The Girl in the Sun

Frontispiece from my copy of
Shakespeare on Love

This piece was originally part of Absinthe Dreams: Elegy for a Past Life, but was later cut and reworked into a standalone story.

She loved me for the dangers
     I had passed,
And I loved her that she did
     pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I
     have used.

~ Othello

     Meeting Chiara altered the course of my life.

     I was sitting against a wall on the high school campus, arms folded over my knees, head lowered, trying to get some rest. A gentle tap on my shoulder startled me. I looked up into the sun, its glare turning her into a silhouette. 

     “Hello,” she said softly. 

     I raised a hand to shield my eyes as she repeated it, almost amused. Then I stood.

     She wore a long grey herringbone tweed balmacaan and black Dr. Martens. She smiled and asked my name.

     “What do you want?” I said.

     “I’m Chiara.”

     I waited, expecting more. When nothing came, I said, “I’m Giovanni—my friends call me Nibs.”

     As my eyes cleared, I saw she had long, curly brown hair, dark eyes, and a stack of schoolbooks pressed to her chest. She told me she was having a party and asked if I wanted to come. Without waiting for my answer, she wrote her address on a scrap of paper, handed it to me, and walked toward the entrance, breaking into laughter with a couple of friends who were waiting for her.

     That night I arrived late with a six-pack, unaware it was her birthday party—and that her entire family was there. She took me inside and introduced me to relatives gathered in the living room and around the dining table. Her mother and two older sisters were clearing plates to make room for coffee and cake. Her father watched me closely, a hint of suspicion in his eyes, as I shook his hand; he promptly confiscated the beer.

     Grinning from ear to ear as she took my bomber jacket, she said, “I can’t believe you came.”

     “I never would have if I knew it was a birthday party.”

     “I know,” she laughed. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

     After she blew out the candles, we sat around the table and had cake. Her parents asked me a lot of questions. They treated me with polite respect, but they were clearly more troubled by the fact that I was an artist than by my shabby clothes or the beer. It turned out Chiara’s maternal uncle had been an artist—and a deadbeat—and her parents seemed to associate the two.

     After coffee, she took me down to the basement. I was a little surprised her parents didn’t object. In my house, we were raised differently—young couples weren’t allowed to be alone, especially not behind closed doors, and I never would have been allowed to bring a girl into my room. It was one of the reasons I moved out and got my own place.

     Alone, she admitted she’d had a crush on me for some time, and that she only made her move after learning my girlfriend, Gaviota, had moved back to Spain. It was hard for me to be upset—especially about showing up with beer instead of a proper gift—when she leaned in, and what followed went well beyond a simple kiss.

     Despite her parents’ disapproval, they never treated me poorly and always welcomed me into their home. I often had dinner with them, and Chiara brought me to family gatherings. Only later did I learn that, behind closed doors, they urged her to break things off.

     One of the more memorable occasions came when I was invited upstate to meet her sister Cinzia’s fiancé, Stefano, and his parents—wealthy, affable Northern Italian Freemasons who, at one point, even tried to recruit me. As the son of a bartender and a would-be starving artist myself, this did little to improve my standing with Chiara’s parents.

     During that trip, Chiara and I took a long walk through the woods, the leaves turning around us. It was there that she first admitted that her parents were firmly against her seeing me. I had already sensed as much.

     Back at the house, Stefano’s parents kept an expansive library in their study. While browsing the shelves, I came across a hardcover copy of The Decline of the West, which introduced me to Oswald Spengler and sent me down a rabbit hole I wouldn’t soon leave. I made it a point to find a copy of both volumes for myself.

     Early in our relationship, she wanted me to meet her friends at the Atomic Club, a small, smoke-filled dive with little more than a bar, a DJ booth, and a dance floor. It would become our regular spot. The place was packed, and we pushed our way to the middle, where her friends Annalisa and Giancarlo were dancing. We joined them for a few songs before heading to the bar. There I met the rest of her circle—Luna and Aurora. After the introductions, Chiara and Giancarlo went back to the dance floor, leaving me with her three friends. I bought us a round, and the interrogation began.

