Reflections on love en route to New York

I lift the window shade: a white sea of clouds blinds me. Gradually, my eyes adjust and I can make out the beginning and end of each cloud, as if they were individual waves. My gaze drifts toward the horizon: ahead of me, New York awaits.

I had booked this trip for the previous Christmas, excited to share the holiday atmosphere of the Big Apple with my long-term ex. Unfortunately, due to a delay with her visa, I was forced to postpone the trip by a year to this Christmas. Too bad we broke up in April.

For many months, I stared at the two tickets on my desk, unsure of what to do with them. Cancel everything and find a different destination? Invite another girl? Go alone?

The weeks passed as relentlessly as sand in an hourglass, and plans kept changing shape, a bit like the clouds I’m flying over right now. I would have loved to go with Piccolina, but she’s spending Christmas with her family. I had thought about bringing Ninfetta, looking forward to her big lips on my dick and her tender cuddles in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, but she ran off with an emir (literally!). I had extended a half-invitation to DonnaGentile, a woman of great charm and pleasantness, but her thirty-two years have bent her mindset in unnatural ways like the spoon in the Matrix (meaning: she didn’t give it to me because she “wants to see if I’m serious.” And any interest vanishes when they try to manipulate me with sex). In the end, I decided to go alone, focus on myself, and leave myself free to find someone there. Then, when I head to Miami, maybe SexySherlock will join me—the smartest woman I’ve ever met (and with a dream body).

Travel photo - reflections on love — SexySherlock is as hot as this. Maybe a bit less *teen*, but we’ll take it.

I’d say this solo trip is the perfect opportunity for reflection. I’m listening to Nuvole Bianche by Einaudi and admitting a truth I’d rather deny: who knows when I’ll feel Love again!

I’m not talking about the feeling of love itself: it’s part of who I am, with the girls I see (especially Piccolina), with partners and employees, with friends. I’m all love, you know that. The Magnificent lovves you!
I’m referring to Love with a capital “L,” the all-consuming kind, the kind that takes your breath away… the kind I felt with my long-term ex. I’m writing about it now, before time fades the memories, veiling those furiously bright colors with a patina—that boiling lava that flowed inside me, that constant shift between suffocation and a deep breath.

If you’re a man (and your name isn’t Giulio), feel free to skip this post: it’s going to be terribly sappy… see you at the next raunchy story.
If you’re a woman (and your name isn’t Lella), dive into this maelstrom of emotions… maybe the next time you read my harsh and disenchanted words, you’ll sense the dying echo of an overly romantic voice.

The heartbreak at sixteen and the flash in the pan

At 16, like everyone, I took my first hit (Elena). From there, something clicked in me, I told myself:

Love that ignites immediately is a flash in the pan: it burns strong, majestic, and ends quickly. Maybe the right kind of love is more like the embers of a fireplace: slow, moderate, persistent..

This idea kept me away from Love for most of my life. I spent from seventeen to thirty-seven with the same person, who later became my wife. Twenty comfortable years with someone I cared for deeply, but with whom I never really let myself go. I ruined every romantic moment with jokes.

The bus and going all-in at thirty-seven

Then, at thirty-seven, I see a bus coming at me and I think.
“I have everything people desire: a solid and serious relationship, serene and respectful, a comfortable life, health, affection, and friends. I have the life grandmothers advise their grandchildren. But if this bus were to hit me now, I’d die feeling like I never truly lived.”
I can’t breathe. I dodge at the last second.
I bravely decide to say goodbye to my wife and start living. Love, still, isn’t an option: after all, how can I miss something I’ve never known?
I’m having fun. Then suddenly that sadistic jerk Cupid shoots his arrow.
Maybe it’s Pietro’s fault, my coach at the time, who – finding me stuck in the love department – makes me do an unlocking exercise.
Maybe it’s the (delightful) fault of becoming a bit better with girls and meeting the Little American: a super flexible twenty-one-year-old bisexual with a tough history.
The fact is, for the first time, I lose my mind, control, and dignity over a brief month-long fling.
I struggle to recover, but I’m no longer the person I was before: it’s like when Ted Mosby discovers bacon for the first time at thirty… he can’t live without it anymore. Not that I actively seek it out; simply, when I’m alone, I feel a strange, new anxiety. A void whose object I don’t understand.
And finally, she arrives… my long-term ex.

