By Sophie
Second week, the Giro is more and more pink, and I like it more and more.
The breakaway couple, the rival couple, the captain and follower couple.
«The Giro is actually about love, and relationships between couples».
The beloved and the lover, the one who flees and the one who pursues."
Ok, I'll start over, and in order.
First of all, the truth: «Hi Giovanni, this Giro I got excited and I betrayed you».
"I realized the erotic dream that you represented for me: but with someone else."
“A cool/wasted 40-year-old who was wearing a really cool vintage Rosti hoodie when I met him.” Yes, I’ll tell you all about it.
Then, so as not to think too much about him, I chatted a lot with my professor of sociology of sport at the Sorbonne. It seems that the Giro d'Italia now excites him too, and I think he will agree to present my thesis on cycling "as primitive mechanical mythology re-functionalized by the media for the new automated Middle Ages".
“But Sophie, you have to find a more glamorous title,” he wrote to me.
Unpleasantly, he sent me “issues to develop” such as:
"Are cyclists a target of pathetic techies?"
«They always want to see a challenge between a Hector and an Achilles > Shark vs Robot?».
«The pink jersey = pink of love novels of other times, where the truest, purest, noblest and most courageous feelings always win».
«The Giro is a spring-loaded heart recharged every year by passing through cult places for the target, with memory situations that start the film of the day, which is always a love film, it is always a victory of the heart».
I honestly don't know, Giovanni, if the pink of the Giro is really that of the heart. It's true that it is a nostalgic and sentimental mythology. But the story of Coppi and the white lady, for example, which I didn't know, is much more than a spring-loaded heart. And so are many other epic stories that actually seem to come back to life in the new editions, with new protagonists.
In this scenario, I am also re-evaluating “the pathetic one”, the gregarious in love who “ uses this Giro to throw my heart into the nettles ” and every evening sends me a voice message or an email with updates on his inner Giro.
Sunday evening, from Como, “the pathetic” sent me an almost pornographic email, in reality psycho-porn, where he reconstructs this story of feelings and sex as a chronicle of a very tough stage, with one mountain grand prix after another, and a final wall. I am almost tempted to suggest to the prof. the title “Cycling as therapy for emotional disorders”.
«And then, staying on topic: Sunday night I dreamed about Cattaneo».
Ok, first things first, in order.
Tuesday and Wednesday, tenth and eleventh stage
In old-fashioned Italian, the eleventh stage is called, or was called, undecima. It was taught to me (docet) by an old priest who was supposed to give me Latin (latinorum) lessons, in a small village outside Bergamo, but actually out of this world, on the road to the Rosti knitwear factory.
After Latin at the priest's, I have the village hairdresser, where I meet my beautician friend. We watch the stage together, with interesting technical comments such as:
"What a look Cassani has!" Cassani is the technical commissioner of Italy.
He lures you in with his soothing voice, you look at him, and he breaks the video.
«Cassani uses mascara».
"No, it's just an eyeliner."
"No, it's the karsha."
Explanation: black powder from black desert rock, which the Tuareg use to stimulate tear production, and prevent the sun from drying out the pupils. The effect is to always have moist, bright, shiny eyes.
In the meantime, we follow these last stages for sprinters, last chances for Viviani, not exploited.
This cool, semi-muscled 40-year-old I met in the evening, returning to Bergamo through the hills, tells me interesting things about Viviani and VAR. He was struggling with a fixed gear on the cobblestones that go up to S. Sebastiano, in a vintage Rosti outfit. I probably saved his life by offering him my water bottle.
"And I confess to you, Giovanni, that I got excited watching him drink."
He drank greedily and looked at me. Speaking in porno-categories, he saw in me the hashtag teen-college. And maybe through the microfibers of my body he also glimpsed the subcategory small tits.
I saw in him the typical male-dilf, that is, daddy I like to fuck, the equivalent of the milf. I ask him what he's doing, he tells me he's a photographer from Milan with 2 ex-wives and 3 children.
«I'm training for a special race».
"On the run from my ex-wives."
At that point I made a joke about VAR. And he said something that struck me.
"Elia was ruined by VAR. He lost faith little by little. First he lost faith in the jury, then in his teammates, finally in himself."
«VAR is worse than the Inquisition».
«The Holy Inquisition forced you to confess your guilt, the VAR sends you to the stake directly».
«The pictures are authentic!».
Explain it to me better, I tell him. And then, I don't know how, it happens.
A moment before he was telling me: «Football is a sport based on feints».
In the next frame he was kissing me.
"See you tomorrow."
«I haven't told you the important things about VAR yet».
We'll see. In the evening I get a message from the "pathetic", with an interesting idea:
In your strength, there is also your weakness.
