Absinthe Dreams: Elegy for a Past Life (Part IV)

Continue reading: [Part I] • [Part II] • [Part III] • [Part V] • [Part VI] • [Part VII]

IV

     Curious about my conversion, I explained to Annalisa how my ailing mother’s sudden decline served as a catalyst for changing my ways and overcoming that nihilistic and decadent period of my life.

     In pursuit of self-mastery, I immersed myself in my studies. I aspired, at first, to what later Traditionalist thinkers would call the solar initiation, or the Olympian way—the arduous path of the kshatriya and the eremite, though only with nominal success.

     Steeped in Perennialism (Guénon, Evola, A. Coomaraswamy, Schuon, etc.), I eventually stumbled upon The Destruction of the Christian Tradition by Rama P. Coomaraswamy (World Wisdom, 2006), which in turn led me to Salvo, Borella, Rao, and others. Still and all, I was hesitant to set foot back into the modern Church.

     Finally, after a vivid dream (I’m convinced it was an apparition) of Santa Patrizia di Costantinopoli urging me to return to the Church on the night of her feast (August 25th), I decided to go back to Mass.

     Certain this was the right path, I went to confession that Saturday and attended Mass at my local church the following morning.

     Underwhelmed and confused by the changes to the rites and Liturgy that had taken place since my childhood (most noticeably the laity receiving Communion in the hand), I stuck with it for a while.

     Uninspired and often annoyed by the mundane and profane sermons of the priests, I eventually started attending Italian-language Masses so I couldn’t understand the homilies but could still receive the sacraments.

     This went on until I finally discovered the whereabouts of the Traditional Latin Mass. 

     On the brink of leaving the Church again (I was tempted to “swim the Bosphorus” and join the Eastern Orthodox), I met, by chance, a Traditional Catholic priest and his friend at a feast in New Jersey, who informed me that the Tridentine Mass was, in fact, still being offered at certain churches throughout New York City.

     Forever changed by it, I attended the Solemn High Mass for the Feast of San Giorgio (April 23rd) at the Shrine Church of the Holy Innocents in Midtown Manhattan, and I immediately knew that I had found what I had been searching for all these years. I was home.

     To this day, that Mass remains one of the most memorable and beautiful Masses I’ve ever attended.

     Fascinated by my story, Annalisa brought me up to date with hers. Between working and taking care of her aging parents, she doesn’t have much time for herself anymore. Not reading as often as she would like—she was a literature major and a voracious reader of Regency fiction (Austen, etc.) and literary verismo (Serao, etc.)—she still keeps a journal and dabbles with her poetry, though nothing she wishes to share.

     To my surprise, she kept an old sketch I doodled of her during one of our figure drawing sessions (The girls and I would often model for each other).

     Unlucky in love, she dated several men (a couple for long periods), but nothing serious ever developed between them. She wanted children, and they didn’t.

     She claimed to be happy, and I hope she is, but (I may be projecting) there seemed to be a palpable melancholy in her eyes.

     “I always wondered what life would have been like if my parents had not moved us away.”

     I often wondered that myself.

     Having done some traveling in recent years, Annalisa visited relatives along la Costa degli Dei in Calabria and finally took her dream vacation to Paris, Nice, and the Côte d'Azur. Fondly recounting her visits to Versailles, the Louvre, and the Musée Rodin, she rattled off the many gardens, churches, and châteaux she had seen.

     Amusingly, she was ashamed to admit that one of her most cherished memories was in the charming dix-huitième (18th arrondissement) of Paris, famous for the Moulin Rouge and the Sacré-Cœur.

     Needlessly worried that I might think less of her, she hesitated to tell me that she went to Café des 2 Moulins because of its connection to the quirky romantic comedy Amélie (2001), starring Audrey Tautou. But when I recognized the café and admitted to liking the film myself, she immediately started recalling the scenes from the movie that took place there with febrile excitement.

     Still, as much as she loved France, Annalisa absolutely glowed when she spoke of her ancestral homeland.

     “You haven’t lived until you’ve tried the swordfish or tuna in Calabria,” she said. “The seafood is always straight from the sea.”

