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Fenton Scorn sulla Statale 299
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| Oh, Canada… - A bonus prologue bit, Chapter 0.5 – The Final Battle with the Neverending Morons |
[Aug. 8th, 2011|09:17 pm] |
Questions asked by the American Immigration Officer, who was definitely the “Final Boss” considering I was sent to this armed guy after apparently failing the previous three steps of “security”:
- Empty your pockets on the table. Take a few steps back and raise your tshirt. Turn around. Untie your pants. Lift one of your pants legs. Slowly. Now the other one. Remove your shoes and give it to me.
- Why are you here?
- First time in America?
- Where do you work?
- What kind of a job is that?
- How long have you been worked there?
- Who’s your boss?
- So if you have a job how can you be here for 3 weeks and it says on your passport you’ve been coming to the US 4 times in the past 2 years?
- So you have paid holidays?
- Do you have a credit card?
- Why are you here?
- Where’s the rest of your luggage?
- Only one backpack for three weeks? That is all you need?
- Why are you so angry in your passport picture?
- Am I going to find weapons in your backpack?
- Am I going to find anything that looks as a weapon in your backpack?
- Am I going to find anything that could be used as a weapon in your backpack?
- Am I going to find narcotics in your backpack? ARE YOU SURE? IT’S YOUR LAST CHANCE.
- What is this (dildo) for?
- What do you mean? ( … )
- Why do you have rope, do you plan to go hiking?
- Sex?
- I don’t get it. What do you plan to do with it during sex?
- Really?
- Why are you here?
- Why are you coming from Greece if you are from Italy?
- So why Greece?
- Where did you sleep in Athens?
- It says here you were in Budapest the day before. Did you pick up anything in Budapest?
- How many days are you staying?
- When do you leave?
- Have you been here before?
- Why have you been here before?
- Why are you here this time?
- Who are these friends?
- Where did you meet them?
- Oh the internet? I see.
- What do you mean hula hooping?
- Why are you here?
- How can you afford these many travels?
- Why did you come in the States last year?
- And the previous year?
- Same girlfriend?
- How long have you and this girlfriend been together?
- GirlfriendS?!!
- What do you write in this journal in Italian?
- What’s in this computer?
- What pictures do you take with this camera?
- Am I going to find fucked up shit in this camera? Turn it on for me, show the photos you took so far.
- Is this girl a friend of yours?
- Oh, you took a photo of her cause she’s pretty? Does she know? I see. That’s a crime around here, it’s called stalking.
- Have you ever been arrested?
- DON’T SAY “NEVER” TO ME!
- Why are you here?
- Do you plan to smoke marijuana while here in the States?
- But do you do it at home?
- Have you ever taken LSD?
- Have you ever been to a rave?
- Why did you tell me you have been here in August while your passport says September?! (…) Riiiight yeah August my bad.
- How much money do you have with you?
- Where is your return ticket?
- Why are you here?
- Where are you going to stay in Toronto?
- How long have you known this David?
- Internet? And do you trust someone you met on the internet to host you?
- Where are you going to stay in Orlando?
- How old is this Nathalie?
- What’s her job?
- When’s her birthday?
- Of what year?
- Do you know it or not? Do not guess. What I want to know SIR is if this Nathalie is 14 or what.
- You are kind of a freaky guy, aren’t you?
Pack your stuff. You can go.
For the records, during the whole interrogation I never lied once, about anything, and I’ve never been arrested. I’ve been charged with Indecent Exposure and discharged cause I didn’t do any of the things they charged me with and my lawyer proved that. I haven’t been arrested for that, and the warrant they issued to my name has been retracted, along with the 1000$ bail. |
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| Oh, Canada... - Chapter 1, Shutting down and Rebooting. |
[Aug. 8th, 2011|09:16 pm] |
“Yeah man, I’ll have a key cut for you tomorrow”, said David after having given me a very quick and unnecessary tour of the house. 564 Bathurst, easy to describe if you are North American, and very hard if you are from anywhere else. I wasn’t too surprised, I guess it was exactly what I was looking for, a student house with no frills, to keep pretending I’m 21, no uptight roommates and very close to the centre. And two minutes in, while dodging an unstable pile of empty beer bottles and being shown the refrigerator in the music room, right by the drums, cause in the kitchen was taking too much space, I knew I got the right place. My room was in the basement, stripes on the walls as painted by the previous guy, and a hypothesis of a window, which opened onto a wall where a constant and mysterious dripping made its futility slightly more interesting. A black cat, which I was too boiled to ask the name of, accompanied us downstairs and instantly fell in love for my cat-flavoured pissy clothes and shoes. David didn’t seem too fond of smiling, so I started wondering if he had one of those faces that have been given just one expression, forever, too compensate for those who smile all the time as if life didn’t really suck. Not that I’m amusing, I showed up well over 1am, 2 hours later than expected due to falling asleep on the subway and going back and forth under Toronto a couple of times before realizing what was going on, but his expressionless courtesy could have been disappointing if it weren’t that human wrecks don’t care that much. So I just apologised, thanked him and collapsed on the bed to finally put an end to the neverending prologue. “I am in Canada”, I told myself, “I am in Toronto, I proudly made it through all the moral firewalls of the world aptly disguised as Immigration Police (which I loathe as much), I overcame sleep deprivation, I cheated the ghosts that protested for a second when they realized I wasn’t going to bring them with me, and landed in Canada. Which is the beginning of the next part of my life.
