My face and hands were smudged with charcoal, I wore no makeup, and my unruly hair was tied up in a terribly unattractive bun. I knew I should look away, feign indifference, but I couldn’t help staring. 

This is NOT what the model for my figure-drawing class is supposed to look like, I thought, groaned quietly despite myself and adamantly refused to glance around and see if my fellow classmates seemed to have their hearts in their throat as well. 

I sketched furiously. I figured if I didn’t focus on the work I’d be paralyzed by his nakedness. Cross my heart, he was that gorgeous: just enough wildness to be adorably awkward, that thin, toned soccer-player-type body, those eyes, dark and mysterious, and a seemingly perfect you-know-what. Our professor was insisting that we practice speed, so every ten minutes our superiorly shaped model changed position, and every ten minutes I tore off a new page for him to begin a new sketch. Fluidity, our professor said, motion, think motion people! More like, listen people, this is a test of will: learn how to survive wanting to DO your art subject. Seriously. All I could think about was whether or not I’d be able to get up the guts to use my hesitant schoolgirl Italian after class and ask if he was taking the bus back to the centro città. I found the guts somewhere and asked. (Granted, he was clothed, which made him much more approachable. Still: go me.)

He smiled at me in response – big smile, good teeth, slightly crooked nose providing a nice supporting feature for, well, pretty much everything else on his face – and gestured toward the bus stop beyond the campus gates. He then began to speak far too rapidly and with far too many words for my freshly-arrived-to-Italy vocabulary. I silenced him with eyes that said, would you kindly cease your foreign chatter because I have no idea what you are saying and you are handsome enough to simply stare at anyway, hoisted my sketchpad under my armpit, and walked side by side with him toward the street.

We waited for the number 10 and I quickly discovered he spoke a total of five or six English words: hello/goodbye, girl, please, and thank you. 

Perfect: Eliminating awkward small talk is usually my goal, anyway. So we stood there, watching the road for the bus and looking at each other shyly but not without purpose.

 Two classes passed. Two more bus rides together with a lilting laugh and crinkly eyes. It seemed I waited all night and day for the moment we got off the bus at Santa Maria Novella Station but he would only, very sweetly say, “Ciao bella,” and kiss both my cheeks. 

But at last, after the fourth class (and endless ‘restless’ nights’), after my fourth time sketching this beautifully naked man in an academic setting, Marco finally took my hand — utter delight on my part — and led me away from the bus stop and toward a black motorino parked on the sidewalk. 

“Andiamo?” he asked  (let’s go?) and gestured to the Vespa. 

No questions asked (in Italian or English for that matter), I climbed behind him and we took off down the Tuscan hillside, the wind blowing through my hair, arms wrapped tightly around his waist, and decided that this was what I had been missing: the freedom to act without the complication -the minefield- of words.

And so it began, a whirlwind love affair with the most minimal of conversation.

We honestly could have cared less what philosophers the other read, what our career aspirations were, or even what music we liked beyond the same rock n roll records he played in his flat while we made love. What we cared about was the contour of bodies and the way the olive trees smelled when we lay beneath them. We were most impressed by lips and limbs, laughter and play. We spent hours cooking and eating and lying, er, kind of lying, in bed. We read together side by side — he in Italian, me in English — occasionally swapping books to read out loud in the other’s respective language just to get a good laugh. 

Then what was it? Love? Lust? Did I even care? Maybe our innermost secrets, hopes, dreams, and fears were not discussed, but in a way, we knew more about each other than all that. 

We ate what we liked, we did what we liked, we played when we liked, we left when we liked. I learned he hated mushrooms because he would make a terrible face if I pulled them out to cook. He learned I liked Bob Dylan more than the Stones because I would always switch the records on his old player. I knew that he loved to paint because his flat was full of canvas and paint, half-completed oil paintings and art books. He graciously left me alone to my studies, as he quickly learned my unabated grouchiness during study hours.  Indeed, we knew each other’s ups and downs and ins and outs, yet we never had to ask. We saw and we lived; we drank wine and picked olives, walked the streets and sat by the river. 

We didn’t need words. 

So, to hell with those twenty questions across a dinner table. Ignore that insurmountable barrier. Just bring on the sweetness.