On heat, sex, cars and the k-word.

OK, it's way too hot to think. Or write. Or do anything else without having to carry a bucket and a mop. Milan's burning and I'm caught in the middle of the blaze. My 5th floor flat under the roof is like a Turkish bath without an exit sign these days. So I'll rant randomly, as seems to be the new trend:

- I just came back from the gym, where I ran 75 minutes on the treadmill, and broke the sweat of the century. From this makeshift observatory, I see everything that happens in the gym. And I confidently came to a conclusion, just by taking a close look at my fellow Milanese gym-goers: it's not that Italian males are all gay, as I very often suspected. I would be very presumptuous to think so. It's just that a large percentage of them (among other scientifical constatations) feel the aesthetical urge to pluck their eyebrows regularly. Or wear sport gear that would normaly be favoured by the likes of Pamela Anderson. or greet each other (at least in the gym) in a way that the rest of the world would confidently define as homo-erotic, for the least (an inspiration haven for porn directors in need of a creative boost...) All this doesn't necessarily mean they are gay, does it? I'm protecting my karma, this is plain anthropology: I guess, before seeing the gays everywhere, that one should study if growing up on a diet of pizza, pasta and gelato might be of some incidence on the quality of testosterone. Hear me, Sarah Palin...

- Speaking of heat, the underground in Milan. I think I already described the sorry state of the Milanese public transportation network. Milan's Mayor, a woman that positively gives me the creeps (and reminds me of Meryl Streep in The Mandchourian Candidate), keeps boasting that this is the best city in the world, and that she gets daily phone calls from the mayors of London, New York, Stockholm or Sydney, voicing their envy and jealousy of the modernity, quality of life, infrastructures of Milan and sky-high level of happiness of its inhabitants. Three subway lines cross the city: I'm lucky I live close to one of these lines, the oldest one. The subway company has fitted the trains with air conditioning a few years ago. Problem: it doesn't work. I took it yesterday, and the A/C machines were positively blowing out hot air. I'm not blaming anybody: sweating is such a great way to detoxify. I look at the bright side of things, I need to back up my good karma: Mrs M. has only our well-being in mind...

- BF, who's a great professional, won a prize last Christmas: the use of a newly released, German-made SUV, for 2 months. He's had it for about 3 weeks. It's parked under my flat, and has only served one purpose: further reduce the parking space in my street. This car is huge: when BF asked me if I could move it on the fixed night they clean the street, once a week (and thus to avoid getting a fine), I answered I'd love to if I had a truck driving licence. There is no way I'll get behind the wheel: one because it's so high I'd be afraid to run over someone and not realize it until the police stops me. Two because I'm sure that driving this car would bestow on me the worst karma ever. Such a huge SUV would bear too much responsability in ripping further apart the ozone layer. I expressed my indignation to BF, regretting he wasn't given temporary use of a cool hybrid car. He answered with the expression that, in Italy, comes as a final solution to many problems: "A caval donato, non si guarda in bocca!" (In English: Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if it has the rabies...) In a little over a month, the car-maker will get its car back, happy that lending it to us (to go to fabulous fashion places and events, maybe) was a great PR stunt. Little would he know that the biggest use of this car was made when I'd secretly go and read in it, A/C at full power, when it's too hot to stay home... I plead guilty to that, my karma is fucked and I know I'll be punished in my next life: I'll pull a rickshaw somewhere monsoony...

- In Rome, do as the Romans do. In Milan, when it's too hot, get away. BF is taking me to Switzerland tonight, where we'll stay with friends near the Lugano lake, where, hopefully, things will be fresher. And where I'll be able to visit my beloved Swiss supermarkets and stock on their wonderful, healthy organic food. And then I'm off to Paris for a week (more on that later), getting ready for real holidays (vs. forced, unemployed ones at home. More on these too later). Escaping as a way to save my kar...

