The Experience

Years ago I lived in Ugolino, near Florence, in a country house where I often suffered a bit of loneliness.

One evening I decided to visit the hookers’ district of Florence. Of course saying it just like that may sound rather squalid, and indeed squalid was my motivation: I wanted to experience the thrill, to get experienced, as they say.

In those years, when I felt lonely, I often spent time thinking of Roberta. She was the proverbial memory-of-a-great-love. A memory, to be honest, embellished by nearly a decade of mulling, which turned it into a very pathetic melodrama. In one of those moments, as I said, I decided to implement my gesture of defiance against the world of bourgeois conventions and retaliate against an adverse destiny.

Better then not recall some more marginal urgencies that finally pushed me to get in the car late at night and drive into a notorious ring of boulevards, the fact is, I found myself there in no time.

Sullen and stubborn, I started looking for a whore. I had no choice, so I told myself, if I wanted to feel alive.  I wandered, driving along the boulevards in thick company, but the shyness of the beginner was holding me back from lining up with the other potential customers. More than shyness, fear. I was absolutely positive that the most likely thing in the world was to be spotted by my parents at two in the morning while inquiring about  prices, in the front tier of a long line of whoremongers. So I continued to drive, unable to make up my mind and pull over.

Eventually, on the sidewalk, I spotted a mini-skirt topping a pair of very red, very heeled pair of very long boots, and no other cars in line. Without wasting time looking at what I could find above the belt I hit the breaks and waited for the boots (from the driving seat I could only see those) to come closer to the window. My mistake was immediately evident: a strong-willed and unshaven chin appeared, and with a thick Neapolitan accent, far removed from that of the great Eduardo de Filippo, thundered: "Seventy-five thousand Lira, handsome, but “facimme” quickly that I “tengo” hurry!" I mumbled an apology, with explanations I hoped to be convincing, on my search for a biologically “traditional” woman, no offense, because I was not accustomed. "But look at this strunz, wasting my time, vattenne, go, go!"

Panicking and completely concentrated in the imperative to escape, yes, but without skidding my tires, I drove away, my ears burning red (my ears become flushed whenever I venture to simulate an attitude of elegant detachment).

At that point it was a matter of honor. Why, I wondered, all those other boars were moving with such ease in that world and I was being humiliated by a couple red boots topped by hairy buttocks? I started to look around with greater determination, but there really was too much crowd on the boulevards, so I decided to take my chances near the train station. I remembered to have noticed in the past some prostitutes on Via Nazionale, but this time I wanted to be sure that it was not a transvestite, and pragmatically decided to exclude people of a potentially masculine size with too flashy and heavy make-up so as to suspect a hidden beard. "After all," I indulgently convinced myself, "I like them petite."

At the very end of Via Nazionale I thought I found my quarry: a girl, dressed in an almost normal fashion, small stature and short blond hair, was sitting on the curb, with the classic handbag swinging and a little bundle in her hand. I slowed down when she got up, dispelling any doubts about her profession, and approached the car window. She seemed acceptable, even pretty in the twilight, with her short hair.

"Fifty, eighty if not at my place." "All right, get in." She got into the car and, in the grip of trepidation, I didn’t even look at her, I felt like I just passed a great test, I felt adventurous and powerful. While driving, I began to speak, and asked her if she did not mind coming to my house, because in any other place I would feel uncomfortable. As I said this, I glimpsed at what was in the little bundle in her lap, a bag with a little piece of “schiacciata,” a kind of bread, half munched and smelling of cheap cooking oil. I turned to look better. Skinny, eyes rimmed and sunken, her clothes dirty and sad in their pathetic attempt to be provocative, a stark contrast to the colorful latex "Carnival in Rio" of the bearded Neapolitan from earlier.

As she went explaining to me that the place we were going to do "what needs to be done" was not important to her as long as I brought her back quickly, otherwise Vito would get angry and when Vito gets angry he also gets rough, she kept trying to break up the piece of bread, but her hands were shaking and she filled the seat all over with crumbs without being able to bring almost anything to her mouth.

How did I feel? To paraphrase Machiavelli: "I do not believe that as long as I will be under the sky I shall return to be in rut," that is, the idea of sex at that point seemed as attractive as a colonoscopy performed by an underpaid and drunk nurse. She seemed completely focused on her piece of bread, but the trembling of the hands made every bite painfully difficult.

After less than a mile I felt physically sick, the smell of oil, and perhaps the sense of guilt, would make me throw up before we got to Grassina. "Listen," I said "I just wanted a little company, is not that we have to do anything, though I don’t mean to offend you, really." She answered in a low voice, as if it costed a lot of effort, with a Tuscan accent hoarse and unpleasant, but she said no, she was not offended, it was ok, but I had to bring her back soon, otherwise Vito would break her face, if she didn’t get enough money. She looked exhausted and passive, able to concentrate solely on the time required "to do what needed to be done" (as he kept saying) and on her crushed piece of bread. "Tell you what, why don’t we just rest a little while? So you can eat your schiacciata, and when you feel like it, I can bring you back, and you can have your 80 thousand lira just the same, what do you think?" She looked at me with a bewildered expression, and after having tried in vain to put the left-overs back in the bag, she asked me if I really was going to do this for her. She said I was the second best person in her life, and then she began to tell me about the first, and how unlucky she always was, and how everything was going wrong, and how nice I was, that anyone could see I was really nice, almost as nice as the first nicest person in her life. In the meantime, the tremor in her hands increased, and she seemed about to cry, but it was only an impression because what she wanted more than anything else was to explain me how men are all assholes, but I was very good, almost as good as the other one, because He was really good.

Eventually we were back on via Nazionale, I gave her the 80 thousand, and she got out of the car, but then I felt I had to say something, so to give, from my point of view, a semblance of normalcy to our encounter. So I introduced myself with that casual tone you use at parties when you meet someone, then I asked her name. "Roberta," she said, trying in vain to put the notes in her purse, to the point that I had to help her.

I returned home, fully convinced that I had been humiliated and punished for something I did not know. As for the other Roberta, the one I loved so insanely, I met her again only once, in passing, years later. We were in a movie theater and I could only mumble a greeting and a few almost meaningless phrases, while she barely masked the embarrassment. She left with her husband, before the start of the second half.

The Roberta for whom I was the second-best person, so told me a not completely trustworthy friend to whom I confided my escapade, died some time after I met her, possibly from an overdose.

Carlo Zei