By Walter Agnew Moore II
It's still 3 April, 2002

Is there ANYWHERE on this planet that has not become infested with brain-zapped drum-circlists? I had kind of assumed that ancient, classy Firenze (known as Florence to us linguistic descendants of bloodthirsty English mercenaries who, like horny mad dogs, simultaneously bit and humped the Leg of the Boot of Italy all through the Renaissance), artsy stately Firenze with its goblin-brown alleys and creepy covered bridges, its colossal homo-erotic statues and wiggly paintings, that Firenze would be free of the Wandering-White-Boy-in-Dreads tribe, but as I squat weary on these steps at the end of some long plaza with Kitt and Little Anna and Nell, we hear the thoomping thoomping thoomping coming from down at the other end, and I cross even Firenze off my list of places that have not slipped beyond the pale of civilization. Oh, despair, this is how the last Roman Senators must have felt as they heard the animal-barking of Ostrogoth cavalrymen roaring drinking-songs in the Forum...

Well, maybe not. I can't speak for the girls, but me, I'm mostly just hungry. Not to mention that I'd probably rather drink with Ostrogoth Good Ol' Boys than get snubbed by Roman Senators anyday. Besides— in a Buddha-esque moment—I suddenly understand the Speaking of the Drums, their magic: Every time a hash-oil stained hand slaps a beat on a stretched piece of hide, one penny's worth of interest is added to a trust fund in some bank back in the States. Those guys are working for their money after all, working harder than you or I will ever know.

Firenze is a good town for wandering aimlessly from spot to spot on one of those tourist maps that you can lift almost anywhere while the three cute girls traveling with you flirt with the clerk. After this drum-circle plaza, which turns out to be the "Piazale Michelangelo" (named after some Italian guy, I gather), we cross the Arno river going in a more-or-less 140-degree compass heading, and after climbing, and dodging very fast cars whizzing down very narrow roads in a park, and climbing some more, we wind up on a sort of flat-topped hill crawling with tourists like maggots on a dead pig, who are there because of the beauty of the overlook, which I hope I have conveyed to you by this description.

Nearby is a nice outdoor cafe with good high prices designed to keep the trash out. I convince the girls to give up their genetically-ingrained Battle-of-Britain rationing mentality for 20 minutes, and we enjoy great slagging flagons of summer-sunshine beer and bowls of nuts and huge olives and three different kinds of potato chips.

Fortified, we manage to get down off of the first hill by climbing up another one. Little Anna had gotten her heart set on seeing the fortress at the top, the Forte Benevole, no doubt because she stormed it and burned it and drew and quartered all the defenders in a previous life.

The hill is long and steep, and the fort is closed. You cannot tell that it is closed until you read the sign. The sign is not at the start of the path, at the bottom of the hill. No, the sign is at the top of the hill, at the end of the path.

We hike back down on leftward-winding St. George Street, and I construct a mystery novel involving the woman in the Mercedes and the man in the red coat riding the scooter as they both keep passing us going different ways.

We're staying at another one of those damned youth hostels, but this one isn't so clean-and-cultish as the one back in the Cinque Terre, no, all this one lacks is a bar to make it perfect. They have got coffee machines that'll sell you empty cups for about a nickle each, perfect for cheap-wine rampages in the common-room later it will prove, and another machine that gives me a free Bounty candy-bar just about every time I touch it.

Somehow around supper-time, we end up towards the south of town, near the remnants of an old gate where the city wall once stood. I believe we are on the old route to Rome, out past the Pitti palace. I buy socks from a young African man hawking them in the street.

We find a pizza place, La Pizzeria Antica Porta, no we don't have reservations but they can cram us into a corner, and buddy, this is why you come to Italy: A warm room packed with full tables all close together, people talking loudly as they eat great pizza with real ingredients, the smell the wood-smoke from the oven, voices echoing off the chipped brick walls that curve inward overhead, a feisty waitress who keeps calling you "Ragazzi!" (Kids!): "Hey kids! Here comes the pizza! Hey kids! You need more Pellegrino water, more red wine? I thought so!"

We make reservations for tomorrow night as well.

At the Internet Pitti on the way back, the girls share an account to check their mail. I check mine too, then wander around the Internet cafe, reading messages tacked to the walls from people wanting to sublet apartments or looking for room-mates. It doesn't look too expensive. Yeah, I could find work here.

4 April, 2002

Now don't get me wrong. The girls are great. This trip has pretty much rocked so far. But...

There's something about travelling with a group of women. No doubt it is the very subtle interaction of many hard-to-notice factors, but to my Standard-Issue Man-Brain, this day so far has seemed sort of like this:

Everybody walks around very slowly, not saying what it is they want to do or where they want to go, but everyone is supposed to guess what the group consensus might be without being so gauche as to actually ask, and meanwhile everyone seems vaguely dissatisfied but won't say why, and, and...

And it is time for me to get a break. The Lone Wolf travels alone. I guess a lot of factors came into play for this realization. First off, I was coming along to Italy not just as a friend but also as a big guard-dog to ward off the expected molestations of would-be Latin Lovers. Well, on actual inspection of the place, whatever Italy was like once, it seems that the testosterone level has plummeted to nil, and that's the real reason all the men live with mommy and nobody can figure out how to make babies anymore. The girls don't need my lurking presence.

But that is no reason to ditch them. That would be because they said they wanted to go to Rome next.

Everybody needs a good irrational repulsion for some place, and I have two: Switzerland (dark, evil, nasty, dirty, expensive, full of old fascists) and Rome (dark, evil, nasty, dirty, expensive, full of old fascists). Maybe you have a different opinion and still want to go to these two places. Go then. I have been myself. I know what I know, and I am not going to Rome, especially not if it involves travelling around slowly in a group of people all waiting for the others to guess what they are thinking.

Still, I like the girls. I feel like they are going to take it as an insult, me splitting off. I don't want to hurt their feelings, I just need a breather.

We are in the train station where they are pre-paying for tomorrow's trip to Rome, leaving at 6 am. Yow, add another reason to the list of why I need a break. They look at me as I come back over from the book-seller's stand, wondering why I am not in the ticket-line with them.