THE CHRONICLES OF CURIOSITY

August 31st, Monday

I've been trying to conserve money. Its something I've never been good at, however, since the Euro kicks our ass, I have no choice. To conserve, I go down the street to a super market probably three times a week. The sliding doors open and immediately I see 'Manuela the Destroyer', the spastic, clumsy Italian shelf stocker who drops, explodes, and destroys everything in sight. For some weird reason, whenever I'm in the store its Pompeii all over again.

So I walk in through the sliding doors and see the manager flailing his arms as if he were landing a plane right on Manuela's head. I then begin to stare at the poor girl, who is now crying hysterically in a pool of Coco Cola. I had a feeling I was never going to see Manuela again. However, these Italians that come in and out of my life are so entertaining that they leave a memorable aftertaste once they're gone. Everyone's a character.

I was on a mission to find a gelato cake. Reason? It was Emma's birthday. I was also on a mission to find several bottles of red wine, a bottle of rum, a handle of vodka, birthday cake candles and a princess crown. My purchases looked a little strange next to those of the locals. Imagine an over abundance of alcohol, a princess outfit, a gelato cake, and an eggplant (I love eggplant…), next to the beautiful produces of the Mediterranean. I got some looks…

I checked out, said arrivederci to Manuela, and made my way to our apartment. We wanted to have a small dinner for Emma and then to 'casually' drink wine until we figured out what to do.

I love the girls I'm living with and when there's wine intermixed with people I love, I begin to love the wine just as much. Emma's the same way. Fuck it, it was her birthday. It was time to go all out.

OH and we did! If anyone knows me well, the last thing I want is a 'casual get together' once the vino starts flowing. I want people, I want drinks, I want people EVERYWHERE! EVERYWHERE! EVERYWHERE! So! What do I do? Run up the stairs five times and back and start knocking on doors, totally ignoring the 'NO PARTIES ALLOWED' policy in the apartments. To give a visual example of the transformation, it went from this:

To this:

and then eventually this....but we'll get to that later...

So within 15 minutes the apartment was packed.

For some strange reason whenever I'm drinking I run into this guy who honestly strives to be the biggest Guido seaside heights has ever bread. When he discovered most of my family was from Jersey, his infatuation level with me rose higher than the tips of his gelled hair. Some people inspire to be astronauts. Some dream of curing cancer. Some may even run a marathon one day. But my drunk friend 'Gumba Johnny' dreams to be a full-blooded, disco raging, yager bombing, Guido. If you ask him what his favorite music is, he responds techno. If you ask him what his favorite food is, he'll say muscle milk. Favorite vacation spot? Seaside Heights. Where do you like to shop? Armani Exchange. Drink of choice? YAGER. So where are you actually from? Umm…Chicago… Ever been to Jersey? Maybe one day…

Poor thing. All he wants to do is be with other Guidos. He'll find what he's looking for. Just like we all find what we're looking for.

What I was looking for was a drink, so I asked Gumba Johnny what he had with him.

"What are you drinking there," I asked, smiling curiously.

"Yager!" He said bending over, taking a shot with his big gold cross dangling side to side. That damn cross must have hypnotized me all the way to Staten Island because I suddenly transformed into Gumba's Guidette and threw the shots back one by one.

I leave the room. I see Emma. She has a bottle of wine in her left hand and she is now twirling around the room, being the epitome of 'la dolce vita'. This makes me think of how happy she would be to see her gelato cake. BACK TO THE KITCHEN!

After nearly burning my hand off with the worlds smallest matches, and miss counting her candles (she was 34 that night…) happy birthday was sung and of course…

DUN DUN DUN…

I begin with my infamous drunk speeches.

Now here I am in a room with 60 people I have never met before in my life. What can I possibly say that is meaningful to any of them?

"Umm..hey everyone!"

The room goes quiet…

"You don't really know me, but I'm glad we're here on my balcony…"

Cricket, Cricket, Secada, Secada…Whispers-"who the hell is this?"

I look at everyone's stupid faces and can immediately relate to them. We're all pretty drunk. And we're all in Rome, over looking the city on a balcony.

"Here's to the best fucking four months of our lives, and to EMMAS BIRTHDAY!"

The crowd goes wild. I'm out. Bar time.

There is soon a stampede of wild Americans running down the stairs and onto the Tram that takes us to an Irish pub called Mulligan's down in Viale di Trastevere. I look at Emma. She is now confessing her love to everyone and everything around her. However, she's speaking French. Why is Emma speaking French? Even worse, why is she speaking French to Italians and in a state of bewilderment of why they don't understand? Oh well. Hugs are flying, Bonjour's are arising, smiles are flashing. The birthday girl is happy, I feel relieved…

I sit down at the bar. Of course I order a cosmo. If you read my second to last entry you would know that I have a weird tendency to order cocktails at Irish Pubs. And since I never learn, I sit back, sip my drink, and within two seconds I am the bearded man in the airport.

Imagine an old western movie where the Indians are coming over the hill and they're about to attack the cowboy enemies after a long inspirational speech to rally the troops. William Tell is playing and there is a sea of soldiers everywhere.