     They weren’t too tough, and we quickly hit it off. They were especially amused that I called her “Chester” on account of her chest—she didn't exactly hide them. Once I was welcomed in, we all grew close. We spent most of our time together at each other’s houses, on stoops or in basements, dancing, traveling, going to shows, and museums. We were almost inseparable.

     Chiara was always trying to upgrade my wardrobe, though she liked wearing my old, ratty band T-shirts and polos. She said she could smell me on them. I didn’t always appreciate the fuss, but I humored her now and then, enough that my old friends started calling me a “preppy.” It didn’t help that she had me rent a tux and a limo for our school dance—a first for me.

     Being an ardent drama student, she was often on stage, and I would go to see her perform; she stood out as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Aside from a few old photo booth pictures, I still keep the inscribed hardback copy of Shakespeare on Love she gave me.

     Despite her parents’ objections, things were going well—or so I thought. It was only after she had a bad dream about me that problems began. She was deeply into oneiromancy and couldn’t shake it. Though I never learned the details of the dream, she eventually broke up with me over it. We remained friends and continued to see each other with the group, sometimes backsliding, when neither of us was involved with anyone else, and we’d been drinking. In time, we drifted apart. She grew serious with someone else and eventually married him.

     With her, I was exposed to a different way of life. I came from a loving home, but one that was poorer, stricter, and more disciplined. With her, I softened. There was an ease to her world, a lightness I hadn’t known. And yet, for all their comfort, her family left me wary of materialism.

     Looking back, I can still trace the line of my life to that moment against the wall and the girl in the sun.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, April 22nd, Feast of Saints Soter and Caius, Popes and Martyrs

The Berlin Underground

Straßenkampf, 1918, Eduard Baudrexel

This piece was originally part of Absinthe Dreams: Elegy for a Past Life, but was later cut and reworked into a standalone essay.

Back in the early ’80s, when we were finally old enough—and brave enough—to wander beyond the empty lots and abandoned buildings of our working-class neighborhood, New York City felt truly cosmopolitan—restless, unpredictable, and far more interesting than it does now. Before long, those wanderings gave way to nights out. When we weren’t in nightclubs or dance halls, we drifted between bars, cafés, pool halls, and even the occasional illegal tattoo parlor.

One of our regular haunts was a seedy underground lounge in Ridgewood, called The Berlin, or maybe the Berlin Club; the name blurs now. It drew a strange, compelling crowd and played a hypnotic mix of 1920s cabaret, orchestral pieces, and contemporary German punk bands like Böhse Onkelz and OHL. Part of the appeal, it must be said, was the barmaids: striking girls in dirndls who looked as though they’d stepped straight off a St. Pauli Girl label.

Unable to find the final version,
here is an unfinished sketch of our
team's crest, with a faint pencil
rendering of a pickelhaube
ghosted over the original

The place was decorated in a style that felt half museum, half fever dream, with macabre paintings of WWI trench warfare, hints of the Munich Secession, heavy bier steins, and pickelhauben. Those spiked helmets later inspired the vulture logo I designed for our sporting club, the Brooklyn Buzzards. From time to time, the lounge doubled as a quiet meeting place for Soviet émigrés and German monarchisten, adding another layer of intrigue to the atmosphere.

We even sat in on the monthly talks. They ranged from anti-communism to more esoteric subjects—Agartha, the supposed otherworldly origins of the Aryans, Wotanism, and the philosophical teachings of Rudolf Steiner and Arthur Schopenhauer. Around then, I went through a serious Hermann Hesse phase to impress Tonja, a blonde dancer and poet who, as it turned out, wasn’t German at all, but Ukrainian.

The Berlin reminded me of the back rooms of many Italian cafés and social clubs scattered across the city, where menfolk played cards, drank espresso, and argued politics. Almost inconceivable today, the walls bore old Arditi posters and political montages depicting Gabriele D’Annunzio, Italo Balbo, Benito Mussolini, and the House of Savoy. That same atmosphere carried into other corners of the city.

It was in a used bookstore that I first heard of neo-Bourbonism. One night, during a heated debate, an older Sicilian man dismantled the more nationalistically minded with ease. I didn't realize it at the time, but that exchange set me on a course whose significance I did not fully grasp.

