Music venues in Italy, Sardinia no exception, are loud and vibrant spaces filled with inhibitions like dancing in the aisles by oneself or with others, on the stage with no one or everyone because nobody judges or cares. The jazz club was exhilarating and for a moment I felt myself slip out of my body and into a perfectly choreographed movie. A movie set in a small Italian town with no Americans whatsoever but me — solo io — and here the isolation was thrilling! I loved being here alone. I drifted back to my bartending days in Rochester, New York with low lights and dank basement night clubs open long after the bars closed, thick with cigar smoke and big tipping mafia men, drinking shots of whiskey, playing cards, dazzling women with free drinks and cocaine, gangsters beating up other gangsters with music turned up too loud to hear. This was a different crowd however, and I didn’t know until that moment just how dangerous my past had been. Suddenly I felt grateful to be alive, let alone here. So much so that I put down my drink to sing and dance solo in the aisle with Camilla.
