A narrow alley in the shadow of Milan’s Duomo. A gloomy, drizzly day: the sky is gray and uncertain, much like my mood. I’m parking my three-wheeled scooter when I see her right in front of me: Piccolina.
My heart jumps as I recognize her. An innocent baby face; the usual sexy eyeliner winging out her eyes, just so she doesn’t look underage (she’s 21, but looks younger). She’s wearing a faux-fur coat, with her long, thin, sensual legs peeking out, covered only by tights. God, she’s beautiful!
But… she’s arm-in-arm with a man in his sixties who is talking to her loudly in English, staring insistently into her eyes. She, however, is looking at me: eyes wide, expression embarrassed. I telepathically understand what she’s telling me: “pretend nothing is happening, pretend you don’t know me.”
I comply.
They pass right by me as I park the scooter.
After a few steps, they say their goodbyes.
He keeps talking as he walks away.
She turns around, looking fearful.
She comes toward me.
She passes me.
She slips into a recess that hides her from the guy’s view and, with her eyes, asks me to join her.
I join her.
I’m surprised: we had agreed to meet for breakfast. My gaze asks her why she’s with another man.
She tells me, laughing, shy and amazed: “What do you know? I was coming here to you when this guy stops me and starts talking to me in English.
He tells me he’s Greek, that he’s just passing through, and that he finds me very attractive. He’d like to go out with me. He invites me for a drink together tonight.
You know I have a hard time saying no, especially in English.” Her eyes say: “Don’t judge me, I’m not a slut.”
My ex used the same excuse too—”I have a hard time saying no, I’m polite“—every time she accepted the worst lustful attention from the worst men in the worst bars of Milan’s Caracas. Women, I hate you. I say nothing, not out loud at least: I say it telepathically, because I know she hears me.
She continues: “But imagine, he took the phone from my hands, wrote his number, called himself, added himself to my Instagram. All this while he kept talking to me. He even brought me here to show me where his hotel is, so I don’t get it wrong tonight!”.
Telepathically, I express condescension and disappointment for being so easily influenced, but out loud, I close the topic: it’s none of my business. I go to kiss her on the cheeks; she responds with wide movements, as if to avoid any risk of being kissed on the lips and to put — smugly — distance. Telepathically, she tells me: «I’m not yours anymore, bitch».
We go to the Rabbit Hole, a cute Alice in Wonderland-themed place, one of her favorites, where we had already gone when we were “together”. The walls are covered with magical, flying books, with the original text of the story. The Mad Hatter’s giant hat is suspended from the ceiling, along with cups and spoons. Everywhere, the waitresses are dressed like Alice and other characters from the novel. A crowd of screaming children celebrates birthdays. It’s the ideal setting for Piccolina, a Hitlerian tormentor raised on Disney and romance.
The place is exactly as you’d imagine: the Mad Hatter dangles from the ceiling among flying cups and spoons, the waitresses are dressed as Carroll characters, and a crowd of screaming children celebrates birthdays in a fairytale chaos. In the middle of all this, Piccolina sits composed, perfectly at ease—a Hitlerian tormentor raised on Disney who has finally found her natural habitat.
At the Rabbit Hole: A Two-Level Conversation
We sit down and a two-level conversation begins.
The first level is the words, what is expressed verbally.
The second is telepathic, which I will report here in red.
Me: “So, how are you?”
me: “God, I miss you! Seeing you again excites me”
Her: “I’ma bit worried about these health issues” and she tells me in detail (omitted for privacy).
Her: “You’re so handsome, jerk!”
Me: “Nice coat, you look like the French Goddess. Is it a gift?”
Me: “So are you in a relationship? Who’s this scumbag?“
Her: “Yes.”
Her: “I know what you want to know. I’m embarrassed”.
Me: “About your man?”
me: “Cut the crap, let’s play with open cards”
Her: “The gift is from my family. But yes, I’m seriously seeing a man. We’re not together yet, but we’re exclusive: we don’t have sex with others.”
Her: “See what you missed, jerk? Look how beautiful I am. Did you think I would wait for you?” “You chose the sluts and you keep the sluts. Not a flower like me.”