And while fantasizing about the contradictions of citizenship and borderless worlds, my brain shut off like a laptop with a long depleted battery that kept functioning just because reason and logic were distracted.
Falling asleep never felt that right. |
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| Oh, Canada... - Chapter 0.3, The end of the Neverending Bullshit |
[Aug. 5th, 2011|07:04 pm] |
There's no believing. There's things happening and things not happening. Believing is irrelevant, especially when decisions are made by people, or systems, that don't even know we exist, or who we are.
So it's not like I stopped believing, I just never did. I didn't believe last year, when on August the 3rd me and Whitney jumped on a plane at first try (2 of us, way harder than flying solo), and I didn't believe this year when I got bounced three days in a row in Roma with more than a dozen other unlucky standby travelers as surprised and unhappy as me. Since there was nothing to believe, or not believe, all I did has been checking the flight loads using technology, not faith, and I found out that waiting in Roma would have probably never worked. After looking at the amount of people "standing by" across all major European airports I realized that Athens was my best bet, except for the fact that all flight to Athens, at least the affordable ones, were completely full and some were actually disappearing one minute to the next leaving only the most expensive ones. Believing or not believing, I was on the verge of a serious nervous pissdown (which is worse than a breakdown) knowing I was wasting my vacation days while at the same time paying for a Toronto apartment I wasn't using, when I found, thanks to my Raincloud, this weird connection for Budapest and then Athens in the middle of the night via the easily overlooked Hungarian airlines.
So I got it, and here starts the story as you know it. What some of you probably don't know is the nature of the standby travel ticket. Basically, thank to someone vouching for you (and I won't name my friend, just in case this note would fall in the wrong hands), you get a ticket for a very cheap price. VERY cheap. The problem is that you don't have a reservation, you don't book a seat. You only pay for a ticket, which means that you get to fly only if there are empty unsold seats, or if someone doesn't show up at the gate. Now, standby travelers can look in advance for flight loads, meaning they should plan their trips according to that, avoiding like the plague the usual vacation times and keeping themselves and their plans as flexible as possible. Which is what I DIDN'T DO. Didn't check flight loads, booked an apartment in Toronto for what I decided would have been my vacation days, and basically shot myself in the feet so many times that I probably finished a box or two of imaginary shells. So yeah, that's how I screwed myself based on optimism (I hate you Optimism) and previous experiences. I flied standby before and never really had a problem with it, so there goes "believing". I totally BELIEVED I was going to leave on August the 1st. Realism though, stronger than Optimism, wrestled the silly smiling dude to the ground and pounded its face to a pulp while laughing at me and all the other optimist believers that were, day after day,seeing their vacation days go wasted one after another in an airport hall.
And still I am lucky, cause I was in Roma. So besides the obvious irritation I went home three days in a row and the damages were contained by having my own apartment. On the other hand, some of the men and women returning every morning to see if they could get a seat were actually trying to get back to their homes in North America, and were certainly burning lots of money and who knows what else for each day they couldn't fly.
So these are the miseries of the modern humans, we want things, we want them easier, we dig our own holes and then we feel like the end is nigh. I know for a fact that when I realized, after going home for the third day in a row and understanding that there were NO CHANCES I was going to fly out of Roma, and that there weren't affordable flights to Athens either, that I felt like things were so utterly unfair and that totally didn't deserve that. Which is bullshit. Things can always be worse, and there's a significant chance that I did deserve that. The universe doesn't care about my vacation or flight loads, and I should have come up with a better plan cause there's no one to blame if airplanes only have 268 seats and not a single one more.
But it's not like I took the hit very well. After shelling out an additional 270 euros to get the Athens ticket I've been pretty much unable to speak a word for 5 hours. I felt that all my mouth could form at the time were blasphemies and curses, so I forced myself to mostly shut up, even when that meant murmuring only a very underwhelming goodbye to Whitney who ended up leaving Italy before me (it was supposed to be the other way around) and going exactly in the same city I would have reached the next night. The irony!
So there I was, in Roma Fiumicino Airport for the 5th time in 4 days, this time with a ticket to Greece, and passing through the metal detector once again when a kind women in her late twenties wearing a uniform walked up to me and asked to check my bag as apparently there was something that looked like a charger folded up with the clothes. That's the infamous dildo. One would think they see everything doing that job, and my bag already cleared security 3 times in the previous 3 days without anyone needing to perform further investigations, but either she's new, or clueless, or curious, she dug deep into my clothes to grab that plastic transparent semi-rigid box that holds a black strange thing. It was funny to see her manipulate the box while trying to figure out what the strange thing was and actually reaching inside to "get" the thing. The whole interaction lasted about fifteen seconds, during which I was so amused that I couldn't just spell out the word "dildo" for her, so I was buying time by saying "it's... a... huh...". She tried to help and said "looks like a small bottle, it is perfume?" while still opening the box. And there, I had mercy and said "it's a sex item" right before she laid her fingers on it. That look on her face, for a second, was awesome. Now, it wouldn't have been that bad, a tragedy, or anything, but I know for a fact she wouldn't have been so happy about it as she froze for a second when I unveiled the mystery, quickly but professionally dropped the thing, and started apologizing saying it was ok, while actually walking to a colleague to ask for support. While I was repacking my belongings, she came back again and seemed to confirm "yeah, it's all fine you are cleared, have a good trip" while obviously avoiding eye contact. Oh, the small miseries of the sex-negative world. I have nothing against this woman, and there's a chance she wouldn't have anything against me, but her embarrassment screamed of layers of fantasies and desires that she's been taught to consider inappropriate, dirty, perverted. So many natural harmless beautiful instincts and discoveries she'll never make, and things she chooses not to explore to safely stay in a comfort zone shared with a majority of humans waving seldom questioned and often inherited flags of morality. I have nothing against her, but if anything I feel sorry for I think she probably won't ever know what she might like and what she honestly doesn't. She is stuck with the ideas of sexuality and depravation that has been given to her, ingrained in her, and there's no room for "self" in that, only shades of "right" and "wrong" that are better left untouched. Or maybe I'm wrong, who knows.
