A different version of this quite short story has been published on the amazing anthology Userlands edited by Dennis Cooper for Akaschic books, NYC.
Honestly I always hated that version of my story, it came out all wrong because of a series of stupid personal reasons that got in the way, and I always regretted it especially because of all the other amazing Userlands authors that surround it with great pages.
Anyway. What follows here is a version of it I might consider now decent and final, and that I read with defective pronunciation at Bluestockings, NYC on March 22nd 2007.
Some of you reading this might be reminded of an old post on this blog which in fact was the original inspiration both for the first and second version of this very piece.

*

you weird people by corpodibacco

I know that the smile of the grocery girl is because of my mother, her crazy looks, untidy hair, her odd clothes, the strange hat, the jabbering. You all must be weird people, says her smile, putting those useless animals before yourself.
I cave in with my own phony smile. Like I'm not like my mother. Not to be confused with her. Not of the weird people.

Outside the grocery store dogs and people move about in the brown shadows of the trees, and the metal bodies of the parked cars shine dryly, the edges white-hot under the sun.
We move out into the light and I reach for the trunk, squinting, crate of carrots in my hands, warning the old man that the car is a mess, 'cause that's the way my mother keeps it. He says okay and starts to fight his way into it, moving empty bottles around, dried sheets of old newspapers torn to pieces, the snow chain case that will tumble against his feet every time we accelerate, various slabs of dried mud spatter all around the inside, including the seats. As we slam the doors the overloaded ashtray exhales out gray and white particles that flit between our legs.
Dogs share the car, I apologize to him. Would he appreciate it if I started blaming my mother for everything? I wonder. I am willing to. He repeats three times, No problem.

In two minutes we are at the pharmacy, a quiet door gaping out on a narrow lane abandoned in the shade. At the opposite end of the alley the village suddenly disappears, and the curvy hills shine in the distant land before the Italian sea.
The old man and I part ways with a wave and a grumble, but then he calls me from the other side of the road, and he says, the grocery girl, she's my daughter. She's a good girl.
In my paranoia I figure he has a scheme that I should marry her.
The round face of the pharmacist takes its time to scan mine. There's a priest-like morbid aura about it, eyes of repressed sexual desire in the gloomy colors of the store as he hands me back the prescription.

Later I stop by an abandoned lot along the road across the olive groves in the countryside. The landscape is marked by scattered trulli and modern cement angular houses half hidden by the green.
The cats flock over meowing and rubbing themselves against the edges of the low stone walls as I get out of the car. I have detailed instructions about where the cat food has to be dropped. The small bowls and the old aluminum pans, one for each cat, are important. The pecking order is important. My mother is crazy.

Back on the shattered road I think of her, and how it would be if she died. Because she's at the hospital I am entitled to this thought. As the road winds down the hill bordered by more stone walls, further into the land I am not familiar with, I imagine a funeral, words of condolence and affection exchanged, how I wouldn't cry, unable to, maybe later on, and how unsatisfactory the long awaited sense of liberation would be, secret joy for a new life that in the end doesn't come about.
I wonder if the disappointment produced by my imagination makes me a better person or is it that I am just unprepared, that there is no way to be prepared but to imagine, and be disappointed.

As the car jolts against the roots cracking the driveway, the eight dogs rush out of the house barking and howling against the fence to cheer for my approaching smell and figure. The wind is ruffling their fur, scraps of toys and rags are scattered in the yard, their animation is irrational and sweet. All my perceptions are now flattened out to a uniform complacent, absurd lack of criticism, as I mentally go through the returning-home procedures. One bone-shaped biscuit for each of the dogs, in a rigorous hierarchical order. Two biscuits for the biggest one. The oldest barks fiercely and runs across my legs. He knows he comes first.

Hours have gone by when I'm finally done feeding the dogs and the horse and cleaning the stable.
At this point outside it is quiet as inside, only residual puffs of wind are stirring the foliage and shaking the hanging clothes. At moments, there's the crunching noise of the horse chewing on the last bits of carrot scattered in the hay. That's when I feel how after all my mother was right, to come to live this far from everything, here where communities are remote lights out in the dark and being this far and invisible is the safest thing you're left with at the end of the day.