     “Are you unhappy with your meal?” I asked, misreading her tone.

     “È sapuritu,” she assured me. “It’s delicious.” I love it when she slips into Calabrese.

     “I just miss Calabria,” she continued. “My zie are wonderful cooks, and my cugini took me everywhere.” 

     Pausing, as if about to blaspheme—“The food is better in Calabria than in France.”

     I’ve heard this sentiment often enough from non-Italians to be mere oikophilia.

     “I get it,” I said. “Every time I come back from Montreal, the croissants here taste bland by comparison. They’re just not the same.”

     She laughed, but I was being serious.

     “Don’t get me wrong,” she said, gesticulating. Her body bounced with joyous abandon, every gesture alive with feeling. “I love a good croissant, but how can you compare that to ’nduja, the cipolle rosse di Tropea, or our cornetto?

     “The food, the beaches, and the people of Calabria are second to none,” she boasted. “Nothing I say can do them justice; you have to go and see for yourself.” Continue reading

Absinthe Dreams: Elegy for a Past Life (Part III)

Continue reading: [Part I] • [Part II] • [Part IV] • [Part V] • [Part VI] • [Part VII]

III

     Finishing our drinks, the maître d’ seated us for dinner. We heard the specials from our waiter and, since it was a Friday night, ordered a few seafood dishes and a bottle of Fiano di Avellino, a noteworthy white wine from Campania.

     As the wine settled and the conversation deepened, we found ourselves reminiscing about our mutual attraction to countercultural subcultures and the avant-garde revolt that was in vogue at the time. Rejecting the prevalent Guido and drug cultures, we prided ourselves on our artistic and intellectual pursuits.

     Branching out from a childhood fascination with Classical European art, history, and high adventure, my early exposure to philosophy, poetry, and (to a lesser degree) the occult in secondary school proved portentous. Deep dives into D’Annunzio, Nietzsche, and Spengler, to name but a few, didn’t uproot me from my heritage—they intensified latent dispositions, such as aristocratic radicalism, ignited by their contempt for mass society.

     Shaped by the Southern Italian ethos of my parents—family loyalty, sacrifice, and reverence for ancestry—these encounters didn’t estrange me from my roots; they deepened them, giving form to instincts already stirred by the old-world fatalism, dignity, and quiet mistrust of modernity I had absorbed at home.

     In fact, back in the late ‘80s, Annalisa and I co-published a few issues of Bal des Ardents, a metapolitical journal named after the infamous “Ball of the Burning Men,” held by Charles the Mad at the Hôtel Saint-Pol in Paris in 1393. It was replete with art, poetry, history, religion, socio-political satire, and scathing commentaries on the modern world.

     A couple of young idealists, we railed against the system and its many injustices. She did most of the writing; I handled the mechanicals and paste-up.

     Out of step with the times, we not only embraced our rebelliousness—we reveled in it.

      Disillusioned with the world around us, we saw ourselves as a militant vanguard, waging war against the effete stupor of modernity through our art and a metaphysical revolt against materialism and spiritual decay. We sought a higher power in the only ways we knew—through meaningful action, inner resistance, and lived experience.

     Rejecting the confusion and desacralization of the post-conciliar Church, we pursued alternative paths to spiritual transcendence—non-Christian and, in hindsight, tragically misguided.

     All the rage at the time, we used to go on missions to find other countercultural fanzines. Creators would trade them at gigs, galleries, and record shops. While many were stodgy, half-baked rags not worth the effort we put into finding them, a few offered worthwhile commentary. 

     Prior to the advent of the Internet, these samizdat-style publications were one of the few effective ways to spread alternative ideas. Before computers and smartphones, the photocopier and P.O. Box were the main tools of rebellion.

     As the stranglehold of information gatekeepers and self-appointed “fact-checkers” tightens across news, social media, publishing, and academia, nonconformists will be forced to revive old-school methods of communication, including underground presses and secret gatherings.

