Author: Eric Millman

Soggiorno del Perdigiorno: A Night in Asakusa, Tokyo

Why Here?
With a day’s cushion in transit between Mt. Takao and Sendai, you need a place within easy reach of Ueno Station where you have some shot at actually sleeping through the night.

As the lone spooner among Resol’s 19 other Japanese properties, each of which can only claim the mere title of Hotel, the Poshtel is so-named for its mid-swank tweener status. Neither hostel not hotel, neither business inn nor boutique, it is a chance to try sleeping in a capsule that doesn’t induce hyperventilation or throw out your delicate, geriatric back. And for a busy Tokyo Saturday, ¥8,606 ($56.57) beats even the swank-free hostels in Shimokitazawa.

The Approach.
With your only taste of Tokyo having come in the grungy calm of Koenji, arriving from the eastern exit of Asakusa Station is an absolute kick in the nuts. The ten minute walk across Nakamise-dori Street, past the famously large lantern of Kaminarimon Gate and the fifteen trillion humans who insist on posing in front of it, past the colorful arcades and Edo-era temples, you get the first real glimpse of the Tokyo you expected. The Tokyo you feared.

As hard as it is to resist the many stands vending crêpes and coffee and Hoppy and gyōza, nevertheless, you persist. Crossing Kokusai-dori Street, all the flash and freakery disappears, giving way to the occasional wine bar, sex motel, or fluffy bakery in an otherwise largely salaryman-spirited block.

Relatively charmless though it may be in its total lack of orange-red awnings, puffer fish windows and, well, mammoth, sacred lanterns, there’s a certain calmness to the air around here that seemed impossible just on the other side of the street. In a way, it highlights what’s just so goddamn lovely about Tokyo in general: one moment your nose is full of someone else’s B.O. and you’re thrashed around in a raging sea of stimulation, the next you’re like a little lamb floating alone in a pool of bland apartment buildings.

Either way, it seems there’s another entrance to Asakusa Station just a few feet from the poshtel, proving your entire journey thus far to be completely pointless. Mind your metro exits, people!

Pod from the future (courtesy of Resol Hotels).

Checking in.
An automatic sliding door retreats into the wall like that of a space ship, welcoming you into a lobby that’s similarly sleek and squeaky. Three employees overflow at two check-in counters, each dressed immaculately in dark and seemingly traditional and undoubtedly uncomfortable uniforms.

With two looking on rather awkwardly, your specific concierge—whose English was likely better than that of the person who is writing this—takes on a tact that is remarkably thorough, walking you through a surprisingly long list of line items, from WiFi passwords to laundry (coin-operated) to luggage storage (available until the front desk closes at midnight) to you-don’t-know-what, all while checking me in on a tablet. Very impressive, very futuristic!

You know it’s a mountain at least, that’s for sure (courtesy of Resol Hotels).

Hanging out.
The hotel’s lounge features a tea ‘n coffee machine, fridge for leftovers, lap desks to use on tatami benches, teetering hourglass-shaped chrome tables on which to (precariously) rest your brew, and a lovely mural of a Mount—Fuji, you presume—on the wall. Well isolated from the sleeping chambers, it’s actually quite perfect for remote workers, and you find yourself chatting with a young, antsy computer engineer from the Pitcairns named Jeff, or a corpulent and congenial Iowan who has arrived in Tokyo a full day earlier than his family and seems confused as to how that might’ve happened.

You know it’s a menu at least, that’s for sure (photo by the author).

Getting Fed.
Breakfast is not included at the Poshtel, but there are plenty of 7-11s, FamilyMarts, or whatever other kind of konbini you could hope for within the vicinity. You have no problem drinking the coffee at FamilyMart. The coffee’s good. You enjoy the coffee at FamilyMart.

Prior to 3pm check-in, you lug your luggage around the corner to a cozy, sandpapery little ramen shop called Raishūken, and it turns out to be one of the oldest in the city.

Founded as a noodle shop by a Chinese family back in 1910, the place is not quite foreigner-proof. Indeed, a long look at the yellowed menu on the wall provides you, A Complete Idiot, with no clues as to what you could possibly hope to order. Still, after several minutes of struggling to communicate the words ramen, please, the kindly old lady holds out her phone’s translator app, which reads: “you have traveled a long way. Please allow me to offer you some shumai (steamed pork dumplings) as a welcome.”

So that’s what you have: one order of shumai, one order of Chinese-style shoyu ramen with pork belly and curly noodles (and one melted heart).

A bed is for sleeping in (courtesy of Resol Hotels).

The Room.
You don’t know how many total beds there are in this place (110), or even how many there are in your chamber (12), but it does feel certain that there are close to to 10,000 beds in here. Your pod is the first on your left in an all-male chamber, and it is approximately just as economic in its orientation as you could’ve hoped. A raised-platform mattress has sufficient storage underneath for luggage and is lockable, oddly enough, by bike cable. Your lights are dimmable, with LED strips that can be detached and used as flashlights. There’s another lockable storage area near your pillow for passports and cameras, and as usual, slippers are provided, as are an abundance of single-use toothbrushes and combs in the shared bathroom.

Everything is remarkably quiet: even the shared bathroom feels like yours alone, even if your neighbors are likely lurking in the next stall over. It’s the kind of solitude you feel while driving on the freeway, surrounded by untold beating hearts locked away in their own isolation.

Reflections, regrets, and remembrances.
When it comes time for shuteye, your pod’s padded portal features a stylishly designed half-arched entryway that’s shaped with just enough clearance to ensure you hit your head each time you enter or exit the space. The bed is warm, clean, and robust, which is all you can hope for.

As a bonus, you have one chambermate who snores and another who sleeps through an alarm that they’ve set for 5am, though they could be the same person. Thanks to Resol Poshtel’s discreet pod design, you’ll never know who it is you’ve been cursing under your breath!

All told, the ol’ corporate Poshtel delivers on its promise, allowing you to feel like a fancy-ass upon passing through the lobby without spending Marriott money for the honor. $60 isn’t exactly cheap for a pod, but then this ain’t no ordinary pod hotel: it’s a Poshtel. A Podshtel, if you will.

And you will. Oh, you will, indeed.

RESOL POSHTEL TOKYO ASAKUSA

2-25-1 Nishiasakusa, Taito-ku, Tokyo 111-0035 (Tsukuba Express Asakusa Station)

Phone: 03-5830-6118

February 14, 2025
dine back in time in kemah, texas: tasting history at th_prsrv

There’s a town to be found just under an hour outside of Houston, nestled along the highway on the concave coastline of Galveston Bay. Named Kemah, meaning “wind in the face” among the indigenous Karankawa people who once lived here, the town has undergone significant several changes over the course of its 100+ years, going from fishing village to den of vice to family-friendly tourist hub in relatively short order.

