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 NapoliContinue 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 Withdrawn from library circulation, the beat-up old tome was a gift for me.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
