How to get EU Citizenship off the Back of a Truck

At a certain point during my stay in Italy it became necessary for me to become, well…legal. Basically I’d entered the country as a tourist and every three months I’d take a trip to London (or a drive to Switzerland) and reenter to renew my American “tourist” status. Clever, right? Well it was all working out swimmingly until I actually landed a job in television that I desperately wanted and had to be legal to have. When you’re modeling, no one gives a rat’s ass if your paperwork is on order. If you’re a six foot two and a hundred and ten pounds from Pluto people are going to be happy to pay you. The minute you’re on a TV set however, you become a liability. You need state insurance and a “permesso di soggiorno” which is the fancy Italian way of saying a work visa. My agent and potential employers were both confused because when filling out the initial paperwork for the job, I provided a valid “codice fiscale” which is like a less intense Italian version of a social security number.

“How do you have a codice fiscale if you’re not legal?” my wide-eyed colleagues would ask me.

Well…

When moving to Milan I went through the lengthy process of opening an Italian bank account (an incredibly futile effort since as I’ve mentioned in other posts Italian banks are open for only three hours a day, swamped with long lines and basically ineffective … also if you’re lucky enough to locate a “bancomat” / ATM it WILL eat your card.) Anyway. The lovely folks at UniCredito informed me that in order to open my account I’d need a codice fiscale. My logical next question was “how do I get one?” They in turn gave me the address of some big administrative building, which one leisurely Italian afternoon I actually found and entered. The building was large and regal looking and unlike any other Italian bureaucratic establishment I’ve been in to this day it was empty – no ticket holders, no lines, no riots. Hesitant to believe my good fortune I went timidly up to the teller window and said I needed a codice fiscale. The official coldly told me to take a seat at an intimidating mahogany table nearby. I sat there waiting for only a few moments before a cute Italian official with lovely mocha skin and an even cuter military outfit sat down across from me.

“Where are you from?” he asked. I handed over my American passport (that always seemed to do the trick) and he stared at it before breaking into a smile and saying, “va bene.”

Several stamps and some flirting later I had been assigned a number which technically never should have been given to me without having obtained a working visa first. It was one of the simplest most pleased Italian bureaucratic encounters I’ve ever had. The young man was clearly filling in for whoever was actually in charge and in his naïveté he happily handed me this number unaware of the horrific procedural length I really had to go through in order to get it. I didn’t know what he’d done was backwards and wrong. I was just thrilled to have actually accomplished something on my checklist (which when you live in Europe seems to very rarely happen). I remember being in such a good mood that I stopped at a nearby shop and bought three sweaters. To top it off they were all on sale. I still wear them to this day.

Flashing forward, my TV job was set to shoot in two weeks and with only a inappropriately given codice fiscale to my name I wasn’t getting the part. I desperately contacted every Italian lawyer friend and friend of friend I had, all of whom weren’t immigration experts and saw no quick fix for my situation. My agent suggested enrolling in school somewhere to get a student visa which you could apparently work a certain number of hours a week on. This idea didn’t make that much sense to me, and I floundered in my own desperation as I did more and more research about the lengthy and challenging ‘permesso di soggiorno’ process. Honestly, building some sort of time travel machine and having my mother birth me in Rome seem liked an easier option.

On a night out at Shocking I was neither drinking nor enjoying myself but talking to a lawyer I’d happened to meet about my visa situation. My agent came up to me and pointed to a girl at the other end of the lounge.

“See her,” he said. “She’s the backup.” Apparently Sky TV had chosen this girl as the recipient for my TV job if I couldn’t get my visa fast enough, and here she was at Shocking enjoying a cocktail right across from me. I almost dropped my drink and screamed since this girl looked exactly like me. It was like looking into a mirror. I could see exactly how the suits at Sky would see us as interchangeable and hand over my precious job to her without even feeling legitimate disappointment for having lost me.

“She’s Russian,” my agent added before moving off to hit the buffet table.

Now this whole situation had gotten out of control and become personal. I didn’t want my job going to HER (me, the less amazing version). Her skirt was ugly and she had bad posture for Christ’s sake. I eyed less-amazing-me thinking about how she’d be so thrilled to get the call for the job she’d been told she didn’t get – a miracle, her big-break, how lucky for her. Yeah. I could not let this happen.

Racking my brain, pacing like a madwoman the next day in my apartment I was finally hit with an idea. I quickly reached for my cell phone and speed dialed Andrei, a character those of you who’ve read Don Jaun of Milan will remember.

“Are you legal?” I asked the moment he picked up.

“Yeah. I have the permesso di soggiorno and renewed it last year.”

Hold up. How was Andrei, a struggling singer-model from Romania legally in this country when I an omnipotent American was not!?!?

I asked him this exact question. Andrei got rather quiet on the phone and I could sense his discomfort by his slightly softer breathing.

“You can’t tell anybody this…” he started. I hurried to assure him my lips were sealed. He still hesitated.

“There’s this guy. He does permesso di soggiornos for models. Name’s Emilio. I’ll give you his number. Just don’t say I sent you to him. He’ll be able to help.”

