Vittoria

Vittoria
Travels in the Golden State

Kathleen Kavalas
 Copyright © 2016 Kathleen Kavalas. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be
reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express
written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief
quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

ISBN: 978-1-365-84851-3

Cover design: Kathleen Kavalas

First Kindle Edition: September 2016

First Printing Edition (@lulu.com): October 2016
 GRAPHIC WARNING

Recommended for mature audiences

due to explicit sexual content.
 Preface

First things first… I must emphatically stress at the outset that,

even though the sensual motif is important, as it undergirds the
entire storyline, Vittoria is not an erotic novella – much the same
way as the photographs of Ansel Adams' are not pictures of
Yosemite, Death Valley, or New Mexico, even though they do depict
El Capitan, sand dunes, or adobe homes and high desert mesas. Put
differently, the erotically-charged events described in this book
form a ruse, and Vittoria is rather a travel story.
Having lived in San Diego my entire life, I often wondered about
the magnetism of the place, that quintessential aspect of California
that irradiates both locals and tourists with awe and wonder. This
book is partially a homage to all that and, in fact, it could not have
been written anywhere else for this very reason. But it's also a
“travel” story about those places where only language can take us –
the metaphorical journey afforded by references and imagination.

i
 Preface

I also wanted to blur the lines between the text and the reader, to
make the text reflect the act of reading it. It is a method that elevates
the mood by multiplying it by itself, and achieves the second order
of experience that resonates not only on the surface of the storyline
but also in the very act of absorbing it. To that effect, I chose to write
a postmodern tale – eclectic, self-referential, intertextual, involving
hybridity, spliced together from many different points of
inspiration, drawn from pop culture and commercial life. In some
measure it is a tribute, and in another a parody.
As for the length of the piece, it is exactly as long as it should be.
At about twenty thousand words, it falls comfortably into the
formal “novella” category, and is one-third the size of a typical
book, or one-fourth the length of a solid novel. But best of all, it
provides just enough reading material to fill one long evening.
Finally, a comment is due about the title. When working on this
book – from May to August 2016 – I was using a working tittle of
Boogie Street, in reference to Leonard Cohen's song included on his
2001 album Ten New Songs. In the end, the relation was too
obscure, especially that few people are familiar with that song,
much less with what Cohen tried to express through it. As he
explained:

Boogie Street to me was that street of work and desire, the

ordinary life and also the place we live in most of the time that is
relieved by the embrace of your children, or the kiss of your
beloved, or the peak experience in which you yourself are
dissolved, and there is no one to experience it so you feel the
refreshment when you come back from those moments … So we
all hope for those heavenly moments, which we get in those
embraces and those sudden perceptions of beauty and sensations
of pleasure, but we're immediately returned to Boogie Street.

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 Preface

Cohen's words apply not only to the main character of the story
but also – it is hoped – to the reader. I wrote the book to make it
function as “a sip of wine, a cigarette” – to borrow a line from the
song – that breaks the heat spell on the reader's Boogie Street.
Therefore, it should be read in one sitting. And while the working
title is still befitting with regard to the final draft, I decided on a
short title referencing one of the main characters of the story – it is
less obscure and better suited for a title page. Still, the gratitude for
the inspiration is hereby being acknowledged.
If you come to like this book, please leave a positive review and
spread the word among your friends and loved ones. Thank you.

Kathleen Kavalas
September 17, 2016
Living Room Coffeehouse Point Loma
San Diego, CA

iii
 DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of
the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is
purely coincidental.
Vittoria
“There is more wisdom in your body
than in your deepest philosophy.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche,
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Illustration 1: Reference Map
Trip to San Diego
 Flight

– “There's always a way to get there, one way or another…” said

the Air Canada flight attendant while rebooking Beth's flight from
Montreal to San Diego.
The busy summer travel season had just begun and Beth was one
of the first victims of the overbooked flights down south, among
those unlucky ones who are put on the standby list without
consultation or consideration of the effect it may have on their
travel plans. Her new flight would not depart for another four
hours and fifty-five minutes, which meant that her joyous mood
was perturbed by the delay in meeting with the Pacific Ocean and
California. On the flip side, it gave her more time to read Susan
Choi's My Education – a solid lesbian novel – which she chose as
the companion book, a hedge against the feared lack of opportunity
to experience a touch of the spark that every young woman yearns
for on a summer vacation.

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 Vittoria

Beth was born and raised in Halifax. Her father was a college
professor teaching various humanities and ethics courses, while her
mom was a yoga instructor and a novelist. She received a typical
pseudo-Catholic upbringing, though by now she was clearly
secular in outlook and practice alike. She moved out of Nova Scotia
right after high school, first to Toronto to pursue a double-major
undergraduate degree in English and chemistry at the University of
Toronto, and then to Montreal, where she enrolled in the doctoral
program in biochemistry at McGill.
Having finished the first year of graduate school, at the age of
twenty-four, she was embarking on her first trip to California – in
part to reward herself for the effort of advanced studies at the
prestigious university, in part to move on with her life following a
brutal breakup, three months earlier, with her girlfriend Carolyn
(she was hot-ass!), and in part to taste something new in life. So
there she was – yet another young woman on a summer journey, on
a budget, on a plane for the famed West coast – part an escape, part
a quest, and part a venture into the unknown.
Beth was a Sagittarius, a natural born explorer and thinker. She
was astute, witty, studious, and eloquent – skills she acquired
naturally in the academic setting of her family. She also had a kinky
side, though to find it one had to negotiate the way past her nerdy-
looking glasses and a handful of freckles that stood dispassionate
sentinel on the otherwise warm face. Her shoulder-length straight
flaxen hair betrayed her Scandinavian descent. She resembled
young Martina Navratilova – she was perhaps a tad flatter, but
overall looked alike and possessed the same penchant for winning.
When she wanted something and locked in on a target, she was
capable of maintaining a laser sharp focus throughout the
challenge. She was determined and persevering in her academic
studies, as well as her romantic endeavors. In sum, she was a smart,

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 Vittoria

energetic woman, with a healthy, optimistic outlook, balanced and

in control.
The early Thursday afternoon flight was pleasant. Beth ate a
turkey sandwich and watched Apocalypse Now. She had never
taken a trip this far alone. But she liked it – she was unhampered by
anyone else's needs. Plus, traveling solo gave her that thrill with
just a splash of anxiety to accentuate the experience of freedom and
self-reliance. She'd be on her own until Saturday morning when
Amanda – her old best friend from Toronto, who recently moved to
San Bernardino – would pick her up, and the two of them would
drive up the coast of California all the way to San Francisco,
enjoying along the way the attractions of the Golden State.
The plane touched down just after 4 PM local time. Half an hour
later Beth was on her way to the hostel – she took a city bus
following beautiful, palm-lined Harbor Dr, with hundreds of white
clippers docked in the bay, then onto a twisty combination of streets
cutting across Point Loma Heights, and via Cable St to Newport
Ave. And there she was, in the heart of the most hippie
neighborhood of Southern California – she felt excited!
Per her father's advise she had always eschewed using Google's
Streetview before going places in order to experience that hit, kinda
like traveling used to be in the past, before the Internet took away
much of the mystery and charm of the places we travel to. So when
she disembarked and walked around she was taken with the
climate of the neighborhood. The street was lined with thrift stores
and antique galleries – junk shops, really – that somehow felt at
place in this otherwise expensive city. There were gift shops, a
brewery, a couple of sushi places – nothing fancy or chic, just cool,
down-to-earth businesses that make great cities hum with vibrant
liveliness. The urban setting of the neighborhood felt hip and Beth
was at ease, not bothered by the presence of a few bikers and bums.
Everything was just chill. The colors of murals, the shabbiness of

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 Vittoria

storefronts, the relaxed tattoo parlors, the cool breeze coming from
the Pacific – all these were adding up to a welcome adjustment of
her mood. She was letting things go, naturally forgetting about her
university and personal issues.
She was now in Ca-li-for-nia…
Yeah, baby!
□

18
 Hostel

When Beth approached the hostel, she noted that it had a big
peace symbol on the front side of the roof, and the entire building,
from ground to top, was painted in a colorful way reminiscent of
the 60s hippie movement, which made it stand out from other –
mostly nondescript as far as architecture goes – buildings lining
Newport Ave.
Once inside, Beth walked over to the office, where the front desk
clerk was busy checking in a stunning-looking brunette woman,
about the same age as hers, and who immediately caught her eye.
Beth queued up in line right behind her and, at that point,
understood those poor souls who, years ago, would stumble into
that McDonald's in São Paulo where Gisele Bündchen used to
work… The chick before her was simply out of place in a hostel
setting.
The brunette's name – as Beth overheard – was Vittoria and she
was a classical embodiment of everything connoted by the word

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 Vittoria

“Italian” in the best possible meaning of the term, as it evolved to

denote both classical and modern associations with grace, art, and
fashion. She projected an image of a woman whose lineage
extended to the glorious days of the Apeninian Peninsula, if not all
the way to Roman Caesars – and Augustus or Marcus Aurelius
would have been certainly happy to sire such a gem – then at least
to the Borgias or the Sforzas. She exhibited that inborn grace and
stature endowed with power and confidence, the way inhabitants of
Italian city-states must had composed themselves before the
calamity of Counter-Reformation set in. In an age when social
constructs are extolled at the expense of biological conditions –
which, if anything, connote racism – Vittoria embodied beauty
through her physical body. It was biology elevated to the ranks of
art, as if the spirit of Michelangelo got consulted by gods to sign off
on her blueprint.
The brunette finished checking in and was directed upstairs to
room #207, while the receptionist's eyebrows lifted in the “my, oh
my!” manner revealing his stupefaction and virtual disbelief in
what kind of a woman he had just checked in.
Beth was likewise bemused by the run-up which felt almost like
some kind of a setup. The immediate luck – or curse, time would
tell – to run into someone of such gorgeous beauty strained
believability of the situation. It was akin to experiencing a
premature high-point of a journey, or sudden and unexpected
outflow of perfection right out of the gate, like listening to a
performance of Rossini's La Gazza Ladra, where the musical
punchline, so to speak, is delivered in the first minutes of the
overture, without the usual buildup and delay commonly
encountered in operas.
Beth followed the chic with her eyes until she disappeared behind
the second flight of stairs. Then she turned her head and

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 Vittoria

approached the front desk, about the same time as the receptionist's
eyebrows were slowly returning to the normal position.
Beth looked at the man on the other side of the desk. His name
was Rufus. He was the co-owner of the hostel – a skinny hippie in
his early forties, with a ponytail goatee bejeweled with red, green,
and yellow beads. He was wearing an old Jimi Hendrix T-Shirt and
acted with contrived formality.
– “How may I help you?,” he said.
– “I booked a room on the Internet. My last name is Sanderson.”
Rufus promptly typed in the name in the computer and retrieved
the reservation.
– “Elizabeth?”
– “Yes.”
– “You'll be staying with us two nights, is that correct?”
– “Yes.”
– “I just need to see your passport.”
– “Sure,” she said and handed him her Canadian passport.
Rufus confirmed it belonged to Elizabeth Sanderson and returned
it back to her.
– ”Thank you. It will be... seventy nine dollars and fifty six cents.
We take cash or credit card.”
Beth handed him a VISA credit card.
As Rufus was processing the payment, she waited impatiently for
the assignment of the room, hoping to score the opportunity to talk
to the goddess who had checked-in just before her.
– ”You'll be in room…” – Rufus hesitated for a while – “… number
two-oh-seven on the second floor.”
(Yes!)
Beth's heart accelerated its beating. It felt like winning a raffle.

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 Vittoria

A big fucking raffle!

– “I'll just have you sign here,” said Rufus while handing her the
bill.
Beth complied without a delay.
– “Here's your key, the wi-fi password,” – he handed her a small
piece of paper with 'power299%' printed on it in Courier New font
– “your credit card, and the receipt. We have free coffee and tea
from 6 AM until 10 PM. 11 PM till 7 AM are quiet hours. And the
laundry room is in the basement. ”
– “I won't need that, thank you!”
– “Well, I hope you'll have a nice stay with us!” said Rufus, issuing
his default twitchy smile.
– “Oh, I will!”
Beth smiled, put everything in her purse and went upstairs. She
walked past the common bathrooms and entered the room where
she was assigned a bed. It was a small space, with four bunk beds –
each sleeping two people – laid-out symmetrically on the left and
right side of an axis formed by the door and the window. All beds
but one were taken, which left Beth with no choice but to accept the
one on the bottom-right side, next to the door.
A twenty-something man with curly hair and a Tweety tattoo on
his right arm was sleeping on the bed above Beth's, while Vittoria
was slowly unpacking her things and placing them on the upper
bed across the room, next to the open window.
– “Hey, what's your name?” said Beth in a soft voice out of
consideration for the sleeping dude.
Vittoria looked at Beth as if to make sure the question was
directed to her.
– “Vittoria,” came the response delivered in a tone quite lower
than voice of a typical young woman from North America.

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 Vittoria

– “Nice to meet you Vittoria, I'm Beth.”

