One of the things I love about having brothers is that I can tease them like actual siblings, and now that my Italian is better, I do this quite effectively. For example, the other night at dinner we are talking about Valentine’s Day and I ask the boys if they will be my boyfriends. The two oldest turn bright red and quickly shoot me down and refuse. Oh, well. The youngest, Giorgio, is persuaded by his mother to be my Valentine. When I explain that I could really use three boyfriends, and I expect things like chocolate and flowers. Adriano goes, “sure I’ll buy you chocolate…with my mom’s money” and then the oldest, Edoardo, proceeds to push the house plants and potted flowers in the kitchen towards me and proffers them as gifts, “Your flowers” he tells me. Cute, right? So in conclusion, I have my first Italian lover. His name is Giorgio. He is ten. He rarely speaks to me. Clearly we’re off to a great start as lack of communication is the building block of every great relationship…
Back at the center, (as we fondly call the place where all our classes, etc take place for the program), the Secret Lovers plan was a success. I gave my secret ‘lover’, Gian Carlo, a coloring book, a bottle of red wine, and of course a hand-made Valentine. My secret lover Tara wrote me this hysterical love poem in Italian. Its pretty perverse and graphic and makes me laugh. It reminds me of the poems Dunham 001 wrote on people’s dry-erase board in the basement freshman year…remember those? The gift she left at home... so I have to wait un po'.
Of course, for me, the real excitement of Valentine’s Day arrived one day early. It created quite a ruckus in the center to be the recipient of such a gift during school hours. I’ll give you two guesses as to which of my lovers gave me flowers…but you’ll only need one
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