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
