The Dreaded CataComb-Over

Today is a day of few pictures. Last night my... my... well he's related to me some how...... my young friend Gabriel. (The son of the son of my stepfather - you do the math ..I'm a Roman Senator and I want more pig!) arrived in Italy on a welcoming wave of complete miscommunication. We knew he was coming and although I blew off my description of last night's dinner, I primarily did that so that I could end the fucking post. Last night's dinner worked into the vaudeville that was our lives.

In fact, prior to dinner, the B-man (grandfather to the Gabbo) headed off to Termini to catch Gabriel on the train as he entered town. There was some uncertainty in schedule which quickly became uncertainty in reality. B-man was going to pick Gabbo up and then head back to the flat, where we would catch a lovely 8:30 or so meal. Early by Italian standards, but as advocates of daily showering and respectful driving we clearly aren't Italian. So I (again, we're still on last night) went to the Steve McQueen pub and awaited the POSSLQ who, with the zealotry of her race ("The Totally Fucking Insane") had headed off to another bookstore (I really haven't highlighted here, the insanity with which she found and entered every English selling bookstore in Rome. The fact is I am too old to even explain it) and promised to meet me back at the regular. I read, drank, and talked to the bartender and the POSSLQ arrived between big rainy squalls. We sat about until we realized it was past 8:30 and then we raced to the restaurant which was just around the corner. No one we recognized there, and a bit of charming misunderstanding based on the fact we had no Italian, the servers had little English, and we raced into the back dining room like cheap hoods out of the "Godfather" series.

Anyway, no one we knew, so we headed up to the flat, where beloved mother awaited. We shared some theories about where the B-man and Gabbo might be, and then we got really hungry.

So we put a note on the door and headed down to the Goose (the restaurant which I have inexplicably been referring to, up to this point, as "the restaurant"). The food was plentiful, the wine digested our stomachs instead of how it should have been, and just as we were ready to leave, the B-man showed up completely bewildered as to what had happened. B-man had stayed in the station for many more trains beyond the one the boy should have been on, and the boy wasn't on them.

No answer to that kind of problem, so we all wandered home. At about 11 oclock I heard our doorbell ring and, alhough I'm the drunk, I'm often the one paying attention. I ran down to the front door, and there was our lad. By this time the others were milling about and we all went up, had a 15 second relieved greeting, and then got to the serious business of assessing who the hell was at fault for everything that had gone wrong. ;-)

Gabbo had apparently arrived on one of the trains that B-man had been waiting for and they had somehow missed each other. So Gabbo waited around a while and then decided he needed to find his own way to our flat. A good idea, but when the guidebooks tell you only to use official cabs from official cab stands? They really are trying to help. Gabbo got an "unofficial" cab driver in a beat up old FIAT who not only charged him something enormous, like 57 Euros, but also took him to the wrong "Aurelian" Avenue. The lad then found an official cab which took Gabbo to where we were staying. Gabbo no longer had the Euros to pay for the ride, so he asked the driver to wait while he ran in and rang us up.Here the story gets hazy. Although Gabbo says he stood outside the door of our flat and actually heard us talking, he knocked (sez he), ignoring the excellent doorbell, and when no one answered he went back out and bought the cabbie off with his remaining dollars. He then sat outside in the fenced plazza until about 11, when he finally did ring the doorbell and my Eagle-like hearing picked it up.

I guess the good news is that he finally made it into the fold.

The next day was off to the Sepulchre of St. Sebastian, the patron saint of pincushions, where we would get a lesson in really old history.

And, we would stand on the Appian Way. This had meaning to me because the Appian Way was frequently mentioned in my high school Latin classes and this made me really, really, want to urinate on the dusty fucker.

