The French soldiers are stooping and circling
    each other with their hands behind their backs
à la Groucho Marx—it's La Scala, and the opera
    is Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment, but the set
is, first, an Alpine range like something you'd see

in an Ed Wood movie, with painted-on goats
    and mountains that threaten to topple whenever
a careless peasant bumps into one, and then,
    after the fille has left the régiment
for her doomed attempt to enter polite society,

a palace interior that resembles a frame
    in an R. Crumb comic with its lozenges
and furbelows and doohickeys and garish colors
    and exaggerated brush stores. I love it.
And the singers! Over the top, everyone of them,

from the cowgirl fille, with her loping stride
    and tomboy mannerisms, to Tonio, her lover,
to the old duchess played by a man who,
    when the fille gets tangled up in her ball gown
and falls over backwards, says,

in his/her gravelly voice, "Elle est tombée"
    in a manner so flat and dry that everybody
in the audience cackles like guinea hens,
    including a formidable bunch of old blue-haired dames
in the orchestra seats who, come to think of it

look as though they themselves might be men,
    might be their own husbands, as it were,
and so diverting is this opera,
    so much a divertissement is it,
that it is not until intermission

that I think back a month earlier
    and remember how irritated I was
when my credit card company called from Ohio
    to say someone in Italy wants to charge merchandise
to your account in the amount of 230,000 dollars,

and I say, It's not dollars, it's liras,
    and the guy says, Oh, it's not the same as dollars
over there? and I say—and I know I shouldn't
    say this, because even as I speak,
from the direction of Baton Rouge, LA

I feel my sleeping 94-year-old mother
    twitch in her armchair and grimace toward the east—
I say, Look, if having sex
    with farm animals makes you
so obtuse, why do you continue to do it?

which makes him so mad he puts his supervisor on,
    and she says, You have to understand,
this charge came from Italy,
    and here you are still in the states,
and I say, Listen, have you ever ordered something

from Williams-Sonoma, like, a wok or something?
    and she says, Sure, everybody's ordered something
from Williams-Sonoma, and I say, So what did you do,
    tell everybody in Columbus goodbye and then walk
to St. Louis and Boulder and Provo, and finally

you get to San Francisco, and you go to Williams-Sonoma
    and you get your wok, and then you walk all the way home,
and everybody back in Columbus says,
    Oh, hi, Marge, where you been?
and you say, Oh, well, had to go to San Francisco,

had to get my wok, dontcha know? I mean, does it not
    seem possible that somebody could be in one place
and pick up the phone and order something
    from another place without actually being there?
And by this time she, too, has had it up to here

but has to superior to pass me on to
    so she says, Such a gentleman! and hangs up
just as I'm shouting, If you're not going to accept
    the charges, what I want to know is
am I or am I not going to get my goddamn opera tickets?

and only then does it occur to me:
    what if they really have started to use dollars
in Italy and a cup of coffee now costs, you know,
    1500 dollars instead of 1500 liras?
But no, we go to the La Scala ticket office

the day of the performance and, sure enough,
    there are the tickets, and for good seats, too,
and we're so happy that we go to a café
    for a drink to celebrate, which is when Barbara
notices the tickets say "gentlemen are kindly requested

to wear jacket and tie," and I say,
    What does that mean, "kindly requested,"
and she says, It means if you don't satisfy
    the dress code, you might be kindly requested
to kindly not attend. So I ask Michele,

the night man at the hotel, if he has a jacket
    I can borrow, but it's a double-breasted jacket,
and Michele has a good eighty pounds on me,
    so when I put it on, I disappear.
Not that it matters once we're there.

where one of the best parts is that
    I am looking down into the orchestra pit
and for the first time can see
    how like a little city it is,
with the various craftsmen pursuing their trades

but also talking to each other and taking little breaks
    and even naps from time to time
and showing off their different personalities
    as well, as is the case
with the young romantic cellist who,

alone among the older, staid
    more civil-servant-type cellists,
is weaving back and forth
    and tossing his bushy hairdo
and arching his eyebrows and sighing

the way he knew he would when he was fourteen
    and already the best cellist in Gubbio or Pongibonsi
and dreaming of soloing under the baton
    of Zubin Mehta or Pierre Boulez at the Met
or the Royal Albert, so that even though

he's only part of an ensemble and an invisible one
    at that, he's happy to say away
and fling his hair about and moan softly to himself,
    even though probably he knows one day
he'll be a geezer too, all of whom

had the same dream he did, but so what,
    tell anybody you're in the orchestra
at La Scala and they'll say, Oh, wow.
    And then there's the oboist
who works on his instrument constantly:

tightening one fitting, loosening another,
    reshaping a reed until there is nothing left
and then discarding it and beginning again
    as his colleagues look on
with what appears to be genuine interest,

although I have to imagine that at least
    some of them are thinking,
If Sergio doesn't stick that fucking thing
    in his mouth and start playing it,
I'm going to break it over his head,

and on stage the French soldiers are prissing around,
    and la fille is breaking their hearts left and right,
and Tonio the tenor escapes death by firing squad
    and gets la fille into the bargain—molto bravo!—
and I am so happy that I forget my get lag

and my quarrels with the credit card company
    and even the big jacket I am wearing, all of which
makes a kind of sense, a gestalt, as it were,
    though no more than what you might expect
from the seemingly random events of a dream

or of our lives, which themselves
    are short, happy dreams, and we always try
to figure out our dreams, don't we?
    If we can remember them, that is.
This jacket is so big that I could have smuggled

a couple of additional opera lovers into
    La Scala with me the way we used
to hide guys in the trunks of our cars
    along with the beer and the Cheetos
when we went to the drive-in back in Baton Rouge.

And as we are walking back to the hotel,
    when Barbara says, "Look! There's Tonio!"
and of course it's not Tonio at all
    but the tenor who sings his part,
only now he's wearing street clothes

instead of his stage costume,
    just at that moment
I am wondering half seriously and half in fun,
    What if I open next year's fashion mags to see
headlines like "Big Jackets are IT!"

and "If You Only Buy One Thing This Season,
    Make Sure It's A Big Jacket,"
but then I hear Barbara say, Look, there he is,
    and I whirl around to cry, "Bravo, signore!"
only I do a complete one eighty,

and the jacket keeps facing forward,
    and as I grin at him foolishly over the collar,
the guy who played Tonio looks at me like,
    first, What the hell, and then,
Does he have a gun in there,

so I hold out my hands to show
    I have only the best intentions,
and his face opens a little,
    and he's probably thinking,
Jeez, that's a big jacket,

and I'm definitely thinking,
    Gun? I could put the whole régiment
in this thing and la fille, too,
    because, let's face it,
the big jacket covers us all.