Current mood:	drunk
Current music:	some shit playing in the hostel

ciao
i. There is a certain kind of Lets's Go writing of which Mike and I made a lot of fun in the past few weeks...namely, the odd fetishization of the encounters of young American backpackers with old European natives. The kind that tells you that the "locals" of such-and-such a place will dazzle you with their hospitality, invite you into their homes with open arms, cook you five course meals and give you bottles of homemade wine, and show you all of the sights...and the on the very next page tells you that those same locals, well, you should watch out because homosexuality is illegal and may be met with violence, or "minorites" may be greeted with hostile stares (especially when they are "mistaken for gypsies"), or women should expect sexual harrassement or various kinds.

We wondered at the implications of this - what is it that makes these American wanderers so deserate to seek out this particular brand of what we might call "0ld World hospitality"? And does it necessarily go hand in hand with racism/sexism/homophobia? And if so, does the longing for one somehow imply the longing for the other?

In any case, never did I think I would experience this so closely myself.

Sitting on Capitoline Hill, trying to decide if it was worth 8 euro to see one of the world's foremost collections of ancient statues (I think so, I'm going back tomorrow), an old Italian man started talking to me - and I mean old, probably in his 60s. He says he loves Boston, I say that I'm enjoying Rome so far, he asks me if I want to have lunch in that expansive Italian way, and I am (having some financial difficulties which I won't go into here) in no position to turn down a free lunch, and besides, isn't this the very kind of thing that I'm supposed to embrace while traveling, and besides I'm trying to train myself to be able to talk to other humans, so I say sure, why not.

And as we're walking he says something like, "You know, Rome, it is so full of tourists...Americans, Canadians, British, and the Japanese...the Japanese and the Chinese...I cannot tell them apart...you know, they are not attractive, the Japanese and the Chinese, all with the same face, do you think?"

Um. "Actually, no, I definitely wouldn't say that."

"Ah, well, we shall disagree."

And maybe I should have run away, but I was perversely interested by the situation, so we go to lunch at some expensive cafe ("This place, it has style. I believe that you cannot buy style, you are born with it, or without it."), where the food is delicious, and he talks to me about his hobby, which is painting of course...and - god, could this be more of a fucking cliche? - he stares at my eyes and tries to determine what color they are, "for if I were painting you."

Remember, old enough to be my grandfather. Grandfatherly, one might say.

And we go through all of the requisite conversation, establishign that I don't like Bush, blah blah blah, and then it all starts to bore me terribly, and I sort of drift off into space while he talks about meeting some girl yesterday who was studying to be a pastor and asking her if she believed in God or in evolution and then I suddenly am hearing him say,

"So I told her, have you ever heard of Mister Darwin? The theory of evolution? I tell her, there is proof for this theory, that is negroes, black people, have heads that are not like ours...they are larger in the back, like the monkeys..."

Um. I looked at him in total shock. "What?" Seriously, what the fuck does one even say to that? Perhaps there is some noble response that I could have made, could have wrenched this old sketchy man out of his nineteenth-century racist physiognomy, but I didn't have the presence of mind for that, and all I could do was make up a story about meeting my friend as soon as possible...though not before he has invited me to dinner at a "very nice, very expensive" restaurant by some lake, and forced me to take his number, and tried to force me to give him my address.

I didn't call.

ii. What is it about me that makes extraordinarly wholesome Midwestern girls the only people who will talk to me in hostels?

Or is it, rather, something about them, something that makes them willing to talk to anyone and everyone, or is it that in this kind of situation I am willing to accept social situations that I would merely smirk at otherwise?

I met some such girls in my hostel room today, and they said they were going clubbing in Testaccio, which by all reports is the place to go for nightlife in Rome, so I said sure, I would go. But at the last minute, they decided to join the hostel-orgainized pub crawl instead, because "the people at the desk said that that other place is really far away, and you know, we don't want to be with all of these Italian guys, we'll be much safer this way."

Anyway. It meant that I ended up spending the evening with a huge group of drunken American and Australian kids, feeling like I was at some kind of fucking college frat party, where those girls showed an extremely impressive ability to dance like sluts with the help of hardly any intoxicants, and the whole time coming up to me and saying, "Abigail, what's wrong? Why aren't you dancing?"

In the end, though, all was well, and I found an Italian boyfriend. Or "boyfriend," I should say, so no one takes that the wrong way. If I call him, he will take me to a real Romam club tomorrow.

I doubt that I will call.