When I got out of the shower I noticed that my phone had the little light flashing. I unlocked it and saw that I'd missed a call from my ... my sister. Ok. Relax. Take it easy. I looked over at Shenhua and she smiled at me as I called my sister back.
My sister answered the phone without even saying hello. "Sorry. I called you by accident." she said.
"Oh, well ..." I started to say but then she hung up on me.
Ok. Whatever. I looked at the time and shrugged. Live and let live. I got in bed with my new girl and I forgot about my problems for a second time that night before we went to sleep.
The next day I'm not sure how it happened but it seemed like I'd been suckered into meeting Shenhua's parents. They were super nice to me but I got the feeling her grandfather was a bit pissed at me for something. Well, I did have sex with his 19 year old granddaughter but judging from how it was, I was not the first one. Hey, no judgment, just being honest. There were more men than women in Taiwan so you have to figure that most women have multiple guys.
But yeah, it got way too personal and I felt like now expectations were being put on me all of the sudden. They were tiptoeing around it but it was sort of like they were feeling me out to see when I would want to get married, even if not to Shenhua then to her sister oddly enough. What, and be like my parents? Fuck that noise.
But still they were very nice to me and Shenhua was very good in bed so for most of a week I was seeing her without committing to her being my girlfriend or getting engaged or anything. But then Shenhua introduced me to her cousin as her boyfriend. Shit. I mean, I liked her. I liked her a lot but you can't just assume things. And no, I wouldn't be interested in marrying her cousin either and I was honestly shocked when that just seemed to casually come out in conversation when Shenhua was claiming to be my girlfriend.
"I need to talk to my parents." I told her after I walked her back to her family's home one night. She seemed very excited by that news.
"About what?"
"Something important. So I'm going to fly home and then I'll be back. But look this'll be great. Then I get a whole new 90 days to stay here."
She was very sad to see me leave but things getting so serious so quickly just really took the fun out of everything.
My dad was in Malta so I flew there but by the time I got there my dad was in Italy so I had to track him down while doing as little calling as possible. I found him holding an outdoor business meeting with some contractors. He was explaining the big new construction project and he had a translator next to him repeating everything he said.
He was genuinely happy to see me and he acted carefree about introducing me to everyone around. If my dad knew I was in trouble he'd tell me. There wasn't a hint of it. So maybe I was fine. Maybe I was ok. The Italian police seemed to not know or care who I was.
I stayed at my dad's villa that night and I got all these emails from Shenhua asking me for my address in the US and other information. I had to pay international rates to call her which annoyed me but on the other hand, she's so good in bed. And besides that, she ... I really felt like she cared about me. So what was the harm of letting her know a little bit?
She asked me when I was coming back but I told her I had only met my dad, I still needed to talk to my mom. Oh, she was so excited but she didn't really know what I was talking with them about.
I stayed in Italy for a while. I knew a few phrases so I could get by. I'd been to Italy before a bunch of times when I was in college so I'd seen everything a typical tourist would want to see. My dad gave me access to his business and I spent a bit of time hanging out with him. After my mom left him I had only really gotten to spend a lot of time with him when I was in college and not really since. He hadn't known I was coming so instead of having fun vacation stuff planned he had a lot of meetings and work related stuff to do but I was happy to just hang out and start learning the business. After all, my dad always told me that sitting in on just one of his meetings was worth a year or more of graduate school, business school, or law school.
One morning I was just having some coffee and toast at an outdoor cafe in some town just south of Rome on the other side of some lake across from the Pope's rainbow colored free love fest castle as the locals called it. I couldn't see it in the daylight but they said that at night there were lights that lit up the side of the hill and the buildings in a rainbow flag. Recently a lot of people really hated the guy, not just for pulling stunts like that but for a bunch of illegal stuff he'd pulled as well. But he couldn't be arrested because of some such thing with international treaties. Of course the Pope could never leave the Vatican again except to travel directly here or directly back or he'd be apprehended. And he could certainly never leave Italy even if he strayed from a direct path back to the Vatican. He'd been convicted in absentia of racketeering, money laundering, child molestation, rape, and finally murder. There was a complete loss of faith in him as a religious leader and so some other guy had been proclaimed as pope. Not that I knew or cared much about religious matters after my dad got off his religious kick but everyone around was just boiling over with want of telling me what was going on. So most religious people and priests were following some other guy as the 'real' pope but the guy in the Vatican was still legally the Pope and as such was the head of his own little country even though no one showed up if he offered any religious services. As head of a country he could tell the police to fuck off when they tried to arrest him. But of course he had to stay a prisoner in his palace.
