Statues of David

There are many stories about the statue of David, Michelangelo’s trophy piece. A good one is about David’s arm being broken off by rioters. Apparently that’s true, and the arm was reattached, and the crack line is right there to see.

“That’s somewhat suspicious,” Claris says as we stand in line to see David in Florence. “You’d expect the fracture repair to be more uneven, wouldn’t you?”

“I would,” I say. “But I’m no expert.”

Claris knows I’m no expert, but I always like to know a little something about the places we go to beforehand, so I can speak a little loudly in crowd situations to inform everyone around me. Claris thinks there is an insecurity thing going on, a character flaw. She says I do it to impress. Maybe, but I’m sure it’s to do with my obsession with raising the bar of public discourse, a kind of Marxian drive to fuel the intellectual engine of the masses.

The best-known piece of art knowledge in Florence, of course, is that there are two statues of David. There’s the real thing inside the Accademia Gallery, and there’s the copy outside in the Palazzo della Signoria, where the original once stood. If you don’t want to line up or pay a penny, you can stand in front of the fake and still admire the greatest work of art ever carved by human hands. But you know it’s an exact copy. It looks identical, but it’s not the real thing. And the fracture is missing. Or is it?

“That’s a real artistic integrity question, isn’t it?” I say to Claris.

“What is?”

“Well, does the fake David have the broken arm, or did they make it perfect?”

This is a really interesting thing I’ve brought up in the lineup to the Accademia, and I can see a few of our fellow tourists have caught onto the philosophical point I’ve made but that Claris is almost dismissive about.

“What are you talking about, buddy?” asks some guy dressed in a bright blue floral-patterned shirt, long white socks pulled up almost to his knees, sandals over his socks, baseball cap, khaki shorts slightly too short for the era, and his big gut hanging out. Gee, I wonder where he’s from?

“Well, you know there are two Davids: this one and the other one over in the square outside.”

He gives me a buckeye look and pops his head back slightly with a neck jerk like he’s physically expressing “you’re kidding!” And then he says it, which I find redundant.

“You’re kidding!”

“Not at all, my friend. There are two of them.”

When I say this I can see a few others in the line look away, either not knowing whether I realize there is only one real David, and that the other is a fake, or they think I’m being disingenuous. Either way it seems they’re not inclined to tattle.

“You mean we’re paying for this one — we’re in this goddamned line for an hour already — and there’s a freaking freebie a few minutes down the road?”

I’m almost tempted to explain the subtleties, but it’s the white socks that bug me. This isn’t a working-class hero; this is something else. I go along for the ride.

“Yes, sir, they’re identical.”

“Connie honey, we’re outta here. I’m not standing around another hour for this. Let’s get to the free one and move over to the ’Fizi. We’ve only got two hours left in our day here.”

“It’s good to plan out your time, that’s certain,” I note. “Where you from, sir?”

“America,” he says.

“North or South?” I ask, just waiting for the opportunity.

“Huh?”

“North or South America?”

“The YEW-NITE-ED STATES of America,” he pronounces with a great deal of pride.

Claris, conciliatory as usual, adds, “Well, you two have a great rest of your tour.”

And off they go.

Now I’m feeling a little guilty about it. They’ll find out soon enough, at least when they get back home and start playing Trivial Pursuit or watching Jeopardy. They’ll learn they skipped the genuine article, and I suspect they won’t be happy about it.

The line finally brings us up to the door of the Accademia. They let us through, and we go up to the ticket booth and grab the reserved tickets we purchased online. We pass through the turnstile and we’re in.

There are a few rooms of statuary, well worth looking at, as a warm-up for the main event. So we do the right thing, the right way, and walk slowly up and down the pathways of busts and broken classics and add our comments about Roman versus Greek styles, how the Greeks were the real geniuses, how the Romans were the practitioners. Everyone reads that dichotomy as a slur against the Romans, of course. The Italians get the bad end of the stick, as if they are barbarians, Mafia from the beginning, and bullies because of their Caesars. It’s jealousy, mostly. But what did they ever bring to civilization aside from aqueducts and rusty pipes that probably killed their empire in the end?

Other than the David, that is.

We follow the bubble of people into David’s room. The Accademia curators have always perpetuated a bit of a charade by not making clear where the David is, as if there would be any lineup at all, let alone two of them, without it. David is why everyone is here.

And there ahead of us, in a semicircular atrium that has been built several feet higher than the great masterpiece, it stands: Michelangelo’s David, in his magnificence, and you can’t help but stare at him in awe. He is very tall, and to be truthful, you can’t really view him without looking directly at his genitals and his buttocks as you walk around, as you must, like you’re driving a roundabout. And then on up to his magnificent six-pack, his hairless chest — did they shave? — and his curly hair, hanging about a young face. This is the biblical David who slew Goliath, the evil giant, but this “little David” is looking King Kongish to Claris and me. You don’t really get the scale of him until you’re up close and personal, looking up his crotch.

And I say it: “Jesus, I’d hate to see Goliath!” There is a rolling chuckle all around the room that is exactly what I wanted, because I said it loud enough to be heard. Claris gives a look that says “see what I mean!”

