Understanding Mrs. Robinson

The story of Romeo and Juliet takes place in a beautiful Italian city called Verona. That’s why it is known as the city of love. I went there last weekend with a few friends of mine. It’s true that it is an extremely romantic place. However when I went, I was also taught another lesson on love.

To understand the impact the story I’m about to tell had on me, it is necessary that I go back in time and mention how I met one of my best friends. When I started learning linguistics and translation, Russian was one of the languages I had selected. After an extremely boring intensive beginners course, I was put in a group of approximately twenty students. During the first class of that second course, because we didn’t know each other, the teacher asked everybody who was sitting at my side of the classroom to get up and introduce themselves to a person on the other side. I stood up, glanced around and walked towards the person who seemed to be the most interesting.

One night, two years later, I was at my friend Tara’s place and we were having one of our regular drinking nights in her basement. We hadn’t seen each other in a while because of university and work, and we were therefore thrilled to finally spend an evening together. Sex has always had an important role in our friendship. No, we’ve never had sex. However, sex is a very recurrent conversation topic, and when we spend nights together such as that particular one, the clothes usually come off within an hour, both metaphorically and literally.

So as expected, we were having a sex talk and that time, it was about the impact that our different ex-partners had on our current sex life. A lot of alcoholic drinks had been drank at that point, and we started talking about her ex Adam who lives in England. I knew their story. They had met while he was doing an exchange in Montreal, they were both young, and their relationship ended because he cheated on her. It took a while for her to forgive him, but with time, they had developed a strong friendship. However, as she was talking about Adam and the sex that they were having while they were together, I noticed that our conversation had gone much beyond the sex talk. Stars started shining in her eyes and a passion invaded the way she spoke. To me, it was obvious: she was still in love with him. We kept on drinking and talking.

Late during the night, our friend Constance called from Ottawa. With time, we had become an inseparable trio and every time Tara and I got together, we simply had to talk to the missing player of our team. I was therefore busy talking to our friend on the phone when Tara connected herself to MSN. She started talking to her friends, including Adam, and I later finished my conversation with Constance. I then kindly asked Tara if she could go get something to eat as I was starving. She left and I took her place at the computer.

I don’t really remember how and why I ended up telling Adam that Tara was still “madly in love with him”, but it caused a long discussion between the two of them. Today, they’re the cutest couple I know and they’re even talking about marriage.

I was on the train from Verona to Bologna. I had visited a beautiful city, but I was also exhausted and I couldn’t wait to be home. I decided to go for a walk around the train because my legs were numb. “Cerchi qualcosa?”, a young man asked me because he thought that I had gotten lost. I couldn’t help but notice his Slavic accent. We started a conversation and I sat in front of him. His name was Anton and he was from Russia. I obviously spoke about the fact that I had studied Russian for two years and that my friend Tara and I had planned to visit his country together one day. He was going to Bologna because his girlfriend was living there.

They had been in a long-distance relationship for more than two years. I still don’t understand why he decided to talk to me like we had known each other forever. However, I also felt like there was a special connection between the two us, as if our encounter was more than just a coincidence. He told me about his girlfriend that he absolutely loved, but he explained that a few nights before, after drinking a bit too much, he had sex with another girl. I could see the guilt on his face. He knew that he had made a huge mistake. Then, he said a sentence that Tara had told me a few weeks before: “In a long-distance relationship, all you have is trust.”

As he was talking, I could hear Tara telling me about her story with Adam and that, although she would never judge me or my behaviour, cheating on somebody who was far away was a threat to trust, the only stable element you have in this type of relationship. I got off the train and tried avoiding Anton. “Don’t leave so fast. My girlfriend is at the station and I’d like you to meet her.”

I got off the train and took off as fast as I could. “Wait, Joel! You just passed her. Where are you going?” For about a second, she was standing next to me, and I knew it. I couldn’t look at her. Yes, I was running away from guilt. I’m probably never going to see Anton again, but he made me realize that what my friend Tara told me was true: trust is all you have in a long-distance love, and no one should ever interfere in a relationship based on trust.

