On The Sopranos, my favorite character is Furio. I like him for his silk shirts, his collared shirts, his tiger-striped shirts, his floral-patterned shirts, his wide and open v-neck shirts where Jesus can peek out, laid in gold on bare skin. I like him for his hair, his horse-thick luscious hair. I’d bite his ponytail in half. I like his big watch. I like his accent. I like that they imported him from Italy, like a nice cheese or a gun. I like how nice he is to the mob boss of New Jersey, driving him, killing for him. I like how nice he is to the mob boss’s wife. I like how he looks dancing with her, her French tips on his Italian shoulders. The mob boss never notices them dancing. He’s too busy talking business. Americans are always busy talking business. The mob boss has no time for his wife. I like that Furio has time for her, time to talk to her, to say nice things to her, to sip her sour home-brewed coffee, her American coffee, nothing like the coffee in Italy. I like looking up trivia after I finish a TV show. Did you know Furio’s shirts are all Versace? (Well some are Versace knock-offs.) Did you know costume designer Juliet Polsca picked the printed silk shirts to separate Italian Furio from the Italian-American others? The Americans wear track suits rustling like plastic bags. The Americans aren’t lovers. They don’t deserve silk cut soft as butterfly wings. They tuck dead bodies into plastic bags and ask Furio, beautiful Furio, in his gold-black patterned silk Versace shirt to saw a man in slices like a pig. The Americans fuck strippers and snort powdered sugar off a Dunkin’ Donut and never notice Furio, ponytailed Italian stallion Furio, hand-feeding a fine and flaky pastry to the mob boss’s wife until it’s too late and she’s in love and his life’s in danger and he must gallop back across the whole gaping Atlantic Ocean, Columbus in reverse. In bed, she will dream of silk and sunshine next to her American husband, her husband in a gold cross and holey white shirt, the sort of shirt they like to call a wife-beater.
Masha Kurbatova (she/her) is a fiction MFA candidate at the University of Arkansas. She’s the Book Reviews Editor for The Arkansas International literary magazine. Her work is forthcoming/has appeared in HAD, Farewell Transmission, BULL, the Tightwires Anthology, and Crow & Cross Keys.
Please send her pictures of your dog via Instagram @dogenthusiast.