– “Nice meeting you,” Vittoria managed to say with a broken
accent and a kind nod.
As the two of them were unpacking and arranging items on their
beds, Beth continued poking around. Between her probing
questions and half-understood responses provided staccato way,
and aided by gestures to compensate for the off-key intonations,
Beth gathered that Vittoria had an arduous trip from Europe – a
flight from Milan to Dallas/Ft. Worth and, after a four hour lay-over,
another one to San Diego… In fact, she experienced an elevated
degree of anxiety and a loss of appetite caused by the burden of the
trip, which made her feel constipated and somewhat naseous.
As the conversation switched to more general topics, Beth learned
more about Vittoria’s background and her plans while in America.
She was twenty-five years old, from Ferrara in northern Italy. She
had just graduated from the University of Padua and planned to
become an art curator. Most importantly, Beth learned that Vittoria
would be leaving for LA on Monday, early in the morning, where
she would get by taking the Pacific Surfliner Train skirting the coast
of Southern California. While in LA, she'd be staying at a hostel in
Santa Monica. Her plan was to spend two days at the Getty, one day
at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and then “do” the walk of
fame, take the obligatory picture with the Hollywood sign in the
background, and pay a visit to Venice Beach. Then she'd fly to Las
Vegas for two days of relaxing. She had a hostel booked there and
she wanted to see the Venetian which, as she imagined it, is very
“tacky.” Then she would fly to San Francisco, where she'd be
staying at a relative's place for three days. The plan called for
visiting San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, checking out the
Alcatraz, and doing a wine tour in Sonoma Valley. Finally, on her
last stop before returning to Italy, she'd fly to New York for three
days to do a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of

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 Vittoria

Modern Art, and the Guggenheim. In short, her stay in the United
States had a definitive focus on the arts, sprinkled with light
gambling and some sight-seeing.
As they spoke, Beth noted that Vittoria was reading an erotic
novel, which she pulled out of her red rucksack and placed on the
table by the window. To her disappointment, the cover of the book
was graced by an embracing heterosexual couple – assuming that
Fabio-look-alikes count as real men – in a downpour of little pink
hearts, serving as a warning sign of a saccharine plot of love,
betrayal, and forgiveness.
After a few minutes, Vittoria's mien and countenance began
showing signs of exhaustion. Beth was quick to pick up the cues
realizing her roommate was too tired to engage in a more
substantial conversation. Out of courtesy, and in effort not to
preclude future advances, she stopped asking questions. It was not
the best she had hoped for because time was short – she herself
would be leaving on Saturday morning, which left essentially one
day – the Friday – to get them closer together, if at all. But such is
the case of hostel-spun acquaintances – they are more like flashes in
a kaleidoscope, one passes over to make room for the next one.
They don't lasts long despite “We'll keep in touch!” assurances.
That's the nature of hostel-born friendships. Also their appeal.
Over the next thirty minutes the room began to fill up with other
residents. Two guys from Japan came in and lay on the beds by the
window, across from Vittoria. They looked like they were on a
virtual safari in California, visiting with the sole purpose to bag a
few local Pokemons. They spoke among themselves only in their
native language and Beth never learned their names. Then there
was a single dude from New Zealand – Mike – who engaged in a
smalltalk with Vittoria, and a couple from Edinburgh – Oliver and
Abigail – who were marginally more understandable than the two
Japanese hunters.

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 Vittoria

Beth went downstairs and sat on the stairs by the main entrance.
She called Amanda.
– “Hello?”
– “Hey Amanda, it's me Beth”
– “Hey! How's going?”
– “Good, good! How are you?”
– “Oh, I'm great! Are you in California yet?”
– “Just checked in! I love the weather!”
– “Yep! That's the great perk of living on the Left Coast!”
– “I can't wait for our trip!”
– ”Me neither. But it's only a day and half away! By the way, I
reserved a cabriolet… Ford Mustang… Just imagine open rooftop,
ocean, coastal ranges, and the sunshine!”
– “Awe-some, and then some!”
Then they spoke briefly about last minute lodging arrangements
and other miscellaneous items involved in planning a few hundred
mile long trip. Then Amanda began to wrap up the conversation.
– “So I'll see you on Saturday morning, right?”
– “Yep!”
– “Let's sync up tomorrow night to make sure everything is on
schedule.”
– “Good idea!”
– “Well, I'll let you go – you probably want to unwind a bit after
the flight.”
– “I sure do! We'll chat tomorrow… ”
– “Love you!”
– “Love you, too!”
Beth hung up the phone.

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 Vittoria

When she came back to the room Mike was leaving to take a
shower, Tweety was snoring, the folks from Japan were surfing
their tablets, and the Hobbits were getting ready to hit local bars.
And across the room, where Beth’s attention directed itself with
undeniable curiosity, Vittoria lay covered under the blanket, in deep
sleep, curing the exhaustion induced by her long trip. Too tired to
do anything else, Beth went to sleep, too.
■

26
Ocean Beach
 Morning

When Beth woke up it was already past 9 AM. She looked across
the room but Vittoria wasn't there. Like almost everyone else, she
had gone downstairs to get coffee and bagels. Beth got up, brushed
her teeth, and went downstairs, as well.
The kitchen and dining area looked quite typical for a hostel: a
couple of fridges, microwave oven, toaster, and two large rustic
shelves holding a variety of coffee mugs and jars with tea leaves.
Utensils, pans, and cleaning supplies were provided for all to share.
Behind the kitchen there was a back patio, with a bluish mural
sporting “Peace Love Surf” slogan or whatever else it's called, or
was meant to express or convey. There was also a party room with a
pool table, a few armchairs – each different from the other ones –
and an old leather couch that saw its best days when Nancy Reagan
was launching the war on drugs. The walls were painted in
different colors and the whole place, though run down in a typical

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 Vittoria

hostel-kind-of-way, had a nice ambiance of a laid-back space where

people can hang around and chill.
Everyone who was having a morning snack and caffeine fix was
either in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a long wooden bench,
or on the back patio, where the open space invited tuning of
guitars, or on the front porch, where the occasional gaps in
conversations were easily filled in by gaping. The atmosphere was
typical for a hostel – relaxed and congenial. Most folks were
exchanging information about what they had seen the day earlier or
what they planned to do later in the day. Some were leaving, some
were consulting maps, some were posting pictures on Facebook,
and still others were pondering what the next stop should be, on
their trips made up of sometimes random movements across the
North American continent.
Again, it was all very typical. People who stay at hostels share
common behaviors: they are gregarious – often borderline friendly,
– relaxed, tolerant, open to other cultures and lifestyles. They like to
talk, play, and party. Very regular folks. Many of them like kale
salad for breakfast and some view taking a Greyhound bus as a
virtual rite of passage. It's just who they are and what they do. If it
helps to make the point, many of them would be happy to live in
Portland, OR… Although, it must promptly qualified, lest one
draws in haste all-too-literal conclusions, hostellers are positively a
notch or two above anarchists and dumpster-diving freegans.
Through their communal structure hostels act like social grease –
they are the Polaroids of the hospitality industry. They appeal to
those who want basic, no-frills facilities and one-to-two-day
friendships built on spontaneity rather than commitment. While
hookups and sex happen in hostels, these are relatively rare and
come naturally such that it feels more like summertime love –
regardless of the season – rather than a tryst or one night stand. The
difference is crucial. It comes down to the type of mentality

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 Vittoria

exhibited by the hosteling crowd – they are people who are a bit
hippie in life, people who want to travel on a budget for a few years
after college before settling down, people who want to experience
just a smidge of the famed Bohemian life. Well, why not?
It was the third time that Beth was staying at a hostel, but only
now – as she was running through her thoughts about them – she
realized that international hostels were perhaps more fun back
before the age of globalization, when a sighting of a person from
Columbia or South Korea was an adventure in itself – something to
brag about to friends and family. Nowadays, that thrill is certainly
gone when one constantly runs into immigrants pretty much
everywhere. And the flood of pictures and YouTube clips on the
Internet aggravates the condition, making it difficult to live isolated,
local life apart from the rest of the world. Still, there's always some
fresh novelty to discover, like when Beth overheard a conversation
of a couple from Manchester and learned firsthand that there exists
an alternative pronunciation of “Los Angeles” – it is “Los Angie
Lease,” and it sounds as if Brits took two pieces of dry play-dough,
spat their proverbial phlegm into it, mixed it in, and then tried to
stretch it three ways as much as they can. In that they are truly
unsurpassed.
– “These people always knew how to transform their own
language into a thing of wonder!” she thought to herself and
smiled.
As Beth walked around she saw Vittoria on the back porch in the
presence of three guys who were clearly trying to befriend her. It is
very common at hostels for folks who happen to stay at the same
place to gravitate towards one another – for safety, convenience,
and companionship. Call it a hosteling ethos, or friendships of
opportunity – the bottom line is that non-romantic hookups like this
are very common, even the norm, at hostels where people from out
of town – or out of country – like to join forces and together fight

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 Vittoria

obstacles like the lack of a mode of transportation, language barrier,

or safety concerns. It is also cheaper to pitch in for gas when a
vehicle is available at somebody's disposal, or getting something
cheap to eat, like pizza.
Men at hostels are rarely impertinent or hustling and this time it
looked like Vittoria seemed to enjoy her newfound entourage of
temporary friends, all of whom were in their mid-twenties. As for
the three men themselves, they were stereotypical to the threshold
of pain, almost caricatures of themselves, as if someone applied too
much voltage to something that was warped to begin with. There
was Dietrich – a metrosexual-wannabe from Düsseldorf wearing a
black T-shirt with the recycling symbol encircled with a few
German words, thick black glass frames, and sideburns to boost
intellectual pretentiousness. On the other side of Vittoria sat Dmitri
– a typical Bulgarian wearing a tank undershirt (what is it about the
Bulgarians and their tank undershirts, anyway?). He was husky and
hairy, not to mention sweaty... And, just to complement his stooped
posture with a drawn face, he appeared stashed and disoriented.
Finally, there was Braxton – an Australian in Billabong shorts and
cute accent reminding everyone of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile
hunter. Only a boomerang was missing from the picture.
It looked like Vittoria found their company amiable and was even
a smidge smitten with the Australian boy.
– “Hi Vittoria!”, said Beth to start a conversation.
– “Hi Beth!”
– “Any plans for today?”
– “We are still considering the options,” came the response from
Dietrich, uttered with a strong German accent and a serious face
expression, as if delivering proscription against haste with regard to
the final interpretation of Hegel's philosophy.

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 Vittoria

This was the type of obnoxious “man in the middle” behavior that
annoyed the shit out of Beth because the question was clearly
directed to Vittoria.
– “Coronado Island or Balboa Park, or perhaps train to Carlsbad –
we don't know yet,” Braxton interjected between two sips of coffee.
Dmitri stared with his haggard eyes, swinging his head slowly
from side to side, like a dog listening to a tune. It was hard to tell
how much he didn't understand vs. how little he cared.
The bottom line was they planned a joint day trip somewhere in
the San Diego area and nobody seemed to care to ask Beth to join
them.
– “What are your plans, Beth?” said Vittoria with flirty confidence,
as if building a communication bridge over her friends, bypassing
them with a direct inquiry.
– “I'm gonna stalk you and rape you at the first opportunity, you
stupid bitch!” Beth thought to herself.
– “Not sure yet! I will probably start by checking out the beach
and getting a bit of the Sun which doesn't shine much where I'm
from.”
And then, for a moment, the two of them looked directly in each
other's eyes. It was sweet and sublime. It was a timeless second of
magic.
And a tiny glimmer of hope.
Still, talking to Vittoria in private that morning was not in the
offing so Beth decided it was strategically sound to wait for a better
opportunity, leaving the conversation at the point where it
remained a short bundle of niceties exchanged in the passing,
rather than a strained attempt get to know her.
– “I'll see you guys around!” She said and went back to the
kitchen.

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 Vittoria

When she entered the dining area some tall, bald guy with not
easy to identify accent tried to talk to her but she was very short
with him and responded with a cold stare over her shoulder – she
didn't need anyone to adore her for the day. Besides, she was
already taken – taken with Vittoria's beauty and her charm…
Beth poured herself a small cup of coffee from a pot but did not
like it. It was not the highest quality caffeine – too acidic. She
decided to leave and go find a local coffee shop. Besides, the hostel
crowd was not exactly her cup of tea that morning – now that she
was pursuing a doctoral degree she felt too academic to act
naturally and compliant. She washed off her mug, went upstairs to
the room and took a quick shower. Twenty minutes later she was
ready. She grabbed her tote bag, came downstairs and noticed
Vittoria and her company of men were still there, talking and
laughing, and having good time. She left looking for her own space
to kill a few hours.
□

34
 Coffee Shop

Beth began walking down Newport Ave. She entered a nearby

Starbucks only to discover that it was brimming with coffee aroma
co-mingled with stench of self-appointed bums – here, more by
choice than by the peripeties of life – who were dawdling about
while sipping Venti Lattes purchased for the money begged the day
earlier. This, in fact, has always been a mark of prosperity of
Southern California where even the homeless can afford to
purchase overpriced coffee drinks. “Well, good for them,” she
thought to herself and left, feeling like there had to be a more
suitable place to have something to drink and read the book she
brought for occasions like this.
As she walked around the Ocean Beach area, she noted the
influence of murals on the ambiance of the neighborhood. She
observed the contrast between cities of the north, with their ever-
present graffiti, and cities of the south, featuring murals in their
alley ways and warehouse districts. The former are oftentimes the

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outgrowth of the gang scene, used to mark territory with dark,

menacing inscriptions. The latter are generally happy, organic, and
colorful – if not altogether psychedelic, then possessing that
peculiar otherworldly, but not transcendental, quality of Diego
Rivera's paintings. She liked them.
As Beth walked around and pondered on the murals, she
continued to be on a lookout for a place to sit down. Soon she
identified a quaint coffee shop – named Koffee Kup – located in a
narrow alley between two buildings, with a cloth canopy over it
and a small courtyard in the back. Because it was silly and
pretentious, not to mention tired, Beth hated it when people
replaced a 'c' with a 'k', even if pronunciation warranted it. In a
snarky kind of fashion, and with a smidge of ironic malice, she
thought the signboard should also say: “Are we kute? Or are we
kute?,” just to beat it to death. Still, apart from its name, it was a
very chill place to have a refreshing drink.
She walked inside, studied the menu for a minute, and ordered
large Chai Latte, which she always drank without sugar.
It was still a bit chilly, as it usually is in San Diego in the mornings,
even in the summertime. Red Hot Chili Pepper's Desecration Smile
was playing on the radio. Beth took out of her bag My Education
and tried to read for a while only to realize that she kept losing
track of the long-winding sentences and metaphors, their high
quality notwithstanding. Instead of enjoying the love story of the
female student with her professor's wife Martha, it felt like a never-
ending strife to roll back the sentences to start over again, hoping
for a grasp of the whole thought. After umpteen frustrating
attempts she riffled through the pages and then parted her way
with Regina Gottlieb's story.
She felt like she couldn't take anything in.