Bref, mais vrai

I spent two days in Venice last weekend. One of the biggest carnivals in the world is taking place right now, and the people from my villa and I clearly wanted to actively participate in this mind-blowing event. After a two-hour train ride from Bologna, we arrived at the station, and we took a bus that brought us to where we were going to stay: a camping site. Our young and adventurous minds didn’t really care about the quality of the beds on which we were going to sleep, and we thus decided that our trip was going to be done in an old-fashioned way. We got there at 7:30 p.m. and at 9, we took a boat that took us downtown Venice in less than twenty minutes. Only by seeing it from far, I could tell that Venice was going to be an important part of my trip to Italy.

The city was like a gigantic Commedia dell’arte play. Everybody was wearing one of those typical colourful masks, and some people were dressed up from head to toe. There was music everywhere and often, groups of young adults were dancing and singing in the streets. My friends and I actually joined a few of them throughout the night. When we arrived at Piazza Marco, the biggest one in Venice, a show had already begun. It actually took me quite some time to realize that the women performing on stage were actually men. Don’t get me wrong; I have seen many drag queens in my life and I am more than capable of recognizing them. These ones, however, were wearing huge marvelous masks that were covering their faces, and they had makeup all over their body. The show itself was a normal drag queen performance, similar to the ones you can see in Montreal.

Zoé was one of these people that I had only seen a few times in my life, but that I always thought was insanely cool. When I saw on Facebook that she was going to be in Venice at the same time as me, I simply had to let her know that I was going to be there as well. My villa friends wanted to keep watching the show, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity of seeing Zoé. Therefore, I left them and went on to see my Quebec friend. Our meeting spot was a bridge, the Ponte di Rialto. After getting lost for only twenty minutes, I was there and thrilled to finally see her. The bridge itself was simply fantastic. Imagine everything you know about Venice: the gondolas, the canals, the water and the lights all over. That was the view I had on top of Ponte di Rialto. I shall keep it in my mind for a very long time.

I turned around when I heard my name from far. Zoé had arrived. After a two-minute hug, she introduced me to her friend Paula who was accompanying her. We all went back to Paula’s place where Zoé was staying. There, there was a little get together happening. Most people were Italian, but there was also a French girl. Everybody was very nice and together, we ate and drank. Paula’s apartment had a huge window with another amazing view of Venice. Zoé and I had a conversation next to it. It was the kind of conversation that makes you understand how lucky and privileged you are to be in Italy with awesome people, living an unforgettable moment. I had to leave rather early because we had to catch a train in order to go back to the camping site. “Ce fut bref, mais ce fut vrai.” These are the last words that Zoé said before I left, and they truly touched me.

It was midnight. I was alone. I had a train to catch. I was in a very foreign city that looks like a labyrinth. You do the math. Ironically though, it was in this situation that I felt like I connected with the city. I was going through the small and the big streets, talking with the people in order to find my way. All the Italians to whom I spoke were extremely nice. I asked my way to a young couple and ended up talking to them about Italian literature for fifteen minutes, and another man told me about his wife who was in the United States after telling me how to get to the train station. I was lucky. Very lucky. I got on the train as it started moving.

The next day, we went back to Bologna to live an experience that one has to live when they go to Europe: a football game (Europeans will make fun of you if you call it “soccer”). I played football for four years, and I was pretty excited to see what it was like in Italy. The stadium is enormous. More than 30 000 people can fit, and it’s far from being the biggest one in Italy. Everybody screams and sings different chants, and after only two minutes, you’re brought into a universe in which the only thing that matters is for the ball to get into the net. You will do everything in your power so that it happens, even if you look stupid or retarded. I had no voice when I went back home. And now, as I’m running out of inspiration, I’ll go to my bed and rest in an extremely Italian fashionable way.