“Oh, wait,” Lusia says. “Where is Lolita? She needs to be in the pictures!”
Lolita is my little sloth, a stuffed animal that my father gave me for my sixth birthday, and I promised my mother to take some photos with it in memory of my father. Not that she remembers, but I always hope she does.
My father sadly died all those years back in a tragic house fire, but he lives in my heart every day. I would describe myself as a spiritual person, and I believe he’s watching over me, even through things got rough after his death, because he left us with no money.
He’s been an architect and travelled the world for many projects, and now, I travel, too. And I might be giving my mother something back—even if she can’t remember much these days.
“Here,” I say and pull Lolita from my rucksack and hold her next to me, the Eiffel Tower in the back. The toll of time is visible on the little sloth: an eye is missing, and the fabric it’s made from has grown rough and thin because I have her with me.
“Check,” says Luisa. “Now let’s get on there. I want to see the Louvre and eat a croissant today before we leave for Rome.”
We started our Europe trip in Copenhagen, flew to Prague afterwards and visited Warsaw. But my heart always longed for the restof the Europe trip: Paris, Rome, and Barcelona. Especially Paris. I am a hopeless romantic, and in my fantasy, I always see myself travelling here one day with the love of my life for our honeymoon.
I mean, it’s not that there are many prospects for anything other than the occasional hook-up, I have been too focused on finishing my master’s, and dating apps are what I believe hell to be like, but I am sure it will be one day. I have all the time left. And I want her to be the most amazing woman. Kind and caring, but also ambitious and with dreams. She should love kids, love sports, just like me, and yet be autonomous. I dream of sharing a wardrobe and just doing the cute couple stuff together. And one day, I will find her.
Getting onto the Eiffel Tower is not what I expected. Crammed elevators, too many people, and it’s somehow higher than I imagined.
“You wanna get back down?” asks Luisa. She can probably see the whiteness in my face, because I feel horrible being up here. I would rather lie down and die at this point. There is a reason I wanted to get into criminology and become a behavioural analyst, rather than an active agent.
“Louvre sounds quite good at this point,” I tell her sarcastically. I don’t want to go there. I don’t care much about art in general. At least the general art found in a museum. Luisa, however, does. And because I love her and she is my best friend, I said yes, of course, to joining her in visiting the Louvre.
Luisa laughs. She comes from a military family. Her father took her skydiving for the first time when she was twelve, and they did stuff like that for fun at least once a month.
I always wondered if my father was still alive; if that had changed things, because my mother is scared about everything, and after years of studying the psychology of human behaviour with many rounds of self-assessment, I am certain she projected her anxiety onto me.
I am scared of everything. Heights, small rooms, vomiting, too many people, spiders, everything with more than two legs, flies or crawls, in general, horses, dogs, bugs, and the worst of the lot, pigeons. They creep me out, and I run from them, like an idiot.
I also have anxiety about anxiety, and therefore, I am quite proud that I managed to get into three planes so far. I had to,because otherwise I would have become my mother. And while I love her dearly, I do not wish to become her in any way.
Which is why I do all the things she would never. This was also the reason I signed up for martial arts with Luisa, went shooting with her and her father, took acting classes at university, and learned to boulder with her. And now, we travel.
The next two days in Paris were the least romantic ever to happen to me. Long queues everywhere, people who are unwilling to speak English and use French in an entirely different way from the French we learned in school, and I am quite pleased when we are sitting on the plane heading to Rome.
“What do you want to do in Rome?” I ask Luisa to distract me from the plane rattling and swaying slightly. My fingers dig painfully into the armrest. I have to close my eyes, because my anxiety is convinced we are going to crash.
Think of something else, Itell myself in my mind. Rome has been Luisa’s idea. I always dreamed of Paris, Luisa of Rome. She is a sucker for history.
“Well, the Colosseum, of course, then we have to throw some money into the Trevi Fountain, and I also want to see the DaVinci Museum. Anything you want?”
“More museums?”
“Come on, Fifi, it’s Leonardo DaVinci. You surely must find something interesting there.”
“How about you do the museum yourself this time, and I wait for you somewhere in a restaurant where I can eat myself through all the authentic Italian food in the meantime?” I also want to listen to some new episodes of my favourite true-crime podcasts.
Luisa groans and says, “Fine. But don’t go too far, I don’t like the idea of you strolling around on your own with the Italian boys.”
“I don’t think they care much about the British-German lesbian who doesn’t give a fuck about men and knows how to kick their asses,” I say and laugh—Luisa joins me.
The slight turbulence has stopped, and it’s the first time I can relax during the flight and let go of my armrest.
“True,” she says. “Still. They’re different there.”
“I dunno,” I say. “Maybe that’s all word of mouth and prejudice.Maybe you meet some nice Italian guy in the museum and forget about me.”
Luisa sticks out her tongue. She is one of the sadly conflicted souls who would love to be a lesbian, but has unfortunately been cursed with heterosexuality. Otherwise, we might have already been a couple, but she’s into men, and men only. We tried kissing one, but it was very clear that it wasn't it.
“Nah,” she says. “Maybe for a fling, but I’d rather find someone from home. I don’t wanna live anywhere else.”
