One of My Faves

I often find myself in strange and unusual situations, particularly as an American living in Italy. When you take someone with little knowledge of a complex language (Me vs Italian) pair that with a New Yorker in a Machoismo society (Me vs Italians) and add alchohol (Me vs The World) hilarity ensues. One of my favorite stories involves me, two girlfriends, 2 gents, a language barrier, and a fateful text message. We'll call this one IN CINQUE....

I had been living in Genova, a decent sized port city on the Northwest coast of Italy, when my two Finnish girlfriends, E & M, and I decided to take a weekend trip to one of my very favorite cities about an hour away. We had developed a tradition that seemed to make the ride go a bit faster. This involved smuggling a couple bottles of supermarket prosecco (for the always affordable 2 euros a pop) and drinking them along the way. Not a complex idea but one that worked. Feel free to use it.

We arrived in Rio, a tiny, one street fishing village that had stolen my heart on my first visit, and like a glutton for punishment, I'd kept coming back. (more on the endless Rio shenanigans later).

We checked into our hostel, got ourselves gussied up and heading to the local hotspot (basically the only bar open til 1am) There we were, minding our own business, when we were joined by GL and J. GL was what I liked to call my on-again off-again headache, an Italian fireman who was the bane of my existence (but who I was also simultaneously semi-obsessed with..ahhh the complexities of the female mind...)

Side note- when we first met, GL asked how old I was. I was 25. He said "me too". When I ran into him two months later it was his birthday. He said he was turning 25. The next year he turned 24. His friends visited me in NYC two years later, they said they were 24, the same age as GL. To this day I have no idea how old he actually is. Probably around 8.

J was his half English, half Italian friend who seemed to be his own biggest fan. They joined us and we chatted for a bit before us girls headed to dinner. Here's the language breakdown: My friends E and M spoke Italian very well, mine was mediocre but far from fluent, J spoke both English and Italian fluently, and GL spoke next to no English.

While we ate I received a text from GL that would forever alter the course of the evening. "Facciamo qualcosa in cinque". The girls and I read the text and agreed on a correct translation. To us, it read "Let's do something together, the five of us" or since we were in an area called Cinque Terre, "Let's all do something in Cinque Terre". So you can see, there's room for error. I'll give you the correct translation at the end, as a punchline. We replied with yes, of  course, and returned to the bar where the boys eagerly awaited our arrival.

After a bit the boys suggested we go back to J's place in the next town over. ahh the poor unsuspecting girls. They seduced us with promises of Wii tennis. How could we resist? We acted like fools on the car ride over, dancing around to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," stopping at a local bar to pick up some more wine, until we finally got to J's.

We gathered in the living room and drank some wine. GL kissed me and put an ice cube in my mouth with his. "Whatinthe?" I thought as I spit it out the window. Nows when things get hairy. GL went to the bedroom and called for me.  I went in and he asked for a massage. "Sure". So i gave him a short, perfectly normal massage, his friend J came in, in a pissed off mood and said the girls had fallen asleep, and lay on the bed. GL then asked me to give J a massage. "Um...sure..ok" (Think more of like in a ditzy blonde voice because I'm obviously an idiot) While I was giving J a massage, GL came from behind and tried get fresh with me. "What are you doing?," I said and made him stop. I could tell he was trying to get me into some threesome type business and I was not having it.  He then seemed pissed off so I left the room to join my friends. I was upset and they were consoling me but now we were stuck at some strangers house with no way back to our hostel. GL came storming in and said he was taking us home. When we got home the three of us replayed the events over and over in our head, so confused as to why things had ended up so weird, with the guys getting so annoyed with us.

It wasn't until the next morning, when we read the original text from GL for the 1000th time that we finally understood what had gone wrong.

And let this be a lesson to you...

"Facciamo qualcosa in cinque", the literal translation is....WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A FIVESOME!!!

The whole time, these boys had thought that we had agreed to have an orgy. When we naively said we would go back to J's, while dancing around to Cyndi Lauper, when GL had tried to play that pass the ice with your mouth game, when GL had finally had given up on my two sleeping friends and trued to make a go of it as a threesome with me, him, and J. These poor boys thought they were going to have the night of their lives and we were just looking to have a little (emphasis on the word little) fun.

The moral of the story is.. if someone ever sends you a text in a different language and you are not 100% sure what it means, have a native speaker translate it for you or you just may end up walking funny the next day ;)