimum of six days a week. He went so far as moving out of our apartment and into Trastevere. This is the effect La Renella's pizza can have on people.

So we go to La Renella, start grabbing flyers and begin our apartment search. No one answers. We don't know what to do. We are only booking our hostel stays two nights in a row, in the hope that we will end up in an apartment before the end of the week. By week three, we have stayed in over ten different rooms in seven different hostels all within three city blocks of each other. We are not in a good position. Garrett and Brandon are inseparable, but this is because Garrett likes talking to Brandon. The feeling is not mutual. Brandon comes up to me and lets me know that Garrett bothers him, I really didn't see why. I was too busy reading, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway to care about anything else. All my thoughts were focused on controlling my destiny through suicide. I at this time didn't trust Brandon or Garrett, barely knew them, yet was forced to spend almost twenty four hours a day with them. I just wanted to find an apartment.

The search led us all over the city to parts of town like, Testaccio, Ponte Lungo, Monte Verde and San Lorenzo. All areas that we would later learn would have been ideal for us, but we all decided them to be too far away. How foolish we were, because we ended up picking an apartment right next to Termini, because it was easily connected to everything. It is also the unofficial Chinatown, drug and prostitution capital of Rome. We moved into a brothel, not just a brothel, but one filled with Transvestite hookers. These "women" had large fake breasts, and make up that would make Mimi on The Drew Carey show look classy. They would try and solicit sex from us every night when we came home. This was done with a series of grunts and tongue movements outside of the mouth. They would pull out their fake breasts and try grabbing us. One night a particularly aggressive one got a hold of Garrett and tried to force him to go home with "her." He struggled to break free and ran home to the safety of our apartment. We decided then that the apartment search was still in full swing, we would stay two months, the amount we had already paid, and no matter if we had to split up or not after we would get the fuck out of that part of town.

School had started and we were all in get a girlfriend mode, even Garrett who had a girlfriend in the States was feeling the pressure, but he would see her soon enough as she would move to France over the winter. Brandon on the other hand, spoke only of Giovanna, his Neapolitan princess. She would arrive on La Notta Bianca (the white night, the one night a year turns into a 24 hour party) from Napoli. I had set my sights on a girl in Trastevere, because I was determined to learn Italian. She was a one of those girls that hung out every night of the summer in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere, which basically means a degenerate hash smoking highschooler with a body to die for and a brain that functioned on the level of a worker bee. We got into a conversation that was beyond my minimal control of Italian to handle, and beyond her mental capacity. I tried to tell her that my family was from Sicily, but I used "La" instead of "La mia" this omission of three letters led her to believe that I was marginalizing Italian culture. She thought I was talking about the Mafia. She came back with a quick rebuttal, made of a fist and this phrase. "Pizza! Pasta! Mandolino! Mafia! Is that all you think of Italy?!" All I could say was "BASTA! FERMA! STOP!" as she struck me in the chest. She got all fired up and then left. I never saw her again. This has basically been my luck with Italian girls ever since, if you replace punching with kissing, always one little encounter, very heated and then I never see them again.

We continued to go to Trastevere to eat pizza, pasta and hear the mandolino. In our spare time we attended classes and waited patiently for the arrival of the now mythical Giovanna, and Brandon's other friend Jamie Brown, who would turn out to be the real legend. Oh, La Notta Bianca how we awaited thee.

Dove the fuck sono?

I am back in the United States of America. More specifically, Philadelphia.

There are many things I could say right now, but I'll limit myself to a few.

I spent the week searching for jobs and laying low, trying to save money. Tuesday I went into the city to say hey to a few people, but the rest of the week I stayed at home, doing nothing. Watching movies on my grandmother's On Demand, drinking whatever booze I stumbled across in my grandmother's house, returning emails, feeling helpless. I read a bit. I started three different books, and put all of them down after 50 pages. I downloaded music, most of which got one listen before being allocated to the trash bin of shit that will never inspire me. I drove around the suburbs in my grandmother's Altima, looking to see if there was a single decent place within a 20 mile radius to meet people. I spent a lot of time online, looking for jobs or cruising the various social networking cites I waste more of my time on than I'd care to admit.

The night I left Jim rode with me to Termini Station to see me off. I had all of my possessions either on my back or in my hands. We sat at a table in the McDonald's downstairs at Termini and tried not to fall asleep. I had no money, neither did Jim. I was grateful that he came with me, but at the same time felt like a burden. Though the last train left late, and Jim told me he'd stay with me until I left, I took an early one, at around 9pm. There was no tear-jerking goodbye or anything, just a "See ya later," and then off we were--me to my Grandmother's frigid basement, department stores, expensive gas and no public trans, and the cold Philadelphia winter. Jim to our tiny flat, no work, a language he didn't speak, and a rapidly diminishing income. We'd spent the past 8 weeks almost exclusively in each other's company, without one argument. An impressive feat for someone who can barely spend 5 minutes in some people's presence without losing his fucking mind. For some reason Jim and I never really hung out in Philly. Every now and then we'd see each other, but mostly we stuck to our own circles. After settling into the train (without a ticket, since I'm a maniac), I wondered why.

I had a bottle of wine and a pocket full of chocolates with me for my long night at the airport alone. I thought about asking two American girls I saw if they wanted to share them with me, but after listening to their conversation for 10 minutes decided I'd rather fly solo (no pun intended). I drank a little wine and tried to write in my journal before grabbing all of my luggage and going outside to smoke. If it weren't for all the stuff I was carrying, perhaps it would have been cold outside, but with all the exertion I was forced into, the cold air was comforting. Across the street was a giant neon screen showing commercials. I looked up at it for a moment. The commercial was for Philadelphia. How appropriate. That was the moment I started to look forward to coming home.

I didn't sleep on either of my flights, though I did drink another bottle of wine, a Bloody Mary, and a beer. Carolyn managed to make it out of her house to come and pick me up with her friend Linda driving. Being back in Philly felt like being back in my childhood home would have felt if visiting it after other people had been living in it for a while. Something was off. The furniture was rearranged, the wallpaper was different, the carpet new. But mostly it was the smell. The smell of foreignness in a place so familiar. I'm sure the origin of that untraceable scent hasn't changed since I first arrived in Philadelphia in August of 2003, but I had grown accustomed to it while living there. Returning was like learning to walk again, except not as dramatic (I have a tendency to go for the melodramatic after a few glasses of vino, which I have, so please excuse me).

I'm currently listening to "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" by Hank Williams. How appropriate.