My strong point is my amateur ability. Maybe because I'm a passionate introvert, making love is my real expertise, my top skill, as they say in the resumes.
But there are women who, since you give them sexual satisfaction, do not want anything else from you. They do not bother you, they do not suffocate you, they do not want to sleep with you. The most they can give you in exchange for the wagons, the convoys of passion that you pour into them, is their own sexual satisfaction, and this is your true subjection and your only mission.
And here I stop, because it gets lost in the usual banalities, such as: seeing a woman experiencing pleasure is the sublime pleasure.
And also things that I don't quite understand about the Zen method of never coming, or of prolonged/continued coming, we are at the emancipation of orgasm from coitus, the ultimate level of the technique of deferring. End of sentence: never.
This emancipation of orgasm from coitus is not very clear to me. Giovanni, could you enlighten me?
Thursday, twelfth stage
It begins. The climbs are coming. The essence, the soul, the history of the Giro.
Children at home, in bed, the adult film begins, the real film, the real test for real men.
They break away with 25 riders and a 15-minute lead.
With 15km to go, at the Cavour intermediate sprint, there are 8 attackers in the lead: Brambilla, Capecchi, Caruso, Cataldo, Montagutti, Benedetti, the Irishman Dunbar and the Slovenian Polanc.
They have a 12 minute and 3km advantage over the Roglic/Nibali group, “the group of the best”.
At 10km Cataldo is sacrificed and “ordered” to wait for Landa, who with Lopez, Boaro and Sutterlin has started from the group to reduce the gap.
Last curve, Brambilla takes off, but Benedetti pushes a higher gear, and incredibly wins. The gregarious' dream!
Are you happy Benedetti?
«Yes, well... I'm 32 now, it doesn't change much for me».
The TV commentator: «Benedetti is not a winner, but today he deserved to win».
Then they interview Cataldo. He could have won too, but he had different team orders. He had to give up personal glory to help his captain, but he is very calm. Life as a gregarious!
Benedetti and Cataldo, song and counter-song of the same message.
“Stay in your place, don’t get excited when they let you win and don’t get depressed when they tell you not to try.”
Do you understand, Sophie, my professor tells me, who is the message really addressed to?
To the workers, to those who keep the companies going in religious silence, workers, employees...
Meanwhile, the new pink jersey is the Slovenian Polanc, behind him Roglic, then Nibali.
With two Slovenians first and second overall, it is impossible not to think of the Anderlass investigation and all the statements about Slovenia being the new frontier of doping.
In the Gazzetta, a former teammate of Roglic, a Dutch rider, with the tone of someone who speaks with knowledge of the facts, says that "Roglic's growth is not normal, in just a few years he has made giant steps", and implies that there are reasons to consider this sudden performance boom at the very least suspicious.
Towards evening I see the 40 year old dilf again. It turns out he is a former footballer.
"Have you ever wondered why certain training sessions are forbidden to the press, the public and especially the cameras? Because they try to simulate fouls, like tripping over the opponent, like falling while pretending to be pushed, like making the head snap after an elbow."
«Pretending to hit the ball, faking a movement to unbalance, deceive the opponent.
No shot will be able to unmask a perfectly simulated foul, unless you have sensors in the players' bodies... ».
My professor, a few hours later, following my report, wrote to me: "At a certain point, Italians understood that they could become winners, and beat their opponents even if they were inferior technically, tactically and even athletically, by developing the ability to deceive the referee. And so, first and foremost, defenders who were very expert in unfairly stopping opponents in an apparently correct way, and counter-attacking attackers who were very good at getting tripped up by doing ad hoc dribbling in the area."
"Italians are now the first to specialize in VAR football, where an automaton eye replaces the human eye, and establishes an indisputable, true truth. But the real message is another. The dramatic suspension of the event, the uncertainty of those two or three minutes in which the VAR like an omnipotent deity establishes what is true and what is not. And the whole mass religiously awaiting the verdict, like in ancient Rome."
«Let's not forget that football, and in general all sport/business, is not an end in itself, but at the service and at the forefront of a specific social system, the spectacular turbocapitalism that seduces and dominates with videocracy, the power of the electronic eye and the artificial brain...».
"This is the paradoxical aspect! Two thousand years of philosophical and scientific progress and we are back to Plato's cavemen who believed in the shadows projected by the fire on the walls of the cave: in our home theater, on our plasma screens, we let ourselves be convinced that the images projected by the sorcerer are reality!".
"Do you understand Sophie?"
«What they instill today with football, and in every sport, tomorrow will become a practice of total social control, they will fire you with VAR, they will take away your custody of your children with VAR... ».
Friday, stage thirteen
First uphill finish, at over 2000m altitude.