Then Budapest, with its 5 hours comfortable wait. The neat, shiny airport, welcoming and empty while the rest of Europe is ablaze with the traveling fever. Budapest that from the top looks like a Lego city made only with two kins of blocks, the red pointy ones for the lower houses which remind me so much of winter, snow and fireplaces. And the square, white ones for the taller apartment buildings, which remind me so much of poverty, eastern Europe and hot summers spent playing football in the harsh grasp of concrete walls with unbranded falling apart sneakers. Budapest, that has a huge graveyard that vanishes and hides in a forest making the eternal rest more attractive than ever, and the city where I got my first tattoo 18 years ago by the hands of a guy who couldn't have tattooed random shaky lines any worse even if he tried.
Budapest felt good though, I would have stayed there more if I could, I mean in the airport. I visited the city in 1993 while backpacking through Europe with my best high school friends, and while I definitely liked it, I fell prey (I made myself fell prey) of some street scammers who ended up robbing me of 350 dollars. Not the best memory ever. But the airport yesterday felt great, and leaving at 11pm to get in the Athens meatgrinder wasn't really a choice. I just had to do it.
See, Athens wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the uncertainty. Now, it's not like I love spending 12 hours in an airport, from 2am to 2pm, especially after having been 5 hours in the previous one, but I don't even hate it that much. Airports are one of the best places for people watching, and I like the food and the restrooms. What drained me has been the lack of sleep, which I thoroughly documented when I wasn't even halfway through the night, and the nerve-wrecking condition of not knowing if I could finally get on a transoceanic airplane, or I had to find accommodations in Athens, spend more money, lose more Toronto days, and go back the next day to try my luck again. While in Budapest I was enjoying the lightness of being finally "airborne", away from home, in Athens I knew I was going to face the nightmare of being bounced again, and this time it wasn't in the comfort of my city, it was going to be in a foreign country with no place to go and with the slap in the face of knowing the whole idea of trying to fly out of Athens was shitty and just another waste of money and energy.
So that's how I really spent the 12 hours there. Roaming like one of the previously mentioned zombies, considering alternatives that led nowhere, sitting down trying to get some internet connection which is, for no fucking reason, limited to 60 minutes per day (and then you have to use the free computers scattered around the airport which run Windows 98 and can't open Facebook NOR my email! This is SOOO southern European, I can't think of any place other than Italy and Greece where this bullshit would ever fly), and ultimately sitting down at bars and cafes recharging my disconnected devices and making deep misplaced considerations about other travelers and their lives. Also, that Greek people and especially Greek women have the best hair in the world, hands down. This, again, while silently dying inside at the idea that I might have missed another plane and with my body and mind slowly decomposing in an unsatisfied need for sleep.
At 7am I was in front of the USAirways check-in desk only to find out that, despite the official departure was 5 hours later, lots of people were already there. WHAT THE FUCK? I still managed to check-in among the firsts, which certainly gave me good priority but still no certainty. For some reason the pre-security people asked me a too many questions. I can only assume that I wasn't looking that great after a night like the one I described, so they were really wondering how a guy like that could have gotten a ticket to Canada. They asked me for a second ID, when I purchased the ticket, where did I sleep the previous night (guess), why was I in Greece, why was I going to the States (Canada, dammit!) and then decided to make me wait while they talked on the phone for a good ten minutes. Can you imagine the pressure at this point? The night just passed had me fighting the ghost of another possible missed flight, but now I was talking to people who had the active power of deny me just because they didn't like the way I was dressed (on top of actually not having open seats on the airplane), so I kept my cool while actually feeling very nervous. Believe me, this is when being a control freak really helps, cause you can't control situations and other people if you don't know how to control yourself, and I am quite good at it.
So after clearing the first stage, the check-in, they told me to go at counter 6 around 10.30am so they will tell me if I got in or I should just raise hell and find a way to make the news with some queer act-out that would at least make this uncolourful shit a little funnier. Shit, 10.30am was 3 more hours waiting. So back to roaming, back to failing to connect to the internet, back to people watching and downsizing their lives, and back to picturing a summer in airports across Europe and how to write a shitty book about it. Somehow I made it to 10.30 and at counter number 6 they told me that I needed to go to counter 30. I tried asking something but they cut me short: counter 30. And at counter 30... There was NO ONE. Not a person, not a sign, nothing. I waited there 15 minutes and the horror was that the flight was supposed to depart in 40 minutes. So I went back to the USAirways ticket sale, told them I was told to go to counter 30, and got some puzzled faces in response. They had no idea why I got told that so they started making phone calls I couldn't even overhear due to the Greek language barrier, but in my head they were laughing at the Counter 30 prank which, I figured, was a joke they play on the fuckers they are not gonna let on the plane for the day. Again, can you imagine how the hell I was feeling at that point? Turned out counter 30 was indeed the place to go, but more than an hour later. In fact, the flight has been delayed of almost 3 hours and so counter 30 was where they wanted me to be at noon. Too bad the woman at counter 6 forgot to say "at noon" so I simply showed up ninety minutes earlier. No one cares. Not the Universe, definitely not the people at Athens airport.
