I am in the Delta airlines lounge at the airport. James Carville is here with his wife and family. I told him to “keep kicking ass and that we need him now more than ever.” We shook hands and talked a bit. He told me “It will all be o.k. It’ll work out fine,” in that cool accent he has. Nice guy. Made me feel better about our current state of insanity in the states. As if maybe he knows something that the rest of us don't. I am exhausted. Stayed up all night again last night. I am filled with a deep sense of mourning right now which I will just ride out. I will miss cappuccino and stylish shoes and everyone looking so fashionable all the time, and beautiful Italian girls, and this easy life. I will miss all the friends I have made while I have been here. I will miss the beautiful and musical language of Italian. but one thing I will not miss is the smell of second hand smoke everywhere I go. This is one thing about Europe that is not so enjoyable. [When I used to smoke I never could understand the incessant pleas from those around me to not smoke around them. but now I understand. Perspective.] I will be happy to breathe in fresh clean air. Tomorrow is Monday. I am supposed to wake up and start working to market and promote the new cd. Its been a while. I have to build an entirely new empire starting tomorrow. Gotta start from scratch almost. Don't even want to think about it. For now I am going to sip this glass of Champaign and just chill and write. 

I'm sitting with this middle aged business man and he makes some comment to me about James Carville after he sees me talking to him. At first I don't even acknowledge him or his comment. I just ignored him. He persists. I say ‘you must be one of those.’ “One of whats?” he asks. “One of the very few left on the other side,” I say and look back to my laptop screen. I didn't feel like hearing some crap from the right. Its too early in the morning. Finally we end up having a little debate about James. I say he's interesting and at least he’s saying something, unlike a lot of the no substance lip service we hear from the right these days. We have some fun. He's more interesting than I take him for at first. It turns out he used to own this huge two and half billion dollar company that included lens crafters, Jennifer convertibles, petit sophisticate, and a bunch of other companies. So the guy is just sickly wealthy. You just cannot beat the first class lounge for these kinds of experiences. You never know who you're talking to, so always be polite. Mom always says that. So we’re going back and forth. He tells me he’s 75 years old. He looks no more than fifty five. I ask him what the secret is. [Although being worth millions of dollars is obviously a good start] He holds up his bloody Mary and exclaims “alcohol!” I've been drinking it all my life. It preserves the organs in the body.” Mind you, its ten in the morning right now. This guy is funny. One of those ‘seen it all done it all super rich business man’ types. He asks me what the name of my group is. I tell him. he tells me he will force his kids and grandkids to buy our cds and not burn them or take the music from the Internet. He has been following the declining revenues in the music industry for the last few years in the wall street journal. Tells me all the companies are selling out as fast as they can. “No way to make money in a few years in your business they say.” He says he can only imagine if (one of the businesses he used to own) all of a sudden people could just go and steal a pair of shoes if they wanted to and no body could stop them. Tells me that frank Sinatra is the best artist in the world. All went downhill after him. He's been married for like forty five years. He recommends to me not to get married till I am in my mid fifties. Wait as long as you can,’ he says. I tell him after the experiences I had last night and on this trip I agreed with him for now, but I think about having a beautiful wife and kids all the time. I can’t stop it. He tells me “it can wait. Trust me. You're young. Enjoy it now while you can.”  

Reading history of Rome again. the franks, the Lombards, Byzantine, the guelfs, the giberdines, the Visigoths, the ortrogoths. Italy has been host to just about every other country in the world at some time or another. the southern part an Arab controlled state for over 200 years in the first millennium, which you can really see in the look of many of the Italians in the South still. Julius Cesar, Octavian, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero. I meet Giovanna after her work and we go to meet some friends from my school. We eat dinner in the piazza navona with a few thousand other people from all over the world. We drink three bottles of white wine. We are all buzzed. Beyond buzzed. Giovanna is the strange Italian in the group. The rest of us “stranieri” from other countries just visiting here from somewhere else to learn the language. You can perceive the differences in having her as part of the group. because she is Italian. She is much more bold and forward than everyone else. smokes twice as much. Speaks loudly and forcefully. Very social and outgoing. So very Italian. Drinks more. God she is sexy. Her belly showing. Low cut jeans. Amazing body. Dark dark features. 

We go to another bar. Drink more. rambling through the plaza amongst hundreds maybe thousands of other people. me and tom, another student from New York talk about how much we will miss Italy. The food. Tonight I had a mixed meat and veggies grilled on skewers and spinach sautéed in olive oil. Last night I had beef tips smothered in gorgonzola and spinach and of course lots of tomatoes. Every day for lunch and dinner tomatoes. Why can’t we have this in America we mourn over our twentieth glass of wine. Ten dollar bottles of delicious wine and any kind of gourmet food we want for ten bucks a plate. Made with love and honor not just the quick buck mentality of the states. Tom from new York is much more cynical than I am about our food in the states. Telling the others that in the states the people don't care about good food. They just care about making money and survival so we can invade another fucking country like Iraq. Americans are down right now. especially the ones who have run away to places like Italy, or Spain, or Greece, etc. here you eat a plate of tomatoes drowned in olive oil and onions and basil and you feel this really groovy vibe of love and health coming from within. In the states if you can find something like this out on the street you just feel ripped off that you had to pay eight or nine dollars for it to pay for all the fancy fucking furniture they installed in the restaurant to try to make it look cooler than the restaurant next door. Its all bullshit in the states. Fancy this and that. maybe not in all the states but in the big cities now. everyone is always trying to out do each other and people have forgotten about the simple things like good food made with love and offered at an affordable price. God will I miss the food here. 

The breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner. 

