Eurotrip: Italy - Alpini! Part 2.
For the most part, all of the Alpini we saw were very unobtrusive and mostly focused on drinking with their Alpini buddies, which I absolutely hold in high regard. HOWEVER.
My last night in Turin, my friend Gianna, her boyfriend Enzo and I went to dinner, drank a shit-tonne (metric) of wine and food and still had room for dessert. Meanwhile, there was a table next to us with ten people (four were terribly behaved Italian children, which is apparently the accepted norm. Did you know Italian kids just up and pee in the street if they feel like it? Their parents tell them to do it. It’s totally fine with everyone. NO IT ISN’T), and one of the adults had a birthday.
To celebrate, they had a huge rectangular tart, and they ate about a quarter of it and then left, leaving THREE QUARTERS of a CAKE on the table rather than be gauche and take it home. I can abide witnessing many heartless things, but abandoned cake will set off the Tiger Mother. So, I start to have a panic attack, but in the next moment the table of eight Alpini on the other side of us step in to rescue the cake. And naturally, because they are gentlemen soldiers, they want to know if we want some of the cake.
I already had a cannolo (singular of cannoli, but when I ordered it I said “uno cannoli,” which translates roughly to “one all the cannoli,” which is exactly what I meant to say. I’m fluent). So, obviously, I was like, “what’s Italian for ‘motherfucker, you KNOW I want some of that cake!’?”
So Gianna translated that, and we got some cake. Yay! It was pretty good. Naturally, now that the Alpini have given us food, they want to know what the story is with Enzo being there with two women, is he getting lucky tonight, yadda yadda. Yes, he is, but only with Gianna.
As soon as it’s established that I’m single, it was like being in front of a pack of hungry lions. This one Alpino starts trying to get me to come sit next to him, demonstrating an impressive command of between two and four English words. “Come here. Come sit here. Come on. Come over here,” etc.
Now, I may have had approximately six thousand glasses of wine (at one point Enzo turned to Gianna and said, “She can drink a lot. She’s invited back any time!” Score), and he may look vaguely Clooney-esque if I squint (HE DID) but I’m not stupid (anymore), so I decline politely, fifteen times in a row. It helped that I don’t speak a word of Italian (except “cannoli,”) until he started speaking French. Sadly for him, I know way more French than Italian, including how to say no (worth learning in most languages).
Then we’re back to English, because apparently he has remembered his go-to line, and here it is: “Come on! Come here. I will massage you… inside and out.”
EW! Ew. EW. Seriously. Take a minute with that. If he’d stopped talking at “massage,” we’d maybe have been able to get something going. But, what? Massage? Inside? Ewwwww. That doesn’t even make any SENSE. (Until it does. At the risk of being redundant, EW.)
Gianna and I were stunned, and the rest of his table even got slightly uncomfortable— when he went outside for a cigarette one of the other guys felt that he should tell me (via Gianna) that his friend doesn’t mean anything by it, “you know that, right?” Yeah, dude, I do know. Italian guys have a reputation, and it’s this. Until dude returns from having his cigarette and creepily touches the back of my neck on his way back to the table. UM!
THEN it turns out he is a politician who is actively running for office in Turin. I would love to see a U.S. politician pull this sh— oh, they do it ALL THE FUCKING TIME? Right. Usually, I assume they try to wait until they’re in office instead of mid-election season. (For an unelected guy, this guy was actually a cut above John Edwards, though. I got his election card for stalking purposes and I will show it to you if I haven’t already).
At this point, we’ve had two rounds of limoncello, and to put it lightly, we’ve gotta go. (It turned out that the restaurant said they’d give us free liquor at the end of our meal— but then they brought out two rounds and made us pay for one of them. Gianna didn’t know the Italian for “tacky.”)
