At an early age, I began turning situations in which I felt helpless and victimized into general legislated case studies.  I have never considered generalities to be truths or untruths.  They were mere topics for mere conversations and as the engines turned over and the wings lifted me away from the most direct and poignant love I have ever experienced, I felt it necessary to engage myself in a generality, otherwise, I would have made a mess of myself on this festering, flying germ tube that was taking me back to the United States.

In General: on living with an Italian woman; or more specifically, in general, on living with a Sicilian woman.  

When making love to a Sicilian woman, I have been fortunate to have had her whisper incredibly wondrous and arousing phrases in my ear with a look of pain and pleasure.  As I laid face buried in her neck, mid-stroke, I heard, “Fantastico,” “Scopami,” “Ti Odio,” “Ti Amo per questo,” “Sei un Mago?” and “Brutto Mostro Cattivo”

“Fantastico.”  Every man likes to be called “Fantastic,” especially when he knows that he is not.  The fantasy of being fantastic is what matters when a man’s balls are slapping against the crack of a woman’s beauty.  This fantasy is so imperative for some men, that it is irrelevant if he is even actually engaged in a sexual experience. 

I once had a friend rebuke me for leaning over a table at a strip club, located off of Route 1 in Massachusetts, and letting him in on a secret that the frequent tease-seer is well aware of. 

My friend was sitting at the end of the bar with a large stupid grin, making goo-goo eyes at a pair of legs stretched open in his face, while the dancer leaned back on her hands, pumping her thighs, mouthing him with her lips, as if sucking his dong, and then winked at him with her winki-dinki-brown-star.  He was laying down dollar bill after dollar bill.  This did not concern me.  Hell, this was her job, to show and wiggle a little shaved gash, squeeze large silicon breast, maybe even lick one or two, and in return she is paid hard currency, while caring less for hard cocks.  I was worried that my friend truly believed that the Teaser loved him.  So I leaned over, knowing that he was not a denizen of exotic dance halls and told him, “You know she doesn’t give a shit about you.  She’s suckering you for your money.”  His response was more insightful than the novice wisdom I had tried to impart to him.  He shouted, “Don’t fuck with my fantasy!”  This glorious stripper made him feel as if he was the only fantastic dick she had ever seen and that was enough for him.

“Scopami” or “Fuck Me.”  Well, every man blows a load off that phrase.  Even the most hardened prude weakens his moralistic principles and allows his Christian Betty to whisper, “Fuck Me,” in his ear, and if he doesn’t, then fuck him.

“Ti Odio” and “Ti Amo per questo,” that is, “I hate you” and “I love you for that,” sensually whispered into a man’s ear when a woman begins to pulsate and arch her back lets a man know that what he has been doing, he has been doing right.  A woman telling a man “I hate you” is the exact opposite of what she sincerely means.  However, it is better if she actually feels a bit of hatred.  What she actually means is that she hates herself for letting a man take her to a place where her body has lost complete control and in turn, she is held suspended in an existential conundrum of hating him and loving him for taking her there.  While she lays there in the dialectic of the Yes and the No, maybe lighting a cigarette or stroking her hair or stretching out while caressing her body, she whispers an inquisitive, “Sei un Mago?”  “Are you a wizard?”  

The man is brought back to his childhood when he thought of wizards and dragons and knights and answers, “Damn right I am.” 

If the man fancies himself “cool,” he might just nod or not say anything at all.  But he feels like one, a wizard that is, and he is glad that someone else has suspected what he has always known himself.

Now if an Italian woman, generally speaking, and more specifically--generally speaking that is--a Sicilian woman, whispers all these passionate phrases in a man’s ear and adds one more, “Brutto Mostro Cattivo,” a man can gaze into the stars of glory with pride and dignity.  It doesn’t matter if he’s red blooded or blue.  He feels good about life, about himself, and more importantly, about the woman he just laid down with and spread open.

The phrase, “Brutto Mostro Cattivo” (You bad brute of a monster), I’d say, is the best compliment a man could be given, and--more specifically--the best compliment I have ever been given.  While I was wallowing in my prowess, not saying anything, striking a cigarette, “fancying” myself one of the “cool,” I was arrested with a, “I’ll kill you if I catch you making love with another woman.”  I coolly looked at my Sicilian lover, thinking, “In California I could have you incarcerated for that threat.”  She then grabbed me by the throat and said, “I’ll break your legs if I even catch you looking at another woman.”   Then she passionately kissed me and released the strangle hold. 

