Let Forever Be

Jules, y'know, honey... this isn't real.

For some reason this has always been one of my favorite videos of Giancarlo, even though he isn’t seen or named in it. “He’s here.”

I finished Scott McClanahan’s Fights! in a matter of hours and I loved it. I don’t know Scott personally, only indirectly, but the week I spent with Giancarlo DiTrapano in Italy for the inaugural Mors Tua Vita Mea workshop he held with Chelsea Hodson in 2017 was my primer on Scott McClanahan mainly because Gain talked about him so much. He talked about Scott as a writer, as his friend, as a trusted partner in life, he was someone he referenced constantly. He even told us, his students, about the fight he and Scott had that’s referenced as their first fight in the novel, and made us promise not to repeat it. Or he assumed we wouldn’t repeat it when Chelsea advised us what gets mentioned in Villa DiTrapano stays in Villa DiTrapano. I referenced it vaguely when I wrote an essay about Gian after he died, and my friend and fellow MTVM alumni Paul Dalla Rosa suggested I take it out. He said that maybe one of his authors would read my essay and feel betrayed.

I didn’t take it out. I didn’t think any of them would read my essay, and also, I was doing what so many people did after Gian died, what I still hear people do to this day— share a snippet of information about him to somehow signal to the world that yes, I knew this man, I loved and admired the fuck out of him, and we shared secrets. I’m special.

One of my favorite pictures of Gian, we were on the beach in Sperlonga, Italy, and I like to think that he is gazing at my perfect hair. I don’t think I’d ever go that short again but man. This was the height of my blonde ambition tour.

Not super important, but: If you know the order in which Tyrant published their books or courted their writers, you can narrow down the writer in the scene from Fights! who had the gun in their backpack to two people. I mean, I highly doubt it was Babak Lakghomi. If it was him I’d be gagged. I know this facet of the novel was just a short scene, but, obviously I am going to wonder. Maybe I just feel smug having potentially figured it out. It was so much easier to figure out than say, who the guy in Elizabeth Ellen’s Person/A was about. That took me years.

Anyway.

When I saw Chelsea and Scott were going to be in the city for the book launch, I immediately bought a ticket for the reading on the Lower East Side this past Tuesday. There was no way I was going to Brooklyn. Tolls alone to Brooklyn now are like, fifty bucks. I can’t tell you how many times writers from out of town were coming into New York and I bailed on going— once when Gian was coming to New York after he and I became friends, I bailed, and he aggressively subtweeted me for being a loser the next morning and I was terrified. This was after the Tyrant Thanksgiving drama of 2017 and I knew he could be vicious on Twitter and I was legitimately scared. I replied a few times defending myself, and he made fun of me repeatedly in his Twitter feed. I think I sent him an text apologizing and he said something along the lines of him not being mad at me (and Lexi Kent, who he was also subtweeting) but his feelings were hurt. I was shocked.

But after that I still never made it into New York to see him (Lexi did, she has the cutest pictures of them in the rain), and I regretted it. I’ve also missed countless Rose Books launches but after seeing Chelsea for lunch in Sedona this past January, I was determined to show up this week. One of my goals for this year is nurturing my friendships, and she’s been a friend and mentor for a decade+. I wanted to see her, Scott’s wife Julia who is a friend, and I knew some of my other friends I had not seen in forever would likely be there too.

The reading itself was fantastic. Every aspect. I took the train in, something I need to remember is super easy when I am not wanting to go into the city to deal with traffic, paying $35+ to park, the tolls, the surge fees. From there I walked a little and then took Lyfts ($91 total in Lyfts, I hate being in New York!) I got there slightly early and got a perfect seat, sort of amphitheater style in this super cute bookstore/cafe. Once Chelsea walked in I got to say hello to her, and also Hurley Winkler who I have known for 8 years and never met in person, and she was stunning and fresh faced and absolutely dazzling. Then I saw Becca Schuh, who I met in 2014 at a Chloe Caldwell/Emily Gould Catapult bootcamp and then she was in my MTVM cohort in Italy with Gian, she’s been my home girl ever since. We took a selfie to send to Paul Dalla Rosa and afterwards I said to him, I need to see Becca more often. She effortlessly gives me effervescent joy every single time I interact with her and I love being around her.

Chelsea’s conversation with Scott was very funny and then he read several pages from a chapter mid-book that I had to fight to hold back tears while I listened to him read. Gian wasn’t really mentioned much during that part that he read from, but his connection to his wife Julia was, and the invisible string of connection through community in your neighborhood was touched on, and I almost bawled. There was a point in Scott’s reading, the last several minutes where his voice was soft, and paced, and steady, maybe he was also holding back tears? Where he read a passge dedicated to Julia, and he held her gaze as he read it, and my head started to hurt slightly, I realized I’d been holding my breath. I exhaled slowly and deliberately, keeping the tears inside.