Travel landscape - meditation on love — The prettier they are, the crazier and more dangerous they are
@ Waldemar van Kazak

I look her in the eyes: she is danger personified. Beautiful, a Sex Goddess like no one after her, the incarnation of transgression and freedom. Intelligent. Sensitive. Funny. With all the relationship experience I never had. With my same hang-ups. A girl to be saved from herself. An accomplice in experimenting with different ways of living life. My baby to love and fill up.
There is only one way to have her: to love her without brakes.
Loving my long-term ex is like throwing yourself into a fire, doused in gasoline. It means giving up all security, tranquility, and peace. It means not knowing what tornado will hit you tomorrow.
It means happily drinking the poison that will kill you, hoping to rise to a new life after a sweet death… but without much certainty.
Until before, you thought you were the master of the world, calmly deciding lives and (professional) deaths. Now you’re here trembling, like a fool, in front of a little being weighing barely 50 kilos. I find myself an adolescent again, inexperienced in relationships and life.

They were 5 great years. And terrible.
5 years in which I reached the highest peaks of happiness. And the deepest abysses.
5 years that finally expressed a part of me I didn’t even know I had. And left me with post-traumatic disorders, like those who returned from Vietnam.

There are many things I wish to forget. But some I hope to remember forever:

The incredible happiness. I was so happy that I found myself praying to God: “Please, don’t ever take this beautiful thing away from me! Don’t let it end. Make it last forever!” And I’m an atheist…
When I went around to the girls I was seeing to break up with them. And I said to my long-term ex: “You do whatever you want, from now on I’m only seeing you!” The attraction to her was so strong that I could no longer feel pleasure, not only with other women, but… not even with porn!
Being looked at as if I were the most beautiful thingin the world. For various reasons, I have a deep need to be truly seen. My long-term ex looked at me and loved not only my strengths, but also my flaws.
The incredible, endless sexual chemistry: 5, 6, 7 times a day, every day, for three years!
The first time we managed “to make love”: I proposed yet another fantasy, she looked at me, completely lost in love, and said sweetly: “No. Just you and me“. Repeating to me with all the love in the world how beautiful I was, how much she loved me. I was so overwhelmed by love that I was paralyzed: I couldn’t respond with the same intensity.
The endless evenings on the couch, talking, singing, dancing. The most beautiful journey I’ve ever taken was on that couch, getting to know each other. I wanted to know everything about her.
That time, just before we got together, I told her: “I’m yours. I surrender. Do with me what you want. Destroy me if you want, I won’t resist“

Illustration for reflections on love while traveling — The best moments on the couch: me, her, and Solomon

Of course, there’s also a lot of shit that I remember well. Things I will never accept from anyone again. Open wounds whose scabs are still painful.
There were moments when, more than a relationship, it felt like martyrdom. And, at every complaint, every time, for infinite times, Fil would repeat to me: “I told you to choose TetteDolci. You wanted X? And this is the result.” And I: “No, no, I want X!”.

The empty bottle

In April, I saw the person I had gone all-in on walk away.
I found myself being an empty bottle, unable to offer a drink to anyone.
Today I am gradually filling up, enjoying my single life.
And no! I wouldn’t go back.
I would never take X back (to whom I wish all the best possible). If you’re reading this… remember who you are, your value, and don’t throw yourself away!
I wouldn’t want a relationship like the one I had again. But neither would I return to a relationship like the one when I was married. My love has such a high price that I’ll only give it to someone who’s off the charts.

@ Waldemar von Kozan — Me shooing away the “*dirty ones”* who want to make me fall in love

I crave lightness. Suddenly, “Le plus beau du quartier” appears in the playlist, the song of the French Goddess. In the end, she and I are a bit more alike in this now: we both say we’re willing to fall in love, but… we actually avoid it. We know that for us, love has such a high price that it really has to be worth it. Hers is more economical, mine more emotional.
So, I think I’ll commit to the diet and become “The most handsome in the neighborhood” too. Maybe an anonymous blogger will write about me, calling me “The Sicilian god” haha. Not knowing that the deepest desire of every goddess and every god is… to be just a mortal.

My eyes are veiled, and I avoid the flight attendants who insist on bringing me champagne. Even first class has its flaws.

PS.
Obviously, everything mentioned above doesn’t apply if you’re Bruletova or Zolotova… in that case, I’d fall in love instantly and promise lifelong monogamy, hehe.
So if your last name ends in “ova,” let’s talk about it.