Fall 1976: A Kiss from the Italian Exchange Student

I was very busy during my the fall of my junior year in high school, trying to "get with" Todd (who I spent the night with at music camp) by dating his girlfriend.    Not to mention working as an athletic trainer, taking Spanish and French, and spending 300 hours a week in church so I would be selected to go to the Nazarene International Institute in Switzerland

But I still found time for a crush on Giovanni.

He was an exchange student from Bergamo, Italy, short and wiry, with dark curly hair, dark eyes, and smooth brown skin - what they call "olive." His English wasn't good, and he spoke no Spanish, but he enrolled in my Advanced Spanish class anyway, figuring that Italian was close enough,  The teacher assigned me to tutor him.

I was obsessed with all things Catholic, so I quizzed Giovanni on priests and monks, and processionals, and novenas.

In October our Spanish class car-pooled to Chicago to see Federico Garcia Lorca's La casa de Bernarda Alba, about a puritanical woman whose five daughters are about to explode with sexual tension.  Bernarda tries to shoot Adela's lover, Pepe, but misses; thinking that he's dead, Adela kills herself.  Bernarda is almost satisfied: "Mi hija ha muerta virgin!" she yells.  "My daughter died a virgin!"

We had a lot of fun mocking Bernarda Alba on the way home, crammed together in back seat of his host family's car for the 3-hour drive back to Rock Island.  Thirty years later, I still remember the warmth of Giovanni's thigh against mine, his pleasantly hard arm,  his hands swaying as he spoke, his smile, a beacon lighting the way to my future.

Through the rest of the year, we yelled "Mi hija ha muerta virgin!" at random strangers.

But we never hung out after class, or on weekends -- he was into dancing at the Dock, the teen disco in Davenport. He invited me once, but Nazarenes were forbidden dancing.

At a Christmas party in December 1976, shortly before I caught my Cousin Joe in the act.  I saw Giovanni kissing a girl under the mistletoe -- very enthusiastically.  I went over to say hello, tapped him on the shoulder, and he grabbed me with surprisingly muscular arms and pulled me into the embrace.

For a moment I thought Giovanni was going to kiss me -- no, it was the girl who leaned over, before I turned my head away -- but at least his arm was around me, pulling me against his hard chest.

In the spring semester, I became friends with Aaron, who didn't know that he was gay, and I started dating Verne the Preacher's Son, and Giovanni fell into the background.  But when I told him I was going to be in Fiesch, Switzerland in July 1977, he said "It's only 200 km from Bergamo!  Call me, and I'm come there to visit you!"

But when I tried to call, his phone number didn't work.  Maybe I wrote it down wrong, or maybe I didn't understand international dialing.

I kicked myself over the missed opportunity for years. Then, in 1985, I traveled to Italy and looked up Giovanni again.