In the below video about adding a second bathroom, please note the transformation of the black hole at the end. That “black hole” was so typical of the state the apartment was in!
My Antique Floors and the Inappropriate Sporcaccione
My floors are what we called “cotto” in Italy. Meaning made from terracotta bricks. They are antique floors and rather special. But they were TRASHED (despite having been covered) after the first summer of the remodel. So, I hired a company that cleans/refurbishes cotto floors. And, unfortunately, this led to the second abusive situation.
Those of you who read this post, know that already a Moroccan worker (and prior acquaintance of mine) had grabbed at my body. This second incident with the cotto floor guy occurred three months later. We will call him Sporcaccione. (Dirty man. Sporca CHO ne)
I hired a family-run company. The sons told me it’s their mom who is the business person– the one who runs it. But it was the dad who had come over to give me the quote, tell me about the process, etc. At that point I got normal vibes from him. Not Sporcaccione vibes.
They needed to be in the apartment for a few days. On one day it was the dad and the boys and on another day the mom came and worked with them too. When they finished, the dad told me he would come back “Monday morning” to hang the doors. I was pleased about this because I can’t hang doors on my own.
When Sporcaccione came back to hang the doors, he commented on the crappy hinges and the bowing of the door, so I mentioned the problems I’d encountered with the Senegalese carpenter. How he’d not done a good job and how he also was rather belligerent, which had not been pleasant for me.
Sporcaccione then said, “You’re not afraid of me, are you?
This struck me as a strange comment, and as I was trying to parse it, I saw something visibly shift in his eyes as he looked at me.
As I was trying to catch up with what was happening, he picked me up (my feet were OFF the floor) and he tried to kiss me. This was a total shock. It was NOT on my radar AT ALL.
It was 10:00 in the morning. I had just met his wife a few days before. I had not remotely viewed Sporcaccione in that way.
My brain was having such a hard time catching up with what was happening that for a moment I could barely respond. When I did manage to respond, I was firm, but calm. Much like with other incident. I did the “broken record technique” of repeating that I don’t see him that way, that he needs to leave, etc.
In both cases, because a full force of outrage did not come out of me in the moment, I’m left, now, with fury.
After dealing with men grabbing at me, or in various ways being abusive, since I was 15, it put me over the edge to STILL deal with it in my fifties.
Forty years of it is just too much.
It compounded and fueled a rage at the patriarchy.
But that, I suppose, is a topic for a different type of blog post.
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