Today at the Piramide station1 on the Metro B line, I spotted a vending machine, except instead of containing gumballs or friendship bracelets, it was stocked with ladies’ underdrawers for sale, wadded into small snap-top plastic bubbles. “At least they seemed to be clean, new underdrawers,” I thought.
Vendable unmentionables isn’t as perverted or unusual as it may first seem. As we discovered, underwear is a major feature of Roman retail. In certain segments of the city, especially the high-rent one in which our hotel is located, there’s an underwear boutique on every block, several with slowly rotating underwear-clad mannequins of the human torso positioned in the front window, so you can check out that thong front and back.
There may be an association between ubiquitous lingerie and the fact that you see couples in Rome, presumably Italians, making out all over the place: in cars, against walls, at the supermarket, on the Metro, just standing there in the piazza, etc. I would not be shocked to learn that making out is listed as a top hobby of Romans, along with buying underpants and not neutering their dogs, which you also really can’t help but notice.
Rome’s a city in love with with its history, culture and self, and that love rubs off on its citizens. I got the uncomfortable impression several waiters and most of the assholes on the street peddling long-stem red roses thought Dana and I were married. One insisted on taking a photo of us together at dinner. Another said I was “a lucky guy,” which I am, but not how he meant, I think.
1 So named because when you exit the station, right across the street is the famous Pyramid of Caius Cestius. Yeah, I never heard of it either. [back]