Chapter two

At the age of seven, I was a well-developed girl for my age, taller than most girls, and I started putting on makeup in Mom's bedroom when she went out to meet her friends for the bridge game she loved so much. Dad was utterly engrossed in eating and watching TV, and he did not care what I did.

The Italian teacher was a worldly hunk, his forelock fluttering like Little Tony's, my favorite singer. I would dream in class with my eyes open, and especially I liked his Neapolitan accent when he repeated the phrase "Tutti Inseima, uno Due Tre." When his character started appearing in my dream at night, and I felt him stroking my hair and bringing me strawberry-flavored lollypops, I knew for sure I was in love with him. He was twenty-seven, and I was seven. So what? At the age of twenty, I thought he would be forty; it already sounded better. I wanted to write him a letter and convince him to wait for me to grow up, but I was afraid he would make fun of me in front of all the students in class. Once during the break, Ilia, who was the most popular boy in the class, approached me and offered me friendship, and I told him that I was already in love and busy. Luckily he did not ask who? Not that I would have answered him anyway, he was just shocked, offended, turned around, and left. Ever since I refused him, my reputation has risen among the girls, and they have been croaking around me like chickens.

But the truth was quite different; I was so sorry that I refused him with my great stupidity because when he announced that he was the boyfriend of Mina, sitting next to me in class, I cried all night out of jealousy.

And so my first school year passed, and the summer holiday arrived. Dad and Mom took me to Lago di Garda, to a small town called Salò, where I first heard the name, Mussolini. Dad explained to me that a king named Emmanuelle was in Italy, and Mussolini overthrew him and became a strong and authoritarian leader. There was a war, and the people did not want him as a leader. Some soldiers captured him and imprisoned him in the mountains, and the Germans came and saved him and let him escape. Then the soldiers caught him again and killed him, and at the end, they hung him upside down in Milan, and everyone passed and spat on him. But that does not belong in my story; I continue from the town of Salò, where we spent the whole month of August and where I also met Roberto.

When I went with Dad on a boat ride on Lake Garda, I saw a boy who was taller than me, and he wore a visor cap that read on its front "Fate L'amore non la Guerra" - "Make love, not war." When we got back from the cruise, he was there with an older woman who I later found out was his grandmother. He looked at me and I at him, and neither of us dared to approach and start a conversation, so he took a handful of sand in his hand and threw it at me. Instead of yelling at him, I stood and smiled like an idiot, then he took another handful of sand and threw it at me, and this time he hit me. Without a second thought, I bent down and flew a ball of wet sand at him, but he bowed, and the ball hit his grandmother, who was sitting on a mat, so she fell on her back. We both burst out laughing, which made me wet my panties. Afraid he would see, I ran quickly to my hotel room.

The next day I met him at breakfast. He refrained from laughing when he saw me; I approached him and said, "My name is Judy; what is your name?" He blushed like a beet and said in a whisper, "Roberto," and then I asked him, "How do you make love instead of war?"