Last km, and the Russian Zakarin successfully completes his breakaway, wins with 35 sec on Nieve, 1.20 on Landa. Polanc at 4.20 keeps the pink. Nibali and Roglic together at 3 min. Duel of nerves between the two. I'm on you, is the message.
We are in full development of the historical theme of the two rivals, the “antagonistic couple”.
I exchange messages with my professor on the topic of “psychological warfare” or “nerve warfare”:
«Nibali vs Roglic: what media message is being conveyed to the masses?».
«The antagonism, the fight between two, the re-enactment of the duel between two opposite types of champions, the basic canon of the mythology of the Giro; and I cite for example Coppi and Bartali; Merckx and Gimondi; Saronni and Moser».
«yes, fine, but what is the format of the 2019 antagonism?».
"The clash, the challenge between the human and the automaton. Nibali is the human, Roglic the automaton. Nibali is bio, he is the Shark; Roglic is tech, he is the Robot."
«Subliminal message for the mass unconscious?».
"That the human must do superhuman and unnatural things to compete with the things the automaton does naturally!"
"Good job Sophie! The future will be more and more automatic and less and less human, in sports, at work, in everything."
"For humans, even winning will still be losing, it will be the last human victory, the future is marked. Automation will also arrive in feelings. Let's prepare for the era of automatic feelings, capable of not making mistakes!"
"But we're already there, if you think about it. Social networks are the instrument of control of life, of privacy, of thoughts, of the conscience of the masses. Social networks are the mass self-surveillance that allows an algorithm, or whoever controls it, to design the opportunities and changes in our lives, as in ancient Greece the Gods did on the other side of Mount Olympus, they enjoyed testing humans... and humans chased love and adventures without realizing that they were manipulated puppets..."
The email from the "pathetic" person that I find in my mailbox in the middle of the night touches on the same theme, and
I have no intention of exhausting myself on social media to spy, imagine, deduce his psychological, emotional, erotic life... I know very well that the only thing to do when you are in my condition is to stay completely away from social media, like from hard drugs; it is impossible to make healthy use of social media when you are madly in love, I do not want to end up like in the past spending all night on his wall...
No calls, no messages for the entire duration of the Giro, that's the agreement, and I have no doubt that she will respect it, and I think I can do it too.
The only thing I do, that I allow myself to do, two or three times every evening, is click on her WhatsApp icon, and I can't tell you how happy I am when I see the word online, really, and it's strange, it's strange and beautiful, because before when I saw her online I was jealous, who she's chatting with, why, what they'll say to each other, and instead now when I see that she's online I'm just happy, because that little writing that flashes means that she exists, she's alive... But after half an hour I look again, she's still online, and then I get anguish, the distance from me, and I feel all her absence...
Saturday, stage fourteen
Just under 30 km to go: Ciccone in the lead, in the breakaway, is chased and reached by the “group of the best”, with Nibali, Roglic, Carapaz, Caruso, Lopez, Sivakov. Pink jersey 3 min.
Nibali extends Roglic impassively on the wheel. Roglic virtual pink jersey
Then Carapaz, Ecuadorian, pure climber, takes off. He tackles the GPM at 85 pedal strokes per minute and km after km he builds up an advantage, while behind they do the calculations.
At 3km Carapaz passes Courmayer at 80km/h. At the last km he is the virtual pink jersey, with the pink jersey at 7.30 min, and the pursuers at 1.30-50.
He wins and wears the pink jersey for a few seconds over Roglic.
The Nibali-Roglic duel is increasingly the story of this Giro. Carapaz has achieved his feat, but he also seems like a third wheel, even if more fearsome than Conti and Polanc.
Nibali doesn't talk about it, he talks about his relationships as a couple, with his teammate and with his opponent: «Damiano went like a motorbike, this time Roglic collaborated unlike the past days».
Instead, speaking of ADV, that is advertising, that is publicity, the Giro remained a Kittel-Dumoulin duel, two absentees. Kittel continues to rage in the Gazzetta and also in the Rai TV commercials with his slogan “Fight for your hair”. Dumoulin retired last week, after the fall caused by Puccio, but continues to be the testimonial of a nice ADV-cartoon for the Shimano brand, whose core business is the gear group, and certainly with this ADV it does not demonstrate a rapid gear change, but a blocked one, just like Kittel who in fact communicates that fighting for your hair makes you fall into depression, because that is the effect it has. And so my question, professor, is: what is the point of these ADVs with the absent testimonial? Counterproductive, self-destructive advertising?
“Sophie, just write down a sequence of slogans, and you’ll find an answer.”
Ok, I'll try.
For those who have everything under control, Suzuki Vitara.
There are things we can't control, but others we can: Alpecin, fight for your hair.
You have no more excuses, Prostamol.
Before, during and after sports, Enervit bars.