Anyway, train to bus to the sepulchre which when we arrived, in typical Italian fashion, was closed for a two hour lunch. So we headed off to our own. After which we took the catacomb tour. This was a bit claustrophobic, since the tunnels were hacked out of tufa by the smaller men of yore who surely weren't going to waste any energy chopping a bit more stone than needed. The claustrophobia extended to our guide's spiel which kept returning, much like the small tunnels, to a few salient areas. "And thus, cata and comb, catacomb!" he declared triumhantly at least every 25 seconds. The tour was cool, though I was dissapointed that there were no bones to be seen. Over there is a picture of St. Pincushion. He was a Christian, Roman soldier, and in a personal competition with another priest (Polycarp) to see who could be martyred first. Very Islamic, if you think about it. Anyway, Sebastian "won" the contest.

St. Sebastian was condemned to death by Emperor Diocletian. Sebastian was stuck through with arrows and left for dead. The widow of St. Castalus, Irene, who was on burial detail, discovered that Sebastian was still alive. She helped him recover, a kindness he repayed by immediately searching out and accosting Diocletian, who took the opportunity to have Sebastian beaten to death and chucked into a sewer.

One of those happy stories.

Anyway, the catacombs were pretty cool and when we got out we immediately marched to the bus stop and refused to enter the first bus that passed. This was before we figured out we were on a one-way street and it was the only bus gonna be in town. We decided that if we followed the bus's route we would eventually get to some spot where there was two-way traffic and we could catch the bus the other way. A nice theory, but after about 20 minutes of negotiating an increasingly dissapearing shoulder with insane Italian drivers fighting for position immediately to our left, we surrendered and returned to the crypt. Where, about an hour later, a bus did arrive.

If I were being paid by the word for this tripe I'd launch into a long description of all the "official" Italian Government cars that whizzed by all traffic with lights and sirens blaring. Suffice it to say that we thought these were cops, but some web-search indicates almost any petty Italian official (weird, while "petty" and "Italian" are redundand, "Italian" and "official" don't seem like they should go together at all. Yet all three words are in the same phrase. I need another beer.)

Anyway, as we went I started noticing bus signs going the other way and mentioned this to the crew. The B-man opined that they were just going to get us the same bus we were on, just going the other way. Possibly true, thought I, but the bus was boring, so I hopped off and, last minute style, the POSSLQ jumped off with me. We crossed the street and discovered that the B-man was correct about one thing. We were only two stops from the end of the bus line we had just hopped off and if it was the next bus we were going to catch, most likely it would be the actual bus we had just hopped off.

As we sat there, three 631 busses went by us, but the POSSLQ was adamant she would not get on them even though they were going the right direction. Finally I asked if she had her map. She did, and even though it didn't extend out to where we were I could pretty much prove by the bus signs (very nice.. they list all the stops on the line and the stop you are at is indicated in a red box) that this bus would take us to the train line by Termini, from whence we could avail ourselves of almost any cross-city transportation. So 30 minutes later, with the POSSLQ gagging on some imaginary bit of detritus she swore the wind "blew" in her throath, I finally dragged her on to the 631. Lo and behold, it took us to the Metro which, 20 minutes later, deposited us on the Vatican Museum side of the Vatican.

It hurts me to admit, since my sense of in-city direction is usually the envy of the boys and desire of the girls, but I immediately started marching away from our flat and the Vatican. Fortunately the POSSLQ again whipped out her map and re-oriented, we headed to St. Peter's square where we each had a beverage and lolled about admiring the architecture and sculpture. We stayed for a bit and then marched off to the Gelato joint where the POSSLQ added one of the 7 or so lbs she gained in Italy in an orgy of chocolate smears.

After all that, we wandered back and on the way ran into Gabbo and the Parentals. They had not had quite the fun time that we had, but in an effort not to embarass them for their silly failure to follow my lead, I will just sum it up in Gabbo's words, "worst bus-ride ever."

After that, we had dinner and discussed our plans for the day. POSSLQ determined that we would get up early and head up into the dome of St. Peters. She also made certain promises to other flatmates that she would betray in the morning, but as I was lolling in the bedroom with a glass of wine and a book, I was blissfully unaware.

Anyway, the light fingers of sleep caressed my brow and then drove a knitting needle into my prefrontal cortex.

I slept like the baby I am.