Waiting To Be Heard - A Memoir Part 3

"I dated a guy pretty seriously," Meredith said. "We were together for a few months. I have real feelings for him, but I'm too young to get serious. I still have two more years of university. We broke up right before I came to Italy."

"Well, you don't want to feel weighed down by decisions while you're figuring life out."

We encouraged ourselves with affirming smiles and cheap local red wine.

Meredith and I did a lot of routine things together-like walking to the grocery store and going to the rental office. She asked me to snap photos of her standing in front of the picture window in her bedroom. "I want my family to see my view," she said.

One afternoon, when I discovered a vintage clothing shop downtown, I was so excited that I went home and immediately brought Meredith back with me, the sort of thing I'd usually do with Brett or Madison.

"These clothes are definitely more offbeat than I'm used to," Meredith said, "but they're awesome." She tried on a few things, coming out of the dressing room to model each one and discuss all the places she could wear it. She bought a sparkly silver vintage dress she said she'd wear for New Year's Eve in London.

It made sense that Meredith and I were closer to each other than to our other flatmates-we were both trying to learn a city and a language we didn't know. Filomena and Laura were longtime friends, older, finished with college, and Italian. To them, Perugia was the same old, same old.

While I waited for the semester to start, I tried to read in Italian and tested new vocabulary wherever I could. One day, I went to the Coop, a supermarket in Piazza Matteotti, gathered my groceries, and went to the register to pay. "Busta?" the cas.h.i.+er asked me.

I didn't know the word. Was it envelope? Was she asking me if I wanted to buy envelopes? I could feel the people behind me in line shuffling impatiently. I was about to respond no, but she read my confused expression before I got the word out. She shook a plastic shopping bag in my face. "Busta?"

I reddened. "S, s, busta. Grazie. Scusa," I said.

I knew I shouldn't have been embarra.s.sed, but I didn't want to be regarded as a tourist. I didn't want attention brought to my ignorance of the language.

I didn't let my mistakes keep me from getting to know my neighborhood or my neighbors a little better. Each time I went to the Internet cafe to Skype with DJ or chat online with Mom, I'd talk to the guy who ran it, Spyros, a Greek in his late twenties. We talked about the same things that filled my conversations with my UW friends-mainly our ideas and insecurities. He graciously welcomed my sputtering attempts to speak in Italian about more than the weather. This was a little different from home, where Laura and Filomena found my deficient Italian entertaining and chuckled at my slipups.

A few times a week I hung around the coffee shop chatting with Mirko about what we each liked to do and about our personalities. Me: serious, goofy early bird. Him: playful, easy-going night owl.

One afternoon I asked, "Do you know where I can go hear live music?"

"No, I like sports," he said. "Do you like Inter?"-Milan's popular professional soccer team.

"I prefer to play soccer than watch it. I was a defender on a premier team," I said. I could tell he was picturing me in a kid's church league.

"Are you good?" he asked.

"Do you know the American expression 'sly like a fox'?" I asked. "That's what I was-fast and reliable for finding an opening and stealing the ball. My teammates nicknamed me Foxy Knoxy."

The next time I went to the cafe, I watched him work, looking for signs of a connection between us. There was music playing in the background-popular dance music from a local radio station. "Do you like music?" I asked.

"I like to dance," he replied. "Do you?"

Is he a lowbrow party guy? I wondered. That's not what I was hoping for. "I'd rather sing and play guitar," I answered.

Maybe we had reached an impa.s.se. Just then, Mirko said, "I thought of a place you'd really like-for pizza."

"Let's go sometime," I said. I thought, I can't believe I just asked him out.

"How about today?" he asked. "I get off at five."

I was excited. Mirko was nice, laid back, and interested in me.

When I arrived back at the cafe to meet him, he was just taking off his ap.r.o.n. We walked down Corso Vannucci, Perugia's main commercial street, and turned onto a quieter side street of shops and restaurants. People were lined up outside the pizzeria, waiting for a table.

"Do you want to eat at my place?" Mirko asked. "We can watch a movie."

"Sure," I said, and instantly felt an inner jolt. It came from the sudden certainty that we would have s.e.x, that that's where our flirtation had been heading all along.

We carried our pizza boxes through Piazza Grimana, by the University for Foreigners, and down an unfamiliar street, past a park. Mirko's house was at the end of a gravel drive. "I live here with my sister," he told me.

During dinner at his kitchen table my thoughts battled. Was I ready to speed ahead with s.e.x like this? I still regretted Cristiano. But I'd also been thinking about what Brett and my friends at UW had said. I could picture them rolling their eyes and saying, "h.e.l.looo, Amanda. s.e.x is normal."

Casual s.e.x was, for my generation, simply what you did.

I didn't feel that my att.i.tude toward s.e.x made me different from anyone else in my villa. I knew Meredith hadn't been with anyone since her serious boyfriend in England. Filomena had a steady boyfriend, Marco Z., in Perugia. And while Laura was dating and sleeping with a guy she thought was sweet but clingy, she encouraged s.e.x outside relations.h.i.+ps.

From the start, all four of us were open to talking about s.e.x and relations.h.i.+ps. Laura insisted that Meredith and I should just have fun. Filomena was a little more b.u.t.toned-up. She couldn't understand how, with our history together, DJ and I could just be friends and inform each other about our romantic exploits over Skype.

I considered Mirko across the checkerboard table as he devoured his pizza. He was part of the small circle of familiar faces I'd started to create for myself in Perugia.

We didn't talk much at dinner. I dawdled, asking him the standard questions about himself. He dodged them and asked, "What movies do you like?"

"I like anything that's not scary," I said. "I'd really like to see a cla.s.sic Italian film."

"I have a funny one on DVD," he said.

Of course the TV was in his bedroom.

"It's a little cold. Let's get under the covers," he coaxed.

I did, fully clothed except for my sneakers.

The movie was so juvenile I could barely pay attention. I was mostly focused on how the night would unfold. I liked Mirko, but I didn't know him. He was attractive, and his confidence was charming. His taste in movies was bad, though. Still, I told myself, People have flings.

When the movie ended, Mirko clicked off the TV. Without speaking, he leaned over and kissed me. I kissed him back. It was happening.

As soon as it was over I quietly got back into my clothes, wondering what I thought of my newfound freedom. I was proud of myself for having a no-strings-attached consensual encounter, but I felt awkward and out of place. I didn't yet know if I'd regret it. (Nor could I antic.i.p.ate that my private, uncertain experiment would become my public undoing.) "I'm sorry," he said, "but you have to go now. My sister will be home soon. I'll walk you to the University for Foreigners. You can find your way from there."

We didn't talk as we walked past the park. When we reached the university, he kissed me good-bye on both cheeks. The standard Italian h.e.l.lo and good-bye among casual friends was as unromantic as a handshake would have been in America. "We should do that again sometime," he said. I nodded, perplexed by the disparate emotions bouncing around in my head.

I walked back to the villa alone, feeling both exhilarated and defeated.

The next morning, I told my roommates I'd had s.e.x with Mirko. "I feel conflicted," I said. "It was fun, but it was weird to feel so disconnected from each other. Is that just me?"

Laura absolved me. "You're young and free-spirited. Don't worry about it."

That made me feel a little better.

A few days later, I stopped by the cafe, and Mirko invited me to his place again. I shoved my ambivalence aside and agreed. As we walked from the cafe, he smiled at me and asked me how school was going. "Fine," I said. "How's work?"

"Pretty slow, now that the tourist season is over."