Three of my friends and I were going to Italy as a celebration of graduating from our intensive boarding high school. Two of us liked to stay in, two of us liked to go out. Christine and I were eager to explore the fabled night life of Italy, where we were of age to drink and party. We wandered towards the main square and were almost immediately swarmed by eager Italian men. Two of them suggested we go to the club with them and we nodded politely but whispered to each other how we were going to ditch them. We excused ourselves to the bathroom and went inside a restaurant, fixing our make up and chatting for about fifteen minutes. We were sure the men would have moved on by now and headed out only to see them waiting together on the other side of the square. They tapped their wrists and gestured with their heads for us to come on. We stared at each other and turned around to look carefully at the large collection of gelato available in the restaurant. We kept glancing at the men as time wore on until even the waiter asked us if we were trying to get rid of them. We nodded and said a few words in Italian such as “why wait?” and wondered what we should do, sure that they would follow us wherever we headed. An American couple was getting some gelato and they noticed our dilemma. They offered for us to join them and walk in the other direction which we gladly did, refusing to look over our shoulders at the men.
The next night we devised a system, that if men approached us who we were not interested in we would babble in other languages to ward them off. Christine studied Chinese and I spoke Spanish. We would immediately both start rambling at each other in these different languages if men came up to us. Some of them literally grabbed our wrists and tried words in a few different tongues. I found out quickly that most of them knew Spanish and resorted instead to mumbling gibberish with a lilting rhythm. It was surprising how many languages the men would try to engage us in but we kept looking at each other, nodding enthusiastically and cracking up at the ridiculouslness of our scheme.
The biggest problem was of course, when two men approached us and one was attractive and the other was not. On one evening a gorgeous dark skinned light eyed man came up to me, while his pudgy hairy friend courted Christine. We sat on the banks of a river and I batted my eyelashes at this gentleman while Christine rolled her eyes at me when she caught mine. My new friend and I intertwined our fingers and smiled at each other, as Christine coughed loudly and complained that she was tired. She told the man that she was tired, and he quickly offered her to come sleep at his place. I continued flirting with the blue eyed specimen as Christine next explained that she really didn’t know much Italian. He answered “I have a dictionary…at my apartment”. She tried saying she was sick at which point he obviously offered medicine which he had, at his apartment. I had played along with some uninteresting men while Christine was enticed by their more attractive friend, an inevitable piece of female friendship sacrifice and she was generally willing to do the same for me, but this case was excessive. She apologized but said she really had to get out of there and I was disappointed but realized how outrageously persistent her guy was. We explained that we had to meet our boyfriends, a generally good excuse to keep them from following, and wandered away laughing as I kept looking over my shoulder at the good looking man. We shook our heads and headed to a discoteca to dance the night away.
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