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It turns out Florence, the site of so much political, financial, engineering, literary, and artistic history is not actually a modern city. What it is instead is a cultural center. I don't mean a formally declared cultural center as you'd find on Wikipedia.
I mean the sort of thing where exposed sewer mains go unfixed for weeks because the plumber is growing grapes at his lavish Etruscan villa. Meanwhile, tourists constantly pound the place anyway.
It's probably the Duomo attracting them like Pete Davidson attracts beautiful corpse-curious women.
Nothing says culture like a gigantic building with shoddy plumbing. In the United States we call that contractor malfeasance, poor planning, or a government agency. Especially if it just keeps getting funded by taxes with a plan to specifically not fix it.
This means it is sort of pretty, if you’re into that kind of thing. Which I am. But it also means it doesn't work for a living and subsists off the kindness of strangers. I am also interested in that kind of thing.
It is a city, but somewhat stuck, as it were. A city of unthinking conservatism where nothing grows due to maniacally protecting its past. I wonder what its most famous resident would have thought of the situation.
Niccolo Machiavelli lived here in the 15th and 16th century. His villa was a mile or three outside the city and he spent his final days there grudgingly playing cards in exile with illiterate farmers. It's a bed and breakfast now.
He was banished by Lorenzo Medici the Magnificent for trying to kill him or something.
I'm sure it was a misunderstanding. Otherwise, why would he dedicate The Prince to Lorenzo if he'd tried and failed to kill him? Perhaps a failure to assassinate his person became an attempt to assassinate his character?
I don't honestly know if The Prince is a genuine guide to power or a satire whose context is lost to time. I rule no kingdoms, I administer no republics. I merely dictate my commune and dole out the bread every Monday for movie night.
All I know is as long as the bread keeps flowing no one gets ripped to pieces.
Old Nic said if one were only either loved or feared, he should like to be feared. The pragmatic brutality of this immortal assertion ironically ensures he will be loved instead. Forever. Or as long as the living listen to the dead, anyway.
I hope we continue doing so. If we didn't, we'd be dead, too. Like Florence's plumbing.
I do not know what Florence looks like from the outside. I blacked out like the Dark Ages the city survived. It was originally a Roman town, founded around two millennia ago. It is Joe Biden's sister city.
It must look much like any other city. Except Venice. But I certainly don't know that for sure. It's the 21st century now. A city can identify as whatever it likes. Maybe it identifies as a village to compete in a less intensive bracket.
I don't judge that kind of thing. I can't compete in any bracket no matter the racket. I couldn't even drink with a cartoon character without wanting to die afterward.
Super Mario did quite the number on me in those old tunnels. Three thousand years old, he claimed. I felt the same waking up in Florence.
Dry, dusty, and weighed down with history. It was just Florence to me then. Not yet Firenze. It would have to earn my love and the rebranding would only come after the resurrection. But for the moment, I was too hungover for any enthusiasms.
I worked up the energy to recon the nearest coffee, cigarette, and toilet in that order. A man has limits, and a hungover man is just a boy, anyway. Me more than most.
Florence, like Venice, had tons of the first two. The third I realized I'd want to play close to homebase. No mercenary restrooms. You can't trust them. They only flush for coin and lack the civic virtue necessary to die on behalf of their city-state for free.
Life slowly returned to us as we limped about a grid of narrow but modern city streets. Most intersections consisted of right angles in an ordered fashion. It was like someone built it rather than grew it from lily pads like Venice.
The grids radiate out like spokes around a hub in the center. A hub you can see from any rooftop, thrusting skyward at least one hundred feet above any other. This is the Duomo and it is beyond magnificent. A more good-looking building does not exist.
It lacks the lipstick and guyliner one sees on many other churches and is all the more beautiful for it. It exudes eternity in a way one has to see and feel walking through its cathedral. A weight built from centuries of casual judgment. And big rocks.
