Not Always Pretty

In the fall of 1982, I set out for Italy with fifty dollars, a few amateur photographs, and a dream of becoming a model.

Growing up in Minnesota, I was bullied for being the tallest kid in school. When I was six, Dad left our family while having an affair with one of my mother’s friends. Shortly after that, my sister died in a fire. My mother took to drinking, and it slowly drowned her prime. By the age of forty, she was diagnosed with MS and spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

Drugs became my best friend; when I turned fifteen, I was expelled from Minnesota after getting caught dealing. I was sent to San Jose, California, to live with my Aunt Louise, whom I had never met. Louise saved me. She was the stable pillar that I needed in my life.

At the age of 20, I headed to New York City, where I lived for three years. I worked and partied long hours with the glitz and glam of the famed Studio 54 discotheque. It took a heavy toll on my mind, body, and spirit. I needed a way out, and I found it in the person of Giorgio Piazzi, an Italian playboy who owned a modeling agency in Milan. He knew I had the potential to model, so off to Italy he sent me.

No sooner had I arrived in Milan than I found myself on the cover of a prominent magazine for Versace. From there, I was off and running, traveling the world, and living the rarefied life of a top model. My long legs quickly landed me a role on a popular Italian TV comedy, and I became a national celebrity, but as always, looking for more excitement. So, I took advantage of my lifelong passion for motorcycles, and accepted an Italian motorcycle company’s offer to be sponsored in a grueling cross-country race. While racing, I met a fearless ex-heroin user by the name of Luca. We traveled together on our motorcycles through Turkey and Greece for one torrid month until it ran its course, and we parted ways.

A few months later, he informed me that he had AIDS, and I spent six excruciating weeks awaiting my test results. I count my lucky stars that I escape unscathed.

My biological clock was ticking, so I married Mauro Corda, a fashionable, good-looking man I met while modeling. The marriage lasted for two turbulent years, marked by his loss of a job and jealousy of my success.

Then it was on to Luigi, whom I had met in a hot tub at the Carlton Hotel in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Luigi was a long-haired, tattooed bad boy, and sure enough, our wild, passionate affair got me pregnant. When Angelica was born, her birth certificate read “mother unknown” because legally, I was still married to Mauro, and she would take on his last name.

When things went sour with Luigi, he told me, “You can go back to the states, but you’re not taking Angelica with you!” So, this “mother unknown” was now stuck in Italy with no way out. I plotted my escape, sold my motorcycle, my car, and ten years of accumulated possessions. Forging documents and smuggling money, I managed to get out, heading back to Minnesota, the state that had banished me all those years before. It was there, with a suitcase and a baby in hand, I started my life over again.