It has been more than five years since my first (and, so far, only) trip to Italy, and I still think about it pretty often.
It was a glorious few days that my mum generously tacked onto the end of a trip we were taking to Malta for a cousin’s wedding. We figured, “when in Rome” (or, more accurately, “when in the Mediterranean”), might as well splurge on ourselves as a fun, once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. We stayed in the gorgeously ornate Bernini Bristol hotel. Our room overlooked the Piazza Barberini, which contains the famous Fontana del Tritone (Triton Fountain). At night, after luxuriant dinners of rich pasta and fine wine, we’d visit the fountain, throw coins in, and make wishes.
Once, I wished for romance, but it was already all around me; the city itself was romance. Earlier that evening, we’d been winked at by a waiter, who’d asked us after our meals if we wanted “dessert, or anything else.” We’d strolled down the street to a gelateria and had a wine-flirty conversation with the nervous employee behind the counter as he scooped up our treats. And now, at the fountain, as I breathed in the cool night air and contemplated my wish for romance, a dark-haired man approached us and handed me two red roses. He said something in Italian that I didn’t understand, but I think I heard bella somewhere in there. I said Grazie, grazie! and wished I knew more words to thank him as he walked away.
Everything in Rome seemed sensual and quasi-sexual to me in a way I rarely felt at home. Maybe it was just the excesses of vacation, but it felt woven into the fabric of the city, too. The resplendent meals. The ambient chatter of people passing you in a piazza. The click of cobblestones against your heels.
There was a slick salesman at a leather goods shop who sweet-talked us into buying leather jackets. I know his flirtation was a sales technique, but it felt more like seduction or sex giochi (that’s Italian for “sex games,” mio caro!). Our interaction lasted at least an hour, and was far longer and more relaxed than any sales transaction I’d ever experienced – he made us feel like we were visiting his home. He pulled jackets and skirts and boots in our sizes from the racks all around us, and implored us in his elegant accent, “Just try it on.” And every time we emerged from the dressing room, he’d make us feel like runway models, with the intensity of his gaze and the specificity of his compliments.
We wore those leather jackets the day we sprinted to catch up with our tour group so we could traverse the Roman Forum, explore the Colosseum. The chill in the air wasn’t depressing, like on dark Toronto nights that portended cold Toronto winters; the crisp breeze in Rome actually felt flirtatious, caressing our skin, reminding us we were lucky to be able to feel such things, lucky just to be alive in this world.
Our lunches and dinners were so obscenely pleasurable that I still think about them five years later, like the indelible look in a long-lost lover’s eyes that you still recall fondly after they’ve gone. The endless embrace of butter and cheese. The free-flowing wine, encouraging us to laugh, light up, and look around with gratitude at our lovely lives. The waitstaff, who acted as though any kind of restraint or self-flagellation related to food would be not only misguided but in fact not worth talking about at all.
I remember the day we planned to go to the Vatican; I realized in horror that the clothes I’d packed were deeply ill-suited for the hallowed institution’s conservative dress code. Pants and long sleeves were required, but these were rare in my relaxed hyper-femme aesthetic, so instead I wore a prim cardigan buttoned up to the top, and loud floral-print leggings under my black dress.
Perusing the statues, paintings, and altars, I felt bowled over by all that history – like time itself was topping me in a hardcore kink scene and the only thing to do was surrender.
When we filed into the Sistine Chapel and gazed up at the ceiling, I felt a peacefulness and rapture I’d previously only ever experienced after taking a lot of pain in a scene. The stillness and reverence in the room were overwhelming. I barely dared to move or even breathe. The art had a message for me: that I should appreciate the present moment, drink in beauty wherever it shows up, savor every second of precious life. I felt humbled by the holiness of the chapel, rendered more whole by its wholeness.
Sometimes I watch media set in Italy and feel, once again, that creepy and comforting feeling of being in a place so old and well-worn that it takes on a godly quality. I look at the red lipstick adorning so many Italian women’s faces and think of the Armani lipstick I bought in the Sephora opposite the Spanish Steps, and the way applying it felt like casting a magic spell. I flip through my photos of lush countrysides and ornate architecture, longing to live that life again.
Someday I’ll go to Italy with my spouse, I suspect, and we’ll make new memories every bit as juicy and jubilant as these. But until then, I’ll keep visiting Rome in my daydreams, learning its lessons again and again: to enjoy the here and now, to revel in pleasure without guilt, and to view myself always as a powerful temptress capable of anything, even summoning red roses with the toss of a coin and the whisper of a wish.
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