Naples: Let’s Get Physical

“You need touch,” he said. “I can see it in your body. You are completely closed off.”

This is Rosario, my new friend in Naples. He’s also my AirBnB host. We’re sharing coffee on a small, shaded side street in the historic center of the city.

Initially, we were talking about dance. Rosario, who’s an actor and theater director, says he can dance freely and spontaneously. It’s no problem for him. For me though, it’s often the opposite. As soon as I’m on the dance floor, unless I’m a few drinks in, I’m completely self-conscious. I’m looking around, making sure no one is looking or laughing at me, often trying to spot that one person who’s worse at dancing than I am. Only then, and with effort, can I dance freely.

“I know,” Rosario said. “I can see it. You’re in your head. This makes sense, as you are a writer. But you need to be free.”

This, to anyone who knows me, is completely obvious. I didn’t mind Rosario saying it — after all, it’s the truth — but I was interested in the how.

Rosario is in his early 50s, originally born in Naples. He’s about 5’6” with a mustache and a clean short haircut, as well as the sunniest disposition I’ve ever seen. When I walked into the courtyard of his building, I looked up and there he was on the second floor balcony, waving giddily like Forrest Gump on the shrimp boat.

We clicked immediately. We sat down on his couch and chatted — about Naples, about art, about my travels. He’s lived in Naples almost his entire life, and has traveled extensively for his acting. Of Naples he said: “I will quote an old writer: In Rome, everything is impersonal. You can die and no one would notice. But here, in Naples, it’s like you’re all part of something together. You are folded in. It’s like one big hug.”

And believe me, when you’re in Naples, you feel it.

Naples holds nothing back. It is the most expressive city in the most expressive country I’ve ever been in. It’s as if the city comes at you full speed, plowing into you in all caps: NAPLES. Make no mistake about it; this is where you are. Action is everywhere, in all planes of direction — scooters zinging this way and that, packages being hurled up and down from balconies. People come in, out, up, down, through. Everyone is yelling. Windows, doors, curtains are always open, with someone often smoking and leaning against a balustrade and simply keeping watch over things. Laundry flutters from the balconies like the national flag. The building surfaces are full of texture and character. The city is wildly, vibrantly, unmistakably alive, and filled with people of all shapes and sizes. It’s as if the place was shaken violently and everything just got dumped everywhere. It’s abuzz; a city in perpetual motion. This is Naples. And like many have reported, it is infinitely lovable.

It’s not a Naples post without a pizza pic. Fun fact: the three ingredients of the Margherita pizza — basil, cheese, tomato — represent the red, white, and green of the Italian flag.

Pizza fritta (fried pizza): The original Hot Pocket

Speaking of love, it’s time to talk about mine.

It’s been awhile. I hadn’t gone on a date since February, and I was really craving romance and intimacy. Not even sex necessarily, just the thrill of flirtation, tension, attraction, excitement.

Even before this, I’ve been single for a very long time. Amongst my friends, I am the single guy — the perpetual stag at weddings, parties, nights out, etc. Most of the time, I’ve been okay with this, placing a ton of energy on career and work. But lately, and this year especially, I’ve seen the desire for a serious partner arise.

That was another expectation I packed for this trip, unfortunately: romance. Not that I’d find the one, per se, but to have some summer flings. In Rome especially I was hounding the dating apps. I was casting looks and stealing glimpses, but nothing was clicking.

Rosario, fortunately, had some sage advice.

“This is why yoga is so good for you,” he said. “You need activities that get you into your body. And especially, you need hobbies where you make something with your hands — something that’s real, tangible. Like ceramics. That’s why I love the idea of you making pasta.”

“Yes!” I said excitedly. “I’ve been saying, I need activities where I’m not thinking as much. Things beyond reading, writing, and such.”

“Well with pasta, you’re still thinking,” he said, “but you aren’t using your head. You’re thinking with your hands. It’s a different use of your brain. You’re in feeling.”

“First, you practice making pasta,” Rosario added. “Then, you can know how to touch a human being.”

Cooking, said Rosario, is no different than sex. It’s intensely intimate, where the how and the doing is far more important than the outcome. Actually, the pleasure of the process will determine the outcome. Good cooking, like sex, requires music, sensuality, scents, wine, ambience. You must be relaxed. Loose. Present. It’s about freedom, spontaneity, pleasure, joy. If you’re rushed or distracted, you’ll taste it in the food. “Often, before doing scenes in theater, we ask people to run around first,” Rosario said. “Once you’re tired, and exhausted, you aren’t so self-conscious, you aren’t thinking so much. Then, you’re able to just act.” It’s also why I’ve heard why sex is much better after doing embodied activities — dance, massage, exercise, etc.

“Sex must be spontaneous and free,” Rosario said. “Otherwise, it’s just gym.”