But then some of the dogs are barking from very far out in the field, possibly at a fox. They're too far to be called back. I mentally pray not to find the fox slaughtered in the field the next day, not to have to get the shovel and the black bag and be seen from across the field again, gleaning the fox remains strewn about the meadow, carrying the rolled up formless bag to the dumpster down the hill, carelessly tossing it as if it were no corpse. But the dogs continue to bark, excitedly.

I first met Rulla in Venice, on a day of exams. We were both waiting to give one of the many at the department of fine arts. She used to wear certain kinky tigerish glasses back then and always a black short skirt, obviously her long curly straw-yellow venetian hair were all about her. She was fun and carefree and lighthearted. I was already this grave boy but more sociable back then. I think we fell for each other, life was about to give us a great passion... we ended up moving together in a little apartment in St. Polo where we lived for almost three years, although the real passion was alive for the first six months at most, before we even moved in together.
Later the passion developed into something different, equally intense but totally self-destructing and perverse and crazy. There were fights, objects thrown, threats, cheating, promises, cries, fake suicide, slaps in the face, reconciliations, kinky stuff and more cries and resentments and self-destructing choices. We were always broke and always behind with the exams and always sad and unsatisfied and stupefied by all the unhappiness. It dates to those times the insane habit I grew to bury myself into the computer to overcome my sadness and the feeling of being out of place.

I finally got the job at the university of Milan and left Venice, because of Rulla-- and I knew the city wasn't going to be a place for me anymore.
As often happens with the wrong habits me and Rulla never really completely moved on... we sort of kept in touch in the following years. Mostly it was her calling me, and since I was --like her, but in a different way-- badly wounded by our story and weary and selfish, sometimes I ignored her calls, worried to get more of her cries and reprimands and desperation.
But we never really let go the thing. The sexual attraction never really faded, and instead placed itself into a particularly scary and sometimes attractive place inside our minds. For a while we also had moments of getting together to fuck every now and then-- as sometimes happens.

Then strangely all the mistakes and the things never told faded into the past and left nothing but the pipes and wires of some sort of edifice we once had had and that was now nowhere to be found, like a razed construction site, footprints of the old structure squashed and deformed in the dirt by the following plans, as we loved and re-loved other bodies, and our bodies were loved, declaring different things with similar words and tones, making new errors and choices above the old ones.

Recently me and Rulla started to hear from each other more frequently. Now one can call the other, normal day, and we just talk about our lives. I learned to listen to her without being scared or self righteous as I used to and I finally saw, how strong and brave and generous she had been during her difficult years. How in different ways we both managed to overcome the worst aspects of our characters, and all the craziness that we experienced when we were together and afterwards. I came to feel that it really had been one of those unique things in life to witness, this twisted path we had jointly followed and separately.

Today Rulla called and said she was pregnant of her boyfriend, with whom she has been living for a year or so. Because of some surgery she had to undergo in the past the news were two times shocking, and the minute she said "I'm pregnant" I wanted so badly to hug her and make her feel how happy I was for her, how great it was and it was going to be, so much that I felt my eyes on the verge of tears. I mean, I think it was sheer happiness for her --I still can feel it right now as I write, if I only think about it-- although I can't rule out other kinds of feelings I might have felt (maybe I stupidly wanted her to hug me too).
The more evident of these feelings could be that our paths are really separating now. Our two lives are going to be growing so differently and on not contagious levels now. This is "right", and inevitable and this rightfulness is what makes it sad on a certain level, I guess.
Also, many of the women I have been with and loved are becoming mothers, so much that I am becoming an expert on the matter. But I am a man, and I can't be a mother no matter what I do. This is no little thing. It is one of the many way life actually has to tell you that your gender not always works for you. At most I could become I lousy father, and the only time I got close to that, with Libi, it was hell at first and then unbearable pain and later on only a memory hard to swallow.

Libi... she came home that I was still talking with Rulla on the phone. She found me in the bathroom sitting on the edge of the tub rambling about names and silly fears. Later me and Libi got to the mall and I told her about Rulla and after a while Libi said she had nausea all day. I thought it was ridiculous. I hoped life wasn't going to be that ridiculous. Or maybe I didn't hoped, I just wondered if.

