Chronology is a Bitch.

So after that wild night that truly signaled the start to a new season in Milan, I can't quite accurately tell you what exactly ensued. Maybe I just don't want to realize that, (GASP), all of this took place almost a decade ago...while I really want to believe that it was all just yesterday. I cannot possibly admit that I am that much closer to Depends and Dentucreme now then I was then....sigh....oh the anguish of it all! ;)

I do know that we maintained our busy casting schedule. Sat in cattle calls for hours, tried our best to decipher what the clients were thinking or saying while looking at our books. We convened at Parco Sempione in the warm afternoons of Italian spring and summer....drank wine, smoked cigs (but only to keep the sadistic mosquitos away, right?) and talked for hours on end about everything and nothing at all....We partied at night like the insouciant youth that we were....leaving clubs as the sun was making its way back out to greet the world. We ran around on blackened feet to castings, ever trying to fold and refold those tarpaulin sized maps of La Citta de Milano....we stopped to eat gelato, panini, antipasti, drink caffe lattes and cappuccinos and espremutas di arancia. We stopped to smell the roses back then too.

I look back on those days with the utmost joy, fondness and melancholy. Those truly were the best days of my life. I traveled and got paid to do so...and most importantly....I had the BEST friends on earth to do it with. We were actually there for each other...not in a Facebook kind of way...but in an actual IN YOUR FACE kind of way. Nothing compares to that now...never will.

I didn't end up working as much as I had wanted to this particular season in Milan...but that didn't matter. I booked a few catalogs, a small editorial, a couple of hair advertisements, and worked showroom for Byblos. It was enough to keep my account clear at the agency. I knew Asia was around the corner for me again where I could repad the old checking account. What mattered was that deep down inside of me I knew that this season in Milan was going to be one of the last seasons that all of us...the C-9 Killahs and the Dolce Crew....would be together. My best bud, my little brother love, Ned, even came out from Paris to spend a few weeks with the old crew in our madness and moments of joyful indiscretion. For just a moment we are all back together and it felt like something that good could never end. But, alas, all good things do come to and end.

A few new good compadres were even added to the mix...as if a group that great could get any better...it did. Ryan, Josh, Daryl, Daniel, Casey....all of us total addicts to the gods of gelati. God, I miss all of those cats. Badly.

And now we are all grown up and off and around the world....some married with kids. Some newlyweds (CONGRATS MIKEY!!), some heading corporations, some still living the dream, some have just fallen off the map.....but never forgotten. ;)

This post just got WAY more emotional then I intended it to....lol! I just truly miss those moments in a lifetime that seems completely like fiction to me now. I miss knowing that in a month or two I would be back on a plane, my life in a midsized black suitcase, and off to see my friends again in some distant land.....too good to be true? It wasn't then....just is now.

And with that I'll sign off. No point in weeping into my laptop. ;) I'll be back again shortly with some proper anecdotes and pictorials. After all, I did make it back to Venice with some of the newer members of my crew...only this time no one ended up getting arrested.

xoxo