Well, I missed the anniversary of his death by ten days (I was in Mexico on the 21st of March which was the day in 2017 we found out Walt Cessna had died. I think he died the day before.) And I missed his memorial in NYC at the Bowery Hotel last June because I was upstate and too ill to get my ass into the city. And I miss him, so it’s all misses.
I have these scrapbooks from 30+ years ago, and yesterday looking for something for an upcoming documentary I just came across one, which unlike my 2 volumes of my days at Vogue and my 3 volumes of Vanity Fair, is unrelated to working for a particular magazine. It was made during ’86-’87, the time that Walt and I were together.
I’m not going to get all mushy here, but it was kind of shocking to accidently come across these pages below and read Walter’s words to me as though he just wrote them. I guess I wrote him stuff back then that maybe he kept. Or maybe not. His bff Simone Colina (known as Fondu back in the day) told me that after we split up, he landed with her and always spoke well of our time together and that he thought maybe I was the one that got away. Coulda, shoulda, woulda, Prada.
We would run to each other from time to time, but for some reason never made a point to get together. He was a presence, to say the least on Facebook, so I kept up with him there. The last time I saw him was at Edwige’s Memorial at the Bowery Hotel in the exact room his memorial was held, not that long after.
I designed and printed 250 postcards to hand out at his memorial with an image of Walt sleeping in our bed when we lived together at The Christodora House and I composed this collage (below) of black and pics I shot for his memorial booklet too. (Hey, that reminds me. David Scharf, I need a postcard and the booklet, please…)
But come on! Will you look at these pics!? What a cutie. And talented? Freakishly so…
A lot of people loved Walt(er). I was one of them. And it makes me happy to remember that he loved me back.
Hope your afterlife is correct, Walter. I'll always love you. (I mean it too.)