Everything was fine yesterday. Awake at three and a half AM-- sipping the tea in silence, only the occasional flapping of lips around the hot suckled mix of air and dirty waters.
I put myself at work at the green table in front of the window in the dining room (which is also the other room)-- the hour is acceptable, the city asleep in the finally-cold darkness never dark of it. My favorite hour-- when the street washers are going back, the orange turret flashing lights singing hi-ho.
Morning arrives, the sky's odd and unexpected and the chemtrails bright and inclined as if hand printed in the sky. Chimneys are billowing smoke into the exhausted city's lungs-- people appear and disappear at the chilly windowsills. I write and draw and listen to music and everything is fine.

Later I receive four marvelous pairs of socks for my birthday, all stripes, and a compass and a small vase of arbutus wood where to keep the erasers and the sharpener in (I scheme).
It is my birthday but it feel fine, although I expected to feel depressed and lonely --as this usually happens on the occasion.
Later my productive mood isn't fading, my mother calls (she needs help with the PC but surprisingly remembers the occasion) and anything I want to use seems to be at reach.

Then my sister calls, we talk about a number of things-- like she buying a house, and me reassuring her it is a good idea to buy twenty miles from Rome-- "you'll be in the woods!".
Then I ask about our Christmas reunion.
The Christmas reunion is something that nobody wants really to do except my father, who expects from it I don't know what-- the digest from our separated lives --of which he knows nothing about and at which he looks with a deformed lens, like we were the people we were years ago or never was. As a result, the reunion regularly turns into a series of clumsy efforts to be sincere-- followed by an equal number of efforts to hide the truth and avoid pointless criticism. Unwelcomed hypocrisy like a plumber in the house-- all sounds sounding fake.

--sister: "I talked with our father and he said that, since you never called him this year, there won't be any Christmas reunion this time. So I booked to go away with my boyfriend that week and we--"
--me: "What? Wait a fucking minute."

Shit. Sure I hadn't heard from my father since when I last called him on his birthday, last February. And everybody knows our relationship is fucked up. And sure, I didn't think very sympathetically of him lately. And notoriously he never calls or shows interest whatsoever but always expects me to look for him --acting like he is forgotten and misunderstood big time.
And yes I haven't looked for him lately -although that would be the simplest solution- because every time I hear from him or spend time with him I feel like shit for days. But these are no reasons to bury me under the guilt of screwing his only day of the year.

I tried to explain in the past.
--me (years ago): 'it's not that I have something against you. It's that being with you is something I don't usually have the energies and the optimism or the indifferent superficiality to do.
--father (years ago): I see, I see.

Oh, father. What does he do with what you give him, be it tears, hugs, self-criticism or good will? He puts it in his big pocket -- it is a dime squeezed from life --and do nothing else about it. His major drive in life --desperation for love which in his book has nothing to do with giving something in return. This can be bearable sometimes but these last years evidently wasn't.

--me: "Thanks a lot sis. Couldn't you patch things up instead of instantly taking the occasion to jump the reunion without feeling guilty?"
--sister: "I guess I didn't think about it. Anyway it's too late because I booked."
--me: "...couldn't you say something like, 'Corpodibacco never even dreamed of jumping Christmas, even if you two didn't call each other I am certain he'd be surprised...' Couldn't you? uhu?"

It is too late. Words are hollow. After a while I am almost hysterical and desperate. That's my sister. Dozens of time I interceded with my mother or father to save her ass and she hasn't the slightest instinct of solidarity.
But I know it's not her fault-- That's how my father brought us up. One against the other. Everyone in the family-- his wife included-- eager to turn the others in for a bit of father's respect, which after all is a typical Italian family outcome, although ours was more violent or exposed.

--me: now all I should do, all he left me with, is to supposedly call him to humbly apologize for the turning out of things and swearing it wasn't my intention-- that his sacred reunion-- it shouldn't be touched-- something like this. Only I can't do it and besides it is useless, 'cause you won't be there. Thanks a lot.
--sister: He's an old man. You just should be more normal with him.

Just an old man. That's typical.

--me (mad): what, are you prizing on the sense of guilt my father just set up for me to fall into? Besides not all old men are innocent and harmless simply because they're old, sister. They are just persons and they can be disloyal and dangerous like anyone else.

