Encounter #1

Late Monday night. U5 to Samariterstrasse.

A posse of Italian alterna-punks boards: Tipsy and delighted with themselves.  An explosion of laughter and curses on a mute German train.

A scrawny fellow — long nose, mop of black curls — sings I know not what. I can't not smile. He catches my eye. "Do you know Arctic Monkeys?" Delicious accented English. Every syllable rolls upward.

"No."

"You must download! Song: 'Flop.' Like — " he tilts forward, catches himself on the silver poles.

"Okay, 'Flop'!" I laugh. "Are they American? The Arctic Monkeys?"

He furrows his brow. His glasses are rimless rectangles. "No..." His friend jumps in: "Sheffield!"

"Ah, Scottish."

We are nearing Samariterstrasse. "Here I must go," he tells me dolefully.

"But me too — this is my stop." And I follow the tumbling boys onto the platform, up the stairs to the street. I walk away.

"Stella!" cries Flop-boy after me.

I turn around. "Stella!" he says again. "You know that, 'Stella'?"

"Of course, it's..." But I am tired and the name of the play fails me. "My grandmother," I say, "her name was Stella."

This doesn't register. "Good-bye, Stella!"

I cross busy Franfurter Allee to Captain Soda. Every day I go to Captain Soda. Every day I pay 1 Euro 20 for a bottle of  FantaZero. FantaZero is my new favorite drink in the world. Diet Dr. Pepper? How quickly we forget.

A white dog bounds around my feet. "Come here," snaps the Turkish shopkeeper. The dog ignores him, circles me. "He is puppy," he apologizes. "He loves to play." I pet the dog's warm snout; it nuzzles my hand, leaps away.

I cross Frankfurter Allee again and walk up Gabelsbergerstrasse. Suddenly I see: the Italians, walking my way, not on the sidewalk, but in a pack right down the middle of the street. One of the boys nudges my skinny friend. "Stella!" he cries and skips over. He throws his arm around my shoulder. "You come back to me!"

"I am Lee-laan," I say. "Who are you?"

"Vincenzo..." He matches his stride to mine. "Where are you going?"

"Home."

"I come with you?"

His face is close to mine, his arm still 'round my neck. I smell the beer on him, the cigarettes. The needle on my gender compass is swinging madly from nowhere (Berlin) to normal (New York) to off the compass face entirely. That would be Italia. But I can only laugh. There is a note of play in everything this kid says. "Oh, I am too old for you." 

"No, why? Okay, maybe you are" — he shrugs — "27, 28. I am 24. It is good." Nice. No one in Berlin guesses over 28. In NYC, I'm lucky if I get less than 33. Maybe the backpack I'm wearing? The German I speak — timid, higher pitched? Or unemployment? Yes, that. Knocks off years. 

"Mmm..." I hold the truth close, divert him instead. "What are you doing in Berlin?" He plays in a band, he tells me. They are performing tomorrow night. "And tonight you drink?"

"Not so much! Only half, look!" He holds up his open bottle in a Kneipe's light.

I tell him my father is Italian. I have family in Milano. My last name is Patri.

"Ah, communisti! I am from communisti, too!" How my surname has betrayed  the politics of my near-blacklisted grandfather I do not know. "But I am from Sicilia. So we must be — " He puffs out his chest.

"Macho?"

"Yes, Macho AND communisiti." He shakes his head. The weight of it all.

Gabelsbergerstrasse dead-ends into Rigaerstrasse. We stop. "I must leave you, Vincenzo," I tell him. "Go to your friends." They have kept walking, the opposite direction.

"No, I come with you?"

"Goodbye, Vincenzo." I reach out my hand. He lifts it to his cheek. I laugh. "Oh, Vincenzo."

"It is no good, to go home alone."

"I must go." I lean in for an air-bacio.

"Ah!" he cries, and delivers one on either cheek. I pull away, turn left onto cobblestones. "But why, Stella?" he calls after me. "Why?"

"It is better this way, Vincenzo. You and I, we will always have the dream."

"What? No. Do not dream when you can live!"

He is perfectly right, of course. Not so long ago, a man 10 years my senior used that dream line on me. Wimp, I thought, afraid to live. But now... "Arrivederci!" I wave. "Ciao!"

"Stella!"

I don't look back. Ten years ago I did Europe. This time, there's just no way.

Comments

[Julie]

sweeeeeeeeet.

[Julie]

sweeeeeeeeet.

[Lilan]

Don't you just love him? Vincenzo, come back!

[Posemary]

You must find Vincenzo. We, your loyal readers, cannot go on without him!!!Ok,you know I am so completely patzo when it comes to Italian men-- but he really does sound sweet.

[Daring One]

I'm loving the blog Lilan. Julie and I and the others can sit home and make babies while you break hearts and have adventures all over the world.

[Lilan]

Why didn't I bring him home? What was I thinking! Now he is lost to me.