Rick Steves

Putting in our headphones, it was as if Allison and I began an ongoing secret in the midst of bustling Rome. We had each other, but we also had Rick Steve’s calming voice pumping into our ears, infusing the city with another layer of wonder, that of history. I am prone to feeling like I am missing out, so setting out on a self-guided tour with passionate and knowledgeable and occasionally insightful Rick helped me to feel like I wasn’t.

I am also fond of alcohol. And let me tell you what a beauty the streets of Rome were in that regard. In virtually every public square and almost every street corner were carts selling cheap offerings. For 1.5 euro you had in your hand the ever fun Peroni. And the best thing of all is that you were able to freely consume in the streets and unsurprisingly I didn’t witness any shameful drunkenness on display. America, the land of the free, isn’t always so free. The beer tastes much like any other green-bottled skunked offering but the pairing of Peroni and the splendor of Italy will forever enshrine that beer as one of my favorites. Having the ability to go on a nostalgia ride to a magical time, through food, drink or art even, is a beautiful thing.

We started in the Campo dei Fiori, a former happening marketplace in Roman times, now a site littered with those engaged mostly in restaurant imbibing, comingling strolling tourists and locals, and study abroad students gathered around the statue with many places to perch, Giordano Bruno. The kinship that I felt with Bruno was more in the vein of his costly free thinking and his willingness to speak truth to power. I say in the vein because my writing a letter to my Sunday school priest at age 15 telling him that I was an atheist pales in comparison to Bruno’s contributions.

Bruno was a 16^th century free thinking polymath, known mainly for his ideas in cosmology, and made infamous by his heretical run-ins with the church. He had a showdown with the Vatican in Rome and ultimately fled the city for his life. I spent a mere semester away from my hometown, so again the analogy breaks down. Contemporary Romans, in an act of fuck you to the Papacy, erected the statue of Bruno around the turn of the century and angled it so that his cloaked personage faced the Vatican head on.

The symbolism of that act is quite clear, with the Romans saying, we will not kowtow to you and the decrees you make in your palace of priceless riches. Rick Steves informed Allison and me that the contemporary Romans have been long known for their subversion and anti-authority impulses, hence why Rome is the birthplace to the majority of Italian comedians. Those in Milan might be too preoccupied with what to wear on stage to issue good comedy.

We drank our Peronis as we drank in the sights, sounds and history. She always drank a bit less than me, in all those respects. She did not have as big of an appetite for intoxicants, allegedly because it made her tired, but plainly because she didn’t like to nearly as much as I did. It was a truth that I fought in the relationship for too long. And she certainly wasn’t as into the immersive sort of travel that I wanted to partake in.

That last part was abundantly clear yet it was a reality that I suspect we both obscured. I in the servicing of pretending that it was not in my nature to want to meet locals and fellow travelers. She in the name of having to categorize me into a place that fit with her expectations, extensions of me or her ideals. She saw the glee with which I became acquainted with the spliff-smoking, St. Petersburg duo of Valiery and Kostas while watching the sunset in Riomaggiore. She needed me to be there, by her side, with my attention set on her and the sunset. I needed her to be there, with me, 4^th in the joint rotation. She wanted small and I wanted big.