The advice - EXPLICIT CONTENT!
Once — I was a kid and still went to the beach with my parents — I was sitting in the little courtyard of a pensione in Romagna, where all the guests gathered with the owners, before and after meals.
The situation was always fluid: all of a sudden everyone could vanish, and you'd find yourself sitting next to some guy you didn't know.
That evening one of those guys looked me up and down and said solemnly: "Don't listen to them, they'll try to feed you a bunch of bullshit. Don't pay them any mind. In life, every time you get the chance, fu-ck, fu-CK, FU-CK!"
All in crescendo. Then silent again, a shadow, forever. It was as if an oracle had possessed him, just long enough to hand me that directive, and then left him to his faded little life as a Lombard accountant on vacation in Romagna.
I was stunned. I was an outgoing kid, but pretty awkward and confused in that department. I was just then starting to shake off the yoke of church indoctrination.
Maybe he was simply a horn-dog obsessed with sex, which is to say, deep down, an ordinary person. Over time, though, I've come to see what he did as the brave gesture of a man who had realized too late the deception he himself had fallen victim to, and who was trying to warn a young guy about coordinated attacks on his natural urges. He was talking about sex — that great marketing lever, but he meant inhibitions, guilt, insecurities, social conditioning in general.
If that's the case, nobody since then has given me better advice.
It took me quite a while to understand it.
And I still haven't fully understood it!
Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.
