The
Italians. If my life in Philadelphia amounts to an abject deconstruction of perennial,
thwarted aspiration, I am under little illusion about what it would amount to
on the peninsula if I managed to land and assemble for transport in Tuscany.
Cramped store outlets barely large enough for a 5 foot 7 inch male of perhaps 175
lbs to stand behind a small counter, equally compact flats in which to wedge
persecuted Arabic foreigners, juxtaposed around the scenic beauty of Lake Como,
a plethora of earthquake collapses in Naples. One thing native Italians share
with my enthusiastic to fade away contingent of Turks is an overweening
penchant for flowery allusions embedded in death threats which are basically meaningless,
an emaciated breath of history from the tombs of the Medici. Is Beppe Grillo a
little Mussolini with saccharine smiles for Rai’s studio lightning? I yowled at
a copywriter who dropped me because I enjoy Matteo Salvini’s pugnacity, and it
is into this subterfuge of less precise detail that lurking in on Tassoni’s
prep school immaturity triggers an irascible desire to hoist myself on my own
petard, but lurk I do, nonetheless. Then I emailed him once again, approximately
the third time since I tracked his career accolades. I mentioned Brandon’s
name, the Negro assailant who nearly took my life. “It would have been better
had he killed me,” I wrote, nearly petulant with despair, still accusing.
Why weren’t you there to
protect me? This
was the embedded outcry to my interpersonal Rocky who rejected me when I was
19. Now who’s being prep school, the dowager asks wryly, so easy to believe you
still love the one who got away? John Tassoni was, indeed, my Rocky Balboa, and
my mild bout of digital hysteria elicited his solicitude, the little monkey on
his back, the nascent savant who can’t get over a punk from Chester who was
kind to her, bear hugged her, made her realize that masculinity needn’t be toxic.
Imprinted for life, no matter whose husband I slept with, but sitting here,
with the mock up board of our lives on social media, you take stock in the
realization of unhappiness with a player. Had I been successful in seducing
him, chaffing or not, the interpersonal would have wound up where I left the
serial novel of Alicia and Peter Florrick, keeping up appearances as a matter
of showboat necessity on the hollow knell of the attraction which brought them
together.
This episode, the one where the flawed values of a moderate political
couple defeat the NSA, would have been courageous on the part of everyone,
including Ridley Scott, to leave it conclude right there after the departure of
Charles. Alicia was far too ruthless with Peter. You may adjudicate that
assessment for yourself.
I’m
dropping The Passage, as edgy as it purports to be, and scrolled through Tucci
in Fortitude as a British DCI, to my delighted surprise. Somehow, even with the
edginess of an Arctic locale, British thrillers are grounded in domestic
tensions which are anti-climatic. On the American scene, they are instances of
grand theater. Another citizen from my homeland with its tertiary angles has
joined my ranks, and like John, a doctorate. I’m mollified. For the time being.
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