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Expatriate, with olives
In a Spanish grove, I found an ancient grace.
By Lucy McCauley
[08/05/99]

Book Bag
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A new anthology helps a visitor appreciate the vast complexities of one of Earth's most spectacular sights.
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[08/04/99]

Out of the Blue
When fists flew on the San Juan Special
Only the strongest flight attendants survived this legendary New York-Puerto Rico flight.
By Elliott Neal Hester
[08/03/99]

Conquering Half Dome -- and the fear of falling
When a simple hike turns into a paralyzing ascent, a father has to overcome his terror.
By Don George
[07/31/99]

Wanderlust
Thais that bind
One minute she's giving me a mean massage, the next she wants to steal me away on her motor scooter.
By Zona Sage
[07/30/99]

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As we started to wind up our festive repast, Sandro matter-of-factly announced that he had left the script in Rome and would have to return on the next train to retrieve it. This fazed no one in the troupe and I was the only person to express concern as we caroused for an additional hour over desserts and liquors, joking about the latest Roman gossip.

Sandro gone, we strolled over to our hotel nearby, a fine example of 19th century elegance evocative of many a gallant assignation. As we rode up in the tiny elevator, Francesca announced that there was a temporary shortage of rooms and so she and I would have to stay in the same room until Sandro's return. For good measure she offered a mock apology for the fact that we would have to share the same bed. As the young count looked on with a knowing glint in his eye, I realized in a flash that the entire scenario, including Sandro's precipitous departure for Rome, had been thoroughly planned, possibly by Sandro himself.

This came as a shock, though a not entirely unpleasant one. It was a defining moment -- I was more struck by being shocked than by what had shocked me. After all, I'd been brought up in a very Italian Philadelphia family where Italian was spoken and the Italian culture sounded a continual counterpoint to the world around us. Visits by my "American" friends were often occasions for embarrassment over "strange" foods, like zucchini and gorgonzola cheese, and more dramatically, our sexual frankness.

Sometimes food and sex combined, as when my very first girlfriend, a shy polite Irish-American, came for dinner. Everything went fairly well until the very end of the meal, when my grandmother noticed that Maureen, or Marina as she'd been redubbed, wasn't eating any fruit or cheese. Normally, my grandparents spoke very little English so I could fudge things in translation. This time, however, la nonna mustered her best English. "Marina," she said, while proffering a big bunch of grapes and gesturing toward still forming breasts, "Eat plenty of grapes. They make your tits grow."

Despite considering myself a natural player in Italy's continual theater of the absurd, I was taken by surprise in Bologna. Not that it was unusual for men or women to have many "conquests" in the playful world of Rome. Marriages and other fixed relationships, such as my own and Francesca's, were not usually an impediment to erotic fun. Whenever we were apart, my companion, being a Roman, always asked me if I'd met any beautiful women, the natural, rational expectation being that some lighthearted adventure should have transpired.

The pursuit was not without the occasional pitfall. Near the Pantheon is the monumental Piazza Navona, featuring fountains by Bernini and, in those days, a mysterious black-eyed mago, or fortune-teller, who always sat at one end wearing a broad-brimmed hat that did little to obscure his perhaps Amazonian features. One fine midnight, as was my habit, I was admiring the huge Egyptian obelisk -- Roman booty -- from the vantage point of a table in front of the Bar Navona. Two painter friends from the north joined me in my after-dinner drinks. As three beauties passed by on their leisurely passegiata, the two jumped up to follow, urging me to come along. I made the Italian hand signal for "see you later." Falling into step behind them, one of the painters came out with, "Why look at these fine beauties, walking three by three like the Three Graces." Without missing a beat, one of the Graces delivered one of the classic batutte, the improvised quips for which the Romans are famous. In pure Roman dialect she said, "And the two of you, side by side like a pair of balls." Coglioni, besides denoting the testicles, is the rough equivalent of "jerk-offs." The painters swiftly regained their seats.

Francesca still strikes me as one of the greatest beauties I've beheld, but I'd never considered her a potential lover, no matter how attractive I found her. Perhaps it was her extraordinary beauty, commented upon by "tutta Roma," which was daunting. More likely, given my irrepressible youthful impulses, it was a question of imperfect sympathies. In that open, guilt-free atmosphere, there was none of the desperate urgency to copulate which so often leads to equally desperate illusions about the other's nature. Francesca, while good-natured and fun, simply did not inspire me to the heights of desire.

Nevertheless, I readily fell into her arms that day in Bologna, and we enjoyed ourselves for several hours, until, apparently never short of surprises, she asked me if I loved her. I told her, truthfully, that I was very flattered by her attentions, that I greatly admired her beauty and talent, that I liked her very much, but that I did not love her.

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