When I hang up, suddenly I have a bleak day in front of me. In that moment I actually feel the positive energy getting drained out of my hands-- I sit at the table and do nothing but cursing and breaking the lead pencil tip and then I get out --knowing I will spend the rest of the day hoping in vain from a call or an email or fucking anything from my father-- which naturally won't come. I love my new socks and I wish birthdays didn't exist.

(...) there's a sporting shop after the other
and those mighty gloomy middle-class buildings
could be staying in Milan.
This place is
a perfect model of the everywhere.
-- Peter Handke, Song for the Duration

(consider reading part one too)

My mother sounds bewildered. Is this my son? she asks.
"Yeah, that's me mom" (I don't call her "mom", actually).
"I was calling Giuliano, I must have dialed the wrong number or something." Giuliano is her ex-boyfriend. They have a relationship by the blurred edges.

Even if she wasn't calling me, my mother starts talking fast about the recent problems her laptop is suffering, particularly with the "bloody antivirus program" which is "expiring", intimidating her out of nothing considered she doesn't even surf the internet and uses the e-mail once a year (Oh, I hate so much all these norton bastards and their accomplices, the fanatic spammers, frightening and pestering people to make money out of it, turning an apparently peaceful thing like writing a miserable experience!)

Her mood seems good, anyway, a little too much maybe. Now she's talking about the speech the president of the Region of Puglia just gave in town.
"It was a wonderful speech, a brave, honest, convincing one and not at all poetic and unrealistic like the others I heard from him on TV."
Then she tells about the moment when she got out of the town hall, "and the most beautiful sunset was in the grassland. Incredibly beautiful colors. It was very refreshing. I took it as a good sign", she says.
"Yeah, well. It's nice", I say.
As we speak, I am trying to see the moment from a certain distance. My 64 old mother talking with me about a pugliese sunset on the phone. It strikes me.
"Here the weather is sort of gloomy", I say. I look around in the dark house, getting darker toward twilight.

"But aren't you happy that Prodi won?" she asks then. That's the biggest news since our last phone call and it's good to talk about it.
"Oh yes. Everyone is better than Berlusconi," I say. "Although, Prodi's kind of weak."
"Who cares, even if he will be in charge for one minute it will be one minute of relief for this country. I can't stand these folks who voted him and now go around telling he will fall for sure, he's weak, his ministries are lousy and so on..."
"They don't want to hope too hard and be disappointed again," I argue. "It's embarrassing."
"All right, but one must let it out sometimes, be positive. Not being so closed up, cowardly incapable to cooperate with his hopes," and now it seems like she's talking about me, and she knows it, and I feel a weird weight on my stomach. I need to change route, to dress the caring son's clothes.
"How are you doing anyway?" I ask. I took care of her needs when she needed it. I, the loving son.

"I am not okay," she says.
"I mean," she says, "my head is not working well. I feel dizzy, tired, confused. I'll wait for the new exams in June. After that, if it's not going to be better at all, I'll take decisions."
I know about these decisions. I know what she means, because she told me a zillion times. It's all about the dogs and the horse and who's gonna take care of them, and about how she firmly doesn't want to be kept alive demented, like it happened with her mother. She goes on about her animals' needs for a while.
"You know I can be around to help" I say at a certain moment, because I don't know what else to say. But this reminds her to update me about N.
N. was her dog-sitter back when she lived in Milan. He now lives in Rome, and he's the one who will be in charge of everything after her death, that's written in her will. He will live in the house in Puglia and take care of the animals until they will be around. He's around my age, and my mother worships him. During the years when I was not being able to be near anyone of my relatives anymore, including her, he was around everyday and helping. He's the typical substitute son, and that's settled once and for all. There's nothing I could do now to change this, but ,well, okay.
"N. said," my mother explains thrilled, "that even if he's happy and in love somewhere in the world and I die, he will come back at once!"
"Oh that's nice of him", I say. The weight on my stomach is heavier now, and I badly need to end the conversation.
"Anyway I feel better today," she says. "I don't know if I told you that I have been to a speech in town..."

Oh, mother. Now my feelings are so paralyzed and confused at the same time.

