Throughout most of my undergrad, I studied and worked so hard that I vacillated between having no life or drinking excessively to make up for having no life. I was too busy looking ahead to the future and plotting my next career conquest. Sure, I had my drunken hookups and my casual relationships, but I was always just a little unavailable. Men were an afterthought. I was no sexual goddess in collegeβnot even a little bit.
I wasn't really pursued or chased. I had never given in to pleasure, wary that I couldn't come back from it. I didn't think of myself as sexy or even that sexually appealing. I firmly believed I was smart and witty, and therefore attractive, but sexy? That was for women who knew things like how to curl their hair and how to make eyeliner not look terrible.
I was not, at least in my own opinion, a woman who turned heads. Buying a one-way ticket to Rome without a plan was risky, but I was positively intoxicated by the idea. I had a bed and breakfast booked for one week, but then a big question mark for the rest of my time there.
Where would I go? Who would I meet? What would I do with my time? I was going to Italy. For an indeterminate amount of time. What the fucking fuck was I doing? During my second week in Rome, I went on a date with two Italian businessmen named Mauro and Giuseppe. It was meant to be a date with only Mauro, but Giuseppe came along thinking I would bring a friend I only had one friend at the time, but she was busy and much older than me, so this is how I ended up on a double date with two beautiful men all to myself.
The three of us dined at a little restaurant tucked away just off Piazza Navona, where a string of white lights twinkled above the tables on cobblestone streets. They sat across from me on one side of a table, and we shared a bottle of red wine.
