Everything I Hate In Life Is Found In Milan

The night before we left for Milan we again said goodbye to Christian, the waiter, and told him we were going to Milan. He scowled and told us, besides the Duomo, there is nothing in Milan.

He could not have been more right.

I was to stay with my mother's friend's friends. I knew only that he was somehow involved in the arts community, had once studied photography, and like mac computers. Great! There should be lots to talk about. He, Piero, was to meet us at the train station and I was just going to drop my bags off at his apartment and the four of us would be off to musuems of Milan.

My roomates did not realize that we had to go to his apartment first, so I felt kind of bad, but he said that he lived close by and I was assuming we would leave as soon as I dropped the bags by.

ONe of the first things he asked me when we got in the car: "Do you know the singer Michael W. Smith?"

oh god.

And that is exactly what continued. Him talking about Enya's sister who is a Christian singer, Michael W Smith, some Christian pub he wanted to take us to. Church, Jesus, I was not prepared. I was trying the entire car ride not to bust out in laughter because we were all caught off guard. We were then told upon arrival that his wife, Giovanna, had prepared us lunch and that they were going to take us around...hmm...sticky situation. Still not sure how we got out of that one, but we did, it was akward, and we still got to see everything.

The contemp. art museum here i guess just closed and dissapeared. But we went to another one which blew my mind away. Blew everyone's mind away. NOne of us had been to a (huge) museum and liked about 95% of their collection. It was amazing! And it was all contemporary Italian artists. I bought the cataloge and everyone who likes art is going to look at it.

AFter dropping my roomates off at the train station and saying our goodbyes, I took my time getting back to the apartment. Seeing that they only had a one bedroom apartment I was terribly afraid that I was going to have to sleep in the same room as this couple, which would have been unbelievably uncomfortable. They sleep on an air mattress in the kitchen though, but i feel terrible about this too.

Pierro is the kind of guy who wears Hawaiian flowered t-shirts that say Messiah on it. I think that can give you a pretty good idea of how this guy communicates. He is also quite a bit of a know-it-all. 90% of his conversations are about the church or cheesey metaphors about God and Jesus. Although this was insanely irritating, because I did not agree with anything he was saying and could not say anything because they were my gracious hosts and feeding me, I thought I could make it through with just politely listening and maybe it would eventually wear off. As long as they didn't ask me the question.

They did.

"So how long have you been a Christian?" "What church do you go to?"

My initial response was to pound my head against the table and plead insanity. Instead, I had to explain that I was raised in the church, but that I had a huge problem with organized religion, and that I had my beliefs but did not want to exactly associate myself with the collective religious group called "Christianity."

Then the looks of judgement. I could see the plan formulating in their heads. oh she is not a Christian now we must make it our goal to witness to her while she stays here. Then Giovanna says, "oh so you have dillusions about the church and its people."

"Well, i don't really think I would call it dillusions..."

I have had many MANY even more clarifying realizations by talking with them on matters I didn't even think I would come to, and going back to the church is most certainly not one of them. But I am not going to get into that. Just realize that being preached at 24/7 is one of the most exhausting, frustrating, and makes me only want to pray that someone will come blow my brains out. I can't stand it and I don't know how anyone could "receive Christ" by talking to an Evangelist.

So I escaped the next day after being driven around to the Schaumburg of Milan and found a nice park. It was really beautiful and so many interesting people. And then I seem to find the most terrible person in it.

After sitting on a bench in the shade, drinking a bottle of water and watching guys practice juggling and other tricks, this guy comes sits by me and tries to communicate. He speaks only Italian I speak only English. good, that was that. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when the older gentleman sitting next to him decides to interpret for him, which ends up being that this guy, i think his name was Andrei, wants to walk around the park with me. OH yeah, walking around a park with a complete stranger who looks incredibly sleazy and speaks no English sounds like an awesome idea to me. I obviously say no. I do take both of their portraits though, and move on. OOH yeah, the old man gave me these braided key chain things. He was cool i liked him.

When I was walking away I saw this black guy with a cast on sitting on another bench looking at me. He looked American or English and he kind of interested me, but i kept walking and shooting. When I turned around from shootng this weird concrete thing, he had changed places and was sitting on a nearby rock. He called out "scuzzi" and I found him kind of strange so I went to see what he wanted. He wanted his picture taken, which I found even more interesting, so I took it, and we started having a conversation. He was from France, so we had a broken english/broken french conversation about hip hop and italy. He had a stuttering problem and this guy was quite endearing and interesting. He didn't seem to be hitting on me, just wanted to be payed attention to. okay, i can do that. Then he asked to walk around the park with me. I said no, and he kept asking why why why? Because I have friends to go back to. Okay, lets have our picture taken then. uh...do you see this camera? its a manual camera, we can't really do that, but he got down on the grass next to me and really wanted this picture, so i just wanted to get it done and over with and leave. As I was adjusting the settings and getting ready to hold it up to take the picture he starts sucking my ear. I obviously move away saying what do you think your doing? and then he apologizes and decides oh, maybe she wants her breast groped. I screamed fuck off and got up and left.

I was and still am so so SOOO freakin pissed off. It is so violating! So terrible and disgusting and inexcusable! God I am so angry about and want to vomit everytime I have a flashback and can feel his tongue on my ear and his hand on my breast. UGHHHH!!! And what pisses me off even more is that this kind of crap happens every day to women and that it has happened so many times to me. Men let something that has no brain control them. ugh!

So for therapy i took some highly emotionaly charged self portraits then sat down in a cafe with coffee and cigarettes. Then back to the apartment for more Jesus talk.

Get me to London.