New York was the city of his heart. He had specialised in American language and accent at New York University, and returned over the years as to a place where he could breathe.
He knew it as a New Yorker, not as a tourist. He loved all of it, from the great rituals to the small things.
"A tall, elderly woman, imperious, thin. She wore combat boots and dressed eccentrically. She intrigued me to no end."Roberto, on the Chelsea Hotel
For a time he stayed at the Chelsea Hotel, the legendary haunt of artists. In the lobby he often crossed paths with that woman, who one day had a coffee cup brought to her and whom he heard say, with assurance, that she always took all her vitamins. Only later, reading of her death, did he learn she was Stormé DeLarverie, a Stonewall activist and legendary drag king. That story, he said, rekindled his longing for New York.
The New York Christmas was his favourite, made of small things.
Everywhere he stepped in, the same Feliz Navidad was playing, and the streets smelled of pine. At Barnes and Noble, on Christmas Eve, the cashiers would shout "NEXT". And the Christmas specials at Starbucks, where one took shelter from the cold.
He had a little place behind Washington Square where he dined, and long walks in the East Village. One Christmas Eve, in a historic venue, the encounter with Amanda Lepore lit a spark. From it came the idea of Dea, his alter ego, who came to life in Milan on 27 December.
His New York, in a few stops.
New York was also, for him, a city of books. His thesis was on Fernanda Pivano, who had translated On the Road and brought the Beat Generation to Italy, and he gave seminars on Jack Kerouac. To walk in the Village was, for him, to walk inside that literature.
The Chelsea Hotel itself was a place of writers, from Dylan Thomas to Thomas Wolfe, from Arthur Miller to Allen Ginsberg. And there was The New Yorker, the magazine he loved, keeper of a certain idea of the city.
Around him, the New York of books.
For years he dreamed of going back for a long stay, two weeks in summer, each time looking for somewhere to stay.
In 2017 he managed it, after years of withdrawing into himself. He called it "breaking the spell". He dedicated that trip to his mother, a way to open himself to the world again.