I thought I was the “Brutto Mostro Cattivo.”  Who the hell does she think she is talking to me like that?  By her own admission, she said I was a “bad brute of a monster.”  But the threat coupled with the kiss turned me on, so I played along, as I not so cleverly thought, “When in Rome do as the Romans do,” and I slapped her on the ass.  But she set me straight, for she was no Roman.  She was a Sicilian and she, not so playfully, slapped me back, then she wiggled her adorable, round ass out of bed and made her way to take a piss.  What she failed to tell me was that she would be breaking my balls until I failed her.

The more time I spent with this Sicilian woman--and surmised of all Sicilian women, generally speaking--I figured out what was behind the constant ball breaking.  Breaking a man’s balls is a sort of warm up, a calisthenics, a getting into shape for the more rigorous breaking of the legs, which is also training for the endurance and strength it takes to dig a six foot grave somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.  For a Sicilian woman the killing you is the easy part.  It is the disposing of your body, the digging of your grave, for which she has to get in shape.  So, just when I thought I was the “Brutto Mostro Cattivo” I was winded.  Sure I am “Brutto Mostro Cattivo” in the sack, and that’s where she likes it.  It’s also where it ends, because she is “Brutto Mostro Cattivo” everywhere else. 

My Sicilian lover later informed me that I had better use a condom were I to fuck another woman.  I quickly responded, “What the hell does it matter if I use a condom if you’re going to kill me?”  I thought I had her.  She would have to stew over her violent absurdities.  No!  She was quicker than I was, as she shot back, “You have to wear a condom, because before I kill you I am going to want to fuck you one last time.”  I scratched myself, and went for a walk through the porticos of Bologna.  

I needed a retardant, something to unwind my mind from the pleasant surprise of an amorous assault. 

I would have to agree that the disposal of my body would be the more arduous step in doing away with a hypothetically unfaithful me, but if you looked at it from my end, it was the easiest part.  The breaking of my balls was by far the most painful of the three catastrophes.  The busting of my legs was the same, regardless from whose end you looked.  In Italy, it would definitely be my end, whereas in the United States, especially in California, where there is the new O.J. Simpson law, things were a little more equal.  In California it would be both our ends.  She would be sure to spend the rest of her life in prison, or at least do a five-to-ten stretch.  She might even get the gas chamber.

Overall, I’d have to protest, as I learned in a US-side-of-things domestic violence class.  When a man comes home from a hard days work and catches his wife in the arms of another man getting mid-stroked, or having her ass slammed and shaped by another man’s pelvic thrust, shouting at the top of her lungs, “You bad brute of a monster!” the civil and healthy thing to do is be calm.  So there you are, Mr. Man from the United States of America.  You come home, dripping sweat from a hard day’s work to find your wife dripping sweat from another man’s hard day’s work, and you’re expected to act responsible and sensible because such is the sign of the healthy interior life of an upstanding civilian.  When you feel like ripping a new asshole in the guy who is ripping a new asshole in your wife, and when you feel like back-handing your better half, just close the door and announce, “I am taking a twenty-minute timeout walk.”  But take no more than twenty-minutes, because if you’re gone for more then twenty-minutes, your wife might begin to worry that you have left her for good, and that you have done so without consulting her.  This would constitute another form of domestic violence, falling under the category of mental and emotional abuse.  If you feel that you might inflict some sort of bodily harm, no matter how minor the harm, even after the twenty-minute timeout walk, you are to take a second twenty-minute walk.  But first you must report back to your wife, giving her the secure comfort that you have not walked out of the relationship.  It is also critical that you not stew over the look of pain and pleasure on your wife’s face as she was sponging up another man’s pre-cum.  So you return home, sure to find your wife on her back, head banging against the wall, tits jiggling about, shouting, “You bad brute of a monster!  Fantastic!  Fuck me!  I hate you!  I love you for this!  You bad brute of a monster!”  Your response as the stronger, healthier half is to be, “Honey, I’m still angry.  I think if I hang around I am going to slap the shit out of you and strangle that ‘bad brute of a monster!’  I’ll be right back.  I need another twenty-minute timeout.” 

