“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
—Marcus Aurelius
It was 1986, I had finally left the bucolic pastures of Tumwater, Washington, and I was about to start my sophomore year in college at Western Washington University. I was 19, deep in a jazz and classical music program, when my friend Harlan (now a film professor) suggested that we sign up for a study abroad program that would take us to Italy, France, and England. There, as a group of music and theater students, we would study the classical arts. We’d see the great museums of Italy and France, and in England we would study theater, specifically the art of playwriting, stage design, acting, and of course music.
The cost of the whole thing was fairly expensive, but fortunately not much more than my regular tuition plus room and board, so I threw my hat in to go. I wanted to get out of the United States so badly, and here was a chance to travel in Europe and receive credit towards my music degree. As an aspiring artist, I couldn’t imagine a better opportunity.
I had to work 2 different jobs during the summer before our trip— one at an industrial explosives factory that started at 5 am and went for a full 8-hour shift, ending around 2 pm. That job involved packing explosives, loading them onto wooden pallets, and then driving a forklift when it was time to load the truck. We did it this way because with industrial explosives, you usually pack them the same day they are to be shipped to the mine, quarry, or road building project where they will be detonated. The fresher the explosive, the more powerful the punch.
My other job, as a busboy at a hotel, started about 4 pm, which gave me just enough time to race home on my motorcycle, take a shower, and show up in my white shirt, black vest, and black bow tie. That job was often more than 8 hours long and quite a bit harder than the explosive factory, because at a hotel, the job is done when the job done. Sometimes I worked a 10-12 hour shift, finishing around 4 am because during the summer it was always busier. I remember several nights when I left the hotel just as daybreak was cracking open the morning sky, realizing that I had been working for almost 24 hours. Needless to say, I never got more than about 4 hours of sleep every night that summer, and often less than that, but somehow my 19-year-old body could handle it and still keep my head relatively straight. Straight enough, at least, to pack industrial explosives the next morning.
These 2 jobs—explosive packer by day and hotel busboy by night were about as opposite ends of the spectrum as you could get, but that’s what I had to do to earn money for Europe in the summer of 1986.
By the time the fall was approaching, I had saved up a few thousand dollars and that, combined with my scholarship fund, allowed me to make the final payment for the study abroad program. I was so excited to get on the airplane in Vancouver, Canada and fly to Rome that I could barely stand the last few days of work. In fact, I had this awful feeling that I might die before escaping Washington State. Finally though, the day arrived, my parents drove me north to Vancouver to catch my flight, and with my brand new passport in hand I boarded my first international flight.
We arrived in Rome some 14 hours later and I was elated—I can’t really describe the feeling of being a small town kid and finding myself in Rome, the literal center of Western Civilization. Our hotel was quite a bit closer to the Mediterranean Sea than the city, so my first memory of Italy was walking to the edge of the sea, barefoot in the sand, and watching a magnificent lightning storm light up the evening sky.
The next day, the bus took us into town and we immediately began our journey to the biggest museum on Earth, the massive Vatican Museum. It’s much larger than the Louvre in Paris, and that’s not counting all the artifacts they have hidden down in the catacombs where no one ever gets to go. The Pagan relics in those holy bowels would likely upend most of the tenets of Christendom, but my young mind was already enraptured by the sublime beauty of the great Renaissance artists and sculptors. From Tumwater, Washington to Rome—I often felt like I was in an altered state of consciousness.
The daily excursions to museums and old Roman ruins were always highlighted by restaurant meals that would have been prohibitively expensive in the United States, but totally affordable here in relatively cheap Italy. What could you not love about this magnificent country?
There was one place, however, that remained elusive and beyond reach, and that was the mythical Roman Colosseum. It is planted squarely in the middle of Rome, its crumbling ruins held at bay by modern buttressing that allows tourists to experience the place where gladiators and wild beasts fought to the death. The problem for us, however, was that it was temporarily closed for repairs and wouldn’t reopen any time soon—certainly not before we left Europe entirely. This posed a serious problem for me and my fellow adventurers who gazed at its enormous stone walls every time we walked past it, which was nearly every day.