And here is where the story ends. Cause at noon, after exactly 10 hours zombieing in this terminal, waiting in line with other "standbyers" like me who have horror stories that make mine shrink to nothingness (couple of guys were at their 7th attempt in a row, stuck in Greece for a whole week being bounced day after day without any chance to get home, go back to work and stop paying for the hostels they were staying into), or just echo the same misfortunes (another couple of kids did what I did, they were in Roma 3 days ago and came to Athens cause they figured what I figured) I finally got a ticket which says F6, Row 6, seats F. I'm in. And we all got in. We cheered a bit, us standbyers, with our strange stories, our crushed dreams of cheap greatness, our bags full of silly summer clothes and foolish promises of an easy teleporting. Congratulated each other, smiled too much, and parted knowing we would have met later on the airplane, and then hopefully never again.
This is how the story ends, with me going through another security round and having one more guy wanting to take a look at my stuff cause some things don't quite add up to him. And it wasn't the dildo this time, which he happily dismissed with a grotesque and winky "oh yeah I understand haha", but the rope, which made him ask, with a straight face "What are you gonna do with this?".
Finally unstoppable, I told him exactly what I was going to do with it. I'm the one not caring about them now, I'm the one bouncing them off my way. Squashed all their objections, I walked my usual hard mountain path, conquered it, and boarded the plane where I've been writing this for the past two hours.
Next stop Philadelphia on my way to Toronto. If I know my Unitedstatesians, they are gonna love the content of my backpack and my explanations. Last year Border Control held me three hours captive in a room for daring to say that the reason of my trip was to visit my girlfriendS. US security is the final boss between me and Canada. I killed bigger beasts, I shat on bigger morons. I'll let you know how it goes. |
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| Oh, Canada… - Chapter 0.2, Athens and the neverending Night |
[Aug. 4th, 2011|04:52 am] |
Drunk with the lack of sleep, I force myself to write to counter the effects of muzak being blared off the speakers of Athens’ airport. This is not a terrible place, although echoing the decadence and the outfashioned-ness of the Roman one, it’s just that I’ve been up for 20 hours now and possibly another 20 are waiting ahead.
I wish I had something meaningful to write, but all the fragments I gathered in the last few hours are now blended together by the psycho-physical confusion I’m subjecting myself to. I don’t feel well at all, and you should be here to understand what I mean:
The large sign above the counter says “Ritazza Caffe’”, it’s another Italian chain that doesn’t exist in Italy but apparently haunts all the other European airports. A girl served me some shakered cappuccino which she was able to pronounce like a true Italian (despite being obviously Greek). She doesn’t seem too pissed for working the night shift. This place is the only business open in the whole airport, so maybe she feels unique instead of unlucky. I wish I knew of her life, and what she goes back to when she’s done serving shakered cappuccini to compulsive travelers. Cause yeah, the airport is full. Lots of men and women of all ages are doing what I can’t (sleeping) on the floor, some beaned-up in blankets, some hugging themselves as tight as they can, and lots more are just roaming around like restless zombies waiting for their flights which won’t be, at best, in less than 4 hours. 8 in my case.
True to the zombie movies tradition, this undead airport hosts all kinds of travelers, so should the infection spread tonight, we would have a fully functional zombie environment, ready to be shot, printed, and sent to cinemas all across the world. The red electronic clock which probably survived the last renovation of this airport at some point in the early 80s says it’s 4am sharp, and a quick glance around me returns various samples of human life: a 50-something lady with cheap clothes, poorly dyed red hair, and two fingers up her nose apparently very immersed in the Greek soap opera being shown on the TV screen just above the cafeteria space. She leans a bit backward, letting a side of her body rest on the table in a dubious attempt to better enjoy the view of the highly positioned TV set while at the same time trying to get some relief to what has certainly been a long and hard day. A man with grey short hair, I’d say her husband, lying his head on her same table, asleep as if someone had drugged the bottle of plain mineral water that is guarding his luggage while he’s knocked out.
Two tables on the right there’s a beautiful girl that just went to the counter to get one more croissant. Her hair is the blackest I’ve seen in a while, her clothes and her skin are so totally white that her eyebrows cut horizontally as deep as the mark of a comic artist, and her eyes, melancholically dark and maked up with a repetition of black, complete a statement that I wholeheartedly agree with. She eats her croissant, and waits.
Behind her another old man, white hair and thick glasses. A bottle of plain mineral water is on his table too, but instead of sleeping he’s studying a traveler’s guide to what’s probably the destination at the end of his wait. The chair in front of him is empty but a purse hangs on a side, and before I finish wondering who sits there a woman with long blondish hair comes back and sits down, holding another small bottle of plain mineral water. In water they trust, and wait.
Two girls sits on the next table, they are Italian and I know this cause I overheard them talking. As usual I am annoyed by Italians when I travel, it’s my chance to leave that shit behind, so I can’t help feeling annoyed at them, and the fact that I recognize in their clothes and mannerisms the kind of Italians I can’t be friends with certainly doesn’t help. They were up and chatty a while ago, but now they snagged some chairs, combined them together and made a couple of tiny and shaky beds to fall asleep on. Their luggage is wisely held firm between the table and the chair-beds.