As I said earlier, I spent most of my week hunkered down in my grandmother's basement, in the suburbs. The weekend came around though and I went into the city, damn your eyes. I saw my friends and had a good time, but 7 months separation has created a strange gap. I've grown too much in the past 7 months, and falling back into my old role felt artificial, but expected from many people. Most of my friends have moved on in life as well. Many of my friends have just gotten into long term relationships, or just come out of them. People have jobs now. Real ones. Either that or they're still in the same job they've been in for years. Either people seem to have moved on much farther than I have, or I've moved on much further than they have. It's a strange sensation, being in the middle of transition.

In my monastic solitude, in my comfortable little bungalow in Carolyn's basement, I'm led back towards the inevitable self-reflections which led to me fleeing this country in the first place. I haven't put any serious thought into what I want to be doing in five years from now since I left Philadelphia. Now that I'm back, I want that fleece pulled back over my eyes. Life in Italy is simpler because it's more complicated. I need to procure food, learn how to communicate, not get lost. Make money. Here I am taken care of to a certain extent by my Grandmother, or I have the option of going home to Alabama to live with my parents for a bit if shit gets too fucked up. But in Italy, those options are taken away. I'm more focused on survival. Therefore the world has a new dimension. In short, I want to go back.

I really shouldn't be writing all of this, because it would appear, strange as this may sound, that people actually read this thing occasionally. Even more strangely, they misinterpret it. Perhaps this is because the two incidents where either our sarcasm, dry wit, or general sardonic utterances have been misunderstood, have been because the readers did not speak English as a native language. But what about those who do?

I guess it is something that people should look at and see as nothing more than the disgruntled writing of two sexually frustrated, post college twenty-somethings with too much time on their hands, and then they should move on. My opinions change with every bowel movement-- something I see as a strength, where others see a lack of backbone. Fuck em either way. I'm happy deep down. Just anxious. About my life, the world, my friends and family. Shit. You know?

This blog isn't making any damn sense. It's time for another good idea/bad idea. Good idea: writing a blog for all of your friends. Bad idea: writing a blog for all of your friends after raiding your grandmother's liquor cabinet.

I have watched "The Departed" twice in two days. That was my joke for the blog.

A thought that I have been having lately is that one day America will collapse. This isn't a new thought or idea. But what I find interesting about dwelling on what will happen, is the art that will come out of it. Sounds strange, I know, but if we think about the available materials, diets, ideas-- all that shit that makes a civilization-- after trade routes are dismantled, after millionaires are forced to beg on the streets, then we will be forced to live off of America alone yet again. Give it a thousand years and perhaps this Dark Age will settle and leave a new, distinctly American form of art, music, architecture, food, etc. A simple example: the Romans have always relied upon Travertine as a building material, and it has shaped what they're capable of (it's durability, color, abundance, etc.), and how their civilization looks. What equivalent does America have? Will America become like Europe? Europe was all once the Roman Empire. Will America be divided up into smaller countries, each with their own derivative English language? Will the Midwest have a language that is to English what French is to Latin? How will their civilization be structured?

These questions are conundrums that keep me occupied through the droll hours in the basement.

Disappearing Acts, Escape Artists Part II

"Brandon is real!" I screamed out loud in the hostel lounge. This was a complete relief, because I was now only 50% schizophrenic. I still had heard no word from Garrett, but assumed he had met up with Brandon the day before. How wrong I was. Brandon's email informed me that he had been working on a farm in Tuscany for some weeks with a girl from Napoli named Giovanna. Now, Giovanna was the only person on the farm that had a calendar, and she seemed to have taken to Brandon, because she didn't want him to leave, so much so that she gave him the wrong date thus delaying his departure a day. Brandon is a good-looking guy, but this Giovanna girl had taken it one step too far. She was planning to come to Rome to see him two weeks later. You would think that she could wait a measly two weeks.

Brandon ended up staying at a hostel down the road. His email told me to stay put and wait for him, but I couldn't. I ran out the door without even logging out of my email account, and ran the 100 m. to Montestella hostel, where I found Brandon, bandanna wrapped around his head, blue sleeveless t-shirt on, smoking a cigarette. I don't smoke, but when I found him I grabbed that cigarette from him and puffed on it to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I recounted my tale of adventure to him, and then he looked at me a bit perplexed and asked, "Where the fuck is Garrett?" I said, "I thought he was with you!" "Shit!" we both exclaimed. This was Garrett's first time out of the USA, and he had flown in on a German airline. He could be anywhere. We decided to do what we thought was most important in starting our search. Taking shits. We started to walk back to my hostel, which had decently clean toilets, when I heard a voice cry out "Jim, Brandon!?" It was Garrett, rattled beyond belief and ready to rattle off a tale filled with misfortune, and spit, an added interactive experience that hit both of our faces with a regular consistency.

Garrett arrived on time, with enough luggage for a group of girl scouts on a trek to Mt. Everest. After searching for Brandon and I for five hours, the boy decided it best to take post in front of Termini station. Here he was approached by a man from Napoli who apparently thought Garrett was an expert on the intricacies of the Roman streets, and the Italian language, because he started asking Garrett for directions in Italian and broken English. The man also speaks with his hands putting on a hell of a display for an hour, all the time trying to hold Garrett gaze straight ahead. Garrett was sitting on one suitcase, the other was on his left side, his book bag was in his lap and brand new computer on his right. When the timing was opportune, the Napolitano opportunist and friend snatched Garrett's computer and made off. Garrett couldn't do anything about it for fear of losing the rest of his luggage, so he just got up and restarted his search for two American guys he didn't know.

He ran into an old man, decrepit and white haired that offered him a room in a hotel for only 45 Euro a night. The man talked Garrett into staying three nights at this fantastically astronomical price. Brandon and I by comparison were paying 18 a night. This fabulous trickster was named Luciano. He even had an apartment to offer to us, Garrett later informed us. Garrett went to the hotel and was just happy to put what was left of his luggage in a safe spot. He tried to massage his hands, because they were swollen to twice their normal size from lugging his bags that were filled with stone carving chisels and mallets. Garrett never ended up carving anything during his stay in Rome, but he did read every Harry Potter book out at the time in less than one month, and also read three other fantasy novels, two by George R.R. Martin and the other by Robert Jordan. He ended up making a permanent dent in the shape of his ass, and a sweat stain from his back on our chair.

On his first night in Rome he went and drank outside of the hostel that Brandon ended up staying in, but didn't run into him. He found us by accident that morning, and like us was headed back to his hotel to take a shit.

To be continued again...