Duomo technically just means cathedral. Any old cathedral. But there is only one The Duomo. More technically, Duomo di Firenze. But any local, or visitor, or hungover idiot knows what you mean if you leave out most of that and settle on Duomo.
Magnificent is the only adjective which works. Everything in Florence is magnificent since that handsome Lorenzo fellow. Other than the Bonfire of the Vanities party they had. You know the one where they burned all the art because Jesus.
Admittedly, during our slow motion hangover, that sounded pretty bloody appealing. Our tour guides had hunted us down like dogs and was making noises at us like Uffizi. I didn't have the energy to ask what that was. I assumed it was a Florentine Maynard.
But no. Wrong again.
It turns out Uffizi is definitely a thing. The Uffizi. It's a museum of some note, apparently. Full of art of some note, as well. I didn't really notice any art at all until abruptly coming face to crotch with some.
I've mentioned before I don't quite understand what art is and I mean it. But I also don't necessarily recognize pornography when I see it. I'm not a United States Supreme Court decision. I'm not Jacobellis v Ohio.
I don't think The Birth of Venus is pornography. But it definitely isn't a birth, either. There's a clamshell and a titanic phallus involved if you know the story behind the painting, sure. But it isn't porn. Even if it did instantly obliterate my hangover.
I repeat. The Birth of Venus is not porn. But it'll do in a pinch.
I don't know how Giarlomo Savanarola missed this gigantic naked lady when collecting sindling for his little Bonfire of the Vanities. It is huge. Perhaps he also knew porn when he saw it and determined he liked it?
Seems the best explanation, really. These Renaissance guys were tricky dicks. Niccolò Machiavelli ruled the Florentine Republic for a bit. And that guy everyone paints as Jesus? That’s Cesare Borgia.
As I was feeling newly perked, we were torn away by our guides and ushered into a large hall dominated by the biggest little man in history. David, balls akimbo, stood proudly naked in a defiantly terrified stance under an even taller dome.
Megan seemed to perk up here, oddly. Life is like that. Full of these strange coincidences. So funny we both recovered around the same time. I'm still not sure how it happened. I'm told correlation isn't causation.
I am told this by Megan, in the Uffizi, with David's world famous wang hanging just overhead. I believe her. Unlike you sexists out there, I believe women. Their entire gender lacks the capacity to lie and I'm sick of bastards generalizing about them.
Still, when viewed in relation to his body, one can't help but note this legendary wang is… well, somewhat terrified. It resembles a frightened turtle. It's not so much. It is beautifully sculpted, like a tumor can be beautiful, I suppose. But it is small.
I whispered something like that to our younger tour guide. She giggled a bit and I thought that was the end of it.
Unfortunately, as she began to speak over the loudspeaker about the history of the statue, she also repeated what I said to about one hundred people.
“As you can see, he is a grower, not a shower.”
I heard Megan whisper, “Oh. Honey. No.”
I understand what people say is not really up to me. But that day in the Uffizi I saw a bright young lady pass those words right along to elderly pensioners. I watched in horror as ribs cracked and hips let themselves out.
In that moment I resolved to never, ever be funny ever again. I don't need that hate on my conscience.
Michaelangelo once claimed he didn't create statues. He excavated them from marble. This sounds great, really. The implication behind the statement is he could sense a penis lurking in any old rock. It reminded me our luggage was still missing.
I figured he would have been able to find a few bags with our names on them. Even if my dick was in my carry-on.
Every morning and every evening in Firenze, over four days, we were assured our bags would be found and delivered. We spent three days in Venice hearing this prior so I saw no reason to question the fact baggage claims arrived every day.
Our bags themselves never did show up and by now the two of us were beginning to smell a bit. I don't mind this myself. If I smell bad, that's just me being my authentic self. My insides expressed on the outside. Handle it, rest of world.
Megan, however, is beautiful inside and out. So, on our final day in Florence, I did what every man should do for his woman, or man, or indeterminate partner who loves chick shit. I took her shopping in Firenze.
This sounds romantic and wonderful because it was. Well, it was because Megan thought so. I pay attention to what she enjoys because I'm a modern man and I enjoy having sex with her.