Most likely she will not directly respond, but she will have a response nonetheless, “Don’t Stop!  Don’t Stop!”  Which you are to understand as, “Sure.  Take your time.”

So there I was, staggering through the porticos of Bologna, trying really hard or hardly trying at all to think about lovely things--about things that made life worth the effort.  I thought about loyal happy dogs, about little furry gophers popping their heads out of their holes, scratching themselves, nibbling nuts they held in their paws, while their precious noses twitched and wiggled about.  I remembered a specific afternoon when the clouds were white and puffy, when the sky was clear and blue, when I played baseball and pitched three consecutive no hit innings and hit a homer and a double.  While sitting in the dugout I had thought, “Life is pretty,” “Life is grand,” and “Damn, I’m one hell of a ball player.”  Then I remembered Stevey Moore batting the head of that unsuspecting, handsome gopher feasting on an acorn.  My blood boiled and rage ran through me as I kicked the shit out of Stevey for creaming a helpless rodent.  I looked down at Stevey laying in the grass with the fat, bloody lip I had given him, and next to him was this helpless gopher, panting heavily for breath, blood trickling out of his fury little ears and mouth.  And I realized that was the day I cam to understand the implications of euthanasia, because I was the one who had to put this gopher out of his misery.  So I crush the gasping gopher’s head with the end of Stevey’s bat with a tear sliding down my filthy face.  When I finished with the gofer I started back in on Stevey, kicking him in his stomach which didn’t hurt as much as my own.  Then I hit him in the back of the legs with his gopher-blood-stained bat. 

“What the hell?  I got distracted.  Those aren’t nice memories.”  So I tried again and again, searching for good memories, but I really didn’t want good memories.  Stricken with an acute sensation of paranoia, I regressed into the hypothetical Unfaithful scenario.  I knew the law.  Shit, Mr. Man!  My hypothetical California wife could have me incarcerated on a felony for calmly telling her that I was still angry and felt like beating the shit out of her and slicing that “bad brute of a monster’s” throat.  Or did I say, “slap the shit out of her and strangle the ‘bad brute of a monster.’”  I couldn’t concentrate on anything peaceful.  I couldn’t work through my personal pain.  I wasn’t permitted to be pissed off.  All I could do was wonder if my hypothetical wife might turn vindictive and call the cops.  Then I would be in the penitentiary for eighteen months.  Every helicopter and cop I saw cruise by I thought was coming for me.  (But I was in Bologna and there were no helicopters.) 

“BE ON THE ALERT!  BE ON THE ALERT!” 

There is an A.P.B. out on a vengeful husband who is going to do in his wife and her “bad brute of a monster.”  All I wanted was a timeout and to watch the gopher wash himself and eat his nut, and now I’m facing a possible six months in L.A. County or 18 months in Chino and life isn’t so pretty.  “To hell with my wife and her new ‘bad brute of a monster.’”  I want to live.  I want my freedom.

I had worked up a “fantastico” victim scenario walking in the winter night of Bologna, knowing I had a beautiful Sicilian who loved me so much she’d kill me. 

I thought about the O.J. Simpson trial.  Wasn’t he found innocent and now they got this new O.J. Simpson domestic-violence-law in California.  That must suck for O.J.  They tell him he is innocent but they’re going to pass a new law for battered women and name it after him.  Who cares about the Heisman Trophy, O.J. became a law.

At first I was appalled that he was found not guilty.  I was living at the Harvard Law School dormitories when the verdict was read.  The school was racially divided.  I went to a lecture Johnnie Cochran gave just after the trial.  He was a damn good speaker.  He had flare.  He had rhythm.  He had style.  And those rhymes stuck in my head for awhile, “If the shoe doesn’t fit you have to acquit.”  Or was it a glove?  Everybody thought O.J. was a “bad brute of a monster.”  I didn’t.  Sure he was lying, but not about killing Nicole and Goldman.  He was lying about who did and why. 

