Gelato in a Cup or a Cone?
On a first fake gelato date with a man I’d never met, I met my match?
Exactly 193 days ago summer 2023 was dwindling at the speed of light. It was nearing the time to abandon all of my lovers and head back to the States. Summer, up to this point, had been interesting, daring, and very wild. There was one problem: I was still thirsty but for more than what I already had.
I popped open Tinder to remove it from my phone only to find one last message reply from a handsome Italian man I’d matched with earlier in the week who had finally replied, noting he should have gone for a cheesy pickup line like, “Okay, here I am, what were your other two wishes?” He was, for lack of better words, different
I was so flustered by the endless texting with Roberto—yes, we’re finally getting to Roberto—that I got on the wrong train which took almost two more hours to get to Rome from Marche than I’d originally planned. I call this instant Karma as I’d originally abandoned vacation early with a platonic Italian man friend after sheer boredom struck, or perhaps fate, as I don’t think I would have connected with Roberto if it weren’t for this abrupt instance. In Rome, I couldn’t find a taxi so I schlepped a mile with my luggage in the 90+ degree weather and checked into my hotel. We couldn’t stop texting, like teenagers, although I didn’t text like this as a teenager as I had a flip phone and a pager. It was disgusting…in the best way possible.
“Today is a match made in heaven, save the date, August 19,” he says.
I was hot and hungry but too famished to go to a restaurant so gelato it was. Roberto helped suggest a spot within walking distance: Gelateria del Campo. “Get whipped cream,” he says. “It’s called panna montata in Italian — trust me.”
“Get the cup, not the cone,” he texts.
“I never get the cone, I am an ice cream-in-a-cup-only kinda gal,” I reply, thinking, is this man insane? I’d never get a cone. It’s cold things melting on a hot ass summer day tomfoolery.
“You’re an amazing human being,” he replies.
I blush as I order my usual double scoop of Stracciatella in a cup (not a cone!), with whipped cream on top. I waltz over to a bench across the way to eat my gelato in peace while trying to multitask and take a picture to text to this mysteriously intriguing Italian man. I almost dropped my cup upside down on the steamy ground and the papery thin gelato napkins were flying everywhere via the little breeze in the air, which felt like a hair dryer blowing out hotter than hot wind. I get my situation in check and spy a family beside me eating gelato out of cones, watching them squirm as the now-liquid creaminess drips down the cones onto their clothing. The dad was staring at the family from a slight distance, enjoying his gelato out of a cup. Smart man.
Why would anyone eat gelato from a cone?
I sent him a picture via text, as requested, with my sticky fingers. The gelato melted faster than I could eat it but I couldn’t stop this conversation. “Are you married? You have a ring on the ring finger,” he quickly replied.
I look down and realize the silver ring, showing the outline of the Tetons, hadn’t been removed from my left ring finger since the end of 2018 when I got divorced. “Fuckkk,” I thought internally. “He’s not going to believe me.” The Tetons ring replaced my 8-carat black diamond wedding ring so I didn’t feel naked — it had been on my finger for years, after all. Baby steps. I wiggled the ring off of my sweaty, puffy finger to show him the outline of the ring.
I finished my gelato but the conversation was still steamy. In my head, I’m still damaged goods, running away from commitment as fast as gelato drips down a cone in the summer heat. Maybe it was the summer heatwave and sticky gelato hands or just saying whatever flowed off my tongue with a stranger that struck my fancy.
The next 48 hours in Rome were so tense that we made a plan to meet in Padova for an aperitivo on my way to Venice, where I was planning to have a fling with a chef. The deal was we’d have a drink and see if the chemistry matched our texting, like love-induced fools, and from there, we’d figure it out. I couldn’t shake the feeling.
Running around Rome, I text him frantically while trying to find a gala dress for Lake Como, with 30 minutes to spare before getting on a train to Padova (the birthplace of Aperol) to finally meet him IRL. “Don’t worry, you just get on the correct train, please—I really want to see you today,” he says in a very calming voice note. “Everything else is optional, we can fix it when you get here.”
