Rolling Stone |
I love his outfit here! I'm guessing that it is Versace. It's a tear-out from a months old magazine pull-out that I found on my desk. My magazines have been coming late because my key is still broken off in the mailbox, and I still refuse to pay the $100 for a locksmith to come fix it when I am renter, and I believe that my landlord should fix it. It's not as if I broke the key on purpose or was negligent. It was old and weak. It broke. Now, I'm at the mercy of the mail carriers in what is considered one of the worst postal codes in the whole of the United States. All I have is this cover. No article. No descriptions. But I think that it is Versace. And this is why ...
In 1995, I traveled to Europe for many weeks right before I started my high school teaching career. My travel partner was a software designer who worked as a consultant, so he was able to block the time out for the trip. We flew to Frankfort without any reservation except for our flight. We wandered through Prague, Budapest, Florence, Venice, Cinque Terre, and arrived at our last stop in Final Ligure, on the Mediterranean in Italy. There, we were ready to get home and found that we were in the least cool place from our trip. It was a beach town. The restaurants were under tents on the ocean, and each one had the same menu and the same, same old. We discovered one part of the town that was more charming that the rest. And we stumbled across a restaurant on a cobbled street where wonderful aromas emanated from within and six tables that begged for a sitter that hugged the street. We asked for a table and were denied. We fixated on this little jewel and finally after asking twice the next day, lunch and dinner, the man finally sat us down for lunch on the third day. It was worth being denied three times, as the fourth time was more delightful that we could have ever guessed. Six tables was all that they sat for lunch or dinner, and we were at the mercy of the waiter, who brought out to us course after course of wonderful food. We sat down at Noon, the first to sit, and left at 3 or 4, the last to leave. The chef came out to the table to ask us how the meal was and congratulated us on our appetites ... for food and wine.
As we drifted off into the afternoon gullet filled, we ran across a Versace store. We looked in the window at what was predominantly men's clothing. My travelling companion said, 'let's go in.' And we left out after he had purchased a pink themed Versace shirt. I encourage his extravagant purchase. I was in no position to buy something so dear as I had been student teaching, had no 'regular' job, and wasn't sure that I had a teaching position secured for the school year start. It was a beautiful shirt. Well constructed, and the colors were so vivid. I don't think that he ever wore the shirt. He was too conservative to wear a pink shirt that exploded with color. I wore it once. And now that I think about it, I should've kept it. He is gone now, and the shirt probably ended up in a bag for the Goodwill, his mother not understanding the beauty of it.
Ah, but it looks good on Bruno. It reminds me of the meal at the little restaurant on the street tucked away from the crowds of Italian vacationers.