I called up Dionne Warwick’s Psychic Hotline.  If anyone had the inside story, it had to be the woman who could sing a Cole Porter song and have a Psychic Hotline.  If she could sing lyrics like

                        I love the looks of you, the lure of you

                                I’d love to make a tour of you

                                The eyes, the arms, the mouth of you

                                The east, west, north and the south of you

I’d love to gain complete control of you

And handle even the heart and soul of you

So love, at least, a small percent of me, do

For I love all of you

she would know what was behind the trial.  And if she didn’t have the story she had that beautiful, round, black crystal ball to tell us.   For a buck-ninty-nine a minute she laid out the whole story. 

“O.J.’s older son done it.  He was pissed with some ex-girlfriend, who was a friend of Nicole’s, for pinching his cocaine as he ‘was’ a dealer.”

“He was?”  I asked in astonishment.

“Baby.  Everybody in Beverly Hills knows that.”

“They do?”  A buck-ninety-nine a minute was a damn good rate for the inside scoop, I thought.

“Oh yeah, Sweetie.  Now here’s what happened.  This girl that O.J.’s son was dating pinched a large amount of his cocaine and ran off with it.  You know you can’t go pinching a man’s stash.  So O.J.’s son hired some low-life crack-heads to go over to Nicole’s house where this girl was supposed to be and get the cocaine back and put a scaring to her.”

“He did?”

“Damn right he did.  Well turns out that the girl wasn’t there, as we all know, and Goldman and Nicole were mistaken for a black girl.”

“You’re shittin’ me!” 

“Hell no, I’m not shittin’ you.  I’m Dionne Warwick, and I’m blessed with psychic abilities.  You know how it is, you can’t trust those crackies.  How they mistook a white girl and a Jew boy with a body like he had, I don’t know.  You know what the difference is between a drunk and crack-head?”

“What?”

“A drunk will steal your money and lie to you.  Where as a crack-head will steal your money, lie to you and then try and help you find it.”

“Ha!  That’s a good one.”

“A good one is right!  Why wasn’t there a scratch on O.J.?  Even the L.A. County Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran…What a name! Woo!…admitted that Dr. Irwin Golden made some mistakes.  They couldn’t say how many assailants were involved.  Dr. Sathy said that Ronnie Goldman didn’t have a chance.  Boy!  That Ronnie was a sexy, strong Jew boy.  He used to get me flustered as I watched his pecs and biceps flex while he brought me my dinner at Mezzaluna.  And that Nicole, she worked out herself.  We had the same trainer.”

“You did?”

“I’m straight talkin’ you.”

“I don’t mean to sound as if I don’t believe you.  The fact is I believe every word you’re telling me,” I said, assuring her of my faith in her psychic powers.

“And that’s not all.”

“It’s not?”

“Noo-noo-no!  How do you think those rich folks get their cocaine in Beverly Hills?”

“How?”  She had me wrapped.

“Please!  Where you been all this time?  You never see those fiends who stand around Franklin and Highland slinging dope over in Benedict Canyon do you?”

“No.  I can’t say that I do.”

“It’s a known fact that that Detective, Mark Fuhrman, used to stop vehicles with white women riding with black men. You ever see those pretty white girls with bolt-on-titties and platinum blond hair driving brand new convertible BMW’s into East L.A. or South Central?”

She was making sense.  “No…No, I can’t say that I have.”

“How the hell do you think those lawyers and doctors and actors and everybody else up in those Hills get their drugs?”

“Mrs. Warwick, I’m not sure, but I think I’m getting the picture.”

“Baby!  Call me Dionne.  You’re not no ordinary white boy.”

“I’m a white Latino, thanks.”

“Then you better get your head screwed on right because you’re skin pigmentation betrays your name and that’s a hard place to balance yourself in.  Anyway, O.J.’s handsome, son brings it to them.  And O.J. knew this and all those lawyers and judges and society people knew this.  Poor O.J. took the fall to protect those rich folk’s drug connection.”

“Shit!”

“Shit’s right!  Damn right!  The rich got to have their drugs too.  And they need it delivered to their front door by a good-looking-rich black boy.  You can’t have a good looking rich white boy driving around the hood.  So you get a good looking rich black boy, like Jason Lamar, whose daddy was from the hood…”

“I thought O.J. was from San Francisco?”

