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Rating: More than one question crossed my mind as I observed the cover on the newsstand under my house. What happens in the pages of this magazine? What arcane secret does it hold? Why am I attracted to it like to a jar of Nutella?
It took little to understand. I comprehended many things that happened to me during that period by reading and looking at the "profound" arguments dissected in its pages.
Like my neighbor's daughter, Lia, two years younger than me, who days earlier said to me - "Shall we take an afternoon nap together?". I dismissed her with a simple - "They're airing Jeeg in the afternoon on TV and anyway, I only sleep at night". Today, I would like to go back to that exact moment to tell her instead - "Hi, I'm Jeeg and I'm all steel!" (with a wink included).
I still remember the first page I turned and the photos with their captions. There were a man and a woman lying on a soft white carpet playing checkers. Each lost piece meant an item of clothing was removed. In the end, when there were no more clothes to drop on the white carpet, they joined together, and not because of the cold.
DIN DOOONNN...
- "Hello, Mrs. Matide, is Lia there?"
- "Of course, dear, let me call her"
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- "Hi Lia, would you like to play checkers?!"
At that point, I was the one ahead with the "program," indeed, for long stretches, I even thought that on that infamous day, she really wanted to sleep. Today, Lia sleeps with 2/3 men a day.
That's how I discovered an army of nuns, nurses, secretaries, mechanics, doctors, bathers, plumbers, mailmen who all had a common goal, to scatter clothes on the white carpet. Those were days of galloping fantasies, I saw white carpets everywhere. Even my little friends helped inflame my fantasies.
- "She got around with half the condo on Via Boerio"
Damn, my condo! But, as usual, I was always on the other side.
I was the one who, when playing doctor, wrote prescriptions after my cousin, immersing himself meticulously in the role of the family doctor, thoroughly examined his patients.
One day (ONE SINGLE FUCKING DAY) my cousin was bedridden with a fever, and it was decided we would play doctor anyway, and I was the substitute.
My time has finally come!
- "Hello doctor, I have a problem with my elbow"
- "Take off all your clothes"
- "What kind of doctor are you?"
AND FUCK OFF, OH WELL.
Luckily, I had my Mecca at home, about sixty pages or so of pure pleasure, hidden behind the wardrobe, away from my mother's eyes but evidently close to my brother's, who after "consulting" it didn't bother to put it back facing the same way he found it.
Today I am a happily married man with offspring in tow. Life, like a sailing race, is made of different tacks before facing the final straight. I'm not keen on winning, and I prefer to get stranded on the coast than head for the straight, but there are things hard to uproot, that follow you throughout your existence.
I remembered it just today when my wife, tidying up the bedroom, said to me:
- "What you see in that damn white carpet is a mystery."
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