36
 Vittoria

She retrieved from the bag her Moleskine notebook, took her
favorite Palomino Blackwing pencil and began jotting down notes
for one of her writing projects.
Being educated and sensitive to the written word herself, Beth
tried to write, too. It was her hobby and passion – an outlet of her
erotic fantasies. She was a young, aspiring author whose dream was
to become so good, she could sell her books with a Money Back
Guarantee: “If you read my novel and not get wet/hard, you will
get your money back!” Her interests lay in a variety of erotica
mixed in with science – a sort of erotic sci-fi genre heavy on bio-
chemical themes mixed with sensuality. She liked other worlds,
different life forms, hybrids of humans and animals, aliens, and
found it interesting to understand erotic love at the biological level
rather than through lewd or intellectualized formulations. She
wanted to show how everything in the intimate sphere, at the end
of the analysis, translates through and into a bio-chemical language
– call it a code, an algorithm, a genome, etc.
Unfortunately, her writing efforts kept failing. She had aspirations
but couldn't produce something comparable, for example, to Susan
Choi's engaging plot filled with ornate metaphors. She had a
commanding knowledge of language but her tropes were often
awkward and her scientific mind kept catching itself in its tracks of
cold analysis and detachment, even if she tried to be merely
“sciencey.” Put bluntly, she was a smidge too nerdy for what she
wanted to accomplish. And the fact that she had never done any
kind of drugs, not even marijuana, did not exactly help in getting
lose from the habitual, academia-stained, way of seeing things.
Beth liked to weave into her stories side themes and motifs, often
unrelated directly to the main plot. She developed this proclivity
under the influence of the early films by Quentin Tarantino, her
favorite movie director. She liked to open her novelettes with

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 Vittoria

dialogues reminiscent of the opening scene from Reservoir Dogs,

where the gang members discuss their tipping practices over a
breakfast at a local diner. She thought this to be the coolest idea to
withhold from the reader the main thrust of the story, if only for a
few pages. It also embellished the narrative with side thoughts and
observations, which offered her an avenue to sneak in her own
musings and rants. At any rate, she used to say a story should be
left to meander freely through off-topic developments and side-
motifs, without rushing to the end.

Beth also liked movies that, when credits are over, feature
outtakes and bloopers, sometimes with voices coming from outside
of the scene. Instead of the pathos of music which wraps up an epic
story, the inclusion of the “leftovers” – she thought – has the
salutary effect of turning down the curtain, when the entire edifice
of fiction is pushed to tumble down like a house of cards: “The
show is over, go home and don't cry!” It is honest and it jolts one
out of the movie-induced fantasy. She imagined her books featuring
at the end some of the better parts and pieces that didn't cut it for
the final draft, but that were nonetheless interesting in their own
right: a Freudian slip, a funny typo, an interesting vignette that did
not fit the main flow of events, an alternate ending that was under
consideration, etc. She thought these could have the effect of
showing the author having fun while writing.

The only novella that she actually finished was an expansion of a

project she did for a creative writing class back at the University of
Toronto. The title was Behold! An Earthling! The main plot revolved
around a lady from New Brunswick who got abducted by aliens.
When transported to planet Xestri in the Constellation of Perseus
she was sold, as a slave, into a traveling troupe that made a living
from a production of an intergalactic freak show staged to evoke
both sympathy and laughter. The story was anchored in the

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 Vittoria

observation that in all of UFO sightings the aliens are green and
have antennas. Thus, it was valid to speculate that human
composition of bodies is not the norm but, in fact, an aberration of
nature, when expanded to include all life-forms in the entire
Universe. The protagonist of the story, following years of traveling,
ended up hooking up with an alien and, through advanced in-vitro
trickery, getting pregnant with the hope that their child would bring
together the two branches of beings together.
It was a postmodern sci-fi erotica that bridged sex with science,
and sneer with sympathy. It was not sexually explicit or obscene,
even as it covered behaviors that make some readers blush. And it
made one wonder how unique we really are – biologically as well
as emotionally.
As for other projects of hers, she worked on a story, with a
working title of Tao De Fellatio, about women imprisoned in
communist China back in 1970s, starving to death and literally
begging to blow their prison guards, to lick the smegma off of their
filthy, unwashed-for-days cocks – purely for the protein needed for
survival. The goal was to show the providential aspect of nature
and how she cares for its children. Though it should have occurred
to her that this would not be altogether apparent to a casual reader
sensing rather the exact opposite: life at its core as rough, brutal,
and unforgiving.
Then she had an idea for a book – titled Periodic Table – about a
mad female scientist who sleeps around with a lot of women only
to analyze their pussies, with the goal of producing a broad
categorization of cunts, because those – she thought – deserve a
periodic table, with a systematic exposition of their different
qualities. And thus, for example, in a reference to the table of
elements, the rightmost column would be reserved for puritan,
strictly-heterosexual, and other types that do not “react” with other
cunts… But the idea of such a “Mendeleev table of cunts” was

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 Vittoria

unworkable for too many reasons and, even if it was, it could never
appeal to a typical reader reaching for excitement, looking to be
taken on a reading adventure of erotic nature.
And then, she was working on a quite entertaining story – with a
working title of Exodus – about a world essentially like ours, except
where vagina dentata is reality, not a myth. In this “Vagden” world,
tooth fairies work overtime to cover for the additional load of teeth
and perverts become dentists, so that they can install crowns and
implants and, along the way, diddle a bit around the bushes.
Women floss their coochies before sex, and Mentos – “The
Freshmaker!” – is known for their X-rated commercials.
Furthermore, teenagers wear braces in their crotches, creating a
special segment of erotica for older men who think they make them
look even younger and more innocent – the same way that, in our
world, eighteen year old girls flaunt their orthodontic appliances on
sites with “teenage” porn. Then there are pissy bitches who grind
their cunt-teeth when they don't get what they want, and old
women who wear dentures down there hoping to stay attractive
and desirable to their hubbies.
The latent intent behind the story was to get back at Annie, a chick
from UK who had jilted Beth a couple years earlier. To that effect,
the “Vagden” world was presented in the book in the timeframe
between years 1980 and 2000, when first VHS and later the Internet
effected a rise and spread of pornography. The social upheaval that
came with it had to do with the concomitant flight of men from the
British Isles (“Alright, this bloody island is for wankers! I'm outta
here!”). While perhaps not entirely nice in its treatment of English
women, the story bore a chance to succeed at showing the inter-
connectedness between our genetic makeup and its ripple effects in
the social sphere of culture, love life, and erotic fantasies.
On this day, however, Beth was not working on any of her half-
baked ideas. Instead she kept thinking about Vittoria and how to

40
 Vittoria

incorporate the notion of biological pedigree in her new book about

beauty as biology, whose goal would be to bring into focus womb
as the matrix at the intersection of code and life. She thought, and
thought, and thought but could not come up with anything
compelling. She wrote down something about Pietro – a scientist
from Rome who abducts the most beautiful Italian woman – named
Vittoria – only to study her natural structure with the objective of
immortalizing her exquisite beauty. But then the story stuttered.
The best she managed to sweat was an idea about her genome
being composed of a repeating sequence of letters S, P, Q, and R.
Alas, none of these is used to describe the human genome, which
made her look for some contrived side explanation to make the
concept palatable. But an hour into scribbling in her notebook
nothing convincing was coming out of it, which brought her to the
dreaded litmus test derived from Gentlemen Broncos… It was one
of Beth's favorite movies of all time, in which an accomplished
writer – Dr. Ronald Chevelier – gives a series of lectures and
instructs students how to write compelling, quality science fiction.
The key part of Chevalier's theory was believability of the story.
Following an exposition of some interesting ideas he asked students
point blank: “But is it be-lie-va-ble?” This line – that stuck in Beth's
mind thanks to Jemaine Clement's half-Maori accent – became for
her the ultimate litmus test in all of her writing efforts. Just like
devout Christians ask themselves “What would Jesus do in this
situation?,” she asked herself time and time again in her moments
of creativity: “What would Chevalier say? Would he find it
believable?”
Today, she had to answer the question in the negative.
Here, she paused and recalled that crazy time two years earlier,
when she and her two friends – Brandon and Julia – drove from
Toronto to Confluence – an annual conference for sci-fi writers held
in Pittsburgh, PA. Brandon, who just happened to look a little bit

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 Vittoria

like Jemaine Clement, grew a full beard and, on that day, wore a
bordeaux turtleneck sweater and a worn-out light-brown leather
jacket he found in a consignment store. While holding a folder
sporting the Yeast Lords title page, and wearing the requisite
bluetooth headset in his ear, he paraded around the conference
floor looking all serious and pretentious, insisting that people call
him “Dr.” Ronald Chevalier. He kept approaching writers and
asking them with a forced accent: “Excuse me, can I plagiarize your
book?” Given the cult status of the movie among sci-fi writers, this
earned him many sincere smiles and pats on his back… Many
authors were even requesting pictures with him. Well, except for
one man, who was apparently not familiar with the movie, and
who almost punched him in the face, in a sudden outburst of an
apoplectic bout of anger.
The recollection of the laughs they all shared helped Beth
overcome the gloom of the morning. She wrapped up whatever
notes she had, hoping they might someday bloom into a revised
and publishable draft. She finished sipping her Chai Latte drink,
used the restroom, and left. It was just past Noon and the
temperature was spiking. It was a Friday and many people were
hitting the beach now. Parking was scarce along Newport Ave. She
thought it to be a good time to check up on the situation back at the
hostel.
□

42
 Pier

Beth went back to the hostel. She didn't know whether Vittoria
and her friends had actually left because plans change and, besides,
who knew what was going on. In the back of her mind she was
hoping she might bump into Vittoria on terms more conducive to
exchanging glances and perhaps discovering a bit of an interest of
mutual nature. The hostel, however, felt empty – as hostels usually
do around this time of the day. Some folks had left, others had gone
to the beach, and a few hours still had to pass until the check-in
time, before new travelers would start arriving.
A groovy tune was playing in the office, filling the air with a blithe
sense of lightness, as if offsetting twenty percent of gravity's
downward pull itself. Beth approached the front desk, now
attended by Meadow – a white woman, about the same age as hers,
with happy tattoos and a Rasta Dreamcatcher bracelet – and asked
about the music:
– “Who is that?”

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 Vittoria

– “B-Side Players,” came the response from the reggae-groupie, “a

band from San Diego. Sometimes they play gigs at local bars here in
Ocean Beach. You should definitely check them out!”
– “They sure sound cool!” responded Beth, expressing her honest
assessment of the band's talent.
The song was about “freedom fighters” ready to “spread the rebel
wings,” and that – as the vocalist insisted – “underneath the wind
we are humankind, ready to begin a new uprising.” It was good
music. Darn good and refreshing. Their success in garnering
attention and recognition, as Beth realized, was reflective of the
demographic changes in California since the 80s, a stark contrast of
Latin-inspired tunes against the classic Rock n'Roll of the old days.
– “The new cultural face of the state is budding, that's for sure,”
she thought to herself the way biologists put into words their rare
sociological observations.
Beth walked around the hostel but couldn't find a trace of Vittoria.
Meadow informed her that she and her three friends went
downtown to see Gaslamp, Coronado Island, and perhaps stop in
the Old Town.
– “Nice!” she thought to herself with obvious irony, as it became
clear by now that Vittoria had become a virtual protégé of the trio.
Having not much else to do, she left and walked down the main
drag, passing on the way a dude with dreadlocks playing banjo on
a street corner. She walked into a couple of food establishments but
couldn't bear herself to eat. Pizza felt like a desperate substitute for
Vittoria's presence, while fish tacos smothered in reddish chipotle
aioli, which she saw being sold from a hole-in-the-wall type of an
establishment, connoted even less kosher associations. Besides, it
was getting really warm and, if anything, she wanted water.
She bought a cold bottle of Dasani from a corner liquor store and
pretty much chugged it down her throat. Recharged and refreshed,

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 Vittoria

she went down toward the ocean, growing more pensive with every
step of the way. What she saw supplied her with elements forming
our imagination about California and the lifestyle it affords its
citizens to enjoy… Taco stands, men in wetsuits, surfboards, shops
with marijuana paraphernalia, lifeguard towers on the beach, flip-
flops, Spanish names, Moorish architectural accents, palm trees…
Yes, palm trees… They were everywhere and they looked lovely.
They made the place feel cool to the point where wearing a baseball
hat backwards looks downright natural, sans its loud pretense of
the owner's coolness. And then the walks along the beach, in that
divine mist rising from the ocean where the waves meet the shore.
On a grass patch, sandwiched between the beach and the street,
sat a few bums. One of them had a T-shirt that read: “There are no
libertarians, only people with Asperger's Syndrome.” Beth thought
it was a clever way to criticize those who oppose social services of
any kind because it really repositions the argument by questioning
their humanity expressed as the capacity for compassion. In that
regard, it was genius. And the fact that it was displayed on a chest
of a person dispossessed of everything added a certain level of
poignancy to it. She thought one day she'd include a character like
that in one of her books, just to take a jab at the emotional pygmies
who pass for brilliant philosophers, who were first to arrive at the
last station of rationality, and now are waiting for everyone else to
catch up. “Sorry, we took a different train guys!” Beth thought to
herself and continued walking.
She entered the pier, the long Ocean Beach pier, with its
characteristic “CAFE” shack half-way between the beach and the
double-pronged end on the far side, out in the water. Cool wind
was blowing gently in her face. People were fishing. She walked
past the restaurant, and continued on.
Close to the point where the pier bifurcates in opposite directions
Beth saw an older woman casting a fishing rod. She was short,

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 Vittoria

corpulent, and had a unibrow that would make Frida jealous. She
was wearing an Eddie Bauer vest, dark-yellow Palladium Pampa
Sport Cuff shoes, and – as far as fishing goes – looked like someone
who knew her chops. “How unusual, how cool!,” Beth thought, and
approached her.
– “Haw'ya doin'?” she said with an obvious adjustment of the
speech format to match the fisherwoman.
– “Doin' nice, doin' nice…,” the lady responded without returning
the question.
– “How are fishies today? Taking the bait?”
The unexpectedly harsh response, in the form of a question, came
with force and volume:
– “Ffff-ishies?”
Then the fisherwoman turned her head a bit, tilted it, and – with
wrinkled forehead, half-opened mouth, and squinted eyes – looked
at Beth askance, the way Micheal Jordan used to dramatize bad
calls by referees.
It was, indeed, a bad call on Beth's part to phrase the question the
way she did. Without a doubt the diminutive made her sound a bit
like some kind of a “friendo” – something she hated to be taken for
ever since she saw No Country for Old Men. The reference – Beth
figured – made her sound too close and intimate.
– “The fish.” She corrected herself immediately.
The fisherwoman forgave her the choice of words.
– “The bait… That's what they're after: the bait. Good fucking luck
without it! And they like deep waters. Here too close to the beach,
they no stupid.” Here she paused, adjusted her hair messed up by
the ocean breeze, then added: “Fish ain't stupid. Are you kiddin'
me? They look stupid, but these are smart motherfuckers, I'll tell ya
that!”