Since the 1990s, the Kemah Boardwalk in particular has hogged much of the town’s attention, developed as it was into a monolithic corporate amusement park now run by Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta. Here in this kingdom, travelers can treat themselves to Fertitta-owned restaurants like Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., the only casual dining chain inspired by a major motion picture.

Our group, however, didn’t come all this way to be gorge ourselves on dishes like the Run Across America Sampler and Forrest’s Seafood Feast. Rather, we were headed hardly a half a mile away from Kemah’s historic lighthouse-cum-watertower, next to the Skinfit Face & Body Spa, and across the street from the Holiday Inn Courtyard by Marriott.

Our destination was a particular little place called Th_Prsrv.

Though the building at 709 Harris Avenue might look like a double-decker Olive Garden®, it most certainly is not. If the venue’s giant parking lot wine bottle didn’t give it away, the trellised garden and greenhouse might: we may as well have been miles away from Crazy Alan’s Swamp Shack and Skallywag Suds N’ Grub. Featuring a winery, a distillery, and two high concept dining options all within its relatively small footprint, we were now within Chef David Skinner’s domain(e), as ambitious a project as one can imagine finding in such proximity to a Dippin’ Dots.

Skinner, the compound’s founder and proprietor, was born in Oklahoma to a Choctaw family, and since his teenage years, he’s been running restaurants. According to his website, his first was named after an Edith “Pilaf” song, a ten-seat affair in the back of his grandmother’s shop, followed by other forays into the restaurant business. Then, after a lengthy detour into the world commodity trading, Skinner would reemerge in the commercial kitchen, French-themed culinary entendres and all, by the year of 2014.

Since then, Skinner’s flagship restaurant, eculent, has been a major critical success to those in the know. Declared “tastier” than Chicago’s 3-starred Alinea, Skinner’s playful, eclectic tasting menu (of which he claims around 70% is sourced from his garden) has featured whimsical concoctions such as gooseneck barnacle pretzels, cauliflower puree molded into the shape of a brain, then topped with caviar, and something called “Shrubbery and a Lick”. And though our evening’s experience would involve none of the above, the latter image isn’t quite so far off.

Upon entering Th_Prsrv, eculent’s sister restaurant contained under the same roof, guests are treated to a sensory blast that brings to mind something of an adult Rainforest Cafe. With no lack of fake plants and twinkle lights snaking across the dark ceiling and hanging over a long, communal table, the mood certainly reads casual. It’s a refreshing counterpoint to the stark minimalism found in many of its contemporary fine diners (or at least those I’ve seen on TV).

Here, you can play the kalimba while you poop.

Counting thirty-six seats in total, with plenty of young staff eager to show us to ours, the tiny restaurant is clearly a product of some strange premonition. Opening in May 2023 as part of a collaboration with 2024’s James Beard Best Texas Chef Award Winner Jabthong “G” Benchawan Painter and her sommelier husband, Graham, Th_Prsrv aims to marry the Choctaw and Thai traditions of each respective chef, taking its guests on a trip across a vast culinary timeline that’s literally printed on the menu, from 2400 BCE to today.

Once everyone is settled in their seats, Graham enters with the charm and flash of a carnival barker. Bald, beared, and brash in an aloha shirt that out-kitsches the surrounding décor, the impassioned wine steward warms up the room with a brief rundown of what to expect of the evening, his predominantly indigenous pairings served alongside courses which alternate between each chef, together telling the tale of how these two cuisines evolved.

Skinner, rather imposing in stature, leads off the show by conjuring up memories of his grandmother’s root cellar, presenting lightly fermented fiddleheads, wild ramps, and a broad palette of other Thai and American vegetables preserved in their own sweat and served alongside sunflower butter topped, inevitably, with flowers.

A plethora of pickles.

Next, Chef “G”, quick to smile and at times breathless from running back and forth from the kitchen, draws our attention to the note of galangal in her own subsequent dish. Flavoring a crisp canapé of catfish topped with prawn marinated in ginger and lime leaves, she notes that this rhizomatous root would’ve been one of the primary sources of piquancy before the Europeans tried in vain to colonize her native country.

Throughout the night, each course represents an exercise in restraint, following a strict narrative defined by past trade winds. Rather than following traditional, academic recipes in entirety, both chefs take their own liberties, Frankensteining each dish together from ingredients in accordance with what was available any given period, making for some rather interesting outcomes.

Chef G’s coconut-soaked crab on popped coconut rice.

“Mother Earth”, on the Choctaw side, uses black ants to lend a hint of zest to its of bison tartare, representing the epoch before the Spanish introduced citrus to the Americas. Later, we’re told, a Choctaw corn soup featuring a bit of jowl represents the year 1540, when De Soto brought pigs to the New World. Only after the 17^th century, when the Portuguese imported chilis to Thailand, are we treated to the familiar zip to which we’re all accustomed with such cuisine, manifest in the form of a spicy but otherwise tepid mushroom soup flavored with red ant eggs and the long, slender Chinda pepper.

The wines—largely Euro-centric, low-intervention varietals without, unfortunately, a single house-made sighting as suggested in the parking lot—weren’t always truly as wild as advertised, and could be at times overmatched by the atypical palate of sweets and sours. That said, and perhaps more importantly, the drinks were generously poured, further fortifying the room’s relaxed, convivial air. Given the size of the space and the nature of those who run it, at least one of the trio is constantly interacting with the guests, diving into each dish’s history to help make for an intellectually engaging atmosphere that left most of us happy.

Though most visitors to Kemah, by necessity alone, will be perfectly content with a plate of Lt. Dan’s Pork Ribs & Shrimp, those fortunate enough to travel in search of story-based, Insta-worthy cuisine might consider Th_Prsrv experience to be a relative bargain.

Ending the meal with fallen snow, plus sticky rice in a banana leaf.

By the end of the evening, as we stumble back into the night outside, the neon of the boardwalk flashing somewhere in the distance, one can’t help but feel a bit disoriented. At least as pedantic as it is flavorful, Th_Prsrv’s menu plays with the very concept of authenticity, fully embracing the diasporic nature of all foods while completely detaching itself from its surroundings. As a result, this sort of dual narrative indigenous cuisine seems to sprout neither from Kemah, nor Houston, nor even Texas, but from the space between history and memoir. Ultimately, the epicurean spectacle of it all makes the meal memorable, a kind of dinner theater that’s well worth the drive, no matter how disorienting were its surrounds.

Th_Prsrv. 709 Harris Ave, Kemah, TX. 281.857.6492. $149, plus $129 for drink pairings.

June 28, 2024
The Best of the Bettole: Two Pubs in Paradiso

On an old television in the corner of the pub, an augur of inaugurated bronze doom flickers, dressed like a child in a suit that’s several sizes too big. Here, a man of untold misery and loneliness rests his hand on a bible, muttering inaudibly with a scowl shared by all around him.