Disappearing Acts, Escape Artists

It has been four days since my last post, sorry to keep you waiting, or this is me apologizing to myself because I haven't written anything. Either way, I will welcome myself back after the longest week in recent memory. It started with beers and goodbyes, as I sent Justin off to the United States for his seasonal retreat to make money in a country with money worth less than the Euro, or the Canadian dollar for that matter. Anyway, when the tourist season starts anew Justin will be back, hopefully pockets full and fingers ready for typing out fresh stories about adventures as immigrants.

I thought I was going to be by myself on a long haul trek through the Roman winter, one known more for its lack of tourists, in my case tourist revenue than its harsh weather. I was just about to miss Justin when, two things happened. Thing number one: Sabrina, Isabella, and Giorgia called, pissed as all hell at the blog Justin wrote about them, making me think that if girls who can't read English can understand our blog enough to be mad at us than the rest of our readership must think we are ridiculous assholes without a good thought in our collective heads. Thing number two: Brandon, my former roommate, and WWOOFer (willing worker of organic farms) would be arriving in Italy the day after Justin left. This left me no time to prepare for him, write a blog, think about Italian ragazzas hating me, or pretty much anything else.

Brandon arrived a little after noon on Thursday morning in typical Brandon fashion, meaning without letting me know when he would be arriving until the moment he arrives. I got a phone call from Brandon directly after making pancakes upstairs in Jordan's apartment. Brandon called asking me if I wanted to get lunch, because he was at Termini, and wouldn't be able to leave for at least an hour because he was washing his clothes at a laundromat we used to frequent when we lived in the area together two years ago. I let him know that I had already eaten, and that he would have been more than welcome to join us if he had sent word about his arrival. I decided to meet him over at the laundromat, because Via Tor Pignatara isn't the easiest place to get to in Rome, and Brandon spent his tenure in Rome either in Trastevere or Termini, and not much more. The boy never made it to Saint Peter's or the Vatican, and he was here for more than five months. I work at the Vatican, and he still missed it this time around.

When I arrived, Brandon and I gave each other enthusiastic hellos, even though I had seen him three weeks prior, when Justin and I lived in Marino, that's just how we are, overly enthusiastic about seeing each other for no reason at all. Not for seeing Basilica's, but for seeing my smiling face Brandon seems to travel half way across the world. We bought two of the worst espressos we've ever had, just because the barista was cute, and caught up on what is most important, stories about girls, traveling, punk rock, and past adventures.

As I mentioned before, Brandon has a typical fashion associated with his arrivals into Rome. His failure to communicate with me when we first encountered in Rome two years ago had me on the brink of thinking I was a paranoid schizophrenic. This requires reintroducing Brandon, and as with the majority of my stories begins in Philadelphia.

I was taking Italian 101 at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, in preparation for my semester in Rome. The class room was packed with students, about ten over capacity, and the only things I learned that semester were that fat girls with Musical Theater and Fibers majors wanted to learn Italian, and that Carla Weinberg our professor hated the Euro because she can "no longer afford to buy leather shoes in Italy." No alphabet, no numbers, no ciao even though our book went by that title. Nothing. I scanned the room, looking for some sign of intelligence and found Brandon. He sat in the back of the class, and just drew little doodles and made snide remarks from time to time, the kind I wished I could get away with, but he was an actor, and I was at the time an illustrator or sculptor, I wasn't quite sure.

One day Brandon and I each stayed after class to tell Carla that we would be studying abroad in Rome. This is where we formally met, totally by chance, because we both asked the less than helpful professor for help. We each learned that the other would be in Rome and decided instantly that we should search for an apartment together. We exchanged phone numbers and that was pretty much it.

I spent the rest of the semester skipping that class, because it was pointless and I had already learned who I was going to live with. Brandon and I had coffee one time after that and discussed logistics. He would be leaving for Italy in June, arriving in Rome, scope out a place for us to meet at the train station and then WWOOF his way around Italy until I arrived in August. Perfect, everything was settled.

The rest of the semester played out, and on the last day of school I meet another guy going to school in Italy the following semester. His name is Garrett. Garrett, is two years older than me, but he is in my major, and he will be studying at the same university as me. How a department of less than twenty people can neglect to tell us that there will be someone else studying in the same foreign country as the other is totally beyond me. I meet Garrett playing kickball on his last day of school in America ever. I immediately tell him about Brandon, and then call Brandon to schedule a meeting about the three of us getting a place together.

We meet at Garrett's house, on a really shitty block in South Philly, exchange flight information and prepare to see each other the next time on August 11th 2005 in Rome.

I arrive in Rome a little bit late, I am supposed to be the last of the three arriving, I figure that they will be patiently or maybe impatiently awaiting my arrival. I arrive at Termini Station, and realize something Brandon neglected to mention. Termini is FUCKING HUGE! There are over twenty front doors, and thirty tracks for train arrivals. The visual clutter of advertisements and the sea of different nationalities give Times Square a run for its money.
I search for two hours, book bag on my back and rolling suitcase in my hand. I took a break to find something edible and decided right away that I wanted to go home. The food by Termini is terrible, and there are pickpockets lurking everywhere. I signed into my email account see if either Brandon or Garrett had emailed me. Neither had. I decided to take one more swing through and if that didn't work I would find a hostel with internet access, so I could make contact with them eventually.

I didn't find them. I did find a hostel, and it was filled with ugly girls, so I decided I would sit by the computer and wait for two guys. Guys I didn't really know, and wasn't sure if I even liked, but they were my only link to home, and I wasn't going to let them go for anything in the world.

After another six hours, six emails, and six people behind me waiting to use the computer. I decided that my connection to home. Brandon and Garrett, the two guys I had met a few times. The guys no one knew about, never met my friends, never hung out with and never responded to my emails, were never going to be real. I decided that they never existed, considered myself crazy and decided to go drink my brain away in the Eternal City. I found a pub crawl and signed up, I really found two hot, really hot German girls and followed them to the pub crawl.

I got drunk on the Tiber River at some shitty bar for tourists, and my drunk mouth rambled off my new story about how I was a schizo to these girls, and that I invented my two potential roommates. I asked them if they wanted to live with me, as I could no longer be able to afford the rent of for a three bedroom apartment as I was in actuality only one person, with two imaginary friends, that didn't even like me enough to make the trip over the ocean with me.

I think I thoroughly freaked those girls out, because I took the bus home alone that night, stumbled into my hostel bed and slept in my clothes on top of my bags. I woke up in the morning to find my guide book had disappeared, maybe I had imagined that too. My last ditch effort to restore my sanity was to check the internet again. Nothing. That was it, I was truly crazy. I went to stand up, when I got a feeling I should hit the refresh button on my browser.
There was a new email in my inbox. It was from Brandon, the subject was "OH FUCK I SUCK!"

