11 · Outside Room

I had written a rural saga, not an intellectual one, because my schooling wouldn’t have allowed me to do otherwise. With a grade of 4 in Italian, I only managed to earn my diploma thanks to sporting merits, a woman, and a principal who appreciated the gift of five liters of my wine. Hahahaha.

I wanted to give people an exercise for the mind, and it didn’t require a degree or a PhD. I had created ten rooms and thought I had closed a chapter of everybody’s life, but I looked around and realized that I had left something outside.

What? Me.

With my imperfections, my vices, my characteristics, the deceptive parts, my touchiness, my desire for payback, the absurd contained within a format, and then the habit of constantly receiving attention without actually being interesting, and that always made me smile.

Yes, there was always somebody beside me wanting to show me the road, the things I should do, how I should do them, why I should do them, almost as if they wanted to initiate me into something. But I wasn’t inside a religious order or a spiritual one. I was inside my own life, where having to learn something was logical, but being told how to do it was not.

Let’s not drag this out, because every reader gets tired and wants to know the ending. Maybe one day I’ll start writing the ending at the beginning of a story, so everyone will understand that the end is the only real beginning.

Before I sit around waiting to die, I will always look for the ideal place in which to do it. But believe me, among so many choices and so many possibilities, I cannot find a better place than in the arms of a woman. Even if she isn’t mine, it doesn’t matter. I don’t particularly care. Hahahahaha.

It’s the best place, the place where everything originated and where everything ends. But nobody ever becomes as unforgettable as a piece of writing.