The Ambassador’s Son

He was beautiful like a cat sprawled in the sun.

He lived with his mother.

He had the the hips of someone who had sex constantly.

His mother walked with crutches and had a facial disfiguration, a stroke or that made it impossible to understand her speech.

He had black hair, soft eyes, and the longest lashes I had ever seen on a man.

He lived with a cat and I was allergic to the cat and the cat slept on the sofa and so did I and my eyes streamed.

He was in touch with his feminine side and an old soul and smart and insightful.

He was too young to pay for anyone.

He had the purr of a sexually successful house cat.

He was yet another young man drifting through life in search of passion. Every time I encountered another person who didn’t know what they wanted to do and felt lost, my conversation dried up.

He was interested and flirtatious and a thoughtful listener.

He played with his phone a lot.

He was twenty-eight. Everything about him was fresh and bouncing with life.

He did not have one wrinkle or sag and I felt old next to him.

His skin loved to touch mine.

He was sleeping with another woman.

And she was still here.

….

He was in bed with this other person until my bus arrived (and then some) and I sent him many messages saying that I was lost and needed help.

We dropped off my things. I was bitchy with hunger. He gave me a peach and grapes. He asked if the girl who had stayed last night could also stay tonight, as she had nowhere to go. I complied, while thinking, “no of course not.”

This is an old story. Today none of this would have happened, because I wouldn’t have agreed to be his guest in the first place. But I had to live through this story, to get to where I am now.

We went for a walk and he explained how, suddenly, he had felt a strong attraction for this person. She had such a “light, sporty energy.” She was adorable. They had sex “many, many times.” (An accidental sighting of the contents of the garbage, sitting at eye-height on a cabinet, confirmed this.) Amazing sex. Sex like he had had with his first lover. Their bodies matched. But it was only for one night, she was going home to America, it wasn’t like he was going to go to America to see her, so…(insert Italian hand gesture here). Still, most of the time he was with me, he was texting her.

We left the house but his battery was almost dead. Desperate to get out of the gloomy apartment, starving, bored with sitting around, I silenced my inner red flag and loaned him my external battery. I yelled at myself. This guy was a literal battery-drainer and I was the one making it possible.

Experience is the best teacher.

Raffaele and I went for a walk through Torino.

We stopped for ice cream. He snuggled me in front to order mine first…and then not only did I have to pay for my own but he asked me to give him a euro for his as well!

But then we strolled through a hidden park. Light shone through the clouds and lit up the distant blue Alps, and a string quintet performed Mozart in the neighbouring castle. We watched squirrels scampering through the shrubbery.

We lay on the grass and he made a nook for me with his arm. I shouldn’t have accepted. A few minutes later he bounced up to call his mommy to ask her if he could sleep in her bed with the other woman and if she would sleep on the bunk bed in the living room with me.

But then he snuggled into the grass and purred love stories to me in Italian and we curled up together. He asked me to tell him about myself, and love, and what I had learned. And, lying on his chest, his arm around me, I did. I would not have done any of this today, but that is what I did then. We laughed. We touched each other. We joked, and we found ease in one another’s presence.

We were members of the same tribe. We were adorable, because, to others, we were irresistible for being Different, but to each other, we were irresistible for being the Same.

He told me about his first love, for Olimpia, and said that this was the only time he had truly been in love.

….

Once upon a time he had felt different from the other boys and girls. Then he grew up and was attracted to women and to men with a developed feminine side. He fell for a woman much older than he. She was his spiritual mentor and gave him a chance to discover his powers, he said. He developed his feminine side, a quality that would stand him in good stead in his future career as a compulsive seducer. But she developed a passion for him and his feelings cooled into friendship, which, he said, “was possible.”

Meanwhile there was la Altra Donna.

She was fourteen years older than Raffaele and this was the first time he had ever really fallen in love. He was trulymadlydeeply in love, and she was in love with him. Except she was married “to a fifty-year-old man” and they had a daughter.

Raffaele said the spark had gone out of her marriage and she was bored. He loved her and had to learn how to deal with her having her own life. Eventually her husband found out and had an Unpleasant Confrontation with Raffaele. I remembered that in Italy it was legal to kill your wife’s lover until 1970.

But this did not end the relationship.

Raffaele felt bad. He had nothing to offer Olimpia. He could not offer her a child, she already had one. He could not offer her a fine home, she already had one. Her husband had given her everything. Over time, he tired of living in the shadows and always coming second, of having no voice, of not being allowed to matter.

So that summer he walked away.

