Sex, Pharmaceuticals and Rock n'Roll

I was going to write about a haunting painting by Guido Reni (1575-1642) that I saw at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome a little over a week ago. The portrait of a young woman, Beatrice Cenci, is not just sensitive and captivating but also has a story behind it that could be ripped out of the 16th century, Italian version of People magazine ("Gente"). But I'm not going to write about the painting in this post. You will just have to read my next post to get the gripping, lurid details of this story of family, aristocracy, incest, murder and betrayal.

The reason I am deferring the sensational Cenci story is that yesterday's New York Times op-ed piece by Camille Paglia entitled "No Sex Please, We're Middle Class," engendered a very interesting discussion in my household this morning. (Only adults over the age of 18 were involved in the discussion).

Paglia, a noted feminist and social commentator, argues that a female version of Viagra is not the answer to the problem of "sexual malaise" that is rampant in our country. It's not quite clear from her essay what the real problem is, because she throws in everything from gender roles to rock n' roll, but her thesis is that interest in sex is a class issue. Middle-class, working women have dulled down their sex drive by becoming too masculine and by emasculating their husbands. The two sexes, albeit in a certain income bracket, have lost the essence of femininity and masculinity. What exactly that essence consists of is not made clear by Paglia, except that it has something to do with shopping at Victoria's Secret.

I am not going to refer directly to personal experience here, except to say that there is nothing that can make a woman feel less sexy than spending twelve hours at home alone with two young kids, with barely a moment to go to the bathroom alone, let alone change out of the spit-up and water paint-laced t-shirt she managed to change into at twelve noon. After a few years of this, reading the paper on the 8am train dressed in a skirt and blouse could be more of a turn on than when Baby undresses Johnny and dances with him to the music of Solomon Burke's "Cry to Me" in Dirty Dancing.

It would make more sense that a couple that can afford to pay a babysitter, and afford to go to the movies and out to dinner one night a week, might actually be able to enjoy each other's company enough to want to have sex. However, after blaming "the white collar realm," Paglia goes on to target Hollywood and video games. Hollywood no longer produces romance with innuendo, she says, and video games turn women into skinny, large-breasted super heroines.

It may be true that Hollywood has lost the art of good writing, but romantic comedies, or, "chick-flicks" as they are currently referred to, abound. I recently saw a charming one called "Letters to Juliet," with Vanessa Redgrave. Okay, so I saw it with my fifteen-year-old, but it was still very romantic. And the vampire "Twilight" series, which has captured the hormones of young girls everywhere has more than enough innuendo, with all that neck biting, heavy petting, and serious eye gazing. I don't think it is worth even discussing any adult male or female who lets video games influence their libido.

But maybe my biggest problem with Paglia's essay is that she offers no support. Sorry, but the English composition teacher in me refuses to accept an argument without some hard core, factual support. She doesn't bother to say what percentage of women are affected by this loss of sexual enthusiasm, what age group they fall into (pre or post-menopausal)or even what their actual income bracket is. She does, however, throw in a nice throwback reference to the "white bourgeoise." Apparently, the only people who are having sex are working-class minorities and country music fans.

My biggest complaint of all is that she doesn't even bother to cite the demographics of who shops at Victoria's Secret! Last time I was there, there were plenty of white, middle class women with their little pink cards in hand. But as my daughter would say at this point, "Mom, TMI!"*


*too much information

Arrivederci Roma

Tonight is our last night in Rome, and we decided to have a quiet, low-key dinner at the hotel. Julia, my fifteen-year old, has now been fully indoctrinated into the coffee culture of Rome and has started drinking caffe latte (with two and a half sugars). She has been a more enthusiastic gastronomic partner than I could have ever hoped for, and therefore I have decided to let her write the post on the food of Rome.

Before I turn it over to Julia, I just want to add the observation that the food, like the presence of a church, can be counted on wherever you go in this city. I can't say I have a favorite meal here, but I could probably eat the pizza at least once a day and gelato twice. And since that is basically what we have been doing, I have been able to avoid trying on any chic Italian clothing. My feet, on the other hand, I found, have not gained weight. The shoes are very, very nice here.

And now for a full food review, I turn it over to Julia:

Buona sera tutti, and I'm sad to say that it is our last night in Rome. My taste buds still tinglefrom a few of the special meals we've had here, and as my Mom's already said, I'm here to give a little overview and review.

It's Italy, and pizza can be found everywhere. Walk down any street, and you're guaranteed to find a "Ristorante Pizzeria" in every other building. Literally. These are your basic diner equivalents, and they've all got amazing thin crust, true Italian style pizza. And as a little side note, the basic "Margherita Pizza" was actually named for a queen of Italy, from right around the time of thecountry's unification in the 1800s. Pasta is everywhere, and as a person who cannot stop eating pasta once it's been made (seriously, at home I eat it out of the strainerl), I've enjoyed the surplus immensely.