I’d never heard Andrei so cautious. I took the number and assured him a thousand times I’d keep our conversation confidential. Then I called this cryptic Emilio character. No answer. I tried later. No answer. I tried again. No answer. Finally on my fourth try he picked up quickly and told me he’d call me back the next day to sort out an appointment. He sounded busy, gruff and well, busy. I barely slept that night.

Emilio eventually called me back and told me to meet him outside a café near stazione centrale. No office. No secretary. No mention of a company or degree. When I asked how I’d know who he was he told me, “I’ll be in a white jeep.” So apparently this meeting was to take place in his car.

To Be Continued…

Don Juan of Milan

Andrei was the Don Juan of Milan. A Romanian model, singer, and playboy – every woman’s head turned when he entered the room. Yes, he had charm. But it was more than that. Women secretly ask God to send them a man who could pull off wearing a white leather jacket, and Andrei was the answer to their prayers. Not only could he strut around in a peasant tops ala Enrique Inglesias with dignity, but he did it in a way that actually accentuated his masculinity. Andrei radiated with machismo – that elegant, sensitive variation of machismo that wants to whisk you away for a weekend in Burmuda, not the machismo that causes men to beat one another to a pulp in bars. When he’d place his hand on the small of your back, your insides would begin to tingle.

Andrei had a girlfriend. A 19-year-old Romanian model named Carmen. Since Andrei had seduced half the city, Carmen was either remarkably sheltered or just didn’t care. When I saw her out in leather stiletto boots and a jean bustier drinking Havana on the rocks with one of Milan’s most notorious gamblers, I assumed the latter. Andrei had always just a broken up with Carmen when he was in the process of seducing you. When you would call him for a rematch, his relationship had always miraculously been mended.

I had met Andrei at a once-cool Milan club called Shocking (if traveling to Italy now don’t go there unless you want cut up the rug with spiky-haired middle schoolers). Amidst the glamorous bodies pulsating to house music I came upon Andrei and in jeans and a white snowcap – a diamond in the ruff. Even in the dark, I could see he had that immaculate olive skin the sun thought a privilege to tan. His hair was wispy without being untidy, overgrown without fitting into the dreaded category of “guys with long hair.” He looked like he just stepped out of a Dolce and Gabbana catalogue, but didn’t have that rottweiler-like aura of haughtiness that most male models posses. So I dared to sneak into his line of sight.

I was expecting Andrei to be like most men I’d met blessed enough to look like Greek gods; unable to form functional sentences or unwilling to utilize verbal communication at all. Engaging gorgeous men in conversation usually results in me wanting to jump-tackle them gorilla-style and knocking out a few of their bleached chiclet teeth. That’s why I almost dropped my vodka cranberry in shock when Andrei was not only literate, gracious, and polite, but demonstrated he had mastered a rare gift few humans possess: The power to make utter strangers feel as if you genuinely care about them. In my book, true charm is the ability to make someone feel special for just being in your presence. As a romantic, I like to think of these extraordinary people skills as a God given gift bestowed on a fetus still in-untero. More likely, Andrei scored some moves by imitating his womanizing father and completed some sort of online finishing school.

From the moment Andrei and I began talking he managed to give me his undivided attention (quite a feat considering there were six foot two Bulgarian super models wandering the club like gazelles waiting to be pounced upon). I felt some sort of pedestal sprouting from the ground beneath me, elevating me to a super-human level. His level.

We happened to be with the same group of people, the leader of which, Sergio, had a van that he used to transport foreign car-less models living in Milan to and from nightclubs. Together, Andrei and I ended up in the party-van squeezed between two Russian dancers, one of whom also work as a stripper, “a high class stripper,” she emphasized, whom we asked about the practical aspects of her work. Sergio joyously careened through Milan’s empty roads and the entire van sung along to a new Romanian pop song on the radio, which had coincidently just become an international hit.

When we pulled up to Andrei’s apartment building on Corse Vente Cinque Maggio, I was filled with uncertainty. Andrei slid out of the car after subtly getting my number during the voyage with an irresistible wink. He mentioned in incredibly attractive broken English that we should wait to see each other. People might get the wrong idea if we both popped out of the disco bus at his apartment after knowing one another only an hour and fifteen minutes.

I felt honored to have given my digits to such an Adonis and relieved that he suggested we wait to see each other since I was already feeling an uncontrollable urge to wrap my legs around his waist and whisper dirty nothings into his ear. Unfortunately, what Andrei meant by “wait” was twenty minutes. As soon as Sergio dropped me off at my house, I received a delightful text message reading:

I you…when you arrive call 024040 [local Milan cab number] and when you here let me know, kisses, you, just to have dring togeter CORSO 22 marzo 42 interfon 28

I could only conclude that he wanted me to come over now. A slightly unreasonable request considering I was moments ago, physically at his apartment, and it was now already 4:30a.m. Yet I knew this boy was not a commodity one could find every day. Subconsciously, every woman’s aware of how much competition surrounds her. Not taking Andrei up on his offer could mean letting his Peter Pan smile fall on to the face of a cutthroat female competitor. And that would be tragic.