Me: “As if this guy only sleeps with you. He’s probably married. He’s worse than me, for sure; he’s just fooling you. Why am I so honest and transparent with women? Can’t I deceive them like everyone else?”
My eyes are veiled; my heart is sad. In my mind, it’s all “Sliding Doors”: images of the alternative life I would have had if I had been with her flash before my eyes. And all the — good — reasons why I decided not to.
Me: “Uh… so why are you on Seeking?”
Her: “Oops, caught.”
Her: “Uh… well, we’re not together yet…. We need to figure it out… We can both see other people, without doing anything. Maybe I’ll find someone I like even more.”
Me: “…”
Me: “Yeah, right” and I look at her with the Monde’s gaze.
Her, even more embarrassed: “And then… even though this man is helping me financially to pay for treatments and is paying thousands of euros… the money isn’t enough, I need to do more tests. I’m on Seeking for this“.
Her: “What do you want? I have to do something. You didn’t want to take care of me. You preferred the whores.”
Me: “Got it. But you said you don’t go with anyone else.”
Me: “I understand you. I don’t judge you. But don’t be a moralist when you talk about my life.”
Her: “Yes, yes: I only have relationships with the man I’m seeing. These Seeking men give me gifts while courting me, but I don’t do anything with them.”
Her: “They’re losers, I treat them as they deserve.”
Me: “You realize it’s a scam? It would be more ethical to sleep with them, at least.”
Me: “She’s smart, Piccolina. She’ll go far; she’ll be successful in life.”
Her: “No, why? They want to use me, taking me to bed. And instead, I use them, getting them to buy me gifts without giving them anything in return.”
Me: “Going to bed shouldn’t be ‘using each other,’ but doing something you both enjoy. The site is for mutually beneficial relationships.”
She smiles at me, embarrassed.
Me: “Okay, come on: in the end, everyone does what they can.”
Me: “I care about you. How much I’d love to take care of you and help you! But you consider me a polygamous monster and don’t want me. And — in the name of your ideal monogamy — you end up using men. I don’t want to be the umpteenth fool you use.”
I order an Earl Grey, hot (like Jean-Luc Picard). She orders a sweet and special tea. Some cookies.
I cross my arms, lean my head against the wall to my left, and look at her. She fiddles with her phone, putting distance between us, as if to reiterate: “you’re no longer important to me“.
Sliding Doors: The End of a Relationship
Months have passed since our last meeting. I sent her away, angry (at a time when she, deep down, had already decided to move on). Yet my chest aches. My feelings for her are still there. I extend my hand, expecting her to place hers in mine. She looks at me as if to say: what do you want? I’m not I’m not yours anymore. I take it back.
Me: “I didn’t think so, but… seeing you awakens feelings in me. What do you feel?”
Me: “Did I do the right thing by not being with her?”
Her: “Well, but you fall in love with everyone! You don’t know what true love is. I don’t feel anything for you. I’ve moved on. I don’t feel emotions anymore. Okay, I care about you, I know you’re a good person, but I’ve been too hurt. I don’t blame you: we just want different things. As Manuel* told me, it’s nobody’s fault if you like pasta and I like rice. We just can’t be together. But we can remain friends.”
Manuel is the psychologist, my friend, to whom I entrusted her when she was unwell.
I wish I knew what she’s thinking, but I’m too emotionally involved to read her. Her words are harsh, but her face is embarrassed: that enchanted embarrassment full of desire she felt the first time she saw me. I’m not indifferent to her, far from it. Finally, I read her:
“I’ll never tell you and I’ll never admit it. But I like you, damn how much I like you!”
Her: “You know, since we stopped seeing each other I’ve blossomed. I’ve focused on my studies, I’ve taken exams, I feel better, I respect myself and take better care of myself.”
Her: “Admire what you lost, asshole! Why didn’t you want me? We were perfect together! And damn how much I still like you! And yes, I miss you.”
My gaze clouds with resignation. Why did I want to meet her again? Maybe I hoped to somehow see her again. It’s clear it wouldn’t do either of us any good. Inside, I feel my heart drop, heavy, like it’s falling into a gray, infinite well.
