When In Rome...

I peered out of a restless sleep to the blurry sights and oppressive sounds of my hostel roomate’s metal lockers being jocked and jangled around loudly. This was a clear Pakistani rendition of “First Call/Reveille.” As a lifelong insomniac, my ability to fall back asleep after being prematurely woken is entirely contingent on stopping my brain from starting to form thoughts. In this case, my brain was already primed and deprived of REM having crawled into the very same bed less then 2 hours before, so the silent curse about inconsiderate roommates and early-rising-pussies that was filibustering a return to sleep in my head would be the block on which I built this day. I groan without opening my mouth, roll my body around in the appropriately unfitted sheets and finally smother my head and ears in my pillow in what can only be described as a passive aggressive “fuck off.” Although, in a crowded party hostel such as this, it might also be the universal signal for “fuck quieter” or “go fuck in someone else’s room.” I was awake. There’s never much hope for sleep for me, but maybe if the Iron Giant over there see’s me suffocating myself in my own pillow he might go explore Rome.

The truth is I met the fellow in question yesterday when I checked into my room. He’s a Pakistani kid studying in Germany, doing some historically motivated traveling while on holiday. I forgot his name of course so we’ll call him Peter. In my estimation he was a very friendly and intelligent kid, if a bit reserved for the party hostel scene. The other truth is, the noise he was making that woke me up is due mostly to the metal lockers attached to the metal cages underneath the metal bunk beds they outfit each traveler with; it’s unavoidable. The other part worth noting is that I had stumbled back to the room at 6am piss drunk, and wouldn’t bet on myself having been half as considerate to my roommates as he was to me several hours later. Anyway, back to my anguish.

“Pssst, hey man. you awake?”

Jesus, now he wants to talk.

I pull the pillow up just barely past my mouth,”Yeah man, I’m up. Whats going on?”

“Do you still want to come today?”

Fuck. Leave it to me to forget my obligations and go out drinking until 6am. Yesterday after I had put my bags down in those metal lockers, this kid and I did all the trite (but necessary) solo-traveler small talk; we both agreed we wanted to see the Pope and should research what we could. About three hours later when I was in the communal kitchen laying the foundation for the inebriation that would make this very story possible, my new Pakistani friend found me amidst the table-pounding Australians and informed me the Pope was speaking tomorrow morning at the Vatican, 10 am. “Lets go! Wake me up if I’m still asleep!” I yelled with a thumbs up and table full of eyes waiting eagerly to inform me in several accents that my side conversation had lost me the round and I needed to “skull” another full glass of Limoncello.

I sat upright in my bunk faster then I should’ve and felt the alcohol slide brutally back into complete control.

“Come where?” I asked, hoping that the answer was anything but what I knew it would be.

“The Pope is speaking today at the Vatican in an hour, remember?”

This is the exact point where I could’ve saved myself a whole lot of trouble. Had I just done what most people would’ve done, I could’ve said “look dude I slept for less then three hours, my head is splitting in half, I’m just now starting to remember things that happened last night, and this is day one for me in Rome so I need to preserve myself. Thanks for the offer, I’m going to try to go back to sleep.” Instead, as my brain started to run warm up diagnostics checks, I considered the idea of the Pope, tried to remember where I was and why I was there, did a special rare reality check where I tried to remember who I was, then eventually decided there is nothing to understand except that some guy who is important to a lot of the world is doing something important and us non-important people need to flock to his harem. Still allocating half my brain to figuring out why a “pope” exists, I opened my dreary eyes wide and lamented in a hoarse morning voice,

“How much time do we have?”

It was 9:15am and my cohort had been told that the pope was to speak at 10. I made a quick mental note of the night before: Lots of drinking, excessive partying, something hilarious, something embarrassing, something fun, someone to ignore, someone to look for and a name that I needed to find. The great part about a hangover of that level, without any sleep to cushion it, is that the brains low functionality tends to obscure the details of memories and leave only the feelings, which can be easily filed away for later scrutiny. I did exactly that, hoping to figure the night out later with some other survivors. For now, duty called and we had 40 minutes to make it to the Vatican.

“Crazy night?” Peter asked.

“Yeah man… When in Rome..” I spit out the old saying without much thought. One day in and it had already gotten to the point where the hackneyed, cliche manner the old saying was being used had ruined any enjoyment felt by using it in such a meta context. In fact, by the time I left Rome, the saying had transformed from something resembling “go with the flow” to “I need to say something before I chug this alcohol so people don’t think I have a drinking problem.”