33 (very, very) random facts about me

- This post is the 100th on this blog.
- I once slapped a guy in the subway in Paris. I was very nervous, as I was trying to quit smoking. It was rush hour and packed, and he wouldn’t move and make room for me. I know slapping is not as manly as hitting, but it was my first time and it was totally spontaneous. I don’t always overreact (at least like this).
- Hard as I tried, I’ve never been a Madonna fan, and continue to be totally unfazed by the character. Though I do like a couple of her songs.
- I have a profound aversion to any flying animals, whatever their size.
- When I was 20, I bought a very cheap ticket to fly to New York with Pakistan International Airlines. My luck was that I managed to cancel it and get a full refund (once I realized the rest of my savings wouldn’t fund me more than a couple of days in New York).
- I met Monica Lewinsky (and found her actually quite nice). I met Woody Allen, mistook him for a beggar and called security. All this when I was selling newspapers and magazines at the English Bookshop in Paris. Oh, and once having a priest buying porn magazines shattered the remnants of my faith and constituted my very first professional dilemma.
- Things I can’t do, as hard as I tried, and I wish I could do: whistling, skiing, playing tennis, speaking in public, playing the piano, drawing. Among others.
- Things I can do, but that are of little (social or practical) use: knitting, knowing by heart the list of the 96 French administrative departments and their main cities, doing (quite well) crosswords and origami. And too many others to list.
- My biggest vanity is when people abroad take me for a local. And their look of surprise when/if I tell them I’m not.
- I swear in Italian, but count in French.
- I visited the Twin Towers on August 11, 2001.
- My biggest professional gaffe: I was 21, interning at the French State Radio, and had to call a semi-famous musician, to interview him about the just-announced death of a renowned French singer, with whom he had worked forever and been great friend. He didn’t know she had died. I decided to learn subtlety that day.
- I’m a huge Harry Potter fan (to the point of listening to the HP audiobooks when I go running).
- I’m addicted to food programs on TV, the best being anything gross and greasy from The Food Network, or anything impossibly chic by Nigella Lawson. Yet I can’t cook, even if I wanted to.
- I once shared a flat in London with, among other very weird people, a (loud) guy working from home as a sex phone operator. I resisted 6 months. Yet I am convinced I'd be better at it than he ever was.
- I am extremely proud of my handwriting. I love writing longhand. I know how to write shorthand, but I’m so slow that this is one resolutely useless skill.
- I lost the count of all the flats in which I lived, since I turned 18 (well over 20). I took pride in it once. I find it a bit pathetic now.
- I got my driver’s licence on the 4th try. If I had known I would drive so little in my life, I don’t think if I would have bothered that much.
- I speak approximately well German, and moderately Spanish and Portuguese. And the drunker, the better. I wish I could speak these languages fluently though. Going back to studying them, or at least one of them, is a regular New Year’s resolution.
- I started self-teaching Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Arabic and Japanese. I never went past Chapter 1 of each of my books, yet I can greet you, present myself, and inquire about your health, your choice of hot drinks or wish you immense luck in any of these languages.
- I smoke way too much. I gave it up for 6 months, and took it up again when I moved back to Milan.
- I have at least 10 visible scars on my head and body.
- My dream would be to write a novel. At least one. Fear of failure is my main source of writer’s block.
- I realize there are many things I’d like to do or try in my life, yet don’t. My shrink said it’s because of my extreme guilt in regards to living my life as I would like to. I’m working on that.
- I love the smell of hospitals, churches, swimming pools and underground parking lots. I hate the smell of gas stations and elevators
- I have very large ears. It’s a family thing, and, apart form hardcore, totally doubtful plastic surgery, there is nothing I can do about it, so I decided to like them.
- I have never marched in a Gay Pride, I don’t want to have kids, I am not into PDA at all. Yet I’m not closeted. And I’m pro gay marriage (and not so sure about gay adoption, if it’s for the sake of being equal).
- I can’t decide which is my favourite film, book or singer. I have too many to make a decision. BF says I’m not credible.
- I never dated a French guy. I may have gone on dates with French people, but it never lasted long enough to remember.
- I once had 2 boyfriends simultaneously. It was hell. I am a very, very bad liar.
- I’m the fourth of 7 children. I hardly know my extended family, nor much history about my ancestors.
- I am extremely punctual, and precise to the point of being über anal-retentive.
- I’m 33, today. An age known in Italy as “l’età di Cristo”, the age of Christ, when he died. This is supposed to mean that one is really an adult at this stage, or should have founded a cult by then, or succeeded in anything. I’d rather not know actually.And yet...