Since then he had screwed everything he could lay his dick on. The day before this girl now sleeping at the house, it was a virgin. And, with airy wave of his hand, he said, “sometimes I sleep with travellers, because, you know, why not.”

….

Suddenly Raffaele had been separated too long from this woman who was staying the night. He jumped back to his phone and stayed there, messaging her.

I worked hard at being nice, because I was still learning what I know now. I hunted for things to say. But I got stung by a bee while we were lying in the grass, and since it was Sunday nowhere was open to buy Advil. I was famished and weary and my feelings were hurt, I had needed to pee for seven hours (because Italy doesn’t have public bathrooms), I was allergic to the vegetation, and I had come expecting one situation and instead was being otherwomanned all over the place…so I got tired of being nice. After a while I stopped making conversation.

That evening, the other woman joined us. I had expected her to be as sexy as Raffaele himself, after his tales of their chemistry.

But when she arrived at the restaurant, she was the dullest lump I had ever seen!

She was short and fat and had the worst posture. Her eyes were dull and stupid. Her colouring was drab. She wore an enormous tank top that said “Florida” in sparkle neon writing. Some of her hair was skinned into a whale spout on top of her head. She wore too much jewellery, everywhere. And she didn’t speak one word of Italian.

She arrived with a second Raffaele in tow. Both Raffaeles doted on her. She had no curiosity, no passions, and no mission. The boys found her mesmerising.

I was light and funny and kept attention directed away from myself. Today I am ashamed to admit that I sat through that dinner, wasting my emotional energy, but that’s what I did.

The Raffaeles had the best evening ever, hanging on this woman’s every utterance.

I doubted how we were going to combine dinner with the concert we were supposed to attend. Dinner was at eight, but we didn’t order until nine, which was when the concert started. I had been expecting to end my evening with Beethoven’s 9th in a Baroque piazza and instead I was sitting around over pizza listening to a girl from Jersey. I don’t know why I didn’t leave.

We caught the end of the symphony. The Ode to Joy. Raffaele 1 and I raced to the piazza and Raffaele 2 and the girl lagged behind. The Ode was fantastic, and Raffaele, a choir nerd like I, was the right person with whom to share it. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder tenderly, and I let him.

Then we reunited with the Others.

With me he was a hungry panther on the prowl. But when I watched him with the girl, he was a shuffling, awkward, dorky kid, nobody special, didn’t think much of himself or know what to do in the world. Their chemistry was like that too. I watched them together. They could not have been less sexy or less romantic.

I guess he liked that.

On the way home with the girl and Me, he breathed, “two American girls in my house! At the same time! And so completely different from each other! I can’t believe it!”

“You have No Idea how lucky you are,” I said.

I spent the night on the top half of a bunk bed made out of the sofa and his mother spent the night on the bottom half. I was allergic to the cat and spent most of the night with my red eyes streaming goop. My bee sting hurt. My heart stung. My mind raced. And his mother snored louder than a wildebeest, all night long.

….

I could not leave in the morning until the two lovebirds emerged from Raffaele’s mother’s bed. I had no key to unlock the door to escape. And the girl was becoming increasingly unclear on when, if ever, she was going to leave.

So, after having been awake all night, I spent the morning getting chased around the house by Raffaele’s mother with the disfigured face and the speech impediment and the ability to just sit and stare, wishing I could pick the lock and run away.

Raffaele and the girl emerged at the crack of 1. Raffaele’s mother bitched about a hundred euro debt he was supposed to have paid. He told her not to talk about such things, we have guests. Raffaele made lunch for his women, pasta with pesto and potatoes. The girl and I peeled potatoes in silence. She had a cold.

We had a silent lunch. Finally coffee was over. I could not wait to get out of that suffocating house, walk in the sunshine, find somewhere else to stay, and move on with my life.

Finally I could literally get my battery back from him.

I got my key and Raffaele saw me out and nobody has ever packed as much punch into an arm squeeze and social kiss as he did. That boy had talent. I had just climbed five flights of stairs (and he had just walked the grueling three steps from the kitchen) but that is not why both of us were panting like hunting animals with gaping mouths, our bosoms heaving. He kissed my cheek.

“Buona giornata,” I said, all cool, instead of replying with a kiss of my own.

….

Epilogue

Later, I accepted Raffaele’s Facebook friend request, and wished I hadn’t. His thumb all over my posts irritated me. But instead of unfriending him, eventually I tried talking to him, about something inconsequential. He answered entirely in emoji, and I realised that we would never speak the same language.

And I finally let go.