How incredible the other day, talking to the girls at the bakery shop, as the radio reported of a philippine woman living in Italy, just outside our city, who slaughtered her entire family later trying to kill herself. The girls were joking about it like people do with events that are so remote and inconceivable that one cannot identify with it.
"She killed her husband with a knife!" said one.
"And her sons!" said the other. They were using the usual half phony sympathy tone of the milanese trades, hypocrite imitation of badly evoked old times.
It was so funny to them, because a woman had done it, and women are supposed to be defenseless or powerless compared to men. It was also funny because she was not italian, and thus such kind of disgrace had nothing to do with us, and could be treated more easily, like the thought of a inundation in India or a earthquake in Guatemala.
I couldn't joke with them as a customer is expected to do. All I could come up with was a sort of depressed smile I was sorry for.
But c'mon. It's years that a week doesn't go by in my country without news of some husband killing his wife. Some father murdering his daughter or son. Some lover, some brother, killing a sister, a ex pregnant girlfriend, etc. Every week. Certain weeks many times. But the girls were bantering as if news of this sort were unheard of around here. "It took a chinese woman to do it!" It was yet another big illusion sold cheap to us by Immigration. Helping us to picture our country as if it was a completely different, innocent little thing. Well, at least for a minute or two of fake conversation.
"Aren't italian men usually killing italian women?" I asked in the end, as the girl handed me a paper bag with in it the bread I had just payed for. "With guns, no?" I pursued. But the girls fell silent and incredulous. Could it be I was the only one who was noticing all the killing of women in the italian newspapers? I had had that same feeling before. It seemed like if these were events that no one wanted to really consider. Consumed rapidly, even if they kept turning up again and again, they didn't mean anything compared to other events, much more abstract and conceptual, distant and showy, that were discussed forever.
But I had disrupted the pleasant atmosphere. Especially when I ended: "If there's a gun in a house, you can be almost sure it will end up being used by a man to kill a woman! Isn't it funny?"
"I'll never give my husband a gun then", the girl proposed after a short while (I was already halfway the glass door), bursting in a fake laugh which strangely moved me.
I remember that all I could think of in that moment was "What I can't believe is that someone married you." I am always amazed when I am informed that people are married. I don't expect them to be. But I didn't said that. I only gave the usual curt salute of the non customary customer and left, to the apparent relief of the street where actually nobody was laughing.

(...) y sé muy bien que no estarás,
ni aquí adentro, la cárcel donde aun te retengo,
ni allí fuera, este rió de calles y de puentes.
No estarás para nada, no serás ni recuerdo,
y cuando piense en ti pensaré un pensamiento
que oscuramente trata de acordarse de ti.

-- Julio Cortazar, Futuro

Linate is the old claiming baggage hall, the dark grey and yellow interiors, the faces of the policemen saying welcome back to Italy, the guy from Modena coming back from Brazil -- he says laughing, welcome to the place in the world where it is the hardest to make love -- I stand there feeling dizzy for the twentyfive hours three planes flight, my bag sliding to me over the conveyor belt, opened from the top, the plastic bag with coffee from chiapas and oaxaca chocolate spat out few bags past -- a pair of pants from guatemala is there too -- I don't care, what's lost is lost, I throw it all above the plastic seats and repack the bag mumbling a welcome to italy to myself-- outside, she's there in a violet dress, others unknown crowding the picture of the waiting --the warmth of Milano's air around us is less intense but somewhat ready to suffocate -- the sky low over the airport, in hues of gray and blue too bright to be looked at -- our embrace is honest? it is honest--

me and Libi have sex inside the car outside of the airport of Linate, her body is in my hands, obeys in the old familiar hard way we know --she gives out high pitched shrills, I feel like eating and swallowing and digesting her body-- it's different from the other sex across the ocean. I think I can't compare. I warn her to be careful, because I have a half broken nose I should take to the hospital tomorrow or so-- not that I feel like it. I don't make up the story of how it got broken, I just leave out the detail -- of the girl I was with --I don't even let the thought get into my mind. I say I know, it doesn't look broken, but I can feel it, like it is harder to breathe with the left nostril -- also it creaks when I touch it-- kept together by the skin -- gives me a weird feeling to the stomach. I learned to talk about love with my heart and now I suspect I love two persons, or I suspected it. I wish I had the room to say that as well.

At home we talk and make love again few times, I am tired and what I see is confused at moments --though real. Later we are half naked on the pavement, I am pouring out the many presents in front of her, it's fun, but then the feast is over pretty soon. I missed Libi, and yet her picture in front of me is not entirely on focus. Now I just feel in need to talk it out with someone. What I can't say bothers me more than the need to sleep-- although pretty soon I fall asleep, and wake up at the beginning of the night -- and awake in front of the window I still try to keep down the thought that, all right, now I wish I could leave -- tomorrow -- again. The bulky memories, labyrinths of words and desires -- the thought of Martina and the bad bad way we said goodbye to each other is down somewhere too, and it's like when the story you want to tell or write about is so big -- too big -- you'll never find a way to begin the job to tell it all out.

