Dispatches From the Roman Em-pire

That's what they called the city while I was there, but other times it is also known as "The Armpit of Hell" or just "Rome"

I am outside a bar with some friends in Rome. We’ve been standing there for ~17 hours, I would estimate. There are too many cooks in the kitchen, as they say, and we can’t seem to make any progress on deciding where to go next.

You know the thing? Where someone suggests a place, but some other person in the group shoots their idea down for being too far away, so someone else suggests a different place and another person shoots that down for being too expensive, and so on. Until everyone dies of starvation or old age out there on the sidewalk. I’m so happy to be in Rome that I wouldn’t mind too much.

A young woman, an acquaintance of a friend of a friend, comes up close to me, hyper with some mix of nerves and excitement. “Hey,” she says. “Girl to girl, where do you think we should go? I mean, girl to girl.”

“Oh, I have no idea,” I shrug. “I am just a tourist; I don’t know the best places. Are you okay?”

“But I mean, I’m just asking you, girl to girl,” she says. “I’m NOT trying to hook up with anyone,”

“You don’t have to hook up with anyone,” I assure her. “If you’re worried about that, I’ll make sure that wherever we end up going, you’re good, okay?”

“Okay,” she says. “Thank you so much. What’s your name?”

“Emily.”

“Oh my god.” Her eyes are like saucers. She’s so thrilled, so touchy, so energetic. “Like Emily in Paris. But Emily in Rome. It’s like a new season!”

We laugh. We exchange phone numbers, in case we get separated.

“But, girl to girl, I’m not trying to hook up with anyone,” she repeats. “I’m literally a virgin.”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “And hey, if you need or want a man to intervene or turn to at any point, this is my friend Rosario. He’s a good person.”

The girl shoots Rosario a look that lies somewhere between suspicion and full-fledged disdain. “I don’t trust men,” she says. “No offense.”¹

There is nothing like the affection between two women at a bar who have never seen each other before in their lives. I had consumed exactly one beer, about an hour earlier, so I wasn’t exactly intoxicated. But Girl Code meant I was prepared to lay my life on the line for this woman if necessary.

I love Girl Code. I love Rome.

My contract teaching English at a high school in Spain ended in May, but my boyfriend and I figured we might as well stay in Europe for the summer, since we didn’t know what we’d be doing back in the U.S. On a video call with Jeff’s friends, he told them, “We’re going to spend a month in Florence, then a month in Rome.”

“Florence,” said one of Jeff’s best friends, a smart and good person whose opinion I value, “is one of my favorite cities in the world. Rome… well…. we went in August, so it was, like, the armpit of hell.”

He paused.

“But it won’t be that bad for you guys, I’m sure.”

“We are going in August,” Jeff laughed.

“Oh,” said his friend solemnly, as though we’d just announced we both had terminal cancer.

I’d been to Rome before, with my parents, when I was 18. It was my first time in Europe, and everything felt magical: the buildings, the food, the streets. I didn’t even have the self-awareness to worry about being perceived as a tourist. I was too happy and awestruck. Now I felt embarrassed about this, like I was silly to like Rome so much. Was I just a clueless American who only appreciated the most popular and touristy places?

I think of my friend who backpacked through Europe and said it was his least favorite city: Too touristy, too crowded, too much a caricature of itself. Here are some real things I’ve read online about Rome.

• "boring af”

• “In general I had the feeling that everything around me was extremely touristy, extremely expensive and extremely mediocre.”

• “I get why we shouldn't tear down the Colosseum, but you just can't tell me that is good to look at. A half-broken rock thing that has holes in it? Wow”

• “Rome is a dirty, and rude city” [sic]

I started to stress about going to Rome. Should we just stay in Florence the whole summer? Should we just move back to the U.S. sooner, to find Stable Jobs and Be Adults? Should we go to Japan or something instead? Would that be less armpit-y? maybe we should live on a boat. Or on a farm. Maybe we should join a monastery. Maybe I should go back to grad school. Maybe-

We went to Italy.

Jeff ended up getting a job earlier than expected, so, in the end, he could only spend two weeks in Italy, even though we had flights and accommodation booked for two months. This is how I ended up spending six weeks in Italy by myself, and this is how I ended up out front of a Roman bar wrapped up in a girl-to-girl convo.

