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Anna hears him, comes back, a dumb smile on her face, leans over him, hugs him, and starts crying. She has nothing under her Godardesque striped shirt, her hard braless breasts (between a B and a C cup) vaguely shaped like those of his female relatives. Anna sits on his lap. She presses her breast against his chest. (Berengo once said, “She’s the sort of figa who is so figa that she can’t hide it, so she’ll fuck anybody and not care.” Berengo has slept with her. “It’s easier for her to sleep with anybody than deny herself all the time.” Since she has no confidence issues, when she’s not down to fuck she shuts down entirely. So what now? I mean, tonight?)
“It’s a nightmare, zio James, a nightmare,” she says as she rubs her cheek and her chest against him, weeping. “I hate this city.”
James tries to soothe her, reads her the list. He’s being fatherly, but he’s keeping her close because he wants her to keep rubbing against him. The list doesn’t seem to soothe her; it only makes her angrier. “I hate these people. It’s all written down on this piece of paper, and it’s all true. It’s all fake!” Her face is red. James has never seen anyone turn this red, this splotchy. It seems like half the capillaries have burst. Is it possible, JM wonders, to feel such strong emotions because of one party? Does she feel that the people here are keeping her from becoming something she wants to become? It feels as though they’re denying her some basic liberty, some right. But what is it, exactly? This war she’s waged against God knows what indignity makes her look ridiculous and weak and fluid—all this pressing up against him, all this leaning.
Anna seems to be in the middle of a crisis, and now she’s kissing and nibbling on his ear. JM can’t pull his ear away even if it hurts.
Anna gets up and asks JM to read the items on the list aloud, so she can act them out.
(5) She sucks in the insides of her check and puffs out her lips [so much flesh, it’s overflowing].
(1) She pulls up her t-shirt and flashes a tit to show a tattoo of a candle on her rib cage.
(26) She rushes to a table and gets some peanuts, which she then throws to people.
(8) As she attempts a headstand on the floor, her t-shirt falls to her neck, and her belly and then her breasts are exposed. James reaches the point in the list where a couple is supposed to kiss, and he skips it, though she manages to read it over his shoulder. A whiff of melancholy, then the sudden feeling that he’s wearing boxers.
The game ends, and Anna is back on his lap to tell him about a dream she had a couple of months ago in which a gypsy stopped to talk to her and Berengo. She had two strips of toilet paper—one that she’d used to wipe her vagina, the other her ass—and said, “I have nothing, but I have this, and so I preach the Gospel.” In the dream Berengo was chatting up the gypsy, and he and Anna weren’t able to get to an appointment they had—they were supposed to paint a wall. “It was a wall where they were pulling out these kittens from between the bricks.” Then she confesses that she’s lying, at least in part. The gypsy is from Berengo’s dream, and the kittens are from hers.
Now she stands up and pushes him violently, so he sits back down on the couch, right at the moment when he was trying to gather the strength to stand up and kiss her. She leaves without saying goodbye. James hangs back, upset with a hard-on, until “Marcello” and Hitler come over to him and sit on either side to have a talk.
Hitler asks James to write a profile of “Marcello.”
“Marcello” tells him, “Will you leave us alone you piece of shit?”
