It’s strange.  Since V & I split, I have come into contact with more people in the fashion world than I ever did with V.  Well, I suppose it’s not that strange, really.  After all this is one of the great fashion cities of the world and there is, most probably, a higher proportion of gay people working in that industry than, say, the one I work in, Engineering.  And now I’m ‘out and about’, I meet the people who work for the names that we all know.

Interesting; and I hope V is doing the same because this was the world he always wanted – although it would be slightly ironic if he wasn’t meeting these people and I, much less interested than he, were.  I mean, for him, someone working for, say, Dolce & Gabanna, would be highly interesting, for me, it’s just a name and, unless they are Mr Dolce, really, of no interest in its own right.  He would ‘use’ the connection, for me it’s just like working for, say, Marks and Spencers.

I start having doubts.  This is based on a previous experience.  Am I just wanting him because it is ‘somebody'; a warm body; it could be any ‘body’?  Is it like that?  He makes me laugh, he is funny, he is nice, he has a great body (even if he doesn’t think so), he’s not incredibly handsome but it is a nice face – but…..will it be enough….will there be other things I like but, more importantly, will there be things I hate or are there already things I hate that will become ugly?  I want him but is that because he is available rather then I really want him?  I wish he were here, with me, so I could find out.

I keep two things in my wallet.  One is the card that Gordon gave me the night before last and the other is the piece of paper, torn from the notebook with the designer’s name on the bottom, for whom he works, on which he ‘scribbled’ the name of the pub for the previous night and the directions to get there.  Except they weren’t scribbled.  They are meticulously written words and a drawn map.

Normally, I struggle to read Italians’ writing.  His is immaculate, tidy, ordered, done with such care (I watched him do it).  It is beautiful writing.  I’m not sure that anything he does is unordered.  Everything is so perfect, so tidy.

I wonder if that is something I could live with?  And, whether he could live with me….but he says that, at first, with his ex, who is also a blue-eyed, British Taurean, he briefly put their clothes together in the wardrobe.  Later he split them as everything had to be ordered for him – so much like V but worse.  Or maybe that was why V came first, to get me more used to the idea?  Gordon says he is used to someone not as tidy as he is.  Maybe it will be a problem for him?

He had a dog when he was a kid.  And he is looking after a dog on the weekend after next or the one after that.  But, with my two?  With the fact that, really, the house should be cleaned every day; that nothing can be left within the reach of Dino; that, if they’re ill, it’s not pleasant – how does he cope with that in the ordered world of his?

He likes the bathroom, the cleanest place in the house, maybe?  He used to do his homework in the bathroom – it was his favourite place.

I take out the note, just to study how tidy and perfectly it is done.  It’s a scrap of paper but more like an artwork.

Maybe I will frame it