Dinner with the Boys

Martino had told me that for my last Saturday night on the island he wanted to have me over to his house for dinner with him and some of the boys. I gladly accepted, but did not know that the feast of quails was going to last until nearly six pm. Luckily the Italians don’t normally have dinner till about ten pm so which gave me a little time to relax and digest before having yet another feast. Before I tell you about dinner let me give you a little history about Martino. First off, Martino’s name is not Martino. It’s Giovanni. I, embarrassingly, didn’t know this till almost a month after knowing him. I always found it weird that no one called him Martino when we were out around town, so finally one day I asked Carmela, and she told me his name was Giovanni. Apparently when your name is Giovanni on an island as small as Ischia, and there are strict rules on how you name your children, like your first born son takes the name of the father’s father, the second born son takes the name of the mother’s father, and so on. As you could imagine there are a lot of Giovanni’s. To make it easy on the teachers at school they sometimes call the Giovanni’s by their last name, which in this case, was Martino. Due to the fact that I already have too many Giovanni’s in this story I will continue to refer to him as Martino as well. Martino and Carmela have been dating for about five years and since he knew that Carmela and I were like brother and sister he immediately became a good friend of mine. Most Friday and Saturday nights I would spend at the club with them and most of that time he and I would have fun giving each other shit. When it came close to the time I would be leaving I didn’t expect him to do anything special for me, but I was pleasantly surprised when Carmela told me that he wanted to cook for me. And so it was, Saturday night at Martino’s, a feast of pasta, rabbit, and of course… wine. Arriving at his house Martino was working hard in the kitchen and the USA world cup game was on, so I was told to take a seat outside, grab a glass of wine, and relax with the seven other guys that were joining us for dinner. Most of them I knew and some of them I didn’t, but it didn’t matter because in Italy there is the mentality that if you’re a friend of a friend you are a friend of mine. After sometime, which I was happy to wait, the first course was served; pasta with the sauce that the rabbit had been cooked in. Sound familiar? We all crowded around the table that had been set up outside, with the tv propped up outside the bedroom window so we could enjoy the game as we enjoyed dinner. After the pasta course Martino quickly jumped up to serve the main course, a delicious rabbit that was seasoned differently than all the other times I had eaten rabbit on the island. In general the Italians stay away from spice because they think it takes away from the flavor of the food, however, Martino had added just the right amount of red pepper and other spices to enhance the flavors of his dish perfectly. Of course the chef was not happy, thinking he had put too much salt, but the rest of us agreed that it was perfect, and the fact that the huge clay pot that he had cooked the two rabbits in was not only empty within minutes but we had also soaked up the remaining juice with pieces of fresh bread as well. After dinner Martino headed to his room to take a quick shower so we could make our way to Ischia for a night on the town. While he was in the shower I began doing the dishes, which, with a slap across the neck when he returned, I found out was a mistake. I explained that since he would not take money from me it was the least I could do to which he only responded with another slap across the neck. Needless to say, I put the sponge down and we left.