Now he and JM are alone, and he begins a monologue about cultural relevance that makes JM ill. “I’m rich, but rich Italian uguale no bling, don’t count. I make my English worse so I sound like a slave…My hunger is for big audience…The problem is irrelevance,” which James records on his iPhone. In that squeaky voice, all the inanity and grandeur and fascism and the end of a generation and maybe a country whose…
RAY-BAN PICS TO-DO LIST
1. someone showing a tattoo
2. knuckles
3. drawing on the wall
4. two girls, piggyback
5. fish face
6. band playing in the kitchen
7. crowd surging/freight elevator
8. someone doing a handstand
9/10. 2 shots: girl and boy swap clothing
11. couple kissing in bathroom
12. dance party in the freight elevator
14. legs in the frame
15. someone holding it up and getting confetti thrown in
17. someone putting on a guy
18. someone putting his or her arms around someone but too tall out of frame
20. people dancing on table
21. someone dancing on table
22. someone shaving his head
23. Ron holding a puppy
23. fake fight
24. wide shots and close-ups of the band
25. someone wrapped in toilet paper
26. food fight
27. someone doing a heart sign with his hands
28. a guy without his shirt
29. picture of Nicky
30. sticking out your tongue
31. someone pouring a drink into someone else’s mouth
MARCELLO’S LATE-NIGHT RANT AT THE RAY-BAN PARTY
I’m crazy mad, James man, crazy mad. I talk to my italo-americano bitch lawyer from Long Island today. Big office Midtown, big window with a view. A view of old skyscrapers, old copies of The New Yorker in waiting room. Twenty floor. Visa-denying bitch. I have need of visa. She deny visa. I can’t live senza visa. Not Visa the credit card; I have credit card. I’m flush and have credit-visa. I mean ID visa, visto, visa lasciapassare to live in America. Today Long Island lawyer bitch, the bitch my friend and manager advice that I visit, she change idea. The prostitute. How can I make record if bitch don’t give me visa? She change idea, she change what she say to me, no, she change what she say to my friend manager about my possibility of have a visa. I think you see the game I play here.
You prize-winning taker of sensible notes: all start with the notes. You take bad notes; you fuck process.
She say this winter American authorities spy that too many Italians obtain visa and now I can’t have sponsor for visa at fake company that a friend of my manager invented to get visa for talent artists like me.
I want to make it U.S. hip-hop and not in Italian hip-hop because Italian hip-hop have no relevance. Better talk like Jamaican. Better sound poor. All money my rich father spend on my English school with English teachers since I had six years, I stick those money in my father’s culo and bring back my English to basic English, and I am poser of poor-sounding Italo-American–sounding Italian that make me next big thing in America instead of another Lil Wayne record with electric guitar.
I speak child English and try rhymes.
I want to make it big, so I make my English bad so I can sound poor like Weezy and seem that I come from idealized Italo-American slum and seem that my polo shirt is heartbreaking because it’s sign that I rise from the ghetto. But you and I know I am not ghetto, not inside not outside; I am all money. I have money like Lil Wayne’s daughter have money.
I look exotic, but I in reality speak English like sons of ambassadors, those sons of ambassadors so black they’re invisible, from French-speaking country, from civilized third world country. I am like them.
I am “Marcello,” like the late great Marcello Mastroianni, the man who beds your sisters and girls, the man who has a flow, the man in the unforgettable roles as an Italian representative of universal appeal and undying relevance. I’m rich, but rich Italian uguale no bling, don’t count. I make my English worse so I sound like a slave, and you digs me, for I’m fast and schemey and I use the tropes like make your head pop with my 9 millimeters I don’t really own but have money my Daddy money to buy a hundred Uzi and kill your whole ghetto.
And you love me, for I’m simple and next-big-thingy already and have hunger for relevance, like handicapped underpriviledged
kids from Odd Future Wolf Gang have hunger for relevance. Me: same hunger, no fake psycho issues. Me: honest. But like them I serve the White Man with passion: they do advertisement for Supreme; I come to New York with my rich money and buy Supreme t-shirts. Only I am white, and the Man, the Power, the Man is my Supreme Dad and all my butt surfing is bound to serve the glory of the Man my father. Father, Money, America, Glory, Polo.
I escape from the former civilization, Italy, the world-famous country of Vinny and Pauly D and The Sitch and of orgy and of binge drinking underage by American students and marveling at the Colosseo.
I grow up listening to white/black conspiracy of The Special, Two-Tone sound, and the white/black conspiracy of Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons sound. After that, I find euro-trance and start produce hip-hop dance records for Italia, but not, no, Italia is no relevance, so am here to impose my will via the inner beauty of English as second language for the poor of the land, the sad-eyed nations of other planets coming to take New York and ask the mayor for a section of the island they can call Little Country of Origin.
