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Mission Accomplished.
I spent the night cursing my good fortune of finding a perfect apartment in downtown Catania. The apartment is housed in an antique palazzo in the historical district of the city. It smells of a standard Sicilian street scene: Baroque buildings, pastel and weatherworn, balconies over looking boxy cars that park tires on narrow sidewalks to give way to rectangular, lava rock that make up the cobblestones of Via San Giuseppe al Duomo. Number 31 has formidable doors, five inches thick, perhaps fifteen feet high. The doors are left ajar during the day, and at night, nothing but the vast consumption of wine will allow a resident who calls this building home, the muscle to move this burden to bed. Upon successful open and a breathless closure, you enter a courtyard with terraces connected by tight ropes that give a glimpse of your neighbor's wardrobe. The hanging garments sleep in both sun and moonlight, woken on cue, when the hollow sounds of swinging church bells ride in on the wind from above. Eight short stairwells lead me to my wing. The wells, turning left and right, house fifty-one marble steps that have been softened by hundreds of years of footsteps. Upon entering the apartment, a hallway leads me into a small, but vertical, loft space. My eyes settled down on the ten-foot, French doors that open to the balcony and welcome me again to the outside world. I open the doors with visions of a simple table and chair, early morning coffee and blackened fingers from thumbing through the daily newspapers. I'll finish the coffee and take a drag on a long-ash cigarette, watching the flurry of helmeted rat-racers, traveling to work on their motor bikes of black, blue and gray. And then, with every page turned and every Italian passing by, bloodsucking mosquitoes are invited into my humble home. I am rich with sweet American blood and they have every right they tell themselves to feed off my fantasy. They'll park themselves on the warm, yellow walls and high on the vaulted ceiling - a perch only a self-preservationist could love. After hours of settling and arranging the space to my liking, it is 2AM. The windowed doors are shut and locked. I retire to my loft bed. I shut my eyes and congratulate myself on a job well done. A new home for an indefinite amount of time. I smile in the darkness. But before I can relax the grin on my face, I tense at the sound of jet engine shrieking past my face. A simple mission to survey the mountain of flesh I call my body. I turn on the light to find my fast friend idling around the ceiling above. Silence now, I creep from under the covers to find a weapon of choice a magazine, no I want to read that in the morning on the balcony, the passage for my predator's trespassing. I settle on paper towels so I can feel the bugger pinched between my fingers. I climb the stairs back to the bed. As I eye the enemy I spot a second bloodsucker spying on me. I am in for a long night I think as I spring off the edge of the bed towards the ceiling like a superhero destined to make a home safe for sleeping. One down, one to go, or so I know. After several minutes of holding watch, I wise up and lie on the bed, prone and motionless. This is the optimum position to allow my eyes the opportunity to canvas the unadorned surfaces of the walls and ceiling. As my focus becomes more intense, several thread like images are darting in front of me. Before paranoia sets in, I am reminded of the optical illness my leggy, blonde ophthalmologist described to me. Floaters, she said, are harmless. They are dust like particles living on your cornea, available to you when you are daydreaming or staring into open, white spaces. The floaters disappear with my thoughts of the good doctor, naked, lying next to me. Experiencing our first night in concubine, first night in my new country, in my new home. Quickly, the thoughts of her vanquish, as does the inevitable masturbation when #2 tail hooks on my Mediterranean wall like an F16 descending on an aircraft carrier. He is a cock-blocking bastard, my testosterone rages. With this thought, I made the uneducated assumption that mosquitoes have gender because it could only be a man who would be brave enough to want to stick around after seeing the agility I possessed in striking down the first flying pinprick. He recovers from his sling-back landing, and I wallop him against the wall, spewing blood on the hand towel and the painted surface. My blood, goddamnit. Wired now, I look for a timepiece. It is 3AM and another bogey buzzes by. We carry on this dogfight until dawn. When the sun rises and shines light on the nearby Piazza Duomo, and the pasticherrias begin to warm their ovens for a morning of baking, and all over Italy, espresso machines are brewing their first cup, I fall asleep missing my first coffee and morning read. Night Falls
Post 3 - June'05 Back to home...
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