A black man on his fifties with cool, elegant glasses, receding hair and a netbook sits in front of me, he has a black jacket and a red shirt is visible underneath it. I like his style, and I wonder if he’s one of the travelers that will try to get a seat on the Philadelphia airplane at my expenses tomorrow morning. That would make me like him way less, so I push away the thought and instead walk behind him with an excuse to take a look at what he’s checking on the internet cause yeah I am that curious (Lycos mail? Disappointing).
As I was writing another man just sat right on the table next to mine. I was using it to rest my feet, so I almost feel my personal space invaded. He’s stocky and in his fifties too. And believe it or not he has a small bottle of plain mineral water with him, but he’s sipping from a small cup of coffee too. He wears tiny glasses, his greying hair is slightly longer than his beard, but it is completely missing on the top and the back of his head. Dark green pants, greenish square-patterned shirt and brown classic Birkenstock sandals. His hand luggage is dark green too, and very small. A gold Rolex replica on his left wrist, he just looks around. 4:35 on the big red electronic clock on top of the “Departures” board, and he waits, looking around and pondering on stuff that I cannot help thinking is making him feel lonely.
We all wait. The muzak keeps blaring all over the airport and the soap opera on the TV keeps inflicting wounds on everyone’s grey matter, slowly killing our ability to distinguish annoyance from abuse.
So everything blends together, the muzak, the soap opera, the people waiting and traveling at night trying to steal a day from the eternal seasonal cycle of their jobs, the girl sitting right by me on the airplane from Budapest using the personal light over her seat to remove some fake-eyebrows she had been wearing and place them in her makeup box right before takeoff, the Greek beardy student with the boring accent that had been talking to the girl from France for two hours telling her all his life and expectations failing to notice that she didn’t seem interested at all. The clerks at the food court who had been fighting in Hungarian for ten minutes while at the same time messing up all orders and putting up a show for us non-Hungarian speakers where the only obvious thing was that they aren’t that great at their job. And the irony of Athens, where I have three friends and lovers but none of them is available to host me, visit me, or just talk to me. (To be fair Whitney, who landed here yesterday to visit another lover, offered to come and spend the night with me in the airport, but I felt it would have been unreasonably hard on her, so I told her not to come.)
Oh, Greece. Oh, Athens. You don’t look at all like Canada. You don’t inspire me. You fuzz.
And so it goes my awareness, my conscience and my reason. Confusion is taking over and I realize I don’t have a point anymore. I started writing this note with a few ideas about what I wanted to recall from the previous day, but now I have nothing more than exhaustion-induced fuzz and I feel guilty for having written nothing but useless shit and knowing at the same time I am so going to post it anyway because that’s how much of an uncesored narcissist I am: so in love with myself that I even like the parts of me that I don’t like.
Cut me some slack. I am drunk with something I brew inside.
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| Oh, Canada... - Chapter 0.1, The Neverending Prologue. |
[Aug. 4th, 2011|04:49 am] |
I shouldn’t be here. I should be in Toronto by now. Instead, I am in Budapest, watching the sun dying over the horizon and casting its last long orange fingers through my typing ones and my legs. Every day I thank the sun for dying, and for doing it in such a dramatic fashion. Cause yeah, I hate the sun. It burns me, it makes me feel uncomfortably warm, it melts snow, it pierces through rainclouds and fundamentally ruins my mood.
I am in Budapest and I shouldn't be here. For someone who is going to become a volunteer in the next few years and plans to break up with money as soon as possible, I am still quite dependant on Capitalism (hey, the thing is capitalism bullies you into doing things its way or not doing them at all, but this is a different story), so here I am, stuck in Europe cause I tried too hard to get a cheap ticket to Toronto only to find out that there's no way you can get out of Roma in August without paying capitalism real money and some stressful sweat. Lesson learned, hate increased, teleport failed and now my flaccid body is jumping across Europe as if I could confuse Chaos to the point a random hurricane of nonsensical energy lifts me in the air and drops me over Canada by accident. While actually all I am doing is getting to Athens where I'll try to see if their planes are less crammed (which is quite likely considering the financial crisis that is afflicting the country, and this makes me feel like an exploiter instead of a volunteer for universal goodness), and to get there I have to spend 5 hours in Budapest and a whole night on the benches of a Greek airport trying to sleep without forgetting to fight for my very questionable right to fly cheap. Should plan B fail (plan A died yesterday, stabbed countless times), I'll have to spend days in Athens which is pretty much the last thing I EVER wanted to do in August. Hell, I even have friends there, which are all aptly unavailable. I feel the shadow of disaster looming over me with agitated enthusiasm.
This is why you have a neverending prologue. I am not where I should be, and I am not telling the stories I should be telling. I am limbo-ing in a grey area that would prove much more satisfying if I only had some control over it. Seriously, I'm a control freak, everyone knows that. Can you imagine how bad this is? It's like those episodes of Star Trek where Kirk, Spock and the guys are on the planet surface and everything is pretty much exploding around them and the Captain calmly goes "Scotty, beam us up..." and nothing happens. Things keep exploding and only static comes from the communicator. Here I stand, with my communicators yelling static "fuck you"s to my wallet and my lousy 21 days off while the teleport to Canada fails to happen and there's no Scotty beaming me fucking anywhere. Doesn't help that Spock isn't here.
