He believes the ideal woman lives somewhere on the Boot, rolling down hillsides in a red-checked skirt with a bottle of wine in each fist, her boobs like perfectly twirled forkfuls of pasta. He will never meet her, but she is there. This allows him to feel content. “It would be very difficult to be celibate in Italy,” he tells me, a muscle leaping in his jaw, probably one of the main ones you use when you eat lasagna.
