Travel: Italy : Milan

Desperately Seeking Joe T. Vanelli July 17, 2004 7/17/04 08:53 pm

Who makes the sturdiest tripods in the world?

Who makes the best imaginative hardcore porn in the world?

Who has porn stars and fashion models in their parliament?

Who makes the best Italo-disco in the intergalactic dancefloor?

You got it.

Boungiorno from Milano, Livejournalistas!

The Duomo is getting a facelift, as is La Scala, so I am left with practically nothing to do. I came down here to seek out Joe T. Vanelli, my italo disco DJ king. Unfortunately it is on that one month of the year that the whole Milan shuts down. Still, the record store across the road from my hotel has a mind-boggling Joe T. collection on cd. Well, I am happy to report that I can still get to see my Bellini sculptures, and one can munch on Burger King while looking out on the gothic spires of the Duomo.

My high point of the day was standing at the listening station and watching an eight year old girl boogie down to italo-disco with headphones on. Dancing is a natural thing. I have never agreed with those people who thought dancing was "corny." My rule-of-thumb is, if a little kid can do it without influence and guidance, then, it is safe to say, it is a natural thing.

Anyway, it's sad that I am unable to attend gigs like Plastic, and Hollywood. Joe T. as it turns out, spins on L'Atlantique for New York Bar, and Old Fashion Café. But the whole throng runs off to the beach for July, so most of the places are closed as well, with the exception of the gay scene at Via Sameretinni behind Stazione Centrale.

Milan is what I call an Atkins nightmare: There is pasta, breads, pizza, and pasta, and did I mention pasta?, and extra credit carbs. And you know something? There are many insanely thin girls here. And I don't mean bony dieted thin. I mean, just plain thin. I swear, if I didn't shave for a month, I would be mistaken for Michael Moore around town. Of course, there are little encouraging devices to keep the people in order. Coin-operated weighing machines dot the sidewalk outside clothing stores along Corso Buenos Aires, where I am staying.

Fashion model wannabes flock to Milano to see and be seen. And why not? In the golden rectangle defined by Via Montenapoleone, Via Sant'Andrea, Via della Spiga, all the usual couture names line the streets. Personally the designer Herzlicht Wilkommen's suits delighted me. I happen to think that 850 USD for a nicely-tailored women's two-piece business suit is very reasonable. You know how you see a form-fitting dress in a window, and you walk around, and find that it's pins that were doing all the work pulling the fabric back against the mannequin? Well, there are no pins here.

So with the Duomo closed and Joe T. missing in action, I guess I'll just have to spend the remainder of my stay shopping till I drop. Because if there is one thing Milan is famous for, it is shopping. You would need a day literally to walk two blocks. That's how dense the boutiques are.

My sister always asked me why it is that Little Italy always ends up next to Chinatown in American cities. I don't know. After coming to Milan I love the Italians more than I ever did (My first boyfriend being Italian - A man who asked me to be his wife). They have poker faces like I do, but the moment you speak a little bit of Italian to them, their faces light up and a big smile comes across their faces. Store proprietors load up my order with extra helpings, napkins, and eating accesories (much like the Scots did), as if they were trying to look after me. And you know, I could use a bit of that in my life right now.

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Nights in Milan 7/26/04 11:11 am

The gliterrati of Milan have either all jet off to the coast of some foreign city, or driven out to Ingresso, a party sector near Linate Airport. This happens every July, when the city meets its most oppressively hot days. Major dance clubs close down, renovations that have been put on the backburner all year get cooking, and the rest of the wheel-less plebeians are stuck in town with a strange traveler from the livejournal hinterland.

Heavey metal, skateboard punks, hippy reggae tie-dyed couture burst from the steps of Statione Centrale to the banks of Dorsena at Viale Galaezzo, where endless flea market stalls hawk, shout, push anything from dollar panties to used transistors, neon dog collars, transformers, tanktops, bongs, 3-piece suits for 15 Euros that will leave you looking like a Seurat painting of pilled fabric after one wet-eyed glance. T-shirts, peace pipes, see through hippy hemp tops, people pile on top of one another while clothes are being tossed between van-based merchants and clients like a busy day at the fishmonger's market.

Within the ebbing hallucinations of an afternoon shade over an empty cobblestone street, a tall teenage boy with Linda Evangelista's face clopped past me in noiseless flip-flops.

Nobody has heard the front door to the Prada boutique open all week,

An explosion of bumping clutched handbags, a jumble of hands maul skirts, suits, hangers, blouses until they were all falling down in all directions onto the disgrace of dusty floors. Women, beastlike, at Salvegente, rolodexing through discarded brand clothing one season past at 60% off. Women at work: Impatient, aggravated, nervous at someone getting to that find before they do, and in fearing so, become manly about handling the business of being women.