To be continued...

It's the reaction that counts.

Writing thoughts, in English, thinking in a completely sarcastic and American view point, and then commenting on another's culture in what may seem to be an impolite and one sided manner seemed just natural, but then I realized that people are actually reading what I am writing, and maybe a little more time and thought should go into what I publish on a whim. That's why the literary world has editors. This is in response to my last blog, about the superficiality of Italian culture. It was titled What's in a Name? It appears to be more about what's in the brains of people than in the names associated with locations and styles.

My friend Ilaria, an Italian girl, read my blog and it upset her. She went on to make valid points that I am usually surrounded by Italian youth, who have yet to form their identities, and that I see them primarily on Friday and Saturday after the work week.

The major thing here is that I felt wrong in upsetting people I cared about. I wouldn't be here in Italy if not for them. Shit, they're the reason I came back to this country anyway, so if I have complaints to make I should have thought about that decision before coming here.

What's in a name?

When I walk down the streets of Rome, there are few things that actually remind me of reality. Reality as I know it at least. I call home from the Piazza Navona, staring at Bernini's magnificent fountain. My workplace is the Sistine Chapel, and Saint Peter's. My friends speak a language I am barely grasping, and all the bands sing in English that is worse than my Italian.

It seems to all be a farce. A never ending dream that I don't want to wake up from. I just finished watching Eyes Wide Shut, the last film directed by Stanley Kubrick, who by sheer coincidence has a show here in Rome right now, and I feel almost like Tom Cruise in the film, searching for a darker more sinister meaning behind the unbelievable fantasy before my eyes, that I happened to stumble into by chance. I feel like the deeper I embed myself into this world the more they see I don't belong, but it doesn't stop me from trying to figure it out.

Italy seems to be a fashion show. The hardcore music scene looks the part, but doesn't act it. No one dances, everyone watches and claps and thats all. The audience rushes then to the merch booth to purchase the look of the band. The fashion that is independent music. Not to say that America isn't guilty of consuming by any means, but there seems to be a passion attached to it there that I just don't find here.

I see people dressed on the streets in skateboarding clothes. From time to time in parks, I encounter boys with skateboards, but no one is ever riding them.

There is scaffolding on the aformentioned Bernini fountain, but never anyone working on it. The same goes for the metro lines. It is 2007, almost 2008, there are only two metro lines in Rome, and the worst traffic I have ever seen. Why is nothing being down.

This was all actually supposed to be about the difference between Pabst Blue Ribbon and Peroni Nastro Azzuro (or Blue Ribbon) which while it may have won a blue ribbon some time ago does not even compare to sub premium Pabst. Nastro Azzuro is a neon green color, and doesn't go down smooth. Try it for yourself because this beer is billed as Peroni in the States, the real Peroni here is not actually bad, and it can be purchased astronomically cheap.

Back to the show, the words for establishments in which alcohol can be consumed in Italy are as follows. Bar, Pub, Disco, Club... you get the idea. What is the Bartender called? Barman. What perplexes me, is where did these people consume alcohol before the 20th century. The Italians are famous for producing wine, yet I rarely ever see them consume it. During our "date" Isabella called Justin a sponge, because he drank more than one glass of wine.

What is this culture that produces such superficial people?

Our Hot Date

A post with pictures!

The beginning of a post that I started a few nights ago:

Tonight Jim and I have our first date with two Italian ragazzas (a ragazza is an Italian girl, as far as we're concerned. Two ragazzas are technically called "due ragazze," with an "e" at the end, but we don't give a shit). These two ragazzas are the two prettiest girls from Marino. Have either of us mentioned that we were celebrities in Marino toward the end of our tenure there? One of these ragazzas is named Sabrina, and she was our usual barmaid at the pub. The other ragazza is Isabella (as in "is a bella ragazza!"). After taking a few shots with some friends during our "last night at the pub", we bid everyone our adieu's and left. As we turned the corner away from the pub and into Marino's main square, we heard our names called out. We turned around and coming up to us was Sabrina, the blonde waitress, who had the night off. Behind her were two of her friends, whom she introduced as Isabella and Georgia. They asked us what we were doing and if we wanted to go to the pub with them, there being nothing else to do in Marino at that time of night except for maybe see who can spit the farthest off the mountain. Going back to the pub would be a bit of an embarrassing concession, since we had left only minutes prior with much fanfare, handshakes and back claps and such, but fuck it. These girls were beautiful. Well, two of them were. The third was nice and cute, but much younger. As we learned later, she was Isabella's younger sister.

We had a round with the three of them and talked for over an hour only in italian. Everything we know in the language was put the test; since even that doesn't amount to much, the rest we left up to our natural charm and wit. Being a southerner in Philly is a commodity, being a southerner in Italy doesn't mean a goddamn thing. I have relied quite heavily on the fact that I'm from Alabama to make an impression when in the north (not because I myself find it particularly interesting, but because it always gets a reaction, and it's a good conversation starter), but with these ragazzas, they just nodded and blinked. A little while after these introductions, Isabella tells us she's going to Alabama. Well, ok. Where in Alabama? Non lo sa.

The night passed at a pleasurable slowness, culminating in a trip to a late night cafe in the next town over for cornetti. Feeling good about it all, Jim and I invited the girls to our house in Rome for dinner.

Now for what I've written since after the night of our "date."

A few days later we moved into our new studio apartment (which I will post more pictures of in a different post). For days our stuff lay strewn about the apartment. Piles of clothes, paperwork from our jobs, suitcases, etc. The place, as I've mentioned in another post, smelled horrendous. We got text messages from Sabrina and Isabella confirming our dinner date. The day came when they had agreed to come and Jim and I got our fucking acts together. Nothing motivates a couple of smelly bachelors who live like college freshmen to clean their act up like a couple of bella ragazzas. That morning Elena (the landlady/Jordan's girlfriend) came and painted one of the walls and brought some cloths in to add some color. Jim, Jordan, and I went to a restaurant in Re di Roma to eat lunch, and afterwards Jim and I went to Coin-- the Italian Macy's-- in San Giovanni so Jim could buy a 9 euro towel. As we were leaving we saw the men's cologne, and both of us sprayed ourselves down. We returned to our bachelor's den to clean ourselves up and prepare. The ragazzas told us they were going to come after dinner, so the pressure to pretend like we knew how to cook was off. That was a relief, since we only found out that our refrigerator didn't work that day.