I asked Peter if he knew any particulars or details about getting over to the Vatican while I continued my diagnostics check. Wallet and passport fell out of my pillowcase. Check. Phone hadn’t charged but still had enough battery life to take a picture or two of the pope. Check. My roommate didn’t know much, except how to get there and that we needed to hurry. I slipped into my pants grabbed my flannel, skipped brushing my teeth, skipped taking a shower, skipped taking a piss, skipped going into the restroom altogether, a mistake I’ll never make again.

People gave me questioning looks throughout my previous travels, so I grew accustomed to it eventually, but Rome was the first stop on my "fly to Rome, make it to Bulgaria somehow" trip and I was a bit sensitive to it today. People held my glance a tad longer then I was used to in the previous countries. It’s not often you see someone as ugly as me, as drunk as me, seemingly having somewhere to go at 9:30am, so I labeled myself a “rare sighting” and welcomed the passerby's stares. It was no problem finding the correct station and hopping on the appropriate train with the sober, and fully functioning Peter as my guide beside me. My head was still in the gutter as we arrived at the Vatican, where any number of friendly Italian “tour-guides” tried to sell us tickets to the free event. Once inside the Vatican we had a little trouble trying to find which room he was speaking in, as this wasn’t a typical event where he addressed St. Peter’s Square from his window. We figured most museums (i.e. Vatican) had WiFi so we walked around a bit trying to pick up a signal and find the event online. Neither of us could pick up a signal, but we did see a sign pointing in the direction we had walked that had the inviting “M” of the McDonalds arches and a caption that said “Free Wifi.” My phone was below 15% by this point, the Mcdonald’s was a bit of a walk, and it was 20 minutes after we had been told the Pope would speak, so we decided screw our phones and asked everyone who looked official to point us in the right direction. Combining the best of several answers, we found the room the Pope was in, and sat smitten in the back while he tended to the prayers of the world.

Seeing the Pope like that was a story in and of itself, and if you’ve never been in the presence of such an important figure you start to have peculiar thoughts while they’re sitting up there all human and fleshy. Having taken our pictures and said our prayers (I stared at the Pope and thought about things I’d like to happen without blinking) we left and decided to check out the Vatican museum, which is the real gem of the Vatican. It is supposedly one of the greatest museums in the world so we were both ecstatic, not to mention walking around in the sun while drinking from the ancient “water fountains” that are spangled around Rome had done wonders for my hangover. Drinking from all these “nasoni” had given me cause to finally use the restroom, first time today. I told my buddy to wait in the Vatican Museum lobby as I handled business, and went in and did exactly that. While washing my hands I slowly brought my eyes level to have a look at the face I hadn’t seen since yesterday and a long night of partying. I literally jumped back.

Holy shit.

I dragged my fingers around my lips and the skin beneath my facial hair and my chin and felt a little burn after my fingers had left. All around my lips, almost up to my nose and half an inch in every other direction was a dark red, almost purple rash that looked like it was spreading in splotchy tendrils. Had I been prone to panic attacks I probably would’ve had one. Instead I just got angry. There was no fucking way, on the first real day of my trip, I was going to have to deal with some rash I had never seen before. There was no fucking way I was going to spend the day trying to track down a doctor who spoke English, was sympathetic enough to Americans to let me in without an appointment, and could give me some sort of prescription to magically make this disappear as soon as possible. I knew from research that Italian healthcare is an absolute mess if you want to be treated for anything non life-threatening, so I was pretty distraught at the prospects facing me and my trip. I couldn’t even look in the mirror past the initial shock, it was a horrifying idea. I went out to my buddy who was still waiting.

“I think I’m getting a rash..”

“I thought you knew?” he said.

“No. This is the first time I’m seeing it. I didn’t look in a mirror this morning I just rolled right out of bed.”

“Well were you with anyone last night?”

Now I had to start unfiling those feelings I had this morning about last night and figuring out the details.

“No not like.. well fuck I was kissing a girl I was dancing with but what if the pillow I slept on just wasn’t clean or had a rash dormant on it?!” I half pleaded that part. My unrelenting refusal to believe that I sometimes make poor judgement errors in women must remain steadfast. It had to be the pillow.

“I don’t want to freak you out, but I think it might be herpes?”

“Maybe. I don’t think herpes completely discolors a portion of your face.”

“Do you want me to look up herpes on my phone?”

“Not really.”

“Well… do you still want to go to the Vatican Museum?”

“This looks weird man. You go, I’m gonna try and figure this out.”

Peter offered to hang out for a bit and help me in case my phone died, which was a class act move (thanks again bud). So we walked around holding our phones up like offerings to the Vatican pigeons with no luck at all, and my phone battery holding on to a thread of existence. Finally I remembered the sign I had seen earlier, the Golden arches and their promised land of Wifi. I walked confidently up to the first official I could find, in this case it was one of the Pontifical Swiss Guards, or in other words the Pope’s own holy military.

