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The Pittilogues: Pitti Uomo 87, Day 1 (part 2)
These fragments we have shored against our ruin
I walk past a mirror before dinner and realize I have no business wearing Rick Owens tees. Or anything that isn't a potato sack. Let's put it this way: I will not be modeling Isaia's gladiatorial outfits anytime soon.
We are at Trattoria Armando tonight. It is the same place we went last winter, and much of the crew is the same. This should have been a sign. @Leaves is there. This, too, should have been a sign.
I think the word for David is incorrigible. I may have used it several times already in describing his behavior, but I believe to to be an accurate adjective.
Our waiter, once more, has atrocious BO. it's a goddamn epidemic. Before we left, Jen told me I looked ‘completely trashed." Wow. Well, I feel trashed. I can't follow conversations. Every word makes me kind of squint-cringe, as though someone has yelled at me.
Example: the following is a note that I took on my phone during dinner:
"Greg doeNt drink wine, he really
Is about asahi machines in japan”
So, yeah. He doesn’t drink wine. Instead he orders beer. I guess maybe he's all about Japanese beer machines. It is hot in here, just like it was last time. I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m just glad I didn’t wear the turtleneck I had initially grabbed from my suitcase.
Niyi tells me his idea for the turducken of shoes: something about three welts and sixteen kinds of exotic leather. I am hot and sweaty and it hurts to smile. He calls my jacket - Cloak, 2006 - "OG." This pleases me.
Starters arrive - chicken pâté and shaved ham, both of which are very tasty. I am perking up, sort of - it is unlikely that I will fall asleep at the table, at any rate. I’m not sure what it is about the pâté here, but they manage to make it look so incredibly unappetizing they should win a prize. It is very tasty.
Gross, dude.
Patrik tells us that he never eats liver - except for foie gras, "because it's expensive.”
There's no "k" in *******, Niyi explains. None of us really know what a ******* is. A lengthy discussion follows. When you see a ******* brand, you know, he tells us. Greg and Patrik tell me that I have a beard. It is very nice of them, but I don't want their pitti.
Sorry.
Niyi tells me I have Neymar hair. Greg points at Patrik. "He says you have ******* hair." Initially I forget to write this down while reaching for my phone.
"I forgot what you just said," I say.
You have ******* hair, says Patrik. Thanks for clarifying.
For the first time, I notice that Greg is very French when he talks. By which I mean that he uses his hands to communicate everything. Niyi does this too, but he’s not French.
My ravioli comes. It is nothing special, I’m sad to say. The pici that Greg and Patrik order is much, much better.
We order more wine. I notice that Patrik and I are mostly - completely - taking care of this end of the table. This is something I should be paying attention to.
David has his arm on Leticia’s chair. My own arm feel as though it's made of lead. Lifting it is a Herculean feet. Mostly I leave my hands on the table, shoulders slumped, eyes still doing the wide-open squint. I hate having to get up to pee. I do it anyway, so that I don't wet myself at the table.
Yes, we talk **** about all of styleforum. I won't even apologize. We talk **** about a lot of things. GQ, bloggers, ourselves. That's what I like about our crew. We don't pull punches that are directed at our own midsections.
We talk a lot - a lot - of **** about Supreme. David and Leticia are sharing a menu. I have to pee again. I am doing that squinty, wide-eyed thing.
Patrik orders shots of vodka for the table. “Mid-meal schnapps,” he says. What the ever-loving ****. I may not survive this, Styleforum. More accurately, I may not remember it.
"It's good for you," he says. He is a liar.
I have to pee. I love Patrik, I love Jun, but Yuki may be my favorite person at Pitti. The window in the bathroom is open. I stay for a long time, breathing in the fresh smell of icy bleach.
We drink the vodka anyway. Greg puts lemon in his for some reason. I have fun blowing my hair out of my face and watching it flop. Damn the Swedes and their perfect bone structure. Damn their beards.
That is not schnapps
Niyi and I talk anime. For real. Dude is awesome. I don't want to divulge too much. I sort of nod when he mentions Cowboy Bebop; say some things about Miyazaki. If only he knew.
Bistecca comes. It is huge. Everyone else eats it instead of their own food, because they can see that it is (and we are, by extension) superior. Niyi asks me what kind of cow it comes from. A big one, is all I can say.
The bistecca- or the finishing thereof - is a production. It takes a while. We talk ties...and stuff. ****. I don't really remember. I am taking notes in the moment and am having problems remembering. Problems typing. I have gone from overheated to shivering, which I believe is a sign of heat stroke or fatal parasitic infection. We have been eating dinner for three hours. So far. I don't know where the wine ends and the jet lag begins. I hope that I can stand, because I have to pee. I am not sure how well my eyes are focusing. David is talking about the tender tips of ties. Maybe he didn't say tender. But I did. Ha Ha. I wonder how my Rick shirts look with half a cow in my stomach. Jesus, who cares.
"He's a robot," says Greg.
"He's a stylebot," says Patrik. I don't know who they're talking about. CM people, I think. They sound...bad. We agree that SW&D is juvenile, but CM is passive aggressive. And that they are both stupid. This is a "we" that does not include me, because I have forgotten how to speak. My eyes have long-since failed. We are, all of us, neither living nor dead.
Limoncello comes. Jen walks down just to tell me that she can see me blinking from the other end of the table, ten people away.
This is another note I typed on my phone:
"In front of David's giant balls, Davidis ford from the band
J"
We leave. Somehow. Our crowd floods out the door, into the night. I know I ordered a dessert, but it never came. It is not a huge loss. I have managed to hang on to my chapstick. We wander the streets of Florence. David wants to go to the bar next door, the one that was playing Rock TV last January. He is voted down by people who want to go to Ghilli.
I tell Gracia that I really have to pee. She tells me to pee in a corner. "I can't do that" I say, "I'm a gentleman and a scholar.”
We can hear Ghilli coming before we can see it. It is mobbed. Pitti seems more crowded than ever, this year.
I ask Justin, one of the Skoaktiebolaget crew, what he thinks of hooliganism in Swedish soccer. He describes it as “Middle-aged men punching the shot out of each other for a few hours, and then it's all good.” It doesn’t seem to bother him. I make a note of this, for future reference. The bar is running some sort of best-of-the-nineties playlist. 3rd Eye Blind is on there. I don’t remember who else - David probably knows, and I imagine I should ask him. He sings along to everything. I have a video of him playing the air guitar. I am not sure I should share it. It is very earnest.
There is more vodka. We take a lot of pictures. We all trade phones a lot. I bet the bartenders think we are ******* ridiculous - well, they’re right.
At some point, Patrik buys us something else; dark and angry and in a slightly-larger shot glass. We drink it. We always drink what Patrik gives us. And then he disappears - pounds on the door of the bathroom and roars some sort of Norse farewell as I’m peeing, then flees into the night. We are betrayed.
Slowly the bar empties. First they try to play the music too loud so that we’ll leave. We order another drink instead. Eventually they turn the music off. Still we stay. Finally they turn the lights on and lift all the stools up onto the tables, and we wrap our thick skulls around the hint. Gracia, David and I - Our Lady of the Rocks, a single drowned Phoenician sailor, and the three of staves, eyes looking into the middle distance - it is fatigue, though, rather than blight. Perhaps they are the same. We are the last of us, we are the best of us. We are very tired. We walk Gracia to her hotel - we have to ask directions - and then David and I take a cab back to headquarters, through the misty night of the unreal city. We have been awake for a very long time.
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