Forcing myself to look away, I pour molten wax onto the tip of my finger, drop by drop, then rub it into the mahogany table ad nauseam. I feel nothing.

“Look at America! Look how sad he is,” squeals Lur, the wild-haired Cuban woman sitting by the front door. She claps her hands together in hysterics, as she always does. After a month’s worth of nights at Bistrò, Lur has yet to learn my name, content in calling me “America” while scoffing in mockery at just about everything I say. I don’t object, for I am a beta cuck.

Lur’s husband, Marco, the pensive and wise bartender of the tiny, wood-lined bar, looks at me with pity, and calls me to the till by name. His graying hair is pulled back in a ponytail, hemp necklace dangling from his sunburned neck; he reeks of spliff. Pulling a greasy bottle from beneath the bar, he pours me a large glass of some clear and wicked liquor reserved, it seems, only for emergencies. “From my garden,” Marco says mournfully, his voice gruff and nasal. “Please.”

“Offer, I, too for you?” My Italian, broken and soaked through in sour wine, sounds as pathetic as I feel. He waves it off, pushing the shot under my hanging head. It stings my nostrils. With a backward tilt of my head, it disappears. Magic.

Winter, 2017. In the wake of an Orange November, I trade my savings for a few months’ rent in a moist, fungal apartment carved into the castle rock of Dolceacqua.

Neither Italian nor French, this tiny village above the Rivêa d’e Sciûe (Liguria’s Floral Coast) offers visitors a privileged plunge into an ancient and romantic world mere minutes from the Casino de Monte-carlo and the migrant detention centers of Ventimiglia. During the warmer months, spandex-clad bikers stop here for torta verde and pigato wine in the midst of their Le Tour, niçoise families retreat from crowded beaches to flood the town’s taverns for rabbit, boar, and a few glasses of the local rossesse, and immigrants risk their lives crossing the highway for France under the blanket of night in pursuit of a better life.

These days, however, Dolceacqua is largely still, silent, and covered with a thin, cool film of condensation. This heavy mist blots the ruins of the Castle Doria from sight, the Nervia River slows to a trickle under the bulbous, 15^th century Old Bridge, and with hardly an outsider around, the streets are starved for footsteps:

At the historic Cinema Cristallo, a teenaged ticket-taker sighs with boredom, so slight was the draw one month into the screening of Lion, the three-time AARP Movies for Grownups Award nominee starring Dev Patel as Australian entrepreneur Saroo Brierly; at Piazza Garibaldi’s finest pizzeria, a balding server in a wine-stained apron polishes silverware on a white tablecloth set for guests that just weren’t coming; down the Via Patrioti Martiri (Martyred Patriots Street), a pub oozes an alluring familiarity: tinny sounds of the Sex Pistols spill out onto the cobblestone amidst rusted signs advertising Guinness to great effect.

Heraldic eagles through the ages.

With that double shot of garden poison rotting my gut, I peer into the AquilaNera Irish Pub with much apprehension. Where I had avoided the familiar in Dolceacqua up until now, my love of potato chips, sticky floors, and the inimitable contours of an imperial pint glass pouring that rich, foamy stout oyster down my gullet was simply too much to resist.

It was like entering a haunted house. “Salve, c’è qualcuno,” my voice echoes. “Anyone there?” As I wobble my way onto a stool, resting my head on the bar, a lanky figure emerges from the back with a Cheshire grin of welcome.

“You alright ovar ‘dere,” she asks, her Cheshire—er, Kilkenny—grin melting away. It was the first bit of native English I’d heard in months, and I sit up in surprise.

“Oh, it’s just I’m…I’m American,” I say, feeling a little naughty speaking my own language.

A voice startles me from a table along the wall. “One hell of a day for yez today, bruv?” An outstretched arm, holding up the remains of a whisky on the rocks, startles me from the darkness. “Put ‘at one on my tab, Col’,” he says to the bartender, before settling at my right. Don’ mind ‘f I join ya?” He unfurls a newspaper at taps his rocks glass for a refill.

“You’re…the waiter…” I say, gobsmacked. I’d been greeting him all this time as he polished his wares, thinking him to be a local when he’d been a damned Englishman all along.

“Eh,” he grumbles. In close proximity I can see what must be years of fade coffee stains on his shirt, his ruddy skin pocked and bloated. He was certainly older than I’d initially thought, or was at least a hard-lived forty. He spreads his copy of The Daily Telegraph atop the bar, pointing to the picture on the front page, where that miserable bronze face glowered in a full-page spread. It was official.

“T’America,” he says, clinking my glass and downing the rest of his drink.

Col’ sets our new round on the bar begins to say something, but thinks better of it. The Englishman looks over the paper. “Bet all ‘at wiggling trash at the border’s shitting ‘mselves about now. America First, fookin’ right. Cheers.”

I struggle to take my first sip, my ears ringing. OK. With a deep breath, I launch into a lecture of all the reasons I think this man is mistaken, spouting off a long list of reasons carefully curated from six months’ worth of progressive blogs, YouTube videos, and talks with my leftist friends. Why, he’s just a racist, sexist, proudly uneducated meanie, that’s all he is, I say, proud of myself. This guy doesn’t get it, I think. He’s on the other side of the world, how would he know?

“Il fookin’ Doo-chay, man, that’s who he reminds me of.” The server sips his new drink, savoring it for a moment, and a devilish grin spreads on his face. “Now that was a fookin’ leader, Moosolini.” Col’ llooks on, bemused, polishing a pint glass. “Man had guts,” he continues, and I feel the red creep onto my cheeks. “Nowdays out here, we got all ‘m melanzane pouring in ‘n no one does fook all.”

“Hanno fatto anche buone cose!”

“But I…I…” I shoot a look to the bartender for some backup, but she just shrugs. I’m in over my head. “Well. Agree to disagree,” I say, voice cracking. I wish I could hide behind my damned beer, but instead I pretend to look around the pub as the bald man continues on about racial purity. I wonder if that cobblestone on the vaulted ceiling is real, or painted on, I think, wanting anything but to look the man in the eye, though his focus is locked on mine. “Ha ha, maybe,” I say, drinking my beer as quickly as possible.

With one final gulp that nearly drowns me, I stand and curtsy like a fucking idiot. “I thank you for the generosity,” I say with an almost courtly grandeur, “but I really must be going.” With a nod to the befuddled bartender, I take my leave from the pub.

Wobbling more than ever back out on the street, I look back at the AquilaNera. Its wrought-iron mascot—an eponymous black eagle, naturally—soars above a maroon shield painted in medieval Blackletter. Black Eagle, I think to myself editorially. What an interesting name for a bar.

La Fenice Bistrò. Via Roma, 26.
Acquila Nera Irish Pub. Via Patrioti Martiri, 17.

