My Beautiful Band of Brothers

My first weekend in Milan, Penny decided to stay in as she usually did, and so, after getting a phone call from Jean-Paul I decided to head out on my own and meet up with him and his roommates at Parco Sempione, which is Milan's huge main park crowned by a stone castle & fortress complete with a moat. Behind the castle there is a large clearing where on any given day you can find bevies of models just taking in the sun, playing soocer, smoking herb, and just basking in how good life is. This would be my first of very many trips to the clearing.

Parco Sempione's castle-fortress:



I walked from my apartment to the park taking it all in and so excited to see one of my best friends in this foreign town. Halfway through the park I was accosted by a short, swarthy guy with a heavy and non-Italian accent....he had a little group off to the side that must have been his posse, and I was pretty intimidated. I had my purse around my neck and held with one hand....my wallet and passport were both in there and I was not about to let go. The guy kept walking very close to me speaking to me in English and Italian asking if I wanted any "hashish, verrry verrry gooood hashish" all the while rubbing up against my purse. I took off at a faster pace until I got to the clearing where I would be looking for Jean-Paul (who I am just gonna call JP from here on out) and he finally backed off.

The clearing:



I was lucky I got away with my purse intact as he was one of many gypsies that are notorious in most European cities for cutting holes in your bags and extricating the contents with the precision of a neuro surgeon, or cutting purse straps completely and taking off with the whole enchilada. In all of my travels to Europe I have encountered quite a few of these characters, many of which use their own children to rob from tourists, luckily, all I ever lost was an agency cell phone on a crowded tram.

A bit flustered, I started looking for JP and finally picked him out in a crowd of several beautiful boy models who would eventually become what I like to call my crew, or my little band of brothers. Although our relationship had always been platonic and nothing more than the best of friends, we ran to each other like out of some cheesy romance movie scene and ended up in a huge bear hug. Here we were in Italy, not knowing anyone, but we had each other. It was a comfort for sure.

JP then introduced me to his roommates, and he had a lot of them. JP was with WhyNot Model Mgmt. which placed their models in what are called the Celebrity Apartments. These apartments were owned and managed by a woman named Lori who allegedly was married to Eric Clapton once upon a time and who, rumor has it, was the mother of the the little boy, Eric's son, who fell to his death, hence the famous song.....JP lived in Celebrity Apartment number one, otherwise known as C-1, with 11 other guys. The ones I met that day at the park were Ned from Maryland, Geoff from Texas, and Paul from South Africa. Ned and Geoff had girlfriends at the time, and the girls were there as well. So we all hung out and talked, about what, I don't remember, but I do remember being really glad to be there and to be making friends with cats who were cool and smart and just all around good to be with.

As dusk approached they invited me over to their apartment where I met the rest of the crew, Jason (Canada), Kerry (California), Muffin (South Africa), and Sammy (Boston). There were other boys living there too, but these were the ones that became my friends, the others were either too elusive, unfriendly or who knows what. Their apartment could have been luxury digs had it been furnished. It was an enormous space surrounding a marbled courtyard with a gazebo in the middle, very pretty, but the guys were relegated to hanging out on benches in the courtyard or in their bedrooms where the only furnishings were beds and armoires....maybe a chair if you got lucky. Their "hausfrau" was an Italian guy named Ale, who said he was a model, but which we all doubted unless he was booking work for GNC Creotine bottles. He was short, outrageously buff, and ever so fakely tanned and blonde. He was always nice to me and the other girls that would visit, but definitely had an issue with the male models. If any one of them would leave a dirty pot or dish in the sink he would come out to the courtyard where everyone was and throw the pan across the floor while screaming about everyone being a pig or something. Later I heard accounts of his threatening the guys with butcher knives and even of confiscating and destroying another model's acoustic guitar. Ale was insane. But that just added to the entertainment value of hanging out at C-1.

C-1 became my second home that season. My apartment was so quiet and lonely, and my friends were always text messaging me to come over and hang out, I was officially one of the boys.