Man at work

Hercules (who might have understood what I go through) at work.

I stayed home much too long these past 5 months, which is a very long time, especially considering that my routine is sickeningly repetitive. So I started doing a bit of odd, temp jobs, to keep busy, see the outside world, and make a (very little, almost irrelevant) bit of money, which never hurts. Because the rules of employment (and the sorry state of it too) are very tricky in Milan, finding a temporary occupation (for a week, a month, anything part-time) is rather complex. Everything is long and compicated here. It kills me.
I remember when I was a student in London, in golden ages, I worked everywhere, at the cash desk in a luxury supermarket, making cappuccino’s in a so-called Italian café, handing out condoms in Soho, folding letters by the thousand in a back-office of a global company, among others. I’d find these jobs in no time, and would hold them as long as I needed the extra-cash or as long as it didn’t clash with my schedule at university. This rhythm of work was as quick as convenient.
Call me snobbish, but I was a bit more cautious recently to go get such jobs. It’s one thing to do them at 22, another at 32. Add to this my huge fear of being trapped forever in an irrelevant job… Yet, I did it, especially as I really neede to get out of home.
Two weeks ago, I got myself an uncomplicated representation job, at Milan’s Trade Fair. My duty was to sit at the desk of the East European Chambers of Commerce in Italy. Theoretically, my role was to give any information to whomever of Slavic descent was interested in doing business with Italy, or the opposite. So I spent a week in royal peace, disturbed only a couple of times by people looking either looking for the bathroom or the exit (and also by this confrontational Indian businessman who ordered me to find him someone who could help him import his Basmati rice in Italy. He got angrier when I told him that as until today India wasn’t in Eastern Europe, there was no way whatsoever I could do anything for him). So what went as a bleak, highly inconclusive week for the East European economy turned out to be a serene time for me.
All this meant I had plenty of tie work and (try to) concentrate on the to-do-list of my future, without having to face the numerous distractions and procrastination opportunities that home usually provides. Getting back into a working routine, although momentary, did me much good. Even if it implied waking up insanely early, trying hard not to break a Noah-like sweat in the sauna-like suburban train while crossing the city from East to West and a couple of other little pains in the ass, yet perfectly bearable.
New week, new job. This week was Men’s Fashion Week in Milan. I went to work for some fashion shows as a host. Job description: wear black suit and tie, stand upright, smile a lot, and show journalists and buyers their seat when they arrive. We had to arrive 2 hours prior to the beginning of the show, which always starts one hour late. The job implied a lot of waiting, often under the sun. It implied being the scapegoat of (though I should write “treated like the lowest kind of shit”) über-stressed press officers, responsible, in their eyes, for most failures and flaws in their organization of the catwalk show. Dealing with arrogant, ignorant and angered people is not my speciality. All this for a miserable pay check (and not an immediate one, as the little money I earned won’t be paid until 3 months, so I know I can pay for my cigarettes comes the fall!)
Throughout this, I kept wondering, Why? Why me? What have I done to deserve that? I am glad I did it, as it acted as an extra incentive to keep on sending resumes around. Yet it sealed the future, unless unforeseen circumstances arise. I. Don’t. Want. To. Work. In. This. Country. Ever. Again.
Time to move on. Big time. Clueless at how to proceed, but working on it...

On Tandoori and Tehran, if I may...

On Thursday night, V. invited me for dinner. Attending were also 8 or so of her closest friends, most of whom I already knew and whose company I really enjoy. She cooked, among other things Indian, the best tandoori chicken I ever ate in my life (prompting my speculation that she must have been the cook to some Maharaja in a previous life, so good it was). Apart form the pleasure of being together, of having dinner at someone’s place (something I love, but is so rare here in Milan, as previously discussed), we talked politics. Hardcore, intense, exhaustive politics. I couldn’t be happier.

Those who have been following this blog for a while will have understood the simple way my brain works: when my mind is set on, or preoccupied by, something, I deploy all my energy on that and leave little room for anything else. Nor, most time, do I feel inclined to bother changing my minds. And perhaps it shows: V. asked me the day after if I was all right, that I looked a bit preoccupied. I was inclined to blame it on my jobless life, yet, I realized the “culprit” was none other than Iran. This is who I am.

