whipping my legs methodically and coldly, I don't make anyattempt to run away but give myself up in total surrender.
Because to those afternoons without the wicked boys prowling about, without a perversely beautiful Devil with whom to contend in a fight to the finish between Good and Evil—to those insipid afternoons I surely prefer their whippings.
My first men were waiters and gas station attendants, bakers and bus conductors. Fleeting encounters without entanglements. Enough distance between us so that I could train myself safely in the gymnasium of seduction. They attracted me, but that wasn't the point. The important thing was that I attracted them. I used them unscrupulously, as mirrors.
On the bus, the test of the gaze: to manage to keep looking into his eyes while he punches my ticket. At the restaurant, my hand resting lightly on the table, tilted a bit to hide the childish roundness so that when he comes back with the macé-doine he discovers it—a white butterfly with trembling wings. On my way to the corner where there's a gas station I walk any old way, but when I get there—a few meters before—I slow down.
Back straight, stomach in, eyes straight ahead. Above all not looking at him but checking to see if he's there without looking (I already know how to do that quite well). Then feeling his look like a hot beam. Putting an indolent sway into my walk.
It was only later that I tried riskier enterprises. A fifth-grade classmate—Giovanni Tini— chubby, shorter than I, with thick-lensed glasses. One day I found in my notebook a paper boat with a figurehead in the shape of a red heart, on which I read “G loves M as Romeo loved his Juliet.” There was another boy in my class whose name began with G, Gianluca, but it couldn't be him, he was too engrossed in his revolutionary reclassifi-cation of beetles. It had to be Giovanni.
At home I asked Mama who Romeo and Juliet were.
“Two young lovers. Their families were enemies and they didn't want the lovers to marry, so Romeo and Juliet could only be together in death.”
“Have you and Papa quarreled with Giovanni Tini's parents?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing, I was just asking.”
I went back to my room. I felt confused, and that story about dying so they could live together worried me.
So I temporized, flirting with Giovanni just enough to enjoy his courtship. My notebook was the port where the white packet boats of his love dropped anchor. “You are my sweet Juliet.” “How beautiful and fair you were yesterday with your hair in long braids like Juliet's.” “You have dark eyes like Juliet's.”
But his pomposity and the way I had to bend down when I spoke with him as short as he was, and the pathetic way he groped around when our classmates knocked his glasses off his nose—it didn't take long for all this to become tiresome. And one Saturday afternoon at a party, without thinking about it beforehand, I found myself ferociously destroying his adoration.
I tore up and down the hallway like a rocket and ended up throwing myself across a divan screaming all the dirty words I knew. And the more incredulous and shocked he became, the more I taunted him, sticking this desanctifying dagger in up to the hilt. Finally a look of contempt came over his face. Only when I left, exhausted, did I begin to feel ashamed. The next Monday, after recess, I found a ship in my notebook made of black paper. The heart-shaped figurehead had been replaced by a white cross on which was written, “Juliet is dead. She fell off the balcony like a tomboy.”
For a while I felt bad about ending it—I was that vain—but I got over it when a new boy arrived: Lorenzo, from London. A sweater with holes in it, torn jeans with bell-bottoms, a purple velour pullover with the slogan “Make love, not war” sewed on the sleeve. All of it from Carnaby Street. A face with a constant play of feelings, cherry-red lips, and lively tender eyes. Infinitely more up-to-date than we
Because to those afternoons without the wicked boys prowling about, without a perversely beautiful Devil with whom to contend in a fight to the finish between Good and Evil—to those insipid afternoons I surely prefer their whippings.
My first men were waiters and gas station attendants, bakers and bus conductors. Fleeting encounters without entanglements. Enough distance between us so that I could train myself safely in the gymnasium of seduction. They attracted me, but that wasn't the point. The important thing was that I attracted them. I used them unscrupulously, as mirrors.
On the bus, the test of the gaze: to manage to keep looking into his eyes while he punches my ticket. At the restaurant, my hand resting lightly on the table, tilted a bit to hide the childish roundness so that when he comes back with the macé-doine he discovers it—a white butterfly with trembling wings. On my way to the corner where there's a gas station I walk any old way, but when I get there—a few meters before—I slow down.
Back straight, stomach in, eyes straight ahead. Above all not looking at him but checking to see if he's there without looking (I already know how to do that quite well). Then feeling his look like a hot beam. Putting an indolent sway into my walk.
It was only later that I tried riskier enterprises. A fifth-grade classmate—Giovanni Tini— chubby, shorter than I, with thick-lensed glasses. One day I found in my notebook a paper boat with a figurehead in the shape of a red heart, on which I read “G loves M as Romeo loved his Juliet.” There was another boy in my class whose name began with G, Gianluca, but it couldn't be him, he was too engrossed in his revolutionary reclassifi-cation of beetles. It had to be Giovanni.
At home I asked Mama who Romeo and Juliet were.
“Two young lovers. Their families were enemies and they didn't want the lovers to marry, so Romeo and Juliet could only be together in death.”
“Have you and Papa quarreled with Giovanni Tini's parents?”
“No. Why?”
“Nothing, I was just asking.”
I went back to my room. I felt confused, and that story about dying so they could live together worried me.
So I temporized, flirting with Giovanni just enough to enjoy his courtship. My notebook was the port where the white packet boats of his love dropped anchor. “You are my sweet Juliet.” “How beautiful and fair you were yesterday with your hair in long braids like Juliet's.” “You have dark eyes like Juliet's.”
But his pomposity and the way I had to bend down when I spoke with him as short as he was, and the pathetic way he groped around when our classmates knocked his glasses off his nose—it didn't take long for all this to become tiresome. And one Saturday afternoon at a party, without thinking about it beforehand, I found myself ferociously destroying his adoration.
I tore up and down the hallway like a rocket and ended up throwing myself across a divan screaming all the dirty words I knew. And the more incredulous and shocked he became, the more I taunted him, sticking this desanctifying dagger in up to the hilt. Finally a look of contempt came over his face. Only when I left, exhausted, did I begin to feel ashamed. The next Monday, after recess, I found a ship in my notebook made of black paper. The heart-shaped figurehead had been replaced by a white cross on which was written, “Juliet is dead. She fell off the balcony like a tomboy.”
For a while I felt bad about ending it—I was that vain—but I got over it when a new boy arrived: Lorenzo, from London. A sweater with holes in it, torn jeans with bell-bottoms, a purple velour pullover with the slogan “Make love, not war” sewed on the sleeve. All of it from Carnaby Street. A face with a constant play of feelings, cherry-red lips, and lively tender eyes. Infinitely more up-to-date than we
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