Mammoni Mio!!

Italian men have a reputation for passion, romance and well, yes, sleaziness.
But there’s more to these Ferrari loving, spaghetti slurping, sometime fashion plates than meets the eye as we discovered one late summer Saturday night in Perugia when we suddenly found ourselves dinning with a couple of likely lads.
We say suddenly because it was just that.
One moment we’re minding our own business, standing in the queue for Pizza Mediterranea – the best pizzeria in Perugia – and the next, we’re at a table for four with our new Italian friends – Luigi and Fabrizio.
We admit it.
We were charmed by these Italian stallions.
They asked us about ourselves.
They seemed interested.
And they really really wanted to have dinner with us.
And why not, we thought.
So that’s how we found ourselves hunkered down with a beer each (well we had a beer each but Fabrizio opted for that most sexy of Italian drinks – acqua minerale).
The conversation progressed well.
They refused, in general, to speak to us in English, so we were forced to use our (very bad) Italian.
We talked about which pizza we would order (apparently funghi has a reputation for upsetting tummies!?), then about Italy and Australia before the real fun started and we moved onto what each of us did.
Luigi, obviously spotting his golden opportunity, reached into his pocket, fished out his mobile phone and proffered it to us with a proud look on his face.
Looking down, we understood immediately.
Luigi was not a wage slave.
He had his own business and here was a mobile phone photo snapshot of his very own optometrist shop.
Now that he mentioned it, he was wearing a great pair of glasses
Fabrizio, on the other hand, launched into a detailed story about how he had been “in insurance” with his father and brother but was now (insert amazingly proud smile here) a tax auditor for the Ministry of Finance and waved around a business card to prove it..
An optometrist and a bureaucrat ….these boys were getting more appealing by the minute.
We moved onto the topic of travel.
Yes, they agreed, we, and Australians in general, travel a lot.
They, on the other hand, were now too busy and important to take holidays very often and when they did they usually went to Sardinia.
But Luigi could remember a time, before he started his optometry business, when he spent four weeks in Chicago staying with the father of a school friend.
He’d love to go back to the United States, but it wouldn’t be the same if he had to stay in a hotel.
He’d also spent a week in Morocco.
Wow, we said and asked him what he thought of it, remembering our own adventures in Marrakech, Tangiers, Rabat and Fez.
“Oh I didn’t really leave the Club Med much”, he said.
He’d won the holiday at an optometrist convention.
We swear this is true.
The conversation continued and Luigi lent forward to ask: “Who did you live with in Australia before you came here”.
We explained that we had lived together, but before that had lived with flatmates or alone.
“How about you,” we asked.
There was silence at the table.
Both men turned a deep shade of pink.
Turns out, they both live with their parents.
We had just met our first “mammoni”.
That’s the Italian slang for grown men who live at home with mamma.
But it’s more than a descriptor for cheap rent.
It implies they get meals made to order, all washing, cleaning and ironing done for free.
It also implies they are reminded on a daily basis that they are the centre of the universe and completely indulged.
Luigi and Fabrizio were nice enough fellows. Each of them had three scooters and a car (Fabrizio had two cars, while Luigi actually had a child and an ex-wife too – he showed us a photo of his son on the mobile phone, but only after showing us his shop first).
But they were both on the wrong side of 35 (actually closer to 40).
Still, we got digits (that’s for you Leah and Anna)
And we didn’t get some impersonal business card.
We got a pen advertising the optometrist shop and featuring Luigi’s work number AND a piece of scrap paper with both mobile numbers (see above) accompanied by repeated pleas to call.
Yeah right.
If we wanted to go out with optometrists and accountants we would have stayed at home (no offence intended)/
Thank god the pizza was excellent.