I am a sensitive person by nature, in so many ways: a recovering addict, a youngest child, a Scorpio sun, Cancer Moon, with my Venus in Scorpio as well. I am not shy about crying, I love to cry; it’s a cathartic release, and I have been crying more and more regularly over the last several months while deliberately paying attention to the news and watching our country fall apart in a completely dystopian and brutal fashion, any little touch of nostalgia or hope core makes me cry.

Fights! was a trip down the same lane. While I wasn’t even aware of who Gian was until late 2017 when he and Chelsea picked me up at the Rome airport, I had read a couple of his books— Marie Calloway’s book and also Scott’s book The Sarah Book. So while reading Fights! it can appear to a reader who knows the subject matter (literally) to be a sort of timeline for the last few years of his life, but from a point of view that’s not Gian’s. That sounds more complicated than it needs to, but like, a lot of what was written I knew already even though I was not there for any of it. ANY of it.

Because Gian spread his lore around. After he died, I can’t even recall how many people posting about how he’d send them clips of Stevie Nicks demos of her singing Wild Heart, or the song Christian that never got released by Fleetwood Mac. He told dozens upon dozens of people the same stories about him, Tyrant, his past, whatever. But it never felt impersonal. Ever. So many essays were published about him after he died— a lot of them mentioning the same stuff. There are several people I have encountered over the years who say Gian was their best friend. He was one of those people— many thought he was their best friend. I don’t know who he considered his best friend— it doesn’t matter. It’s like that quote in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Marge talking about Dickie: when he gives you attention it’s like the sun shining on you. I think I even plagiarized that in my essay about him. I’m not trying to make Gian sound like Dickie Greenleaf.. even thought he is kinda like him. I think Gian would like the comparison.

A couple things that stood out. When Gian tweeted this on Thanksgiving evening, 2017, I was at my sister and brother in law’s beach house in the North Fork. I was annoyed by my family, and I was sitting in the sun room alone, in pitch black darkness, on Twitter and texting the guy who is my now husband, and it was oddly exciting to watch the shit unfold on Twitter. It felt like a roast, but of a weird niche community online that literally nobody I knew IRL had any clue about. At the time I was not acquainted with the writer Gian had a falling out with, and targeting, and I think I may have been less giddy had I been acquainted with her, but what I’d always loved about that beef was Julia defending Gian and sparring with dorks online.

Another thing I remembered, but had forgotten: Covid seemed like such a lonely time for Gian. I had no idea how much he was struggling though, but it’s evident in Scott’s book. Covid was tough for many people, I know, but the isolation of the villa he lived in got to him and he wasn’t shy about complaining. He’d send me long voice notes on about Euphoria, and Industry, how he was too impatient for new episodes to drop. He was streaming them from a torrent and for some reason I felt very hesitant to give him my HBO password. Like I was scared to give him my password— what was he going to do? Give it to someone else? My big fear. It’s laughable at the moment.

I was texting with Gian in the days leading up to his death when he was in New York. Nothing major. He asked me about investing in his new press but also said he was just playing. The we talked about pizza. Brief, stupid shit. When Chelsea called me a few days later to say Gian had died, I freaked out. I tried to remain composed but I remember blathering on about how he had to have been in a lot of pain that none of us knew about (meanwhile it was just pain I was assuming, and it was me who didn’t know about it. Gian was not vulnerable with me). As I was talking I knew I was not being appropriate— Chelsea was likely in shock to learn that one of her very close friends was gone, and, she was generously calling all of Gian’s students to inform them so they didn’t read it on Twitter. We got off the phone shortly after I picked up, there was nothing much to say, she had many calls to make, and I was stunned. I remember feeling gutted. I remember knowing that I barely knew him at all.

I’d give anything to go back to the Villa, or Sezze in general. The little cafe I’d walk to every morning to get a few cappuccinos and try to meditate alone before the workshop. The random trattoria he stopped in once to grab us all pizza that we ate standing in the street by the van he rented for the workshop. This trattoria had a poster of Madonna on the street, an ad for her True Blue record that was like, 35 years old. Sezze was wild.

His legacy, for me, is not in the DiTrapano Foundation. That organization feels very much like riding Gian’s coattails and trying to capture the excitement that Gian and Chelsea created from 2017-2019. I do not get the publications they put out, I do not get a lot of choices they make, I do not get it at all. So… there’s that.

I see his legacy in music, movies, and literature. I think of him when I hear that Robe Lowe quote from St Elmo’s Fire about St Elmo’s Fire being an illusion. Or Over The Edge, and The Outsiders. Dallas Winston. Rufus Wainwright. That hideous video he loved of Elvis all sweaty and bloated singing Unchained Melody. All the books and writers he suggested. Whenever I put She’s So Unusual on and I remember asking him if he liked this record at all, and he got so mad and defensive I even asked.

Gian sent me this on Christmas Eve, 2020. He wanted to know my reaction. I bet he sent it to many others who loved him so much.

Fights! is a beautifully written homage to family, love, art, and Giancarlo. I felt lucky to read and learn about Scott’s enduring love with Gian, and happy to rekindle my own.

Order Fights! here, on the Rose Books website <3