I’m lonely. I crave social contact. Interactions on the outside occur intermittently and in another language. Not satisfying. A series of lurches, stops, starts, misfires usually accompanied by chuckles from all sides. Abstract thoughts can not be expressed. I imagine this is what it’s like to be on the autism spectrum. I have so much knowledge and humor and questions inside me but I can’t GET THEM OUT. After a few sputtered attempts, I end up playing charades, hyper-exaggerated motions, elaborate, circular conversations.

The other day I spent five minutes playing charades at a market, Il Gailla, trying to pin down the name of something I needed, but couldn’t for the life of me find. It started with one clerk as audience, the cashier, a dour woman with an orangey tan and a wrinkled mouth, too much sun and smoking and not enough vitamin C.

“Scusi. Avete qualcosa…uh…something per…food…no uhm…cibo?”

Blank stare.

Hmmm. I thought. Okay, take a deep breath. At least you’ve got her attention.

“Okai. Dopo cena…uh…piu cibo…dove?  

After dinner…uh…more food…where?

Nothing. Another little store person comes up. A middle-aged short woman with a pixie cut and a hairnet. What is this tall bald stranger trying to say?

“Piu cibo!” I repeat.

“Mercato!” One guesses and points to the dry goods section at the far end of the store.

“Gelato!” The other chimes in. I am amazed at the wide range of interpretations my hobbled Italian is getting.

“Café! Biscotti!” Someone else calls out.

Oh god. This last was a customer, an onlooker. Now I’m drawing a crowd.

I shake my head. Here comes the charades. I didn’t want to, but here goes. “No,” I sighed, taking a breath. “Dopo cene. C’e cibo…”

I then cup my hands in a bowl-like gesture and mimic spooning my leftover imaginary food into this imaginary other vessel.

The pixie cut woman, claps her hands, inspired. “CONTENITORE!!!!!”

“Ah, Si! Contenitore!” another echoes with a shake of her head, a little disappointed with herself. “Contenitore.”

“Alora. Seguimi,” the pixie cut girl motions with a hand, and takes off down a long and twisted aisle.

Eventually she leads me to a stack of restaurant-style takeout boxes, the aluminum jobs with the white paper lids. The kind you have to crinkle down the edges to secure. I scan the aisle. No sign of Tupperware and certainly no Pyrex. The aluminum have to do.

“Grazie mille,” I said.

“Prego!” she says with a legitimate smile, and peels away.

Scenes like this can take place twelve times a day, when I’m looking for Tupperware containers or a light bulb, or for band aids and hydrogen peroxide or a stick of deodorant. They happen when I need a cable to hook up a discarded television or a in leaky faucet conversation with a guy at a hardware store. The conversation I had trying to find clothespins lasted ten minutes and ended up with the girl trying to give my hairpins. Me. Bald Frantz. Hairpins.

All this for daily needs. How then can one be expected to talk about anything deeper and more abstract? Things like love and aching, and the state of the Italian education system or politics or soccer, something they call calico, which to me sounds like a vitamin???

Language is important. Speaking is important. I want desperately to speak, to convey thoughts.  But here in Genoa, where English is hard to come by, Italian may be the best option. Here then is the gauntlet. A simple dog’s command, Speak.

It is challenging to break into the local scene here, and the difficulty runs in both directions. Sure the Italians are a bit closed off in Genoa, a bit slow on the uptake and with the warming. They (especially the older generation) are closed mouthed. The woman seem cold and distant, or perhaps that’s just their good looks talking. They don’t seem approachable. On the other hand, the men seem predatory. Sharks in shallows. You don’t want them approaching.

But it flows the other way as well. The English speaker, worldwide, is used to being understood in English. Faced here with a population deaf to our own language, we are forced to use theirs, and we are not good at it. Many English speakers learn the catch phrases, the shopping phrases, numbers, weights, etc. but are hesitant to move beyond. Trying to speak another language, requires first, a receptive audience and second a sort of fearless willingness to engage, to participate and to make mistakes. If one finds the first, one must dare themselves to be the second.

There are exceptions of course. Strike someone hard enough with your good looks and I suppose you can live on the physical aspects, all the while gradually chipping away at the towering language barrier that lies between you. There are tales of this. An attractive American girl meets attractive Italian man while seeped in an environment of elevated blood alcohol levels. The music thumping rhythmically, hypnotically powering dancing until only the physical matters. They wake up the next morning and are unable to say word one to each other, but the desire is there, burning long past the alcohol, and they work it out. Now 14 years later, they speak in a chopped hybrid of Italian and English, neither entirely fluent in the other’s language. Yet it doesn’t matter. It works.

Or another, American girl meets Italian boy in a beachy discotheque and alarm bells sound. This time the boy knows a little English, the girl, a little Italian. They hit it off. The girl, happy and content with her Italian before, now has stronger motivation to learn. She takes classes. He does too. They date, a little awkwardly at first until they get back to a bed, but that stage doesn’t last long. They move in together. She decides to stay.

Or the Aussie. The rare opposing case study. The guy who hooks an Italian girl. The gorgeous and sweet Italian girl. Reeeeediculous. I don’t know how that one happened, but it did, and it sets the bar rather high.

But these are exceptions. Not the rule.

I am convinced this is why groups of expats travel in packs. This is why expat networks exist to begin with. Precisely because, even for the bold, there is a need to be social, to communicate more complex ideas—hell, even complete a conditional sentence, or subordinate a clause—without making your head hurt. They cure loneliness and social isolation.

For me, thus far, the expat equivalent is the English speakers at my school. Some are Italian, but most are not. They are Australian and Canadian and American. From the three corners of Australia: Melbourne and Darwin and Perth; from Toronto and Saskatchewan; from Iowa and New York and Tennessee and Texas and Chicago.

And while we don’t all perfectly gel, we are kindred spirits. In each of us, there is something that made us want to move abroad and see things. That itch I spoke of in a previous entry, they have it too.

They are easy to talk to. They are all teachers, experts in their field, holders of Masters degrees, and work in the same rarefied space as me. Their sense of adventure, for many, surpasses my own. The places they’ve been, things they’ve seen, foods they’ve tasted! Like so many Anthony Bourdains, only without the cable budget and laminated press badge.

These English-speaking compatriots are a soothing balm to alleviate loneliness. The question is though, are they also the mother’s skirt that while comforting, entangles me and keeps me from truly entering Italian life and language?

It remains to be seen.