I listen to her voice for another while before pushing a goodbye against it. I know that's probably the voice I recognize and love more than any other, for no reason, totally against my will, because it was the voice that didn't scare me, or because it used to read me Topolino when I was a kid, although it was also the drunken voice that later said those things, absurdly weird things to me that I don't manage to remember.
Ironic and beautiful, the voice tells me once again about the sunset, and the speech of the President, about the dogs. She makes other considerations about her possible dementia or death, very calmly. I used to make jokes in the past whenever she talked about her possible death or arteriosclerosis or whatever, even after the accident. I wonder if she notices that I am not capable of doing them anymore. I hope she doesn't.

When we say goodbye, I am outside, on the terrace, where a later western sunset is also ending. Behind the big clouds the light is turning into a sooty grey blue, and the hour of the swallows and the bats is almost over.
I hardly felt so alone or desperate at this beautiful hour, particularly because I can't focus on what the exact reason is. I can only be ashamed of my supposed complexity, and picture this gloomy weird ball of reasons all entangled together in my head.
I should try to find something useful in it, I think, to begin disentangling it.
At least, whatever this anguish is, it has a duration, unlike death, or dementia for what it matters, which -- I imagine -- gradually removes the feeling of duration from our lives.
At this thought, the lights in the house across the courtyard are turned on. I see the plants plunged into orange light, they look odd and unreal. I get back in the house - it's not my house. I am shivering, arms pushed against my stomach, tired of myself.

Anything sorts itself out,
except the difficulty to be, which never does.
      -- Jean Cocteau

Every now and then during the day I call myself stupid for something that crosses my mind. Memories of past scenes from the story of my life pop up unexpected in my head and drive me into a concealed embarrassments that can be shaken away only by calling myself "stupid" briefly, unheard. Of course the embarrassing events of the past are not really embarrassing for any sane person but me, but that's how it works. Petty stupid things dominate me in that moment, like a wrong word, a trivial mistake, someone I disappointed for something. I mean, years ago, even.
It's stuff nobody probably remembers, not even me until bits of it come to surface again. When they do, I am cutting a tomato for lunch, or browsing a website, or reading, or htmlzing a website, or pruning the woodbine, it doesn't matter. The memory unfolds, and I regret it.
I don't seem to be able to control at all the embarrassment that follows, so useless and neurotic, all by myself, if not by blaming my weakness, my oddity, my confidence or lack of confidence. There must be some pleasure in it, but I don't really know which is.

It's like that thing that keeps happening when I'm in bed alone, about to fall asleep.
-- No not masturbation, another one --
When I'm in bed alone, and I get drowsy over the book I'm reading, and I know I am about to fall asleep, suddenly, in the wrong moment so to speak, I realize that undoubtedly I will die, sooner or later, maybe in a short while-- I will cease to exist and there will be absolutely no place left for me, for my mind, my personality, my body, my feelings, my voice. All blacked out. Nothing left.
I mean, it's not something that will happen if I am not careful. It will just happen, for sure, one hundred fucking percent. Me no more. And all the rest of the planet going on.
At the unbeatable plainness of this vision my heart start banging in my chest fast, and I have to move about in the bed to push the whole thing away. Insane person! of course it's no use to worry about dying, I repeat to myself, since it has to happen anyway. I think about genes, and about all those rules of Nature I like so much to read about, and I wonder why I don't seem to be able to get along with it. Should I take drugs? I wonder.

It's all because you have too much spare time, says a voice. For your wanderings, it says. Because you lead an absurd life, it says. It's because, says the voice, you are closed up into yourself, cowardly worried to be deluded, unwilling to cooperate with your future, your destiny --all that sort of crap, says the voice.
I wonder about the voice, then I stop -- maybe I am opening the fridge, or jumping onto the tram, or washing dishes -- and I have a sudden revelation.

Sudden Revelation: to do nothing is the only way to understand how everything is vain.

That's when my mother calls. The cell phone vibrates in my hand, showing her name. I haven't heard from her for weeks. I haven't called, neither she has. For a moment I have the vision of her face, her figure walking down across the grassland to the ulives behind the stone wall, followed by dogs. She wears a captain hat, and looks away.