(...) her dark skin shines in the shade of the room as I enter, the morning light pours in from the side of the open roof, I see parts of her legs and shoulders, her beautiful face half turned against the pillow, the eyes closed in a peaceful sleep; this happen two or three times, especially when I get up early because of montezuma's revenge, and silently getting back to the room, every time I stand bewildered for a second at the vision of the sleeping beauty, my heart beating faster and harder, almost immediately a hard-on forces me to undress, I long to undress and lay next to Martina again, make love to her again; this mexican girl looks a india and a japanese and a thailandese at the same time; she's from the city, and very emancipated, lively, superstitious-- keeps saying she went to work when she was fourteen to be independent-- when she smiles she looks like a kid, in a way that strangely reminds me of my stepbrother when he was a kid, ages ago-- so enthusiast of the company-- we don't have a language in common, so it's all about me trying to speak spanish and missing the words, failing the grammar. Martina smiles at my mistakes, strokes my leg, I long for her mouth, for another slow dance-- outside the sea of mazunte keeps roaring against the long uneven beach-- all the rest is quiet-- unfulfilled warnings of a hurricane approaching-- when Martina and myself separate in the bed, I am sweating, and panting, the bed is full of sand, our fingers meet, we try to tell another story; in the silence of the last moments before the usual sneaking out, desayuno on the solitaire terrace deserted by the low season-- I wonder if I am in love now, and if so, what proportions this disaster will take, if any. ¿Can I bear the idea of spreading pain and tears once again? ¿is it a hastened dream? Soon we separate, with a warm smile, the same way we will separate on the last day, she going to el d.f., I going to oaxaca. It is possible necessary that we meet again in the city in a few day; so she runs to the back of the camioneta-- I go back to the beach for a last goodbye to the unsteady waters of mazunte-- the restaurants are playing the languid musics to the sea, the stray dogs populate and play on the foreground of the scene; the response, that it is necessary to meet again, to reach her body and smile again-- might be lost to the waves or to some other equally distracting, hypnotic phenomenon, and the residual forces are needed to pick up my sandals -- shake the sand away for the last time, and leave.

The first post I ever wrote on this blog was about me trying to go across the city to cut my hair. The theme is interesting, isn't it. This time I'm going to this place on the other side of the avenue, which is just a regular hair cutter like thousands in the city. I don't go very often for hair cutters. In the falling nation, hair cutting is the sole branch of commercial business to never go under some crisis, and this tells a lot about the shallowness and manipulability of italians.

It's funny how there usually are one or more ladies having their hair done while I'm there, and I think that never once in my uneven career as a hair cutting customer I was able to witness one of those ladies to actually have her hair done, pay and leave. I always have my hair done while they're there, and I leave before anyone of them ever leaves. They sit there with tinfoil hats and gossip magazines, are moved from area to area, are washed and blew dried and they always have different persons attending to them and there's always another thing they have to undergo after the last one and they never leave.
I look at them sideways in the mirror and they seem victims to me. Probably I transfer on them my own victimized feeling, but they usually they have such morose and alert faces, hate to be looked at while they're there, browse magazines with aggressive turning of pages, and they never seem to be wanting to get out of it. No nostalgia for the outsides. They always give me this mixed feeling of sympathy and actual sadness, trapped as they are for so long under the hands of hair cutters pushing on them new styles and ridiculously overpriced products, and they're bored to death, besotted. And they also give me a bitter feeling of distaste and hate for their laziness and passivity and active participation in the general lie, that so effectual negation of death and crappiness of things, and for the selfishness of all those caring energies devoted to them. Makes me want to slap them in the face, slap them again. Drag them out to the sidewalk, kick them in the ass.

The radio at the hair cutting place is often as loud and silly as a silly radio can be, and conversations beneath it, outside of 'how do you want your hair done' rarely mean anything. Or they never mean anything. But they have to be yelled out anyway to win over the loud voices of the radio and the blow driers. I look out the window like a child kept in the house for his homework on a sunny day, and all around is the chaotic horn of stupidity having its moment, and having its moment again.

At one point today the girl wanted to ask to the young foreign guy if what she was doing with the razor was hurting him, but she couldn't speak english, so she turned to her colleagues. Nobody could help her. Nobody could speak english. My hair cutter guy said he could manage it if it was french. But nobody knew how or wanted to ask the guy if he spoke french anyway. Others said, 'I can manage to speak english but I don't know how to ask that question'. Soon the issue, probably just for the fun of it resembling life, was extended to all the customers in the room, ladies glued to their chairs and hanging to their gossip magazines included. No one knew how to ask that question, so I finally came out of my cocoon and asked it myself. Oh, it was fun. Following my exploit I joined for a while the animated nonsensical exchange of words going about as a disordered wave in the room and it's true, I felt less lonely and trapped and desperate and old.
And it was ludicrously tragic too. I mean, at least fifteen italian random people in a room, and only one of them is able to ask does it hurt? in english? Pretty amazing. To his credit, the store manager tried a "is bua?" a couple of times, seriously convinced that "bua", the slang word used in italian with children for pain, could be some international kind of word. It really was momentous the look on the face of the foreign guy when I asked him the dreaded question. "Does it hurt when she does that with the razor?" The guy hastily denied he was caused any sort of pain. By that time he probably was expecting some serious italian question and was getting worried. Afterwards was only incredulous.