“Boooy don’t interrupt me.  Don’t you know that they got ghettos in San Francisco too?  So you get a looker like Lamar, whose daddy is from the streets and is a famous football player, and what you got yourself is a good delivery boy.  Those white society people love O.J.  O.J.’s a good time and generous too.  He gave that sexy Kato a good home.  Why do you think they call O.J. “The Juice?”  We all party together.  Judge Ito, Johnnie, Marcia Clark, Denise Brown, Al Cowlings and his adult film actress Jennifer Peace, even the Goldman’s joined us on occasion.  Can’t you see?  O.J. looked like he was lyin’ because he was lyin’.  But not about killing those two innocent people but about who done it and how deep this is, and boy, it’s deep.  If the truth got out you might have the DEA cracking down on some important people.  O.J. was protecting the establishment.  Frank Chiuchiolo witnessed two white men running from the scene that night.  Two white crackies, I’d say.  Lamar was a damn fool for payin’ two white crackies to do a job like that.  Everybody knows you don’t hire crackies, especially when you can get a reliable Russian to take care of your business.”

“Wow!”

I thanked Dionne Warwick for the insight and hung up.  Then I decided the whole bunch of them was mad, and that I had to stop feeling victimized all the time. 

All this mental anxiety started with a little sexy talk.  And I liked sexy talk.  More specifically I liked when women talked sexy talk to me.  I’m not so good at it myself.  Universally speaking, I find women like sexy talk when they’re getting fucked the way they need to get fucked.  I also find, universally, that women would rather have men simply shut up and get it over with when they’re not getting fucked the way they need to get fucked. 

I have had women whisper to or shout at me, “Talk to me.  Tell me something sexy, dirty.”  The best thing I could come up with I stuck with.  Women have seemed to like it when I have looked at them with passion and sexy lust while slowly and sensually sliding in and out and around them and rhetorically asking them, “Do you like having my cock in you?  You like having my cock in your pussy?”  The woman’s reply has been a sensual and erotic, “Yes.”  Sometimes I follow up with a seductive request, “Tell me you like my cock in you.”  Women have always gotten wrapped around that one. 

This line is good for all kinds of sex, “frustrated-slamming-pelvic-fucking after a hard day’s work,” “passionate love making,” “long fervent sessions,” “I’m-still-mad-at-you make-up sex,” etc. etc.  “Do you like having my cock in you?” works fine.  Women have responded with a shy smile, or an “Oh yeah,” or a “Give it to me…give me more!” or “Your cock is the only cock I like in me,” as they climaxed.  I knew they meant what they said.  I also knew that they only meant it when they said it, and they had said it to someone before me and would say it to someone after me.  And that was of no consequence to me.

Although one time I was made aware of how obvious and rhetorical my sexy talk was.  A feisty woman stopped plapulating my cock and challenged me with a question of her own and it wasn’t, “Do you like having your cock in my pussy?”  That would have been successful sexy talk.  Rather she asked, “What do you mean?  What?  Do you think I can’t make decisions for myself?  If I didn’t like having your cock in me, do you think you would have your cock in my pussy?”

She asked all this while my cock was still in her, while we were in the voraciousness of lust.  She misunderstood me.  I thought she was into confrontational sex.  She was flattering my cock while insulting my intellect.  I felt stupid.  I felt challenged.  I felt badgered.  I needed a quick response.  “No.  I was just trying to be kinky.”

Satisfied with my answer, she resumed thrusting with gusto.  I wanted to get the hell away from her.  I finished what was required of me, made up an excuse, put my pants on and left.  While walking home I erased her number from my cell phone determined never to use that sexy talk again.

Enough with victimizations, I was glad to be in Bologna.  With my Sicilian woman hurling passionate jealous threats, I knew what was expected of me.  My greatest challenge: learning how to duck a backhand.  Even her mother slapped me once for calling her, “Signora.”  She demanded that I call her, “Mamma.”  My greatest brainteaser was figuring out if Bologna had a second name.  And my greatest worry was wondering what color the sky was as I walked under the endless mazes of Porticos which reminded me of a hot smoggy day in Los Angeles.