You’d have guessed that since my last post, the delicate situation in Iran has been monopolizing my thoughts and time. These days, I’ve seen countless pictures, videos and footage, read extensive reviews, accounts and analysis on the uprising in Tehran, on the story of Iran (the best hub of information being the Huffington Post, which provides, in my sense, an excellent coverage of the situation, as well as countless links to the best articles, videos and Twittering available on the subject). There’d be so much to say and write and comment and argue about, and I, for one, don’t feel able to give a thorough and fair rendering of what’s going on.

An anonymous commentator (who turned out to be my brother, I’d recognize him between millions) wrote on the post before this that the problem is not who the president should be: the problem is the regime. I agree. Yet, once again, the situation is more intricate. Iran is a fascinating, yet quite indecipherable (when you are caught unprepared), country and society. To tell the truth, I’m being quite pessimistic about the turn that events there are likely to turn. Yet this time, Pandora’s box has been opened, ever so slightly, and it should definitely influence the future. But at what price?

A couple of days ago, I found this series of BBC documentary on YouTube, which was made to “commemorate” the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Three parts, divided in 18 segments to understand what really is at stake here, and where does everything come from. Before Anonymous Commentator says anything, yes, OK, it sometimes sounds quite UK/US biased, but never before did I realise to what extent everything is related: Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US, the EU, the Shah, Khomeyni, the nuclear issue etc... And how we got where we are now. Fascinating, yet frightening. If you have three hours to spare (I know, an awful lot), watch it here: Episode 1 (part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6). Episode 2 (part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6). Episode 3 (part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6).

So much for the petty rendition of my inconsequential life these days. I should soon relate my latest, temporary job experiences (mostly working these days as a smiling fixture at Milan’s Men Fashion Shows, a confirmation, if I ever needed one, how the fashion world can be shallow and irritating). As always, something light will follow. In the meantime, an on cue with the theme of these days, do visit this favourite blog of mine, Life goes on in Tehran. And remember, there's much more, so much more, there than just the Islamic Republic and the mollahs.

There is so much more to Iran, indeed. Could this video ever sum it up?

The volcano

Theran rising

discontentment is very much grounded and they shall know no truce, until they have the truth.

Copyright AFP

On life in litterature

Another Zola post. One of the reasons I love reading so much in general (and Zola in particular), comes from this sense of joy and satisfaction I feel each time I come upon a passage, where I feel that the author could have been writing about my life or me. A particular chapter of L'Argent, that I read this morning while crossing Milan in the underground, was another of these (not so small) epiphanies. Let me quote just a few of these remarkably accurate lines:

"Lorsque Madame Caroline revint devant sa table, elle eut un léger frisson. [...]Un instant, elle resta là, heureuse et surprise. Voilà donc qu'une de ces grandes crises était encore passée, elle espérait de nouveau. Quoi? Elle n'en savait toujours rien, l'éternel inconnu qui était au bout de la vie, au bout de l'humanité. Vivre, cela devait suffire, pour que la vie lui apportât sans cesse la guérison des blessures que la vie lui faisait. Une fois de plus, elle se rappelait les débâcles de son existence[...]; et à chaque écroulement, elle retrouvait la vivace énergie, la joie immortelle qui la remettait debout, au milieu des ruines."
Emile Zola, L'argent, 1891

For those of you who may have a few problems reading and understanding Zola en français, I provide a translation, on which I worked especially for you, priviledging the meaning over the litterary values of the original version. I count on your kind understanding...

When she came back to her desk, Madame Caroline felt a slight shudder. [...] For an instant, she stood there, joyful and surprised. One of her crisis had passed another time, and she was hopeful again. For what? She still didn’t know, the eternal unknown that was at the end of life, at the end of mankind. To live—this should be enough, so that life would endlessly heal the wounds that it itself inflicted upon her. Once again, she remembered the misfortunes of her existence[...]; yet each time after she had fallen apart, she found again the vivacious energy, the immortal joy that made her stand up again, in the middle of the ruins.

Madame Caroline, c'est moi!

On litterature in life

L'Argent, 1928 screen adaptation screen-cap.