I am supposed to come back to the states tomorrow or Sunday. I keep telling myself this. but Giovanna's body is so beautiful. and I have so many friends here from all over the world. So instead of thinking about it I just down another glass of wine. I want to pick her up and kiss her and make love to her all night.

Today I got a haircut. I was so worried being in a strange place and not speaking Italian. But this guy was amazing. he spent hours with my hair. He was so passionate. Reminded me of Federico in New York who was also Italian and very passionate about hair. He told me how awful whoever has been cutting my hair is in Miami. I told him I just haven't been able to find anyone in Miami. Very nice to connect with someone again so passionate about hair and style. The salon was very styled out. Not pretentious. Again, it is a cool without pretension. Something Miami has not learned yet. You can be cool and nice and open and real. They are not opposite qualities. People smile here. men play with children in the street even though they look like they just walked out of a photo shoot for GQ magazine. it is very nice. it is an innocence that is very refreshing and heart warming. Very different than the New York, LA, Miami vibe of ‘if you’re cool/good/successful, then you’re kind of a snob or a tough guy or a jerk. [this is really funny but one time when I was getting my haircut from Federico I asked him where he was going for the weekend and he didn't want to tell me, I pressured him and he said he was supposed to keep it a secret that he was going to Disney world with his wife and kids, because his boss would get mad at him cause it did not seem cool—it could hurt the salon’s image. Can you imagine? Well that's New York. Not here in Italy. Guys are more than happy to show off their families.]

Riding through the narrow cobblestoned streets amongst the very tall old old old brick buildings and churches and squares and palaces, I was thinking tonight that I could see how this could get old if you grew up here. especially if you see America on TV with all its new stuff and shiny happy people. this could definitely get old. Everything is old here. climbing the stairs tonight looking at the old stairs and the old walls, it made me long for something new and clean and pristine looking. 

Received an email from Cleopatra tonight. It was so thoroughly depressing. It was so simple but it just brought it all rushing onto me. Just this agonizing feeling of loss. She tells me that she knows by the pain in her stomach that we are doing the right thing. I emailed back I will stay away for as long as it takes. I hope one day after we are all dead we will be able to sit down and chat and laugh and say wow, I tell her.

I don't know what it is, just this pain inside like I have no one, no family. If I really just let go of Cleo and Bas and her whole family and the different companies we have built over the years I just don't know who I am right now. who is my family. Realizing that I have been living through them and with them for so long I don't know how to feel safety or comfort right now on my own. we have all been living together for eight years. o.k. so now I leave it all, and start a new life. what? Where? With who? Thank God I still have my mom and my real family and all that but I have just felt so close to Cleo and her whole family for so long its crazy. I feel like an orphan. This awful feeling. Like I am studying over here for 6 hours a day. Why? For who? Can I live for just myself? Do stuff for just myself? I think I am having an identity crisis. It is truly fucked up. So there we are. That's how I feel. thank God for Little Tree. She is like a surrogate mother/wife for me. takes good care of me. Madelynne too. The Artisan does too. Send me things in the mail. Emails all the time. It is very nice. to have these women in your life who take care of you and you aren't going out or anything. what I don't like is when chicks are just being nice to you and taking care of you because they want you to be their boyfriend.   

Playboy turned Good boy

When I look into the faces of all the Italian girls I see something very profound for me. I don't know what it is. My heart beats faster. I see something that resonates deeply for me, something I have held in my heart for a long time. I think I reached this wall where all of a sudden I don't want to fool around with girls anymore who are not something special. Which is crazy cause we are about to release this new album, so on the exterior I have this totally hedonistic sexual free for all image happening, but on the inside I am already beyond it. This is a weird place for me to be, to feel, because I enjoy the girls more than anything else except for music. I live eat sleep and breathe girls. But I have not enjoyed the last few brief relations I have had with girls. They have all been very nice, but it made me ache inside. As if I was cheating on my wife, even though I am not married and do not even know my wife yet, but secretly it feels as though I do know her in my heart. So now I am trying not to talk to girls in that way anymore, in a romantic way, if I know there is no chance of us moving in that direction. I just stop talking to them in that way, and I move on, and I don't spend time with them anymore. Part of me thinks this is crazy. The talk of a madman. After all, at my age I should just continue to do it with as many girls as I can right? I mean this is what my head tells me. This is especially what my dick tells me. LOL. This is what logic tells me. Am I crazy? But my heart, my intuition tells me something different. Tells me to be vigilant and look out for her now. Tells me to stop fucking around. Even if I tell myself if only for a few days or for one night. To let all that go. To be faithful to her even though I do not yet know her. O.k. I will then. I will follow my heart. I write her songs. 

Sitting in the cafes at night. Thinking of her and thinking of her being pregnant. Not the actions of a playboy anymore huh? I don't know what has happened to me. I used to be able to talk myself into doing almost any girl. Now I cannot even talk myself into flirting with them if I don't think they are the one. Crazy. especially here because I feel it so much stronger than I ever have before because I feel it when I see the faces. I don't know. crazy talk. But eventually we have to give in when God talks to us, or when we hear that voice form our hearts. Which kind of sucks cause a part of me just wants to get laid a lot. As Bas says, “what are you crazy?! You don't give up tail when its right in front of your face. Tail doesn’t come around all the time. always take it.” I seriously had this plan where I was going to spend a few days making love with a different girl each in five different countries in a row. I had it all set up. I was going to write about it as if it happened like five years ago or something. I know all these girls and it just happened to work out that way where I could do it. It was going to be something magnificent. Something to tell the kids about. But I just flew straight to Italy instead. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. and now I have to try to explain to all these girls why I am not coming to see them. but I just can’t force myself to do it. I don't know, maybe those days are over for me. maybe I'm growing up. maybe I'm just an idiot. who knows.