THE END OF A LOVE STORY

Old love stories ... pfft Pookie prefers to sleep !

My Sicilian adventures are coming to an end. But some of you asked me what became my first love ? (FL) One thing is sure, he didn't become Mr. Gattino !

When I saw FL for the first time I got a shock. He represented at least physically my dream's man. Tall, beautiful dark eyes, thick dark brown hair and very regular features and a sensual mouth. Women were around him like bees or mosquitos, it depended. And he did nothing for that, nor was he very interested in, it was just his charisma. But before I froze to a pillar of salt, he came over to me to invite me to danse. I thought I would melt and my legs felt like cotton. That had never happened in my whole life ! I always had a lot of boys around me and could choose, but none had had such an effect on me. What I never thought possible happened, I lost my mind and felt in love !

A man like him I had never met in my life, I was 22 and a so called party girl and very spoiled, I went out a lot, had a lot of fun but never something serious with a boy. But this one was not a boy he was a man and 6 years older then me. In short, an old man. He represented everything I never had met in my regulated life of a good family daughter. He had no rules for a regulated life and was full of phantasy. With him not one second was boring.

He had a wonderful voice and had studied opera singing. So it could happen that while walking on a crowded street he suddenly started to sing in this bariton voice just to declare his love for me. I can tell you we had a lot of success on the streets ! Fortunately I wasn't the kind of girl who wanted to disappear in a mouse hole. He also would pull you in a field of sunflowers or in a dark house corner, in a cornfield or a Theatre decoration.

With him I met a lot of artists and the singers of the Opera in Brussels. I have met Bejart when he had just created the new "Bolero" version and caused a big scandal with that in the 60th. My so regulated life was suddenly transformed into a very stormy one. I never knew what could happen in the next minutes or even seconds.

Me with Opera singers

As a lot of Southern people, he could go from deep melancholia to high happiness in a second and sometimes it was very hard to follow him. He didn't care about a good job or career, lived from day to day and curiously succeeded well.

But in all this overwhelming happiness I felt there was also a big shadow. Women, they couldn't leave him in peace. Instead of being jalous I started to protect my man from female aggressors and that in itself was also a whole story.

Once we were sitting in a cinema holding hands and watching a movie. Suddenly I felt another hand in mine laying a piece of paper in it. I took the paper and looked around but only saw a woman sitting next to him and nothing else. Later when I could read what was written on the paper, I was more than surprised ! It was an invitation (a more than clear one) to the woman's flat ! In the darkness she had confonded my hand with his. How that was possible will remain a mistery to me.

I didn't tell him anything, but when I saw her later leaving the movies, I just followed her with the little paper and told her next time to better watch out and not confond hands. Then I walked back leaving her behind freezed like a statue. And this were only one example.

By the time I got tired of all this. Meanwhile we had celebrated our official engagement very much to the chagrin of my parents. But as it always had been, the more they said against him the more I got stubborn. But after two years with FL with up and downs and fights and reconsiliations I was a wreck. My usual weight was 59 kgs (130lbs) and had dropped to 45 kg (99lbs) ! I felt like really loosing my mind. In a last fight for survival I finally decided that I couldn't go on this way and we split in best friendship of course. I think that was one of the hardest decisions I had to make in my life and also one of the most saddest once.

It was a terrible time for me. I constantly fought with heart and brain and sometimes I couldn't bare the separation anymore and we got back together. It was an autodestructive love. Finally he returned to Sicily.

Years later when I was happily married I met him on a street. I froze again seeing him and I think he had the same reaction. But after the shock I pulled myself together and asked him how he was doing. I then heard that he had married a (very catholic) German girl, had already two children and complained that she was again pregnant. Poor boy. He didn't work I mean in a "normal" way but was writing a book and tried a carreer to be an actor. He had returned from Sicily. We said good bye and that was it.

If you wish you can read the Sicilian stories here :

Sicialian stories

I have been an angel

Zia Petrina

Another Sicialian Story