Pay attention while strolling through Rome and you are bound to see a Virgin Mary on any given wall. Over 600 Virgin Marys are painted very randomly throughout the city. A tour guide informed us of the fascinating, spooky, quintessentially Roman story behind this phenomenon. I promptly forgot it, and continued on my way. We were then informed of the “SPQR” symbol, omnipresent on Roman busses, cabs, buildings. SPQR is a Latin abbreviation meaning, essentially, “Rome.” Seems a redundant thing to have everywhere, but I guess it’s a sort of city seal. I asked the guide about RSTLNE.
“Which one is that?” he asked.
“You know,” I said, “RSTLNE. The bonus letters in the final puzzle of Wheel of Fortune.”
I’m surprised it hasn’t caught on there, considering how superstitious Romans are. Many proceedings in their history attest to this. Quirkiest of all is that every house in the city used to be built with a “death door”—an oversized doggie-style door specifically for the deceased, as it would be bad luck for any living person to cross a doorway once crossed by a corpse. Those death doors that haven’t been renovated into windows are still very visible toward the bottom of building structures.
I learned of all these grisly matters from a Dark Side of Rome walking tour. It was actually entertaining for 14 euros. I recommend it. If your guide is Simone, tell him Alec sent you and you might get an awkward, confused look followed by an attempt to pretend that he remembers who you’re talking about.
I chatted with Simone for a while after the tour. He told me he’d been to college in Ireland and gotten his degree in economics. I asked him who his favorite economist was. He got uncomfortable.
“John Maynard Keynes,” he stammered, in a hesitant, whimpering, clearly embarrassed tone. I shot him a severe look.
“But—but—I—I—economics is really not my field, my interest is in the business and corporate management side of finance.”
“Oh, well in that case…” I lowered the chair I had hoisted over my head.
Simone, a native Roman, turned out to be a nice guy. He was twenty-seven years old, business-minded, and fed-up with the stale Italian economy. He said Italian girls are definitively the hardest in the Western world because they’re consciously stubborn and do not get drunk, to which the trademark aggressiveness of Italian males is a reaction. He was fed-up with this too, and thus itching to leave Rome for a more opportunistic Anglo city like Sydney or London. In this sense he was similar to me. In the itching sense, that is, not in the desire to exodus.
The effect of the Tuscan mosquitoes had by now reached the point of ostentation, and I was being made fun of. I realized there is only one thing to do in a situation like this—namely, turn the tables on your companions by creating the best possible nickname for yourself and forbidding anyone else from using it. Ergo, Flamus Anus.