My zodiac sign being Leo, my warped ego didn’t want this heartthrob to feel as if he had me at his beck and call. The most logical compromise seemed to go over to his apartment while simultaneously downplaying my interest. I took off my makeup and changed into some tight fitting, sporty pajamas. My hope was that he’d notice I hadn’t stayed laced up in my binding party clothes for his benefit. I wanted to appear confident and chill – Like the kind of the girl who wouldn’t rush over to his apartment when he snapped his fingers. The cab ride over to his place was naturally, exhilarating.

His palazzo didn’t have an elevator, so when I arrived I had to rush up a series of outdoor staircases. He stood shining under the moonlight on the fourth flight up. He grinned down at me wearing only a loose white bathrobe, which beautifully offset that aforementioned olive skin. Good thing I had decided to go casual.

His apartment was not particularly impressive, but as he whisked me around the corner into his bedroom I stopped cold. In the thirty minutes it had taken need to come over, he had scattered the area surrounding his glamorized mattress on the floor with over fifty tea light candles. Champagne chilled in a bucket of ice near the bed. Strawberries were arranged in a perfect circle on a nearby plate. The dozens of candles made the room literally glow worse than a cheesy movie set. The mattress on the floor reminded me of the hunky dance instructor’s pad in Dirty Dancing – except the guy I was with was even hotter than Partick Swayze.
In America, we’re taught that this kind strawberry-champagne romance doesn’t spontaneously happen in real life. Luckily, Europe exists to prove such assumptions wrong. Before I knew it we were sitting side-by-side on his make-shift bed enjoying bubbly and chocolate while divulging secrets about our childhood romances and insane parents.

Thus it began. Looking back, Andrei, cavalier as he could be, was classifiable as a by-the-books sex addict. Yet when you’re young and in Italy, this knowledge is beyond you – sex addiction is something you’ll learn about years later through reality TV and discover that there are actually support groups for suffers. But back then, in the joy that is obliviousness, being with Andrei was to feel one hundred and ten percent alive. He could make love for hours, and hours, and then be ready to start again. My heart went out to his roommate – an aspiring American novelist who lived in the bedroom next door. I can only imagine how he must of loathed the looping sounds of women constantly climaxing.

Sex with Andrei could be playful as well as passionate. Holes would often pop up in his air mattress and during the act of intercourse you’d suddenly find yourself sinking, the air hissing out of the air-matt like the scolding “Hsh!” of an angry parent. Then a ritual would begin in which Andrei and I would both scurry to find the tear, pressing our ears to the mattress, throwing the bed sheets aside. Upon locating the hole, Andrei would victoriously grab a role of duct tape he kept by his bed for this specific purpose and tape up the tear with a satisfied smile. If you’ve found the offending fissure, you scored his praise.

Then Andrei moved. He got a real bed, and an apartment further on the outskirts of the city. And things began to change.

When Andrei and I met he was relatively naive. He drank in moderation, condemned drugs, and had never inhaled a cigarette – a European miracle. Over the course of the next two years, this innocence somehow deteriorated. It wasn’t long before someone introduced Andrei to cocaine, and suddenly sex wasn’t his only addiction. Still trying to stay health conscious, Andrei refused to snort the white powder. Instead, he and his friend Tony mixed the coke with tobacco from cigarettes and fried the mixture on tin foil, choosing to inhale it through Tony’s asthma inhaler. According to Andrei, this method of intake meant the cocaine entered your bloodstream without hitting your brain, somehow making the drug miraculously less damaging.

But it was damaging.

It soon replaced women at the center of his universe. Andrei remained charming. None of his noteworthy qualities went away. But when everyone else went to bed at five in the morning, Andrei was out scoring. At seven in the morning, he was calling for a dealer to swing by the house and deliver. At eight am he’d call his agency to get the casting schedule for that day having never gone to sleep, still getting high.

Who a person hangs out with dictates, unfortunately, so much about them. “You are your friends,” someone once said to me. And they’re right. Is it fair to blame Tony? Andrei’s drug indulgent friend? Or to blame Carmen? The sultry girlfriend with whom a permanent break-up eventually ensued. Am I to blame as a longtime friend of this man who I admired as a girl, envied as a lover, and grew to pity as an adult?

Over the course of three years in Milan, Andrei and I slowly drifted our different ways until I’d run into him occasionally around three am at the Saturday night hot-spot of the week. We’d introduce one another to our new dates with a secret smile of longing and ultimate approval. Or if out with friends, we’d merge our possies, and share a round of drinks, announcing to everyone that we knew each other from “way back.” Back when Shocking was cool. Back when loving life and floating through it like a movie was still possible. Back when champagne on ice was enough. Then, after impressing our friends, we’d disappear to opposite areas of the club, swallowed by the crowd. I’d move mindlessly through dancing bodies, the eyes on the back of my head still on Andrei, worrying for him, somehow hoping to keep track of him as I let him slip away into the night.