“No guff!” says a clever little boyish man, marred by pimples, sporting a haversack and a faux English walking stick, an unlit pipe hanging from his lip. I gather the Accademia guards must have given the pipe a second look to check it for flame. Or the lad stuck it in his mouth to look intellectual after he got into the David hall. Very pretentious. I immediately resent his comment anyway. I thought my own joke said it all, and I don’t look over at him at first. Instead I give David’s penis a really long stare. Boy-Man-with-Pipe looks at me staring up there, and from what I can see peripherally, it looks like the kid feels a little uncomfortable. I give the kid a quick glance and a wink, then look back at the penis and scrotum. Another glance, another wink, from lad to lad. I do this three or four times until the Pipe makes his exit.

One thing about the real thing, compared to the fake in the palazzo, is that while artistically there is no distinction (the copy is perfect, after all), you certainly can’t touch the real David without setting off the gallery alarms and getting arrested. The fake, however, is unprotected, and at night, not only are there no guards, but there are no tourists who haven’t retired to their hotel rooms to soothe their sore feet and let breathe their fresh blisters.

I have a proposal.

“Claris, how about we visit the fake one, late tonight? It’ll be like a private viewing. Our own David, ours alone. It’ll be fun. What do you say?”

“Not me, dear. My feet are killing me.”

“Oh, come on. Last night in Florence. I want to be able to say we touched David. It’ll be a near religious experience.”

“Simon. It’s not even the real . . .” Claris starts adding detail, knowing my thoughts on this.

“Yes, it’s the fake, but we can mention that part parenthetically only if we’re cornered, right?”

“Not me, thanks. You go by yourself.”

* * *

It’s three in the morning, and I’d set the alarm of my cell on vibrate and stuffed it under my pillow. Now it buzzes, and I grab it quick so as not to wake Claris. I really feel like asking her once more. Last chance, are you sure? But I decide against. It’ll be just Dave and me tonight.

Our hotel is not far from the street leading into the square. It is hardly pitch black. In fact it is almost radiant in the full moon. There are several street lamps with dim lighting along the route, and a few shops, restaurants and historic buildings with small spot beams on them. It’s as if Florence is perpetually on display for tourists, twenty-four hours a day, the museum city.

I can spot the statues across the cobblestones of the large palazzo. The David is striking even from a distance. Perhaps the marble is a little more brilliantly bleached in the sun and cleansed by the regular wash of rain than the pampered original protected under the roof of the Accademia.

We’d noticed earlier, looking for il Duomo, one of the city’s other great architectural highlights along with the Vecchio bridge, that hardly anyone bothers to give the fake a second glance. Maybe the Americans are fooled, but there were no crowds, and I’d predict even fewer photographs taken that are later identified as “David and me” or “Family with David: Firenze 2009.” (English-speaking tourists love to spell Florence the Italian way — for the cosmopolitan feel.)

It is almost as if the fake David were a pariah, the poor man’s hero, the ugly twin. It is illogical, but there you have it.

As I walk up in the dark, alone, David lit only by moonlight, he is stunning. There is a sheen that glistens off his shoulders. His chest and back, as I circle around, are magisterial. He holds a slingshot on his shoulder but it looks like he is holding his jacket by its collar on his way home from the office. That image stays with me. He is a boy bravely heading out for his manhood moment with Goliath, yet this is also a young man, and I wish more than ever that Claris were here with me, so we can share the thrill.

One thing about being alone with this David outside at night is that I can stare full throttle at his nakedness and not feel the pressure of a crowd passing judgment on my sexuality. Who can stare at a nude and not squirm just a little? I’ve always wanted to understand that. Now I can safely give the statue my complete, uninhibited attention. So I scan up his thighs and come face to face, so to speak, with his package.

There it is. His hands and feet are huge. So I’m surprised, considering his frame, how relatively small his penis is. It’s sort of shrivelled up. He’s not circumcised. I guess that was the Roman way. I’m also thinking his meat is modest, compared to his potatoes. I’m even passing over the concept of doing something the Catholics and the Victorians might have done, and take a swing at the gonads with a hammer to knock them off, or slip on a pair of woolen pants to cover him up — though I guess, practically speaking, I’d have to sew them on.

I’m being immature; this is art.

Then I remember the ostensible purpose for my coming out tonight in the first place — to declare the equivalent of dipping a toe in the ocean: to say I’ve touched David in Florence. That small white lie will sound much better than, “I’ve touched the fake David in Florence.” Claris, however, will probably insist on the clarification if I don’t offer full disclosure. She’ll add, “Simon means he touched the replica, so he wouldn’t get arrested.” I’m sure she’ll add that.

Again I wish Claris were here for this. She could snap a photo with her cellphone camera. We could reminisce about it forever and send it out to our friends. Put it up on Facebook. I could have a friend Photoshop out the background so it looks like I’m in the Accademia. Instead, I’m touching the duplicate.

But she’s not with me and I climb up onto the pedestal with him. I look for the fracture. There isn’t one.

Still no one about. I briefly think of the guy in the Hawaiian shirt. Any chance he might be waiting to give me shit or hurt me? No, not at three thirty in the morning.

I reach up between David’s legs, run my hands up his thighs along the smooth, veined and cold stone. It is a work. You’d have to be some kind of magician to capture the youthful musculature like that, and to shape this beauty so precisely. It makes you wonder who Michelangelo used for his model. Or did he chisel the marble from memory? And if so, as they say, did he cut away the extraneous rock so David would be revealed? Not sculpted, but revealed.

I reach up to the very top of his thighs until my hand rests in the middle, on his glory.

“There, there, David,” I whisper. “Now I’ve got you where I want you.”