So, the prologue keeps going. This airport is beautiful. I took a photo of the "Latte" (which is the Italian word for "milk" but apparently in the English speaking world means "milk plus coffee") and apple pie to show my Italian friends what I mean when I say that the Roman airport is possibly the worst in the world. I am sitting on a nice, soft couch where I have free power outlets to charge my computer and my Trekkie Communicator (my new Superphone, I call her Svetlana) while being stupid on the internet, flirting over OkCupid (I'm tireless), posting some pictures and loving everything around me, cause explosions of chaos or not, I just love to travel and the moment I leave the swamp known as Roma I feel instantly better. Seriously, I could live in this couch for a few of months. The place is better than my apartment, for sure, and they serve better coffee.
Oh, luminous hidden bands just lit up in the ceiling of the huge airport hall where I'm standing, and all of a sudden it feels like night has just begun. Like my bloody path. Cheating the money I don't have, defying the captivity I put myself into a long time ago, challenging the feelings I've been wired to for a long time, smashing all the boxes society tries to build around me, and questioning every pattern that doesn't sound right even when it feels so intoxicatingly comfortable, once again I walk my isolated mountain path mostly alone, ready for everything, with nothing more than a backpack, my journal, my scars, my intentions and my queer, ethical, slutty self.
And a dildo, which is really not a bomb even though it looks like it to Italian police. Also, I am not Captain Kirk. I’m lonelier than him. And I still want someone to beam me to Canada right now.
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| Traveling with Ghosts - Chapter 1 |
[Mar. 31st, 2011|09:51 pm] |
Viaggiare coi fantasmi e' difficile. Io li ho in simpatia. Sono io che li invito a seguirmi nelle mie avventure. Sempre io ad assicurarmi che stiano bene, e che continuino a rovinarmi il sonno. Se se ne vanno per i fatti loro ne attiro l'attenzione con qualche coincidenza (volontariamente) tirata per i capelli, e se si assopiscono, o si distraggono, inciampo apposta in un ricordo rumoroso e molesto, e quelli subito tornano al lavoro.
Ai fantasmi ho chiesto gia' di rovinarmi parecchi viaggi, Parigi, Bologna, Milano, e cosi' li ho portati con me anche in Florida. Il giorno che ho capito che non sarei tornato ad Ann Arbor li ho chiamati e gli ho detto che si andava a Orlando, cosi', per dargli il tempo di prepararsi. Cazzo, avreste dovuto vedere l'entusiasmo con cui si precipitavano nel mio zaino undici giorni fa quando siamo partiti!
Sui fantasmi puoi sempre contare. Sono difficili, ma ci puoi contare.
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| Traveling with Ghosts - Prologue |
[Mar. 31st, 2011|09:36 pm] |
0.1 - Prologo pigro.
29 Marzo 2011
Su un aereo che torna a Roma.
Uno scrittore non puo' essere piu' pigro di cosi'. Consapevole di volersi rileggere, ansioso di condividere, ma irritato all'idea di non aver ancora finito, anzi neppure iniziato, il proprio pezzo, egli si rifiuta il diritto di modificare cio' che scrive. Peggio, ancora indeciso su come cominciare, e' gia' infastidito dall'idea di sbagliare, perche' sa, questo scrittore pigro, che non c'e' appello per i suoi pensieri una volta trasferiti in lettere e punteggiatura.
La scrittura, indelebile come un tatuaggio, spennellata come una pittura ad olio, non si rivede, ritaglia, ridimensiona. Troppo facile, si dice questo scrittore pigro, cesellare le memorie, limarle e ingrassarle come un meccanismo di precisione. Troppo facile accordarle come uno strumento musicale prima di un concerto. "La memoria e' una cosa difficile, imperfetta, e trova la sua dignita' nella spontaneita', mai nella revisione!".
E con queste parole lo scrittore, pigro, non si lascia una seconda possibilita', ma astutamente, vigliacco, si assicura di continuare a essere uno scrittore da niente.
<<Tutto quanto e' contenuto in questo diario, e nei brani che seguono, viene pensato e scritto una sola volta, riga per riga. Ogni tanto cambio una parola, al massimo una frase, ma mi e' vietato cancellare periodi, mi e' vietato pensare a che taglio voglio dare alla storia, mi e' vietato pensare alle pagine successive, e mi e' vietato modificare (troppo) le parti che non mi piacciono.
Questa e' la regola dello scrittore pigro. La banalita', sovente, e' improvvista. La qualita', quando capita, e' un caso.>> |
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| Eta'. |
[Jan. 30th, 2011|11:01 pm] |
C'era la partita stasera.
Sono vecchio, e il mio corpo e' piu' vecchio del dovuto perche' lo muovo poco, non faccio abbastanza sesso per via delle mie stupide allergie, e perche' essendo grande e grosso richiede piu' forza per muovere piu' peso. Ho 37 anni, alla gente sembro un po' piu' giovane, ma quando mi metti un pallone tra i piedi sento tutta la fatica accumulata in questi anni. Quello che sapevo fare non riesce piu', e la prepotenza dei miei gesti che diventavano all'improvviso cosi' inequivocabilmente maschili e' meno efficace e brutale di un tempo. Non ho mai avuto classe, solo tanta intensita', ferocia, rispettabile cattiveria agonistica e un atteggiamento da filosofo del fallo, da geometra della scivolata, da chirurgo dello sfondamento. Cosi' privo di talento, ma tanto utile in campo. Rispettato, temuto, apprezzato solo grazie a una fama costruita su grinta, resistenza, e colpi improbabilil e unici frutto dello strano fidanzamento tra mancanza di coordinazione e ostinato, proverbiale agonismo.