At the end of it, or at the beginning sometimes, hair cutters want my name. I don't give my name to stores. I never do. I think nobody should, but it's too late for that. Hair cutters pester you for your name more than anyone else, because they're the more powerful and they know it. But I am not caving in. "If you want, I'll give you a fake name" I say to the store manager. He looks at me uneasy. Repeatedly he points his finger to the computer monitor, mutters, "I have to put your name into this." "I don't want to be filed, I'm sorry." This being Italy, there's always a way around rules, and this store manager is a nice guy. He fills the form for a guy called Uomo Di Passaggio and writes the same name on the card he has to give me. "So you get a discount after ten cuts" he explains. I am thinking I won't come back probably. But the card registered to Uomo di Passaggio is actually memorable. "I love this card, I'll keep it dear", I say to him. There, he's uneasy again.

Oh, I hate italian hair cutters. Which are the only hair cutters I know by the way. It's just that you always have to cut your hair before you leave, it's the rule.

...there are still two weeks left, but, you know.

Libi I'm trying to write you this letter though I'm no good at it. I always worry that what I'm going to write in the letters will haunt me later on for some reason. Not that I have anything special to write you about. Anything you can't imagine by yourself probably.
So I am leaving, as you know (do'h). Of course I'll miss you Libi. I'll miss your eyes so intense and sweet when we hold each other, your arms when we fall asleep together, your cheering voice as you enter the door, noises of you in the kitchen, in the bathroom, out on the yellow terrace talking to the neighbor's cat. I'll miss our clothes scattered all over the apartment, your round breast, the way you give me, I'll miss you at night, when I'm awake and I hear your soft snoring coming from the other room, that always made me warm, our moments of bravery with the sex, our plans for dinner every night, the contorted and lengthy summaries of the movies you saw. I'll miss not seeing our plants flourishing this spring or getting sick. Even that corny french music all in minor key you always want to listen to. I'll miss hearing of your mother's cat, whom you nicknamed with the same nickname you gave me. I'll miss the countless ways you found to make me feel not guilty, of being alive, of being what I was, of not always doing the right thing. I always tried to protect you but if I succeeded at lengths it only was because you needed so little. Manifested so little. See, I know that.
I'll leave and miss the warm love that my leaving triggered from somewhere inside ourselves, even if it was forced out somehow.
You know that I'll be away for three months, although I am not so sure it will be three months, maybe it will be more, or less. I want you to be strong and go on with everything because I'll be back anyway. I wish I was leaving you with someone else like a child or a pet. But our lives are still important to take care of if we part. And if I am not coming back, because I die or something, please know that the days were all true, all true. True like fear, like illness, like lust, like hunger, like all that I postponed waiting to find the courage to give more to you. True when I ran away from you, true when I came back, true when I said I was sorry. Sometimes I wondered whether it was true or not, but what is true? Is it a lie to think that it's true all that we can't rationalize? And if I really die or something keep my relatives away from my stuff if you can, except maybe the pictures, and destroy the blog please. The password is written under the drawer of the green table (...)

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.

still deleting old drafts...

// (...) I think it's endearing of her to say it. And then it hits me, while those thoughts that I have end within the boundaries of what is me, what I think it's being me, it's this kind of things, done together with no apparent reason nor necessity and totally mundane, to make two persons a couple, whatever a couple is. It is just not obvious to me why, nor whether I like this or not. //

// (...) Later they watched together the Ozu movie in color, just downloaded illegally, called An Autumn Afternoon, that made them both hungry for japanese food and beer. He asked how was it possible, that so sensitive and intimate people never touched each other, if not for some occasional shoulder-patting on the way, not even in the most sorrowful situations? It probably was the same in Italy years ago, rural life and all. But at least there were the recurrent beatings and rapes and clashes, wives against husbands, husbands against wives, parents against children, brothers against sisters against brothers, friends on friends, everybody against dogs, donkeys, cows. In japanese movies, no palpating whatsoever. Sex was awesome then I bet, she said. //

// (...) When asked of this strange behaviour, he then will defend himself saying: "They both were wrong."
"Do you have any idea of who's right, then?"
"I don't care, really!" he will answer with a smile.
"What do you argue for, if you have no idea, then."
"'cause! I enjoy to be different, and I want to be admired for it."
"But you don't get much admiration going to argue with people who have such strong opinions."
"I just want to be admired by the majority of a minority of the other side," he will answer.
That's how I am. It all goes back to when I was a teenager stuck in a too political family, and was usually considered "too much politically indifferent and substantially from the right" from my father his wife and my stepbrother, "just too much of a leftist" from my mother, and simply a misbeliever from my sister. Great days were those, I'm sure they're being kept somewhere to be repeated for me for my eternal damnation in hell. Not that the members of my so called family ever changed their mind about me in the meantime. But at least I don't get to talk with them much anymore. //