Rosy Smith: Italy

Hello, welcome, hi, so good to see you here! Lovelies, it's been a while. Last time we talked, I was still figuring out my hair and freezing in my nylons, now I am on my second round of tapes and cannot bear to wear anything other than a bikini because my Gosh it's hot. So we got a lot of catching up to do....

I am sososo close to being done with university altogether - I have handed in my dissertation yesterday (and found a spelling mistake on the very front page two hours before the deadline, so we swerved that bump in the road that would've haunted me for the rest of my life; by the way, the title is '"I choose my choice" - Portrayals of "The Housewife" and "The Working Girl" in "Sex and the City" versus "The Best of Everything"', if you wanna add me on researchgate or whatever) and the only thing left for me to overcome is the viva voce in two weeks. I'm very pleased with myself, thank you very much - getting my BA is sort of a passion project of mine (I know, I have wild passions) in order for me to feel better about myself, and I need to capture that feeling, because....

Now I am job hunting and I hate it already. Please refrain from telling me how lucky I am that my parents aren't throwing me out as soon as the ink on my diploma has dried. If that wasn't the case, I would've started freaking out in January, okay? So far, I am waiting for five feedbacks, four of which are unsolicited applications to publishing houses that have a bunch of magazines each, so technically it's many, many offices I've covered. The problem with unsolicited applications is that no one wants you to call and ask, since they didn't ask you to apply in the first place (which is probably already bothering them, so pestering everyone answering the phone with my fear of failure = not bound to be helpful). It's just that the sheer uncertainty of whatever is gonna happen within the next few months - will I move somewhere? get a job? an unpaid internship that'll force me to live at home and take the train everyday? - is bothering ME very, very much. So the bottom line is, if you know someone who'd pay me a living wage to write stuff for them, you got my email.

Let's not think of that too much, though, 'cause it is summer, after all! I went to Rome to see my bestest friend and it was wonderful and way too short - I didn't even eat any pasta, there was just too much to devour in such little time. The weather! The sights! The scenic streets with bars in front of which you can drink! No Italians for me though; their curly hair and general tendency to be short in height rules out most of the locals for me. My friend, however, is basically in a country filled with her type, and the fact that she can speak more Italian than my "Ciao, studio giornalismo di moda, e tu?" and is obviously gorgeous should rev up her chances pretty high.

This just to get you up to speed - since I have loads of free time now, between scanning job offers and crying about them, I'll talk to you very soon about the truly exciting stuff.

Stay tuned!

Love,

Rosy Smith

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So it's the last day of school before Christmas Holidays and I just made a list of all the highlights in 2016 (none of them having anything to do with school, surprisingly - who'd have thought?) and it reminded me of my loveliest friend and my beautiful summertime in Santa Marinella, Italy, and the series I started to do. So in the vacational spirit, dive with me into the golden sunshine and take a seat on the piazzia as the following happens around you....

Okay, the third day, my loveliest friend and I decided to explore the towns a trainstop away to get a bit of privacy (for those who didn't read this, we had previously met two men who were very, mhm, chatty). However, I had been sprinkled with mosquito bites all over my legs and feet during the first night and I always have some kind of allergic reactions to those; by the time we arrived at the castle we set out for (it looked like a couple metres away from the station but it was actually miles to walk in complete fallow land with the sun burning on us), my right foot was throbbing with every step. So we had some gelato and left for Civitavecchia. While we were making our way along the harbor, looking for some food and not finding any along the length of the ocean, the itchiness got almost unbearable and eventually, my loveliest friend set out to find a pharmacy while I sat on the ground in front of some random statue where families were taking pictures and sceptically glanced at me. Couldn't blame them, really, 'cause my hair was plastered to my head, I was practically crying (okay, I was totally crying) and rubbing an humongous foot.

In the pharmacy, I made the most tremendous (and only) purchase of our stay: A cooling pack shaped perfectly to be strapped to my foot. It's the best. I'd have died without it. I put it on first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It's wondrous I didn't baptize it in the ocean.

I also bought some hella expensive cortisone pills but they're prescription at home and that says something, so I refrained from actually taking them (however, I slapped on my 1% cortisone lotion like it's free).We can't all be as mellow as our Italian friend.

He himself stepped out onto the piazzia that night when my loveliest friend had just made a quick run to our apartment and came up to me sitting on the edge with my knees prepped up. "How's it going", he asked and I pointed to my foot and explained the deformation And that's the point where things got slightly out of hand and I'm not sure how that happened, once again: Suddenly, I was sat on a lively piazzia in the middle of everything with a strange thirty-year old I met 48 hours ago at the beach who likes to smoke pot gently massaging my foot in his lap while mumbling on about homeopathic methods for itchiness. Yeah. Well. I just kinda let it happen because my mind didn't really know how to process this scenario that it certainly never planned for. Also, it would be rather unpolite to make him stop - how many men give you voluntary foot massages? Still, a bit odd. And it dramatically increased the itchiness when he tenderly stroked the freaking luminous red, sensitive area. But he meant well. When my loveliest friend came around again, I almost fell off the brink with the urge to hysterically laugh at her confused, then baffled, then "Should I leave the two off you alone or...." expression. It was a scream.

