The Italians (25 page)

Casual sex among Italian teenagers is clearly more common than it was in the days when the influence of the Vatican—and the Christian Democrats—was all pervasive. But a boy will often still refer to his steady girlfriend using the same word that was used then, as his
fidanzata,
which means “fiancée,” even if they are not engaged to be married. And it is just as likely that she will refer to him in the same way—as her
fidanzato
. The terms
il mio ragazzo
(“my boy”) and
la mia ragazza
(“my girl”) have become increasingly popular to refer to boyfriends and girlfriends, especially among urban middle-class youngsters. But
fidanzato
and
fidanzata
have shown remarkable staying power, and that is perhaps because they reflect more accurately the nature of the relationships that many young Italians form: virtual engagements that can last ten years or more before they lead seamlessly to marriage or—more commonly these days—long-term partnerships.

Madonna’s T-shirt echoed a view of long standing: a perception of Italians, and particularly Italian men, as great lovers—“Italian stallions.” It is a view that has run through the collective subconscious of the Western world from the days of Giacomo Casanova to those of Marcello Mastroianni: a view that says Italians are not just among the world’s best-looking people, but also the most romantic, seductive—and exciting in bed. Fact or myth?

Another of Durex’s polls
⁴
found perplexingly contradictory evidence. Two-thirds of the respondents in Italy said that they always, or almost always, experienced an orgasm during sex, which was one of the highest proportions in the world. As in other countries, the share of women who consistently reached a climax was lower than the percentage of men who did so. But the proportion in Italy was still one of the highest registered in any of the countries surveyed. Italian couples had sex relatively often and, on average, spent more time on intercourse than in most other countries. The overall picture, then, was that—even if Italians did not “do it better” than everybody else—they certainly did it pretty well. Except that, when the same respondents in Italy were asked if they were content with their sex lives, fewer than in almost any other country said they were fully satisfied. Maybe there is another factor that is not showing up in the statistics. Or perhaps the Italians (like the French, who also registered a low level of contentment) suffer from unreasonable expectations.

While disapproving strongly of premarital sex, particularly for women, the Catholic Church has always taken a more relaxed attitude toward extramarital dalliances, especially when the adultery is committed by the husband and provided that the family remains intact—at least when seen from outside. So while being restrained in their sexual encounters before marriage, Italians have had a much more varied sex life afterward. Or rather, that is the impression left by a long literary tradition going back to Boccaccio’s
Decameron
(in which, strikingly, many of the adulterers are not men, but women, like Monna
^*
Ghita).

The curmudgeonly Tobias Smollett, visiting Tuscany in the 1760s, described the custom among wealthy Florentine ladies of maintaining what we would today call a boy toy. In those days he was called a
cicisbeo
. The relationship between them was known to—and accepted by—the woman’s husband. Though it was regarded as bad form for a
cicisbeo
to show any sign of affection to his mistress in public, he accompanied her everywhere. “Just without one of the gates of Florence, there is a triumphal arch . . . and here in the summer evenings, the quality resort to take the air in their coaches,” Smollett wrote. “Every carriage stops, and forms a little separate
conversazione.
The ladies sit within, and the
cicisbei
stand on the foot-boards, on each side of the coach, entertaining them with their discourse.”
⁵

In some cases the
cicisbeo
was a gay man whose role was restricted to that of an amusing companion. But in others he was the woman’s lover. It has often been said and written that Lord Byron had an Italian mistress, Countess Teresa Guiccioli. But seen from an Italian perspective, the noble lady from Ravenna had a more than usually intelligent English
cicisbeo
.

That Italians take a less than earnest view of marital infidelity was also the conclusion drawn by a psychology magazine,
Riza Psicosomatica,
from a lighthearted poll it carried out in 2006. The aim was to discover which vices and defects caused Italians to feel most guilty. At the top of the list came gluttony and overspending. At the very bottom was sexual infidelity. It prompted fewer qualms than neglecting one’s physique.

Until recently, the figure of the mistress also featured more prominently in Italian culture than it did in those of many other countries. The fact that famous men had a second partner (sometimes even a second family) was often common knowledge, and when he died it was not uncommon for journalists to seek a quote not just from the bereaved widow, but also from her rival in love. Another figure who crops up quite frequently is the middle-class Italian man who drifts away from his marriage once the children have been born and embarks on a string of affairs before returning to spend his declining years with his wife.

But entertaining girlfriends costs money. Keeping mistresses—let alone second families—costs even more. This sort of cheating was always confined largely to the better-off. And since it was wealthier Italians, who, by virtue of their social position and financial standing, were more likely to come into contact with foreigners, their habits have very possibly had a disproportionate effect on perceptions among outsiders of what is typically Italian. So it is legitimate to ask whether, in fact, Italians as a people are as unfaithful in marriage as their reputation would suggest. The only international comparison I know of dates from 1994 and concerns attitudes rather than habits. People in more than twenty countries were asked their opinions of extramarital sex. The proportion in Italy who answered that it was “always wrong” was 67 percent, which was exactly the same as in Britain. It was a substantially lower figure than in the United States, where four out of every five respondents condemned adultery unconditionally, but a much higher one than in formerly Communist states: in Russia, the disapproval rate was a mere 36 percent.
⁶

Less well-off Italian males looking for sex outside marriage (and, as mentioned earlier, before marriage) turned to prostitutes. In 1958, however, a law sponsored by a Socialist, Lina Merlin, made it illegal to profit from prostitution and led to the closure of the many brothels that had existed up until that time. The result of that still controversial measure was to force prostitutes onto the streets, where the majority remain to this day. Some, it is true, work undisturbed from home. They traditionally advertised their services in newspapers, often beginning their ads with a string of capital A’s designed to ensure that they secured first place in the personal column. Nowadays, a growing number use the Internet. According to figures compiled by
Corriere della Sera
from a variety of sources and published in 2013, there were roughly forty-five thousand prostitutes active in Italy, of whom only eight thousand were Italians. Of the rest, well over half were walking the streets, more often than not protected—and exploited—by pimps, and less likely perhaps to be subject to the medical checkups they might get in a brothel.

