Notizie dal Mio Cuore - 62
But to hear these words from someone I was sure I had stepped away from, someone I was falling in love with back – when was it? – I think May of 2007 – and after I’ve said to him when he called me recently “si possiamo avere un cena insieme ma come amici. Non posso essere un amante con te come prima.” (yes we can have a dinner together but as friends, I can’t be lovers with you like before). Because – if you recall – “before” was not so easy. “Before” was dating – we called him Alessandro – in a way that served his life and made me feel like a mistress to a non-married man.
There is something about me and men who want me desperately but can’t seem to actually allow themselves to be with me. And still this is Alessandro. One year later, calling me for friendly drinks, kissing me on the lips to greet me instead of both cheeks, wrapping his arm around my waste as we walk through Piazza Beccheria, touching my face with “che bella sei” (how beautiful you are) while I’m trying to get him to clearly understand in my now one-year-older Italian that “non posso” be lovers. And I can’t.
So why do I have a drink with him? Or dinner? Or anything for that matter? I remember once, back in Los Angeles in my former life, I was taking a class on self-defense and the teacher said something so striking I’ve never forgotten it. She said that women are so innately nurturing that the larger percentage of victims restrain themselves from fighting back because of a deep-seated fear of hurting their attackers.
I don’t want to hurt him. And yet I am wondering how much I am hurting myself. We stopped at Piazzale Michelangelo after dinner and walked toward the edge which looked over the city. The moon was full which was making the stones of Florence glow an orange and gold between the shadows of the grays and tans. He looked at me and took my face in his hands and kissed me far too intimately to be friends and basically told me he loved me. That some day things would not always be like this – the “this” for those of you who may not know is his strict commitment to his 9 year old daughter’s fantasy that even though he no longer lives with her mother (they were never married) there is no other woman in his life (it’s the whole “La Mamma” thing). So I think Alessandro, 500 feet from the bronze copy of The David and framed by the moon kissing the trees above the Boboli Gardens also basically asked me to marry him…. somewhere …. in …. the … future.
I can only pray that if and when that time comes my answer will be “no, grazie.”
Ciao Ragazzi,
A voi vi mando tanti baci!
Bari