There were four of us within the larger class who formed the kind of brotherhood that is only found among traveling companions. Harlan, Brian, Schuyler, and myself were determined to see the Colosseum, regardless of the “No Ingresso” signs and the guards who were seen patrolling its perimeter. Now, the story that follows is not an advocacy for breaking and entering, and in my mellow middle age I cannot recommend any such incursion unless it is really warranted. We were young Americans, and we thought, in our wine-soaked brains, that this small transgression could somehow be overlooked. We were not vandals, and even if it was an arrogant and naive thing to do, we also had the “can do” spirit that our grandfathers had instilled in us. Thus, we made the stealth conversion from foreign exchange students by day to Colosseum commandos by night.
It was near the end of our stay when we hatched our plans. We figured it was better to do it the night before we left the city, rather than risk being recognized the following day. Over the black iron fence we climbed, a dangerous feat in itself because of the exquisitely pointed spikes at the top. It was supernaturally evil-looking, and stands to this day as the scariest, ugliest, black iron fence I have ever seen, much less scaled, which is not many, but it made quite a mental impression. One of the lads, which one I can’t remember, punctured the crotch of his jeans on one of the spikes, which barely missed his balls and left a permanent memory in the tender part of his manhood. However, the fence would be the easiest obstacle of the night as we entered the gloomy darkness of the chambers inside the Colosseum.
We wandered the ghostly labyrinth for quite some time, amazed at the size and dimensions of the walls, the masonry, and the dawning realization that so many people had been put to death here. Years later I read that on certain special occasions, the Emperor would have the Colosseum flooded with water from the Tiber River so they could reenact a famous sea battle. You could definitely feel the ghosts down there, and that was right about the time the shouting began.
The guards had suddenly become aware of us and I’m not sure how it happened, as we were being very quiet, and it was nearly pitch black aside from the ambient lighting of the structure. We were doing our best to be stealth, quiet, and respectful of the place, but somebody must have laughed or sneezed or somehow tipped off the guards—the chase was on.
And I literally mean the chase was on because like a movie scene, the 4 of us started running in separate directions, the guards in hot pursuit, and none of us knowing if our particular trajectory would take us to an escape route outside of the immense structure. The guards, shouting in Italian with their flashlights bouncing off the walls like a cop show, were closing in. We didn’t have flashlights with us, as that would have betrayed our positions, so we had to run through the dark labyrinth in the same way the gladiators and the condemned had run 2000 years earlier. I had no idea of the route I was running, and I can’t say I even had a plan. For all I knew, I was running in a circle. My memory of the whole thing was surreal, as if I wasn’t really there, yet I was running faster than I was previously capable.
This went on for a few minutes at least, but not much more than 10, which is actually a very long time to be running from cops, stopping to catch your breath, gauge your position, and then running again, all the while evading an aggressively shouting guard. Suddenly, there it was again—the evil, gothic, black iron fence with the needle sharp spikes. I had to be very careful as I made my final escape, lest I impale myself before the guards could grab me.
Up and over I went, using all of my forearm strength to suspend my weight as I gingerly slid over the top of the spikes, lowering myself to the other side of the fence, and a short jump to the sidewalk. James Bond (or the stuntmen who did his moves) would have been exceedingly proud of my maneuver. I hit the ground running and was instantly in a sprint across the Piazza del Colosseum and back on the road to our hotel. At some point I stopped to look back to see if any of my fellow comrades had made it out, and miraculously, all of them had, equally in a sprint down the road.
Well, the moral of the story is this: I don’t recommend that you break into ancient ruins (or anywhere for that matter), especially if you are likely to get into serious legal trouble doing so. But every now and then a rule must be broken and an adventure must be had, because that is the stuff that keeps the spirit wild, and the man untamed.