breathe in, laugh out

During a normal phone convo with T-Diddy last week, she asks what’s new.

“Well I think I’m going to go out with an Italian guy. Like one actually from Italy.”

T-Diddy responds, “No, don’t ever go out with an Italian guy! Didn’t I tell you about the one that I dated??”

Dad must overhear the conversation; I can hear him shout in the background: “Or a Greek guy! No Greek guys either!”

Well that eliminates a large part of Europe… You think they’d be less picky at this point.

I obviously didn’t listen to my parents’ advice, and decided to go out with the Italian. He was from Tinder. Was very aggressive in the messaging, Facebooking, etc. He just moved to San Diego from Italy for an engineering job a little over a month ago, although he spent 6 months at the same company last year, and a few months in NYC. So although he is literally straight from Italy, he has spent a pretty good amount of time here. At first, I think he paid a lot of attention to using proper English in text messages, and had me fooled, but when he started getting lazy was when it got funny.

Each time I shared a funny text, I felt it had to be in an Italian accent or it wouldn’t be as accurate.  It became routine for me to start giggling over a message, and one of my roommates to say, “Lorenzo?”

“V, get me into my Italian accent.”  (Italian doesn’t come naturally.  Asian accents, yes, Italian, no.)

V would say something like, “VinCENza!!!!” with her hands in the air, and I’d immediately be able to imitate Lorenzo’s message in perfect Italian form.

Friday night started with an invitation to go out with Lorenzo, which I turned down because I was wicked tired.  Crap… get the Boston girls out of my house.  I told him I had a date with my couch, so we made plans to do something on Saturday night instead.  I put on my sweats, got my blanket and my real pillow from my bed (that’s when you know it’s serious), and curled up on the couch to watch TV.  I was definitely in for the night.  Turns out I wasn’t.  Breezy came home about a half hour later with Bud Light-aritas, looked at me and told me to get in the shower.  I said no.  Then V put on her sad puppy dog face.  So I got in the shower.

My date with the couch turned into a typical night out in PB, and wouldn’t ya know it, Renzie ended up coming back from his plans downtown early, and wanted to meet up with us.  Since all of the girls wanted to meet the mysterious Italian, I told him where we were and he came out.  I figured he’d just stop in for a bit, but he ended up staying with us the entire rest of the night and didn’t go home until like 3am.

Saturday night rolls around, and Renzie and I make plans to go bowling.  I’m last-minute getting ready (as usual), looking for something to wear, and yell out of my bedroom…

“V, is it cold out??”

“I don’t know, I’ll check.”

She walks to the front door and then all I hear is two loud screams.  I run out to see what happened… when she opened the door, Lorenzo was just standing there with his face two inches from the screen.  I guess he was getting ready to knock??  We invited him in.  I checked the temperature for myself.  V and Breezy were sitting on the couch painting their nails.  Renzie sits down and says,

“I paint.”

Breezy hands him the colors and says to pick.  He sifts through, “no. no. no.”  He finally finds one he is satisfied with, and looks at me and asks:

“I paint?  It is ok?”

“Ummm sure…”

He paints their nails.  I ask him a question about bowling and he responds with, “What you did?”

“Huh??  What you did?  What does that mean?”

“You.  What you did today?”

“It’s ‘what did you DO today?'”

“Yes, that what I mean.”

He’s making us laugh… a lot.  Breezy says, “I’m kind of jealous.  I feel like you’re going to have a really funny night.”

We did.  We went bowling and drank Long Islands… he insisted we drink Long Islands because “That where you come from.”

We had conversations that would have been funny WITHOUT the language barrier, so add in a strong Italian accent and some communication problems, and the night was a hoot.  On the way back from bowling, it was about 11pm.  I asked Renzie what he was doing for the rest of the night.

“I do what you do.”

“Okay, well my sister and roommates are at a party.  Do you want to go meet with them?”

“OUR sister.”

“Yes, our sister.”

“Yes, let’s meet.  And I need to meet boyfriend.  Sister’s boyfriend.  Will he be there?”

“I don’t know… ”

Lorenzo was quite the social butterfly.  He easily made friends.  V randomly asked him if he liked soccer.  He responded “No,” as another guy who overheard, informed her he loved soccer.  Lorenzo whispered, “soccer is for the gays.”  We laughed.  Because you just can’t not laugh at him.

He joined us for a stop at the Silver Fox, and pulled out his flawless swing dance moves, which he debuted at Duck Dive the night before.  He was quite the charmer.

The next afternoon, Carissa and I had a lunch date.  I texted Lorenzo to ask him the name of the Acai place he has been raving about.  He responds.  I say thank you.  I also say, “Thank you again for a lovely bowling date.”

Carissa and I look up Rum Jungle in PB and head over there.  We are sitting on the couch, eating our Acai bowls, and I get a response from Lorenzo:  “yes it was pretty boring.”

WHAT???  Carissa says, “I think he gets his words mixed up.”

I say, “No I think he actually meant it was boring, but he is trying to use sarcasm?”

We start dying laughing, quoting some of his bests from the night before.  I pull up old screen shots of texts that had made me laugh, and we are just having a doozy of a time cracking up at this guy.  Then Carissa looks up from the tears of laughter and says, “Oh, hi.”

It’s Lorenzo… walking OUT of Rum Jungle to take a call on his cell.  Which means he was IN Rum Jungle the entire time we were laughing.  There were only about three other people in the tiny little place.  I don’t know how we didn’t see him walk in… I died.  I said, “Should I run away??  Did he hear everything??”

Carissa says, “No, I don’t think so… even if he could hear us, we were talking too fast for him to understand.”

He comes back in and sits down with us.  We have a conversation about Acai and cauliflower ear.  Then we leave because Carissa has to head to work.

“Why would he go there??  I JUST asked what the name of that place was!”

“Maybe that’s WHY HE WENT THERE!”

So weird.  “Carissa, why does this happen to me all…of….the….time??”

“It really does.”

I need to learn how to keep my mouth shut unless I’m in the privacy of my own home.

In any case the Italian Stallion is at the very least, AMAZING entertainment.  And really nice to look at.  I’m thinking the whole dating thing may not work out due to the fact that we spend entirely too much time saying “What??” and “I don’t know what that means?”  And “I don’t know how to say in English.”  And the rest of the time just laughing.   Breezy asked several times yesterday, “Can Lorenzo come over?”  Hopefully.  Hopefully Lorenzo will remain in our lives for at least a little longer.

xoxo

Gossip Girl