Your bag is empty.
The kids are not having sex. Weekly sexual activity among adults has fallen by a third since 1990, young people are lonelier than any generation on record, and smartphones have colonized nearly every waking hour. The results are in and the post-pandemic’s “new-normal” seems to be rapidly killing our capacity for connection.
And then there’s Rome.
As others retreat into the anxiety of social media isolation, Romans are rallying. In the face of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s crackdowns — like a 2022 law criminalizing unsanctioned gatherings of more than 50 people — young people are still leaning into the city’s long history of bohemian parties, artistic expression, and sexual freedom. As their American counterparts are increasingly isolated, Rome’s underground scene is experiencing what some are calling a veritable renaissance.
It’s the middle of the night and sweat is dripping down the walls of the club’s toilets, where scantily clad bodies are crushing, rolling, smoking, bumping and grinding to the beat of the bass and the countless lovers fucking in the next cubicle. Mirrors are covered in amphetamine-fueled love notes, propositions are slurred from lips to lobes, and the bar top’s sticky with slugs of whiskey and sloshed gin and tonics — “Heavy on the gin.”
Out on the dance floor it’s all strobe lights and arched spines getting stuck into the nitty gritty, bouncing, pounding, fizzing and frothing, tasting bitter pills on other people’s tongues – all go, all together, everybody now!
We leave as the sun starts peeking over the basilicas, warming up the Roman skyline.
By midday it’s swelteringly hot and I’m headed over to watch a performance in a piazza in Trastevere. A dancer flings her body between the Byzantine church columns and bewildered tourists before disappearing into an art gallery on the corner.
I’ve been invited by Giulian, a performance artist who frequents the same clubs I do, and who’s been living here for nine years. We sit down to chat at a graffiti sprayed bar, sipping Prosecco as more friends pass by and pull up chairs.
“The scene in Rome is like an organism that we’re all a part of. We share the same blood, we move and feel together.” Giulian says. “After COVID, something started to ferment… I felt like I was being reborn. At first I thought it was just me but then I realised it was something much bigger. We started occupying spaces and making things happen without waiting for permission.”
Our friend, the French artist Marie, agrees. “I moved to Rome and found an immensity of possibilities… This shift started a few years ago and now I feel the city is ready to explode!” Since the pandemic, Rome has seen a wave of self-organised collectives — Mala Movida, Real Isteria, Scherzo Segreto, Collective Mood — emerging alongside new nightlife series and alternative cultural venues like Clubreform, Pescheria and Santa Libbirata.
Marta, co-founder of the queer party collective Safffo, adds “People were really missing connection and community after the pandemic, so we put together our first festival in 2022 — and it was fucking amazing! I could feel the energy of people walking in being like, Wow!”
After moving to Rome from London, Marta founded Safffo — a queer party collective hosting raves, festivals and sex-positive events across the city — after arriving and finding no spaces cenetred around FLINTA* (Female, Lesbian, Intersex, Non-binary, Trans and Agender) pleasure.
“Rome is erotic,” Marie jumps in, “It’s the eroticism of being in your body, being conscious of it, and other people accepting your desire.”
Marta describes creating Rome’s first ever FLINTA*-only dark room, taking over what was “basically a changing room built for blow jobs” and turning it into a “comfortable space for people to come and be together, kiss, fuck, take drugs safely… It’s my favorite place at the party.”
We’re midway through our conversation about lesbian dark rooms when the old man at the next table leans over to introduce himself as the editor of Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly…
Rome is full of moments like this, where the ancient and the contemporary collide. Sam, from Melbourne, recalls going cruising one evening: “I met this guy who was playing a Philistine in Mel Gibson’s The Resurrection of Christ.” One thing led to another and, “he put his foot in my face, so I start sucking — then he’s gently kicking me in the nuts while I’m sticking my tongue between his toes! It was a bit of a dream, fucking under the ruins of a Roman aqueduct at sunset.”
La Grande Bellezza lives on!
Despite the pressure on young people to stay home alone and doom scroll till dawn, Romans are clawing their way out from the city’s ancient, gritty underbelly to pursue the messy, dirty, chaotic business of real true connection.
And as last night’s party winds down, the sun making its way up once again over the churches, we roll home along the river, feeling that maybe, just maybe, we’ve made it to The Right Place at The Right Time.