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 Vittoria

– “I get that...” Said Beth in a soft voice reflective of the calming

effect the long response had on her.
At that moment the lady faced Beth and said in a voice that was
nice and quiet, almost warm:
– “You wouldn't have any loose change by any chance, would
you?”
At that point their eyesights interlocked in that uncomfortable
way, with the lady awaiting Beth's reaction and Beth wondering if
this was just a coincidence, or perhaps she was really facing the
female incarnation of Anton Chigurh on a mission to prove once
again that the fate is blind. In her life, she remembered only one
other time she felt this level of conversational discomfort – back at
the University of Toronto when she was explaining to her black
classmate the rules of Reversi.
– “No, I don't. I'm sorry,” Beth broke the impasse, which was
becoming more distressing with each passing second.
– “No worries, it's just gotten hot and I didn't bring any cash to get
water. Oh, well!”
Still, Beth thought it wise to redirect the thrust of the conversation.
– “It's an amazing spot for surfing.”
– “Well, you either fish for what's deep or you surf the surface…”
Beth was dumbfounded. It was hard for her to make the sense of it
– it was either some deep, universal allegory or just a silly saying of
hers… Who could tell?
– “Are you from here?” she asked to steer the conversation in a
safer direction still.
– “Chula Vista, south of the city,” came the response from the
fisherwoman.
– “California is so beautiful… The weather, palm trees…”

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 Vittoria

– “… Eucalyptus trees, Torrey Pines, Bougainvillea, flowers

blooming year round...” – the fisherwoman wrested the baton of the
conversation – “...yeah, it's all fucking pretty. Too pretty, if you ask
me” – then she paused, turned her head sideways and up, the
Obama way, and said – “Makes me feel like I'm a turd sitting on a
pile of pearls.”
With this, yet another awkward moment of silence established its
unwelcome existence, lodging the uncomfortable expectation of a
quick reply when none appeared acceptable to Beth. On one hand,
she didn't want to contradict the fisherwoman, but then she didn't
want to concur with her, either. She decided the best course of
action would be to opt for a safe escape. She pulled-out her cell
phone, swiped the screen and pretended to read a text message.
– “Oh, shit! I gotta go!”
She turned back and began walking away, towards the beach,
acting as if she was now placing an urgent phone call.
– “See ya!” screamed the lady.
At that point Beth realized it's never a good idea to talk to women
with fishing rods.
When she got closer to the beach, right where surfers await the
next wave worthy of their interest, she stopped and leaned against
the guardrail. The waves were splashing against the structure and
light clouds were acting in their capacity to dim the heat of the Sun.
Maybe it was the conversation with the fisherwoman, or maybe
the hippie who played banjo, or the store with tapestries from
Nepal and Tibet, or the folks living in those ancient Westfalia
wagons on the beach. For one reason or another Beth became
pensive, almost philosophical and began to wonder:
– “What is the real California? Where is it? Is it in our heads? In
our imagination? In the movies? Is it just a notion? Something akin

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 Vittoria

to the concept of 'living la dolce vita'? The sweet life that most of us
would select, if we could only pick and choose where to be born?”
California was picture perfect. But is the picture what's important?
Beth's father used to say it made him laugh when Ansel Adams'
photographs – oftentimes showing perfect scenery – were used in
the context of showcasing California's natural landmarks in travel
brochures, albums about Yosemite National Park, and so on. But in
fact, he claimed, for this very reason he was the best litmus test for
understanding photography. He used to tell Beth that as long as she
thought Ansel Adams was taking pictures of Yosemite or Death
Valley, she didn't understand what he was doing, nor what
photography is all about. “And once you do,” he told her over a
Sunday dinner back when she was seventeen, “you'll understand
it's a tadpole to get over the illusion, you will know how to look
past the habitual understanding of images.” Now Beth recalled
those words and thought about the cues from her father, and their
eye-opening implications.
She thought California appeared so beautiful it was almost
impossible to bear. And, at the same time, it was hard to really find
it. That set her thinking and she recalled California Dreamin' – The
Mamas and The Papas' hit song from 1965 – and how it now
appeared to her more as a metaphor. Many times the references to
the “church” and the “preacher” used to throw people off in their
literal reading of the lyrics, and official explanations from the band
members sounded about as convincing as Lennon's account of the
inspiration behind Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. But what if this
song was not a yearning after going to California, which it is on the
surface, but rather a wistful metaphor where California stands for
perfection, for life this beautiful and happy, which simply cannot be
had. What if “brown” and “gray” were not references to the winter
season but whatever is opposite to warmth and joy, which
themselves are metonyms for luck, success, and love? Perhaps they

49
 Vittoria

should have sung “California dreamin' on such a shitty day,” she

wondered. And this brought her back to the point of departure...
Vittoria was too perfect to be true – simply a mirage, a spite of gods
playing a joke on her, tantalizing, luring, but in the end keeping her
apart.
□

50
 Excursion

Having spent almost an hour on the beach, Beth returned to the

hostel. She went upstairs to her room, lay down and tried to get
some sleep. But what she hoped to be a sweet little afternoon nap
turned into uncomfortable tossing and turning, a routine of
someone suffering from insomnia north of the Arctic Circle, in the
glow of the Midnight Sun. By 4 PM she gave up, got up, and went
downstairs, where Rufus was working his shift again. He was
talking to Luiz and Bruna – a Brazilian couple from Reclife who
were staying in room #208, and who just got back from the beach.
They were looking for tips about what was close to the hostel that
they could go and see. Rufus recommended a short drive to
Cabrillo National Monument and Sunset Cliffs. As Beth joined the
little chit-chat about the nearby attractions, the Brazilian couple
suggested that she joins them.
– “Well, why not!” she said.

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 Vittoria

Then she smiled and the three of them went outside, got into a red
Chevy Cruze rental, and began their short excursion. Luiz was
driving and Bruna, acting as a co-driver, was relating the map
sketched out by Rufus to the street names they were passing by.
In no more than ten minutes they entered the Naval Base Point
Loma on the way to the monument. This was an area of contrasts.
On one hand, the views were magnificent – Coronado Island lay
down below, with a couple of aircraft carriers docked in the bay. To
the left there were high-rises of Downtown and, way in the
distance, Laguna Mountains formed a backdrop to the panorama of
the southern tip of California. The naval base, on the other hand,
was out of place, with its cheerless barracks and stern antenna
installations. What was, as far as nature goes, one of the most
picturesque places in the entire state has been turned by men into a
place without vigor, into a gaunt reservoir of discipline that's barren
of life and denuded of its natural beauty, possessing that
characteristic ambiance of a deadened space that only military
installations can instill. A large cemetery, with thousands of graves
arranged in a mathematical grid and marked by white crosses,
added another layer of sobriety and solemnity. Few places
anywhere can match the contrasts of the Naval Base Point Loma.
Then they reached the National Monument, stopped the car in a
parking lot surrounded by clay hills, and went into the visitor
center.
The monument commemorates the events of September 28, 1542,
when Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed to the west coast of North
America, and made a landing in San Diego Bay, which he named
San Miguel, thus becoming the first European to step on the
California soil, fifty years after Columbus stumbled upon an
unknown continent while seeking a westward route to India, and
twenty two years after Magellan’s expedition found a passage at the

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 Vittoria

bottom of South America, which opened up the Pacific from the

East.
As Beth learned, he was one of the early conquistadors of Latin
America, though little is known of the man – it is still unclear
whether he was a Portuguese or a Spaniard. In 1542 he, and his co-
captain Bartolomé Ferrelo, led an expedition of three ships – San
Salvador, La Victoria, and San Miguel – carrying a crew of seasoned
salts along with clergy members of the Catholic Church, Spanish
prisoners, and Indian slaves – for a total of about two hundred men.
He explored the coast of what would later be termed as Baja and
Alta Californias, at least as far north as San Francisco Bay, making
multiple landings and encountering native Indians, who were –
more often than not – hostile towards the European seafarers.
Unfortunately, he did not find the famed cities of Cibola, nor a
passage between Atlantic and Pacific oceans – both of which were
among the goals of the expedition. It was also during this voyage
when Cabrillo died from gangrene, after hitting a sharp rock on the
island of “San Salvador,” and now known as Santa Catalina Island.
He died in January 1543.
The memorial also features a small, quaint lighthouse and a
handful of batteries – military relics from the time of World War II,
when the Japanese invasion of California was a distinct possibility.
But despite interesting history, the sight-seeing tour felt dry and
boring due to monotonous and spiritless veteran guide who, no
doubt, had spent a good chunk of his life living in military bases.
It took Beth, Luiz and Bruna just over two hours to do the tour
and then follow a short Bayside Trail down to the ocean. When they
emerged from the bottom of the cliffs, they bought a few postcards
back at the visitor's center, used the restrooms, and left for Sunset
Cliffs.

53
 Vittoria

Throughout the visit to Cabrillo National Monument Beth and her

friends from Brazil did not speak a lot. The little conversation that
they attempted to have was stymied by the limited knowledge of
English that the Brazilian couple possessed. Their temperaments
were different, too. But, for Beth at least, it felt good to have some
company for a change.
A few minutes after they left the National Monument they got to
Sunset Cliffs. It was a beautiful sight to behold. The azure sky with
white puffy clouds and greenish waters of the ocean contrasted
with the orange and brown hues of the cliffs' clay. In the distance
Beth noticed surfers – little specs against the vastness of the Pacific –
who braved the oncoming waves, transmuting their bravura into
pure thrill. It was, again, the contrast that made her wonder about,
and admire, how some people can throw themselves into the throes
of wild nature, without trepidation. It was uplifting to see such
naked fearlessness. It felt like experiencing the unplugged, analog
world: simple, raw, authentic – just as she wanted it.
Beth wanted her own delivery.
All sorts of thoughts began coming to her head. “What da hell am
I doing? Am I overthinking everything? Are all these my misspent
worries? Should I take the risk and do something out of bounds?
Ride the wave of life and enjoy whatever comes my way?” And
then she continued the train of thoughts, attempting to understand
their pragmatic ramifications: “But what am I supposed to do? Go
back to the pier and stir some shit with the agent of fate?” And with
this rhetorical question she cooled off.
As Luiz and Bruna were taking pictures, Beth sat on a big rock.
She wanted to calm herself down, to acquiesce her thoughts. She
pulled out her Samsung Galaxy phone and looked up information
on B-Side Players. She read that their sound is a lively mix of
“Cumbia, Salsa, Son Montuno, Jarocho & Boogaloo, and gritty

54
 Vittoria

street Samba.” She didn't understand much of the specification of

their music blend but liked the reference to “gritty street Samba,”
and wondered what is its relation to plain and unadulterated
Samba.
And then there was Bruna and Luiz taking pictures. Lots and lots,
and lots of them. While her boyfriend was pressing the simulated
shutter button, Bruna was practicing clown choreography, like
getting close to the edge of the cliff and assuming one of those
standard “I'm having a blast” type of poses: standing sideways on
the left leg, raising the other one with the knee bent at ninety
degrees, with the left arm waving a “hello” and the right arm
projected backward with its palm left hanging limply… And that
stupid grin! And when they changed their roles, Luiz didn't even
have to make any ridiculous poses – the AirPods he was wearing
looked like Q-Tips sticking out of his ears, though he thought they
made him look progressive and hip.
This made Beth think of an idea for a book! What if these
ridiculous devices are the first step in the ongoing evolution of
humans towards hybrid creatures that will incorporate new
technologies to expand our capabilities? What if the concept of
augmented reality will progress beyond amplification of sound and
simple screen overlays? What if it evolves into a broader set of
sensors that, over time, will be integrated into antennas and
attached directly to the brain? Or, even better, through bio-
engineering manipulation of DNA, grown directly from the skull?
Is that how aliens got them?
At any rate, Beth concluded, tracing a possible evolution of
antennas from the origin of AirPods might be enough to fill a
decent-size novella, and it could provide an opportunity to poke
fun at Apple – as she now realized, antennas grown from the
frontal bone would not only allow for a larger set of functions but,

55
 Vittoria

in a single swoop, would also address the issue of Q-Tip

aesthetics…
As she was busy charting her future publishing plans, Luiz and
Bruna requested that she takes a few pictures of them together. She
complied with a forced smile. When she was done, she sat on the
big rock again and stared at the ocean, and the Moon which was
now slowly rising from behind the horizon. It was a beautiful
moment in a beautiful place, peaceful and quiet. If she could only
enjoy it, rather than feel like the fifth wheel, her role reduced now
to taking pictures – pictures of fucking clowns and goofballs with
too much empty memory on their phones.
Just then her phone rang.
It was Amanda – she'd be there to pick her up in the morning.
– “Are you rea-dy gurl?” she asked.
– “I sure aaaa-am!” replied Beth with a melodic intonation, hiding
the mental state she was in.
– “Ten o'clock sharp!”
– “I'll be ready and waiting on the front porch, lady!”
– “Get a good night sleep, we have a lot of miles to cover!”
– “I will, no worries.”
– “OK, I'll see you tomorrow morning then!”
– “Love ya!”
– “Love you too, bye!”
Beth felt ready to move on with her trip. They planned to see La
Jolla, Carlsbad, Venice Beach, Santa Monica, Malibu, Santa Barbara,
San Louis Obispo, Big Sur, Carmel Mission, Monterey, Santa Cruz,
Mavericks, and San Francisco. In short, the whole coastal shebang.
And along the way, they'd sample food that California is known for,
the fusion of Asian cuisine and healthy approach to eating.

