In the basement of the famous music club, breathing hot air under the low ceiling as I walk amidst the little crowd gathering, I feel ill, disturbed by my weakness, dizzy of pharmacy drugs and nasal congestion. The self-sabotage keeps moving forward like the only thing moving forward inside me.
I wonder if the bacteria of my cold, or the viruses of my flu are spreading themselves around the room as I move around.
There are many young italians here, guys probably living in the city. I look at them, listen to the italian chit-chat all around me. I don't feel any bond, any special sympathy for them. I wish there was no italian language at all down here tonight. I don't want to pay attention to it. I look at them, all happy and relaxed, so casually conscious of their appearance. I'm not one of them. Neither I am one of the locals of course. No doubt about that.

Me and Loris* hug awkwardly in a corner near the bar. He's nervous and excited for the show about to begin. We talk about the tour, the positive reviews that made him happy. We drink something, I have a beer because I don't know what to order, I tell him I admire his courage to be a small fish in the biggest sea here, when he's such a cult in Italy now. He says, I am tired, I can't wait to be back in Italy.
When the show starts, the music is definitely too loud for me, the voice almost unintelligible, also because of the chewed sort of italian-british accent Loris pulls out when he sings. The choreography they use during the songs, partially coordinated and partially improvised on the very limited same-level stage is pretty amazing, and even hating the loud volume as I do the sound is evidently great.
Loris has a couple of winning numbers, like when he plays the guitar stroking the strings against the tripod of the mic. An american girl near where I am standing, shouts to a friend: "I don't understand a word! [unintelligible] He's awesome!"
I am leaning on a column at the back of the room where the loud music drums less violently against my sensitive ears. They will be buzzing for hours at the end of the night.
I wonder if all these silly precautions and fears are a definitive sign of my being irremediably old. But the truth is, I always was like this. I always had sensitive ears, always felt alone and about to fall when I was sick, always had a sense of not belonging to the place where everyone else felt at ease.

Someone is dancing in front, I see the bobbing heads and arms backlit against the sweating faces of the band, in full light and with eyes mostly closed. There are many wild cheers at the end of the songs. I applaud, listening to the distinct smack of my hands and feel alone and displaced. I would love to be able to talk to the asian girl sitting next to me, or to some of the guys there that seem so nice and cool. But the music is too loud anyway, and I wouldn't know what to say. I actually had more fun at the gay bar the night before, at the reunion with the anthology guys. And not only because in the meantime my cold developed into something nasty and feverish. Here everything seems to be dragging me in a place where I can't be, where I am no good. Here I don't learn nor I see because I am only worried to defend myself, somehow.

Hours before, in the afternoon -- a long conversation with Libi. Finally with a prepaid telephone card that didn't let us down. She was having a late dinner with friends, and I was bowing inside a telephone booth on 14th street. She said, it seems like three years you've been away. They will feel like twenty before you come back. Don't be such a Penelope, I said. Although I actually wish I was a Ulysses.
I told her I was thinking of going to Loris's show anyway, even if the cold was getting worse. I told her that I needed to make things happen.
We talked, putting a lot of warmness in our voices. Things seemed patched up between us now, although I kept feeling a sort of pressure from her regarding the direction I had to take, the things I was considering to do. My not saying, I love you I miss you, I'll be back soon.
We discussed the practical things, the package of winter clothes I wanted to send back home, the destinations, the accomodations. Nothing useful coming out of it, except the illusion of working out the loneliness.
I told her how naively admired I was, of the guys of the anthology, how I was amazed by the humanity and beauty and diversity of their characters, of their souls. How the city was contradictory in that regard, so that at moments you felt surrounded by so many authentic interesting people and stories, and at moments solitude and deceit where everywhere, with every step, into every shop and with every trading act, muttered words of courtesy, cash exchanging hands, friday night competitions to get cabs, racism and hypocrisy of all the parts. I was wondering how amazing it should have been to fall in love with someone in a city where you can feel so lonesome and left out, and cheated. And because of that, how probably rare and misunderstood falling in love must have been. Not differently from other cities, of course, the cities we knew already. But so obvious in the feeling of the place, when you're a stranger into it.