     We often attended underground meetings on campuses, in dorms, libraries, and parks. I don’t know how the girls found them, but they always convinced Giancarlo and me to go to pretentious art exhibits or turgid poetry readings in converted lofts in Williamsburg or ateliers in Park Slope—back before either neighborhood had been fully gentrified.

     Once, we even had to endure a wacky vegetarian luncheon with a bunch of Hare Krishnas we met in Tompkins Square. The only saving grace from that fiasco was that they gave us free copies of the Bhagavad Gita and, strangely enough, Gaddafi’s Green Book.

     “You’re one to talk,” she chided. “Weren’t you the one dragging us to all those weird lectures? I remember sitting through Lyndon LaRouche and Sun Myung Moon because of you.”

     Her voice rose. “Didn’t you take us to a couple of hardcore shows at that biker gang’s clubhouse?”     

     In Annalisa’s defense, it’s difficult to remember every gathering we attended. The ’80s and early ’90s were strange and interesting times, with no shortage of fringe groups and furtive cults meeting in the backrooms of beer halls and cafés. That said, for the record, I know I never brought them to see the LaRouchites or the Moonies.

     We did, however, frequently attend clandestine anti-communist meetings in Queens, composed of multi-national cells of émigrés from the USSR and its satellite states. Our “nest” consisted primarily of Romanian dissidents, though it also included Hungarians, Croats, Poles, and others.

     It was at these gatherings that we first learned about the Katyn Forest massacre, the Holodomor genocide, and other communist atrocities often omitted in Western schools. 

     Naturally, after the fall of Ceaușescu in 1989, we lost all contact with them when the Romanian contingent returned home. As far as I know, the group became defunct after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

     “As for the bikers,” I joked, “you’re lucky I don’t smoke, because the Sergeant at Arms wanted to trade me a carton of cigarettes for you.”

     “So it’s your fault I’m not riding across the country on the back of some hog today,” she grinned, clearly enjoying herself.

     The thought of such a dainty and thoughtful creature on the back of a Harley was preposterous and made me laugh. Continue reading

Absinthe Dreams: Elegy for a Past Life (Part II)

Continue reading: [Part I] • [Part III] • [Part IV] • [Part V] •  [Part VI] • [Part VII]

II

    Pent-up by school or work all day, we lived for the night. Looking to escape the rigidity of “proper society,” we refused to be held captive by bourgeois convention. 

      One night we’d be at an underground lounge or burlesque show “dressed to the nines” in our army surplus and vintage finery; the next, we’d be scoffing down 50-cent hot dogs at Gray’s Papaya after a night of clubbing in the city.

     Free spirits with a lust for life, we were just as at home at the opera house and the ballet as we were at go-go bars and hardcore punk shows at CBGB or the Old Ritz.

     Ours was a certain gioia di campare—that deep, soulful joy of making a life out of what we had, even when we didn’t know exactly what we were living for. Yet that same hunger for intensity often led us astray; more often than I’d like to admit, we fell into self-destructive habits like drinking and sex. As youth so often do, we learned the hard way.

     In a strange irony, our aversion to conformity and our youthful rebelliousness—misguided though they sometimes were—offered a kind of inner sovereignty, a quiet strength born from standing apart.

     Our circle was almost like a second family. After school, work, and dinner, we gathered on stoops or in basements to talk about our futures and the uncertainty of life.

     Even though our home lives were relatively solid—I had loving parents and doting grandparents—we belonged to a generation and a neighborhood largely forsaken by society. Surrounded by crime, drugs, and corruption, I had a gun pointed at my head more times than I care to remember. 

     We harbored no delusions or sense of entitlement; we certainly didn’t believe we were owed anything. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was once a time I never thought I would live to see thirty.

     “Do you remember New Year’s Eve?” asked Annalisa.

     “How could I forget?” I said. “We celebrated almost ten years together.”

     They were all eventful, but there was only one New Year’s Eve story. 

     One year, instead of going to the city, we all decided to go to the Atomic Club, our regular hangout in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Drinking, dancing, and mingling with friends, Giancarlo and I brought Annalisa and Aurora onto the dance floor for a traditional good-luck kiss at the stroke of midnight. We did this whenever any of us was single. 