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 Vittoria

As she was going over places they would visit and foods they
would taste, Beth realized that she hadn't eaten the whole day.
Which made her reflect on her situation… She couldn't eat, sleep, or
read, her writing was slow, she was getting odd thoughts and felt
alone. The conversation (if that’s the word!) with the fisherwoman
was kooky, and besides she couldn't really connect with anyone else
for that matter... She felt frustrated and unsure what to do next and
how to enjoy her time. It strangely felt like she's been here forever –
not like someone who had arrived just over twenty-four hours
earlier. How did she get here? Was it all Vittoria's fault? Was it her
beauty that turned what was shaping up like a nice stay into an
experience of malaise? Was California a mirage? No longer the
same place as that found by the early conquistadors, when it was
still virgin and unexplored? Not yet digested into Fodor’s and
Lonely Planet travel guides? Was she waking up from a dream? As
Beth waded in her thoughts, notions of honor, glory, and collective
memory swirled in her head. She suddenly thought of the
responsibility we all share to commemorate the heroic deeds of
those who lost their lives in wars past... And she began to reflect on
the graves on the Naval Base, and how life produces its own
annihilation. And then she recalled that she's here with these
clowns...
Everything was weird.
Just plain fuck-ing weird!
It was so weird and unwieldy that she didn't want any pictures of
her taken – the moment just didn't feel right, not quite the grade she
would want to preserve for future recollection. She would just sit
down on the rock and watch the setting Sun hand off its rule of the
sky to the Moon. That's all she could bear herself to do. It was quite
a sight to behold, and about the only form of consolation she was
willing to accept at this point.

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 Vittoria

After a few minutes she heard a shout:

– ”You coming back with us?,” yelled Luiz.
– “Yep! Hold on guys!”
Beth got up and walked towards the car.
It was getting darker by the minute, and the three of them drove
back to Newport Ave. By the time they got to the hostel it was
essentially dark.
□

58
 Party

When Luiz parked his Chevy rental, Beth thanked for the time
spent together and made her way towards the hostel. She didn't
have high hopes or anything – she knew the fleeting window of
opportunity to get closer to Vittoria was rapidly closing. It was
Friday night, and just a few hours remained before it would be
technically too late for anything. Period.
When she got to the hostel, however, it looked like things were
livelier than the night before. Much more so, in fact. This was a
good sign.
The propensity of travelers to throw a party is always a function
of who happens to be staying on the given night at the hostel. A few
right souls can start the fire, so to speak. Or there just happens to be
the right chemistry among a group of people that fate brought
together for one night in their lifetime. These are natural chance
events. At any rate, tonight it would not be quiet, slow, or lazy.

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 Vittoria

Beth had to squeeze her way through the folks who were sitting
on the front patio. The rest of the hostel was likewise bustling with
people, most of whom were hanging out on the ground floor in the
kitchen, on the back patio, and in the pool room. Mellow music was
playing from a jukebox in the main party room. Few folks were
drinking at this point but it was just a matter of time before others
would reach for alcohol. It felt like the place was in the inflection
state between a busy evening and Friday night party, when things
begin to fall into place, and everyone naturally drifts into the right
state of mind. Though the night was still young, Beth could tell it
would be one of “those” nights that one cannot engineer because
they only happen by themselves or not at all.
Beth didn't see Vittoria as she was making her way towards the
stairs, but then she didn't look particularly closely – she was still
overwhelmed by the sudden transition from the peaceful ambiance
of the Sunset Cliffs. She just went upstairs, straight to her room.
Once inside, she noticed that some some reshuffling had taken
place earlier in the day – Tweety and the Japanese guys were gone,
and in their place there were new rucksacks and towels. Vittoria's
bed, though, looked virtually unchanged since morning.
Beth ate a power bar to get some proteins in her system. Then she
went and took a nice, long shower, brushed her teeth, did her hair,
and changed her clothes. She felt a little bit better. She called her
mother to let her know all was fine. And then she made her way
downstairs.
The party was now well underway. It got packed pretty much
everywhere. Glasses with beer and wine were in most people's
hands. A few guys were having cigarettes which left the air filled
with smoke. But nobody minded it – not minding smokers is, after
all, still common across large parts of the world. Someone brought
two large cheese pizzas from a local eatery. Someone else opened

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 Vittoria

up a bottle of El Jimador Tequila, and a few guys went to the

laundry room in the basement to share a joint. Things were on the
upswing. And it looked like Beth might be enjoying her time.
But that was not meant to be the case.
She looked around and saw Vittoria's face obscured in the dim
hallway of the hostel – her beauty was filtered through noise,
revelry, and tobacco haze. She noticed that Dietrich, Dmitri, and
Braxton were right next to her, like an international three-headed
Cerberus guarding access across the river of her lesbian lust. The
last vestiges of hope were fizzing out. She knew she wouldn't net
this butterfly. Not tonight, not ever. The time was coming to
concede the loss.
She went to watch for a bit people playing pool. She always liked
the game because it requires, in equal measure, strength and
precision, not to mention a basic notion of geometric strategy. Broad
shouldered Ramón from Barcelona was easily winning with Mr.
Chou from China who, it appeared, played pool for the first time in
his life. Others were cheering while waiting for their turn.
As she looked around, it occurred to Beth that the fisherwoman
may had been unto something. We use our language either to fish
for something big, something that comes from the depths, or else
we simply use the language to slide, to ride the waves of
conversations, wave after wave, topic after topic. This is the
dichotomy of attitudes between academic nerds and social
butterflies. Unfortunately, having grown up in an intellectual
environment and having spent many years in college made her fall
into the former bucket. Such is the fate of most PhDs. That bummed
her out a little, now that she thought about it.
But it was nice to be there. The parties at hostels tend to strike that
balance between extreme crowds. Somehow everyone is having
good time, women socialize without having to deal with pushy

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 Vittoria

men, nobody dresses up, most people drink but rarely too much,
and drugs are sporadic. Just simple young folks having a good
time.
When an old Rolling Stones tune ended (was it Country Honk?),
Beth made her way towards the jukebox. She began browsing
through the digital catalog of fifteen thousand songs, looking for
Alanis Morisette. While she was flipping through the simulated
pages of album sleeves she caught herself red-handed trying to
prove to the crowd that she was not American – the way people
from Canada do, subconsciously, when they attach pins with the
Maple Leaf to lapels, to make it clear that they are not who others
are likely to assume they are. “For Christ's sake,” she thought, “this
is an international hostel!” This left her with freedom to choose the
next song outside of the standard “Alanis Morisette, Bryan Adams,
Rush” set. Without pausing to consider ramifications, she picked a
song her father used to play at home – it reminded him of the late
summer 1987 when he met Beth's mother...
It was Bee Gees.
The moment Beth selected You Win Again and the sound of corny
organs began to flow from the speakers, she experienced that
feeling of a sudden realization of a social gaffe – the way when once
a student submits an essay for grading, he or she immediately
realizes there's a grammatical error on page six, even though the
paper had been proofread three times before.
It was too late.
The opening beat of the tune sent a small shockwave across the
room, with people turning their heads to see who in his or her right
mind would select Gibb brothers. And when their eyes met with
Beth's, they transmitted the standard “Seriously?” message over the
line of sight.
She felt dumb.

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 Vittoria

It is an altogether separate topic as to whether or not Bee Gees

deserve to be treated this way, but the fact is that, since the success
of Saturday Night Live, their music has been stained with indelible
patina of cheesiness of the lamest kind, and relegated to the private
sphere – like porn, one can enjoy it in private, but not admit to it in
public. There were other movements in rock that have passed the
limelight of the day yet never got committed to the dustbin of
irrelevance and ridicule. For example, Sex Pistols – and punk music
in general – are gone but one can still listen to them with a straight
face. But that's certainly not the case with the most accomplished
fraternal trio in the history of pop. Their songs – catchy as they
were – didn't age well, and they definitely don't sound relevant or
compelling any more. Those who fail to notice that have to learn the
hard way.
That's what happened to Beth.
Clearly, this party was going nowhere for her. She felt
embarrassed, estranged, like a fool who fucked things up. She
looked down, and thought “Why me?”
– “Hey, don't worry about it!” a voice came from behind.
It was Rufus. He was hanging around the hostel on wild nights to
make sure things wouldn't get out of hand. He also appeared more
relaxed now that he wasn't officially working.
– “Thank you!,” Beth responded with honest gratitude.
– “It happens sometimes. Not often, but it happens.”
– “Thanks!”
They both smiled.
– “Hey, let's look for something that could redeem your respect
around here, alright?”
– “Too late for that, but OK!”

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 Vittoria

They leaned over the jukebox and began browsing together. Beth
felt a little better. Rufus took the charge to weed out cheesy chaff.
– “Fuck Journey! … Fuck Foreigner! … Fuck Europe! … Fuck Rick
Astley! … Fuck David Lee Roth! … Let's play it safe here, alright?”
– “Yep! And fuck Scorpions, too!”
– “You got that one right!”
– “What about Shaggy?”
– “Borderline. Fuck him! As I said let's play it safe!”
– “Agreed!”
Beth felt like a baby, but she knew Rufus meant well. He was kind
and sincere, and he did it with charm by lathering his “fuck's” with
warm hippie friendliness. She enjoyed watching him playing a
jukebox minesweeper.
– “Fuck Milli Vanilli! … Fuck Celine Dion! … Fuck Wham!! …
Shit! Somebody needs to scrub this library!” And a few “fuck”
exclamations later he said ”Oh wait, these guys are good,” while
pointing at Del Barrio Para Wirikuta by Hector Guerra and MPC
Familia.
– “Never heard of them.”
– “Give it a try! I swear it's not a setup!”
– “My life is on the line, you realize that?”
– “I won't let you down...”
– “OK, I trust you man!”
– “No fear! OK, see you around!”
Rufus gave Beth a comforting pat on her back and walked away.
Beth inserted a dollar and added it to the queue, just as Bee Gees
were winding down their 1987 hit. Half a minute later the new song
began playing (what a relief!). It had a real nice, strong, fresh feel to
it, as if rap crossed with music of the native Indians of Sierra Madre

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 Vittoria

Occidental, as if gangsters south of the border produced a hit with

that “outta Compton” vibe, while retaining reliance on local
instruments. And what a difference it made! Everybody loved it.
The mood of the place reverted to the original state. Beth won them
over. The house was rocking again!
Still, she needed a drink to wash away the whole faux pas
situation with the jukebox.
She went outside and across the street to a small liquor store. She
wanted a strong beer. She stood before shelves with cold ones and
began to read the labels of IPAs which were clearly marketing
inventions to make microbreweries sound hip, with their ridiculous
play on the word “hops“ like “Hoppy Birthday,” “Hoppy Rabid,”
“Hopulence,” “Pure Hoppiness,” “Smooth Hoperator,” and so on.
This tired overuse of a concept turned her off (though she had to
admit that “Hops and Dreams” was clever).
At that point Beth thought about the way marketing works in the
context of free market economy, where it roves after an idea that
succeeds commercially, and then gang-rapes it to death through
innumerable repetitions of the same concept, until it's so beat that
nobody reacts to it any more. Like Fifty Shades of Grey, which
spawned not only countless imitations and parodies but took over
other genres producing, among other nonsensical ideas, such
monstrous cookbook titles as Fifty Shades of Chicken (poultry and
BDSM, really?). It seems that when something sells, the chase is on
until it sells no more.
Beth looked at another shelf and, maybe because she felt homesick
a bit, decided to buy a large bottle of La Fin du Monde, craft beer
brewed in Quebec.
Then she came back to the hostel and sat on the steps of the front
porch. On the label she read the beer was “brewed in honor of the
intrepid European explorers who believed they had reached the