Emile Zola is, without the slightest doubt, one of my favourite French writers (tight race with Simone de Beauvoir though). In France, he is commonly considered a boring, depressing, out-of-date author, whose writings mainly belongs to compulsory high-school reading.

It’s true indeed that it does not make for a hilarious reading (a leader of the highly realistic Naturalist movement, he had more on his plate than just crack jokes) — but the extent to which this man was a visionary is extraordinary. The way he describes the society he lived in is not only terrifyingly accurate, but forces to conclude that, whatever occurs (social, economical, political progresses or regressions), the world, then and now, hasn’t really changed. Nor that it should, in a foreseeable future…

In L'Argent (Money, which he got published in 1891, and that I am currently reading), if you change the characters’ names (Saccard and Rougon respectively becoming Bernie Maddoff and Alan Greenspan) and adapt the settings of the plot into a contemporary context (La Bourse, the Paris Stock Exchange, in 1864 becoming Wall Street in 2008), you would end up with a comprehensive, accurate, reliable, Vanity Fair-like narration of the current financial meltdown. The behaviours and the dynamic (pure greed, careless speculation, utter ignorance), the outcome are, sadly, identical.

Hippies still have bright days ahead…

Tales of a city

Between 2001 and now, I calculated I've lived a grand total of 6 years in Milan, not bad for a city that I like, but that, for sure, I don't love. These days, I am trying to defend myself from the agressive gloom of my current work situation, while making an attempt at drawing a couple of conclusions before moving on. Why am I here in the first place? What do I want next from life? What can I do, about it, but also in general? And not, as is too often the custom here, what can people I know bring me or do for me...

These days, I am reflecting, with the coolest possible head. Preparing the future, and trying hard not to reproduce old mistakes. All this staying-in-Milan-and-trying-hard-to-make-it-happens was most noble, yet such perseverance in the long run proved fruitless. I achieved very little, and way less that I could have pretended too. I have spent more trying to find a job, rather than working in a position where I actually used both halves of my brain - and this is, I'm very afraid, wasted time, precious time I could have put at better use somewhere else.

So yes, the future might lie elsewhere. BF and I have even started discussing the option and the future. And for now, we are sort of cool about it. But this time, I'm not rushing out of the country with the first available flight. Although I have to act somewhat quickly (I'd sooo love to work again -and not at home- after the summer), I'm trying not to get over-excited and screw it up. And if you have ever tried, you may know how painlessly difficult this is.

I am an eternal wanderer, never able to visit a city without feeling the urge to move there and act local, learn the language and the custom ... There are cities (London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Lisbon, New York, Paris) that I already know well and love, where I'd move to in the blink of an eye, if life was easier (read: if I had more balls, if money wasn't such a condition/pre-requisite/problem...)
And then there are also cities I never been to (Stockholm, Munich, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Madrid, San Francisco, Istanbul) that I'd really love to visit, and seriously intend to, one day. My recent trips in Europe helped me realize I am truly the person I want to be when I'm travelling and not in Milan. Harsh, I know, but true. Yet I have to be realistic and find out where my best chances lie. Optimism, confidence, breathe in, breathe out, and... visualize it!

Then I read Anna's blog, and I found this picture of my ideal city. Let me take five good minutes to wander out of reality, in the streets of the metropolis that would resolve a great deal of my issues...

Mourning

I don't really know where to start this post. Sunday evening, and I am still hungover from last night. There is no need relating everything, the habitual scenario, unfortunately. Sushi, vodka, Maggazzini Generali, home at 6 am, woke up at 11, drank liters of water, back to bed until the middle of the afternoon, some reading with the TV on and BF sleeping on the couch. The head is buzzing, the mood is low. And the lingering thought that, although I had "fun", this is not the life I want to lead. This is pointless, useless, sterile. There is more I want to do, more I want to see. from this world. Not just only drugged clubbers dancing shirtless in a pool of sweat and vomit. Not just this falsified reality of the Milanese nightlife, and its followers, just a sum of as many lonelinesses flocking together. Everything that happened to me in the past months has taught me a great lesson about myself: being out of work, realising I may have a value, one that was constantly denied to me through university and the too many job interviews I did in Paris or in Milan all these years. And the people, and how promptly they can run away from you. And eventually the realisation that I really have to stop waiting for people to give me the green light to go and live my life as I wish to live it. In a month I'll be 33. There is no more time to lose. I have too much potential, I don't want to lose everything. Much food for thoughts for one Sunday night. My idea was to find a few things to write here and go to bed. Yet I had to come up with something to say...

