An irresistible impulse to steal without dexterity or the perfume provisionally pocketed and forgotten there, or even carelessness. A little personal story
I know Piero Fassino as a worthy person, as much as it is possible to safeguard a decent reputation by living a long public life in a world like this. There is a wealth of detail surrounding his passage through an airport duty-free shop. Brand of perfume, price (130 euros), type of jacket and pocket capacity, type of telephone and any earphones (no earphones), destination of the flight and its use, whether outbound or return (outbound), existence or non-existence of anti-shoplifting devices (useful this, I didn’t know the word), consulting off-duty employees about whether he had made a name for himself as a habitual shoplifter, etc.
I essentially find three hypotheses. 1. An irresistible impulse to steal without skill. 2. What he said, two cluttered hands, the perfume temporarily pocketed. 3. A carelessness, a failed act instead of an attempted act, as can happen to a man who is no longer young, distracted and absorbed in his own affairs.
I understand that the situation is unfortunate for Fassino, and I hope it ends soon. But it’s not him I wanted to talk about, it’s me. The fact is that knowing which of the three versions, or a possible fourth, is the true one, doesn’t matter to me at all. The little story of the airport and the duty-free shop and the perfume simply reminded me that, for the most diverse and unpredictable reasons, and what’s more “of slight importance” or perhaps completely involuntary, a man, especially a man as old as it’s me, can sink into a desolate afternoon, summed up and exhausted in the admission, so clear that it seems written in capital letters on the opposite wall: “I DID SOME FUCK”.