So, yeah, that's the story of how he and I bonded over inflammation. It's an experience I'll treasure forever in my heart. Something along those lines.

Love,

Rosy Smith

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Yes, I have timing issues, but after my loveliest friend told me that she cried with disappointment when my last post wasn't this one (we are very much hung up on that vacation, so it's not that surprising), it only took me six days to come around to it....

First things first, on our first morning in Santa Marinella, we went grocery shopping which felt like such an adult thing to do; however, we seem to not have yet mastered the art of coming out of the supermarket with a basket full of things that actually make up for a whole meal together. But we got iced tea that's really cold and will satisfy my unusual thirst throughout the whole week. And some lettuce. And Mozarella. And, of course, frozen pizza (the native cooking version of a tourist - a tourist who can't cook).

On we went to the beach - we found a pretty cliff to sit on ( if you want to have a good beach day, always go for a pretty cliff) and draped ourselves over it for ten beautiful minutes in the plain sunlight until we realized we'd be beautifully burned if that went on much longer so we bought our very own parasol like my parents used to do back when they went to the Canaries in the 90s - I have this weird complex about the 90s being cool even though I only spent the first four years of my life there, so I have the need to mention that. After a while of sunbathing and flipping through Italian Elle without understanding a word (funny how we didn't cover any fashion terms in fashion school yet), we sliddered down the cliff to try and find a safe spot to go into the water without jumping on a riff and ripping our new bikinis / our limbs.

"You know, I really don't like that people think I'm such a girly gi-iiih" - my loveliest friend, screaming in unisono with me as a wave crashed onto the cliff we were standing on and wet our feet (Always a surprise, no matter how close the sea is).

And as we stood there, making guinea pig sounds and clinging onto each other in desperate fear of slipping and just for general support in the quest of entering the water, I turned to face the other people on the cliff, you know, to see if they were already handing out popcorn in order to make it an even better show, when I spotted this man looking right at us, and I don't remember if I smiled but I probably did because I'm a nice person, and suddenly, he was standing next to us offering my friend a hand to step onto a different stone. In our desperation, it seemed like the right thing to do, so she took it, and he kinda lifted her above the gap, and then he took my hand and pointed to a presumably better spot to get into the water. "Is it safe?", my friend asked. "We're not so good at swimming", I said, pointing out our best features in front of strangers as it is my custom. "Yeah, (oh, he was Italian, but he spoke English in a soft, slurred voice) all you need is a bit of courage." I laughed. "We're not so good at that either" (See, pointing it all out). He looked a bit confused but he must have realized the burden he'd loaded onto himself and got into the water, just jumping right in. "I'm not jumping anywhere", I declared to my friend. "Come on", the man said, holding out his hands. My friend crouched down on the cliff, leaned forward, and fell-jumped into his arms. Me, already crouching behind her, decided that anything better than ripping my limbs is fine with me, and did the same.

I think I made it without screaming.

Needless to say, since my loveliest friend and I have issues, we were mortified already that we needed a stranger to basically carry us into the water, so we swam away quickly, and my God, I forget how good and calm and velvety the sea feels every time. It's been over a year since I've been it it and that, lovelies, is definitely too long. The sun was glittering and blinding and behind us, the pretty cliffs and the castello rose above the ground, covered in pines and flowers, looking like a real-life postcard motive (guess what, it is), and everything felt as light as it's only possible when you're just a small body moving in the endless sea.

The only problem was the Getting Out Of It.

