Breaking all the rules

I’m smoking cigarettes there is nothing left I guess

I broke all the rules both of my moms every set for me. Sitting in an Aeroporto that I have been multiple times for various reasons getting ready to go to Roma by myself.
I am ready for a trip that calls out to me. I feel the energy of the art and history in my bones. I drive my Italian car to the airport about 45 minutes from my home in Italy. Why they let me drive in Italy is beyond me but I go with the opportunity to roll down the windows, listen to Italian hip hop and  be completely free

I have been in Rome approximately ten minutes and have succeded to break the rules, many of them. I find myself in a black VW and my luggage stuffed into the back. In the front two handsome Italian me are trying to talk to me in English and me with them in Italian, I am sitting in the back seat with the windows down. It all started in a small airport in Sicily when my flight to Rome was delayed for an hour. I walk to the bar to get a coffee and sit down; I get out my journal and phone and try to translate an Italian text message into English from a man in Sicily. He is looking at me from across the airport, handsome and tall. He is young and dressed in boat shoes and a polo, I could not tell if he was from Italy or some where else. I look down at my notes then up at him through my eyelashes and blink twice just for good measure.

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   A sure signal for him to say I may be interested. Looking back and forth now, my heart races in anticipation for what is about to follow. He walks over; I pretend that I do not see him. I look up and he is speaking rapid Italian. He asks if I want a coffee, I say no thank you. “A cocktail? A water?”  “No thank you” I respond. I say I do not speak Italian. He asks me if it is possible if he sits down, naturally I say of course. 

   I stare deep into his eyes and slightly get lost. I love the airport, it is a place for possibility, you never know what or who you may meet. I love waiting for the anticipating who I am going to sit next to, or meet or what you will find. I have learnt my lesson of buying expensive things in an airport, tempting as it may seem.

“I looking at you and you looking at me, can kiss” he says? In the back of a plane…I laugh.

  He asks if the seats are at your leisure. Lucky for me you sit where you find a place and we find a place in the very back like the bad kids at school. We spend the flight trying to talk and staring at each other. He asks me if he can take me to my hotel….of course I say. We wait an hour for our beaten up luggage and walk out side to the city of Rome. His handsome friend dressed in designer clothes and white sunglasses is waiting outside. He looks at me and we both laugh. “Look mom I picked up an Americana girl.” He opens the door and takes my luggage I climb in and not a second thought crosses my mind. I wonder what my mother would think if she saw me, and if this is consider hitch hiking.

    We speak in broken English through the city of Rome. We get lost and can not find my hotel, his hand reaches back to touch me, it fills me with electricity. Finally, after an hour and a half in the car with them we find my hotel in a back alley and they drop me off. He takes my baggage to the front desk and kisses me on the cheek while I wait for his move. He doesn’t make one, so I walk away with his number in my Italian phone and scent of him on my skin…

I am starving. I arrive at my hotel at 8 o’clock and have not eaten since breakfast. I take a quick shower talk to the front desk about places to visit and head out the door. I walk down desolate streets to find a restaurant and bar. Everyone in Rome is on holiday and it is very quiet. But, you can still its heart beating rapidly. I find a café, pizzaera and order delicious food from the waiter. We have a connection; and I ask him in Italian if he has family or a background from the Middle East. He says yes, and we can’t stop talking. I eat pizza fresh from a brick oven paired with a bottle of wine, two guys from the next table ask if they can join me.  We listen to music on the street and chat about everything, after the second round of lemoncello it is best to call it a night. My head is spining with wine and new friends, the two men pick up my bill and I head back to my hotel, stopping a young man for a cigarette and lighter. Why has happened to me?

Rules broken:

 1. Do not travel alone  2. Don’t talk to strangers.  3. Do not sit with men in the back of airplanes.  4. Never get in a car with someone you don’t know.  5. Don’t ever get in a car or spend time with someone in a foreign county you don’t know.  6. Don’t drink too much.  7. Don’t smoke.  8. Don’t wonder around in alleys at night  9. Don’t ask for a light from strangers late at night.  10. Don’t eat dinner after ten o’clock.  11. No espresso after 5 pm.  12. Don’t lie.