Megan Stielstra is the author of Once I Was Cool. Her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, and her next collection, COME HERE FEAR, is forthcoming from Harper Perennial.
Spin My sophomore year in college, I attended a study-abroad program in a tiny cobblestone city in Tuscany that was so beautiful I thought it was pretend. The streets were narrow and lined with churches and cathedrals and museums; every ceiling was painted with stories; every wall molded into gargoyles and cherubs. At its center was a football field-sized square called Piazza del Campo where everyone met up, drank in the culture, and in my…