Long out of that world, the last place of its kind I remember visiting was in the early 2000s, when a Russian friend took me to a freezing basement in Sheepshead Bay, made to resemble a medieval hall. There was a long communal table of heavy wood, lined with benches, porcelain bowls of caviar, pelmeni, and endless vodka toasts to the Tsar. The strangest part wasn’t the temperature, but the scantily clad belly dancers, breath hanging in the air, performing as if unaware of the cold or in defiance of it.

Across the city, in other circles, the arguments took different forms—touching on the Greek Megali Idea (Great Idea), Irish republicanism, Spanish Falangismo, and even Tibetan Rangzen. It felt as though there was a soapbox on every corner. The city was alive.

Today, the discontent feels different. The disgruntled masses come off less like dissidents and more like petulant, unmoored malcontents—quick to complain and slow to understand. I’ve never seen a more uninformed group. Grievances circle back on themselves, shaped by the very ideas they claim to oppose. They repeat slogans, speak in abstractions, and rarely seem aware of their own contradictions. The most striking difference is that, in those days, the recusants operated underground, wary of state violence, whereas today’s so-called revolutionaries protest openly, often with little fear—and at times with the tacit sanction of the state.

Like everything else in the city today, it feels like a caricature of what it once was.

~ By Giovannni di Napoli, April 17th, Feast of St. Anicetus

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

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

VII

     Well past our bedtimes, Annalisa rested her head on my shoulder and started to nod off. By then, the lounge was empty—the other patrons long gone. The weary barmaid approached our table, announced last call, and began clearing away our empty glasses. As I closed our tab, I asked for a plastic bag to protect my book.

     Helping Annalisa up, I said, “It’s time to call it a night.”

     “No,” she protested feebly. “It’s raining out.”

     “It stopped,” I lied. “Besides, I have a long trip ahead of me, and I need to get going.”

     Pouting and beating my chest with her tiny fists, she looked up at me with her bewitching Stygian eyes and whispered, “Stay with me.”

     I wanted to. Lord knows, I wanted to.

     “Don’t tempt me, mora.” I kissed her furrowed brow.

     Back in the day, we would’ve broken night together, talking till dawn. But that was a lifetime ago. 

     Many a night we spent together staring at the stars, dreaming of better days. I remember us holding each other for warmth beneath the blankets in my first apartment, and sleeping tangled together in the back seat of a car on long road trips. Little did I know those nights would be among the dearest of my life. Too many to hold onto—perhaps those memories should remain undisturbed.

     “You still can’t handle your booze, I see.”

     “I’m fine,” she assured me. “Just a little tired.”

     “C’mon, go get some sleep.”

     “It’s been ages since I’ve gone out drinking,” she said, trying to play it off. “I must look awful.”

     As I gently traced the gooseflesh on the back of her arms, lightning lit up the night sky, briefly betraying our sorrowful countenances.

     “Quite the contrary.”

     Saying our reluctant goodbyes beneath the darkened arcade by the hotel entrance, we promised to stay in touch via cell phone and social media—options that hadn’t existed when her family first pulled up stakes.

     Leaning on one foot, she gave me a warm embrace and a soft peck on each cheek. Normally, I would have walked her back to her room, but I didn’t trust myself. With anyone else, it wouldn’t have been a problem—but with her, it took Herculean might to let go and walk away.

     On the subway ride back to Brooklyn, I tried reading some of the poetry from the book she gave me, but it was all I could do not to think about her. Unlike so many people from my past, Annalisa had not abandoned her roots, her culture, or her convictions for a culturally hollow American identity. Immensely proud of her Calabrian heritage, she is devoted to her parents, intelligent, witty, vivacious, and refreshingly feminine (especially by today’s low standards). I only wish she had found God.

     Perhaps reading more into it than I should, I found myself lingering on the same lines from a poem by the renowned Occitan troubadour Bertran de Born:

“All her suitors depart from her reluctantly, the sight of her has such savor; everyone who sees her believes that his eyes never saw a more beautiful woman.” [1]

     Despite my romantic feelings, my intentions were not impure; I harbored no profane desire (or so I tried to convince myself). That night stirred in me something deeper, rooted in the noble ideals of chivalry, courtly love, and dolce stil novo, the sweet new style of love that seeks to ennoble the soul and lead it toward the divine.