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 Vittoria

'end of the world' when they discovered North America, ‘the new
world’.”
– “How appropriate!” she thought to herself.
This was, after all, the end of a chapter for her, the end of a short-
lived crush with high hopes but no fulfillment. She had one day,
one shot at it, and the thing is that it didn't come even close. Not at
all. “The end shall be my new beginning” she thought. Tomorrow
morning Vittoria would be gone from her life and a new world
would open up for her. She'd be there to discover it.
She poured the beer into a plastic cup. The heady foam topped the
brew that was of dark golden color. She began sipping it slowly,
savoring its premium taste. She liked it. It was full-bodied, had
subtle and nuanced notes to it. “Good stuff,” she said half-aloud,
while still examining the label with its nocturnal shadows.
While she was enjoying the beer, some new guy tried to get Beth
to talk to him but, again, she wouldn't have it. She liked men but
never got quite the same kick out of them. She used to say that, if
anything, they might be good for threesomes, to show them how
happy can a woman make another one. But given that a close
encounter with Vittoria did not appear to be in the offing, not even
a twosome, she snubbed him, plain and simple.
When she was done with two-thirds of the beer, she got up and
walked over to the back patio, bottle in hand. There, she stood and
stared – leered, really – at Vittoria, or whatever transpired through
her unmet hopes and regrets running up and down the brain. She
was still taken with her beauty, and her Italianness…
Vittoria was pure breed, sophisticated from the ground up,
without any admixture of cultural impurities – and even if she was
just putting on an act, she would never break the character. She
appeared confident, stoic, with imposing personality expanding out
of her average size frame. What made her so special was that

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 Vittoria

something that transpires through Italian art, fashion, and tales of

the past – that brashness, pride, elegance, and civilization mixed
with a bit of Etruscan primitiveness, with some vestiges of
animality. She combined in herself the opposites attributed to Janus,
the god of passages and transitions – one way looking back to the
ancient history, to the primitive and barbaric, while the other way
directed towards the humanistic foundations that made Western
civilization great. In her demeanor, slender silhouette, and olive
complexion there was the elegance befitting a model showcasing
the newest Prada collection, while in her glistening eyes and
stentorian voice there was the seduction of a Pompeian courtesan.
As Beth was ogling Vittoria, all the images of what we deem
Italian began appearing in her mind as if in a kaleidoscope, with
Con te partiro (Time to Say Goodbye) now playing in her ears like
some kind of subconscious soundtrack: the steps of Piazza di
Spagna, rocky outcroppings of the Island of Capri, pencil sketches
of Leonardo da Vinci, Venetian gondolas, jousting condottieri,
travels of Marco Polo, sins of the Popes, frutti di mare pasta dishes,
victories of Scipio Africanus, vineyards of Tuscany, the Carabinieri
escorting Amanda Knox, all the women of Tony Soprano's, the
statue of Giordano Bruno in Piazza di Fiori, blood-stained Tiber,
and the requisite laurel wreaths adoring divine emperors… Here,
Beth closed her eyes to shield the images and let the refrain come to
the fore…

Time to say goodbye.

Paesi che non ho mai
veduto e vissuto con te,
adesso si li vivrò,
Con te partirò
su navi per mari
che, io lo so,
no, no, non esistono più.
It’s time to say goodbye…

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 Vittoria

She opened her eyes to reconnect with Vittoria's face, and the
barrage of pictures came flickering again… Those of erupting
Vesuvius, of Benito Mussolini and theatricality of his poses, of
marriages and affairs of Lucrezia Borgia, of Cosa Nostra and its
code of honor, of beneficence of the House of Medici, of gladiatorial
shows at the Colosseum, of postcards from the Amalfi coast, of
crimes of the Gambino family, of Luciano Pavarotti’s performances
at La Scala, of the finesse of Bernini's marble sculptures, of the
mastery of Fellini's craft as a film director, and of that genius way of
evolving language to denote in obscure way mafia dealings and
their arrangements – like “Uncle Junior who eats alone.”
Vittoria's physique and beauty somehow captured the essence of
Italy and held the power to summon the images that otherwise lay
dormant in memory, to jolt them out of slumbering in the inner
recesses of the hippocampus. And conversely, out of this cavalcade
of images, the very personality of Vittoria was popping out, as if the
images accounted for who she was. She seemed to embody that
perfect correspondence between knowledge and reality, projected
out of Beth's memory and materializing as Vittoria's face,
demeanor, and physique.
All of these flickering frames were inscribed into countless
references, archived documents, travel brochures, college textbooks,
digitized libraries, operatic performances, Instagram pictures, Olive
Garden menu items, museum exhibits, replicas of Roman
aqueducts, and shows on cable TV. There was no doubt – Vittoria
was branded. Branded by history, by the Renaissance, by modern-
day advertising, by tabloids, by the restaurant industry, even by
HBO. The stereotypes – mass produced and reproduced, copied,
and imprinted in minds through an endless array of memes, TV
screens, web sites, blogs, and fashion statements… They were now
at play, making all such associations appear to Beth in a knee-jerk

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 Vittoria

manner. And just like Hank Willis Thomas captured the effect that
mass-culture has on people to perceive athletic African-Americans
as born with a Nike swoosh embossed in their skulls, it was simply
hard to think of Vittoria outside of what was known as Italian. Beth
could literally sense that somewhere under those lightly undulating
black hair was hiding a Dolce&Gabbana monogram.
Con te partiro was slowly wrapping up in the background of
Beth's head. And where the voice of Andrea Bocelli leaves off, the
violins continued to the rhythm of the drums, with their wistful
lyricism converting into goosebumps all over her body. She thought
to herself that Vittoria was to other women she had met in life what
a fucking Lamborghini is to ordinary vehicles. She began to wonder
what her cunt must be like and, quite automatically, she imagined it
with oversized labia minora, with their flaps swinging open in
involuntary spasmodic movements by opening slightly out and
then all the way up – bringing to mind Lambo's trademark scissor
doors.
But just as a Lamborghini, Vittoria was unachievable in equal
measure, as if circumstances exerted a barrier similar to that of an
unaffordable price. She finished the beer and, feeling slightly
boozed-up, admitted that acceptance had to be the final chapter of
the story. She found herself forlorn but with mental composure.
She went upstairs and retired to the room.
She didn't like to lose but there she was, alone with a few empty
bunk beds – so whom could she fool? At this point it would take
some cockamamie turn of events for them to get close. Exhausted
and reconciled with the status quo she flipped the light switch.
Then she lay down and tried to turn herself off like the bulb and fall
asleep. Maybe it was better this way...
The party downstairs continued in earnest, fueled by six-packs
and bottles of cheap California wine purchased at the same liquor

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 Vittoria

store where Beth got her beer. Music was loud. Women were in
good mood. Guys were slightly raunchy. All was fun and in good
spirit. But for Beth all this was coming to an end. She was resigned
to the way things were. She made peace with her fate.
So this was it. She was leaving the next morning, only eleven
hours later. Tomorrow all of this would come to pass and she'd be
driving with her bestie, in the Ford Mustang convertible, up the
beautiful coast on California Highway One, while whatever
recollections of Vittoria there were they would fade in memory like
a departing train in a fog.
■

70
Up the Coast and Into the Mine
 The Trip

As she lay in bed, Beth was thinking about the places she'd visit
over the next seven days… She would see the missions founded the
Junípero Serra, buy cool shades in Venice Beach, swim in La Jolla
Cove, visit Botanical Gardens in Santa Barbara, take pictures at the
Carlsbad Flower Fields, hike in Point Reyes, tour Santa Barbara
wine country, get a T-shirt at Monterey Bay Aquarium, and camp
for two nights in Big Sur, where Jack Kerouac wrote the eponymous
book with reflections on his career as an accomplished author, its
promises and disillusions. And then San Francisco – she and
Amanda would hit bars in North Beach, visit strip clubs in seedy
Tenderloin, drive down Lombard street, eat at Boudin Sourdough
Bakery & Cafe in Fisherman's Wharf, and walk across the Golden
Gate bridge.
While trying to fall asleep, she traveled up the coast in her mind –
place after place, attraction after attraction. After all, all of this was

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 Vittoria

ahead of her. She found herself in that sweet spot when the best was
still to come…
Downstairs a song from the jukebox ended and it was quiet for a
couple of minutes. Only louder talkers and occasional laughter –
typical aural tapestry of all parties and soirées – was audible from
the party room. But here's the law of the land. If you take a hostel
that's close to a beach in Southern California, and get a quorum of
young people in a party room with a jukebox, one thing is bound to
happen – sooner or later someone will select a Doors track.
And that moment came right then.
The lively riff and then the opening verses of the undying classic
reached Beth's ears:

You know the day destroys the night

Night divides the day
Tried to run, tried to hide
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side, yeah

Something stirred inside her, as if she knew she'd give birth to

something. She became attentive again, and her ears perked up,
while the song continued.

We chased our pleasures here

Dug our treasures there
...

Beth rose at instant, like a corpse resurrected from a crypt, turned

on the light and approached the bunk bed in the opposite corner of
the room. She raised her right-hand shirt sleeve and, with arrogant
probity of a veterinarian who's about to examine cow's ass, inserted
her arm into the red rucksack. She fumbled through the clothes –

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 Vittoria

rummaged, really – touching toiletries, an MP3 player, and a

hairbrush, until she sensed a plastic bag in her hand. She pulled it
out and, in a moment of lucky discovery, realized she found what
appeared to be Vittoria's little laundry bag that included panties
worn during her trip from Italy.
Beth knew full-well that the door was unlocked and that there
would be little to be said in her own defense if someone walked in
on her (no shit!). But the attendant risk caused an adrenaline rush,
and that in turn made her heart palpitate with increased beating.
Blood was flooding her head, palms were getting clammy… The
domino was rolling… She was getting dizzy, scared, excited. Before
long, the hormones and ugly curiosity took the better part of her.
She unwrapped the plastic bag and pulled out a crumpled ball of
brown cotton, which had a nice weight to it, indicative of moisture
trapped inside – the same feeling one gets when handling a slab of
gold, with gravity speaking for its preciousness even more than
glitter. Then she placed the panties close to her nose.
She inhaled lightly, with a good safety margin, to perform the
initial test. Given the circumstances and the ownership of the
panties she naturally anticipated to detect something from Italy –
perhaps a whiff of fennel or pistachios, the bouquet flavors of pesto
ingredients, or nutty notes of matured Pecorino cheese…
Nope.
Not by a long shot!
These panties, or rather the cunt that had been covered in them,
smelled like Indian curry. The identification was sudden and direct,
especially that this wasn't an ordinary blend of South Asian spices
but something on a par with top-shelf “Maharaja” brand from
Penzey's Spices, made from the freshest ingredients picked up
straight from the jungle, and mixed on the premises of the store that
same morning. Beth couldn't tell how to account for what she was

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experiencing, as the individual smells remained coy, vague, and

didn't register exact names. Still, in their entirety they formed a
superb combination of flavors that officially rendered Vittoria's cunt
a yoni.
While the yellow curry flavor itself was largely opaque, the smells
exhibited a cascading property, as it were, emanating different notes
in waves. Beth observed that there was a certain cadence of flavors
as if time played an integral part of the composition, with each
element entering its joyful trajectory in her nostrils, then slowly
dissipating its potency and flavor, vacating the spot for the next one
scheduled to shine for a brief moment, with a different color of
bliss. It was an immensely pleasing palette of exotic flavors, if still
undeciphered, that had been secreted by the mucous membranes of
Vittoria's snatch. Whatever they were, they were now permeating
the fabric of the underwear garment, warranting further
investigation.
As for the style, these were cute, simple brown boyshorts, made
with high quality soft Pima cotton. It was just eleven hours since
Vittoria took them off before taking a late morning shower. Beth
calculated that, therefore, the panties had had to be worn for no less
than forty hours, if one realistically estimates the time it takes to
travel from Ferrara to San Diego, via Milan and a layover in
Dallas/Ft. Worth, and add to it the first long night at the hostel…
Here she paused and imagined Vittoria's cunt with cum seeping
through her little slit like maple syrup from a cut bark – hour after
hour, after hour – the result of fantasizing stimulated by absorbed
reading of the romance novel and the presence of handsome,
uniformed Alitalia pilots on that long trans-Atlantic flight.
No matter how she looked at them, these were some seriously
happy boyshorts. When she rolled them out and spread them wide
open she loved what she saw on the inside. The backside was
spotless clean while the front side was stained – ravaged, really – by

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the ordeal of the long trip and covered by something

extraordinarily rare. This was not a layer of film, but a thick coating
of oily ghee – thick, creamy, slightly yellow in color, and
delightfully fragrant.
As for the graphic aspect of the stain, the cum was not splattered
violently a la Pollock, but looked more like a woodcut, with little
grooves appearing as if etched in the slowly congealing matter –
similar in appearance to Gustave Baumann's Autumnal Glory,
except that instead of foliage the imprint resembled a floret covered
with fine, elaborate pattern reminiscent of sandalwood bark.
As for everything else, God only knew what kind of bacteria was
incubating in this petri dish – there was cum, sweat, droplets of
urine and one lonely black pube. But what Beth did know beyond
any doubt was that the quantity of the cum was stupendous. It was
clearly a cunt on a roll – young, tender, and capable of discharging
prodigious amounts of creamy goodness. In the past Beth had
mixed luck when it came to women's juices. At one point she dated
Heather who squirted easily but the product was thin and
unappetizing, so to speak (“Just get a sponge, please!”). And then
there was Carolyn whose cum was thick and superbly fragrant, alas
it came in trace quantities, leaving Beth with the same satisfaction
as enjoying a 1 oz portion of prime rib served with three peas at a
high-end restaurant. This cunt, on the other hand, was a marvel of
marvels – here quantity went hand in hand with quality. There were
no compromises. It was a cunt in her prime – a scrumptious,
succulent piece of art.
This first experience of such strong smells made Beth think about
the aromatic aura associated with sex and how sterilized and
impoverished our experiences have become due to the increase of
reliance on pornography, with genitals sanitized of their fragrance
or stink – depending on how one looks at it – and depriving the
losers, the lonely, and the timid not only affection and love, but also

