I got the news via e-mail from another friend that I haven’t talked with in… oh, nearly 10 years. She wrote me saying, “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news…” and then I read the funeral information. And I immediately started to cry. I kept a pretty good handle on my emotions, but I kept saying, “Oh my god… oh my god…” like a broken record. Even though I knew it was coming, I couldn’t believe it. And I really regretted not having the opportunity to say goodbye.

I first met Angela after my fourth (or so) month of living in Toronto. I’d just had my apartment broken into and half of my stuff stolen, and even though I knew it was unlikely that I would get hit twice and I had a solid lease, I wanted the hell out of there. I scoured the eye Magazine listings for apartment options and came across her ad looking for someone to share her duplex. It was literally spitting distance from where I was already living, so I made an appointment to meet with her and discuss options.

The duplex was in St. Patrick’s Square, which is behind an old-school market that’s directly across the street from the City TV building on Queen Street. Angie answered the door and I was immediately struck by how exotic she looked – long, dark hair, olive skin, curves as far as the eye could see… and when she told me she was Italian and spoke it fluently, I was green with envy. My mixture of admiration and jealousy deepened when she invited me into her office and told me what she did for a living: she was a freelance writer who mostly wrote about the film industry. And not only did she write about it, but she often interviewed and hung out with its most prestigious members. When she told me she wrote for Entertainment Weekly, I nearly died. And then I prayed to god that she’d pick me to take over the space.

About a week later Angie called me and told me that she wanted me to live there, reasoning, “There was another guy who was interested, but I kind of like the idea of having a female who’s also a fellow writer around.” Me? A writer?!? I mean, I always knew that that’s what I was, but something about having her acknowledge it just sent me over the moon.

I moved in shortly afterward. The place was the bottom two floors of the duplex, and my rent was slightly discounted because Angie kept her office in my front room, which was fine – I didn’t have any furniture to put in there anyway. Every morning she would come downstairs and begin work, and I’d hear her on the phone doing interviews, talking with editors, and trading back and forth between Italian and English as I got ready for work. At the time I was working at a bag store in Hazelton Lanes, but I was trying desperately to get where she was – working from home, on her own schedule.

Our friendship started out slowly. When I would come home from work and found Angie still in the office, we’d catch up on each other’s days a little. Then she started giving me CDs that she didn’t want that the record companies sent her for review. Eventually she invited me to come to screenings with her, and then she introduced me to her friends. I felt like the child in the bunch, but I also knew it was my opportunity to be a sponge. Often times I felt so out of place with her and her friends because they were so advanced and accomplished, and I felt so… green. (Bear in mind that I was about 21 at this point, but that didn’t matter to me at the time. To me, 21 meant I was running out of time.)

Eventually, Angie started sharing her life stories with me. When she was my age, she was writing for Rolling Stone and interviewing some of the biggest artists in the world. She told me stories of taking a bath with Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan, getting propositioned by both Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart when they were at the height of the Eurythmics popularity, turning down a fling with Bono in the early U2 days, and the holy grail of my pre-teen existence, getting to kiss John Taylor from Duran Duran. She told me stories of growing up in Italy, how she once set off a car bomb to impress a boy, how different it was there compared to Canada… oh, how I wanted to be her! She’d lead such an incredible and amazing life, and I so admired everything about it.

And when I moved on from my retail position to doing a webzine for Molson, Angie positioned herself as a copy editor and negotiated two articles a month from me, and I agreed, because I wanted her there with me through that time because even though I’d pitched them on the concept and they bought it from me, I still felt insecure about my skill. I wanted her by me, helping me, and in a way, telling me what to do when I felt lost. I wanted her to be impressed by me. I wanted her to be proud.

The really interesting thing is Angie is somewhat responsible for starting me on my adult industry path. I wrote about this in the book, but it was through her that I was introduced to AVN. She’d done reviews for them for some extra cash and got added to their mailing list, and handed me a copy of it one day when I saw it laying on her desk. How funny is it that about five years later I took a job there…

I’ll never forget when Alessandro entered her life. She’d met him in Italy at a café (if I remember correctly), and upon returning home they began a relationship conducted over IRC and phone. She’d talked of the men from her past with me, but the way she was talking about Ale was completely different. She was so passionate about him. I can’t tell you how many times she rushed home to hurry back to her computer so they could connect on IRC. I remember the first time he visited her in Toronto (and I remember that’s when I made my first investment in ear plugs… I would’ve never gotten any sleep otherwise.) She knew she was going to marry him from the beginning. Watching her fall in love was an incredible experience.

To be honest, I don’t recall the reasons for our falling out. After Ale moved to Toronto permanently, I started to feel a bit like three was a crowd and wanted to get my own place. That, and looking back I think there was a part of me that felt like I’d been replaced, but I was too immature to know how to express that… so I just left. I felt exhausted and sad, and it’s likely that I said and did some shitty things out of spite, out of hurt. But our friendship never really did recover after I moved out. To be honest, I found it kind of absurd that she could be hurt by me or feel like my moving out was a personal strike against her… which I guess it was, to a small extent. But the concept that little old me could’ve made an impact on her life was completely foreign to me.

I heard through the grapevine that she and Ale were married, they moved into a house, she’d given birth to a baby girl. I was happy that she’d gotten the life she’d always wanted.

About a year ago Ale tracked me down online after reading some promo about Hooking Up on an Italian website. We caught up a little, and he told me then about how Angie had gotten an incredibly aggressive cancer and might not have much time. He confessed that they’d tried everything to stop it, but nothing worked. I felt sad about it then, but I still didn’t contact her… or even ask him how to. I was afraid that she’d just reject me.

And now she’s gone.

I never got the chance to tell Angie how much she’d meant to me. There were times that our friendship was volatile, but whose friendship isn’t? The absolute joy of having her around and benefiting from her guidance far outweighed any petty argument we’d had or any shitty thing we’d said to one another. Evenings watching movies with Bandit, her toothless cat… watching her make mushroom risotto with precision and dedication… laughing our guts out at afternoon screenings… those are the things I cherish. Her lessons on how to take care of myself, how to be a better writer, pitching and crafting and copy editing… invaluable. And I never got to tell her. I never got the chance to say thank you. I never had the chance to apologize for being a temperamental 21 year-old that was so wrapped up in her own agony that I couldn’t see past my own bubble to understand that maybe I might’ve hurt her feelings.

Angie, you meant more to me than you will ever know. And I missed you more than you will ever know. Thank you so much for touching my life.

God bless you. Rest in peace.