And then came the phone call, from one of my very close friends in Paris. One of our friends was found dead in his flat, yesterday morning. He was only 26. I'd rather not go into more details. I'm under such shock, and so sad, and freaked out, and I can't believe it, and I don't want to believe it. And I feel guilty that I didn't speak to him more last time I saw him in Paris a month ago, or that I hadn't been more present in general- as I always knew he needed help, though he hardly ever showed it, on the contrary. I made a round of calls to friends in Paris. This is so weird, so sudden, so unbelievable, the untimeliness, the conditions, that no one was sure how to react.
And then along with the tears came the anger. A strange mix of feelings. I'm pretty sure I know what happened, and I'm pretty sure why. This is a sad case of a wasted life. I'll go to bed before I turn cryptic, as some things are better not discussed here in such a state of shock.
But I looked at the sky, very symbolically, and promised myself, quite solemnly, that his death will remind me that it's time for me to seriously get on with my life. If I knew him, this is undoubtedly what he may have wanted...

On family and growing up...

Sis and I, last Friday, having drinks on Genoa's Porto Antico, after a family day at the beach on the Riviera.

I’ve never been great around kids. They are a complete mystery to me, they scare me. I don’t have a clue how to behave with them, so much that they feel it. And tend to react accordingly. They consider me as a boring adult, at best, but most commonly, as a preaching tyrant. I believe it all comes from my being over-protective, from my fear of seeing them hurt themselves. From my desire to protect them from all these traps of childhood I tend to see everywhere. I guess there are still long therapy sessions ahead for me. So last week, when my little sister arrived, with husband, kids and dog in tow, for a long weekend in Milan, I was both very happy and slightly stressed out. I love my nephews, yet I don’t them very well. And they don’t know me either. And even if I have been an uncle for the past ten years, to 4 kids now, none of them has ever visited me yet (I have been living away/they were small/I was the one to visit etc…). So for this first time, I did my best to welcome them, enquiring on what kids like to eat for breakfast or snack, thinking hard what I could show them (or keep them busy with) while they were here. The first days proved well how out of touch, how uncomfortable I can be. But I’m glad I had a chance to get better through the weekend. Especially by looking at how my sister acts and behaves with them. I always knew she was a good mother, but I was amazed at seeing her dealing with her kids, always smiling, always supportive, always loving, yet able to show enough authority when required. I then realized they have the best role-models/parents possible, so my duty was not to try to save them, but to amuse them. And so I tried, doing my best, asking if anybody wanted to drink a Coke or have an ice-cream, tirelessly pushing young people on the swing (of every playground we encountered throughout Milan). All of this while the parents could have a miraculously long nap. So I may be remembered for a while as the daunting-looking yet doting-trying uncle. There is lots of room fr improvement, but for the first time in my life, I started to be comfortable with this new role of mine.
What wouldn’t one do for their little sis…

My big, fat, Greek week

A trip to such a place — always better than a kick in the teeth, innit?

Monday, and I am home in Milan, sitting at my desk, and pinching myself hard, as I have a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that, only two days ago, I was basking under the Greek sun of Mykonos. Five days in total, very well spent. And I eventually got more than I bargained for.

Mykonos is small and cramped, even in the first weeks of May. I can hardly imagine what the place looks like in August, when a third of Italy and flock to these shores of the Aegean Sea. Mykonos is a gigantic tourist trap, to say the least. Shops selling Greek traditional artefact by the kilo (for the most, it appeared, made somewhere in special administrative regions in China) alternate with those selling the tackiest of Italian fashion or some atrociously show-off-y jewellery. Everything is aimed at tourists, and I haven’t seen anything, that was remotely typical, not greedily taken advantage of.

