“Do you sometimes worry what would happen if you hit a vein and the ink travels to the heart and stops it?”

Probably not the best question to ask a tattoo artist when he’s plunging a needle into your friend. It’s Saturday 2nd November and the three of us are sitting around and chilling to the buzzing soundtrack of tattoo pens in the middle of Shoreditch, London. A place of many beginnings and a fresh new terrifying end.

We have met Corinne Chinnici the first New Year’s Eve we spent together as a couple. At that time, I was dating David Girard, the wonderful french giraffe man, for a few months, and so far we have only adopted each others friends in London. ‘Danish Girl’ with Eddie Radmayne playing Einar Wegener - a 20’s Danish transgender artist who’d be among the first to undergo a gender reassignemnt surgery - was released not so long ago, so you can imagine our shock and delight when his exact carbon copy joined our pre-party drinks in the last hours of 2015.

Although our ‘Danish Girl’ came with other people, we totally claimed her for the night, and ever since we held each other even closer and never let go.

Unlike Einar, Corinne actually owns a vagina, but you’d probably stop and think twice before assuming so, as she’d more likely pass for a freckled 13 year old boy, who’s fashion inspiration is Ziggy Stardust meets eighties punk wrapped in lots of nylon and polyester, who’s mum insists on buying two-three size bigger clothes, cause he would grow into them. She never did.

London will always remain a special place. I left a piece of my heart, my history and myself here, pinned under the places and people that touched and shaped my soul. Many friends, but also many people I cannot just throw in that category. I have met my chosen family in London, I’ve built a home for that family that will go with me everywhere, and Corinne will always have a place at that table.

Our bonkers stories of growing up and finding ourselves in this highly addictive, always infuriating but never not inspiring City, are touched by so many synchronicities and memorable moments (I mean the simple fact we look like twins can't be random, right?), that I had to sit down to question David - Amanpour style - to see what connotations our brains come up with. Here’s what we landed on:

Corinne Chinnici is Italian first. She’s got enormous heart filled with enormous emotions. She’s warm, hilarious, full of zest for life and dedicated to carbs. Corinne is also a Scorpio. That means she occupies a deliciously schizophrenic place in which all of the above co-exists with a darkness constantly threatening to gobble up her whole world.

She gives herself fully to people, places and realities she feels passionate about, but there will always be that one bitch who wants to bring her down. The bitch will usually be of a human origin, but it could be another type of kryptonite to her radiant personality - injustice, inequality, or mushrooms. Like a true Italian opera - her reality is loud, over-decorated, sensual, seemingly comical but hiding a deep (musical!) complexity underneath.

When we met on the tipping point in between 2015 and 2016, she wasn’t in the best place. Locked in the retail reality, dreaming of studying music and establishing herself in that world. As it always is with the truly meaningful connections, our friendship is filled with meaningful coincidences. Soon after that New Years Eve party, we invited Corinne to chill with us in Ziferblat - a place just next door from the tattoo studio where we’re marking our skin today. A place that no longer exists, but the one she fell in love with so deeply (as only Italians and Scorpios can do), she would end up volunteering at, and soon after managing. Through there, she met people who made her dream of a degree in music possible. And because she charms poor unassuming folks everywhere she goes, in two seconds she had found the dream job in the music industry and the dream partner at one of the many gigs she attends regularly.

Corinne thinks she owes much of this to the two of us, who held space for her in this overwhelming City and coached her through the ups and downs (mostly downs), but in fact it’s her, who taught us both a lot about love and friendships.

Cara Delevigne is scrutinising us from a ginormous billboard across the street from the Prick! tattoo studio. I cannot help but wonder if maybe her furrowed brows are a symbolic reflection of my grandma’s disapproval for having a tattoo (which is solely for criminals or amazonian tribes) from beyond the grave. They’re huge as it is, but someone had the idea to print her over the whole side of a building, so now they’re the size of car bumpers. I’m still jealous.

This will not be my first tattoo. Some time ago, following my brother’s one way ride out of this world, I got to keep his notebook filled with hand-written poems. So, on the sad 10 years anniversary of his passing - a tumultuous time in my life marked by a complete violent dismantling of all the scaffolds I built to support me here in London, which is always also a time of new beginnings want it or not - I got the title of his poem he dedicated to me tattooed on my forearm, in his hand-writing. ‘Little friend’. Tattoo that prompted more naughty jokes than I could even count, but never will not be meaningful. It’s a mark of many different chapters and challenges, and a resilience and resolve to grow and evolve, so I could face them and slay.

Tattoo always seemed to me like a concept too permanent to just go and be spontaneous about it, but in the end - like all our scars, wrinkles of worries and laughter, it’s just an outside mark of the changes, chapters and cycles we carry inside…

So even though I never planned on another ink, here we are. November 2019. Danilo Danielllo, who's mustache and biceps match in scope his talent & humour finishing David's first tat, just a couple of weeks before we leave London together for the huge unknown out there in the big wide world. This City, these people and stories and lessons, failures that seemed enormous and profound but in retrospect were really just the foam of the days, and victories that seemed too little to celebrate properly, but really were giant triumphs that shaped us for the next few chapters - this chunk of life surely deserves another bookmark on our skin.

Corinne will always carry us - a giraffe for David and fox for me - on her biceps, so she’d remember to be strong and feisty when pursuing her dreams. David’s tattoo will remind him of the reiki journey he started here in London, and to also build life one day at a time. And for me, of course, it’s a ‘compass’ from the Wheel of Fortune tarot card - to remind me that life is cyclical and to be open to all of its ebbs and flows.

Now, let’s turn the wheel again!

It’s a week or so later. Our last party at the Archway Road flat. Our goodbyes. I’m holding that little pixie so tight I could crush her. She could stay longer, but there’s been too many goodbyes and we already had our biggest one, the one that’s permanently etched in our dermis.

We cry and she says: “Okay boys. I have to let you go now.”

And it is okay. Because we know - as it goes with family - that no matter how far we travel, we’re not really going anywhere at all.