In the two weeks Jeff did spend in Italy, though, we came down to Rome for a couple of days, so he could see it. And ohh, did we see it.

It was so hot. I cannot emphasize this enough. Even though I don’t agree with the “armpit of hell” comment, I see where it came from, a little. Jeff broke out in a heat rash. People on the street confused me for a water fountain because I was so sweaty.² Temperature records were broken. I heard the pope melted.

But it didn’t stop us. We saw the Colosseum! Castle Sant’Angelo! And the Trevi Fountain! And the Vatican Museum! Pasta! Pizza! Campo di Fiori! Walks along the Tiber! One piazza, two piazza, three piazza, four! Charming alley! Aperol spritz! Go go go! It was amazing.

“a half-broken rock thing that has holes in it.”

By the time I arrived in Rome by myself, I’d already seen some of the bigger tourist attractions, so there wasn’t a mad rush to see them all. It was also August, a strangely quiet time. Yes, some areas are full of tourists (hi) but it’s also a time when many locals leave for their own summer vacations. In the quiet neighborhood where I was staying, many stores were closed for the whole month. I missed Jeff, and realized I couldn’t go a whole four weeks without being around people, so I started going to meetups.

Some of these were language exchanges, where you could ostensibly practice either English or Italian (I tried to practice Italian, but the problem was that everyone spoke English). Some were just to meet people. They’re nice because you don’t have to feel shy about trying to make friends. Because everyone is trying to make friends!³

I don’t know any of these people, but I’m sure they are great.

And this is what made me fall in love with Rome again, not the way I did when I was 18. It wasn’t because of the Trevi Fountain or the Sistine Chapel (which I hope everyone gets to see someday), but because of the people I met — because of the present, and the presence, they represented among all that beautiful history. Some of them became friends I hope to keep forever, while others were annoying or hilarious or weird or just plain fascinating.

Maybe it was because I was there for longer than a normal vacation, but still with the knowledge that it wasn’t permanent. Maybe it was simply that Rome is magic. Maybe everyone was just relieved to have survived the heat of July. Whatever it was, somehow everyone I met there, Italian or otherwise, seemed extra vivid.

One Italian guy with a silly hat kept telling me how bad I was at Italian, which was not helpful. But then there was Merve, a neighbor-turned-dear-friend with whom I shared many nights and many bus rides and conversations.

There was another Italian who went to grad school in the U.S., where he said he really grew to love Waffle House. A woman who was so Scottish I couldn’t believe it. About 14 different guys named Andrea. A heartbroken and devastatingly hot Italian woman who was about to move to Miami.

Two separate men who, when I mentioned I was a writer, said, in a way they thought was coy, “Will you write about me?” and inspired me to stop introducing myself to men as a writer. But hey look! Now I wrote about you, Gabriele and Tony who will never read this. And, of course, there was the girl at the bar, and my trustworthy fast friend Rosario, who she didn’t trust for one second.

“That girl is so intense,” Merve tells me, over the noise of the bar. (In the end, our indecisive group had decided to go into the bar we had been standing in front of in the first place). “I am afraid she might bite me or something.”

“She’s friendly,” I tell Merve. “If anything, she might just kiss you.”

Merve winces. “That’s worse. If she tried that, I’d ask her to bite me instead.”

Somehow, either one would have seemed perfectly fitting, perfectly representative of a night in Roma.

---

Questions of the Week: Have you ever made friends on vacation? Did you keep in touch? What do you think is the best way to meet people in a new place? Would you rather be kissed or bitten by a woman you don’t know at a bar?

Recommendations of the Week: Strange, by Celeste, if you feel like having your heartstrings plucked. How Much Do You Love Me? by Vulfmon & Jacob Jeffries, if you feel like groovin’. This lovely essay (and list of relationship advice) by

Megan Pillow

over at

Craftwork

.

Thank you again to the weird and wonderful and unforgettable people of Rome. I could go on and on about how grateful I am for the friends I made there, but hopefully they already know.

1. Rosario, himself being a man, knows that there are many men who cannot be trusted, and that this girl has no way of truly knowing whether he is one of them, so he doesn’t take offense. Though later, when I report that she made it home safe, he says “That girl was really aggressive. In a cute way?”

2. probably

3. (Or to hit on people. But that’s true of anywhere, I suppose.)