Ciao, Roma: Shroomin’ the Mistakes Away

Because I was unwisely given the responsibility of planning the Rome portion of our honeymoon, its end-date did not fit accurately into the overarching calendar of our travels, and we wound up with an extra day in the city — which we discovered after we had packed to leave for Naples, but, thankfully, before we had left the keys on the table and departed for the train.

Lauren, whose patience for the cobbles, crowds, and ceaseless carbohydrates had run thin by now, opted to pass the mid-day in the low-decibel* sanctuary of our Trastevere apartment. I had the kind and husbandly thought of treating my new bride to the cozy-pants comfort of an English-language movie and vegetarian restaurant, both of which I was certain I could locate in this cosmopolitan city of three million. 

A bit of sleuthing led me to the key term sottotitolo, which means “subtitled,” and by which I could infer that a film’s audio track would be in English, with its subtitles in Italian. Now freshly-sophisticated in all matters Italian cinema, I began perusing the websites of local theatres. One was showing a horror film, which led me to an article about that film’s artistic heritage, which led me to a lurid description of Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom), which led me to YouTube, wherein an expensively-shot 1970s terror-orgy of forced coprophagia flickered across my corneas. 

For the remainder of my web searches, I made sure at each step that I was not purchasing tickets for Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma, and eventually lucked into a small theater that was playing a sottotitolo version of Buena Vista Social Club. (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was also playing, but it was three bus transfers away: a too-delicious temptation of the fates to produce a transportation strike.) 

Feeling smart, I walked a few crowded miles on the cobbles to purchase a few carbohydrates for us. Specifically, I walked to the highly-recommended Roscioli for supplì al telefono (basically, a battered, fried ball of cheese and risotto) and a miraculous sort of focaccia with a flaky exterior. As I wandered back to the apartment, I prayed that the Catholic church would invent a holiday where the consumption of fibrous vegetables was papally mandated. 

After yet another fine but not remarkable upscale Roman restaurant dinner** Lauren produced a special kind of chocolate bar from her purse. We have a friend who runs a spiritual healing compound on the Washington coast, and one of the pharmaceutical adjutants used there is the hallucinogenic mushroom. (The other primary cerebral jet-pack they strap onto you there is something called bufo, which I think you get from giving a Mexican toad a particular kind of clavicle rub.) This friend works microdoses of her mushrooms into chocolate bars, whose remarkably competent tempering gives them that lovely professional snap and melt. Because mushrooms are not illegal in Italy — and by that I mean not detectable by the Italian travel authorities — we each enjoyed a few squares and walked off to our movie date. 

The clean and capacious theater filled with young Italian art students, and we sunk back into upholstered lavender comfort. After a few charming animations and previews the opening strains of Cuban jazz wafted into our senses, and I happily surrendered myself to one of the rare experiences of peace on this leg of the journey. 

Anyone who lived in the United States twenty years ago had Buena Vista Social Club played at them until their eyes ran red with heme, and the documentary of the album’s production was of commensurate cultural omnipresence. We had never seen it, but Lauren loves Latin music and stories of human perseverance, so I knew this would be a no-brainer, and a welcome break from ten days of the mental strain of constant Italian transposition. 

At first, one of the musicians was speaking in Spanish, because he was Cuban and that is how it goes there. I relaxed further into the knowledge that the English narrator would soon appear and turn the musician’s words into something familiar and intelligible. The Italian subtitles had struck up, but I chose not to pick at them for the gems and rubies of understanding — I was on vacation, after all, and starting to feel that happy kind of buzzing numb that begins at the skin and melts inwards. 

After several minutes of listening to Spanish with Italian subtitles, the English narrator still had not shown up. I was suddenly hit by the panicked realization that this film clearly did not have an English narrator at all. By the idiot application of my useless mind to a simple task, I had taken us to see a film that not only wasn’t in English, it was DOUBLE-FOREIGN. I looked like an idiot to my wife, a woman who was now stuck with me and my inability to navigate basic daily operations forever.  

I peered discreetly to my side. Lauren, who is unlike me in several popular ways, was leaning back in delight and absorbing it all, gently moving to the music of the instruments, the voices, the visuals. Assured that I knew her well enough to believe she was legitimately having a good time, I, too, allowed myself to lay back and start to enjoy the movie, but the mushrooms were not so strong that I entered the space of ego evaporation which would have fully released me from my gaffe. 

Eventually the movie ended, and we had a good laugh about many things, including the aforementioned journey of agony on which I had led myself. As I laid my head on the pillow that night, and the backs of my eyelids turned into inky black theater curtains of peacock tails, the premonition of the next morning’s croissant and cappuccino washed over me, and I was finally at peace for the day. 

Next time: Naples, Where I Go On the Down Low, Down Low 

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* Excepting the frequent and random bleats from ambulances. It was quickly revealed to us that our apartment was situated directly above the dispatch center for all of Rome’s emergency vehicles, and Rome — perhaps owing to its culture of Vespa-pedestro superposition insanity and fiber-free diet — has oh-so-many emergencies. 

** Rome’s vegetarian restaurant was closed that day, and probably would have been closed during any such time as we needed to eat (say, dinnertime) on any other day, because its calendar of hours looked like mid-game on a checkerboard.