Reading history of Rome again. the franks, the Lombards, Byzantine, the guelfs, the giberdines, the Visigoths, the ortrogoths. Italy has been host to just about every other country in the world at some time or another. the southern part an Arab controlled state for over 200 years in the first millennium, which you can really see in the look of many of the Italians in the South still. Julius Cesar, Octavian, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero. I meet Giovanna after her work and we go to meet some friends from my school. We eat dinner in the piazza navona with a few thousand other people from all over the world. We drink three bottles of white wine. We are all buzzed. Beyond buzzed. Giovanna is the strange Italian in the group. The rest of us “stranieri” from other countries just visiting here from somewhere else to learn the language. You can perceive the differences in having her as part of the group. because she is Italian. She is much more bold and forward than everyone else. smokes twice as much. Speaks loudly and forcefully. Very social and outgoing. So very Italian. Drinks more. God she is sexy. Her belly showing. Low cut jeans. Amazing body. Dark dark features. 

We go to another bar. Drink more. rambling through the plaza amongst hundreds maybe thousands of other people. me and tom, another student from New York talk about how much we will miss Italy. The food. Tonight I had a mixed meat and veggies grilled on skewers and spinach sautéed in olive oil. Last night I had beef tips smothered in gorgonzola and spinach and of course lots of tomatoes. Every day for lunch and dinner tomatoes. Why can’t we have this in America we mourn over our twentieth glass of wine. Ten dollar bottles of delicious wine and any kind of gourmet food we want for ten bucks a plate. Made with love and honor not just the quick buck mentality of the states. Tom from new York is much more cynical than I am about our food in the states. Telling the others that in the states the people don't care about good food. They just care about making money and survival so we can invade another fucking country like Iraq. Americans are down right now. especially the ones who have run away to places like Italy, or Spain, or Greece, etc. here you eat a plate of tomatoes drowned in olive oil and onions and basil and you feel this really groovy vibe of love and health coming from within. In the states if you can find something like this out on the street you just feel ripped off that you had to pay eight or nine dollars for it to pay for all the fancy fucking furniture they installed in the restaurant to try to make it look cooler than the restaurant next door. Its all bullshit in the states. Fancy this and that. maybe not in all the states but in the big cities now. everyone is always trying to out do each other and people have forgotten about the simple things like good food made with love and offered at an affordable price. God will I miss the food here. 

The breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. 

I am supposed to come back to the states tomorrow or Sunday. I keep telling myself this. but Giovanna's body is so beautiful. and I have so many friends here from all over the world. So instead of thinking about it I just down another glass of wine. I want to pick her up and kiss her and make love to her all night.

We walk through the cobblestone streets. passing one grand ancient monument after another. we stop at the ancient statue of the emperor Marcus aurileus (one of my favorites reads in college) and we all sit down in the piazza designed by Michelangelo surrounding it and roll another joint. We pass the joint around and start laughing. Each of us from a different country: Italy, Germany, England, Barcelona, Madrid, Ukraine, and of course America, all of us laughing our heads off at one another. The police pull up to walk around and make sure all is well in the oldest city in the entire world and we continue to smoke our joint following Giovanna’s lead. Things like this don't matter in Rome. Rome is too big and too old to worry about a bunch of exchange students smoking some pot. I stare up at Marcus aurileus. Wow. Giovanna and me are starting to touch now. I feel strange because as much as I like Giovanna, I am strangely attracted to the girl from Barcelona also. Perhaps not to her, but to her energy, to her Castilian accent. God I want to make love with her because of this thick Castilian accent. There is something so superior about these girls from Spain. I noticed in the Listerine girl as well. What is that? it is so classy. And confident. I love that. American girls don't have it, but English girls do. it is so essential. Perhaps... I need to go to Barcelona and live and learn Castilian. I decide this in a spit second. I will have to do it. But when? Can I get someone to do all the work that will be necessary to market and promote Sleep with you over the next two months before we tour. Will we tour? Will the album take off? If it doesn’t what will I do with my life? what am I doing now? I am drunk and stoned on these ancient cobblestoned streets of Rome with a bunch of people I didn't even know two weeks ago and who I probably will never see again after this week. but I am so happy and for now they feel like my best friends. 

We take a bunch of pictures with my sony Clie. 

Red faced and pissed out of our minds. We stumble into a bar that doesn’t even open till 1am. A bar not opening till 1am? Strange. We stumble into this place its like going to Miami. Surfboards on the wall. Snowboards. In Rome??? What the fuck? Where are we? Nelly and Janet Jackson playing on the stereo. We are drunk. very drunk. me and Giovanna start to dance. We are dirty dancing. No one else exists except us on the dance floor. She is asking me how I can resist her. I am telling her I am not going to start making out with her in front of everyone else. I'm wasted but not that wasted. she is telling me that sometimes Americans are too much gentlemen. Later she tells me it is a welcome change. But we are starting to kiss and make out a bit. Wow. Giovanna is nice. she is hot. She is sexy. She is so wild and italian. I can’t believe this. where the fuck are we?” I keep saying to Tom the guy from New York. He's trying to get me to ditch my trip home and come to Greece for a few days. Hhhmmmm... im already here. might as well. What the fuck am I doing? The band? How is the band? What is going to happen to our new CD? God do we need a manager or someone to do all this shit for us so I can just go off and do my thing and write about it and make money from that. it is about fucking time for that. Why can’t I just live this life I live and make money from selling our CDs and just keep traveling the world? Why do we have to do all this other stuff???

Giovanna. God I am kissing her madly by 5am. We leave to walk her to her car. The city is empty except a few stragglers. There are some gypsies asleep on the streets and some homeless asleep on benches. A few lost tourists try to find their hotel. speaking to me as if I am an Italian. so happy when I point them in the right direction in perfect American English. “oh my God thank you so much! You are American? where are you from?” I live in Miami. just keep walking that way, you'll find your hotel.” “Oh my God Miami. we love Miami. thank you so much.” The city is beautiful. so peaceful. Giovanna is all over me. every few yards we stop and kiss for a few minutes. She has me singing. I am so happy I have a fucking perma-smile on my face and I am singing. We debate who is better, frank Sinatra, Pavarotti, or Caetano Veloso. Of course she says the doors are better than all of them. the doors. Wow. Fucking a man. The doors. I see a huge poster of Caetano. You know Lou reed was just here. can I live here? its cheaper than New York. Of course you aren't connected here like you are in the states. Its like another world.

Giovanna tells me its o.k. that we found each other and now I will leave. Its like a movie. We are happy we found each other. We don't care that I will leave and maybe we never see each other again. she is co cute. Very young and innocent compared to American girls. She doesn’t think so. They think because they drink and smoke that they are mature or wise or modern but it is the opposite. They are young and innocent and naive comparatively. But I like it. I don't mind it. we kiss more and more. I'm looking at her and she looks like this Arabian or Sicilian Princess and I'm thinking wow what a fucking trip. I stare up at all the mammoth cathedrals above me. we don't have anything like this in the fucking states I exclaim. No you don't. she says. Drunk. I stumble into my hotel at 5:43 in the morning. What do I say to the guy at the desk? Good morning? Good evening? Good night? 

Now I think about staying another week. I love this girl. How long will I love her for? A week? two weeks? I love this night life. Every night we could go out like this. we get super drunk as the hours pass and we roam the giant streets of Rome. God do I need this. Why am I so stiff and rigid all the time? Always working working working. Maybe I will just party till I die. Die in Rome. The new CD is out. I could die here now. I've done my work.