The Greeks also seem to enjoy exploiting commercially the gay card. Shops and bars and restaurants and bakeries, they all support the cause and boast a rainbow-flag sticker in their windows (or an actual flag somewhere). The Pink Euro is still a reality for many of them. Add to this the ear-splitting music coming from the bars at night, and I couldn’t help but pity all these centenarian women, dressed in black, who roam the streets and feed the stray cats during the day: the island of their fathers must seem like the strangest place for them to live on. Even I, who wouldn’t hear a military band in my room while I sleep, had trouble getting a rest because of the noise hell that is Mykonos at night.

Mykonos, as V. puts it mildly, is a bit like Guantanamo for the gays. Everybody knows this. Maybe spring is not the choicest holiday period for them, as those I’ve seen (or recognized as such) weren’t the most numerous. But then again, wait till summer really kicks in. The bulk of the flock, these days, were European, American and Japanese pensioners, that cruise liners kept vomiting on the quays of the city’s port. They always landed at the hottest hours of the day, strolled the tiny streets, caressed the pelicans, took pictures of the white-washed walls and blooming bougainvillea, and as soon as the mercury started to lower to more bearable temperatures, they all fretted back to the harbour and sailed off to another island.

Yet, I must admit one thing: despite all this, Mykonos is a fascinating place. Because of all these white, tiny houses dramatically contrasting with an extremely blue and pure sky; the sea wind; the food; the Mythos beer. And for this inebriating feeling of tranquillity I got, no matter how un-tranquil things can be at times. And also because the Greeks are a funny people, blunt, tremendously talkative and, for the most part, extremely welcoming (or they have a strong sense for commerce, but I don’t mind that). The purpose of my stay in Mykonos was not purely touristic: I had a mission, which I completed in due times. Yet it wasn’t forced works, and I had quite a lot of free times to roam the island on my own during the day, and the streets of Chora at night.

What made my stay truly outstanding where the number and diversity of very interesting people I met there. Among them were this extremely touching couple of British gay pensioners on their sacred, annual trip to the island; a 40-something, feisty French fag-hag—a former economist nothing less— who found her nirvana serving drinks to the gays in Mykonos for the past 20 years, and with which I had at least two long, extraordinary conversations about love, life and the pursuit of happiness; a Parisian shrink, with whom I had another opportunity for mindboggling conversation (and thanks to whom I flew back to Milan without having to pop an anxiolytic pill for the fear of flying…).

I had my fair share of doubts when I first set foot there. Happy to travel again, but yes, doubts. I wasn't exactly keen to experience the “Disneyland-on-Sea by day, Sodom and Gomorrah by night” reputation of the island. It may be true to some extents. But I was there, and I would be a fucking liar if I denied the beauty of the place, its power of attraction, whatever its tacky side. And all these people I met. They made me feel alive.
I could have so easily starred in a new commercial for MasterCard.

The pelican, symbol of Mykonos, and a constant presence in the streets. The first time I saw one (coming from a corner)was a surprise,
as I didn't expect it, and also would have thought a pelican would be as big as a duck, not as a veal.It reminded me of a French poem
(that I can't seem to find in English on Google), extremely depressing, who made me see them with a teary eye...

Καλησπέρα, Ελλάδα

I'm not sure I'll see that precise landscape, all church and bay. But what is certain is what I'll see in less than 24 hours should be more or less equivalent. Two planes, a half-afternoon waiting for a connection flight at the airport in Athens, and there I'll be, in the middle of the Cyclades, going Greek, riding a donkey, drinking ouzo, eating eggplants and doing the kind of things the Hellens enjoy doing in their spare time. (OK, proof-reading exposed some potential, kinky double-entendre here, but I'll stick to the innocent spirit of my first draft...)

I'd be lying if I said I need the break: but I welcome it gladly. I've been travelling so much the past few months, and I'm more than happy about it. I never travel as much as I would like to. I hope this is the new next trend in my life, and not just a one shot bout of luck. I know virtually nothing about Greece and the Greeks. I have work to do there, I got ready for that, and didn't have a chance to learn anything about the country. I can't even say anything in Greek, which is so unlike me (i.e. not to know at least a couple of sentence in the language of the country I visit). I'll figure it out.
I expect to like it though. I should let you know. If you want to. If you behave. If you comment, or just drop in to say "Hello". Although my life lately resembles that of a high-flying escort boy, I'm still unemployed and bored, and I badly need some interaction!