     In its highest form, courtly love was not carnal but contemplative: a disciplined longing that elevated the lover through reverence for the beloved’s beauty and virtue. For me, Annalisa was not an object to be possessed, but a reflection of divine perfection, drawing the soul upward from earthly desire to spiritual fulfillment. True love became a pathway to God. Like the great 13th-century Sicilian poet Giacomo da Lentini, I want to see my loved ones in Paradise.

For it would bring me great delight

To see my love in glory’s realm [2]

     While I did not succumb to temptation, I did consider it. In a fleeting moment of weakness and longing, I second-guessed my decision not to spend the night with her. After all this time striving for inner discipline and higher meaning, it seems that, with the right sort of woman, I’m still a beast at heart, governed by appetites I thought subdued. Haunted by my past, my predilection for base pleasures remains a stark reminder of my fallen nature. And yet, wanting her only intensifies my quest for transcendence and shows just how far I still have to go.

     Unable to sleep when I got home, I poured myself the glass of absinthe I had wanted earlier. Aside from the occasional glass of wine with dinner, I rarely drink alone anymore. But this was more than a nightcap—it was an incantation, a ritual of remembrance.

     Slowly stirring in some cold water, I watched the spirit cloud into its celebrated milky green—its la louche, its alchemical bloom. Preferring the bitter anise flavor, I skipped the sugar cubes.

     Taking that first sip, I remembered how reading Hemingway and Wilde with Annalisa back in high school first turned me on to la fée verte.

     Sitting at my desk with my Pontarlier and laptop, I vainly tried to pen her a poem worthy of the Fedeli d’Amore or the Sicilian School. I wanted to sing the praises of the “lovely daughter of Tropea” like the cantastorie, the Minnesänger, and the troubadours of old.

     Alas, we are no Orpheus and Eurydice, Tristan and Isolde, or Ruggiero and Angelica. We may be star-crossed, but the poets will never sing of this love that never was. With each sip, the veil thinned, and my memory bled into absinthe dreams. Inspiration faltered, and the words would not come—for ours was no fin’amor, no refined and ennobling love of the medieval lyric tradition. And yet, from that silence, this sprawling lament began to take form, a different poetry—my elegy for a past life.

Notes

[1] Sel qui camja bon per meillor, edited by William D. Paden, Jr., Tilde Sankovitch, and Patricia H. Stäblein, The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, University of California Press, 1986, p.138

[2] 27 Sonetto, translation and notes by Richard Lansing, Giacomo da Lentini: The Complete Poetry, University of Toronto Press, 2018, p.125

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

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

VI

     I grabbed us a circular booth near the window in the hotel lounge while Annalisa freshened up in her room. Except for a young couple with their heads buried in their phones and a drunken lout hitting on the unresponsive barmaid, the atmospheric bar was surprisingly sparse.

     I wanted absinthe, but the callow waitress had no idea what I was asking for and absurdly suggested Midori as a substitute. 

     The potent green spirit has fallen out of fashion in recent years, and it’s now hard to find a bar that still stocks it, which I take as a clear sign of civilizational collapse. 

     So, I settled for a brandy instead.

     Returning in a sheer white V-neck T-shirt and gray flannel shorts, Annalisa ordered another martini and four shots of “Göring-Schnaps” for old times' sake—one for each of our friends. Before amaro became readily available, Jägermeister was our shot of choice.

     Her flimsy top hid nothing from the imagination.

     “I notice you’re no longer wearing a bra,” I teased.

     “When in Rome,” she laughed. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

     Nestling in next to me, she put her bare legs over my lap, and I wrapped my arm around her slim waist. Resting my free hand on her shin, one of her flats fell off, revealing a silver toe ring with a tiny garnet setting. Both January babies, we shared the same birthstone. For some strange reason, I found it comforting that she still wore one.

