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| Just the two of us - acrylic on canvas - 120 x 120 x 2 cm (47.24 x 47.24 x 0.78 in) c/o Karin Goeppert |
PACKAGE
TOUR
Another
warm
day in
Sorrento
a couple of
decades ago.
Followed by
another. There were precisely
fourteen in
total. Slow days
of alcoholic
contemplation, out by the pool
drinking
Tears of Christ, the cheapest
wine
available, grapes grown on the slopes of Vesuvius.
Maybe a
thousand
olive
trees, I wouldn’t lie. And a Roman
bath with
squirting phallic graffiti
all over
its ruined walls. “Italians,”
my wife
said, “apparently really love dick.”
We began to
see cocks everywhere—in chalk
on brick
walls, spray painted, even in
what seemed
to be toothpaste—
Amalfi,
Positano, later in Naples. Such over
compensation
understandable
perhaps in
a psychic matriarchy, the realm of Mama Mia.
“Despised
and rejected,”
said the
Dutch art
historian—quoting
from Handel’s Messiah—
a reluctantly
gay man
recently
dumped by a long-time lover;
embarrassed
by his life
he couldn’t
stop talking about it.
We
travelled over to Ravello
with him
one day—he gleefully
clapping
his hands, hoping we’d
bump into
Gore Vidal
buying
tomatoes and prosciutto crudo—
where he downed
three beers
in thirty-minutes
flat
then wobbled
off to the bus
and waited for
us there. Sadness
nearly
geographic in its magnitude.
Death
Valley, the Empty Quarter.
We knew him
precisely fourteen days.
Breakfast
and dinner included. With a partial sea
view.