We walked around the place preparing for a night of wild orgies and debauchery. Both of us bathed and shaved; we hung up sheets around our beds for "privacy", we borrowed plates and forks and glasses from Jordan and Elena for the cheese, wine, and meats we bought for snacks. When finally they called for us to meet them, Jim and I were acting like two 6th graders. We literally sprinted to the bus stop so that we could meet them at the Arco di Travertino Metro stop. They were in a car, but directions here are difficult.

For the first of our setbacks, Georgia, Isabella's little sister, came too. Heartily discouraged, we kissed them all on the cheeks and got into the car. This wasn't going to be an orgy fest with Isabella's little sister there too. The ragazzas sang loudly to Italian songs while Jim and I made fun of them in English in the back seat, with Georgia sitting between us. We made it to our place feeling slightly uncomfortable. Fortunately Jordan was hanging outside of his window above us, and Elena wasn't around, so we invited him down to have a glass of wine. His Italian is nearly flawless, so he was a good ice-breaker to have around.

Things started out awkwardly. I poured a round of wine for everyone except for Georgia, who preferred orange juice. After that glass I offered another to everyone. Only Jim and I took one. Isabella started calling me "la spugna" (spelling?), which means "sponge." Why she chose me to start making fun of for drinking, I don't know, but it didn't endear her to me. I told her in Italian that I could drink all night without feeling much of an effect, and that Americans drink all the fucking time. At this point Sabrina, the waitress spoke up and started making fun of my claim by reminding me of the ONE night where I got really drunk at the pub, when I ended up nearly passing out on the stool. Ok, good point Sabrina. I could have defended myself by telling her how much I drank that night, but that would have vindicated their case that I was a "sponge." Feeling all hope of making out with a ragazza fade away, I decided to do the next best thing, and one of my favorite activities in Italy: make fun of everyone in English. Cuz they don't understand a fucking word of it. Once I did that, I started to loosen up. It is a fun activity only if there is another English speaker in the room, because without one I just feel like an asshole. This tactic never fails to make me feel more comfortable. And eventually they warmed up to us and we to them, and finally I got on a long rant about Alabama and the beaches there and how they're more beautiful than the beaches in Florida; how the forests in Alabama are wonderful ; how the mountains are great for hiking. I felt really good.

Basically the night ended with them leaving and kissing us on the cheeks. Jim and I went upstairs to Jordan and Elena's place to retrieve our "Hell's Bier" from their refrigerator. They were put there just in case things didn't work out the way we had intended, just in case we needed an anti-victory drink. We came back into our apartment. It was covered in dirty plates with old olive pits, there were empty bottles and empty glasses everywhere, the floor had reverted back to it's permanent dirtiness. We sat down and got onto the internet to check out emails and myspace accounts. It was almost as if nothing had ever happened.

By the way... this is about teeth and personal hygine

A toothbrush, I did buy before Justin wrote that blog about me and my stench, and it's not that I wanted to be stinky, it's just that it is fucking impossible to get a hold of the things we take for granted in the states. For instance, a toothbrush that doesn't rip through gums, or a decent sized towel for under $14. I had to estimate the dollar value of my towel. Nothing here seems to be easy. I had to pay 29 euros to get my clothes washed and dried, which is why I held out for six weeks, and the fuckers at the laundrymat didn't even fold my clothes. They just folded the top layer, so when I looked in the bags, I said "tutto posto" and walked away broke, with clean but already wrinkled shirts.

I have this weird thing about using other peoples soap, or drying off without a towel, I just can't do it, so that in addition to the stressful moving process, which involved dodging questions about money from my quasi landlady, or better put Justin's roommate slash spy loanshark, had me too stressed out to even think about showering. I have since showered about as many times as I have posted on this blog. Our new shower is great! It makes an awesome water park out of our bathroom floor, and I don't think I have ever come quite as close to God as when I scurried out of the shower to answer the phone. I slipped on my living room floor courtesy of the showers incredible ability to get everything in the house wet except for me. Mind you, I was buck naked minus the first of two towels I purchased in the last few days here. It was a gorgeous one euro trenta centissimi pink hand towel with a green apple embroidered on it. I flew up in the air, lost my towel and landed on my ass cheeks splitting them on the concrete floor. I would have cracked my head open on the same floor, but thankfully I had just paid far to much to do my laundry, and my suitcase broke my head's fall.

I was, by the way trying at the same moment that I was half knocked out on my living room/kitchen/bedroom floor, did I mention that I live in a room that is about 30,000 square cm, you fuckers don't know how to use the metric system anyway, measure it out and get back to me, to go to a dinner for work. My friend/landlord/coworker Jordan was calling me from upstairs to make sure I was ready to go. I missed his call and all i could think about was how bad it would suck if he walked in on me naked on the floor, cell phone in hand, head in suitcase.

I got up got dressed met up with Jordan, and we made our way to the work dinner. The night in general was anything but eventful, but I did end up sleeping at a girls house. No, not anything sexual, she manages our work website and is not Italian, quickly knocking her out of position for me to earn an EU passport. Well regardless, the most exciting thing after falling had to be drinking tea in the morning, something I had forgotten that I enjoyed, and then buying a new towel! Cleanliness here I come, and just in time for Justin's next post in which we will have sort of a double date with some real Italian women... stay tuned true believers.

Sonia Velasquez

Colombian Pirates... AKA Eyepatches are sexy!

I think Justin and I may have totally forgotten the craziest thing that has happened to us since we arrived here in Italy, while we were living in Marino with two of the craziest girls I've ever encountered. One was from Argentina, and would stay in her room all day long, and only come out to devour the toilet paper rolls, and a girl from Belgium who lived all over the world, spoke some of the most ridiculous languages, and disappeared for weeks at a time. This girl was such an enigma, that one day I will take the time and devote a post to her.

We had one other roommate however, only for two weeks. She was this strange woman from Columbia. She spoke to us in a mix of English, Italian and Spanish(of which, I know none.) She had a really sophisticated and almost sexy air about her, but there was this strange problem with her eye. Which one I can't quite remember now, but it seemed like it didn't work. It was glazed over and was kind of sunken in. We joked about maybe trying to get it on with her, but how creeped out she made us both feel when she looked directly at us. This went on like this until the day before she left. I happened to run into her on the train from Rome to Marino, and ended up hiking up the hill with her. I was a little bit tipsy and out of breath by the time I got to the top of the hill, that made me think it was a great idea to start hitting on her. We get back to the house another ten minutes later, and split a bottle of wine.

