Once again, everyone is in Italy. The influencers are in Italy. The cats that normally hiss at you from under your porch are in Italy. The girl who was mean to you in middle school is in Italy.
You are not in Italy. You are at home, watching season six of Seinfeld for the third time since February, eating soup. You made the soup out of the scraps of a rotisserie chicken that you ripped apart with your bare hands while you cried to John Mayer and swore off drinking for the fifth time this year.
You know that everyone is about to return from Italy just in time for fall, just in time to drop egregious mentions of Amalfi and the locals at every cocktail hour you muscle through.
Fortunately, you will be prepared if you do the following.
Have a drink
I’m not drinking as of a week ago, but ask me about that again when everyone is back from Italy. Remind yourself that you don’t even like Aperol that much and that everyone who says they do is probably lying, at least a little.
Have a drink. Drink something American. Drink Bourbon. I didn’t listen to Carrie Underwood for nothing, and neither did you.
Allow yourself one (1) cigarette
It’s been a hell of a year and you didn’t go to Italy. You are allowed one cigarette. But just one. The annual cigarette is and must be an occasion. Dress for it. Your outfit should consist of some combination of silk, feathers, linen, and a lot of leg. The leg is actually very much required—I’m looking at you, gentlemen.
Bonus points if you bum it off a man who looks like a biker. Points deducted if he speaks French. Make sure you save your cigarette for a rainy evening, preferably after you’ve had that drink. Then go to bed, without a shower. Your pillow should smell like an ashtray when you awake. Only then have you done it right.
Buy yourself something superfluous
Add to cart and hit that Apple pay button. We all know that it doesn’t count when you check out using Apple Pay, just like it doesn’t count when you buy it on vacation in Italy. Were you hoping to be engaged in a year? Now is the time to buy yourself a diamond. Feeling uncertain about your midsection? Try a breadmaker. Do you regret not going to Italy? I suggest a nice sculpture for the garden.
You saved so much money by not going to Italy, you deserve a nice treat.
Frame your nudes
Europeans are canonically way more chill about nudity than Americans. I blame the United States’ Protestant ancestors: we are the only quote-unquote “Western” country founded by Protestants. The Catholics love to get naked.
When your friends return from Italy to see a tastefully framed photo of your bare behind hanging over the bar cart, they will be too taken by your cool aplomb to even mention how they barely blushed at the nude beach. Yes, their children will have photos of their parents “dressed like Europeans” outside the Coliseum, but will they be able to say that mom and dad could get it “back in the twenties”? I don’t think so.
Make burnt offerings to Giada de Laurentiis
In the kingdom of “When I was in Italy,” Giada de Laurentiis rules with an iron fist and an aggressive pronunciation of gnocchi. You have approximately six days left to burn something, anything, and ask for her intercession.
Plan your own trip to Italy
You didn’t go this year because you are going next year, obviously. Chop, chop.