June 13, 2024
The Best of the Bettole: Houston’s Double-Duty Dive

By noon on Saturday, this side of the sidewalk bordering Houston’s Market Square Park is largely empty, but for three headless mannequins looking out from the window box, tempting the random agalmatophile at the very heart of old downtown.

While two other excellent bettole remain closed at this hour, namely the hard-nosed, walnut-and-vinyl Warren’s Inn and the ancient and pleasantly-off La Carafe, CharBar’s mirrored doors only appear to shut to traffic, running counter to what the electric sign over the bare left shoulder of mannequin #3 might otherwise indicate.

Inside, sunlight reflects off of glass-lined walls, obscuring the contents of the cabinets which run the length of the space. Spartan yet worn, this could be the back room of a strip club in the Eastern bloc, and lurking inside those wood-framed walls, there could be anything: sides of beef? Jars of pickled eggs? Dead dogs?

From behind the bar, squinting into the light to make sense of my surprise of a silhouette, a man sighs into the phone. “Let me call you back,” he drolls in a voice rich and raspy, halfway to a Harvey Fierstein. “I have a customer.”

There’s a mysterious plastic bag slouching on a barstool, a fraying trench coat draped on the chair back behind it. In the greasy, basketball-sized goblet at the curved end of the bar, only three peppermint puff candies remain, daring the foul-breathed; above the entrance at my back hangs the Steelers jersey of Galveston’s own Casey Hampton. A closer look inside the cabinets reveals epochs of fabric bolts and altered shirts. Behind the bar, a small picture frame cradles a photo of two identical dogs. On it, scrawled in fake handwriting, the immortal words “I Heart Dady.”

Alongside Dady’s Dogs, there is a series of mammoth-sized family photos framed under panels of burlwood laminate. Between these, nailed off-kilter to the melamine, a tiny tile reads “Shalom Y’all” in blue letters. The barman, who bears exactly the same name as Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based Michael Shapiro – otherwise known as Poppy, my late maternal grandfather – represents his own Jewish identity with a golden Star of David necklace. Yes, this Michael Shapiro assures, there are Jews in Houston. Jewston! Who knew?

One such Jew named George Meyer, it should be noted, “christened” his father’s peripheral acreage “Meyerland” in 1955 as part of a residential development located just beyond Interstate 610, approximately ten miles southwest of the setting of that which you are reading. In attendance at the groundbreaking ceremony of such, it is said and should be noted, was a long-since-dead and disgraced Californian named Richard Milhous Nixon, who once said of Jewish people, “generally speaking, you can’t trust the bastards.”

CharBar’s menu features a sufficient variety of liquids intended for incremental brain damage, and the cheapest – a 330ml bottle of Anheuser-Busch-founded, San Antonio-based, Pabst Brewing Company-owned Lone Star Beer – runs at precisely four dollars and zero cents, and this is what I order. The barman, whose presumably-rayon shirt is rather summery and loud for this grim and cruel month of December, his beard downy-white and full, fishes in his fridge for the American Adjunct lager without success, offering a Miller Lite in its place.

Several sips into such, a sharply-dressed young man enters the establishment, and Michael Shapiro greets him with familiarity and warmth before disappearing into a back room, with a short, silent, middle-aged woman in a moisture-wicking baseball cap emerging in his place.

We wait in awkward silence for a moment. And another.

Finally, Houston Poppy returns, handing the young man a dark-colored blazer and guiding him in front of a mirror, where he measures the garment from hem to chest to sleeve.

Michael Shapiro, it seems, is a tailor. His father, Duke, was a tailor just the same.

Michael’s grandfather, W.B. Samuelson – who one presumes was also once none other than another tailor – first opened this location in 1936, when it marked the midst of the Houston’s “Tailor’s Row”. Named “Duke of Hollywood” for Michael’s father – who This Michael Shapiro notes had nothing to do with the metonym for the American film industry located in the adoptive hometown of My Michael Shapiro – the shop outlasted both Samuelson and the eponymous Duke.

Captained, in turn, by the young and affable Michael, the shop came upon hard times around the Age of Y2K, when Tailor’s Row was no more, prompting Houston Poppy to give Duke of Hollywood a certain fiscal jolt.

In the subsequent two decades, the establishment has borne two distinct identities: by day, Michael sews and alters the gladrags, clobber, and habiliments of the Houston public. By night, assuming a name taken from Michael’s daughter, Charlien, CharBar trades its shears and thimbles for procurable beverages of varying degrees of flammability. Occasionally, as in this particular instance, the latter function overlaps with former’s timeframe; occasionally during the latter’s later hours, the bar’s second story also plays host to any number of ghost tours ready, one presumes, to exorcise the malevolent spirit of a certain antisemitic presidential poltergeist, should he dare set his phantasmagoric foot on the premises.

As the dapper young coxcomb departs in his newly-fitted duds, another arrives with a new suit in hand, and Michael’s face lights up in welcome. Finishing off my beer, I find myself wishing I might exist in a world where I had a suit or suits to be altered with such regularity: it’s clear that these people love their tailor, and that he loves them back.

No doubt, Downtown Houston suffers for no want of their own high-level bettole, and indeed it may not be the only one in the city sunlighting as a tailor and owned by a wry Jew in his seventies, but I feel confident that it is most certainly the best.

CharBar. 305 Travis Street. Houston.

January 13, 2024
The Best of the Bettole: A Ping Pong Party in New Orleans

The floors are ever-sticky in well-worn patches of Celtic green and the back room welcomes with cold cinder block walls painted in a dank, prison-like mauve. Few public comforts can be found quite like those overstuft couches of split leather, crumbling microfiber, and stained chenille; untold organisms tickle you as you sink into concave cushions, kicking your feet up, knocking over a stale glass of melted rum and cigarette ash, changing the channel on one of several TVs for playoff baseball no one else cares to watch. This is a bar for games: shuffleboard tables sloping and worn and gritty with sand; pulpy dartboards; 20^th century pinball; life-sized, war-torn, Jenga blocks scarred in scrawl and soaked in Fireball.

Up front, a pool table sheds felt under the constant patrol of stern-and-furrowed leather jackets drinking whisky sodas and smoking Newports with a foot out the front door, shouting at their short friend. A digital jukebox spits out Kid Rock or 50 Cent and there’s a dog with a skin disease and his leash is wrapped around a barstool and its owner could be anyone. The bartender is good if you are but has no problem kicking the shit out of you.

A pair of spangled bleach-blondes hand out free samples of energy drinks to an ogling old man who sports a Mardi Gras polo even though it’s only October. A crockpot of tinned chili waits by the door alongside a bag of buns, a bottle of crusty Cajun Pete’s hot sauce, the worst of brands, and a tub of boiled, spongey hot dogs, free to all and ready to soak up a regrettable shot of Gordon’s Dry.