We get into a conversation about our respective countries. Mine obviously the USA, and hers Columbia. She starts talking about self image, and I immediately equate it to her eye, but no she seems to be relating it to how girls view her as a role model. I ask her why girls view her as an idol, "Which girls?" I ask. She grabs my computer and pulls up a website. I will reproduce it here for you. http://www.soniavelasquez.com/ The woman is a fucking Columbian celebrity!!! She has billboards with her picture on it, and has been in Maxim magazine as one of the hottest celebrities in the world. Here I am sitting next to a fucking celebrity thinking that I have the chance to score with her, kicking myself for not being able to see past her eye. No pun intended. She seems to lose interest in me as soon as I realize who she is. I think I got a little too excited.

This woman has her eye patches custom fabricated and given to her by a designer. She is a leading journalist in Columbia, like Katie Couric, but hot, and I am sitting across the red and white checkered table from her in Marino. One of the smallest most insignificant towns in Italy. She gets up from the table, calls me Justin and thats it. I never see her again.

In regards to my ranting blog a few posts down...

No, folks, I am not disgruntled about being here. Sorry if I was misleading. I love being here. By wondering what the fuck I'm doing here, I don't mean that in a desperate way, I mean it in a, "Why did I come to Italy? Why did I want so bad to leave the United States?" sorta way. You know? I meant it in more of a "What is the meaning of life?" sorta way, to be cliche about it. Though I really don't think my intentions or reasons for being here are even that dramatic.

In conclusion, I think I needed the culture shock. It reawakens one's senses. One experiences the world more vividly when poor and in a foreign country that makes no sense. There is a lot of frustration that necessarily comes with this, but it is well worth it. Routines are hypnotic. If you listen to the same song every day, you no longer hear the words or the hooks or the melodies. It ceases to have any effect. And that's how I felt about the United States. Needed a break. Sorry to have to post to clarify this. The blog was written late at night, when I was feeling cynical and sarcastic. Actually I thought it was funny. Not whiny. Not because I was feeling dejected and depressed. But because I wanted to share thoughts. Next time I'll try to be more chipper.

Come si dice, "You smell like putrid death"?

Jim and Jordan-- the two Americans I waste most of my time with-- both work for the same tour company, which is having an exclusive dinner tonight only for people who work with them. That combined with my excessive drinking last night and resulting hangover today, has put me at home alone, with nothing to do but sit in my room and smell the toxic filth of two grown men who don't know how to take care of themselves. This sparked an idea for a blog. Read on.

My first roommate in college was a 6 foot 8 inch, 420 pound behemoth Floridian named Wookie. Before I moved in, I called his house in Florida to see what he was bringing, so that we didn't have two TV's, etc. His mom answered and told me he wasn't in, but that he would be bringing his own bed, since he was 6'8". The next time I called I talked to him on the phone. His voice was deep and he spoke slowly, with a slight drawl. For some reason I envisioned a tall, thin basketball player; I could almost see a 6'8" black haired, blue eyed kid wearing his jersey, casually cupping a basketball in his massive hand while he talked to me with the phone in his other hand. When I first arrived at Alumni Hall of Troy State University in South Alabama on an early August morning, I knocked on the door. I was never very good at meeting people. I think too much and have problems with small talk and generally don't want to have anything to do with most human beings, and so I was a little nervous at the prospect of having to share a room with a stranger. The door swung open and he ducked down under the door frame to step out in the hall. I was momentarily stunned. He filled the entire frame; the slivers of light spilling out from the room, around his massive frame, and into the dark hallway made him look even more frightening. He stuck out his hand and smiled. "I'm Wookie," he said in a slow, deep voice, like that of a retarded ogre.

We sat down in the room and made awkward conversation for a few minutes before he said, "Fuck this, do you smoke? Wanna go outside for a cigarette?" We were instant friends.

The semester passed relatively smoothly. My girlfriend at the time, Darbi (like Darby Crash, from The Germs) was about five feet tall in heels, and was maybe 95 pounds after a good meal. Wookie looked as though he could have devoured her in a few chumps. It would have taken her no less than 14 years to eat him. Wookie wore a shirt sometimes that stated the obvious, "I'm bigger than you," which I found particularly funny.

One thing about living with a beast of a man of his size was the smell. I don't believe Wookie could reach all of his body, and so bathing for him was something impossible. Scrunch an elephant into a dorm room shower stall and turn the water on, and you get an idea of the impossibility of hygiene maintenance. I'm pretty sure there were parts of his body that hadn't been washed since elementary school. There were folds and folds of skin, layers of fat, beneath which dead skin and filth had begun to cake onto his body (Wookie would crush my skull in a single blow if he knew I was writing this). The resulting smell at night, once all his cotton armor had been removed, was horrendous; something akin to the smell of the vagina of a crackhead's corpse after a few days of festering in a sewer. Slowly people stopped coming by our room, my girlfriend dumped me, my grades gradually plummeted (my final GPA for that semester was an impressive 0.38). I sorta blame Wookie's stench for all of this.

Let's jump from 2001 to 2007 (six years!). Jim hasn't done his laundry since he arrived here over 6 weeks ago, his toothbrush was dropped onto the filthy bathroom floor at our old place and he has been refusing to use that one anymore, or any toothbrush that the Italians sell (they only sell medium and hard bristle brushes), and he hasn't had a towel and hasn't bathed for 3 or 4 days. Our landlady (Jordan's girlfriend) came into our apartment to paint the walls or some shit while we were away earlier and, as Jordan recounted to us earlier, couldn't stay in the room. The smell of Jim could give the smell of a man appropriately named "Wookie" a run for it's money. That's frightening. Jim must have some amazing death odor powers. Maybe he's part sasquatch.

I'm seriously not one to judge another human being based off of their smell; anyone who's ever lived with me or spent a prolonged period of time in a vehicle with me understands that I too, believe it or not, can emit odors capable of choking an adult sloth. But this was getting unbearable. Fearing for our well being, the two of us took our laundry to the lavaggio. I only had a pair of jeans and t-shirt that needed to be washed, since I wear the same shit everyday and most of my other laundry I did at my old house, drying it outside (something else Jim refuses to do). After dropping off our clothes we went in search of a store where he could buy a towel or a toothbrush, preferably both. We walked down Tor Pignattara looking for a store. Both of us were exceptionally exhausted from moving and drinking, moving and drinking, so we must have looked like two lobotomized chimpanzees as we grunted directions at each other.

I'm realizing that this story isn't going anywhere. Sorry, folks. The end.