Her: “But we can be friends.”
Me: “Piccolina, we can’t be friends. I have feelings: if there can’t be anything between us, it’s better not to see each other anymore. This will probably be the last time we meet.”
I can’t read what she’s thinking, but I see that she agrees.
She’s pleased to see that I care about her so much. I should have shown coldness and indifference, and she — knowing her — would have died for me! But not out of interest: for ego, for her blocks. She went after the worst monsters.
I know it well, but I’ve decided to do the opposite: show her how much I care about her, so it’s easy for her to let me go. Piccolina, this is my last gift to you.
Me: “One day, when your last illusion has fallen, you’ll manage to see life not as a Disney fairytale, but for what it is: a beautiful abyss. On that day, you’ll remember me, us. And you’ll look for me, hoping I might still be there for you and that I can finally fall in love exclusively with you. But who knows who I’ll be with then!”
Me: “Well, maybe when you turn 24, I’ll look you up again.”
The table next to us is full of screaming little monkeys, usually referred to as “children.” They are hopping around happily, celebrating a birthday. They’re wearing headbands with rabbit ears.
Her: “How cute these ears are! Ask the owner if he’ll give me a pair too,” she orders.
I smile: that’s so Piccolina. I call the waitress; she brings me the owner. I offer to buy these nice rabbit ears; he kindly decides to give them to me for free with Sicilian generosity. The owner is actually from Palermo and moved to Milan just to open this place. The Sicilian accent and this moment of noble generosity hearten me: it’s like a caress in this world of boyfriends who pay for everything, sugar daddies, and johns.
The Last Goodbye to Piccolina
It’s time to go. Piccolina is expected at a lunch nearby with yet another aspiring sugar daddy she plans to lead on. I, on the other hand, am expected on my sofa: in two hours, I have a date with a Russian model who is strangely likable, smiling, and kind (I’ll discover she was actually born and raised in Italy).
We leave.
I approach for the last kiss or the last hug. She keeps her distance, smiles, and walks away pleased to have had the last word.
I watch her walk away in her fur coat, getting smaller and smaller, until she disappears, swallowed by her life that continues without me.
Reflections: Male Love vs Female Love
Until a few weeks ago, Piccolina was pining for me: a thousand scenes, she threw away her Ninfetta costume, emptied her makeup under the water; various crying fits.
Today, Piccolina claims I’m totally indifferent to her, that she no longer feels anything for me. Yes, she cares about me, but she feels no emotion seeing me. She has archived me. Not surprisingly, after the meeting, she vanished.
This only strengthens my belief in the great difference between female and male love.
Female love is powerful but… conditional. Women love you not for who you are, but for the role you can play in their plan. They want a husband, a lover, someone to solve their practical and existential problems. A man is just a means, a tool for their plan. If it doesn’t work anymore or if they find one with better features, out! Love dissolves like an ice pop in the August sun of Sicily. It’s a relationship more similar to that of an employer with their employees: you’re part of the family, we love you, we care about you, but… if you’re no longer working out, you’re fired.
Male love is more romantic and selfless, more like a disease than a rational plan. And only a disease can lead you to put the other person before yourself, to solve all their problems, to provide for them (because, let’s not kid ourselves: a man’s money is both of theirs, a woman’s money is only hers). Men of average value trade all this for sex, because they have no other way to get it easily. For high-value men, sex is a commodity: something easy to obtain, which doesn’t justify trading it for freedom.
If a high-value man were at least allowed to sleep around, the equation would be more balanced. Instead, the traditional monogamous model makes it truly unfavorable for a high-value man to be in a relationship. And so the man, sooner or later, leaves and the woman ends up alone and has to settle for the fool of the moment.
Clearly, these are generalizations and there can be exceptions and special cases. A man with a particular desire for fatherhood, for example, might seek a good wife for his children. And I don’t deny that in the early part of my career, my business and career greatly benefited from being married to a woman with “low emotional maintenance,” allowing me to disregard women, emotions, and relationship problems. This gave me plenty of time and peace to study, work hard, and lay the foundations of my business. But today, what advantage would I gain from getting engaged?
Romanticism is male.
Calculation and planning are female.
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