You’re a piece of shit. You’re a tremendous piece of shit.
Because you have the money to be in here in the first place, sitting at this table with your young woman, ordering anything you please and even complaining at having to wait for a couple of minutes, you just think you’re so much better than I am.
But you’re a piece of shit. No more and no less.
Not just you, don’t get me wrong: everyone in this place is a piece of shit.
For that matter, it’s a place designed to appeal to the smug young sons and daughters of the wealthy neighborhoods of town, the kind of place that’s fashionable for two or three years, no more, after which nobody goes there anymore. At that point, the proprietors rest on their laurels, the fading glow of past glory, hoping for a return to a popularity that’s never going to come back, and then they finally shutter the place. For people like us, for people who don’t have a rich Papà who cheats on Mamma and then salves his conscience for the fact by spreading money around to everyone in the family—for someone like us who just works in the place—it’s fundamental to understand when the time has come to move on.
Things are fine here for now. No doubt, I have to put up with some humiliations, people like you, my dear piece of shit, as you complain about slow service and leave me a one-euro tip. I hate you and everyone like you, but the ones I hate most are the ones who leave a one-euro tip. Better to leave no tip at all than a one-euro tip. That at least seems honest: I didn’t like having to wait, so I’m not giving you anything at all. But a one-euro tip is an insult. Sometimes, it’s an unforgivable insult.
I still can’t seem to let these things slide off my back. And maybe I never will. But that’s okay. It’s the anger that feeds my music. It’s with that anger that I manage to survive and make sure my dream survives, too.
It’s easy for you, you piece of shit. What problems do you have in life? What problems have you ever had? It’s not like you were born in some tiny shithole town in the middle of nowhere, some burg that’s not even mentioned on maps, stuck in the middle of the most overlooked and downtrodden region of all of Europe. They throw you a lavish birthday party every year, and your Papà buys you a new car, and your Mamma buys you the latest pair of shoes, the finest brand. And if you’re ever lucky enough that they get divorced, you’ll just get twice the swag.
Instead I have to stand here and serve you, and listen while you lecture me, with that shrill little faggoty voice of yours, just so I can nourish a dream that might never come true.
I can take my little revenges, though. For instance, I can spit in the beer you ordered from me. For instance, by exchanging hot glances with the slut you brought in here, who stares at my junk and my pectorals every time I pass by your table.
And for that matter, that’s only natural, seeing that you’re a homely piece of shit, no matter how much money you may have. It’s only natural that she should look at a man who could finally give her a proper appreciation of the meaning of the verb “to fuck.”
I could wait until she gets up and tells you, excuse me, I’m going to the restroom, and then follow her downstairs and take her into the supply closet and give her five minutes of paradise and a point of comparison. In fact, that’s exactly what I used to do, at the beginning, until I realized I was running too big of a risk. There aren’t many places in this town where they give you a steady salary, on top of the tips.
There are times, you piece of shit, when I wonder how long this is all going to have to continue. How many sandwiches, how many beers am I going to have to serve. How many floors am I going to have to mop, at night, while you sleep peacefully in your bed and your slut goes around cheating on you with guys like me.
Because that’s the way women are, you piece of shit. They swear their undying fidelity, they tell you how much they love you. They even follow you when you leave town and move away: it’s just to be close to you, they tell you, but it’s actually so they can keep an eye on you and then have their own fun. If we were friends, you piece of shit, and I consider myself lucky that we never will be, I’d tell you to steer clear of love in general, because love will just drag you down with it. I even wrote that in my last song, another song that, along with the other hundred or so that I’ve written, might never have the honor of gracing a stage in an auditorium.
Love drags you down.
She used to gaze at me as if I were God Almighty, back in the village. All the guys swooned over her, but she only had eyes for me. I could have told her to walk naked down the main street of town and she’d have done it, but even so, she would still have belonged to me, and me alone. Whereas you, you piece of shit, you can’t even begin to imagine how pretty she was. Not one of these little sluts—these little whores in your oh-so-respectable city, made up and dressed to the nines and accessorized to the tune of thousands and thousands of euros—can even hope to come close. Even the cheapest glad rags, if she wore them, looked like a custom-made evening gown, stitched by some world-renowned designer.
Because she was beautiful, you know that, you piece of shit? Just beautiful.
Sometimes I would gaze down at her, after making love with her in the grass, and I’d ask myself what on earth could be better than this; I never came up with an answer. Now, if I try playing the things I wrote back then, they seem like pieces written by someone else.
Sometimes, love needs a place to live, you know that, you piece of shit? A physical location, a street, a zip code. If you move it from there, then love sickens and dies, unless it’s treated in time.
I left my hometown because I believed that certain things couldn’t change. I left because I thought that if I stayed there I’d die, I’d suffocate, but instead what happened is that I died here. Because love, if you take it away from its home, can no longer breathe.
I remember when I found her there, waiting for me outside the door of the club, right here, not thirty feet from the table where you’re drinking with such gusto that beer I spat into. She was waiting for me to finish my shift, smiling as if she’d just jumped out of a cake. God, she pissed me off.
I was here to work. I was here to meet someone who could help me cut a record. I was here to build my future and hers, too. And there she was, standing proud and smiling in the pouring rain. She didn’t understand that I needed to have her far away, to guard the heart that I had given her, not right here, to bust my balls.