Silly Catholics... Metal Mayhem

I gave a group tour today. This is a normal occurrence. I wake up, go to work get my list of tourists, meet them, ask where they are from and then tell them where they can get a cheap bottle of water. I encounter about 20 of these people a day. Single serving clients, they enter into and out of my brain as they tell me their names. Sometimes I can remember where they are from, when they have an affiliation with either Atlantic City or Philadelphia, or in rare instances when they are friends with Minor Threat members, or when the man on my tour is the author of a historical text called India after Gandhi, published by an imprint of Harper Collins, but these people are rare. Today I had two people on my tour that seemed just a little left of center. They both were wearing metal band t-shirts. Akin to the kind you would see for Napalm Death or Cannibal Corpse. Letters all hard to read, and scratchy. They were also wearing pentagram necklaces.

We get all the way to the Sistine Chapel without incident. Mind that I am not allowed to speak inside the chapel because it is considered a holy place. So my group goes in, and I tell them that I will meet them at the guided tour exit on the right hand side. Five people on my tour don't show up. I start freaking out inside. I never lost the headsets before, and five is a lot to lose. I really need to keep everyone on my tour, because I am being paid shit and lately the tourists have been stingy fucks when it comes to tipping. I don't want to be responsible for the headsets.

I search the Sistine Chapel frantically while the rest on my tour wait for me in front of the pope's private quarters. I am running around the chapel with a huge bottle of water over my head, repeating "We are meeting by the far right door." By speaking in the chapel I am risking my job, but I keep repeating myself. After fifteen minutes, I give up all hope on making enough money that going to work was even worth it. I continue on down an ugly hallway designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who no matter how good he was at sculpting definitely lacked in the architectural department. The steps are extra large, for transporting newly selected popes by donkey to great the people. How fucking elegant can these decrepit old men be. Today, the normal route is blocked by a rope, and we are escorted down the steps that are only supposed to be used by the pope and the Swiss guards. I try to emphasise how cool this is to my tourists, what a once in a lifetime experience this is, but I don't think they were listening to me after I lost five paying customers. We end up outside in Saint Peter's square, where I wait with eight people from England for the straggler in their group. He shows up after about a half an hour, making my pay per hour go down down down. Miraculously he arrives with the rest of the lost tourists. Two of the women on my tour from Canada, nothing too interesting about them except that the daughter is really attractive, and my heavy metal couple.

They inform me that upon entering the Sistine chapel they were approached by security and asked to remove their pentagram necklaces. They comply but then the man asks what he should do with his pentagram tattoo on his arm. He flashes it with pride to the guard, and they are subsequently escorted out of the museum complex. We get into a conversation about how silly the Catholic Church is because fill their churches with pagan art, but a pagan symbol on others is unheard of.

Needless to say I make minimal tips even though I worked an hour more than I was supposed to and all because St. Peter's was closed.

ZINGARI or WOP either or I am

The last 10 months of my life I have spent in transit. In Philadelphia, I moved from my mold infested apartment into my silica filled studio, where I squatted illegally in my own university for three months until graduation. I was in ill health and immediately after graduating was without health insurance to fix my upper respiratory problems, so I did what all other poor Philadelphian students do after graduation. Moved to North Philly, but not the hip up and coming locale that is Fishtown. No, I get myself a job in Kensington at a bronze foundry, and move into Port Richmond. The walk down Tioga St. from work to home was only six blocks, but it felt like forever in a nightmare. Children barefoot, and shirtless, running with plastic guns and broken bottles, the kind found littering the ground ever inch or so. The parents of these children were barely my age, could most likely be found on the front porch of their multi colored asphalt sided broken windowed homes, smoking crack in the open air. Every other house doubled as a water ice stand, or pretzel shop, Chinese and Ebonics were the two tongues spoken.

This in combination with my job, which consisted of welding wax tiles to other sticks of wax for Michelle Oka-Doner, to be placed in Miami International Airport, is what prompted me to get the hell out of Philadelphia as fast as I could. The city had been telling me to leave since January, but school held me prisoner. In mid July, I walked out on my job, still not sure if they paid me my last paycheck or not, and moved back in with my mom. I bailed on my apartment in Port Richmond, leaving my mattress and some speakers an no word whatsoever to my landlord.

I was home less than a week, when I left on tour with my band the New Romantics for an 11 day tour through the North East of the United States. We lived in any house that would house us, one night ending up at Jake Sullivan's house in Vermont. Jake is a punk first and foremost, but he is a pro snowboarder as well, and we got to spend the night at his very crust punky apartment. There were some other pro skaters at the house and some cokehead from a New York metal band. These guys, not Jake. Were locked in a bedroom hiding to the best of their ability the huge mound of cocaine they had been consuming throughout the night. Another metal head, dressed in black and white striped tights cowboy boots and hair that puts Jon Bon Jovi's mullet in it's glory days to shame, happens to go into the attic and falls through the ceiling directly on top of the pile of coke. These guys try desperately to sort the fiberglass insulation from their eight ball, and the Beetlejuice panted guy was stuck in the ceiling. How fucking punk? The fiberglass getting into people's brains reminded me about being back at work on sculpture either at the foundry or at school. It was time to go.

I played out the rest of the summer on the beach living up the Atlantic City summer, for what may be the last time, with all my best friends from childhood, and then September 10th came along and on a plane I went.

I landed in Rome after a paranoid flight, ready to settle down. It has been seven weeks and I am further away from having an apartment than when I started. Justin put me up in a town called Marino, where he had been living in a similar condition to my own for some months. We shared a bedroom that became unbearably stinky over the six weeks I spent there. Two vagabonds, living in Rome on tourists visas not knowing how long the money or work will hold out, living on a diet of Porchetta and Vino interspersed with gelato.

I didn't do my laundry for the six weeks until yesterday, and this past week I was really developing a ripe odor. Justin told me that I smelled like rotting flesh. I hadn't taken a shower for four days, because of moving and not having a towel to dry myself. This life of constantly being on the move, bouncing from place to place has really taken a toll on my personal self worth. I feel like I am losing my identity, and at the same time I am enjoying every second of this life. I feel a growing affinity with the African and Southeast Asian merchants that sell fake handbags and sunglasses. I sell a fake story about the men that designed Italy. They sell fake versions of Italian designers.

This should in theory be my last month of this gypsy lifestyle, I just hope what I have learned from it might stay ingrained in my being.

