Free On Earth as It Is in Heaven by Davide Enia

penis swells up and gets stiff.
    â€œAnd that’s good for when we’re in bed with them. Because as soon as you’re inside a woman, that’s when the fairy tale begins, but that’s something—listen to your uncle—that’s something you should never tell women, because women are such kissy creatures, it takes the patience of a saint, it’s a truth you’ll find written in the Gospels: blessed are those who put up with all the kisses of women without complaining before getting down to the real business. And in any case, no, the string doesn’t tear off, that’s all bullshit. Any other questions? No? Good, now your uncle is going to explain all the best positions for you.”
    Umbertino was stripping himself bare. He warmed me up, spreading himself over me like a blanket. His memories proliferated along with the explanations. My heart felt lighter, even if a small thorn remained stuck in it and stubbornly refused to be plucked out. It was still there when I got home. My mother wasn’t home yet, but this time it was better that way. I stretched out on the bed and shut my eyes. The only thing I could feel was that tiny unexpected thorn. The one person I wanted with me, right then, wasn’t there. Nina. I wanted to show her my clean fingers, tell her that as far as I was concerned she had already won, she had both parents, I’d lost my father, so it was two to one, her favor. Also, I wanted my father. My father, whom I’d never met, was the one who should have been consoling me, not my uncle. It was my father who should have explained to me that I wasn’t sick, that my penis was standing up in a sign of respect for women, that the swing I felt surging back and forth in my stomach was just my heart dancing. An uncle is an uncle, not a father. But he wasn’t there next to me, and neither was Nina. I did what my mother often did: I shut the door to my bedroom and bit my pillow hard to make sure the rest of the world couldn’t hear me cry.
    It would be five years before I saw Nina again.

    For four days Rosario, stripped naked, had been stretched out in the sunlight.
    On the first day, all the other grape harvesters chose not to pay any attention, dismissing him as odd.
    â€œHe’s completely crazy, never says a word to a soul, if he won’t work, he’ll have to hash it out with the boss, and what the fuck do we care about that.”
    If he wouldn’t work, he wasn’t going to get paid, and it was none of their business.
    The next day, the same scene; they began to mock him openly.
    â€œDamned lizard.”
    He ignored them.
    On the third day, they progressed to outright insults and abuse, piecing together a mythical saga of his faggotry, but it fell on deaf ears. A stone is indifferent to the words of mankind.
    It was on the fourth day of his sun worshipping that Melino Miceli, the row boss, renamed him La Nèglia , the worthless thing.
    The nèglia is something that has no use. Once it has been recognized as devoid of any practical utility, a useless thing just gets in the way, generates confusion; it undermines the very idea of an established order. The larger relationship with the system of things is compromised. To describe something as worthless is an indication of defeat: no potential uses can be found, the interplay of possible combinations—or perhaps we should say: the imagination’s ability to create hypotheses—turns out not to be boundless. The thing, in all its infinite piety, sits there, on the mantelpiece, in a cardboard box, or in the garbage, intent on performing the most merciful act imaginable. It serves our ends, allowing us to do anything, allowing us to do to it what we will, never pronouncing judgment on our inadequacy.
    But La Nèglia cared nothing for details like the harvest, his pay, the insults, being fired.
    He’d been drafted.
    He was slated to board a troopship, in two days’