     When I reached down to fetch her shoe, she held me back and let the second one slip off. “Leave it,” she said, stretching her ankles and wiggling her toes. 

     She still had the firm, shapely legs of a dancer.

     The rain finally began to fall, its tears sliding silently down the pane.

     Playing with my tie, she gave me a provocative sidelong glance and brazenly asked, “Why didn’t we ever go out?”

     Pausing for a moment, I gave her an unamused smirk. “Eros literally wasn’t in the cards for us,” I reminded her. “You refused to go out with me because some two-bit cartomancer told you not to while reading your fortune.”

     Blushing, she coyly turned her face away, but she was laughing heartily.

     “You superstitious minx,” I said, feigning offense.

     When I pretended to move away, she pulled me closer. 

     Sadly, having gone out with my share of magàre (witches) in my day, this was nowhere near the strangest romantic rebuff I’ve experienced.

     “Chester broke up with me because of a bad dream.”

     “I remember,” she murmured, stroking the scruff of my beard with the back of her finger. “You deserved it,” she laughed again, mischief in her eyes. “You were a real cad in her dream.”

     “You’re all insane,” I said, half-joking.

     Downing our shots in quick succession, we talked about our fanciful plans and places we wanted to visit. I always admired her positivity and optimism; it was a refreshing countervail to my infernal pessimism. Aside from noticing how much the city had fallen apart since she moved away, we never once discussed the world in flames around us.

     Ordering two more shots, she whispered, “To us,” sotto voce.

     A bit tipsy, Annalisa made me promise that we would one day take a holiday to Madrid or Barcelona together.

     “I want to go to the Museo del Prado with you,” she said. “I want to see Goya and Velázquez; I want to see Maja desnuda and Las Meninas.”

     Miming castanets and wiggling her lithe body against mine, “You always loved taking us to flamenco bars and Spanish restaurants.”

     Our favorite was Carmen’s, a tenebrous taberna with red tablecloths and soot-covered paintings located in the Meatpacking District. We would unfailingly get pulpo a la Gallega, paella Valenciana, and several pitchers of sangria. Afterward, we would all stumble drunkenly through the cobbled streets singing verses from love songs and poems. 

     “C’mon, sing me a song,” she pleaded.

     Not nearly as drunk as I needed to be to make an ass of myself in public, I found her irresistible and reluctantly sang a few verses from The Spanish Lady and The Parting Glass, traditional Irish folk songs I learned years ago while drinking with my Irish buddies and listening to old cassette tapes of the Jolly Beggarmen and the Pogues.

     To my great shame, I still cannot recite a single line of poetry by Salvatore Di Giacomo or Giacomo da Lentini in the original Neapolitan or Sicilian, and my friends today won’t let me forget it.

     Prone to reverie, she sensed my mind wandering.

     “If you like, we can also find your high school sweetheart.” 

     “Which one?” I quipped, trying to play it cool. “I had so many old flames.”

     “What was her name again?” she asked playfully. “Ivette? Marta?” Then, after a pause: “Iolanda?”

     I knew who she meant. Gaviota moved back to Valencia with her family after they sold their home. She was the first real loss I felt during the Great Bensonhurst Exodus. We had nearly run away together to Alicante, the city she loved most, but fate was against us. I didn’t have the heart to abandon my father and sick mother. Staying in New York was never an option for her.

     Smart, beautiful, and a talented artist, Gaviota was the one who got away. She was my first true love. Any photos I had are long gone—destroyed by a jealous ex.

     I do, however, keep the medal of Francisco Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera that she gave me, tucked in my curio cabinet alongside the other strange relics of my past.

     Caressing my hand, Annalisa tried to read my palm, but I wouldn’t let her.

     “Haven’t you learned your lesson yet, Zingara?” I warned her.

     Overcome by a rush of blood, I held her slender hands against my chest—we stopped talking at last—and I stole a kiss. Continue reading

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

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

V

     After dinner, Annalisa and I skipped coffee and dessert. We did, however, have an amaro. Savoring our digestivi, we finally took our eyes off each other long enough to notice our surroundings. Asking her thoughts on all the ugly art hanging on the walls, she said it reminded her of home. There is a diner in her town that displays the paintings of local dilettanti.