“Hey man do you know where McDonalds is?”

The guy gave me a long look over with a hint of disgust or pity or something and shook his head. It wasn’t until later that I thought about how ridiculous that must have seemed from his perspective. Here I was in one of the most important buildings in human history, in a city with phenomenal cuisine choices, standing a football field from where the Pope inculcates the masses, asking a member of the Papal Secret Service if he knows where I can get some cheeseburgers on the cheap. In my defense, I had just seen the Pope and the Vatican, hadn’t had Mcdonalds in months and truly only needed their WiFi, but he will never know that. God bless America.

Peter had trailed off while I disgraced my country, and with a short walk down a little side street had found a little pizza shop that had WiFi. He looked up local doctors while I tried to Web-MD myself. As far as the internet could tell me I had some sort of weaponized Impetigo and would have to cut off my lips to survive. More favorably would be the potential severe meningitis mixed with vitamin B-deficiency that had emulsified into a staph infection headed straight for my brain. Don’t ever Web-MD yourself, especially when you don’t speak the language of the Doctor you intend to see.

I was hoping to find a little medstop or urgent care facility, really just hoping to be able to speak to anyone somewhat medically inclined for all of two minutes for advice, but no such things exist in the perfect world of universal healthcare. Instead all my buddy could find was the nearest hospital, which was about 6 blocks away. My phone was dead so I made a mental note of the path from his Maps application, wished him luck and went on my way.

Now trying to explain anything to anyone in Italy was a real pain in the ass. Italy is one of those countries, like France, where most of the people speak and understand English, but they hate the idea of travelers coming into their country and not speaking their language, as if everyone who came there wanted to stay. From my perspective it’s like, listen guy, I’m going to be in your country for all of two weeks, then I’m going to 7 other countries where they all speak different languages. I can’t learn them all, but we all have this magical little connection called English that I was very luckily born into because life isn’t fair sometimes. Can you hop off your high horse for a second, detach the gypsy carriage and help a weary traveler out?

Anyway, stumbling around I found the hospital, then stumbled further until I found a concierge who either understood English or understood that she didn’t want to deal with me, so she pointed and gestured towards the Emergency Room. I tried to explain that’s the last place I need to be, it's just a rash, all I need is to see a nurse for 5 minutes, please! “Pronto soccorso! Pronto Soccorso! Pronto Soccorso!” It was really quite pretty of a language. Even things like “Emergency Room” reminded me of some Hemingway passage.

I waited in that Emergency Room lobby for six and a half fucking hours. I can’t tell you the amount of people I saw come in after me and leave before me, easily around fifty. I waited and waited and waited. No phone to entertain me, no newspaper, no book, no food or drink in my stomach. Nothing to do but watch the sad parade of the sick, injured, diseased, delusioned, dying, crying masses come in from the ambulance bay and exit through another part of the building or the other part of living (oh man is that a story for another time). I hadn’t eaten that morning, or all day for that matter, and knew that as soon as I left to find a real bathroom or food, my number would get called (HA). So, instead, I sat there from 11:30 until 6pm as pissed off as I’ve ever been in my life, frozen in helpless anger each time one of the doctors came out and acknowledged that I was still there. The hunger increased my sensitivities and restricted me from getting tired, so I heard and saw a lifetime of suffering, and wouldn’t wish those six and a half hours on my worst enemy. The only bathroom in the lobby didn’t even have a fucking mirror for chrisssake (thanks a lot Pope), so I couldn’t check if my rash was spreading or subsiding. Nothing to do, but sit there and wait and wait and wait.

After six and a half hours I was feeling weak, despondent, destitute, you name it. The pain in my stomach from not eating was becoming intense, and I was angry at everyone at the whole hospital. Both receptionists kept looking up at me, seemingly as surprised as I was that I was still there. Angry at every doctor who kept looking at me, seemingly as surprised as I was that I was still there. Angry at every Paramedic who delivered patient after patient in my presence, from god knows how many parts of Rome, seemingly even more surprised then I was that I was still there. Unfairly angry at everyone in America who thinks universal healthcare is a practical idea. Angry at the entire country of Italy it seemed like. I stormed out of the hospital ready to curb stomp a Vespa to death. Instead, I found a pharmacy nearby, bought some random antibiotic cream that I figured was better then nothing, and started walking. It’s early December and a little after 6pm and although I had been cruising around Rome earlier in a t-shirt feeling warm, I was never expecting to be gone this late so it was dark and cold as soon as the sun set and I had zero idea what direction my hostel was in. I started walking anyway applying the cream as I walked. At this point in the story I still have only looked in the mirror once, fleetingly, at the Vatican Museum. Applying the cream without a mirror must’ve made my face look like a wax statue, but I didn’t care about anything at this point and kept lathering it on.