The effect of the so-called Legge Merlin has been to make prostitution in Italy even more sordid than in other societies and to increase the health risks for all concerned. But it may have made it less widespread. If the figure given just above is correct, then the total number of prostitutes in Italy is a fraction of that in Spain, where estimates begin at around two hundred thousand. That discrepancy is another reason for wondering whether the Italian male is as wayward as he is reputed to be.

Perhaps the area in which the influence of the Church can be seen most clearly is contraception. The manufacture, sale and advertising of contraceptives were all at one time crimes in Italy, punishable by up to a year in prison. The prohibition was lifted in 1971, notwithstanding the publication only three years earlier of Paul VI’s encyclical
Humanae Vitae,
which reaffirmed the Vatican’s opposition to artificial methods of birth control.

As in other majority Catholic societies, the Vatican’s strictures are widely ignored. Contraceptives of all kinds can be bought in Italy, and in some cases the cost can be recovered from the state. Yet because the whole issue remains so sensitive, contraception is treated with a mixture of benign neglect and discreet omission. In 2013 the International Planned Parenthood Federation published a survey that aimed to measure the ease with which young women could access forms of contraception in ten European nations. Each was scored on a range of criteria that included the development of policies by the government, the availability of sex education and the provision of individualized counseling. Italy’s average score was barely half that of Spain and less than a third that of France. It was one of only three countries in which policies to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights were either given a low priority or were “practically absent from institutional agendas.”
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Successive governments have done nothing, moreover, to bring down the high price of condoms, which, according to a 2009 survey,
⁷
cost almost double the global average. That may go some—albeit some very small—way to explaining why another study a few years later found that less than half of sexually active young Italian men in their late teens or early twenties took steps to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. The rest of the explanation would seem to consist of a mix of inexperience, irresponsibility and perhaps too a reluctance—whether conscious or unconscious—to use those artificial means of contraception that are so repugnant to the Catholic Church.

At all events, a similar disinclination can be seen in the figures for female contraceptive use. Italian women are less likely to take the pill than those in other European countries, even though it remains the most widely used method. But in a survey conducted in 2006, the third most popular method was still coitus interruptus—and that was using the results of an online poll that gauged only the preferences of a relatively sophisticated cross section of the population that used the Internet.
⁸

All this would seem to point in the direction of a higher level of unwanted pregnancies that would lead in turn to a high abortion rate. Instead, it signals a mystery. One of the surveys mentioned earlier found that unplanned pregnancies were less common in Italy than in any of the thirty-six other countries surveyed.
⁹
The abortion rate is also comparatively low.

What we have, then, is a society in which a lot of young men are not taking precautions, but without the results you could reasonably expect. Something here does not add up. To some extent, the circle can be squared by the rapidly increasing popularity in Italy of the “morning-after pill,” but it may be that the frequency of sexual relations between young Italians who are not in stable relationships is still low and that promiscuity is rare. Another reason for believing this is that the opportunities for sex between young people are more limited. Italian parents today may not have the same conservative attitudes as their mothers and fathers. But going to college or university in your home city and not leaving your family home until your thirties does not exactly encourage an active sex life, let alone a promiscuous one.

It is a peculiarity of the Italian language that it has two ways of saying “to love.” There is
amare,
but also
volere bene
. Not even Italians themselves can agree on the precise difference between them, and the way in which they are used can differ from one person to another. Very broadly speaking,
volere bene
denotes a less intimate, less erotic kind of affection (though when Italians want to say that they love, say, sailing or hunting they sometimes use
amare
).
If you were to use
volere bene
in connection with your partner or spouse, people might think something had gone wrong with your relationship. Applied to friends or colleagues,
volere bene
can mean no more than “to be very fond of.” And it is the term normally—though not always—used when speaking to or about relatives.
“Mamma,”
goes a popular song from the 1940s revived by Luciano Pavarotti,
“quanto ti voglio bene!”
(“Mama, I love you so much!”).
¹⁰

The lyrics of that, and many other songs written in Italian, attest to what other Europeans tend to regard as a uniquely strong bond between Italian sons and their mothers. The final words of “Mamma” are:
“Queste parole d’amore che ti sospira il mio cuore / forse non s’usano più / Mamma!
/
ma la canzone mia più bella sei tu! / Sei tu la vita /
e per la vita non ti lascio mai più!”
(“These words of love that my heart sighs / Are maybe not used these days /
Mamma!
/ But my most beautiful song is you / You are life / And for the rest of my life I shall never leave you again.”)

Small wonder that when non-Italians have covered this lovely ballad, they have either sung it in Italian—a language incomprehensible to the vast majority of their audiences—or in a translation with a very different slant. In the Italian version, an adult son is returning to his beloved mother and swearing never to leave her again. In the English adaptation,
¹¹
he is regretting the distance between them: “Oh Ma-ma / Until the day that we’re together once more / I live in these memories / Until the day that we’re together once more.” Tellingly perhaps, the song in its English version had greatest success when sung by a woman, the Italian American singer Connie Francis.
^*