“Go on,” she urges. “This is all very interesting.”
“What I’m trying to say is that your first time should be with someone you’re comfortable with, because you need to feel like you’re ‘together,’ not like two strangers who happened to be in the same room by chance.”
“Maybe your experience was so bad because you hadn’t completely forgotten the girl you were in love with and in your subconscious you were thinking about how much you would have preferred to be doing it with her.”
“Okay, Freud, that’s enough. As for your, er, situation, I don’t think I can be terribly helpful to you.”
“But you can be!” she exclaims. “I need normal pads, and there are only tampons here. Can you buy some pads for me?”
“Me!” I exclaim, terrified. “Couldn’t Mariana or Donatella do it?”
Linda arches an eyebrow. “I’d like to keep this to myself for as long as possible.”
“I can accompany you. You go into the supermarket, get what you need, and I’ll bring you home,” I propose, just to avoid the painful task.
“On a Saturday?! It’s the wives’ big shopping day. If they see me in that aisle, the entire village will know I’ve got my period before dinner.”She looks at me with pleading eyes. “Please, Michael, it’ll only take a minute. Have mercy on me. I’m sitting here with balled-up toilet paper in my underwear ... don’t make me walk around like that.”
“This is moral blackmail,” I reproach her.
“Is it working?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” I say, standing up. Now look what I’ve gotten myself into.
When I see the packed supermarket, I turn around and opt for the pharmacy, which has a more reserved and discreet air.
I enter the small, immaculate shop and queue up behind an elderly lady who wants a tube of denture paste.
How do I know? Because the pharmacist recites the lady’s request out loud. So much for discretion.
I face my turn by hesitating. Perhaps I can try to make myself understood without openly declaring what I need.
“Next,” calls the pharmacist.
“I’m next,” I say.
“Good, good. A new face ... Which happens to be one of the Englishmen staying at Le Giuggiole? The friend of the count’s nephew?”
He got me. “Yes, but that’s not important.”
“What do you need?”
“I need a box of those things that you put ... down there ...” I say, pointing to the crotch of my trousers.
“Suppositories?” he asks, in a tone six octaves higher than mine. “What kind? Mucolytic? Analgesic? Laxatives? My mother-in-law uses this kind with glycerol and chamomile.”
“No, no.” I stop him immediately. “It’s not a medicine I need. It’s not for the back, but for the front, those things that are only needed atspecial times.”
“Understood! So Viagra then.” At his announcement, all the other customers in the pharmacy look me up and down.
“Viagra? No, this isn’t for me.”
“That’s what they all say: ‘It’s not for me.’ Look, you shouldn’t be ashamed, you know? You’re not the first. Do you see that gentleman over there?” he asks me, pointing to a man in his seventies who is having his blood pressure tested. “He is Belvedere’s official tester of erectile dysfunction drugs: Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, Spedra ... nothing scares him! Oh, Beato!” he calls him. “Did you take Viagra last night?”
“Good lord!” he replies. “I lasted three hours!”
“Good for you, Beato! You’re not a man. You’re a power tool!” replies the pharmacist, who then turns to me again. “He’s our local impotence influencer.”
“I have no impotence to speak of!” I exclaim, this time careful to make myself heard by those present. “Look, it’s really very simple. I need a pack of pads, okay?”
