June 4, 2003 – Wednesday

Wicked Eyes

My dad woke us up early in the morning to make the train, and I had the hardest time getting out of bed because of the awful nights sleep. I finally dragged my ass out of bed to get dressed and stumbled over to my clothes.

This is where the story starts to get interesting.

When I picked up my clothes, they were not where I had left them on the couch, but on the floor. I figured they had just slipped down in the night, but when I reached down to grab my bra, I noticed it was wet. I leaned in to smell it, and discovered it was soaked in cat piss.

I was so shocked that it took me a second to realize that it was the only bra I had packed for the short trip, and that there would be no way to get it cleaned and dried in time to leave, or to go grab another one from Laurie’s.

I started to pull on my jeans next, only to discover that those, too, had puddles of pee on them. And they were also the only pair of pants I had packed for the trip. Previously, I thought I was so smart and cool for managing to pack so light, and now I was totally regretting it.

Since I did not have any extra clothes, I had to borrow a pair of pants from my mom, which were about 3 sizes to big for me. As for a bra, I had to wear a tight zip-up sweater to hold back my breasts, because my mom’s bras are enormous, and Kelsey’s much too small. I kept joking that it was like a really skewed version of a Goldilocks story, only all the items that were “just right” were covered in the contents of a feline’s bladder.

I felt so shy in the train because too much movement made my chest jiggle like mad and the pants made me look really fat. And to make matters worse, we didn’t have a reservation for the train, so we ended up getting kicked out of our seats, and I had to parade about the train in my wonderful little ensemble.

We walked around looking for a place to sit, but the only place that still had seats remaining wasthe smoking section, and the smell made Kelsey and I sick. So we tried the dining car, but I thought it smelled like a mixture of cold cuts and barf, and made me even more nauseous than the cigarette smoke. I spent the rest of the train ride standing with Kelsey by an exit door trying not to vomit.

We finally arrived in Firenze (Florence),and found a little pensione to stay in. Once we got settled, I stripped off the evil clown pants and flopped on the bed, passing out almost immediately.

Kelsey is the greatest friend in the world! Being the total sweetheart that she is, she went out while I was sleeping to do some shopping and find me a new pair of pants and a bra. After a couple of tries, we found an awesome pair of jeans that I am totally in love with. No such luck with the bra though. It appears that most women in Italy are flat-chested, and not very many of the bras went up to my size. Which is surprising, because I’m only a 36C, which is the average back home. The only one that fit was one of those ugly 50s style bras of hideous lace that makes your boobs all pointy and cone-like. But I figured that beggars can’t be choosers, and in spite of a washing, the other one still smelled just a little strange.

Fresh and happy in my new clothes, I went out with Kels into the square to do some shopping. I stopped at this store where Kelsey had bought my jeans and thought I’d look to see what else they had. The woman there was a little crazy and kind of insistent, and kept bringing over clothes for me to try, telling me “Oh, You like this color. You try this, yes?” And everything she brought over was beige/tan. What does that say for me when someone looks at me and thinks, “That girl just screams Beige!”?

Around this time, I had started to notice another side effect to the ugly bra. It itched so bad I was scratching like a maniac. I quickly came to the conclusion that a slightly smelly bra was preferable to breaking out in hives all over my nipples, so I headed back to the room to change. On the way, we ran into this guy that had apparently been flirting with Kelsey while she was out on her solitary shopping mission for me. (I had warned her previously that Italian men adore blondes, but she never quite believed me.)

The guy had been really persistent with her, and she had only managed to get away by insisting she had to meet a friend. While she had been gone, he found a friend, so that when Kelsey and I walked by, he told her he brought someone to keep me company so they could go out dancing. I found this whole thing terribly amusing, especially considering that the friend he had brought for me was way more attractive than the guy himself. I ended up teasing her about it for the rest of the night. Let me get back at her for her laughter over my urine-drenching.

As we were trying to decide where to eat, Kelsey was getting all kinds of attention. All sorts of men were staring at her and calling to her and flirting with her. She is so adorably oblivious to it as well. She didn’t believe me that they were into her, and thought they must have been flirting with me. I kept trying to explain that they love the blonde American girls in Italy, and I was too European looking for them.

As if to prove my point, when we were out walking later that night, an Italian girl came up to me asking for directions, assuming I was a local. As I stared at her like an idiot, (the only Italian I know is menu items), she looked really surprised and said “You’re not Italian?” My dad laughed and told me that it was the dark hair that was fooling them. (So apparently unnatural purple-red hair looks Italian.) Plus he says that Italian women are pretty shrewish, and that I seem like that kind of girl. Dads give the best compliments.