Ex romanità, former empire, and I produce tracks for Italian distinguished hip-hop scene but have never rapped before. I don’t waste songwriting skill for small Italian audience.
My hunger is for big audience.
The lonely hunger of the man already rich that resonates all the same in the poor man’s heart.
I’m young and hood in my striped polo, and no one can beats me for I have history, I stay in school, I take the cocaine and shoot the girls with porn iPhone like in Italian songs.
I come to New York and have no hood, no projects, just I’m cool. When I come to New York I sleep at my manager’s apartment. He want to make something new of me. House high-rise very expensive in Williamsburg on the river, kicking all the poor away, soon kicking the Hasids away, kicking the brothers away ’cause we want the new okay neighborhood all for us. We live here, I and manager.
My manager love cock, but he promise he not butt surfing in my presence. He nose like I nose. We do. I promise my mom I never become gay in pursuit of career. But bashing gays is good career move. Young people love the easy predigested scandal. Because it’s a thing we do together. We organize the layers of fun.
That’s why I see potential of inspiring heartbreak in my friendship with homosexual manager from repressed Italy. He repressed. Big time repressed. Orphan, too. He more heartbreaking than me; he success story. We fuck you up with cry for our story, especially his. Read gossip magazine and find out if he fuck me.
Have not decided which hos I want yet. Only thinking of developing my tear-inducing, scrappy flow.
If sucking manager’s cock is needed I ask my mom she does the cock sucking. Rich woman must know how to, no? even if she have back problems? Sucking cock for rising from misery is more typically black problems but she got back problems.
See? I make joke, maybe I be comic. Immigrant comic.
The problem is irrelevance. Is losing sleep over irrelevance. I will fuck Italo-American lawyer because her typical Italian inability to do right.
If I don’t get visa my life is useless; have to spend rest of days taking ketamine to fight the feeling.
Case popolari = not the projects. Projects = MIT-like research and development of arts. Case Popolari = delusional people.
I wanna lose my Italian ’cause talk Italian only makes you sleep with Italians or with American tourist in Italy, but not make you relevant unless you fuck daughter of big CEO of music business under the Colosseum in a dream and then in the dream he makes your dream come true.
Me, no Baywatch bagnino, no operaio, no Pasolini butt seller. Me no want to lose my hair but accept my macho legacy. My hair already thinning. Me skinny rich but balding because macho legacy. Me Italian for real. No Vinny. No Sitch. Me hundred percent Italian. Even Fascist.
All must converge. Money my father earn through hard work as lawyer. Me, too, lawyer. Me twenty-five. Me laureate in law. Will I ever be lawyer or will I be hip-hop sensation with simple accento and tear-jerking rhymes about hunger for success? Everybody digs “Marcello.”
All the money the piccola imprenditoria italiana gave to my father for their lawsuits and their gestione del personale, I spend in cab rides and cranberry crap at the Jane Hotel, and Coogi puttane in Miu Miu sandals. I buy mocassinos and moccaccinos to hos and they blow me.
See new collection of Miu Miu sandals? Fashioned like slaves of ancient Rome, slaves for my pleasure. All must converge.
We use Italian accents to impress people, like young good-looking Albanesi in the bars of Stazione Termini in remote Roma, the city that I don’t love and that won’t give me nothing except my money.
Problem is this is not supermoney like, I don’t know, Britney Spears money: our money is only family money. It is just a lot of money.
My father money are lazy money: money that buy irrelevance, and this means a life of ketamina.
Look, James, look at me. Take the notes. Take the good notes is half the work.
We the posers at the opening, we open the fancy store and buy ourselves all the merch, all the clothes, and then them niggers kill us because we want to die. But we die here and you call the Italian parliament and give the news that we die because irrelevance.