I stopped at a little hole in the wall cafe/deli and got a sandwich and a big beer, which I figured would be bad for the rash, but as this point I was in the hospital of Eric doing a mental health operation. The deli had dark lighting and a strip of shitty little decorative mirroring lining the wall at the end of the booth I was sitting at. It looked kind of like what you’d see on the inside of a porta-loo, minus the graffiti. I stared at it anyway, as best I could and was put a little at ease by what made me think “that’s not as bad as it looked before.” I knew that trick was gonna work. It was dark out, the whatever the fuck deli/liquor store/cafe/speakeasy this was turning out to be had bad light, the mirror was shit and beer. I’m gonna have a bad mirror policy in my house when I own one. I’ve never understood those mirrors that let you see the molecules on your follicles that women often have. Even to put on makeup it seems counter intuitive. I’ll look at what I think is the most porcelain, unblemished part of my skin in one of those mirrors and instantly be on Amazon’s facial vanity section for an hour seeing how fast I can get Ecuadorian Snail Shit delivered to my house. You know, just to revitalize my pores. Anyway I paid due, and made my way out of that deli in hunter mode. The day was lost and I was pissed. The convalescent meal and poor quality mirror had cheered me up a little, and I wandered around lazily trying to remember how long the train ride we had taken that morning was. I had still been a bit drunk, so I didn’t really trust myself to remember accurately, but knew it had been long and was so damn tired that anything over two miles would’ve found our hero sleeping on a bench in the capital of a country during the holidays for the SECOND time in his young adult life.. Again, a story for another time.

Through a little run of luck I stopped an American girl who was studying in Italy and knew everything I needed to know as far as getting back to the hostel and could tell it to me how I needed to hear it. I meandered my way to the train, taking my time now that I knew what time the trains came. I took my time,and bring it up only to express as a little side-note how beautiful it is to travel during the winter holidays. I love summer as much as the next guy and understand the appeal in seeing a lot of places like Croatia and Spain and France in the summer, but there is something so beautiful and poignant about seeing ancient cities all dressed up for the holidays in that time of year when everything seems so temporary. Just thinking about it now gives me goosebumps. Everybody should go travel alone through that part of Europe around Christmas, mulled wine in hand 24/7. The world would be better off. Back to the story..

I found my way back to the hostel around 9pm where Peter was on his way out to go to dinner. I explained my day to him and unfortunately his bedside manner was complete shit.

“I don’t think it looks worse?” he basically asked.

I told him goodbye and finally had a little peace and quiet. I put my phone on the charger and now that I had solid WiFi I could do some real research. I freaked myself out a little bit more, and decided to see if the cream had helped at all. I stepped into the bathroom, sighed, and opened my eyes. There it was in all its glory, the rash that had already ruined my day and was looking like it would ruin the rest of my trip. I ran my fingers around it again, not feeling any burn this time, which I figured was due to the ointment. Drawing up close to the mirror I really gave the color and pigment of the rash a good look. It was such a strange color, it seemed like a mutant strain of a rash from the 1800’s or something. In fact, it seemed like it had spread to my mustache hair and was starting to discolor the hair itself.

Wait a minute. Hair doesn’t get rashes.

I looked closer. There even seemed to be parts of the rash that were seperating itself from the hair almost like…

I scrambled into the shower, a complete no-no with a rash, but I had a theory and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going out on that party bus tonight. A hot and very thorough shower followed and revealed what I had started to suspect when I finally gave myself a good closeup look in a mirror.

My so-called rash was lipstick. My refusal to admit I make poor judgement calls in women got a tick in the win and loss column that day. No herpes, but definitely swapped some spit with the sloppiest girl in the city last night. And before everyone writes me off as an idiot for not knowing it was lipstick, well, actually I have no defense to that. The kid I was with was obviously not accustomed to such things, and the only other people I talked to all day were my fellow patients waiting to be treated at the hospital who all believed, or feigned belief, that it was some sort of rash too. Thank god I didn’t end up seeing a doctor. I can imagine all they would’ve said was “So good news and bad news, you don’t have a rash but you are diagnosably retarded.”

To which I would’ve responded,

“But you’re sure about the first part?”

Here's a picture of me at St. Peter's Square about an hour before I realized I looked like I'd made out with a diseased ogre. If you look closely you can kind of see the purplish hue around my lips.

Cheers everyone.