The History of Sex: Venice and Florence -- Casanova and the Curse of the Lobster Girl -- (Chap. IV, Pt. 17)

For the record, our fellow tourists on the table aren't Americans; they're a nice British couple and a quartet of nouveau-louche Russians.

Though from where they're sitting, of course, the Curse of the Lobster Girl has come true.

There are plenty of Americans in here besides me—most of them in the silver and gold anniversary brackets—so many, in fact, that the lingua franca of the evening is English.

Our emcees: the two Casanovas

Our tablemates from England, 'Graham' and 'Barbara,' are wearing bog-standard masks and cloaks, having hired them for €80 apiece. 'They're the cheapest I could find,' he admits.

Given that Graham does business in the Middle East, and that this Carnival jaunt is his twenty-fifth anniversary gift to his wife, this strikes me as a typical case of Yorkshireman's Thrift—or possibly an explanation for why he's wealthy and I'm not.

But Graham has another romantic treat in store: he's flying their three children in later this evening to surprise Barbara at the party.

From old-fashioned romance, then, our table runs the gamut to new-money decadence: two dour, middle-aged Russians and their vaguely exotic—or exotically vague—companions.

To be fair, the Barbie Doll Cossacks do their best to make up for their partners' totalitarian lack of charm; they're as pleasant as the men are peasant.

All four of them are dressed in the best eighteenth-century finery that money laundering can buy, with Gibraltar-sized rocks to match.

But the men have the joyless demeanor of people who can eat but can't taste.

And it's not entirely clear how solid their relationships are: the youngest woman keeps glaring at her date as he boasts to Lena that he used to earn just $4 an hour as a Soviet engineer; now he makes much more as a biznesman.

BUT DOES HE PLAY BASEBALL?

'I've been to South Africa hunting,' he mentions.

'What did you shoot?' Lena asks, hoping he'll say something that's regularly culled, like springbok—or even elephants and lions.

'Buffalo.'

Strike one.

'My friend shot a cat.'

'What type?'

'A special kind of cat.'

Strike two.

'London is my favorite city,' he says. 'It's clean, and the people are friendly.'

—mind you, the man lives in Moscow— 

 'But there's better nightlife in Moscow. That's because in London people still have some belief in God and morality. In Russia, there is no morality.'

'And what type of work do you do?' Lena asks, giving him one last chance.

'Nightclubs.'

'Really? What kind?'

'The kind that only men visit.'

'Ohhhh.'

Annnnd he's outta there.

Unconscionably, at least for someone with a sweet tooth like mine, the biznesmen drag their dates off early—before they can even have dessert.

Afterwards, as Lena and I make our way across the Grand Canal to our hotel, we're stopped on the Accademia bridge by a couple in their twenties: 'Scusi—una foto?'

So we pose with the plainclothed Italians in a role reversal worthy of Carnival—though I can't help thinking there's something wrong with this picture.

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