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the pleasures that enter us through the nose to amplify the

experience of intimacy.
It is, after all, an entire world of flavors and smells, co-mingled in
the act, churned in the sweat of orgasmic spasms. One can only
imagine the stench a porn mag would exude if it was a carrier of the
olfactory content, especially in the close-ups and pictures of
ungodly orgies. In fact, if we could somehow reproduce on paper
the smells that accompany the activities portrayed in those filthy
magazines, they would need to be sold in double wrapped plastic
bags, and then hidden in sealed containers, away from the reach of
those around us. And reading such a magazine would need to take
place in an isolated space dedicated to that specific purpose.
For time being, however, Beth had Vittoria's panties in her
hands… She was now aware she was in possession of something
special, something that stood like a gate to an unknown world. She
was ready for more.
She put the panties right up to her nose again, feeling moisture
right above her upper lip, and inhaled in a prolonged fashion,
without any reservation, moving her head back in slow motion. She
didn't have to wait for the effect which came right away with
redoubled force and directness. It immediately sent fireworks
through her sinuses, while the overall profile continued to build up,
transforming into a vicious orgy of elements vying for prominence
and attention, until the melee of combative flavors gave way to a
higher sense of order, surrendering to something like armed truce,
which through its inherent fragility yields ever greater sense of
peace. At which point came the pause.
A long, arresting pause.
Everything in Beth's mind stopped, as if time lost its power to
animate thoughts, while the spices themselves remained operative
in their function and effect. It was an experience strangely similar to

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– as if transposed from – the iconic scene from The Matrix, in which

Trinity jumps up in the air, the frame freezes, time is suspended,
and the camera swirls around to reveal her pose in 3D, to present
the entire field of vision. Likewise here, Beth felt as if she was
sniffing the flavors from every angle, detecting their various
properties and how they complement one another.
Without effort, she picked up traces of bitter fenugreek against
cooling cardamom, the spiciness of mustard seeds peeking through
the earthy turmeric, faint hints of bittersweet cloves rising from the
background of chili powder, and nutty, penetrating cumin
brightened up by coriander. Strangely, however, the arrangement of
the flavors continued to undergo a transformation when she was
done with the first pass – what was in the foreground receded into
the background, and what was initially in the background popped
up to the front. It felt like the only way to approach the intricacy of
the edifice, with focus shifting from one flavor to another, and
resting there for a short contemplative moment before moving on to
the next. Only tiny rays of sulfuric garlic, emerging like accents
from the cloud of zesty ginger, endured in their olfactory glow all
throughout, contrasting the comfort of persistence against the
warped grain of time.
If it makes any sense to an inexperienced person, the spices
appeared to Beth more like themselves, as if presenting their crisp,
unadulterated forms. She saw them naked, like some kind of
prototypes, the Platonic Forms of what they normally appear to us
– cumin felt more like cumin, fenugreek more like fenugreek, and
coriander more like coriander – though they all maintained a
proper balance of proportions with respect to one another, without
overstepping the limits assigned to their individual roles.
Moderate and proportional as each contribution was, the entire
assembly was spiked up by urine, coursing through the flavors like
an alternating current with its attractive and repulsive forces,

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animating the profiles, amplifying the directness with which each

was stamping its mark, and allowing the spices to play off of each
other's contrasting qualities. Yet, put together all of them were
congruent, strangely aligned in the common objective to bring up
something bigger than themselves – they acted in unison and
concert to exude that peculiar sense of womanhood.
It was like experiencing Vittoria's cunt in sharp relief, zooming in
and out, examining its details exposed in high definition, traversing
the road down into its secretive component parts. The complexity,
definition, depth, and potency were astounding. None of the
elements was overly pungent, jarring or abrasive, still none was
superfluous. But of them all it was ground cumin that stood out
front and center. It was assertive without being overly aggressive,
and more than any other spice was responsible for begetting that
characteristic sense of womanly warmth and safety, continuing to
stand in the foreground even as other spices began to abate and fall
off the stage. Throughout the experience, it was cumin that
bracketed the rest of the flavors and emanated an inviting sense of
presence and closeness – her presence and closeness – as if its smell
carried with it the shadow of the woman, and the nature of her
womb. It was a feeling of a deceptively benign comportment of
someone kindly disposed and approachable. Intimating a sense of
pareidolia, it created an immersive circle of warmth wrapping
around Beth who found herself at its center, as if Vittoria's presence
was materializing on the periphery – it made Beth feel strangely
like being in the embrace of her loving arms.
Cunts, cunts, cunts… They come in a variety of shapes, colors, and
sizes. Some have labia minora sticking out, some are tight, some are
lose, some have god-awful moles on them, and some appear to be
bent a smidge. And they all smell different.
The joke on the street has it that they smell like fish, or seafood in
general, which is true – many of them do and do so in a variety of

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ways. There are cunts that smell like a decomposing herring left on
a balmy day in a pool of vinegar, and some that instantly remind
one of that summer day spent on the banks of the Salton Sea, where
there was no escaping the smell of dead and pulverized tilapias.
There are slits that resemble mussels in image and smell, and there
are bearded clams that smell like… well, like clams. And, just to be
fair, while some cunts stink fishy in a gung ho kind of way – say,
like shrimp paste – others smell just a tiny little bit like fish, the way
fingers smell after handling a goldfish when cleaning a fish tank.
But even these are oversimplifications that do disservice to the
gamut of smells and profiles exhibited by snatches around the
world.
In point of fact, a cunt can smell like almost anything, whether it
be food, animal, plant, or... anything really. There are those –
exemplified by Vittoria's pussy – that connote associations with
culinary delights of the Indian subcontinent. Other cunts smell like
stale bread, hummus, or roasted Poblano peppers. There are those
that smell musky or rancid, still others reek like star anise, with its
medicinal notes raising suspicions about the health of the vagina.
Some cunts smell putrid, and some have pH balance out of kilter
resulting in raised alkaline levels with their own characteristic
odors. Others are briny, overly yeasty, exhibit herbal notes, or
simply smell grassy and flat. Some smell like wet furry animals,
some like mold, and some like sulfides. There's also a whole class of
lactic cunts raising associations with foods such as Brie rind, blue
cheese, or Greek yogurt. And – one can only venture to imagine –
there are probably cunts that smell a smidge like dried figs, prunes,
raisins, or some indeterminate fruit in the process of fermentation.
Then there are “blowtorch” cunts – the ones that stink so bad in
ways difficult to narrow down their affinity to anything outside of
them, that one just thinks of the surest way to sterilize them – hence
the name. And then, to touch upon more nuanced classifications,

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there are eighteen year old pussies that smell like innocence and
hundred year old vaginas that smell like death, though those
connotations clearly overstep the properties of smell as such and
encroach on the realm of pure poesy.
No matter how one looks at it, there exists a plethora of smells
that account for the variety of women, and their individual
sexualities, so – perhaps with some help from Ron Jeremy – one
could compile a compendium of smells that exist out there, and
describe their nature the way it was done with other species.
As Beth was thinking about this, she understood that one good
way to methodically characterize the variety of cunts in her book –
instead of her ersatz attempt via the route of a Mendeleev table
turned a metonymic cul-de-sac – would be to chart a wine wheel
with groupings and subgrouping of smells. One then could have
fun identifying the pie-slice where his or her latest sex partner falls,
or even become a connoisseur of sorts by developing predilections
for the most nuanced smells. She also began to understand men
who always want women in great numbers, to sample that diversity
of life – that connection became finally clear: between the richness
of biological life and the appeal of variety for variety's sake.
Needless to say, at this point Beth was well beyond tipsy, feeling a
good buzz going on vertigo. Yet, she wanted more. When she
exhaled from her lungs the last remnant molecules of Vittoria's filth,
she felt like a diver who returned to the surface for one reason and
one reason only – so that she can rest a breath or two before
continuing to dive even deeper. She spread the panties in her hands
once more and, after her lungs got the oxygen they needed, took a
big breath and inhaled again, even harder than the second time.
And then, she braced herself for an onslaught of benevolent flavors
– her mind in riot gear and all… She was ready for whatever might
come.

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It was all in vain.

It's called “miscalculation.”
Maybe the potency of the smell has compounded on top of what
Beth had already tested, or perhaps it was simply not prudent to
sniff the panties with such reckless abandon… At any rate, the few
moments that followed can be reconstructed only in approximation
that stands in the inverse relation to the level of audacity displayed
by whatever it was she was sniffing.
This time, rather than exuding cozy warmth and amity, the cumin
had a blistering bite, as if grown on Martian soil, in an experimental
hothouse built by Elon Musk in preparation for the colonization of
the Red Planet. In a blink of an eye, Beth's mind was blanketed by
its nipping stings and forced to cower from the associated blasts of
scalding subnotes that were assailing her with atrocious
vehemence, damaging the inner lining of her nostrils. Other flavors-
turned-Martians came back too – this time with savage ferocity,
crashing against one another, wreaking havoc in Beth's brain, now
caught off-guard in its attempt to control the situation.
It was may-hem!
If one was to describe the effect of the smells to capture the
positive end of it, one could say they felt like mythical furies,
overdosed on caffeine, and slamming against the membranes of the
nose with predatorial barbarity – they raged and they roared their
frenzy with insistence and clamor, granting Beth a perspective from
another dimension. She began to realize the capacity of the human
mind to expand out of its disciplined domain of operations, as if
knocked out of its habitual function to moderate and limit what is
normally denied to humans.
In sum, it was an experience manifesting itself as a cosmic battle,
taking place in a mythical frame of reference, where the old order is
disintegrating before the eyes to reveal new vistas. She would now

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behold things – both grand and detailed, in their visible aspect as

well as their latent meaning – that she never imagined the sense of
smell can awake. These spices were simply unlocking the gates of
perception, paving the way to the doorsteps of infinity. And that
urine … engendering breathtaking visions of Heaven and Hell,
leaving in their wake a sense of prohibited knowledge.
However unholy the entire experience felt, in those destructive
bursts of flavors, there was a definitive sense of teleological
completeness, as the conditional way of seeing was combusting in
flames along with them. It was, in fact, similar to the way ancient
myths envisioned the end of the world, in a general conflagration –
it was the Armageddon that ends it all. These were the flavors that
essentially exhausted themselves and made Beth not look beyond
them. It was that rare and unmistakable sense of finality that
accompanies sexual and mystical release alike – the finality that
stands revealed as it is, without its origin.
Put differently, the visions and voices now filling her mind did not
exist apart from the flavors, but were entirely contained within their
envelope, in the very act of absorbing them, inexorably linking Beth
to what she was experiencing, her ego dissolving beyond the
subject/object dichotomy: she was the smell itself, her whole being
consumed by its profile.
Ganges, Jaipur Tandoori, Rickshaw Bar, Banjara, Bombay
Choupati, Taj Mahal, Udupi Palace, Bengal Tiger, Tamarind
Dreams, … – all the Indian restaurants Beth used to eat at flashed in
her head. Involuntarily, she recalled their curries. The similarities
were strong, except that this dish felt more like a fiendish
concoction cooked with irresponsible amounts of ground cumin, as
if it was prepared by a graduate of a Punjabi equivalent of Le
Cordon Bleu, put together on a whim, in a drunk frenzy of
spontaneous improvisation rather than by following a tested but
staid recipe. “And that fucking little pube left for garnish!,” Beth

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thought to herself as she now kept the panties spread open three
inches before her eyes.
“If food rating agencies could rate this cunt,” she continued the
train of thought, “Michelin would not spare a single star, and Zagat
would readily bestow their stupid 'ZAGAT RATED' signature mark
with a recommendation to match ('Hands down the best curry twat
in the Old Continent!'). Fuck! Indra himself – the Vedic god of rain
and thunder, war and victory – would gladly accept this cunt as the
main prize, and Vittoria as his trophy wife, following the cosmic
battle against asuras led by serpent Vritra.”
And then, with the inclusion of a reference to the pantheon of
archaic deities from Rig Veda, Beth began to slip into the dangerous
zone of deep speculations. It was becoming clear that smells from
Vittoria's cunt worked like entheogens – kinda like Peyote or
psilocybin mushrooms – in that they started to give rise to sudden
sensations and ideas of philosophical, religious, and quazi-mystical
nature. She reflected, in a soliloquy, on the way our bodies evolved
over the millenia, and how the secret of life's self-perpetuating
existence through generations is tied to the cultural aspects of our
bodies and social interactions – a bit like Carrie Bradshaw in HBO's
Sex and the City used to ask questions about love in New York,
while the camera zoomed in on the caret on her Mac running along
with her thoughts:
– “How do our senses work in relation to sociability? How do our
smells, skin color, and tone of voice condition attraction and
procreation? Can we reduce social aspects of courtship and
parenthood to science, merely to chemical compounds working
their magic? Do our pheromones and sweat act like bait? Did cunts
evolve to match smell preferences, or was it the other way around –
perhaps we learned to like eating fish and curry because they
reminded us of our cosmic Mother? Why would nature go to such
great length to engage the whole body, mind, and memory in the

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process of procreation? Whence does such olfactory opulence

come? Wherefore is life conceived in such a soup of flavors? Where
to look for the answers? In Kama Sutra? In a Hindu shrine?”
It was obvious that the line of self-control was crossed when she
began to use words such as “whence” and “wherefore” in a self-
directed monologue. But that was not the end of her descent into
the netherworld of New Age inspired ramblings. A few seconds
later, and accompanied by an epileptic jolt aligned with a soft
thump in the background, Beth succumbed to the effect of the smell
taking over, as she witnessed the reality transforming itself with a
twang of mangled color blotches – similar to the way Peter Jackson
captured entry into the Fourth World in Heavenly Creatures. And
because most of what she saw and felt at that moment was ineffable
outside of Sanskrit, whatever she managed to transcribe into plain
English sounded one full octave lower as far as its meaning goes,
with only faint vestiges of rational speech barely discernible here
and there.
In a vein reminiscent of Sri Aurobindo's effluence but tempered by
pseudo-scientific references and dubious analogies to modern
physics a la Deepak Chopra, she said something about a “dance” of
particles that “collide for a split-second” to create “surprising
configurations” of smells, about “random” mixtures of chemicals
that lead to “unknown reactions” in the “cosmic game of hide and
seek.” And how all these were now “coalescing” into a spiritual
experience of “supreme unity” that “transcends principium
individuationis.” She mentioned the role of incense in religious
customs the world over, which is to “elevate the inspirational
moments,” when carefully selected spices “burn on the sacrificial
altars.” Then she mumbled something about how bodily smells are
real, firmly attached and connected to the “socket of bodily senses,”
rather than free-floating in “intellectual clouds” of philosophical
speculations.