A Sad, Lonely Rant Which Utilizes Every Form of the Word "Fuck", by Justin Southern

I honestly don't know what the fuck I'm doing here right now. Here in Italy, here in Rome, here in my house alone on a Saturday night, drinking a beer. It's my absurd, existential crisis that I go through every night. Every day. Every time I wake up I wonder where the fuck I am, and what the fuck I'm doing here. But the longer I stay here, the more I feel that I don't have anywhere else to go. When I consider the options (back to Alabama, back to Philadelphia, somewhere new where I have friends, like Austin or Portland), I find that I have less and less reasons to leave here. What work am I qualified for but to sit around on my lazy ass, reading books about Merovingian siege tactics or Rennaisance paper making techniques and then, once in a while, venture out into the world to repeat all the useless knowledge I have stored in my brain? I doubt many people in Austin, Texas are interested in the Great Jewish Revolt of 66-73CE. The only person I ever get emails from is Jim, who is usually sitting across the room from me when he sends them. He knows that I check it four hundred times a day, and does it to fuck with me. He knows that when I get an email I yelp in excitement like a puppy having its first orgasm. Then, upon realizing it is him, I fall back to earth and realize that leaving my homeland, abandoning everyone I know to come to a country where I know no one and speak only the basics, has left me in an awkward position: that of an expatriate. Not an "ex-pat"; not someone doing it because it's fashionable or because they have the money and, hey, why not? But because I am someone who realized one day that, if I didn't get the fuck out of the insanity of America for a little while, I would be consumed by it. Nope, didn't want that to happen. At least here, when the world doesn't make sense, there is a very obvious reason: I'm not from here.

My Italian is pitiable for someone who has lived here for 5 months. My boss' dog understands more than me. A fucking German Shepherd! German! And it understands everything. Fucking bastard. Last night I went out with my friend Claudio and some of his friends, two of whom were "idraulici." Plumbers? I forgot their names instantly, but came up with two very obvious nicknames for the two of them: Mario and Luigi. All of those fucking bastards spoke to me at a million miles an hour and in Romanesco, the Roman dialect of Italian, a type of Italian so fucked up many Italians don't understand it. How the fuck was I supposed to understand that? I spent most of the night feeling like Claudio's American pet. At one point, while we all hung out in a piazza in San Lorenzo, they were all so crowded around in an impenetrable circle that I got fed up with trying to meet people and left to find a quiet alleyway to take a piss in. When I came back they were all like, "Where the fuck did you go?" or, "Dove cazzo sei andato?" Or some shit along those lines. I don't think any of them have faith in my ability to navigate this city, even though I know my way around it better than they do. Proven by the fact that I had to give Mario and Luigi directions last night as we were driving around. I like Claudio, but he isn't very helpful in my Learn Italian Endeavor. The way they only spoke to me if I did something wrong made me feel like I should have been sticking my nose in their asses or humping their legs.

Tonight I left my house to fucking comprare some sigaretti, which I thought would be a pointless task, since it was midnight and Italians close everything every time they so much as get a cramp in their asshole, which, believe me, happens all the time. But I managed to find something. I sewed my way through the ancient acqueducts that run through my neighborhood, Tor Pignattara, off of the Via Casilina, thinking about what the cazzo I'm doing here. Can't say I came up with much of a conclusion. But I believe that, hell, if I'm going to have an existential crisis anywhere, why not do it here? It was a miracle that I found a machinetta that was operational. I bought my sigaretti and walked back the way I came, stopping only once to buy another beer. Fucking assholes! I ranted in my head. Not about anyone or anything in particular, just the general mechanism at work in the world that makes people and places and ideas suck such terrible ass. My brain was going all over the place, as it often does at the late hour. I had been trying to write this very selfsame blog that I'm writing now when I left, but it was a miserable failure, much like every other thing I ever touch. As soon as I left, though, all the shit I wanted to say on here just came pouring out. 800,000 square meters of water pour through the Trevi Fountain every day (at least that's what I tell my tourists), and it had nothing on the floodgate of words and thoughts I had running through my head. Nouns, adjectives, adverbs, metaphors... Fucking bastards! Why did they organize my head that way? That as soon as I stepped away from my computer it all comes out. Bastards...

I tried to remember some of it, but the only thing I remembered was the line about a puppy's first orgasm. That and all the "Fucking Bastards" I used. I use that one a lot. That and, "Fucking Philistines!" That one is for my tourists. Fucking Philistines can't appreciate a damn thing they're looking at. Put the fucking Laocoon and the Apollo Belvedere in their face, perhaps next to Michelangelo's pisspot, and what are they going to snap a thousand photos of? This is my life. Alternating between being the happiest fucking guy in the world and adorably disgruntled. And then a little drinking in between.

At least the guy at San Crispino, one of the world's most famous gelatterias, gives me free gelatto. Can't touch this!

This is mr. southern, signing off (or sigh-ing off! har-har)

Squeezin' the Juice

One nice thing about Italian breakfast, or the lack thereof is Spremuta. It is fresh squeezed orange juice available at a very not gourmet price. The rest of Italian breakfast is lacking to say the least. I've been losing weight consistently even though I eat gelato, pizza and drink beer practically everyday. I would chalk it up to the fact that I haven't been eating breakfast, but I have been. I'll let you in on a secret. The McDonald's at Termini is your friend. Yes hungry traveler, you with almost no money and a hankering for an egg sandwich. Buy one at the Mickey D's at Termini train station. The wrapper even says that they use free range eggs. I don't know if I believe this or not, but when I was commuting every morning into Rome, I found this little sentence to be vindicating. (Justin just reached into his dirty pant pocket and asked me if I wanted a peanut. ) I must really be losing weight. I hope it's not AIDS.
I could however chalk the weight loss up to the the fact that I had been climbing up a mountain every night to get home, a journey that roughly averaged twenty minutes up hill or 10 minutes down. Most nights the journey could stretch to an hour or more if Justin would meet me at the Porchetta stand. This place was my oasis in Marino, a dead roasted pig with herb sandwich and a glass of some of the shittiest red wine around, refrigerated to such a degree that one didn't notice the flavor, all for three euros. One glass of wine easily turned to two, and eventually it led Justin and I to Finnegan's Pub. Marino's most intimate watering hole, where we would eventually become local celebrities. But that is another story...

Changing house

Welcome everyone. Benvenuti, cappuccino, capito, allora, va bene to an experiment in writing and living in the same space. Justin and I (Jim) have just moved into a house in Rome, Italy. We are so new to this house that we still don't know where the light switches are. Justin is searching frantically for one now, as I write. What are are trying to accomplish with what seems like just another expat blog, will hopefully give you insight into an alternative view of Rome. I should mention that we live in a makeshift studio apartment inside an artist colony, that was occupied by prostitutes and pimps until a few years ago.
We both work as tour guides in Rome, and maybe you have either taken a tour with us or will in the future. If you haven't yet, get on it! We need the money.
Here you will be able to read stories about some of the more exciting clients we've had, art we see, booze we've consumed and pretty much anything else that comes with the territory of being two young broke Americans in Rome. So sit back and enjoy...