In the end, the only credible testimonial, present at the Giro and not only in the commercials, is the hypnotic Cassani, the national technical commissioner, who recommends protein bars to everyone.
Sunday, stage fifteen
Ivrea-Como, 233 km, the last 100 the same as the Giro di Lombardia.
After 15 km, Cat-Cat, Cattaneo and Cataldo break away.
At 150 km they have 12 minutes. At 70 km they still have 10 minutes on the group.
We go to the GPM of the Madonna del Ghisallo, a sacred place of cycling with a museum and Coppi and Bartali memorabilia. The legendary Cattaneo breaks the gear, and calmly changes the bike, as if it were nothing.
TV reporter: "This crazy escape is probably going to the finish line."
Then: «Nibali is waiting, maybe he's making Caruso work too hard».
Then: «Today Cataldo is free to go and win».
In fact, at 25km the group stops to catch their breath.
"Who's going to shoot now?"
Garzelli: «everyone wants to manage their strength for the Ciniglio, the last climb».
The Cat-Cat duo has been on the run for 200 km. Meanwhile, on the web I read a statement by Roglic:
"I'd rather have the pink jersey in Verona." More and more likeable, I think.
And then all sorts of things happen to him: he punctures, he takes his teammate's bike, then he gets a boost from the water bottle passed by the team car, then he gets pissed off with the jury president's car that slows him down on a curve. Then he has to change bikes to get one of his size to tackle the final climb, and all this on a very narrow and winding road, and with the judge's bike chasing him, perhaps to give him a fine, or even a few seconds of penalty for the propulsive water bottle. Now the group doesn't wait for him. But by forcing it, Roglic-Robot comes back.
At 10km the Cat-Cat couple is still united, but sooner or later they will become enemies, the synergy will evolve into a final duel. They have 2.30 on the group, from which Yates attacks «in his own way». They leave him 100m. I go, you go, we go, you go.
Meanwhile Roglic, with the bike that isn't his, doesn't give up, crashes into the guardrail, starts again.
Nibali finally sets off, for the first time without anyone on his wheel.
«The Shark's First Bite».
On the Como lakeside, last km, Cat-Cat are always together, they turn together. No one will film them. Study phase, format changes, now they have to shoot each other.
Last corner, Cataldo takes off, resists Cattaneo's comeback, and wins.
Nibali and Carapaz at 12sec, Landa and Lopez at 35, Roglic at 51. In the standings Carapaz in pink with 47 on Roglic and 1.47 on Nibali.
Roglic-robot was braver than a human: puncture, wrong bike, resistance, descent, fall, restart, damage limited in 40 seconds.
Cataldo has today what he gave up on Thursday, the deserved reward after the sacrifice:
"I don't believe it. I was dreaming of this stage. I had spent two terrible days. I felt bad, even last night. This morning I didn't know what to do. But my legs responded well. We got along very well with Mattia, a great rider."
"A reward for all the sacrifices, Benedetti also said, a day like this is something a domestique dreams of all his life. Here, in Como, on the Lombardia, magnificent!"
Mattia Cattaneo: «I tried to attack him on the climb, since I couldn't detach him, so I tried in the sprint, but he had more».
"A great move for both me and him. I'm happy."
The way Cattaneo said these simple sentences, I liked it. The expression, the voice.
Is this why I dreamed about it last night? Or because I haven't seen my dilf in three days?
Or maybe it's all the fault of the "pathetic", and of his internal race, also this very hard: and here we see how the romance novel can suddenly become an adult film.
She always appears very cold, her voice toneless, her gaze dull, her skin dry, her gestures tense. Funereal, unreachable, untouchable. Without looking at me she begins her litany, it seems like she is reciting a mantra, and with difficulty, with exhausted words, that come from far away. She says things like: I don't love you. I don't want to give you any more space in my life. I don't want to be with you. We must not see each other anymore. I'm not in love with you. We must not make love anymore. You must forget me. Do you understand? Do you understand? She asks me with the tone of a teacher who speaks to a child with learning difficulties.
I say yes, I whisper yes. Look at me, she says. I look at her and her eyes that a moment before were marbles of iron, catch fire, and are burning embers. A thirsty out of control: I pull her to me, I hold her, I kiss her, and my heart explodes. We make love wildly, quickly, without a tomorrow. When we stop panting, when our heartbeats return to normal, then we start again, we do it again, but this time softly, silently, calmly, without haste. First hell, now heaven on earth.
Sometimes we fall asleep, but only for a few minutes. Then I make food, we drink, we joke. Then we do it again, and again.
She never stops by my place. She leaves with two tasks for me: don't look for her, don't call her.
Now I am a busy man. I don't call her, I don't look for her, and I think about her day and night.
There are no days off when you think of a woman.