     “I often think about our museum visits,” she said, “especially the picnics at the Cloisters.”

     Every spring, Giancarlo and I would pack a lunch and drive the girls to Washington Heights to see the gardens in bloom and medieval art. Working up an appetite exploring the galleries, which always culminated in a viewing of Robert Campin’s glorious Mérode Altarpiece (or Annunciation Triptych), we’d lay out checkered blankets and pick at the victuals in scenic Fort Tryon Park as the sailboats lazily rolled down the Hudson River beneath the Palisades. 

     “You have to admit,” she said, “as bad as New York City has become, it’s still home to many world-class museums and libraries.” 

     “You’ve been gone for too long,” I objected. “The Revolution’s long march through the institutions has been relentless.”

     Preparing to rail against the current state of the city’s museums, I held my tongue, already regretting what I’d just said. No need to spoil the mood and ruin more pleasant memories for her; besides, she already knows how bad the city is. No good can come from lecturing people who are already in agreement with you. It drives me crazy whenever people do it to me.

     Once I’d taken care of the check, we decided to take a passeggiata and walk off the meal. Though the sky threatened rain, the South Village was still buzzing with life. As we strolled and indulged in a bit of people-watching, it struck us that there were an inordinate number of scantily clad women milling about, even by New York standards.

     “I know women’s fashion was just as vulgar in our day, but does anyone actually wear bras anymore?” she asked rhetorically.

     Catching more than an eyeful, at times it almost felt like we were sauntering through an outdoor strip club, except instead of stuffing my spare bills into a dancer’s lacy garter, I gave them to a homeless man.

     Looking for a quiet place to sit and talk, we checked out a few more public houses, but nothing suited our fancy. Blaring awful music, they were all overcrowded and lousy with loud, drunken revelers. The smell of weed wafted outside every doorway. Drug use was just as prevalent when we were young, but now there is no stigma attached to it.

     “Thank God we never got caught up with that junk,” she said, wrinkling her Greek nose in disgust. “We already had our share of vices.”

     At parties or in clubs, someone would inevitably try to pass you a joint or something harder, and we always refused. Today, people talk openly about their drug habits without the slightest hint of shame or embarrassment.

     A young woman I used to work with once bragged about snorting blow off some guy’s member when I casually asked how her weekend was. Without batting an eye, another co-worker shamelessly told us he spent the entire time getting high and playing video games.

     This wasn’t your parents’ water cooler talk.

     The crazy part is that when I said I went to church and had Sunday dinner with my family, they looked at me as if I were the one who should be ashamed.

     As tempting as it is to dismiss them all as a bunch of medigans, the truth is our own people have become just as decadent and susceptible to the vices of modernity as our so-called “less civilized” compatriots.

     Enjoying our leisurely stroll, I did not share this sordid anecdote with Annalisa.

     With our arms entwined, we wandered a little farther, noting the few enduring outposts of our youth—Caffè Reggio, The Strand, Generation Records, and Trash and Vaudeville. They still clung to life, though the latter was no longer in its original home. Sadly, far more had closed down. Lucky Strike Bistro, Boo Radley’s, Pearl Paint, and Antique Boutique were all gone. Others—Bleecker Bob’s, 99X, Carmen’s, CBGB, and Billy’s Topless—had vanished from the streets but remain vivid in memory.

     “Billy’s Topless! Now there was a real loss to the culture,” she said mockingly. “Who did you bring us there to see again—your friend’s older sister?”

     “Her name escapes me,” I said sheepishly. “It was only a couple of times.”

     “As if that excuses the lechery, you stalker,” she said, twisting the screws. “Did you even score with her?”

     “It wasn’t about sex,” I insisted. “She was beautiful, and I wanted to paint her.”

     As an artist herself, Annalisa understood that. “When the muse calls,” she said grudgingly, letting me off the hook.

     Naturally, I didn’t tell her that Giancarlo and I had gone back a few more times on our own. Still, nothing ever came of it.

     Giving up hope of finding a suitable spot, she suggested we take an Uber back to SoHo for a nightcap at her hotel. Continue reading