Mambo Italiano

So the day after Thanksgiving I got on a plane and flew to Italy.

The entire trip is an endless blur. I don't remember much. Only fragments.

I remember the long walk through the Papal Museum in the Vatican until we finally reached the Sistine Chapel.

I remember looking up at the ceiling and being so overwhelmed that I started weeping and had to sit down on a hard pew. I kept crying but I couldn't stop looking. How was I going to make a mark like that? What would my contribution to the world be? Who would remember me when I died and what would they remember me for?

I remember some of the freshest produce I've ever had in my life and most of the best meals. We found one place around the corner from our hotel on the Piazza del Popolo in Rome and I ate the same meal three times because it was so good: cold seafood salad and spaghetti carbonara.

I remember going to bed those first few nights and praying that I would wake up and it would be a dream. I would wake up and I wouldn't be in Italy and I wouldn't have Hepatitis B anymore.

I remember sitting in a bar every day from 4 - 5:30 to drink (against my doctor's orders) and write in my journal and just watch and listen to the people.

I remember feeling strangely at home in Rome.

I remember not liking Florence and trying to go into a gay bar late one night but feeling scared, inadequate and foreign on every level. The music was loud, pulsing and Italian. The gays were dressed in better, more expensive clothes than mine. I didn't even get a drink. I did a lap and left, frustrated and lonely.

I remember staring at a plate with the head of Medusa painted on it at the Uffizi. I couldn't stop staring into her eyes. I wanted to turn to stone, yes. I also couldn't help but notice the fear and sadness in her last look before her head came off. I spent days thinking I'd write a story about Medusa and life from her point of view but then I thought it was too close to Wicked. So I never did.

I remember a long train ride with my face buried in the uncollected stories of Patricia Highsmith.

I remember Venice. The sound of the water lapping against stones older than the United States. I remember the joy of walking streets with no cars.

I remember my shock at realizing the Big Man was reliving the exact same trip he had taken with his one and only boyfriend in the years when they were young and in love and exchanged rings in Venice. I followed him up and down the twisting Venetian streets that all look the same, until we came to stop in front of a non-descript hotel. "This is it," he said. "This is where we stayed." And it all came together for me. This is why we were here. Big Man was chasing ghosts. And I wanted to go home.

I remember trying to call my parents on a Sunday afternoon and thinking it was odd that I couldn't get in touch with them.

I remember thinking my liver was slowly expanding, taking over my body. I remember hearing my blood pump disease through me morning, noon and night.

I remember one final day in Rome going right from the train station to the Vatican because I wanted to sit in the Sistine Chapel one more time. It was closed.

I remember the endless flight home and just wanting to be alone.

I remember once again trying to get in touch with my parents and when I finally did them telling me that Chloe, the beautiful dog Present Ex and I got together had to be put down while I was away. She had a one-in-a-million reaction to a distemper shot and developed anemia. My parents woke one morning and found her with her head in the water bowl, too weak to even pick herself up. They cried when they told me. They didn't want me to think it was their fault or that they acted hastily. I couldn't cry. I couldn't react. My whole world was turned upside down. I deserted Chloe. I didn't take care of her. Her death was my fault.

I was not in a good place.