Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF

you know the American expression ‘sly like a fox’?” I asked. “That’s what I was—fast and reliable for finding an opening and stealing the ball. My teammates nicknamed me Foxy Knoxy.”
    The next time I went to the café, I watched him work, looking for signs of a connection between us. There was music playing in the background—popular dance music from a local radio station. “Do you like music?” I asked.
    “I like to dance,” he replied. “Do you?”
    Is he a lowbrow party guy? I wondered. That’s not what I was hoping for. “I’d rather sing and play guitar,” I answered.
    Maybe we had reached an impasse. Just then, Mirko said, “I thought of a place you’d really like—for pizza.”
    “Let’s go sometime,” I said. I thought, I can’t believe I just asked him out.
    “How about today?” he asked. “I get off at five.”
    I was excited. Mirko was nice, laid back, and interested in me.
    When I arrived back at the café to meet him, he was just taking off his apron. We walked down Corso Vannucci, Perugia’s main commercial street, and turned onto a quieter side street of shops and restaurants. People were lined up outside the pizzeria, waiting for a table.
    “Do you want to eat at my place?” Mirko asked. “We can watch a movie.”
    “Sure,” I said, and instantly felt an inner jolt. It came from the sudden certainty that we would have sex, that that’s where our flirtation had been heading all along.
    We carried our pizza boxes through Piazza Grimana, by the University for Foreigners, and down an unfamiliar street, past a park. Mirko’s house was at the end of a gravel drive. “I live here with my sister,” he told me.
    During dinner at his kitchen table my thoughts battled. Was I ready to speed ahead with sex like this? I still regretted Cristiano. But I’d also been thinking about what Brett and my friends at UW had said. I could picture them rolling their eyes and saying, “Hellooo, Amanda. Sex is normal.”
    Casual sex was, for my generation, simply what you did.
    I didn’t feel that my attitude toward sex made me different from anyone else in my villa. I knew Meredith hadn’t been with anyone since her serious boyfriend in England. Filomena had a steady boyfriend, Marco Z., in Perugia. And while Laura was dating and sleeping with a guy she thought was sweet but clingy, she encouraged sex outside relationships.
    From the start, all four of us were open to talking about sex and relationships. Laura insisted that Meredith and I should just have fun. Filomena was a little more buttoned-up. She couldn’t understand how, with our history together, DJ and I could just be friends and inform each other about our romantic exploits over Skype.
    I considered Mirko across the checkerboard table as he devoured his pizza. He was part of the small circle of familiar faces I’d started to create for myself in Perugia.
    We didn’t talk much at dinner. I dawdled, asking him the standard questions about himself. He dodged them and asked, “What movies do you like?”
    “I like anything that’s not scary,” I said. “I’d really like to see a classic Italian film.”
    “I have a funny one on DVD,” he said.
    Of course the TV was in his bedroom.
    “It’s a little cold. Let’s get under the covers,” he coaxed.
    I did, fully clothed except for my sneakers.
    The movie was so juvenile I could barely pay attention. I was mostly focused on how the night would unfold. I liked Mirko, but I didn’t know him. He was attractive, and his confidence was charming. His taste in movies was bad, though. Still, I told myself, People have flings .
    When the movie ended, Mirko clicked off the TV. Without speaking, he leaned over and kissed me. I kissed him back. It was happening.
    As soon as it was over I quietly got back into my clothes, wondering what I thought of my newfound freedom. I was proud of myself for having a no-strings-attached consensual encounter, but I felt awkward and out of place. I