In May 1997 I was two months shy of my twentieth birthday & just finishing my sophomore year at St. Joseph's College, Brooklyn Campus. I had grown up speaking a dialect of Italian at home, had taken Italian as my foreign language all four years of high school, and at college I was doing well in advanced Italian...my professor said I spoke nearly as well as a native of Florence. And so when I got the chance, that May, to leave Brooklyn, where I'd spent my entire life, and spend six weeks in Florence, studying art history (with emphasis on Michelangelo) and the deMedici family, both courses to be taught entirely in Italian, I was thrilled. Even more thrilling was that my parents agreed to let me go.
I arrived in Florence to find I was the only New Yorker in the group. The other students were all from some university I'd never heard of in Spokane, Washington, of all places. I was also the only Italian-American in the group, and thus, the only one who had grown up speaking Italian. They all knew each other already, which made me the odd girl out, a position I didn't really mind as it wasn't new to me. Our first night in Florence, in the boarding house, we were unpacking, and I noticed my two roommates had these contraptions that appeared to be complicated systems of ropes and pulleys. I stared, befuddled, not knowing if they were two Dominatrixes who wanted to meet and suspend Florentine submissives, or a lesbian couple looking to suspend each other. Turns out those contraptions were some manner of rock climbing gear. My Spokane roommates were outdoorsy girls...and I soon found out I was the only one on the trip who hadn't packed some sort of rock climbing or hiking gear.
Monday through Thursday we had classes. Classes were held on the top floor of a palazzo that belonged to the Marquis d'Antinori. The Marquis himself could sometimes be seen smoking a cigar in the courtyard. It was said that he, like all the Italian noblemen whose titles had become worthless in the modern world, had to work, and made his living in wine...he had a vineyard outside of Florence. The Marquise d'Antinori, along with their two grown daughters, remained unseen to us. So we were kept busy with class Monday through Thursday, but Friday through Sunday we were at liberty. My cohorts sometimes ventured out to Cinque Terre to hike on weekends, staying gone Friday morning through Sunday evening. I, of course, having not packed hiking gear, because I owned no hiking gear, never joined them on these excursions.
Not that I minded being alone in Florence at the weekends. There was plenty to do. By day, I could shop, go look at exquisite fresco paintings inside churches, take a quick train ride to Pratto & explore that town, another time I made a day trip to Sienna. Once I went way out by the Florentine soccer stadium to go to a flea market
By night, there was The Fiddler's Elbow, an Irish Pub. Located a few blocks from my boarding house, it had a sign on the door in English, something few places in Florence had, and raucous music from inside the place beckoned from half a block away. Upon entry, I discovered the place had something else few places in Florence had...air conditioning. Having seen the sign declaring the place an Irish pub, I made my way to the bar expecting to see Paddy O'Sullivan, or some other stock Irish character behind the bar. So you can imagine my surprise when a Samoan guy asked me, "Cosa vuoi da bere?"
"Wow, OK," I started pulling money out, "voglio un Cuba Libra." The Samoan guy gave me a blank look. "Rum and coke," I said in English, "that's all it is."
"Oh," he grinned, "gotcha. You sound like New York," he said as he poured.
"I'm from New York," I smiled.
In the course of that night, I came to learn that although The Fiddler's Elbow called itself an Irish Pub, I would most likely never see a single Irish person in there, unless they wandered in by mistake. The place was staffed by foreigners, like the Samoan guy, who worked there to finance their studies at Italian universities, and aside from the occasional American-born like myself, the clientele was mostly European. Some might go so far as to say the clientele was mostly Eurotrash, and while it's probably true no one who drank there was the head of a Fortune 500 company or a member of any of Florence's oldest or most respected anything, I didn't give a good goddamn. I had flown halfway around the world to have an adventure, and this seemed as good a place as any to have it. So most weekend evenings I found myself at The Fiddler's Elbow. I always went alone, I always started out on a barstool, but more often than not, I moved/was invited to join someone/a group of people, at one of the tables upstairs. What follows is loosely based on one of those nights at The Fiddler's Elbow.
"Bella ragazza," the stranger to my right said, as I sat on a barstool that night, drinking yet another rum & Coke, or as the Florentines called it, Coke and rum, "come ti chiami?"
"Mi chiamo Cara," I said, swiveling to face him, "e tu?"
"Salvatore."
"Buon conocerti, Salvatore," I said, taking him in. He had dark hair and eyes like myself, and stood about 5"5. His shoulders were spectacularly muscular, and the black T-shirt he wore said he knew goddamn well how good his shoulders looked. Yes, it was good to meet Salvatore.
"Anche tu," he smiled, "quanti anni hai?"
"Diciannove, e tu?"
"Diciannove," he had this shocked look, like he couldn't believe I was nineteen, "no, veramemte?"
"Si, da vero," I nodded.