Tonight, there’s ping pong out back. Its net drapes uselessly on the uneven table like underwear in the trash, torn and forgotten and smelling something wretched. A pair of wobbling women port four soggy paddles from the bar, challenging us two to a duel. But first: the greying brunette enlists my friend to score a round up front, conspicuously ignoring the window at the bar’s back which services the back room; now alone, the redhead smiles out of the corner of her mouth, eyes narrowed and cynical.

Nearly balancing a leaky vodka-cran and a lit Capri with one hand floating dangerously in the air, she tries to start a rally but misses the table; in the moment it takes to retrieve the ball, she’s flipped off all her clothes and the back room fills with her weird perfume. I stutter, unable to get the words out, and she laughs hoarse, skunking me on two consecutive serves, reaching absolute and unassailable competitive advantage. “Thisses our secret,” she slurs, and pulls on her clothes just as our friends return with drinks. I’m full of whisky and $1.75 PBRs, myself, and unsure if I really saw what I just saw. My friend refuses to believe me; I can’t focus; the girls beat us badly, and they would have either way.

Taking a bottle of Bud Light to go, I hit a pothole on my bike ride home and soak my clothes through with cheap beer. It’s cold as hell and the streets of Mid City are dark and dead and it’s all one can hope for on a Monday night.

Mick’s Irish Pub. 4801 Bienville Street. New Orleans.

December 27, 2023
The Rancid Root of Health: yesterday’s favorite soft drink

Before there was Goop and #proffee, there was root beer. However irrelevant it seems now, claiming approximately 0.003% of the global market share of carbonated soft drinks while remaining all but unknown outside of the United States, this indigenous elixir-turned poor man’s Dr. Pepper effectively paved the way for the big business of liquid diabetes we know today. And it all began in the name of good health.

Since time prehistoric, indigenous people of eastern forests of North America would drink boiled roots and berries to manage a host of afflictions, from rheumatism to gout. British conquistador and conspirator Walter Raleigh, who learned of the practice in 1585 during his nation’s first failed attempt to claim the Americas, brought sassafras and other “cordials” back to Briton to sell as miraculous health tonics.

Three centuries later, as the Temperance Movement swept through the United States,

teetotaling druggist Charles Hires would “invent” an alcohol-free tea culled from the woodlands of his native New Jersey. Combining between 16 and 26 powdered ingredients, from sassafras to wintergreen, Hires first marketed his blend to health-conscious homebrewers.

Looking to appeal to stalwart, tea-averse miners at the purported urging of Temple University’s founding President, Hires rechristened his beverage root “beer” while leaning on recent bottling innovations to increase access for all. This combined with Hires’ marketing moxie—wherein he claimed that his drink could cure everything from tuberculosis to cancer—quickly made the upstart pharmacist a millionaire.

Good for babies! Courtesy of Boston Public Library, ca. 1894.

Before the end of the century, however, myriad competitors had emerged to get their own slice of the Temperance pie, from Emile A. Zatarain, Sr. to Edward Barq. By 1886, morphine addict and ex-confederate soldier John Pemberton also joined the party, dealcoholizing his “French Wine Coca” to give birth to what he called “a most wonderful invigorator of sexual organs,” otherwise known as Coca-Cola.

The success of these entrepreneurs didn’t go entirely unchecked, of course. For three years, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union locked Hires in litigation until he could prove that his new “beer” was indeed alcohol-free. Meanwhile in the south, unfounded racist outrage preempted Coca-Cola to go cocaine-free in 1903, just three years before Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act to establish federal labeling requirements while attempting to handcuff snakeoil-style marketing claims.

It wasn’t until 1960 when the FDA would ban unprocessed sassafras—a natural building block of the drug MDMA—under the largely unsubstantiated grounds that it was a carcinogen. In the same year, Hires’ family sold the late founder’s company to the first in a line of culinary conglomerates; its current overlord, Keurig Dr. Pepper, remains tight-lipped as to whether Hires even remains in production at all.

Now straddling the gray area between “natural” and “artificial” flavors, such soft drinks instead lean on the addictive and fleetingly euphoric effects of upwards of 40 grams of sugar per can, a proven source of the many ailments it once claimed to have cured.

Worth $221.6 billion globally as of 2020, the carbonated soft drink industry continues to thrive at the expense of its consumers, but the market indicates an ever-growing thirst for healthier options. In an era when the global wellness industry is currently valued at $4.4 trillion and TikTok health trends practically dominate the discourse, perhaps things are starting to come full circle. Next stop, New Jersey woodlands?

May 30, 2023
Sai Che Bevo

Jack’s father shimmies, winking, with a small keg under his arm; he hands me a glass of foam, and then another. When I remind him that he has just poured me one, he slaps me in the face — stai zitto — and cheerses me with a wink and a smile.

A young house painter sits at the table, staring at nothing, his clothes covered in his work. He lights a cigarette. Chiara drops a mountain of mountain sausage on the table, and returns immediately to wash dishes without so much as a taste. Giorgio hands his phone around: it’s his new wife, calling from Albania. Some pistachio liqueur passes around the table. A large spider dives under my chair and I recoil in fear, beer sloshing on my pants. The song comes on, as it does every night, and we all hold up our glasses and sway, a crude waltz adorned in plastic, worn and warped and inelegant. Sai che sono un egoista, un inconsciente, prepotente nella vita come nell’amor. The night passes like this, from nylon to polyester; as much as I love disco music, it’s time to go home. We hold up our glasses once more, throwing back a grappa, or maybe a limoncello; whatever it is, it fails to warm me up.

Entering my rented country shack, ears full of booze and stomach still ringing, I salute old Jack, who watches me, unmoved and full of disdain, from his favorite chair. Left alone for days at a time each summer, he still doesn’t trust me, still hasn’t touched his food, and the wound on his haunch is spreading over his handsome, white-brown speckled coat. I fear that with so much dormant solitude, his age is rapidly betraying him, and with it, his will to live. I see it in his eyes, and I recognize it. To be fair to Jack, despite the sea breeze, the is an air of sadness here: the living room is dark and smothered by the photos of dead relatives with feathered hair, dressed in ‘80s fleece; the kitchen buzzes with insects bursting from rusted jars of rancid capers and years of dried-out birthday cakes.

With nothing to lose, I put on the song for at least the third time tonight. It is so feral that it couldn’t possibly be American. This is the red-blooded, working-class Italian myth we are sold on tomato labels, a song marked by a profound self-hate that takes its singer, Dantean, from the tips of heaven to the depths of hell, or probably the inverse. This singer: he hates himself, he hates himself for even having to say so, and he can’t recommend highly enough that his love might have nothing to do with him, a love song whose very intent might well be to repel love. And yet he can’t help but sing, tobacco-voiced, that despite his pathetic state, he’s able to carry on, knowing that he is loved. Mi vergognerei di me — he would be ashamed of himself for this destructive behavior — but you (his “bambina” but also the great “Lui” up in the sky) haven’t abandoned him yet, so he must be doing something right. Sounds healthy.