See, I have a lifelong fear of being crashed against the cliffs while swimming towards them. I don't know anybody whom that happend to, neither has it ever happened to me, but humans are irrational beings. My loveliest friend, for instance, is very scared of stepping into a sea urchin, so we had all the worst case scenarios covered and reluctantly swam back, examining the situation. Could we climb up there? Would we fall and make a fool of ourselves/hit our heads and bleed to death, whatever came first? "Let's just stay in here for a while longer", I said, "like we voluntarily choose to relax in this place exactly." We turned to face the cliffs, but our casual "We really just want to hang in here, it's all good" expression must have failed to convince, and it changed into "What the hell is this guy doing" the moment we saw that man who helped us earlier run, (yes, in my memory he was running like a baywatch cast member) down the cliffs, thankfully not holding a red float but shamefully a stick; you heard right, a stick like the ones on the trees where the leaves are - out to my loveliest friend, and in that moment of panic and helplessness regarding any other possibility to get out of the water, she reached for the stick. Turns out that a stick would work great if you wanted to poke a dead cat floating in the water for three weeks to see if it might be alive; it would also be the right device to pick up a piece of trash, like maybe a Coke can, that someone lost on the other side of the coast a couple of days ago; however, I hate to say it, but my friend and I aren't the same weight as the aforementioned items, even if we're as low in dignity as they are. So, our knight in brownish bermudas threw it away in a grand gesture and tried with his hands instead and pulled my friend up in a standing position. I was so stunned that I reached for him eagerly and he, not having found a great stand on the wet stone again, and I, not finding a great stand on there at all, fell back into the water. That's the moment when I get full on irrational and my biggest worry is "Am I too heavy for him?". After that split-second thought, I look at him, he looks at me, and my loveliest friend describes that sight as hilarious 'cause we both looked utterly bewildered, gazing up at her with that same expression (as if she could help us) before he gets into action again, grabbed my waist and pushed me onto the stone. I pray til this day that my bikini bottoms didn't slip too much when the water pulled at them while I was getting out, because I need a little something of my body this man hasn't touched or seen within the first 30 minutes of us knowing each other.

Our plan was to hide under our parasol and never see him again, but his plan was to place his towel next to ours and tell us his name - we'll call him A here - and that he lived in America in his teens and that he was waiting on a friend with whom he was starting a rap/electro music career that was about to blow up soon. Of course. He couldn't be working in an office or something, he had to be a budding musician. We "mmhm"d a lot and said "Wow that's cool" while trying to shove his dog (a small white....I have no clue about dog breeds but he looked like the one from The Adventures Of Tintin) off our stuff. He (the dog) really had it for my loveliest friend and cuddled up closely to her, forcing us to almost fall off our cliff because we tried to get as far away from him as possible. We're not really dog people (aka she's totally scared and I'm not exactly brave with them either and we have absolutely no desire at all to change that). A took him away some times, but not often, and when he went swimming, this dog stayed with us like we adopted him. A did, too. So I'll give you a better picture of him: His head is closely shaved, he's mid-height and very skinny arm and leg wise but still has pretty broad shoulders (I don't know how that's possible either) and pretty good abs, and he is covered in scars and cuts, the most recent one resulting from me being clumsy enough to make him fall off a cliff. Makes you think he's professionally rescuing girls out of the sea - either that or a drug dealer or something.

We met him again at the cafe at the end of our street; turns out he's our next door neighbour. His friend, B (I'm just noticing they're like Chip'n'Dale), had arrived and they asked if they could sit with us - "No they can't". I hissed to my friend. "Yeah, sure", my friend said with an uncertain smile (we're too polite/socially awkward to tell off strangers, which is probably a dangerous quality to have). We ended up spending the afternoon sitting there, letting them play us some of their music ("It's....interesting. I mean, I don't like that kind of music, but someone who does would think it's good, right?" - me, not liking it at all) and declining their offers to play it live for us "up in the apartment". It's not even that we thought they would do something to us, but even the idea of sitting in this guy's home, when we just met him in the weirdest situation ever and them playing bad music to us and us having to pretend to like it, when we could be out and about that gorgeous town eating gelato in the sun by ourselves.....it honestly didn't appeal to me as something I had any interest in doing.

First Evening Photoshoot - The Hair Flip

"But why don't you trust us", B said. I think he was offended 'cause he thought we thought he was in the Mafia (how did that even come up?). Italian men, lovelies! "They're young girls, in a strange country...." A got me better there. Well, he does have a daughter, so I guess he thought about her being 19 and hanging out with two men in their thirties - yes, they were that old, even though A looks younger due to his 90's rapper style in cut-off jeans and plaid button down shirts. All in all, a strange situation. Not neccessarily bad, but indeed very strange. We kept saying that after we finally left and got some ice cream. In heels, 'cause in Italy, it's never too early to wear heels.

Remember the piazza? Me and my loveliest friend just sat there again, on our usual bench, like two extras on a movie set, and watched the magic happen around us: By ten o'clock, the people came and started to have dinner (unthinkable for us, being hungry at six sharp) and the kids were running around again (don't the Italian kids have to go to sleep, ever? It's like being in Neverland) and the air was still warm and the old-fashioned streetlights gave everything a dreamy radiance.

"I like how I am here - I feel like I can't be this way at home", she said thoughtfully. "Maybe that's the way we are when we're in Italy", I said.

And then, the buskers appeared. And they played a beautiful, beautiful version of Sinatra's "My Way". I swear, that moment sitting there, with that tune hovering around mixed with the children's playing and the people laughing and the silverware and the glasses clinking and the knowledge I'd be there for a week, I was so in love. With everything. And I was serious when I said to my loveliest friend: "I want to get married right now. I'd marry anyone".

Love,

Rosy Smith

PS: I changed my mind about the marriage thing by now, but you know, the mood was right at the time.

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