     As the ball began to drop and the crowd started counting down, I pulled Aurora close. Just as our lips were about to lock, people around us began screaming. Blood was everywhere. 

     The guy next to us had his throat slit.

     Pandemonium erupted, and Giancarlo and I did our best to shield the girls and push through the panicked mob outside. We never found out who—or why.

     “It wasn’t the Atomic Club, it was P.T.’s,” she corrected me. “The club had already changed its name by then.”

     “I know,” I said, “but P.T.’s will always be the Atomic Club to me.”

     Going through many transformations over the years, I haven’t the heart to tell her the space is a South American restaurant today.

     “We had a lot of history there,” I reminded her. “That dance floor was where we first met.”

     “Yes, that’s right,” she said joyfully.

     Chiara and I met on campus during our freshman year of high school. We had a brief, torrid fling, but she inexplicably decided to cool things off. 

     One night, early in our relationship, she wanted me to meet her girlfriends at the club. Leading me through the smoke-filled room onto the dance floor, she introduced me to Annalisa and Giancarlo, who were on a date themselves and dancing to the latest post-punk and new wave singles. A terrific dancer, Annalisa was once part of an amateur Calabrian folk troupe that performed the traditional tarantella calabrese at local cafés, dance halls, and festivals.

     Joining them for a few songs, we then went to the bar to cool off. There, I was introduced to Aurora and Luna, who were watching everyone’s coats and bags. 

     Sizing me up, the overprotective girls surrounded me and, without warning, proceeded to give me the third degree. Wanting to make sure I was good enough for their friend, I would later learn they performed this precautionary feminal ritual every time one of them started dating a new guy.

     Recently, having gone through it himself while courting Annalisa, Giancarlo shot me a sympathetic smile. Leaving me to face my rigorous inquisitors, he patted me on the shoulder, wished me luck, and walked back onto the dance floor with Chiara. 

     Giancarlo and I hit it off instantly, so much so that he got me a part-time job working with him as a house painter. I would later be a groomsman at his wedding and pallbearer at his funeral. I could probably write a book about our adventures.

     The girls also approved, and I was warmly welcomed into the group.

     “We only let you in because you bought the first few rounds,” they would joke.

     Like everyone else back then, we had playful nicknames for each other. Annalisa was “Zingara” because she was swarthy and mischievous; Giancarlo was “Burro” (Butter) because he had butterfingers and couldn’t catch a football in the clutch to save his life; Aurora and Luna were “Heckle” and “Jeckle,” named after the popular Terrytoon characters; Chiara was “Chester” because she had big boobs and liked to flaunt them; and I was “DON Giovanni.” Nothing to do with the fictional Spanish ladies’ man, DON was an acronym for “double or nothing.”

     Originally called “Nibs,” a Soprannome di famiglia passed down from my father and grandfather, I earned my new cognomen during my first and only trip to Atlantic City. On what must’ve been beginner’s luck, I hit a wild hot streak at the roulette table, doubling my bets again and again. Each time I won, instead of cashing out, I’d shout “Double or nothing!” and let it ride to the giddy disbelief of my friends. Eventually, with a small fortune on the line, I came to my senses and walked away with the winnings.

     That night, I didn’t just get a new nickname—I paid for our whole trip: steak dinners, drinks, cigars, strippers, and all our rooms. It was one of those rare evenings when fickle Fortuna smiled on us.

     To be sure, we had other friends and interesting things going on in our lives (e.g., I was a bassist in a really bad garage band), but we were always there for one another. Unlike our fleeting inamoratas, the girls would actually come to watch Giancarlo and me play football at the parade grounds every weekend and cheer us on. Even more impressive, they would tend to our cuts and bruises after the inevitable brawl with the opposing team. 

     Welcomed in each other's homes, we joined in one another’s family functions—birthdays, Sunday dinners, and the like—as well as our small but cherished rituals, such as playing cards or watching Serie A on RAI with the menfolk. In addition to their proms, Giancarlo and I often escorted the girls to weddings, anniversary parties, and other formal occasions. Yet these were never the pretentious, performative affairs of polite society; rather, they were warm, rooted gatherings, steeped in faith, family, and tradition.