The song causes Jack to finally lift his head, and then lazily hop to the floor. For the first time in two days, he ambles outside and devours his food, ants and all, energized as he is by the song. As he eats, I catch myself looking at his balls; I don’t think I’ll ever get used to their omnipresence in a country which seems unconcerned about population management.

Jack looks back for a wistful moment, and, as the song closes, trots back to his chair. Having spent most nights here alone, he seems at first disturbed to find me sitting in it, but I put on the song one last time, and he hops up anyway. We sit in silence, feeding off its embrace of the bitter, just two lonely old guys with no one to sing to but each other.

Jack’s reaction to a finely-attuned rub behind his ears shows me that our dynamic is quickly shifting. It is the first and hopefully last time I have felt a canine erection bloom on my lap, like a butterfly transformed to a sharp, pulsating caterpillar. I stand, and shake him off of my lap, and without hesitation he hurries off to bed, as if nothing had happened at all.

I think for a moment, that if I were a dog, if I had found myself with an erection on the lap of another species, I might have thrown myself into oncoming traffic out of shame, certainly avoiding eye contact at every opportunity, shuddering at the thought that perhaps one day my host might write about this embarrassing, indiscreet physiological miscue. Jack had no such remorse, no such concern at all, and I wonder now if perhaps we were each listening to the song in completely different ways and for completely different reasons. I, out here alone in the Ligurian hinterland, relating so deeply to this inelegant shrug of self-loathing, a musical homage to a world that accepts us and each of our flaws; Jack, an illiterate animal, startled by a string of loud noises, looking for a fresh leg to fuck.

I do wonder which of us Mr. Di Bari would relate to more.

March 12, 2021
Pigneto, L’acquedotto Felice

By some measured cliches, Rome is the ragged symbol of culture both high and low, the hot-blooded beating heart of the world. The city of Keats’ bloodied last breath, of Fellini’s swollen pseudo-libido, of Berlusconi’s (several) bunga-bunga parties. Rome may well be a city of layers and conflicts, a million-dollar convertible rumbling over thousand-year-old cobblestones, a plate of minced lamb hearts and a gang of bedazzled grandmas, but I’ll be damned if I understand it at all. Yet here I am once again, stepping out from a train and into proof that perpetual motion is, indeed, attainable.

Roma Termini is one of many postwar travertine travesties in Italy. Boxy, squat, and streaked with sixty years of grime, it was perhaps once a marvel of modernism, a sleek set of ribs jutting out from a geometric beast suspended overhead, but now it just overwhelms one’s spirit. I’m of the mind that an Italian train station should be explicitly bland and utilitarian for all the dizzying complexity contained within: the shouting, the sweeping crowds, the machine gun-toting police, the crowd’s surging indifference and the looming probability of getting mugged. Maybe I’m overvaluing architecture.

As soon as I exit the station, I’m already lost. Rome is a tangled terracotta web of seemingly identical vie and strade, only bigger, socked with old people who bemusedly watch you pretend like you don’t need help. An hour’s walk puts me back at the station, whose grinning, mouth-like entry is surely designed to mock tourists like me who are too stubborn to concede that they are tourists, or too proud to take the fucking metro.

It’s my third time here: first, on a drunken college field trip, of which I recall little; second, with my family, when I was bitten by a carriage horse outside of the Vatican. This time, I’ve come in search of something real, to blacken my heart and dirty my ears with some proper live music from the subcutaneous layer of this metropolis where, beyond a few notable neighborhoods, few foreigners venture.

A quick search on the Internet’s Insider® outlets circa 2016 names Pigneto as the place to be for wistful hepcats such as I, a sort of Roman Oakland, a grungy, alternative place where you could really hear some music. I’ll note that Pigneto was once, to no one’s surprise, one of the poorest areas in the city, a hodgepodge of dumpy architecture and bad business beloved by Italy’s intellectual hero, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini famously called the neighborhood “the crown of thorns that encircles the city of God.”

Pasolini was slaughtered on the Roman coast for his temerity; I missed my fantasy baseball draft for this vacation — not quite on the same level — and I probably owed it to his memory not to waste it on my own poltroonery.

||

Poltroon or not, after accident-ing on the Colosseum for the third time, I pony up the €1.50 on a metro ticket, and disembark at Furio Camillo. With Pigneto booked up or out of my price range, I settle for a room here along the medieval Via Tuscolana, just outside of the ancient Aurelian walls in one of the more genuine parts of town, a skip south of my destination.

By the time I arrive, all allure for the city has dissipated. I slink past empty bars and neon family restaurants, impressed by none, feet aching, dreaming of a fiery pit into which I might hurl my backpack. Rosario, my host, greets me with a furrowed brow. I’m three hours late. He’s boiling a pot of proper Italian pasta: tomato puree, made from his family’s garden, to be draped over some actual capellini, and generously plates me an amount I subsequently destroy with my mouth. I apologize in profuse, profane Italian for my tardiness, my hunger, and my smell, and he half-smiles, offering his beastly guest a napkin and a spare towel.

Rosario is a thirtysomething lawyer from Naples, his flat a pinnacle of brutalist architecture. Its sweeping, anonymous angles and bright pastels frame a balcony overlooking a million others hovering over the mess of honking below, and I gobble up its generous anonymity with more zeal than I had shown the pasta.

My host shrugs, and pulls on a pair of Nikes in preparation for a birthday out in the suburbs. He rattles off a few nightclubs in Trastevere, the so-called “American” district. I note, brandishing my Insider® Italian, that I was actually hoping to get deep into the alternative scene in Rome, to check out the sort of venues typically off-limits to foreigners. “I want to find music, you know? Like, not some touristy place, but somewhere you’d go.”

He’s confused. “Trastevere. I just told you.”

He clearly wasn’t understanding what I was after. “I’m looking for something autentico, like, senza turisti. Hey, what about…Pigneto?”

“It’s Tuesday. There is nothing in Pigneto on a Tuesday. It will be boring and sad. I promise you, I really think you would be happy to go to Trastevere.”

||

My first stop in Pigneto is Lo Yeti, a bookstore I’d read about on the Internet. Bohemian, artsy, with music every night. Just the place for a student of culture like myself. I roll up to the bar with a knowing smile and order a glass of Cannellino di Frascati, one of the only true Roman varietals. The owner, wiping down a cup, looks outside at the still-setting sun and counters with a Montefiascone. “Ah, Montefiascone,” I say, not knowing what that is. “Ottimo.” Don’t I want something to eat with it? She looks at me as if I had just suffered a long, slow tumble, pants at my ankles, on national TV. I reassure her it’s just an aperitivo, thinking I’d take dinner later in the evening, like a proper Roman, because Romans eat late. She gives me a cup of crackers anyway and looks at me with inestimable pity.