(I still hear these words in my head when I’m stressed to the max).
My voice text in reply was something along the lines of sweating so hard that drops of sweat are dripping down my leg, splashing onto my feet. “I’ll be the woman in a green top with even darker green sweat stains under her tits,” I text him. “If you don’t see a trail of sweat it could be my imposter.” As the train neared the station, the nervous sweats got more intense. I walked up the stairs to exit the station with cold feet, almost ready to turn around and abort the mission and get on a train, any train, and bounce.
“Just say the magic words, ‘Take me to Venice’ and it’s over,” he says.
He greeted me outside the train station with a white bag. “Not another butt plug,” I frantically thought to myself. I lightly peeked inside when we got in his car only to find the most thoughtful gift I’d ever received during summertime: a washcloth (to get my melon sweat under control) and water. How romantic, I remember thinking. I tried to hide my ear-to-ear grin, and bashfully blurted out, “Don’t talk to me,” in defense of having strong pre-meetup feelings, which are nonexistent in my world.
He took me to a slightly cheesy American-themed bakery for aperitivo and very lightly bit my shoulder, and that was it for me. We continued onto a second spot and ordered a drink and some snacks and he went in for a kiss. A barely-touch-the-lips-leave-you-wanting-more kind of kiss that makes the blood rush to your head. Yeah…that one.
We got into his car. “Want to go somewhere else?” he asks.
“Take me to your place right now,” I murmur.
It was a blur. I was sweaty, shaking in the doorway to his bedroom because I wanted him so badly. “What do you want,” he asked me, pinned up against the wall. I felt like a pent-up feline ready to roar. He was the first Italian that didn’t try to manhandle me. When we came up for air it was dark outside. I wasn’t sure if it was 8 pm or 3 am and he sweetly got up and fixed us dinner: a cheese tasting with wine—an entire Alpine cheese dinner with 7 different cheeses retrieved from the mountains, with the help of his father, for our first date.
“We can f@ck very good,” he says, after dinner. “It’s the brain and body working together.”
For the first time that summer I’d lost my damn mind, caught up in lust-ville. Friends had texted to see if I was okay due to sheer radio silence on my end. I was more than okay. Our aperitivo hour turned into 5 days of an Italian fairytale and Roberto was perhaps the only man who had never gotten on my nerves spending 24/7 for several days (at this time, ha!).
There was homemade tiramisu; night tours of Padova with the sexiest Italian tour guide; homemade pomodoro, in which he tells me to just “sit back and relax;” a day trip to Arquà Petrarca in the Euganean Hills, to see where famous Italian poet Francesco Petrarca lived; 20-ounces of bistecca in La Campagna; a drive through the rolling hills of Franciacorta, Italy’s sparkling wine region, to Lago d’Iseo, blasting the Dumb & Dumber soundtrack and singing along; pizza and Franciacorta Saten overlooking the lake and holding hands along the stroll back to the hotel; and perfectly executed risotto and white wine on a crispy summer day when we arrived in Lago di Como. The hotel was fit for a queen and I knew I’d fallen for him when he’d noticed my social anxiety at a party and allowed me to lightly hold onto his finger, as a security blanket
Days later, in Bellagio, we laughed at people walking out of a gelateria with gelato dripping down their cones. “The time with you is just so…..special….I don’t know how to say it better,” he says.”
There is a beginning and there is an end, and right now we’re everything in between. It took me a while to finish this as I never wanted it to end, and then it did, and then it didn’t. TBC.
I’m still in Thailand, writing on Koh Samui up in the hills, after a very entertaining rollercoaster of a week which I’ll get to soon. Thailand is spicy and wild!
xxJenn
Oh Roberto.... This was fantastic!! Leaving ALL of us wanting more.
Love everything about this!!!