     Looking back, I know why Aurora and Luna, both pretty and fun-loving, never had dates. In some ways, we were so naive.

     Speaking of being naive, we certainly didn’t realize it at the time, but we were living through the twilight of Italian American New York.

     Well past our community’s heyday, we witnessed the rapid decline and fall of our ethnic enclaves. Selling off their homes for hefty profits, our community forfeited what was left of our unique identity and traditional ways of life for the deracinated and atomized sprawl of suburbia.

     I still cannot believe what we gave up for “progress.”

     Those of us who stayed put had to adapt and deal with the changing, often unpleasant, realities of our moribund city.

     Considering what was lost and what has replaced it, it is no wonder that we look back with fondness and feel nostalgia for those heady days. I don’t think we can over-romanticize them.

     Sure, they weren’t perfect, nothing ever is, but they made sense, unlike today.

     If the older generations made similar claims before us, it was probably because it was just as true for them. Given that our civilization is in perpetual decline, the youth of today will undoubtedly feel the same in the future.

     Lamenting the atomization of society and lack of modern familial cohesion, my late father (comparing his childhood to his advanced years) once told me, “We were poor and had nothing, but we were happy; today we have everything, and we’re miserable.”

     By “everything,” he was, of course, referring to material prosperity.

     Prioritizing materialism and immediate gratification over traditional principles—such as faith, cultural identity, and a sense of duty to family—has torn our families and community asunder. That, I believe, is the real root of our misery. Continue reading

Absinthe Dreams: Elegy for a Past Life (Part I)

Part memoir, part romanzo di formazione, Absinthe Dreams: Elegy for a Past Life is a meditation on memory, loss, and renewal. Conceived as a private exercise in remembrance and mourning, it became an attempt to give voice to the past. Neither autobiography nor moral fable, it is a confession, a lament, and perhaps a modest offering. I wrote it to remember, but also to understand—to see whether beauty, memory, and love, even unfulfilled, might still lead one toward the divine. ~ Giovanni di Napoli

Continue reading: [Part II] • [Part III] • [Part IV] • [Part V] • [Part VI] • [Part VII]

I

“You all know the wild grief that besets us when we remember times of happiness. How far beyond recall they are, and we are severed from them by something more pitiless than leagues and miles.” ~ On the Marble Cliffs, Ernst Jünger (1939)

     Not long ago, I reconnected with an old friend I hadn’t seen in years. For the sake of privacy, I’ll call her “Annalisa.” In town on business, she wanted to meet for drinks at an old café we used to haunt on 18th Avenue in Bensonhurst. Unaware of how much the old neighborhood had changed since she moved away back in the early ’90s, I had to break the news to her that an Asian nail salon had replaced our old watering hole.

     Considering she had not witnessed the dissolution firsthand, her incredulity was understandable. Once staunchly Sicilian, the Brooklyn enclave is unrecognizable today. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I hadn’t lived through it.

     Agreeing on another location for our tête-à-tête, we met in Manhattan at a dingy piano bar we knew well on Houston Street. Usually, I’m the early one, but Annalisa was already seated at the crowded bar when I arrived with a book of medieval Provençal poetry on her lap. Withdrawn from library circulation, the beat-up old tome was a gift for me. 

     Lighting up with joy as she hopped off the high stool, Annalisa wrapped me in a big hug and gave me an affectionate kiss hello. She still radiated that familiar Duosiciliana warmth and easy physicality, now so rare in today’s cautious public sphere. In the age of social media, we have grown more visually bold, yet less physically and emotionally open.

     Sliding in beside her, I learned she hadn’t been waiting long and, over the din, ordered us drinks. A dirty martini was still her preferred apéritif; I had my usual—bourbon neat. For a moment, we stared at each other in silent disbelief, but once we started talking, we couldn’t stop. Separated for almost thirty years, we picked up right where we left off.