The bookshop is cozy and refreshingly devoid of books. In English, anyway. I browse with my glass of Montewhatever, perusing the pages with knowing nods, chin perched in hand, comprehending almost nothing. Seated underneath a small arch in the kid’s corner is an insubordinately fashionable female person, probably a few years younger than myself and equally alone: just the type of clientele the Internet implied I would find in this Pigneto. I smile and wave and she responds in kind, but at the woman behind me, freshly arrived. Now in a chair far too small for me, I eavesdrop on the language lesson, waiting for a moment to interject despite the certain fact I don’t speak a word of Japanese.

The heavily-perfumed, angora-wearing woman next to me notices, desperate to save me from further shame, and asks where I’m from. I scoff, playfully, “what makes you think I’m not from here?” She forces a smile, and awaits my response. “Sono americano,” I respond, and we’re both a little disappointed. We sit in silence, her burly partner completely disinterested in contributing to the conversation, most assuredly displeased by the situation altogether. Mercifully, a procession barges into the shop, ten young punks in torn black Levi’s interrupting the nothing with frothy screams I do not understand. “Fascisti?” I ask my friend over the din.

She looks at me with a familiar pity. “Antifascisti,” she says, and returns to her partner.

By now, a tattooed and pierced string quartet is setting up on the café side, bringing in with them a following of smiling grey-haired intellectuals with rimless glasses hanging off the edge of their wrinkled noses. Trastevere my ass! This is what I came for! They would probably launch into an interpretative-but-still-recognizable suite of Nino Rota compositions to which I’d nod along knowingly, and the Japanese student would wait impatiently until intermission at which point she’d nervously tap me on the shoulder and ask but how do you know all of those songs and I would shrug, modestly noting, I dunno, I guess I’m just that devoted to Italian cinema, and we would totally exchange social media profiles.

As the band tunes up, I notice a shriveled, lamentable young man in a wheelchair sitting behind me all alone, staring, perhaps, at my flowing blonde Californian hair, my authentically bohemian clothes, or my functioning legs. I want to soothe him with small talk, asking come stai? Tutto bene? Hai visto la partita?, to reassure him that things were going to be just fine in this cruel, anonymous world of ours.

“You are blocking my view of the band,” he says in perfect English.

Shuffling apologetically, bowed at the waist, I circle the bar once and find no empty seats, including the one I’d just vacated, and without the demoralizing wink of acknowledgement from any of my new friends, I slip out the front door undetected.

The sun is now quite set and I figure it’s about time for a real aperitivo at a place that’s a bit looser, a bit more me. I make a right at the main drag, Via del Pigneto, and find a trove of dark, shoddy-hip bars and restaurants calling my name. Only one, Libreria Tuba, has a line out the door, and I head there first. The bartender is probably 6’2”, with blonde dreads reaching down her inked back. I’ve a good feeling about this place. I opt for a Negroni, the quintessentially bitter Florentine cocktail, and the bartender winks. She knows I’m in the know.

I take a seat at the back of the bar in a tiny alcove conveniently located next to the bathroom. The chairs are as pink as my drink, and a pair of college-aged girls, cute in a fetid sort of way, giggle at me. I smile back, tipping my drink their way, feeling accepted, if not entirely welcome. Their eyes crane upwards, directed toward a giant black dildo hovering over my head. A vibrator on the bookshelf. A cornucopia of toys behind glass. Soon, a few other women notice me, and they cheers their beers in my direction. In the cinematic version of this scene, a fully nude human would have then clapped me on the back, garbling the punchline well he aaaasked for “alternative” as I, spilling my drink on my crotch, scampered out the door. In the real life version, however, I play it cool, finishing my drink with calm, and thank the young ladies for no apparent reason, ambling confidently back into the street. And then ambling back into the bar because I forgot to pay, but then back out.

In Italy, and especially in Pigneto, a walk around the corner can be like walking through a sephia portal and coming out in an alternate universe. A warm glow spills out from such a portal down the street. It’s il Tiaso, a place full of leather-bound books and wine bottles framing a stately charcoal sketch of the great Fred Fellini himself. That there’s hardly enough room for the haggard vagrant just inside the entrance, let alone a band, let alone me, is of no concern when I am in the company of Maestro Federico. The smell of moldered cotton pages, the sound of the creaky floor flaked in generations of paint, the muted glimmer of the chipped chalkboard menu all feel like a warm embrace, and I pony up to my third bar, by now not at all sober. The bartender, whose arms easily span the length of the so-called enolibreria, smiles warmly, welcoming me with a regal bow. He walks me through the menu with pride, his messy, salt-pepper mop bouncing with every nod. I entertain another Montewhatever, and can tell immediately that he is pleasantly surprised by the breadth of my knowledge. And that I’ve chosen the most expensive glass on the menu.

A woman enters and his posture shifts as if by poisoned barb. I rattle on, oblivious, and finally take a Sardinian bovale to the seat just beneath the Maestro. There’s a soccer match on the sunbleached TV and in competition with the impressive library next to me, it’s the victor of my attention, because I’m both erudite and an American who watches soccer sometimes.

The woman at the bar grows heated. The bartender is not smiling. They shout in Roman-ese, or at least in a version of Italian I do not understand, or at least in some language that isn’t English. She throws her glass at him and it smashes against the wall. In their culture, be it Roman or otherwise, this presumably indicates frustration or disdain, because yeah, he’s just slapped her in the face. The haggard doorman steps in, copping a feel as he pulls her away. Her arms jut out, grasping for hair to tear. The bartender is accordingly full of rage, spitting venom, seeking flesh to chunk. I hereby decide that I no longer like him, and abandon the remainder of my bovale on the table under my beloved Fellini’s disapproving gaze, and leave without paying. I expect him to chase after me, to tear my limbs from my body, but that has not yet happened.

||

The sun having mysteriously disappeared below the earth, I am now engulfed by the darkness of Via del Pigneto, meandering entirely drunk and completely alone, feeling my way through the mealy humidity.

It really is getting late, and I decide that if I want to see music, I’ll have to make dinner a quick one. I pop into Viveri, a spot at the mouth of the road just slender enough for one person to pass. The bartender, severe in his pomade and his camicia nera, has a quick wit to him, all business, the type who spins the glass in his hand as he waits for your order, who never smiles and would call you “boss” were the restaurant in the United States. His colleague has her hair bleached powder-white, her ironic smile masked in fluorescent lipstick. The menu is but a wall with three types of polpette scrawled in chalk. I’m in the dinner capital of the earth and I’ve chosen a wine-and-meatball house.

If there was ever someone who can’t abort a half-plan it’s me, having already ordered a fat cannonau, and I deign to treat this aperitivo as dinner. By now the hollow of my stomach is pumping the booze directly to my brain, and I force myself to focus on my original task. I pump the neon bartendress for clues, name-dropping some real Insider® Italian band names. “The real stuff, you know?”