There she stood. And there she was again, night after night, because she thought I was fucking all the girls I could here, in this city, that I had come here to have fun where she couldn’t find out about it, not to work. The times I was able to get a gig singing, ramshackle clubs that paid just a few euros, she would swoop in like a hawk, and instead of watching me perform she’d survey the other women, monitoring their every movement.
You can’t imagine, you piece of shit, the constant arguing, the obsessive fixation that she turned into. She’d gone to live with that brother of hers, who was born an old man, that useless creature who knows nothing about real life because all he can think about are books, and she’d done it for one reason only, to torment me.
Then she started looking around a little.
Do you understand, you piece of shit, just the way this superficial and absurd city of yours can treat a woman who comes from a tiny, godforsaken little town, especially if she’s beautiful enough to take your breath away? Someone who’s got it into her head that her man is cheating on her every night, someone who wants to take revenge?
It didn’t take her long to get busy. She could have done it behind my back: busy as I was, I might not even have noticed. But maybe there was no fun to it, if I didn’t know.
You know, she said, I’ve been offered work as a runway model. What kind of runway, I asked her. Like at an airport? Runway, don’t you get it, she replied. Run-way mo-del. A fashion runway, like the ones you see in magazines. So then I asked, who offered you this work? Some guy on the street. What do you mean, some guy on the street?
So it turns out that while she was on her way to buy some groceries, some guy in an SUV pulls over and stops her: just like in some dumb American TV show. Excuse me, Signorina, can I steal just a second of your time, just a moment? And she, bumpkin that she is, ignorant country girl, who has no idea that in a city like this one you should never stop and talk to someone on the street, just smiles and says: Sure, I’m all ears. With the face she has. With that body, you understand, you piece of shit? Sure, she says, I’m all ears.
And it turns out that this guy has a modeling agency, surprise surprise. That he’d noticed her walking down the street: You know, Signorina, I really want to compliment you on your natural grace. Oh, Signore, what a coincidence, that’s actually my name, Grazia. Ah, how funny you are, can we relax and switch to the informal? Why, of course, my pleasure. Natural grace indeed. Fine firm ass, is what he meant to say, I really want to compliment you on your fine firm ass.
Ah, now you get mad, she says to me. When you play your guitar, or stroll from table to table smiling at the girls, putting on a show like a guy who puts out for money, I’m not supposed to say a word. But when someone offers me a job, oh no! and there’s nothing wrong with me working, is there? It’s not like I’m going to be a prostitute or anything, I’m just showing off nice clothing to other women, after all. But then I’m suddenly a slut, is that it?
You try and explain to her that it’s not the same thing at all. You try and explain that for an unexperienced young woman it’s dangerous to frequent certain circles in a place as complicated as this city. You try and explain that the runway presentation is just the first step, then come photographs and after that, who knows what else.
You’re so selfish, she screams at me. I feel like doing certain things. Just the same as you, I have no doubt.
That was when I hit her the first time. I’d never touched her before, not to hurt her, anyway. I don’t know where it came from, but there it was. She looked at me for a whole minute, hand on her face, tears streaming silently down her cheeks. That image was what inspired my song, “Tears on Your Face,” which might have been the best piece I’ve ever written.
She wouldn’t answer the phone for two days. I had to go to her apartment, and then that idiot brother of hers wouldn’t let me in: I knocked him out of the way with a quick smack of the back of my hand. I took care of everything the way real men like me take care of things, you piece of shit. Real men. Not like you.
She promised me she’d never do it again. That I had it backwards, that I didn’t understand, that she’d stop for my sake, even if there was nothing wrong about it.
It all seemed too easy to me. I thought she’d put up more of a fight. It smelled fishy to me, so I took the day off work, I told them I wasn’t feeling well, and I set out to follow her.
She was still going, you bet she was. She was going, bright and cheerful, then she’d come downstairs out of that place with five or six other whores, all of them worse than her, and she’d head home. I went in, I made friends with the doorman, and I got him to tell me what they wore on these runway presentations.
Underwear, and that’s all. Can you imagine, you piece of shit? Underwear. A thong, a bra.
My woman striding back and forth in a thong and a bra, with that body of hers that turns your brain and your heart inside out, those endless, perfect legs, those arms, the belly she has.
Underwear.
And I’m not sure it’s just women who go to see those runway presentations, is it? There are salesmen and businessmen who are there to select the items, the lines to manufacture and market. That filthy pig of a doorman even offered to put me in touch with one of the girls. You just give me ten euros, I’ll talk to her and get you her phone number. I pointed to the picture of her and the filthy pig exclaimed: Ah, the Calabrian girl! She’s new here, and she’s spectacular. But she’s a tough nut to crack, she doesn’t put out. You’re going to have to spend at least fifty euros. I don’t even know why I didn’t break his nose for him, the filthy pig.
When I saw her in front of me that night, I lost control. I took her into the back of the shop, and God only knows how I managed to keep from murdering her. God only knows. She took off running, in tears, and since then she never showed her face around here again.
I’m here to work, you piece of shit. Strictly to work. And I wanted to construct a future for me and for her. But now I don’t know anymore if she’s the one I want at my side. Now she’s no better in any way than the little slut sitting by your side, who secretly watches me when you’re turned away. What good is a girl like that, to me?
A girl like that doesn’t mean a thing to me.
As far as I’m concerned, a girl like that can just die.