(to be continued. Second part is ready but it all came out too long)

The first two hours at the bookstore just passed. KJAZ music is playing in the background as the sporadic life outside rolls by along the dried canal, in the white opening, over the late morning, inside the fading noises of the infinite working sites opened everywhere.
I submitted almost twenty books to the database, mostly seventy or ninety years old books with old writings on the front page from the past owners, ex-libris, postcards, once-transparent creaky yellowish covers, sometimes old blurred illustrations. Not very interesting books, the only remarkable thing was that collection of 1974 international poetry, the only less-than-forty-years-old book I did today. Numbered limited edition though. Too bad we want €200 just for that.

I am taking my break, and I am trying to write using the only small uncluttered part of the desk left, while I register with the corner of my eye the occasional presences of back lighted figures leaning over the shop window for a second, lurking over the 10€ titles and rushing away. I am thinking about my mother, whether her mind could be fading away or not, the thing she feared the most and the only one nobody can be possibly prepared to. I certainly am not prepared to that, so early, I think. But it's not going to happen.

Then summoned by this sideway visions of passing shadows in the ovattato world out there, Gisa appears, with her new long black coat by the large, sophisticated furry collar.
Her look is bright and beautiful, her smile luminous and warm, the little baby girl in the leopard-skin coat is whining for her teeth, but smiles recognizing me.
Finally you look great, I say. You rested. I did, she says. Then we talk about the fight her man got in and his broken arm. We talk about books. About baby teeth. Anything we talk about, it's dear today.
Light entered in the bookstore together with those two, I sense, it reached any scaffolds and into the music and into the things-to-do and I know it will leave me afterwards, strangely moved, embarrassed, just silent with myself for a while.
I manage not to talk about our days in Venice before they leave, and that's good, after all it's the kind of ten-years-old stuff you are not supposed to talk about that much.

The following evening I sent Gisa a message, to know whether she had called for the babysitter or not, and what about the application at her friend's bookstore for me, and how she felt given Loris was out on a gig again. She answered shortly.

I called, I texted, but she no answered me. I stayed at home, I been bored, nobody was called me all day. Kisses.

Me and Gisa switch into ungrammatical mode sometimes, supposedly for fun. But I suspect is more a way to self-mock ourselves before the other does. I guess it helps us to cope with our failed dreams for the creative life we are not having, minimizing and all. Or maybe it is some other less interesting reason, like the fact that most of the italian TV comical style is based on all sorts of ungrammatical speeches, and we probably absorbed it unconsciously since our childhood, like everybody else.

F.'s message was not mentioning the babysitter, so I texted her again. She answered,

No not called for a nanny, I were sad and distressed all day... so much I fell into apathy. Tomorrow was another day.

Tomorrow was another day. This sounded more like a piece of poetry than a mistake to my ears. Gisa really was talented with words, too bad she obviously denied it.
Not only she had helped Loris with almost all the lyrics in the album past summer, coming up with the most beautiful lines. I have an entire collection of letters and notes she wrote me when we were together. The most beautiful swift phrases were mixed up in those messages.
For example I could recall a poem she wrote me, were she compared her love to a broken bicycle, it was the most hilarious and moving thing.
Suddenly, thinking back about this, I realized I had lent her all those letters before her moving in with Loris and I hoped they hadn't got lost. All kind of stuff got lost in that moving in.
I answered,

Poor Gisa! You no worry. You was to be resting and collected. True, tomorrow was another day! I hug you strong, good night! ps. you is a-genial with words. This reminding me, you not lost that letters of yours I gave you, aren't you?

Her answer came with grammar.

Sure I have them. I keep 'em with a piece of my heart. I don't know were they are exactly though. I wonder why they came to your mind tonight anyway. Ps. I actually found a babysitter just now. For the late hours so I can go revel around. Goodnight. It's lovely to text with you.

Yes, I toyed in my mind with the idea that we could get close again a little, and maybe meet in one of those evening when the babysitter was over. Get into bed again because there was always this moment of being intense in our messages. But friendship was much better, I thought, and with so little I felt uselessly good, more similar to the grown up the world expected me to be.

Plus it didn't make no sense to have the babysitter over in the evening when you're already exhausted by a whole day with the baby. What a lame idea. I weighted the cell phone in my hand and considered texting her again. But then I gave up. After all tomorrow was another day.