She looks to her friends clumped at the end of the bar and I pretend not to see them roll their eyes. Handing me a weekly musical imprint, she rattles off a few venues in the area, each one shot down by her friends. I’ve finished my meatballs and a second cannonau, and the woman throws up her hands. “It’s Tuesday,” she says. “Maybe you should try Trastevere?”

||

By eleven the streets are positively deserted. If it’s not time to go home, it’s time for much worse. Now soused, I saunter up and over the train tracks, and everything turns a cinematic sephia in my head. Nonne beat their rugs on balconies above, eyeing me suspiciously; drifters deal cards under the crumbling arches of the acquedotto Felice; my bladder heaves with wine pleading for evacuation. Far ahead on an unlit street, a lone server shakes out a tablecloth outside the Ristorante Accattone, so-named for the Pasolini film (itself yet another way of saying “vagabond”) which, it seems, he shot on this very road nearly sixty years prior. I offer to buy one last amaro if the server lets me use his toilet, and miraculously, he agrees.

Relieving myself in the back of that dark restaurant, I crane my ear to a subtle wafting over the din of my urine against the porcelain. It’s music. From the kitchen. Why was it so familiar?

My mama don’t like you and she likes everyone
And I never like to admit that I was wrong
And I’ve been so caught up in my job, didn’t see what’s going on
But now I know, I’m better sleeping on my own
‘Cause if you like the way you look that much
Oh baby, you should go and love yourself
And if you think that I’m still holdin’ on to somethin’
You should go and love yourself

I zip up, cheers the server, and set back on my way down the via del Mandrione, relieved of all concern. All according to plan.

February 19, 2021
Homage to o’ Musso

Glow of gum
And sea of spittle
neon captain calls, vien’cca!
Feral and grave
Lemon of pink
Salting hornwise, loose and every which way

Thieve my money, o shouty man
O laughy man, just take my tenner
Thy house of mirrors
of cheerful cartilagenry
Like lissome loaves of salty soap
Gushing acid on rancid tongue

Smuscolato
Smaschiato
Smascherato
Miscuglio della mucca
Muschiata
E mezza morta
Come me.

‍

January 3, 2021
La Bella Lingua

A brief introduction to the delicious life of Pietro Aretino.

And so. If you happened to be born in Arezzo in the 1400s (or ever), and had the misfortunate sting of poetry running in your veins, your light was shadowed by Francesco Petrarca, the priest who had discovered and spread the work of Cicero, the priest whose poetry was priestly (I think?  What the hell do I know about Petrarch, really!?).

Pietro Aretino, born the son of a cobbler named Luca del Buta who abandoned his family to become a mercenary, was a man whose name served to obscure his oirigins. Pietro Aretino was a man whose sexual appetite was such that the boys he pursued were known as “Aretini”, the girls “Aretine”; Pietro Aretino was a poet immortalized by Ludovico Ariosto as the “flagellatore de’ principi (tormentor of princes).” Yes, please.

And so. The story goes that when Giulio Romano, the student of Raphael, felt he was being underpaid by Pope Clement VII in his commission of the Sala di Constantino in the Vatican, he instead drew sixteen different sexytime positions on the walls (though it’s more likely that he was simply doing a sexy commission for the Duke of Mantova). Upon seeing the original work, the engraver Marcantonio Raimondi took it upon himself to immortalize the drawings before they could be scrubbed; Aretino, a friend of Raimondi, did the same in verse as part of I Modi [The Ways, otherwise known as The Sixteen Pleasures].

“Come view this you who like to fuck,” offers Aretini in 1527 (from a 1798 reprint by A. Carracci).

As a serious scholar of linguistics, I wish to provide a public service in translating the second of what are known as the Sonetti lussuriosi, or “Lustful Sonnets” (the most famous part of this infamous body of work).

Mettimi un dito in cul, caro vecchione [Put a finger in my ass, dear old soul],
e spinge il cazzo dentro a poco a poco [and push that dick inside, bit by bit];
alza ben questa gamba a far buon gioco [raise well this leg to improve our nice little schtick],
poi mena senza far reputazione [then pound away, don’t wait to be extolled].

Che, per mia fé! quest’è il miglior boccone [But, my word!  This here is a better mouthful]
che mangiar il pan unto appresso al foco [than when sitting by the fire, eating greasy chips];
e s’in potta ti spiace, muta luoco [So drop your dick in the rear if don’t like the slit],
ch’uomo non è chi non è buggiarone [a man ain’t a man if he don’t put it in the asshole].

In potta io v’el farò per questa fiata [With my cunt I will do you this time, sans complaint]
in cul quest’altra, e in potta e in culo il cazzo [in the ass another, and then in both goes the prick]
mi farà lieto, e voi farà beata [this will make me happy, and will make you a saint]

E chi vuol essere gran maestro è pazzo [And whoever aspires to greatness is a lunatic]
ch’è proprio un uccel perde giornata [a dick who does so is just another blank taint]
chi d’altro che di fotter ha sollazzo [because he who is fucking is getting their kicks].

E crepi in un palazzo [And if you get smoked in your house or some savage shit],
ser cortigiano, e spetti ch’il tal muoya [I’m telling you, my bro, if you die, that’s your deal]:
ch’io per me spero sol trarmi la foia [I only need myself to make myself squeal].

~

Ahem. Naturally, Aretino was nearly murdered for this, forcing him to flee Rome for Venice, that den of sin, the Land Against The Pope, where he made a fortune off of blackmailing famous people.  Meanwhile, Pope Clement VII did his best to ensure that all copies of the book were destroyed.

A Venetian woodcut of the second sonnet, dating to ca. 1537-1550.

He failed. In 1928, lord bless the heavens, the son of Arturo Toscanini found a copy, ensuring that this article you’re reading now could exist!

~

Aretino himself would note in his Letters, “Mi dicono ch’io sia figlio di cortigiana; ciò non mi torna male; ma tuttavia ho l’anima di un re. Io vivo libero, mi diverto, e perciò posso chiamarmi felice [They tell me that I’m the son of a whore; that doesn’t bother me; nevertheless I have the soul of a king. I live free, I entertain myself, and for that I can call myself happy].” Bless him.

Reportedly (and by this I mean I can only find this on Wikipedia, but it’s too great a detail to ignore), Aretino died as he lived: watching a monkey walk around in boots. Having witnessed this marvelous event on October 21, 1556, the great poet was possessed by a fit of laughter so severe that itled to a mortal stroke. And so!

On his gravestone, attributed to the Bishop Paolo Giovio, reads the following verse:

Qui giace l’Aretin, poeta tosco [Here lies Aretin, Tuscan poet]:
Di tutti disse mal fuorché di Cristo [who of everyone he spoke poorly, other than Christ],
Scusandosi col dir: non lo conosco [For which he excuses himself, saying: who?].

February 3, 2020