Tutte cose che quando le racconto a mio figlio, che ha le ossa di un uccello in confronto a me e il talento di un Platini autolesionista, lo fanno ridere con le lacrime. Che sono forte e metallico lo vede da solo, ma che questo potesse essere utile su un campo di calcio, e anche un po' memorabile, gli sembra incredibile.
Forse per questo era ora che giocassi una partita cosi'. Dopo una settimana con una ventina di ore di sonno totali, in una sera di pioggia dove le mie fibre muscolari parevano essere venute con me al campo solo per l'impossibilita' fisiologica di lasciare il corpo, e la mia voglia di giocare era pari solo a quella di avere un attacco di gastrite, una serata in cui in fin dei conti avrei preferito essere in tutt'altro posto, in una specie di club romano dove non sarei mai andato da italiano ma che con Justine avrebbe potuto passare per la presa per il culo di un'affascinante discoteca slovacca, ecco che ti esce una partita che sa di sesso. Non il sesso migliore, non e' il sesso con una donna che ami, e non e' nemmeno il sesso intenso, pieno, che viene dall'impatto di due corpi le cui cellule sono ciecamente destinate ad attrarsi e a scoparsi fino a scoppiare. E' il sesso di una notte sola, il sesso di quell'incontro inaspettato e a cui non avresti mai pensato fino al momento in cui vi guardate in faccia e con liberazione vi dite che si', e' il caso. Stasera si'.
Avevo deciso di stare in porta. Non mi sentivo bene, non avevo voglia di far niente, e il nostro portiere non era venuto a causa di un dolore al braccio. Gli avversari erano, come sempre, almeno dieci anni piu' giovani di noi. Solo mio figlio e' dieci anni piu' giovane anche di loro, e questo crea scompensi di ogni genere ma di solito non cambia l'opacita' della mia prestazione. Nel primo tempo mi ero esibito in qualche grossolana parata, ma mi si era notato di piu' per quei cinque goal presi tra uno sfarfallio e l'altro e per qualche parola di rimprovero a mezza bocca per i compagni piu' spompati di un pallone rimasto al sole troppo a lungo. Non avevo messo in conto di giocare neppure nel secondo tempo, una sconfitta era prevista e a nessuno importava che io non parassi neanche i palloni fermi; e' una regola non scritta quella per cui il povero stronzo che si sacrifica come portiere deve sempre essere (falsamente) complimentato e supportato, pena la possibilita' che si faccia passare la fantasia e decida di andarsene a casa a farsi seghe piu' costruttive. Emiliano pero', affaticato e demoralizzato, si era fatto avanti per prendere il mio posto. Emi e' piccolo, minuto, ma capace e esperto come pochi, amico mio da piu' di 30 anni e storica spalla in un'arcigna e fallosa difesa che testardamente suda sui campetti di calcio dall'inizio degli anni Ottanta.
Cosi' mi ero ritrovato al mio posto, lato basso a sinistra del campo, con un risultato blandamente sfavorevole, quattro compagni di squadra sfiancati dal primo tempo contro questi ragazzini che schiumano dalla voglia di spaccarti in due a te e ai tuoi capelli bianchi, e un pallone che mi rotola fra i piedi prima ancora d'aver finito di sistemarmi addosso una sopra-maglietta verde e troppo stretta.
E' cosi' che va il sesso certe volte. Conosci bene quella persona, c'hai passato tante serate a chiacchierare, e col tempo avete scambiato cosi' tanta intimita' che non serve neppure piu' che ci si porti da casa l'entusiasmo e i sorrisi spontanei delle prime serate. Si puo' vedere un film insieme un po' abbracciate e un po' no, si puo' stare zitte senza provare imbarazzo, si puo' essere in disaccordo sugli scioperi e gli scontri in piazza senza farsi salire troppo la pressione o la voglia di mandare tutto affanculo. Poi pero' c'e' una sera, inspiegabile, che mentre lei parla tu t'accorgi che le stai guardando il mento come se non fosse mai stato li'. Che il tuo corpo preferisce sare sdraiato un po' sbilenco su quel familiarissimo divano anziche' restare dritto e rigido al suo posto troppo inconsciamente attento a non invadere spazi che bruciano. E che quando lei t'abbraccia dicendo che ti vuole bene, che e' quasi normale, il suo respiro e' piu' profondo di come credi che dovrebbe essere. Stasera si'.
Vedi la palla, il bamboccio viene verso di te portandola con se' e preparandosi a farci qualcosa di rapido e strano che ha visto su internet, la sradichi dalle gambe del ragazzino dai capelli curati e dai muscoli che guizzano come se la maglietta fosse cucita sotto e non sopra la pelle, ti assicuri che gli esca un grugnito quando il tuo osso ormai vecchio ma non meno appuntito di come era quindici anni fa gli devia il ginocchio quanto serve a mandarlo col sedere per terra, fai cinque lunghi passi avanti e tre di lato, uno su te stesso che serve solo a confondere l'altro ragazzino che ti corre incontro veloce come un predatore, ingenuo come un novizio, gli nascondi la palla con la tua schiena lunga come una portaerei, gli dai una spallata che per motivi fisici lo prende in bocca e gli massaggia la faccia, e per finire spingi ancora un po' piu' avanti, lasci che la sfera si incastri tra i vostri due piedi e senza pieta' premi finche' il peso della sua caviglia giovane lascia strada al tuo brutale, pesante, goffo passo di danza. Solo, libero, guardi in basso anziche' in alto verso la porta come ti hanno insegnato infinite epoche prima, e colpisci per far male. Il pallone grida e ringrazia, dà una botta al palo, una alla traversa, si insacca dove lo mettono solo quelli bravi, e esausto si lascia andare in fondo alla rete, soddisfatto.