     Throughout high school and college, “Annalisa,” “Chiara,” “Aurora,” “Luna,” “Giancarlo,” and I were inseparable—we were the closest of friends. A small group of young bohemians, we often shared our most intimate thoughts and beds. We were a strange mix of rebellious working-class boys and haute bourgeoisie girls. Owing to their offbeat hairstyles and fashion sense, Giancarlo and I jokingly nicknamed them “The Buffalo Gals,” a reference to the old-timey dancing girls who performed at brothels and cabarets. In return, the gals affectionately referred to us as “The Lost Boys,” after the beloved characters from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904). 

     As with the broader community, the massive flight of the city’s Italians to the suburbs and beyond tore our close-knit coterie apart.

     Like me, Annalisa never married or had children. Unlike me, she aged gracefully and was still as beautiful as ever.

     Giancarlo, father of two, was taken too soon by cancer; Aurora and Luna turned out to be lovers; and Chiara married but never had children.

     Given that we once shared interests in art, music, poetry, philosophy, and much more, I was a little surprised that Annalisa was intent on discussing my old “war stories”—at least so soon. (“War stories,” of course, being our irreverent slang for past sexual conquests.)

     Maybe she was just a little nervous and excited.

     “Who are you sleeping with these days?” she mischievously inquired. “Anybody I know?”

     “Those days are over,” I assured her.

     She did not believe me. “When did you get so shy?”

     While we never personally hooked up (not for want of trying on my part), Annalisa was always quite inquisitive and titillated by the bawdy recaps of my decadent romps. 

     Having abandoned the Faith in the fifth grade, much to the consternation of my poor parents (not to mention the sisters and brothers at my Catholic school), I wandered through a spiritual wilderness exploring various esoteric and Eastern religions. Forsaking the sexual morality of the Roman Church, my periodic dalliances with local bagascia naturally aroused the curiosity of my more demure friends.

     In fairness to her, I’m not the same “Lost Boy” she remembered. I returned to the Faith long after we lost contact.

     Even though I’m no prig or prude, I was hoping to talk about something a little less risqué with our limited time. Almost anything else would have been preferable to my amorous but ultimately fruitless liaisons. After all, except for Giancarlo and me, we were the closest in the group and had the most in common.  

     Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t expect to have an in-depth conversation about Oscar Wilde‘s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) or Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926), both of which we read together, but there were so many more interesting memories to recall.

     Laughing it off, I made a self-deprecating joke about finally growing up and leaving Neverland.

     Thankfully, she didn’t press.

     Doing a little growing up herself, the petite tomboyish teenager I once adored had traded in her worn-out combat boots and peroxide pixie cut for a slinky red dress and long raven tresses, which she wore down. I don’t think I had ever seen her natural hair color before (assuming it wasn’t dyed now).

     Topping off our cocktails while waiting for our table, we instead swapped memories about our frequent getaways to the woods, going skinny-dipping at a friend’s lake house, and fishing for pike and pickerel in the Delaware River. 

     As a city boy, our verdant excursions were always very special to me. They reminded me of my cherished childhood trips to the Catskills, Adirondacks, and Appalachian Mountains with my parents before my mother fell ill.

     Now that Annalisa lives in rural Western Pennsylvania, she mostly thinks about the concerts, museum visits, poetry readings, and promenading arm in arm at the local feasts every year.

     She was genuinely upset when I told her what had become of the feasts. 

     Once an important part of our culture, Bensonhurst was filled with Southern Italian religious celebrations. Every year, the entire neighborhood would come out to celebrate them. Nowadays, they are all but forgotten—except for a handful of old-timers and devotees. 

     While some, like the Madonna di Piedigrotta, are long gone, others, like Santa Fortunata, San Calogero, and Santissimo Crocifisso, persist in relative anonymity. Santa Rosalia remains the only one of note, but even that is a pale shadow of what it once was. Aside from a few Italian food stands and an outdoor shrine dedicated to la Santuzza, there is nothing remotely cultural or religious about it. It’s practically indistinguishable from any other street fair. Continue reading