Shopping in Firenze took the form of wandering aimlessly in and out of storefronts flanked by five hundred year old statues. Most appeared to be waiting for their luggage still, too. Stark naked, of course.
To make matters worse, someone had whacked off their members at some point.
I mentioned shopping seemed aimless. Only to my ignorant eye. I'm sure Megan had a method. I just could never determine what that was. It resulted in clothes in the end, either way.
Eventually, we landed in a H&M store. I'd never seen one of these things before then, but Megan seemed convinced she'd find something we could afford in it. She was right it turned out. She's often right, but please do not tell her that.
I was skeptical myself. No plumbers still. It smelled like culture in there. Mario was still faffing off in Tuscany, waylaying dumb tourists in his amazing prepper tunnels. So, culture still meant a strong urine smell.
This alone isn't too offensive. But I distinctly whiffed a Number Sixty-Eight. That's thirty-four Number Two's. You truly have no idea just how much garlic goes in the food in Italy. Ever met an Italian vampire? Other than Berlesconi, of course.
No, you haven't. Your goth girlfriend from high school doesn't count. Speaking of, her and her friends warily eyed me as I loitered outside the changing rooms while Megan tested the wares.
Young people are too dumb to notice a man holding a purse is probably not a predator. He is probably a victim. I'm setting the record straight here. A man holding a purse is with his wife. A man with a fanny-pack is a serial killer.
But these dumb kids figured maybe I was going to cop a feel, or sneak a peek, or any other number of things one should expect from the locals.
Mercifully, after a brief hour Megan grabbed some good looking stuff. I even grabbed a pair of sandals. After all, we were headed out to a fancy dinner later that night.
We had a hot date with a fat Etruscan hog. I didn't want to get my hopes up, though. I'd been hurt before.
Freshly attired, we waddled to a restaurant where we met with our guides again. The young guide beamed at us while the elder scowled. I guessed there had been words regarding the words used to describe David's stately wang earlier.
In polite society, the human body with its various parts, functions, and uses is simply not spoken of. They tolerate a bit of filth, but their view of themselves is mostly based on the erroneous idea they are better than their bodies.
More importantly, they are better than those who are not properly ashamed.
These are the dregs of the lower class, so irritatingly free with speech and thought. The civil decry vice as vicious, which makes sense if you're into etymology. But vice is whatever they don't happen to like at any given moment. It's usually me, to be honest.
You should see these people cut loose the instant a pig gets set on fire, though.
The lights dimmed in a cramped space resembling a London Underground bomb shelter without all the toothless crackers. A single match was struck and dragged quickly across a thirty pound, porcine chunk crucified on a vertical spit.
Slathered in an oil of some sort by my dear friend Luigi, it combusted instantly like so much Renaissance art. The smell was good enough to mask an asshole's cigarette smoke under a collective nasal orgasm no doubt immortalized in some fresco or another.
I was that asshole. But wait. There's more.
As our chef-cum-plumber-cum-cartoon stereotype negligently sliced magnificent slabs from the still smoking meat, I asked what sort of education the boar had received and whether he had earned any certificates.
After a moment of deep, emotive confusion - always a fun emotion when wielding a knife sharp enough to either cut a god or a mouthy American - Luigi roared laughing at the sheer absurdity of caring.
He cried as he slapped half a bloody pig on my plate. “That's-eh a good eh-one! My eh-brother would-eh love eh-you!"”
He did, Luigi. He did.
Still, I didn't know what in the hell was so gods damned funny, myself. Until I tasted it. Then I knew. But not much else, considering Luigi popped around eighty corks of his brother's wine and poured, poured, poured.
To this day, I'm still not entirely sure what a fat Etruscan hog is. But if someone offers it up, I'll be putting it in my mouth.
Whatever it is. On an unrelated note, I'll be doing a book signing for this thing in the third bathroom stall of the men's room at Danny's Pub.
The adventure continues in Rome.