Esibizionista che sei.
Sudato, ancora vibrante di piacere e di una intensita' a cui non pensavi d'aver piu' diritto, torni nella tua meta' campo, in quell'angolo in basso a sinistra, coi compagni che ridono e che ti danno pacche sulla spalla apparentemente solo poco piu' stupiti di te.
Ma si', stasera si'.
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| What too many people, especially men, still refuse to understand. |
[Jan. 3rd, 2011|10:08 am] |
"The greatest achievement of Patriarchy, I mean the most dreadful and disgusting, is having shaped society so that any newborn child, male or female, is inherently and unescapably sexist, requiring a violent struggle with oneself only to simply acknowledge that terrible notion, and without which there's no chance of fighting back."
This is me, and something I thought the other night while watching "For Colored Girls". You can tell it's me by the uncertain English.
"It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions, that appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them and attack them in such a manner that political violence has always excercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them."
This is Michel Foucault. and I am in love <3 |
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| The deserter. |
[Dec. 15th, 2010|12:55 pm] |
As a feminist, I wake up every morning with a pain in the back of my neck.
I wasn't born like that, I wasn't born a feminist. No one is.
In fact, we come to this world ready to be the opposite. And the training starts on day one.
Over the years, no one told me about that pain. I didn't have it, I wasn't supposed to, and no one really ever believes those who say they have it. I was actually trained not to believe women, or to actually not care too much to begin with. I was told their purpose was to please the ones like me, and I was shown proofs about it. Honestly, they seemed to be everywhere, often supported by other women. Hard to refute.
Over the years, since I was a baby and up to until I let them, I was trained as a soldier in the largest army on Earth, and instructed on how to deal with women, how to grant them permissions, how to ignore them, how to exploit them, how to convince them, how to seduce them, how to bribe them, how to trick them, how to use them, how to help them feel useless, how to make them believe they are useful only when they make me happy, how to make them believe they are happy when they are not, how to make sure they will mistake my concessions as empowerment, how to make sure they won't ask themselves questions, how to make sure they will ask each others the wrong questions, how to make sure they will corner and isolate the ones who can feel the pain and want to talk about it, how to make sure they will make me cum or feel guilty and devalued for not doing it.
But no one told me I was being trained, as it's easy to feel resentful towards such a planetary convenient conspiracy. So I've been fed enough disinformation to think I got things right, enough disinformation to be a double agent: one of the good guys, who actually promote sexism behind or dangerously close to the enemy lines. Armies need to be diversified, so the Army of Patriarchy has grunts (oh so many!), officers, captains, generals and headquarters spread literally everywhere. But it also needs dormant provokers, snitches, spies and converters. I was trained to be one of the best, the elite soldier, a dark Jedi of male chauvinism, unaware of my violence so I could inflict it on women without them realizing it. As a sweet, mellow poison, I had been built to sabotage securities (fostering insecurities), undermine independence, thwart doubts and preserve happiness in slavery.
And I did my job well, for a long time. You know, you do it so well that you REALLY think you are good, you wouldn't believe them if they told you what you really are. In fact, I didn't. It took me some time to understand the words, combine the pieces, look back at the fundamental steps of my life and look around at the fiber of everything that is real, to realize what I did, how I accepted it, how I let it happen, how I contributed to it.
Took me to have my lover beaten by her best friend, "the sweetest guy in the world", to realize how well they programmed us into not knowing, not believing, not acknowledging, not even giving them a chance to fight back. Took me to write a script for a movie and have my feminist friend Rhoberta telling me how vacuous, inconsistent and male-centered the female characters were to realize how deep in me they had hidden their propaganda and made me into an invisible publicist.
That's when I started feeling it, the pain. In the back of my neck, constant, persistent, reminding me of what I was, of what I did, of what is around me and what I participated every day to and how I didn't do anything to stop it. A piercing, inevitable, stubborn pain telling me how easy I had things up to that point, how painLESS I had my existance through the bliss of ignorance, through the confidence of oppression, through the convenience of incessant, profitable colonialism. As if to remind me of the pain I will never feel, of the humiliations I will never be inflicted, of the abuses I will never undergo, the pain stayed there, never moved an inch since then, and I grew to love it and feel proud of it.
The pain broke my programming, swallowed it, opened my eyes to the real murder count, showed me the fields of war scattered with millions of unsung, violated and ridiculed victims. I saw so much horror I felt ashamed for being what I was.
I couldn't go back, hell I DIDN'T WANT TO GO BACK, so I deserted.
I left the Army, I shat on it, and I started fighting it. After 20 years doing the dirty job for the largest oppression force in the world, I quit, and realized they even lied to me about what I was: my identity was lying somewhere one step ahead their simplifications, and as a happy pansexual genderqueer I don't need men's "permission" anymore to be who I am and help others to be what they really are, or they could be.
I loath the days I used to be an exploiter, I am disgusted for having "granted permissions", I feel so sorry for what I did, I hate those who taught me it was my job, my right, my role. I want to ask for A DIFFERENT kind of permission now, without feeling entitled to be told yes: I was a soldier in the Army of Patriarchy. I was the Patriarchy. And I deserted. Now I am a feminist, if the women will let me.
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