Of course, if you want a real meal, with maybe a few more appealing options, any of the little bit nicer restaurants you find will offer the most amazing food. The Italians have a way of preserving the flavors in their food that for whatever reason Americans cannot seem to figure out. Any pasta dish or meat dish or caprese salad from a slightly more upscale restaurant will offer you an experience so good that even when you are stuffed to bursting, you cannot help but put just a little bit more into your mouth. A personal favorite of mine is in fact those caprese salads, and the mozzarella that you will find here (and all over Italy I'm sure) is like no other. It melts in your mouth. A little olive oil, maybe a bite of tomato, and I could live off of this stuff (with some gelato and pasta, of course, and I'll talk more about the former in a second). Oh and the bread. I am particularly partial to French bread, but those Italians know how to work their dough too. In conjunction with the flavors, the sauces they add to the juiciest cuts of meat and the most sumptuous of pastas make my mouth water just thinking of them.

This all sounds quite heavy, and trust me I think I've gained a few pounds eating all of this food, but lighter meals are not lacking in these incredible flavors. We went to one place in the old Jewish ghetto where they served us two platters of salads and raw meat and lighter vegetables with bread. One thing that stands out was the white fish; I don't know how they did it, but it was possibly one of the most delectable things I've ever tasted. Flavors! YUM.

So of course, after your meal, you need something sweet to end the evening (or afternoon, or morning even, if you're not too conservative). Gelaterias are nearly as common as the Pizzerias, and although they're all unique, any single one will give you a nice little treat.
Buon appetito!

Roma

Buona sera from Rome. As I sit at my computer in the lobby of my hotel in Rome at 12:30 am, the sounds from the street are distinct. The night sounds here are different from those in New York. I can hear the sound of cups clinking at the cafe across the street, where a long table of people are still sitting and enjoying their last sips of espresso and smoking cigarettes. There is traffic whizzing by, but it is mostly motorcycles, and the car noises are distinctly those of a manual transmission. And of course, when voices drift in through the open door, they are speaking in a loud but mellifluous language that is foreign to me.

I thought that once I got to Rome I would be so overwhelmed I would want to post here every day. Well, I am overwhelmed, and maybe that's why this is my first post in three days. What my fifteen-year old daughter said about St. Peter's Basilica today applies to my feelings about Rome in general: it's 'ginormous.' Some things are just too big and too important to use either gigantic or enormous alone.

It's not just the physical size of the structures we have seen so far, like the Colosseum or the Vatican Museums or the collection at the Galleria Borghese, that make Rome seem so much bigger than ordinary life. It is also the quantity and the quality of the art and architecture that was created here. Yesterday we saw Bernini's incredible sculpture of Apollo and Daphne at the Borghese; today we sat at a cafe in the Piazza Navona eating gelato with Bernini's fountain, 'Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi,' just a few steps away. We may have craned our necks and been unable to close our mouths along with the throngs at the Sistine Chapel today, but yesterday we traipsed around the Campidoglio which Michelangelo designed as if we were walking around Central Park.

In New York you can see great artists in the top museums, but here these artists are in the city itself. They are the city itself. And it is a hit parade for fans of art and of history: Caravaggio and Raphael, Julius Ceaser and Julius II; Constantine and Canova, among many, many others. And that is just the 'ginormity' of what we are seeing with our eyes. Then there's the food.

But there are only a few cars going by now and the cafe has shut down for the night. So I will have to save the food, and Rome's seduction of my other four senses, for the next post. So for tonight, 'Vado a Dormire!'

Words, Words, Words

There's poignancy in silence. This is not meant to be an excuse for my lack of postings in the last several days, but it is something that I have been thinking about a lot recently. It started about a week ago when I saw a French film called "Mademoiselle Chambon." I read a review of the movie in The Daily News that intrigued me. The review said that although the film was, bien sur, a romantic triangle, it did not have the heavy dose of 'sex and cigarettes' that one normally goes to French cinema to see. I know that even the French are not allowed to smoke at bars anymore, but some cinematic traditions are sacred. Just because they can't smoke in bed afterwards, doesn't mean they should dispense with the act itself. As it turns out, the film includes tremendous passion and even some sex, but the sex is almost an afterthought and, perhaps in a first for French cinema, arguably expendable.

The story of the film is simple: a working class, married father falls in love with his son's school teacher. She is single, lives alone and is also an accomplished classical violinist. That is pretty much it, except that the two main characters portray such depth of agony and emotion with so few words that the film is practically a silent movie. When they do talk to one another, they treat words as if they are precious and extremely powerful. You can imagine then, that a lot goes unsaid, but everything registers on the faces of the actors. You might feel cheated at the end, if what you like in a movie is confrontation and resolution. Everything doesn't tie up into a neat little package punctuated by a lot of "I love yous." But that's what we have Disney, or rather Pixar, for. Thank God I can still go to the Lincoln Plaza Cinema on the West side and leave feeling totally up in the air.

Shortly after I saw this film, I learned that my father has an illness in which he is slowly losing his ability to recall words and complete sentences. Our family has known that he is suffering with loss of language ability for quite some time. We are all heartbroken; particularly for someone as articulate and intellectually lively as my father this is a devastating diagnosis.

