No. 32 Answering the Call of Nature in Naples, Italy

Cancel Me If You Want To

A fellow Substacker once wrote about their experience in Naples, Italy, and I commented that I thought Naples was an unwashed armpit.

You may be thinking—How can she slag an entire city like that?

It’s unkind.

It’s unflattering.

It’s unfair and completely biased.

You may insist that there exemplary aspects which I have overlooked. What about the pizza? The warmth of the people!

Well, I didn’t have any. And I didn’t speak to any. So zip it until you’ve heard about the TWO bathroom crimes we witnessed within the space of thirty minutes.

What is a bathroom crime? It is an assault on toileting courtesy. A felony of hygiene.

We took a day trip to Naples in order to visit Pompeii, marveling at the ruins of the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in the first century. Our return train to Rome left in the evening, so we meandered through Naples in the direction of the train station.

A sedan pulled alongside the curb half a block ahead of us. The windows were rolled down, and soon, the bare ass of a toddler overhung the car door. We stopped. A tiny naked butt is not a common sight in the cobbled wilds of the city.

Female hands gripped the child’s armpits and held him or her away from the car as the little body strained for several seconds. First one, then two turds hit the sidewalk. They rolled like marbles and settled to a stop. The little round butt retreated into the car, and the car sped away from the scene of the poop-and-run.

Traveling with two children of my own, I was torn. On the one hand, if the kid had only given a thirty-second warning of impending bowel action, what else were the desperate parents going to do?

On the other hand, NO.

NO.

And…

NO.

We continued on to the train station, but with an hour to kill, decided to enter the McDonalds next door for a snack. Inside, the fast-food restaurant was upscale. Everything was clean, sleek chrome lines, shiny tiles, and gleaming marble surfaces. Floor-to-ceiling windows provided a sweeping view of the plaza, and a long marble table gave a front row view to people watch.

We secured our seats at the window, and as Tim stood to place our order, a loud, angry voice began shouting in Italian. A moment later, a homeless woman strode across the room. She appeared quite thin, and at the same time, took up a great deal of space. Her matted hair had divided into Medusa-like snakes that lay atop one another in a nest. Though the weather was summertime hot and humid, she wore voluminous layers of clothes cinched at the waist with a belt. Her skirts approached an Elizabethan width, at least three or four feet across at the hips. The hems were uneven, the fabric shredded into strips.

Close behind, two male employees shepherded her toward the double doors to the plaza. She strode past the doors and did a pirouette between our table and the next. Two more employees came from behind the counter in the other direction. With what looked like a practiced, tactical, pincer movement the employees closed in on her, grabbing beneath the arms and at the elbows. Together, they lifted and shuffled her out the doors amid a shower of curses. The woman continued to shout through the closing doors, and maintained the tirade even after the employees returned to take orders once again.

Tim got our food and brought it back to the table. Just as we unwrapped our burgers, the woman marched up to the window. She yanked her underwear down to the ankles. Whirling around, she hefted the skirts over the full moons of her buttocks. She thrust them against the glass. The skin flattened and spread like the dough of two uncooked pizzas. A moment later, a golden waterfall cascaded down the window.

“That’s one way to register your displeasure,” I said to the mortified faces of my children.

“Can we move?” Faith asked. We found a table out of sight of the window.

“I hope we don’t have to see any more strangers’ butts today,” Aidan said. We all glanced around the restaurant as though anyone might, at any moment, suddenly drop their drawers.

“Yeah, two is my limit,” I said.

So do two instances of bathroom felonies justify my qualification of the ancient city of Naples as an unwashed armpit? I guess not. Thousands of other residents used the toilet properly that day and every day, I’m sure.

But I’ll never look at raw pizza dough the same way again.

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