Electric Blue Neon Light

wind.

ONE

"We always believe in the opposite, but worries are necessary.

We need them to live and not lose our minds."

In 1980 I was eighteen years old, I lived in Civitavecchia and I was in my last year of high school.

Things were heading in the right direction, maybe even going well, or I simply hadn’t ever seen them go wrong. How should I put this, I had no reference for comparison.

School was also going smoothly, and, perhaps also for this reason, spring seemed to have come around with tremendous speed that year.

As a matter of fact, it had always gone like this; first spring and then summer would arrive without you even realizing, making you fall into them right after the Christmas holidays.

School and holidays: during those years they punctuated the rhythm of everything, and even summer seemed to arrive solely due to the end of school, rather than the other way around. So, in those three months, my life was made up of being at the beach and on a moped from morning to night.

My authentic, amazing and bright life, and I waited for it every year, like a compelling curtain.

To tell the truth I would already feel the summer air when the first brave souls started to come to school in short sleeves. Even if this happened in March or April – it was a sign. Yes, now it was time to go through my four-door wardrobe and slip my favourite t-shirt from the pile, making a mess of the others. So, every year, I was the one in the family who started the ‘cambio di stagione’¹ in the spring – which my mother would then complete. It always seemed to me that she was running late when it came to these things, but she was right to tell me that I was the one who was early. And she was also right when, with a melancholic smile, she would add that all this hurry to live life would not last forever for me either.

Thus, that year was the final year of high school and after that the exam, that final exam that, for one reason or another, everyone remembers.

Perhaps because of that stupid name, La Maturità (The Maturity), or because university exams all end up being the same… either way, everyone remembers this exam. And I remember it too.

I mainly remember the six AM alarms set to study. I started early, so that at eleven I could go to the beach for a bit. It was a different way of poring over books, and with the absence of morning classes in school, it had a new flavour.

My home was silent at that time of day, and this was not half-bad, but what made studying truly more mindful was studying without teachers and classmates. I studied in the kitchen with the window open – I was on the first floor and below me was the street, Via Togliatti. At that time of day, devoid of traffic and noise, it was pleasant to go outside on the balcony and breathe.

I could smell the strong perfume of my mother’s geraniums and no other smells, not yet, from the street and from people’s kitchens. We had lived there, at number eight, for a long time. To think about it, we had lived there since before my brother and I started going to school.

After a bit I would come back in, eat something and open my school books.

I would sit at the table, my back to the window because the sunlight was already strong, and then I’d begin.

Usually I would set off at a good pace, and time would run by quickly, but at around nine it would become a lot more difficult.

I would sustain myself by having some more food, but my salvation would never come before eleven, and salvation was the sluggish sound of a Guzzi 50 moped, a sound that I could recognize amongst thousands still today.

I would hear it turn into Via Togliatti from Viale Baccelli, shoot up the street towards my house and suddenly the sound of the engine would cut off; thirty seconds more and the intercom would ring.

If my mother was home, she would buzz the door open without asking who it was, but no one would ever come up.

It was Mino, we all knew it, my desk-mate who would ring and wait for me to come down. I would grab my towel, fly down the first ramp of steps and then the second, and I would be in the street in a flash.

What we couldn’t hold in our hands we would place under the seat, we would be wearing our bathing suits already and after a speedy check of the fuel level ‘by ear’, that is, by shaking the moped, we were ready.

Our studies benefited by our waking up early, plus the sea was nicer. We’d only stay for a couple of hours, but maybe, because morning really is a special time of day, or because pleasure after hard work is richer in flavour, those two hours were enough.

We spent almost a month like this, from the end of school ‘til the exam. Every day, 11.00-13.00, my house – St. Agostino beach.

The final kilometres of the twelve on that route to the sea were a long, straight stretch between eucalyptus trees. Straight, except for a sharp, narrow S-bend halfway along, where the road passed over the railway bridge. The Vespi Bar was there. The little Guzzi with a full load was pretty slow, and because the straight road was boring, Mino and I had started enjoying riding with imprudent and whimsical seating arrangements. Whoever was driving (we were interchangeable) would raise their legs until they were over the handlebars, thereby freeing up the footrests for passenger’s feet. Then, he would shout SWAP!

At this point the driver would operate the clutch with his hands, and the other would change gear with his foot.

It wasn’t a straightforward task. It was reckless, yes, but not straightforward. And in any case, we needed it; as if the exam wasn’t enough to make us worry, we had to come up with something else.

We always believe in the opposite, but worries are necessary. We need them to live and not lose our minds. So, Mino and I invented the worry of not making mistakes while executing this ‘swap’ on the moped. It was the beginning of the summer of 1980, we weren’t yet 20 years old and there were really no greater problems to concern ourselves with.

My classmates were fairly competent, and our teachers would not complain very much. When they did, it was only to push us to achieve higher. I listened to every encouragement, but I would limit myself to raking in whichever results came easiest.

In fact, I had always studied the bare minimum and I was actually incapable of working less than I was. It was a certain mindset, probably a mark in my brain caused by childhood slaps from my mother, who would not compromise on school (and on honesty).

By middle school I was convinced that she would have rather forgiven me a robbery than failing an exam.

As a precaution. I stayed away from both.

This is how it had gone on for years, to the point where at the moment, in my fifth year of liceo scientifico (science-oriented high school), this was more or less my situation:

ENGLISH: Very good

ITALIAN: Good but the boy could do a lot more

HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY: Could do more

ASTRONOMICAL GEOGRAPHY: Needs to do more

PHYSICS: Could do more

MATHEMATICS: He should be doing a lot, a lot more

and, the cherry on top:

RELIGIOUS STUDIES: Madam, said the horrified priest to my mother – she would talk to all of my teachers during Parent Teacher Evenings, so as not to disrespect any of them –

… do you realise? The boy says he is an EPICUREAN!