Anyway, while I was having coffee some girl came up and struck up a conversation. She seemed nice and she was very pretty. She was asking me about my car and I told her it was actually just my dad's and I'd borrowed it. Then she asked if I'd mind giving her a ride in it. What? I know what you're thinking, I must have borrowed the lamb, right. No. I had just taken one of the black sedans. I didn't know much about luxury European cars so I didn't know that this car was anything special.
Well, anyway, a random girl just approaching me to ask if she could ride in my car did sort of creep me out so I tried to politely find a way to get out of the conversation with her. She then explained that she was going to be late for something and could I give her a ride to her appointment. This seemed so shady so I told her no. No reason given, just no.
The next day I ran into her again. Instead of being angry with me she approached me and was acting affectionate towards me in front of her group of friends. It was then that I learned that her name was Ludovica. Yeah, try saying that three times fast, no offense but still. Anyway, she was my age and she was very attractive and even spoke a bit of English. Her friends invited me to spend the day with them and I was cautious but went along.
It was a pretty fun day and nothing outlandish happened. We just went around town to different shops, went up some kind of tower to see the view, and eventually had dinner at a place where there was some guy playing guitar. I looked over at this girl and when it seemed we had a sort of semi private moment when her friends wouldn't notice she let herself be open to me and I kissed her.
One thing led to another and I found myself in a hotel room with Ludovica. We were in a kind of competition with each other to see who could last longer in bed. I prided myself in being mister endurance but this girl could just keep going and going. I kept thinking that this was amazing. How had I gotten so lucky with her? Did she really like me? Did she really care about me? What about Shenhua? I was still calling and emailing her. But good sex is good sex and Ludovica was willing to do a lot of things sexually that Shenhua was just not willing to even entertain. The sex started with Ludovica giving me head which Shenhua would never do. Shenhua was all about just having the sex itself. Ludovica went right to sucking my cock for a bit every time it came out of her pussy like it was an instinct or something. She also enjoyed experimenting with various positions and we even went out to the balcony in the early hours of the morning so I could bend her over and fuck her out there.
The next day I didn't leave the hotel until noon but Ludovica was already gone. I emailed her and she sent a message back saying she was at work but would call me later. Cool. No pressure. I drove back to my dad's villa to see him and what he was up to. He introduced me to his newest girlfriend who was younger than me. I wasn't sure of exactly where she was from but it was not Italy. The three of us had dinner together at a nice place and then we went to the harbor to have a get together with friends on one of my dad's boats.
This was nice. This was a nice life. The work my dad's company did was actually interesting and I could start to see something for myself. But you know how life is. The moment you think you've got something figured out the next curve ball was already coming while you were distracted.
The next day I was able to meet up with Ludovica again. We made a plan to meet for lunch and she said she was bringing someone special for me to meet. Man I really hoped it would not be her parents or sister or cousin and then there would be all this pressure on me to get married just because I spent one night with her. No. Stop trying to lock me down.
Well, she didn't bring her parents but she did bring a family member ... her two year old daughter Chiara. So ok. I had never knowingly had sex with a woman who'd had kids before but I wasn't initially against the idea. She was a single mom but she told me she'd never been married or anything. I mean, if sex was going to turn into a real relationship then I'd have to come to terms with this quick.
Our 'date' that day was sort of me acting as a pretend father to Chiara and I actually spent more time with the little girl than the mom. Instant fatherhood, was this really something I wanted to get involved in. I was still going back and forth on that in my mind when a few days later I was confronted by a group of three guys who were all pissed at me and yelling at me in Italian. It looked like a fight was going to go down but the police showed up before anything happened and I learned through the police translator why the guys were angry with me. One of them was claiming to be Ludovica's husband and Chiara was his daughter. Now I didn't know if any of that was true or not but I did not need drama or contact with the police in my life so I was out.