At the end of the concert, moments of blessed silence. Me and Loris exchange a slap and then I climb up the stairs and get out of the club, while the band hurriedly packs up the instruments. There's a long line of people on the sidewalk outside and after few minutes breathing fresh air, checking for new messages, I realize there is no way I can get back in the club now. The line extends itself down the stairs and it is impossible to cut in front.
I wait outside for half an hour. An hour. I start feeling very cold and tired. What a crappy night. No dinner or hanging out with the band, for me. I am going back. I go back. So nothing happened in the end. Slowly walking through Soho and the village back to the hostel I stupidly keep calling home as I talk by myself.
I know I won't be leaving for any place the next day. I lack the courage to embark on a bus and leave the city. Humiliated by my weakness, I feel too sick and about to fall.

_{* As you know, not a real name. Never real names.}

I think I went fast to the end of my story, because it was so short. Trembling a little and nervous, or probably terrified. But all the amazing people were there. Having heard the others read made me feel better. And Math, she was so calm and so expressive and lively when she hosted and read Dennis' letter she made even me calm and collected.
Everyone was great, and I envied those who moved to laughs the listeners, and everyone else, each one of them being younger than me, closer than me, more connected than me to everything around, the city, the language, the nation, the places.
I came all the way from Milan, Italy and suddenly I wasn't even supposed to be reading anymore and nobody had told me but in the end I read anyway, and I was happy. And all the time I was learning again how everything about this vague dream, this wanting to write in english, wanting to do without my roots and my falling nation is a folly, A FOLLY, but still I can only follow that quivering thing deep in my throat, can't help it, there are still living narrow dreams there, irrational, unmotivated, unplanned, useless, that keep me going and alive.

I rewrote the story for the event just two days before the reading, in bits from different cyber cafes and internet points in the city, foreign computers, and of that rewriting I am happy too. Because of different accidents the story that originally got on the anthology was so wrong, and I always hated it and I still hate it, there in the middle of so many great pages. But just to change it into something else, something I now feel for and can defend, it has been emotionally important, even if it is not important at all.

I read, stumbled on the words a few times, probably pulled a ridiculous accent, and the girl behind the counter started to loudly run the coffee machine as I went on, and in the background the traffic on Allen street steadfastly kept running. But I was focused on the page and just trying not to screw up my pronunciation too much like Dita recommended me, and I felt fine. And the story was short anyway. The bookshop small and cozy, well illuminated. Afterwards I signed copies of the anthology and didn't know what to write and I only wrote stupid things and I rather should have just signed the copies, I was so unprepared at the idea and I always hated the thing where the writers sign books and instead, I suddenly realized how these things can be important, and pleasurable, because they make people closer, in indirect ways I am only starting to understand now. I was impermeable to that in Italy. Barely disturbed by such scenes. And it's like how it is important to remember names when you shake hands with people, and instead I always forget them. Although I never forget the faces, and probably too many other details I keep with me forever, possibly without a reason or a use.

Later the bar was dark and lovely and only my inability to be easygoing and easy at making friends and be interesting or carefree or whatever prevented me to let myself go and fully enjoy all the moments. But none of these anguishes is much important.

This morning right after dawn I descended seventh avenue from uptown, dragging my luggage and homelessness back to the hostel that kicked me out for two days. Black people and Latinos where everywhere around the opening places, off and on trucks, pushing carts, delivering, arranging, preparing, cleaning and setting up the city for the later people, some of them look so tired or sad in the gray early saturday, others all busy in the frenzy anticipation of the rush hours to come.
Few mellow groups, each with its own leader seemed to be coming back from parties, famous actress passed me by too in the very changing light above the city, as the shadows thickened at the base of the tall buildings, and only occasionally the cold wind came pushing from the side, channeled through into the streets.

The coffee places were still closed, my knee still hurting, still limping all the way, but I wanted to walk anyway, lugging the sad wheeled case about to fall apart or explode.
All the emotions at this point were drained out. All my feelings, back to a familiar state of disillusioned hope where nothing is clear except solitude, of myself and so many, the necessary condition to be dragged across the puddles like a broken case on wheels.