Tear Along the Dotted Line (Strappare lungo i bordi)

A NETFLIX SERIES

IT'S POINTLESS

TO BE ALIVE ON THE OUTSIDE IF YOU'RE DEAD ON THE INSIDE

- -

LAST STOP

REBIBBIA PRISON

The next station is Ponte Mammolo.

COLOSSEUM

The first time I saw Alice was in the summer of 2001.

I didn't know fuck all about anything.

I was 17, finishing my last year of school,

just as AS Roma won the championship.

What's wrong with ya? Don't like football?

What? So this isn't the release party for the Evangelion boxset?

I should say that at the time,

I'd just got back from the G8 Summit in Genoa

where we'd been beaten up, shot in the face,

battered in our sleep, and tortured for three days.

I only got slapped a couple of times by a forest ranger,

as if I was Yogi Bear, which doesn't really make me sound like a real survivor.

So I'll take on the collective pain, which is obviously more dignified.

I'm trying to say we were caught up in a whirlwind of emotions

we didn't understand.

One minute, Manu Chao was saying the secret to feeling good

was smoking 300 joints a day,

the next, Tiziano Ferro was telling you to throw yourself off the bridge.

Mao Tse Tung said,

"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos."

"The situation is excellent."

I'm not 100% sure,

but if he was referring to hormonal chaos, I was doing particularly well!

To illustrate, I remember at the end of that momentous summer

I was at a gig with my friend Sarah, who said to me…

"Zero, this is Alice. She's a friend of mine."

"You talk to her for a bit while I go get beers."

Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Alice.

She didn't sound like a robot.

I haven't spoken to her for ages and can't do a good impression of her.

She may as well have been, 'cause you couldn't hear shit in there.

Exactly three seconds had passed since we were introduced,

and I was already in love.

I'm not afraid of using that word.

I was so in love, I thought, "You know what? "

"I'm not gonna say a damn thing to her,

otherwise, I'll turn as red as a lobster and she'll think I'm a loser."

"So instead, I have to pretend to be mysterious, like I don't give a shit."

After all, my emotional development was influenced

by a huge piece of graffiti in my neighbourhood

that was the perfect combination of traditional working class homophobia

and the mysterious heterophobia no one had ever really seen,

but which left me feeling pretty confused.

We crossed paths other times that month,

and spoke a total of 15 words to each other,

usually different variations of…

-Fancy a ciggie? -No, sorry. I don't smoke.

And, "Wanna smoke?"

"No, I don't smoke, remember? I haven't changed. Nice to meet you."

There were things that made me think my feelings were reciprocated.

- -

To give you an example, although we barely spoke in person,

we'd message each other all night on MSN,

which was like an ancient forefather to WhatsApp

that allowed even sociopaths to find a mate

while still allowing us some space to interpret real life events.

- -Oh, that's great! She added you.

Dude, she wants to bang you!

Hmm, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure.

We'd talk about really private things,

as if we'd known each other ages.

If you're blushing behind a screen, no one can tell,

so I almost seemed chilled, laughing, great at one-liners.

Why are you playing it so cool, Zero?

Why play it so cool when in real life, every time you say hi,

you sweat like a pig and look at your shoes

as if you had your lines written on your laces?

That virtual relationship was a regular intimate part of our day.

Alice was the only person who knew I wanted to have a career as a cartoonist.

She even asked me to write a story for the kids in her after-school club.

PRINCE TRIP-YOU-UP

So, it was about this boy

who was terrified of walking down the street

because there was a bully

who was known as the Prince Trip-you-up.

In the end, his mum reassures him

by saying that when they grow up, bullies stay idiots.

And he, on the other hand, would become a great scientist.

The boy did grow up to become a great scientist,

but the bully also grew up

and became known as the Blade King,

because he stabbed people.

And so, the scientist continued to live in fear of him. The end.

Come on, Zero. How could I read this to children?

The first part is nice, but there needs to be a bit of hope at the end.

We need hope.

Fine, we had different approaches pedagogically,

but I think we definitely had chemistry, that never really went anywhere

because it was always like walking a tightrope.

Basically, I was under a lawyer's jurisdiction.

Zero, you have to work well within the shadows of the law.

You need to use words that are ambiguous enough

so someone can tell you're interested, but, at the same time,

if that interest isn't reciprocated, you can deny it.

For example, if I was to say, "I'd love to hang out with you."

If you wanted to understand what I really meant, you would.

But if you say, "Sorry, I have a boyfriend,"

I can simply say, "Whoa, I wasn't asking you out."

"All I said was, 'I'd love to hang out, not go out.'"

Potentially, all it means is I could bump into you one day in the doctor's

and think to myself,

"I could've ended up next to some old codger spitting."

"Luckily, it's Alice."

"That's great. I'm happy to see her."

Do you get it? Now, say I say to you, "Would you like to go out with me?"

And you answered, "Look, you're nice and all, but no."

Well, that would be absolute, total nuclear annihilation.

It's like the Japanese emperor surrendering after atomic bombs

and the people telling him in disbelief,

"What the hell do you think you're doing? You can't surrender now!"

"You're the bloody emperor!"

"This isn't a game! It's not World Darts at the lakeside country club!"

"We've lost the war, you know! You have to kill yourself."

"Hack your guts in front of everyone, like Mishima, you piece of shit!"

There, you see? Mmm.

We couldn't take the gamble. It was a matter of survival.

But I was so sure she felt the same about me.

But think, you tell her how you feel, she feels the same, yeah?

If you're that explicit, you'll be stuck with her forever.

That's how it goes. Whoever makes the first move signs a blank cheque.

You said we should go out. Now you don't want to, after three months?

A date is a blood oath!

I even brought samples so we can pick out wallpaper.

I think turquoise for the nursery. What do you think, sweetie?

So that was that, the relationship remained as it was,

writing to each other but never actually speaking.

We sowed a lot of seeds, but never reaped the fruits.

If this thing is meant to happen, Zero, then it will, you know?

This crazy rushing around to make things happen,

it's all because of capitalism.

In fact, that's the real reason we have cocaine, to keep up.

So we went slow, because we thought that's the way life worked.

That we just had to tear along the dotted line very slowly,

following that dotted line to our destiny

and everything would happen as it was supposed to.

Because we were only 17 and we had all the time in the world.

Like Achilles and the tortoise.

Well, Achilles and the tortoise never got together in the end, you know?

He hooked up with Marika from Soho.

The tortoise got together with a tortoise from Hyde Park.

That's a true story, I think.

I wonder if they ever regretted it, those two imbeciles.

All that turmoil, inner torment seems so long ago now,