Mr Burlington is in trouble...

Mr Burlington is in trouble...

It is a habit of his: he is quite the adventurer, which is probably why I was so drawn to him in the first place. Strong-willed and ambitious, he has made himself against all social predicaments: both his parents were Sicilian immigrates in the US and still do not speak a very good English, and Mr Burlington rose through society like Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, supporting himself through business school and penetrating the sacro saint sepulchre of the American capital’s high society on his own.

I don’t think I have ever met such an intelligent man, and he is one of the persons I admire the most: yes he is feisty, yes he endeavours to break into the closed circle of the high and mighty, yes he can be frank in a brutal way, but he is also one of the most genuine persons I know, smart, free-spirited, courageous and reliable as a friend.

To break through life when you come from nowhere, you must have some balls, you must not be scared of breaking social rules.

This is where it went wrong: it is an Icarus’ tale really, if you are too impatient and want to high fly too fast, you end up burning your wings.

Mr Burlington went to Paris some time ago to sponsor a fashion week party at Neo: after a couple of weeks without news, I started wondering why he had disappeared from the London party scene. I was half thinking he might have decided to stay in France and take Paris by storm, when his boss contacted me by email regarding work, and dropped in our email exchange: ‘Dave is in prison in France’.

In prison? How?! Why??? All I could think is that he had managed to pick a fight with someone, the police had come over and they had found out he did not have a European working visa.
Unable to shed some light on the whole situation, I ran over to his club, then contacted half our common database, and ended up getting his address in France: ‘maison d’arret de Douai’. How French people have the good humour to call a prison ‘a home of arrest’, I cannot begin to fathom, it really makes me mad! ‘Maison d’arret de Douai, letters, photos, no packages’... no phone calls.

How isolated can you be when you are secluded between four walls, in a country where you don’t speak the language, incapable of talking to your friends or family? Really, the idea of a prison where you would keep criminals away from society has become so common that you would probably not stop to wonder how cruel the concept of depriving someone of their liberty of movements truly is: can you imagine suddenly not being able to walk where you want, meet who you like, see what you please, see life around you? Have you ever considered yourself in this kind of position? Is this really the best solution we could find? Because it seems not only like torture, it seems like you cannot get out of such a space if you spend too much time in it... You must go mad in this kind of place.

Yes he fucked up. He ran away from the US when he was 23 because he was about to serve a 2 year sentence for some drug-related issue. He is not a dealer, and for I know him well, I would say he just tried to make enough money to get ahead as fast as he could. But what would get you a slap on the wrist in the UK, where everybody has tried coke, will have much graver consequences in a place like the State of New York which applies a no-tolerance policy.

At 23, he decided to make a run for it: he probably was old enough to know what he might risk, but are you not a kid at that age? Are you not a boy? Do you ever think of the consequences of your actions to their full extent? Do you ever imagine that your life could be taken away in a snap? It is an age when you feel immortal and invincible. And what of punishing someone for dealing with a substance in a recreational way while it is common knowledge that 80% of the New York youth has tried it? Isn’t it slightly hypocritical?

Mr Burlington’s passport was flagged and he was arrested on his way back to London. He is now facing 12 years for running away 5 years ago. He was 23. Today he is 28 and if he is deported to the US, he will be 40 when he gets out. For a boy’s mistake.

Do we call this justice?

Champagnista V