| XXX |
|
|
Sadomasochism in Sicily.
On a recent trip to London, my return flight was over-booked, so I accepted the $150 rebate and Business Class upgrade on the next flight. Before retiring to Alitalia's Captain's Lounge, I had ample time to check out the beautiful bodies gracing the covers of the many laddie magazines that seem not to be losing their vogue-like status. Counting near ten titles to choose from, I flashed back to the days of barbershops in Brooklyn when back-issues of Playboy were scattered about for the men who smelt a mix of whiskey and Old Spice as they fingered the oft-turned pages before their hair was cut and the Brylcream applied. However this day, I was surrounded by a crowd of young kids, and I felt I was ogling the beauty in that book written by Nabokov. So, I decided on the age-worthy and venerable British Esquire. Still a pang of guilt, I picked up the magazine which donned the coverline HOT GIRLS. A flashy yellow fading into orange type face surrounded the super model Marisa Miller - tanned with her wet breasts holding up a red dress that was two sizes two big even if it was constructed of only two inches of Bora Asku's Indonesian cotton. I cupped the magazine in my hand knowing it was a literary stalwart that Nabokov actually contributed to in the magazine's halcyon years. I would balance the buy with the European equivalent of Wine Spectator, called Decanter. Convincing myself that my pending purchases were refined and not hedonistic, I plopped the magazines on the counter with a ten-pound note. The Indian clerk looked me in the eyes, handed me my change and say, "good choice mate, chop, chop." Twenty pages into Esquire. Who knew Wilbur Smith was a writer of thirty novels that have sold over 70 million copies worldwide? Mr. Smith's novels do to Hemingway African adventure stories what Danielle Steele does to Jane Austen - adds countless pages of gratuitous sex and violence with the coating of a sultry cover that sells at supermarket checkout counters. It wasn't the hype of Mr. Smith's recent novel, The Triumph of the Sun, which kept me lingering on the page. Atop five books for summer reading was an anonymous book called 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed. The work is a loosely fictionalized diary of a 14-year-old Sicilian schoolgirl who, despite her age, as the reviewer states, knows the inner workings of her adolescent body and the seedy world of sadomasochism. The book has sold over 2 million copies and a filmed adaptation is due out in September. My thoughts of returning to Heathrow's hectic terminal to see if I could get my hands on the promising work, was quickly quelled when a young waitress with Mediterranean skin and an Italian accent in the Alitalia lounge asked me if I wanted another cocktail. I slurped the last drops of Pimm's through my straw, fumbled at peeling the fruit from the bottom of the glass and said, certainly. She smiled and shuffled off with a saunter. Something learned, I surmised, while watching the models on the catwalks in Milan. I turned back to the page I was reading. Are all Italian girls this naughty? I glance up at the girl mixing my drink. Is this why the book is anonymous? Is it a compilation of stories, one of many, penned from countless hours of sex talk in school bathrooms and standing at the football pitch waiting for the boys to sweat all over them? OK. Let me take inventory on what I have witnessed these past six weeks in Sicily. Clothing is optional.
Clothing. When it is worn, it is form fitting and there isn't much of it. Tops need to be cut low to reveal heaving cleavage, but also hemmed high enough to show tattoos on lower backs. Pants need to be painted on just below the hipbone to prove that a tan line doesn't exist at this level. While at the beach, bikini tops are optional. Clothing on television is also kept to a minimum. Multiple infomercials interrupt movies for twenty minutes at a time touting Wal-Mart like home furnishing stores and mail-order mattresses. The spokeswomen wear push-up bras and lace teddies. Poster advertising in pharmacies and supermarkets have no problem showing the wantedness of a woman in her natural state applying her new bronzing oil. "Which she purchased here, at a 20% discount." I'll take two, a new mattress and a small hand carved wooden table that can fit on my terrace. Alcohol. There is no drinking age that I can count. Italians love their alcohol. It is part of the dining experience. The pre-dinner aperitivo, the ever-full glass of wine sloshing with a four-course meal and the post-dinner drink. Wine is the cornerstone to the drinking experience and is offered to teens at the dinner table to fortify their existence. And therefore, alcohol is not a forbidden fruit, and it is not abused when sneaking around after-hours. Cigarettes. Freud would contest that the oral fixation with cigarette smoking is inherently sexual. The process of consuming something that is bad for you, offering a dizzying rush to the head that causes the heart to skip a beat and eventually shortening your lifespan before pushing it away to be repeated all over again. I would say that is also the classic relationship story. Repeated in our younger years to be abolished when we find the one true love that is sleek and slender on the outside, but caters to all our darkest, dirtiest fantasies inside. At that point we decided to copulate and give up smoking. However, Italians continue to smoke, but then again no one has ever said they were a faithful lot. All in all, not a bad lifestyle. Also consider there is a break in the workday at 1 PM, and work is resumed at 4 PM. During this break, food is consumed in fistfuls and naps are taken. In July, stores have massive sales, in an attempt to sell out their summer inventory because August is too damn hot to work and shops close down for the entire month. Shorter workdays, more vacation. Advantage, Italy. So, where do we Americans go wrong? Aside from thoughts on geo-political economic philosophy, we have somewhere along the lines lost our commonsense when it comes to developing our children. The experiential maturing process of youth in America is limited to doing fewer things than say the 14-year-old Italian girl who penned the sadomasochistic diary noted above. Is it right or wrong for her to have had those experiences? Will she be better off not having had those experiences? Are her parents terrible at the job of raising children for not producing a prim and proper report card of a child age 0-18, or in some cases, 21? We can't impose the answers on her life. She needs to live inside or outside her decisions and find her own answers. But sometimes that soul searching can produce plenty awe-inspiring things. As Sensationalist British artist, Tracey Emin was reported as saying, "I'd give up art if I could answer the questions to what inspires my work." Those answers keep eluding Tracey and she keeps producing some of the more avant-garde art and installation work. In America, there is no drinking. No smoking. No fighting. No bare breasts. No porn on the internet. No masturbating. No playing organized team sports, because you will scrape your knee and break your neck. No riding between subway cars. No bike riding without a helmet. No driving without a seatbelt. No use of cell-phones in certain places. No decisions that haven't already been made for you. So we continue to hide our kids inside, dress them in the latest articles from the Sears catalog and allow them to steal cars in the supped-up version of Grand Theft Auto or network their PlayStations to other kids huddled at home as they blow each other up with weapons of mass destruction that the military industrial complex has yet to invent. If that doesn't keep them content, let's go rent Terminator 3 - a two-dollar promise that at least two hundred people will be killed before the two words of the title screen will appear. We rather allow our pent up aggression to be released in video games and movies we watch at home, because it is a comfortable environment to do so. Well, how about allowing our kids some wine and not be afraid of exposing them to the breasts of birds and the stingers of the bees? Maybe it will produce a warming inside that will cause future feelings of artistic inspiration and love. Hey, if your kid smokes with the cool kids behind his or her high school after hours, at least he has friends and doesn't feel alienated. I rather him or her with a pack of cigarettes than packing a gun and blowing away the kids he wishes to befriend. Suck, and Know
Post 8 - August'05 Back to home...
|
|
|