Me, Julia

He tucked my arm under his and led me to the second level where we sat with the rest of his friends.

There was much chatter between them, about people and places that I did not know so I sat quiet, just listening, but watching as once in a while someone would glance at me then look away quickly.  I knew that once I left, I would be the topic of conversation.

Thankfully, Aldo felt my distress and we did not stay long.  He led me down the steps and telling Rico to keep the bike, we walked away.  He led me to a small street, in a horseshoe shape.  There were closed shops that lined the street and tall buildings that blocked the sunlight, giving the street an eerie dusk feeling. 

“Look at the sky,” Aldo prompted.

I looked up and saw the deep azure blue of the little bit of the sky I could see.  “Beautiful,” I sighed.

Just then, Aldo’s hands came up to touch my cheeks.  He held my face gently as I waited, barely moving, for the touch of his lips on mine.  It was a soft brush of lips, over too quickly, but the impact resonated throughout my body.  My heartbeat deepened, my pulse raced, I was falling hopelessly for this boy. 

He did not release me, but held my face and looked deeply into my eyes.  I tried to return his gaze, but it became too much for me.  I wretched my eyes away, feeling the heat rise from my groin to my face, coloring me from chest to cheeks to ears.

He dropped one hand, the other cupped my neck, and he brought me forward to meet his lips.  This time there was more pressure on my mouth, I could feel the weight of his lips, his teeth behind them.  I had the urge to part my lips, but I let it pass allowing myself just to savor this moment.

He broke the kiss, but his arm wound my shoulders bringing me closer to him.  “Easy, piccolina,” (little one) his voice a low whisper in my ear.  “We have time to learn.”

I wanted to learn with Aldo as my teacher.  If just a kiss could do this to me, I could not even finish the thought.  What else was there beyond this feeling of yearning and need?

I learned something very important during the following week.  Listen.  If you blend in with the furniture and just listen, you can learn many things. I paid attention when the older girls spoke.  A few of them had boyfriends, others played around.  It’s true, the rich are different.  I was raised as a middleclass Italian girl, my values were the same as other middleclass families in New York at that time, regardless of who my father was.  The girls at school, well, the few I listened to, if I was to believe everything I heard, none were virgins, and all were on birth control pills.  I had gained some slight status because of Aldo, and I was not dismissed so easily any longer, yet they called Aldo a street urchin because he did not come from a rich family.  I put up with all their teasing because I was learning.  This was the first time I had ever heard the word orgasm and I had to look it up in my dictionary; the first time I realized that the feeling I had received from Aldo’s kisses was not the culmination of anything, but the beginning.  Hirtha was a wealth of information.  She had a serious boyfriend back in Hamburg, Germany and she spoke about him with the other girls.  She made him sound like a hero in romantic novels.  I clung to that dream.  I wanted perfection in my budding romance with Aldo. 

During our weekly forays, I became acquainted with Aldo’s Roma.  He took me to the markets, to the well-known piazzas and other ancient sights as well, but I loved the wandering we did through the streets where real people lived and worked, whose lives were never touched by the bustle of the tourism.

Did I tell you about the flowers?  There were flowers everywhere, in the markets, restaurants, hanging from the poles in the more famous streets, and balconies of peoples homes.  Lining some of the streets were pots of oleander and hanging over every wall ancient or new, was bougainvillea.  Even as the temperature dropped, the flowers thrived.