Thursday 7 October - Don't Make Me Get All Up In Your Business, Frenchy

Today was the explanation about the Bonfire of the Vanities. I was challenged by a member of the group about Savonarola's reasoning for the strict code of ethics. I told him that honestly I was giving them what I had read, which came from not only historical city records, but from the writings of Savonarola himself, in addition to those who wrote about it that were first hand witnesses. What the monk wrote and what he thought could have been absolutely different things, for certain. Who knows what goes on in anyone's mid, really? People can be duplicitous in writing one thing and wanting or doing something else. I mean, how can I definitively state anything? It was hundreds of years ago...I am not omniscient after all. I didn't put it exactly that way, but you get the gist. He did too. Are we cool now?

We made our way to the Uffizi for Kris' Art Tour 101 for a few hours and then the group broke up for the rest of the day on their own. Again with the office hours in the afternoon, and I checked in with baggage transport company in Venice about our intended arrival tomorrow. I counted off the number of bags they would be expecting to transport from the station to the hotel. I also called the taxi company we use to verify the boat names and registration numbers to look for. We don't want a poacher sweeping us off the dock when we step out of the train station. This is all going well, I must say.

Frank and I went to dinner at Antico Paoli, a great institution in the Florence restaurant community. Love it, but other patrons were being a bugger. The next table kept knocking into us, moving their chairs further and further out from the table and jostling us. They were French, and I don't want to say I don't like the French, but I've not had a lot of great experience with the ones I've encountered in Italy. I always get an air of entitlement from them. Maybe I'm mistaken, but it's just the vibe I feel a lot of the time.

She had stepped on my foot three times. She had bumped me when going to the restroom and back - apparently no sense of space exists in her world. Maybe she needed glasses, I don't know. The lady was telling a story and gesticulating and in waving her arms emphatically, two of her fingers caught my hair and pulled my head in her direction. Um, OW!?! And she didn't feel, didn't stop, didn't notice. Didn't care, most likely.

I grabbed her wrist by reaching back and yanked on her to stop the pain and get the slack to disentangle us. I hoped I dislocated her shoulder in doing it, but no. She's kind of ripping a hunk of my hair out, you know? I thought swift action was necessary.

She yelps. The room goes silent. Ah crap. SHE'S the one who is going to cause a scene because I touched her? She still has my hair in her claw.

I continued holding onto her and very clearly told her to let go of my hair or I would break her goddamned wrist. Her dining companion took stock of the fact she had my hair in her hand and said something to her. She unclenched and relaxed her grip. I let go of her wrist and turned to face her. THEN she started to bitch at me. I don't understand French, but she clearly wasn't happy with me touching her person.

I stood up from the table and leaned into her face and told her to keep her scarecrow claws off of me or I would stab her hand with my dessert fork and furthermore put my size 11 foot in her ass. I don't care if she understood a word of English, you have to get the picture. Turns out she is a rather petite woman who got a bit intimidated with my nearly 6-foot, plus-sized self nose-to-nose with her.

And with that, we paid up and got out of there. Frank cracked up when we got outside. I apologized for my behavior and told him I would never dream of doing that in front of clients. He told me he believed me and not to worry about it one bit. She had it coming. We laughed all the way back to the hotel, with Frank saying he thought when I stood up I was going to bust out the vaseline for my face and start removing my earrings and jewelry before shivving her with a sharpened rattail comb like I was in some women's prison movie. I told him I don't usually announce before I put on a beatdown, so she was given a courtesy.

He doesn't know my history of altercations, so he doesn't know the half of it! We'll just have to keep it that way.

Maybe Florence's public art gets me rage-y. There's a lot of violence on display, after all. See?






(Rape of the Sabine Women)








(Perseus & Medusa)