That is what it was like once the Italian men found out American girls were at Mulligan's Pub. Except, I wasn't objecting to any of it. In fact, I threw my white flag up pretty fast.

I finished the last of my cosmo, payed my tab, excused myself from the man who was talking to me, and made my way to the door. However, just as I was about to introduce myself to some Giuseppe's, Alessandros, and Emanuale's, I see a blonde thing dive across the bar. Since blondes are definitely first on Rome's endangered species list, I thought to myself, "That can only be Emma…"

I look closer and she is flailing an American 20 dollar bill in the face of a pure bred Irish-man, screaming at him in French.

"Je suis Emma d'America! Je n'ai pas des euros! Prenez mon argent!"

"I speak bloody English, girl!" I heard the orange bearded man say in a thick Irish accent, "Ya can't pay with that here! We're in Europe! And why yer speakin' French girl!, aren't yer American?"

"No, seriously, take the money!" Emma repeated again in French, "Its honestly all I have, I'm very sorry!"

"Emma! Lets go outside!" I said to her, picking her up off the bar stool, "Look! Italian men! They..uhh..understand French? Lets go!"

The bearded man and I made eye contact, I mouthed an ''I'm sorry'', and proceeded out the door, where I tried my luck with Italian and where Emma, well, continued to forget she spoke English…

Honestly, it was a great few hours outside the doors of Mulligans. My housemates and I ended up befriending many of the men who serenaded us with promises of 'true roman pizza', 'almafi coast adventures', and Sicilian wine.

These men are too much! It took my ex-boyfriend months before he confessed his love for me and now I have these men pouring words of affection like the wine they promise to keep flowing for the rest of my life (direct quote by the way).

"Signorina," the italian man said, staring me straight in the eyes, "Your teeth…"

"My teeth?" I thought. In America, if a man made reference to my teeth he would either a) be making reference to a HUGE piece of broccoli stuck in between my molars, b) be making fun of my severely crooked bottom tooth, or C) be making reference to the effectiveness of my crest white strips.

"Your teeth signorina…"

"My teeth what?"

"Your teeth…they…"

He is now standing two inches away from my face. I would have turned and walked north, but I was severely curious to know what he thought about my teeth.

"Your teeth…they look…they look like Pianos! I can just play them all night!"

Oh Sweet Romeo! Take me away…

Another thing I learned about Italian men is that they think they can increase their chances with facebook. They LOVE facebook. They also LOVE IPHONES. They love it because if a girl doesn't call them back, or if they give them the wrong number, they can always hunt them down on the good 'ol fb. They'll even just start taking pictures/videos of you! I 'went on a walk' with an Italian I met at a bar and they LOVE to just start snapping pictures. Anways, Saturday mornings are my favorite in Italy.

You wake up hung over off of wine, do your ritual facebook check and then suddenly…

POP! POP! POP! POPOPOPOPOPOPOPOPOOP!

A MILLION facebook chats appear and you're wondering how these people have re-entered your life. If you're wondering what a typical Saturday morning (that usually carries into Sunday, Monday, Tuesday….Wednesday…Thursday…err..Friday…) is like, look at one of my fb chats:

Italian man: :-)

Chloe: Hello

Italian man: It was good to meet you last night!!!!! :-)

Chloe: Thanks you too

Italian man: I fall in love with you with every smile

Chloe: Oh thanks!

Italian man: I give you a kiss tonight. Come out with us. You need real Roman in your life. I buy you pizza.

(secretly, I want pizza, but I'm trying not to be the fly who flies straight into the luminous lamp…)

Chloe: Maybe Another time

Italian man: :-) you funny

Chloe: I didn't make a joke

Italian man: :-) where do you normally go out?

Chloe: Around here…

Italian man: I make you dinner

Ok. Basta.

Now I'm not saying they're all like this. Actually I've met a lot of great Italian men, but mostly the ones who approach you in a strange way are the ones you have to turn your nose to.

Emma, Hilary and I had enough. On top of that, the birthday girl was slowly going down. Your best friend always knows your 'drunk face', and at that moment I saw Emma's drunk face like I've never seen it before. It read something like, "Get me the fuck out of here," mixed with, "I need to eat Pizza now or else I will kill someone," and fully equipped with glazed over puppy dog eyes.

"Chloe,"' she said, "I need Pizza now. I need to eat something-NOW!

Shit, I thought. When Emma's drunk and says she needs food, she's going to get food, and she is going to binge eat the food. From that point on, I knew it was time to go.

However, every time we tried to escape, the group of 30 Americans seemed to follow. It was honestly like that old school zombie movie where zombies kept appearing out of nowhere, following poor girls wherever they went (you know which one I'm talking about?). All we wanted to do was sit down and have a glass of wine with just us girls. But no. We had to be stereotypical belligerently drunk Americans who travel like damn geese. We had to get these people off our backs. So Hilary, Emma and I were flying down streets, running in stores, zig zagging, pulling 'fake outs', where we would pretend we were going into a bar but really weren't, and any other desperate moves to loose the parade behind us.