People sit at tables which have been pulled out onto the sidewalks, munching on the same dish from one end of the city to another. Atkins is on a national holiday here, and everyday, the featured fireworks is carbo with starch on the side. Pizza, foccacia, pastries, rule where calories is translated as energy. Yet models-in-waiting for their scouts to return from a holiday in Nice march like queens among subway riders, practicing non-smiling on the catwalk, giraffed-neck, stand-offish.

In a Darwinistic voice, she said, "don't you even dare write a line in your livejournal about me."

I drink cheap biere, shop at Miss Sixty, inquire about the boots at the Strenesse showroom (whose handsome salesman were so nice that it destroyed the endless warnings from the travel guides to be wary about walking into these snooty places), hop through Sammartini alleys where transvestite hookers look away when I give them reassuring smiles, at Afterline, where gay boys in tight tops danced to bass-less italodisco and my martini taste like lemon drops, and now I'm across the street outside the Tunnel, but hip-hop is playing, and I head for alleys where a tap water is forever dripping, and in the back of head, subconsciously, shorten the distance between I and the man of my Freudian dreams, who eventually stabs me.

Buses, trains, cars, scooters, buzzing electricity passing, streetlamps, flicker as two old ladies stared, I walk towards a young man who look like a classic Italian movie star from the fifties, without a hair out of place, tidy, effete. Somewhere in an attic, his portrait must be silently aging under a fine layer of dust. He asked me why I left the last club, I said simply I was looking for dance. He said, "follow me."

Our bus took us to an unfamiliar periphery of town. As we talked, I left a mental paper trail that was instantly dispersed by the after draft of the bus. We got off, walked up over highway ramps, under overpasses, into and out of secluded closes. I watched his hand, waiting for the glint of a blade to emerge. He asked if I trusted him. I smiled and said I did not. After more labyrinthian turns deep within the somnolence of residential highrises, he stopped a man and asked him in Italian where One Way was. No gay listing, dance listing, or happenings listing ever mentioned such a place. The man pointed to an unmarked door where a bare bulb hung motionless over a man sitting on a stool. There was no sound coming out of the space. We paid for our tickets and walked up to a heavy black velvet curtain. My mysterious guide grabbed one end of the curtain, turned to me with a half frowned smile and yanked it open. Voila! Loud pumping discoteque funky house poured out and all around us from a room where some two hundred dancers bathed in flashing blue lights! He twisted to the bar and conveyor-belt bartop snacks into his mouth. "I'm really hungry, I haven't eaten yet." I worried and asked if we should go out and get him food first. I'm such a soccer mom among my peeps.

There were several other rooms attached to the main dance floor, each had its own heavy velvet curtain separating the space. My guide told me there were naughty going-ons in each of those rooms. I believed him this time. We danced and got funky-butt fever. I went a little insane with my jitterbug histrionics, and was immediately pegged by all the gay guys as a top. Even by my new friend, Matteo. Double doh.

We eventually had to use the taxi service by the time we decided we had enough. I snapped out of sleep the next morning, ate big deep dish slices at a restaurant, and headed for Palazzo della Permanente, and then on to the Pinacoteca de Brera, where I promptly fell asleep under the watchful eye of Piero della Francesca's Brera Altarpiece.

I have been averaging 3-4 hours of sleep a night, walking many miles a day, and on my feet throughout; on foot, on train, subways, tram cars, buses, trolleys, endless stairs, bars, turnstiles, street crossings, dance floors. I have this fear that the moment I sit down, something interesting or exciting - just around the next corner - would materialize and vanish without my knowing. As a result, I am constantly on the move. At this point, I literally cannot stop vibrating. (I know this because I have been unable to take one single sharp snapshot on my camera). I'm packing so much living into each day that the nervous energy has transformed itself into a kinetic restlessness shaking out to each synaptic tip.

On the final evening, after running around converting cm's into inches, and making sure that that miniskirt from Miss Sixty was just right, I picked it up and filled out postcards in a rush, bid farewell to the Duomo's facade in a gauze, ran over and gave a flying kiss to the Castello Sforzesco with its joyous refreshing fountains, missed my appointment for truffles at La Bice, and stumbled through the small, almost empty streets of Borsa in search of one final discovery. I was almost about to give up, but my feet told my brains to hang tough for a few more blocks. Then all of a sudden POW! (The Milanese have such a flare for yanking the veil open at the crucial moment), the square at San Lorenzo Maggiore, packed with hundreds of locals sitting on the steps drinking beers in the open long past midnight. The takeaway stores adjacent to the square were selling these large bottled beers, which I promptly headed for. As I walked across in the crosshairs of everyone, nobody catcalled, as popular stereotype would have you believe.

Milan folk have all been easygoing, sweet, and shy. It's not what I thought it would be at all. Having been exposed to Northeast American-Italians all my life, I erroneously expected Milan Italians to be loud, brusque, cocksure, and combatively macho; Instead, I came upon the pearl of gentleness, it's delicate oystered luminiscence the only possible author that can lay claim to the 16th century frottolas of Caprioli.

To this happy knowledge, I silently toasted drink after drink in the calm early morning air.

Thank YOU, wonderful people of Milan!

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