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)