Touch, though, is something that can be practiced regularly. It’s the gateway to intimacy. You must first learn to incorporate touch into your platonic and familial relationships, he advised (if the other person is also comfortable with it). That’s how you open up the body. Touch is what brings you away from the abstraction of the mind and into the concrete richness of the physical world.

And Italy, according to Rosario, is the perfect place to learn. “Here, everyone touches,” he said. “You live in New York City, the worst place in the world for touch. It’s not built for it. The only place worse is Japan. You need to be in a place where there is touch.”

With this, a marvelous realization set in.

The impetus for this trip, beyond soul-searching and whatnot, was to learn to cook Italian food. It was a vague intention that I couldn’t exactly explain. I just felt excited to do it. This advice from Rosario was beautiful and liberating, as my unconscious yearning was now illuminated: I wasn’t here to just learn pasta; I was here to learn how to feel more deeply.

We finished our coffees and it was almost time to go before Rosario offered his parting advice.

“Right now, you are in crisis,” he said. “You’re stuck in life, and you took a break. You’re asking those big questions, ‘Who am I? What makes me happy?’

“This is very good,” he added, “but in crisis, you must stay with it. If you leave, it will be worthless. And when you come out of it, you get something beautiful. You get new life.”

An example: Rosario used to have a major thing against feet. They disgusted him. He couldn’t even wear sandals. “One day, at a rehearsal, I had to do a scene that involved feet. So I laid down and everyone put their feet directly on me. Even on my face. Feet were everywhere. It was so uncomfortable. But now,” he said, smiling as he pointed to his open-toed sandals, “I have no problem with feet.”

It’s not a direct metaphor, but it’s close. In Greek, crisis comes from “krisis,” which originally meant “the turning point of the disease.” We must stand and bear the thing that’s uncomfortable or else we forego the eventual reward. Being lost is uncomfortable. Yet when you face it, like a Haruki Murakami character going down into the well, you’re often greeted with salvation — some type of rebirth.

“Remember,” Rosario said, “there is no big Answer. There is only the next path.”

I had four days before Sicily and nothing booked, so I rented a BMW and drove down the Amalfi Coast. If there was ever a time to feel cool, this was it. I stayed in Vietri Sul Mare, a smallish town at the end of the coast away from the maddening crowds. Before I continue, let me just share some photos of this most magnificent site:

My intention for these four days was to loaf and do nothing. I took my hosts’ recommendation for his favorite restaurant and ate the most delicious and unique pasta dish of my life, Genovese with tuna. It was this rich, brothy sauce over handmade ziti made with freshly caught tuna. I think about it often, even to this day. My first night I sat in my air-conditioned hotel room and watched Shawshank Redemption in Italian, and it was glorious.

I also was back on the dating apps. No lie, I had Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder all firing in motion. It’s an empty feeling, swiping and yearning in a hotel room like that. So at one point, I put the phone down and deleted all the apps. I thought I’d try something new. I closed my eyes and pictured myself on a scooter with a beautiful woman riding with me. We were enjoying the day, happy to be together. I surrounded the vision with golden light (I’d read this before in a book), said a blessing, then continued with my friend Andy Dufresne.

Genovese. Divinity encapsulated.

The next day, I went back to that same restaurant for lunch. At the table next to me sat a pretty young woman, she was eating by herself. I got her attention and recommended she try the Genovese. We started talking and I learned she’s a Master’s student living in a tiny village up the coast. I also learned, upon seeing her face to face, she’s quite gorgeous. After eating, we exchanged information and met up that night for a drink in Cetara, a small fishing village in the middle of where we’re both staying. It was platonic, two solo travelers meeting and sharing time together, and we had a great time.

My last day, I thought I’d rent a scooter and travel up the coast, from Vietri to Positano. Fortunately, my new friend was game to come with me, and we had a most fabulous day. First we went to a famous cafe in Maori, where the chef makes cakes for royal birthdays and such. We ate a pear and ricotta cake that’s well-known throughout Italy, and it completely blew me away. We rode up and stopped at a most picturesque swimming spot, Fiordo di Fiori — right off the main road under an arched stone bridge, where people dropped like bombs off 20’ ledges into the green emerald waters. We finished by riding into Positano, sharing an aperitivo, then coasting all the way back. It wasn’t until we were on the way home that I realized the stunning accuracy and speed with which that vision of myself and a woman on the scooter, cast two days prior, came true.

Fiordo di Fiori

That night, I went back to that same restaurant. By this point the entire staff knew me. Maybe they even expected me. I drank a half-liter of wine and ate a fish that was alive just moments before. It was 8pm, a cool dark dusk settling over me as I ate on the veranda. It was the happiest and most peaceful I’d felt since arriving, the exact blissful euphoria I’d been craving since I landed.

I ordered a limoncello as I finished my meal. Each sip, alternating between sweet and acidic, reminded me of one incontrovertible truth: La vita e bella.

Life is beautiful.