She immediately asked me for an explanation about this and did not forgive me for this one for a while. More than anything because in that moment, she hadn’t known what being an Epicurean meant.

This situation was naturally nothing special, but the widespread practice in that school of not even studying the bare minimum meant that, despite my evident mediocrity, I found myself, along with some other pupils, in a position of slight significance.

In April of that year, in the corridors of the school during breaktime, I felt someone link arms with me. It was Professor Pierotti, who taught history and philosophy.

…Fiore Frangesc’ ...

He said, waking me up from my torpor with his bad breath more than with his words.

… ma tu, ’o vo’ piglia’ o no ’o sissanta? Eeh?! Sìì? Allora e sape’ che si sturii accussì ’o po’ piglia’ sulamente si vene ’na cummission’ ’e scarpar’. Ma si vene ’na cummissione cumme se deve, no! Allora? Fiore! Mi sono spiegato …?! ²

Obviously, I reassured him of my efforts, but in reality, I did not alter my behaviour by a single degree. This wasn’t stubbornness on my part. Every time I promised to work harder, I believed it, but not for long. Then time would pass, and everything would remain the way it was. I didn’t feel the need for better results. And at what cost? To do what? It wasn’t for me; everything was going well as it was.

Let’s say that if school really does train you for life³, I would have been the guy who was learning his lessons well:

1. Maximum results with minimum effort

2. Knowing how to content oneself with what one has

3. Not making too many enemies

But as they say, maybe the streets, more than school, train you for life. And maybe they are right. As it was, I was learning and applying the right things in the wrong place. Yet good or bad as it had been, for me that was life. That was what I had been taught and that is how I believed things would always be.

Instead it was only high school, some kind of equestrian show, a carousel of young riders trotting along with obstacle courses, judges and scores. Where there were tumbles, desperate cries, clear rounds and jumps for joy.

But we all moved in a misleading ‘model’, where the obstacles were fake and, more importantly, built to measure.

Fake was the hedge, fake was the ditch and fake was the champion – indeed, the champion was often the fakest of all.

In that sort of bandwagon, for example, getting your first steps right mattered, and luckily it seemed that I had gotten them pretty right.

Often those steps determined who would obtain a little more or a little less than what they deserved; for all 5 years of high school.

Anyway, getting back to me, in the spring of that year I was also getting close to a girl. One April afternoon, on the steps of the town theatre where our group would gather, I had quickly kissed a third-year girl who was sitting next to me.

We knew each other well enough to say Hi to each other, of course, but not more than that, so it was all pretty sudden and unexpected; I remember that we were talking about something, something funny I think because she was smiling and I was smiling too, then our gazes drew us a little closer, I felt her taking my hand between hers and I kissed her.

I didn’t know if that was how big love stories began, I didn’t ask myself that and neither was I interested in knowing. The only thing I knew is that she was called Beba, she would wear red trousers and colourful tops from Benetton, she had wonderful dark eyes and when she smiled, she would get dimples in her cheeks.

Like all the other girls she had a Boxer Piaggio, but in the middle of a swarm of blue mopeds, hers was red. To speed things up she would bump start the engine, like the guys, rather than pedal on the kickstand like the girls with the blue Boxer bikes.

Beba was cool, she played basketball and she fit life like sugar fits a sweet.

There was every reason to kiss her.

Basically, every day, in the afternoon at around six, a lot of us would meet on the steps of the ‘Teatro Traiano’ and we’d stay there for a couple of hours, with our backs leaning on the enormous wooden door until dinner time.

The theatre was always closed, in disuse for at least a decade for a refurbishment (supposedly by now of pharaonic proportions) passed from one local government to the next one...

Luckily, though, at least the steps had remained outside of both the door and the refurbishment.

They were comfortable steps, low and wide, that boasted a good view onto the evening strolls, lending themselves to encounters of all types.

In the afternoons they were frequented by students (Beba would almost always come), whereas in the evening after dinner there would be more ominous people and no girls.

I was almost always there; before and after meals, because especially in the summer the best time was late evening, when it was properly late and very few people would stay.

The nights were warm, the streets seemed wider and the sea with its sea-smell was a moment away. During those evenings even mutes had something to tell, the hotheads listened in silence and those absent in school would always be present. Even those who were insufferable during the day would seem considerably more tolerable in the moonlight. Some beer helped, but it would have been the same even without it.

In this way strange discussions would come out, discussions that would be taken away by the following day and that would never come out again, not even during the next evening.

There would often be talk about women, desired or lost. There would be talk of going far away (because, as everyone knows, the right women are always elsewhere…) and we travelled among erotic fantasies with our imagination. About this girl, now about that girl. About this teacher, now about that one.

But sometimes the discussions were sad; mourning that still caused suffering or stories about fathers that, although skilled at the lathe or speedy amongst the tables of a restaurant, were losing their jobs.

Other times there were stories about mothers who had had something removed from their breast, about which nothing was known yet.

Other times still there were unconfessed fears and amongst the many even the fear of mice or snakes.

Very often we talked about money, and then tips on how to make it would start coming in thick and fast, and everyone would have their own.

Our imagination did not know boundaries when money was concerned, the same old money that everyone needed and that was never enough.

Whatever they were about, all of those discussions would always reveal the most naïve of our juvenile convictions: the certainty that we would be able to do everything or, if we wanted, nothing, in life.

Illuminated by the lampposts and by the white light of the moon, those discussions would also reveal the deepest part in men; that part that for the better or for the worse, is always different from men’s faces.

I would watch and listen, more than anything.

I would watch and listen to the way in which each of those people knew how to find the right words for