It was the first day of spring in 2020. A couple of weeks after my 24th birthday. Images of herds of southern Italians at the Milano Centrale station, desperately trying to reach their loved ones for lock-down, flooding the news.
I woke up calm, yet excited, with that pinch of shyness you feel after the first night together.
His scandinavian-style, minimalist, and perfectly clean Amsterdam apartment absorbed the first beams of sunlight, and they matched the beige palette of its furniture and light-wooden floors. He gets out of bed and the next thing I hear is Pino Daniele’s “Amore senza fine” (“Endless love”) playing from the speakers. “This can’t be true,” I thought. After that came an avocado toast with salmon and scrambled eggs in bed and a Nespresso cup, along with his defined and tanned bicep staring at me from the edge of the bed, smooth as the (also beige) duvet cover.
It was the best lock-down of my life, if one could even say that. Especially because it was only a lock-down through the echoes of family and friends in Rome, and, of course, Giuseppe Conte’s “bollettino”, counting victims of that tragedy.
Amsterdam was still “free”, enjoying its best and most rain-free season in years, its empty parks beckoning endless walks, take-away food from window bakeries and bars, sunset work-outs and yoga on the roof, beach escapes, and the two of us.
People used to stare at me when I entered the supermarket wearing a face mask. Gloves on, we came back and disinfected item by item together like both our families were doing in Italy. We made pizza, drank beer and wine, and ate “scrocchi” for aperitivo (Italian products abroad are a whole world of their own, I guess we can call these crackers). We sang, worked, played Fifa, tanned and… “facemmo tanto amore” (said bluntly, the sex was the best I had had in years).
We’ve been looking for that feeling for the past three years. It was as if with the end of lock-down and the long-awaited Italian return, the magic faded. We’ve been chasing each other in circles since then, never really finding our way back to that beige apartment. Even though it has always been there.
He now blames it on a foundational lack of connection. We’re not made for each other. I guess I have to acquiesce to that answer because I can’t think of a better one.
I like to think that COVID showed us the power of appreciating simple things. Of having our backs when nothing is rushing us out of bed. Of nurturing love in the midst of chaos. Of settling for a beam of sunlight and a young, dreamy, slightly insecure lover, who, as Jovanotti sang, was “Bella, come una mattina” (“Beautiful like the morning”). When no one is awake yet, I can love him just for me.