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And then, after a short pause, she reloaded her vocabulary again,
and admitted incoherently that such experience rooted in life
generates the feeling of “spiritual validity” altogether outside the
“good and evil scheme of comprehension,” which “yields valence”
to the “postulate of boundless love” governing the world. And that
it is our obligation to translate “the truth of the Upanishads” into
creating good Karma for the benefit of all. Then she added that we
must “enunciate” the importance of the role that smell plays in the
“transmission” of pleasure, as well as “injunctions” deemed sacred
by the school of Purva Mimamsa. And she wrapped up the speech
with a bold reference to the “cosmic drama” and how the structure
of the universe “commands profound reverence” for the “mystery
of life.”
When she finished, she kept staring at the panties with sharpened
acuity. The glorious splatter, where the groves had been before, had
tiny rills and rivulets of alternating rainbow colors – of pellucid
hues – flowing up and down, as if gravity was absent. On the other
hand, the islands of cum that were between them morphed and re-
morphed into fantastic shapes, as if someone was moving a
magnifying glass between the panties and Beth's eyes. Strangely,
however, it all felt natural, and interconnected, and peaceful, and
purposeful as fuck, though at that point she couldn't articulate any
of those glimpses into the impenetrable depths of existence.
At this stage, covered in sweat and with hazy eyes, she felt like a
shaman descending from a mountain with a message for the
humankind, expressed as the new rules of engagement. Unaware at
this point that she was still alone in the room, she began to proclaim
them in an impromptu manner, with an ever rising pitch of voice,
as if she was speaking to the crowds:
– “Ditch Facebook, turn off the Internet,” she said with conviction
and authority “and go get real pussy – a wife, a girlfriend, a
mistress, or even a whore, if that's what it takes – and smell her.

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Smell her hair, her neck, her armpits, her thighs, her whole body –
inch by inch, down to the last pore. But above all please do smell
her cunt! Her dirty little cunt!” And then she exclaimed in the Amy
Poehler kind of way, as if to underline the point of inspiration:
“Viva hot humid days!”
After this prologue of sorts she began to list proscriptions, in a
slurry speech now murmured under her nose, provided as a guide,
apparently to help recover primal sensibilities:
– “Fuck deodorants! Fuck Maytag! Fuck Tide! Fuck Downy! Fuck
Clorox! ... And Snuggle Bear?” – here she paused for a second,
extended her right arm straight all the way, with the thumb in the
level position, then tilted it downwards and said slow-ly – “Oh,
yeah, fuck him, too!”
And then she stopped.
Small drops of hot sweat were dripping from her forehead. Her
body was quivering. Her heart was racing. Her mind was adrift.
Eyes agog. She felt detached and unhinged. She had to swallow
saliva a couple of times just to clear the build up in her mouth.
It was obvious that the entire experience pushed Beth's fragile
brain to the redline. The smell literally enticed, ensnared, and
enveloped her mind to the point where it had a similar effect to
something between dropping acid and sniffing neoprene. She
became suspicious of things being a tad off when she lifted her
head and could swear she heard the sound of sitar coming from
downstairs… Then she looked up and saw a garland of Marigold
flowers hanging around Vittoria's bed…
She was hallucinating and her mind was zig-zagging.
Mental states induced by drugs or heightened sexual arousal are
often likened to the feeling of being inebriated. But it's never quite
the same as being fucked sideways, and more of a feeling that
accompanies one on the way there, when one starts to lose the grip

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of one's thoughts, and begins to experience problems with restoring

oneself to the state from before the trip. To find a good description
of this state one would need to travel no closer than to Jarbidge in
Northeastern Nevada – the most remote town in the lower
contiguous forty eight states, and likewise out there in terms of its
collective drinking problem. A place where one wretched drunk
once uttered words that till this day are burned into a wooden
plaque gracing a local saloon: “I'm lost: I've gone to look for myself,
if I should return before I get back, please ask me to wait.” That's
exactly how Beth felt at this precise moment – she was in the
penumbra of the encroaching delirium: she tried to find her own
self but knew full well that the reins were slipping.
To get out of the predicament, she marshaled all her strength,
pulled the panties away, and kept them at a safe distance. She acted
with determination and resolve. She shook her head a few times to
sober up, then looked around to get her bearings. The flowers were
gone! The voice of Jim Morrison was still in the air...
Given how long the trip had felt, she marveled now at the way
time dilation works – though she was happy that her proper sense
of seconds was slowly returning, and that once again she was
regaining the possession of her sober identity.
□

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When Beth's drunk shadow finally realigned with her true self,
she began to feel good. Real good. However wet her cunt may have
been at the moment – and it was, in fact, very wet – Beth didn't even
think of masturbating, though she used to do that often and to
completion. Strangely enough, the peculiar quality of the entire
experience carried with it a sense of nourishment and satisfaction
for the sex-starved lesbian, altogether short-circuiting her cunt, as if
her nose, sinuses, and lungs worked in tandem to take the edge off
the sexual thirst in the limbic system of the brain.
She knew the time came to part ways with the boyshorts… She
took the final look at them, dipped her index finger in the gooey
splatter and smeared a smudge just above her upper lip, under the
nostrils, as a keepsake of sorts. Then she quickly wrapped the
panties back in the plastic bag and returned it to Vittoria's rucksack.
At that point Beth turned off the light, and got back into her cozy
bed. She felt accomplished. She knew that whatever else there was

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to see along the coast would pale in comparison with what she had
just seen with her third eye, in a place that's not marked on any
map, in a location that even Mercator wouldn't know how to
project.
Behind her closed eyes and Buddha-like smile there was the key
she now held for the approximation of the bliss she had just
experienced: the recipe. How glad she was that back as an
undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, she had lived
for three semesters with Deepti Gopal, an exchange student from
Chennai, who taught her how to cook with Indian spices. Now she
viewed that experience as invaluable, as priceless. Without it she
would have never been able to decrypt Vittoria's secret scents.
From now on, the recipe would function as the stolen password
and key to her ecstasy. She knew that her sweet memories, the
spoils of the sordid adventure, would stay with her, and that smells
of the Indian curry dish would possess the power to unearth them.
And that like Proust, when he dipped that petite madeleine into a
cup of lime-flower tea and was taken to his childhood in Combray,
she too would be transported back in time to experience anew the
trip she once took in California, and that Vittoria's beauty and her
presence would pierce through the surface of flavors and be
restored to its former glory. And this Beth also knew beyond doubt,
that the revived memories would, in turn, ferry her across the
continent, to that magical place where the mighty Pacific splashes
its measured waves against yellow clay cliffs rising from the
seafloor bed, against a stretch of seaboard unique and beautiful as
Torrey Pines that call it home.
In the party room downstairs, Break On Through (To the Other
Side) was ending in its cacophonous, ecstatic, noisy crescendo.
Here, upstairs, Beth was likewise hazy at the close of her day. She
was on the other side now, delivered there by the treasure she dug
out in California. This was, after all, her little El Dorado, where she

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chanced upon a nugget of aromatic bliss. She felt like a 49-er of

sorts, though less like a prospector and more like a thief who under
the veil of the night stole from the mine of Vittoria's treasure, from
the tabernacle of her feminity.
This brazen act of grabbing what was not hers felt sacrilegious. In
Beth's mind it was justified by nothing other than the thrill of
transgressing socially-established boundaries, knowingly pilfering
another woman's secrets, committing an erotic profanation of
someone else's privacy. And what an incredible feeling it was to
have Vittoria's cunt deep inside her – the closeness, directness, and
communion were all nonpareil. The feeling that lingered when
Beth's body was filled with Vittoria's innermost scents made her
experience the meta-physiology of her own body: lungs submerged
in a lake of perverted intimacy, mind drowned in muddy waters of
shame.
What she did was, indeed, quite beyond the pale – an indecent act
that defiled her humanist integrity. But thanks to its cathartic
property it purged her of the habitual worries and misgivings, it
put a stop to the endless brooding over life. At last, she forded her
way into maturity and came into her own, now that she found what
she had been yearning for – life raw, unfiltered, and analog.
People often confound remorse with guilt, but Beth had none of
the former while cherishing no doubt about the latter. This was the
thrill of life at its very source: guilty joy and joyous, unapologetic
guilt.
– “GRAH-tzee-eh!”
■■■

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 Afterword

In the Preface I skipped mentioning one other important source of

inspiration, lest too much be disclosed prematurely. It is, of course,
Joseph Conrad to whom I adumbrated an allusion in the main text
of the book, and who's remained an enduring inspiration in my life
– at different times and for different reasons. And regarding the
title, I chose it also for its referential breadth as it resonates with the
Victorian era of the Wild West, the British Raj, and the sense of
victory that the main character experiences in the course of the
events that take place during her stay in Ocean Beach.
As for the book itself, I'd like to point out the obvious and admit
that practically everyone in the story is stereotypical. So is Vittoria
(at least in Beth's imagination), and so are her adorators. Beth gets
advises only from her father, and Chevalier acts in the father figure
role as far as her writing goes (and not her mother, who herself is a
writer). She even needs a man to pick a good song for her! And the

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fisherwoman is weird, just like one would expect a woman with a

fishing rod to be. Then the hostel is run by Rufus with a goatee, and
the Chinese man never played pool in his life. Finally, Amanda and
Beth plan on a crazy Thelma & Louise trip in a convertible. How
more cliché can it get? Still, it feels weirdly normal. But perhaps
Vittoria is not the only one hidden behind the wall of images,
fashion statements, and memes...
As for the erotic motif, it should also be clear by now that this
book is not a typical example of the lesbian erotica genre. Quite to
the contrary, one must look past it – to the other side of the novella
– to find what appears to be missing on the surface. Clearly, Vittoria
herself is mostly missing and yet we do get to know her quite
closely. If anything, the intent was to use text as a play on the reader
and the story was made up as the means to perform an experiment
in writing. I wanted to write text that reflects itself, that mirrors the
very act of reading.
In the opening chapter, which brims with optimism, naivety, and
innocence, we take a flight with Beth – when we land, we are in Ca-
li-for-nia (“Yeah, baby!”). The second chapter still feels quite
normal, though it slows down a tad with the surprising run-up that
feels like a setup. Still, at that point we imagine the book to be what
we expected it to be – a story of two women who, hopefully, will
end up doing pleasant things to each other. Alas, with each passing
chapter, things go more and more awry… We are wandering with
Beth looking for the California she traveled to see – the Promised
Land, really – but there are only disappointments (among which is
the inherent ambivalence of the place, experienced primarily on the
pier, where things are what they seem and yet they’re not). So it
gets worse and worse, until everything seems “just plain fuck-ing
weird!” (just like the story itself). And even the Friday night party
doesn't resolve anything. We only know that we'll be taking a trip, a
big trip – that anything up until that point has been just a warm-up,

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a prelude. Still, it's Vittoria who's the object of Beth's affection… So

how will the story end? Well, in the very beginning we had been all
but told that there's always a way to get there, “one way or
another”... So, towards the end, we are taken for a trip, quite
literally paragraph for paragraph, with the main character and the
mocking verbiage that mimics her experiences. The composure and
sanity return to the text when Beth pulls away the boyshorts. As the
text draws to a close, we feel guilty that we liked the story, though –
hopefully – there are no regrets, which at the very end makes us
exclaim along with her: “GRAH-tzee-eh!”
Apart from considering its self-reflection, there are probably a few
ways to read Vittoria. First, it can be read just for pure fun – and I
hope that many people will find this book enjoyable. But the text
also signals issues that extend beyond the margins of entertainment
– for example, those associated with branding outside of the
commercial context: in history, politics, anthropology, etc. (note that
Beth is unaware of this, even if she's quick to pick up marketing
ploys in the commercial sphere). It's just another take on the topic
that's been discussed many times, over the last twenty-five years or
so. There are also some thoughts on globalization, multiculturalism
notions of identity and hybridity, the effect of widespread
pornography, return to the nature, and so on. And then there's the
motif of a “tadpole” – as Beth's father had phrased it. It's the
treatment of love and enchantment as a tool to get to the places that
we didn't know existed, that remain unmarked on maps we learned
to rely on in our daily lives.
Beth seeks that amazing love of another woman in glorious
California – both built-up artificially in her imagination – but all she
gets is frustration and pain, and she remains trapped in her
thoughts without a visible exit. Only when she gives in, when not a
wispy speck of hope remains, she's shown the gate. Vittoria, thus, is
an allegory. Taken together, these phases account for a trip from the

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childish naivety about the Promised Land (however it may be

originally conceived), through the netherworld of the search after it,
and then to the health awaiting on the other side of madness
resulting therefrom. To be sure, the “tadpole” is not necessarily
drugs – those seldom are – but all the “maximum” situations and
events that in their extrema are, by necessity, always direct and
analog, possessing the power to push us through the artificial
images built around us – the images that, quite imperceptibly,
encircle us within their walls. It was Vittoria's body – the “other
side” of her images – that spoke to Beth directly, and it was likewise
her own body that became the nexus of the experience and the
source of a new outlook on life.
Inasmuch as text and images can contribute and stimulate such
situations and events, they fulfill their role and promise. For in it
all, I hope, it will not be lost on the reader – that the Promised Land
of joy, beauty, and deeper understanding of life, lies in a place that
images and text can't touch, though they can swing us there, if only
for brief moments… Just like it is the case with Ansel Adams, who
found some of those places past the illusion of the Golden State, on
the other side of his photographs.

–Kathleen Kavalas

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