Finally! After what seemed like hours of trying to get everyone off our backs we were free! However, it took us another hour to find a restaurant that served pizza.

"je veux la pizza!" Emma said slamming her palm on the restaurant's bar top, " JE. VEUX. LA. PIZZA!!"

"No parli francese ragazza!" The waitress screamed back.

"JE. VEUX. LA. PIZZA!"

She was now leaning so far over the bar top I thought she was going to fall over.

"EMMA!" I said, "They don't have pizza! Lets leave!"

"JE. VEUX. LA. PIZZA!!!!!"

"scusi la mia amica. CIAO!"

As I was pulling Emma out of the restaurant Hilary, Emma and I were surrounded by a group of teenagers.

"Hey girls. What are you doing tonight?" they said with hoodies over their heads, which is definitely not Italian attire. Usually the men are in button downs or suites.

Severely frustrated, I tried to push through the group, but the more we pushed, the more they followed.

"What is it with you Italian men! What do you want? We're obviously trying to get somewhere!"

"JE VEUX LA PIZZA!!!" Emma then blurted out with a mean, angry face.

"And she wants fucking pizza!" I said sternly with a nice chop of the hand. "CIAO!"

They continued to follow us.

"What do you want!"

"We want to party and do drugs with American girls!"

Hilary and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said why the fuck not.

JUST KIDDING! We wanted pizza.

So we finally sat down at a cute café.

Right as we were about to sit down and drink our much-anticipated wine and eat our delicious pizza, we saw stranglers from the group of thirty stumbling and tripping up the cobble street like wounded soldiers.

"Oh no!" I said to Hilary and Emma, "They've found us!"

As they approached I noticed one of the stranglers. There he was: Gumba Johnny, looking more Guidoed out then ever. As he was coming up the street I couldn't help but notice the irregular, zig zagged, and dysfunctional route he was taking to get up the hill. He was knocking into things, pushing people over, taking menus, throwing them in the air, flexing, and screaming ''WHAT WHAT!" at people in, what was attempted to be, a Jersey accent. Italians must have thought King Kong had invaded Italy by the looks on their faces. It was a disaster.

The Americans have landed.

"I'M SO HUNGRY!!!!!!!!!!!" Emma said, "TELL THEM TO GET AWAY! TELL THEM NOW!"

Now I really like these guys. They're so sweet. However when a girl needs wine and pizza, she needs wine and pizza. I have absolutely no idea what I said to them. But they were gone in .002 seconds.

The next two hours we spent at the café may have been the two funniest hours of my life. As soon as we sat down we noticed a group of attractive Italian men sitting next to us. Since the tables were literally two centimeters apart, it was quite hard to ignore them. So, trying to spark conversation, I asked, "Scusi ragazzi, avete un accendino?" (Do you have a lighter?).

With a spark of a light, chemistry sparked as well. We talked, we drank, exchanged cultural differences, and over all had a great time. They spoke a little English and they helped us with our Italian. Then-

Dun dun dun…

They all whip our their iphones.

"You have facebook?!"

AHH! I knew it was coming! Not only was I going to have a million facebook chats tomorrow morning from the Italians at the bar, but now I was going to have four more!

Oh well. I was this far deep. I gave them my name.

When the waitress came to take our order we were heartbroken to hear THEY HAD NO PIZZA. With the sound of those four words, I thought Emma's head was going to explode into a million pieces.

"Vous ne prenez pas la pizza!!"

"I don't speak French. I'M ITALIAN!" The waitress said severely frustrated, "You speak English though, so do I."

" Vous ne prenez pas la pizza!"

"Emma," I said, "She speaks English!"

She didn't care. She was French for the night and she wanted pizza…

Within two seconds Emma got out of her seat and BOLTED like I have never seen anyone bolt before, away from the restaurant.

"EMMA! WHERE ARE YOU GOING!"

"PIZZA! She said as she disappeared into a sea of Italians.

"Where your friend go!?" Said the Italian man, "You should probably-a get-a her!"

"Listen, buddy, my friend has been wanting this pizza all night. If she dies getting this pizza, she will be dying in glory because she wants it THAT bad."

"OHHH!!!" They said and continued to drink their wine.

I'm going to let this video speak for itself. Because what you see is exactly what happened when Emma came back.

You really can't make this shit up.

So after the happy birthdays were sang, and the wine stopped flowing, we were one hundred percent ripped off by our waitress. I give her credit for trying. I mean, our table was covered with pizza, we were singing happy birthday at the top of our lungs, I was being a typical american and flirting with 30 year old italian men, and we had an American girl who only spoke french at our table. Of course she could get 40 bucks from me! Luckily the other side of my brain works better when I'm drunk and I did the math correctly. My new friend Francesco helped us out too. He put that dumb bitch in her place.

So the next morning we woke up (thankfully) and felt as if we were going to die. I was almost petrified to go on facebook. PETRIFIED.

But I put my game face on and did it anyway.

That morning was the all time record! Fifteen new friends! There were non stop pops for a good hour. I love these Italian men. They are so funny.