Rome Killed My Curiosity
Text and photos © Gry Ellebjerg
Rome, famous for heterosexual passion. Would it also have room for lesbian love? It is one of the world's most holy places. Why not stay with nuns? After all, they also live a segregated life, and it could give me an insight into Italian culture. I felt like a lesbian undercover cop. Perfect! My hunt on The Pink Road could start.
I wanted to make it as real as I could, so I arrived early February. There is no better way to get to know somebody than in pouring rain. It helped me resist the city's strong seduction techniques. Everything you look at, eat and drink is basically to die for. It's like meeting a charming narcissist. The clues were there from the very beginning. I just didn’t see them.
On the first morning, a sister knocked on my door and started saying something. I had no idea what; I was still half-asleep. I grabbed my phone and tried to find a translation. But something went terribly wrong. "The police will come!" the screen read. The police? Now? Why? After a few minutes of total confusion, I realised she was asking: "Do you need your room cleaned?"
The nuns were always smiling, but during my two-week stay, our conversations never went beyond "ciao" and "arrivederci." I tried using the bits of Italian I knew. I wanted to learn things about them. When the Pope got sick I thought my break had come. I couldn't wait for them to give me some behind-the-scenes information. But no. They just gave me their best smile.
I had a lot of my meals at a local, family-owned restaurant close to the nuns'. It was a tactical move to see if I could establish contact. I was the only tourist, a good sign. The food and drink were heaven: red wine, carbonara, cacio e pepe, homemade tiramisu, espresso. I always had the same waiter, the youngest son, who could say a few words in English. He used those words politely, and that was it.
Sometimes the father showed me to the table but it was always his son who took my order. The grandfather was the chef. One day he came out and spoke to all the customers. One table at a time. When he got to mine he quickly withdrew.
While waiting for the tram an Italian lady approached me. She asked something related to the tram. I had no idea what. She took me for an Italian. I was flattered and said: "Scusa Signora, parla inglese?" Her energy shifted."Fantastico!" she exclaimed, refusing to look at me, turned around and took off.
Close to Ponte Sant'Angelo I passed an antique shop. My eyes were browsing around in the window when I saw something I could not unsee. A small statue of Mussolini. The shop looked posh and expensive. To put that statue in that spot was no coincidence. The shop was closed, so I could not talk to the owner.
I stood there frozen, thinking it would not be possible for an antique shop in Berlin to have a sculpture of Hitler in the window. Perhaps they are just better at hiding it. I did not know what was worse.
Later that evening, a friend told me that two men had been attacked in Rome by right-wing people after their wedding ceremony. She said: "Persone hanno paura." People are afraid.
I had fallen in love with Rome as a young woman. For many years it was my special city. I even had one of my first romances here with an Italian guy driving us around in the ruins on a Vespa. I had spent a lot of time before in Rome but never alone. I had hit a wall. It was very unpleasant.
I was in a complicated affair. On the surface Romans seemed to be modern citizens. But being here felt like time travelling back 50 years. I felt hardship and sadness. All the other tourists and I were just a transaction they needed to survive. We were the blood infusions.
I learned of the high unemployment among young people, forcing many to live at home with their parents. The mafia and the church dip their fingers into everything. Women don't want to get pregnant. Add a right-wing party to the mix. I hadn't even reached out to the lesbians yet.
If it's this hard to connect with mainstream society, how hard is it to reach lesbians? I was told they hung out in Pigneto, at a place called Tuba. The only openly lesbian place in the city. I made my first attempt on a Sunday. Tram first, then a twenty-minute bus. I found the stop. It was raining and cold. Bus after bus came, but never my number. The few who spoke to me gave the wrong information.
It took a while to understand the error because I was still excited to have made contact. Nothing made sense. The timetable didn't match. I took a break for a coffee, then went back. I asked people waiting. I asked drivers. Forty-five minutes at the bus stop. Soaking wet, cold and frustrated at not being able to figure out something as simple as a bus. I gave up and went back to the hotel. I wanted to pack my bags and leave.
A few days later I made a new effort. Took the bus close to Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II, passed by Forum Romanum, Colosseum and then open waste land. Graffiti everywhere. Modern houses. A bit shabby and run down. Fumes. People dressed as Berliners. Punk. Electronic. Roads in the sky.
The sun had been replaced with grey clouds making water. I came to a street with no cars. In the middle, groceries were being sold. It looked poor, and further down the street, Tuba. Now I understand that this was the area I should have stayed in. This is where the interesting things happen. Being in the Pigneto area felt like time travel to the future. But I didn't get that back then.
It was one small room with perhaps four tables. But all I could see was a large piece of fabric shaped like a vagina framing a doorway. The walls had shelves that were filled with Italian books about queer topics, feminism, poetry. At one table, a woman was sitting working on her laptop - next to her sat a dog guarding her, barking at anyone getting too close.
At the bar, a man and a woman were engaged in a conversation. I managed to make my space and order a Cappuccino. The woman behind the counter put the coffee on a tray and put it at the end of the counter in the opposite direction of where I was standing. She did not give me any sign that the tray was for me. I paid and had to ask. My gut was not impressed with the systematic ignorance.
The room was small. I could not even imagine them having parties here, though I'd heard in the evenings they arranged different cultural events and parties. On this day, half the guests looked like cis men. Some were sitting outside smoking, talking. The woman I'd noticed earlier was still sitting with her dog barking at me whenever I moved. "She is always protective," the owner said. “Got it!”
I decided to check out Antigone, a queer bookshop, a 20-minute walk from Tuba. It was a cool place. I could see it had an interesting selection, even if all the books were in Italian. I think that says a lot. If you go into any queer bookshop in Copenhagen, Malmö, Berlin or Paris, they will have books in English. It just reflects that normally the queer community is very international. I asked the person behind the counter if she knew where the lesbians were.
“Tuba.”
”Is that the only place?”
”Yes.”
“Oh.”
One day you live in a black-and-white TV and the next, it is all color. The day after Tuba, I went to Via San Giovanni. The gay street. The sun was on. The sky was blue. At the end of it, a view of the Colosseum. Three gay restaurants almost next to each other. I ordered a beer and an arancino. Next to me, a gay couple was having brunch. On the other side, a Dutch tourist family ordering refreshments.
The waiters were queer, very friendly and spoke English. I found out that nowadays they had to share their community space with heterosexual family tourists. A clever way to finance their parties and a way to claim their space in public. Perhaps using open-minded tourists as a buffer against conservatism is a stroke of genius. Meanwhile, the women were still hiding. No tourist would ever crash their parties.
In Rome I did not even go out by myself at night to any of the queer events. It was enough of a challenge to navigate mainstream society. Imagine how the lesbians must feel. I had connected with a local woman on Instagram, but I ended up canceling our meeting. I was simply too drained. Later, when she read my text about Rome, she commented that I was a fake, claiming she had given me plenty of tips. Her reaction just proved my point.
After talking to friends from Italy and lesbian couples living in Rome, I came to the conclusion that if you want to meet a lesbian, you will find them in mainstream bars or restaurants. They are breathing through a straw. Perhaps my mistake was that, unlike Dante, I didn’t have a Beatrice.
