"I was using the industry," says Fabio, now 48. "I used the fashion industry, the whole business, for money, for chicks, for a lifestyle. But I never let them use me. And now they think I'm still desperate for a job, for work. Like I'll do anything. I don't care if I'm never on TV again."

Fabio talks a lot of shit. He barged back into the gossip columns last fall because of a near throwdown with George Clooney at a Beverly Hills restaurant. The incident reportedly began when Clooney accused a gaggle of Fabio's fans of taking his photograph. "This guy, he ate more than he could chew," Fabio says (his English-language phrasing is sometimes awkward: "The yard on the other side is always more green"; "One animal in a man's hand is more than two in the tree"). "He laid a hand on me, so it would have been self-defense if I had beaten him down. I could have fucked him up. Oh my god, I could have beaten the shit out of him. I was so pissed off." According to Fabio, Clooney called his dinner companions—who'd won the date at a charity auction benefiting the California Highway Patrol—names. "Bitches, even badder words," he recalls. "So I go over and I'm like, 'Listen, I will fuck you up.'" Fabio claims that Clooney then shoved him. At six three and 230 pounds, the former Italian-army paratrooper is hard to budge. "Right then, I could have knocked him over and beat him," he says. "I could have punched him in the face while he was on his back. That's how you really hurt someone—their face can't amortize the punch so it takes, it takes the whole impact."

Clooney, according to onlookers, left the restaurant. "I am still so pissed at him," Fabio says. "To insult women like that. He is a dog whose noise is worse than his bite."

Fabio Lanzoni was born into a wealthy Italian family. His father, Sauro, was a Milanese industrialist whose firm, Flowlink, built and installed conveyer belts for companies around the world. The family lived in a huge apartment near the Duomo and wintered in the Italian Alps. Fabio's only regret, if you can call it that, is not having pursued a career as a professional skier. Summers were devoted to motor sports, riding trail bikes in the country around the family's Adriatic beach compound. He recalls losing his virginity to a 17-year-old at the family beach house when he was, in his words, "younger, very much younger. She was telling me 'Don't make me pregnant,' and I was like, 'Don't worry, I don't even have sperm yet.'"

His first visit to the United States, when he was 14, was to accompany his father to see a world-renowned heart specialist in Houston. "My dad was in the hospital, getting checked out for chest pains," he says. "Meanwhile, I met this other guy from Rome and the two of us were just going around, having fun, meeting girls, going to titty bars." The family returned home from Texas, his father with a clean bill of health, Fabio with a longing to return to America.

When he was 19, he moved to New York. He signed with the Ford Modeling Agency the following day, and the day after that he was cast in a Gap campaign: 18 days on the beach in Hawaii with Andie MacDowell and Kathy Ireland and a $100,000 payday. The eighties were a blur.

"I was a testosterone machine. Oh my god, I was going through models like crazy. I would be at Heartbreak or MK and there they were, 200 of them, all lined up. I could choose."

He barely remembers his first shoot for a romance-novel cover, but publishers quickly discovered that putting the long-haired stallion's image on books could boost sales by as much as 40 percent. Fabio appeared on more than 2,000 book jackets. People put him on its cover and Cosmopolitan proclaimed him the Sexiest Man in the World. Later, he shilled for products like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and Nationwide Insurance. He did a hugely successful spoken-word CD called Fabio After Dark and a line of coats for Sam's Club. Right now he's working on a super-secret energy drink. He has already raised several million dollars, he says, and by next year should be in a position to launch it. "I'm telling you, you're gonna drink this stuff and after a few days you'll be like, 'Fabio, I can't believe how much energy I have.'"

What's in it?

"I wish I could tell you, but it's a secret. I'm sitting on this gold mine for a long time. It's like you're looking all over your house for your car keys and it turns out you are sitting on them, that's what this is like."

Hanging out with Fabio is a little like discovering what would have happened to you if you had been extremely well-built, no-worries wealthy, and single into your late forties. You would have a vast collection of totally bitchin' cars and motorcycles and a ridiculously kick-ass home sound system. "And the chicks," he adds. "I still get a lot of chicks."

He moved to his Spanish-style five-bedroom house in the Santa Monica mountains from Beverly Hills four years ago, mainly because he likes to tear up the nearby trails on his motocross bikes, despite the persistent efforts of local park rangers to arrest him.

"That is a Husqvarna 450 RR," he tells me when we go out to his driveway. "One of only 20 in the world. That Ducati 998R? Only two in the world. That Lamborghini? Maybe only 200."

Throughout the kitchen, den, and adjacent bathroom are motorcycle parts and 40-pound bags of dog kibble. Part of being a bachelor and living however the hell you want is owning four Rottweilers and a pit bull.

He admits he has a hard time meeting girls he likes, because, you know, he's Fabio. So he ends up dating a lot of actresses. "And they are always complaining about their work, or how they are not working. About this casting or this part they are hoping to get, and I have to say, 'Come on, you're a fucking waitress.' I don't say that, but I think that, you know, because I'm a gentleman."

While he still hasn't found the "one special lady"—because he is exacting, demanding "the best woman possible"—he believes that he will find a woman with "good family values, good morals."

Fabio's Porsche can go from zero to 60 in 2.5 seconds. Sitting in the passenger seat while he guns it up a canyon road is like having a fist pushed against your chest. "You feel that? You see, there is nothing like this car," he says. We're on the other side of the Hollywood Hills, driving down La Cienega, when Fabio starts talking about having been in love once. She was a brunette with a great body named Jennifer, whom he first saw from behind while she was dancing at the nightclub MK in New York. He was 24, and the two of them were practically living together within a few months. She was the "only one in the world. It's very hard to fall in love," he says. They were together for five and a half years. "I wasn't ready then. I still love her. She's always going to have a place in my heart. I don't think about going back with her. What am I gonna do, ruin her family?" He shakes his head. "But I'm always going to love her."

He pulls up to a restaurant and stops the car. The valet opens the door, but Fabio sits for a while, shaking his head. "Who knows? Maybe I'm never gonna meet another girl like that. Maybe it happened too young for me."

We get out of the car and stroll to the restaurant. It is freezing out. Fabio is wearing just a T-shirt. A Porsche pulls up alongside us, a black 996 Cabriolet. Fabio taps my shoulder. "You see this car? Oh my god, my car will make this car look like it's standing still."