But I have just as strong a belief in the power of non-verbal communication as I do in the power of words. A person can express a lot with just a turning away of the head. If Mademoiselle Chambon gives its audience anything it's that we should value words as a gift and use them a lot more sparingly. We take them way too much for granted as it is.

The Literary World Cup

Just a short follow-up to my previous blog from May 24 about the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and her book of short stories, "The Thing Around Your Neck." If you happen to read The New Yorker, or even if you don't, but you want to sound very literary while watching Nigeria play Argentina in the second group of the World Cup, you can mention that Adiche was just named to the prestigious list of "20 under 40" promising young fiction writers in the June 7 issue of The New Yorker.

In case your friends haven't thrown chips at you yet because they just missed Argentina score with a header at the end of the first half, you can add that the last time the New Yorker published the list was ten years ago, in 1999. That list included writers such as Junot Diaz, who went on to win the Pulitzer prize in fiction for The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Once the second half starts and your friends ask you why you are discussing literature during an extremely important sporting event, and why it can't wait until after the game and the three beers, you can eloquently point out that a young writer from Nigeria being chosen for the "20 under 40" list is the equivalent of scoring the tying goal in the second half. She may not win the whole game, but she just got herself in a damn good position to try.

Our Town

There are two things that can make Manhattan feel like a small town: the first is when there is a huge snowstorm--school is cancelled, not a car moves down the street and you look out the window and inevitably there is one guy with a knapsack cross-country skiing down Second Avenue. The other is when there is an Avenue street fair.

The avenue street fair is a Manhattan tradition which I would like to compare to a country fair, except that it is nothing at all like a country fair, except for the grilled corn. The "Avenue," which is hosting the fair, is closed to traffic for about twenty blocks; vendors of every ethnic background materialize with their white stands selling, among other things, Persian rugs, Peruvian embroidered kids' clothing, French perfume (well, it does say "Coco" on the bottle), African print skirts and South African world cup jerseys--okay, that particular vendor only shows up once every four years. And, oh, the smells: the chicken, beef and onion shish kebabs on the grill; the sizzling of the deep fried zeppole dough before it is rolled in sugar; the spicy pan fried Thai noodles with peanut sauce.

I wasn't thinking about a street fair when I looked out the kitchen window onto Third avenue this morning. Since on Father's Day this year I will be closer to "the Father" in Rome than "my father" in New Jersey, I invited my dad and assorted relatives to my apartment for an early celebration. This is the first Father's Day in fifteen years that will not be celebrated at our former home in the suburbs with a gourmet barbecue and a game of one on one soccer between my step-brother and one of the kids. Despite my worries that it wouldn't live up, the bagels and lox and chocolate babka were great, as was the company. As it turns out, there was still a barbecue, but it was only the smoke that came wafting up to my seventh floor window.

As soon as the last guest was out the door, so was I. Downstairs and onto Third Avenue for my small town, hometown, warm weather street fair. The kebabs were still smoking, the rain hadn't started yet and there was still plenty of grilled corn and fresh squeezed lemonade for the crowd that was leisurely walking down the middle of a city street.

Divine Providence

It has taken a few days to digest all of the things that happened when I went spent Friday and part of Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend at the Princeton reunion, and then Saturday night and Sunday morning at my own 25th reunion at Brown University. I predicted sentimentality, and if I had to put a theme song to the part of my own reunion that I attended, it would have to be Green Day's "Good Riddance", even if they do play it at every Bar Mitzvah and on the last day of camp. It truly reminded me that college was "the time of my life."

Probably the highlight of the whole weekend was reuniting with my best friend from Brown on the three and a half hour train ride from Princeton to Providence (reuniting being a euphemism for talking nonstop the entire way, including on the two trains we had to take to get to Amtrak at Penn Station in New York.)

There are some friends who we have not spoken to in five or ten or even twenty years, but it doesn't matter because when we see them again it's as if we've been checking in with them every day since our freshman year in college. We suddenly remember why this person meant so much to us, yet there's a surreal quality to the encounter given that they show up (in some cases) with their 6'2'' teenage son.

My own son (only 5'8", but still) just finished his freshman year at Brown. He came along, allegedly to visit his upper class friends who were graduating, but I think he just wanted to make sure that his mother didn't party like it was 1999. Just in case the reunion committee was serious about recreating an 80s style college "funk night" with the requisite kegs, smell of beer and vomit in the hallway afterwards, I had two glasses of Proseco at the hotel before I left. Luckily we have all grown up to appreciate an open bar (and to be able to pay for it).

Even though I had the usual 'shouting match over the music' five minute conversations with most of the classmates I spoke to, I still managed to have substantive talks with two different college friends, both of whom I never see. That meant a lot to me. Also, Princeton may have the "P-rade" with its loud, outlandish orange and black costumes, but there is nothing like the Brown tradition of marching down college hill with your classmates, and then lining the hill to watch the current class of graduates march. It never fails to give me chills, despite the 85 degree weather.

Walking back up the hill, past the college and on to the main drag of Thayer street, my son said that he would prefer to have just a week off for summer and then come back to school. That, even more than the reunion itself, is how I know just how much time has passed.