Literary Caprices: Vignettes and Other Indulgences IV

See Part I, Part II, Part III 

Rejected from a Date I Never Asked For

While I appreciate the good intentions of family and friends who try to fix me up on dates, I resent the notion that I can’t meet women on my own. Not to sound cocky, but I meet women all the time. We just rarely connect on any meaningful level.

I’ve agreed to blind dates in the past, trusting the matchmakers' judgment, only to discover that absolutely no thought had gone into finding me a suitable partner. The only thing my dates and I had in common was being single. Disappointed one too many times, I naturally began declining offers to be fixed up.

So, the other night, when I was invited to dinner at a friend’s house and discovered that the only other guest was a woman I had never met, the situation was obvious. Dinner was a ruse to get me to meet their friend.

Feigning ignorance, I genuinely enjoyed the evening. After she said goodnight and hopped into her Uber, I don’t think the car had even pulled away before my friend’s wife began grilling me about what I thought.

Trying to be polite, I said a lot of nice things without committing to anything.

Needless to say, I was genuinely surprised when the dinner guest called me a day later out of the blue. She wasn’t calling to arrange a date, but to “let me down gently.” Apparently, she hadn’t wanted to be fixed up either. 

That part I understood. What I didn’t understand was why she felt the need to call and turn me down for a date I had never asked her on.

Wanton Women and a Naïve Fool

Walking to the subway the other day, my friend glanced at a group of young Asian women we were passing and said, “Look at all these hookers.”

“They’re not hookers,” I replied. “That’s just how young ladies dress nowadays.” In my defense, I see a lot of scantily clad women around the city.

Right on cue, one of them skipped over to me. Looking as though she had stepped straight out of a hentai magazine, she wore a tiny miniskirt, garters, go-go boots, garish makeup, and ribbons in her hair. Without saying a word, she handed me a card advertising a 24-hour “massage” parlor.

I still don’t know what hurt me more: my friend laughing at my naivety or the realization that this girl had taken one look at me and decided I was the sort of guy who might frequent such an establishment.

A Cramp in No Man’s Land

I’ve been having a lot of strange dreams lately, but last night’s may have been the strangest.

I was fighting in a war sometime in the future, though the battlefield looked like something out of the First World War. It was a strange, retrofuturistic world of trenches, mud, smoke, and unfamiliar machinery, where whatever advances mankind had made had somehow brought us back to killing one another in the old ways.

At some point, I climbed out of my trench and crawled across no man’s land toward the enemy line. Like the Arditi of old, I crossed the desolate battlefield with a dagger clenched between my teeth and a trench mace in hand.

Somehow I reached the enemy trench unnoticed. Dropping into it, I began my assault with knife and mace.

At first, the enemy seemed completely oblivious to my presence. Then, as I moved down the trench, they simply froze. One after another, they stood staring at me while I charged forward, swinging the mace and slashing with the knife. There was something strangely mechanical about it all. No one fought back. I simply kept advancing.

Then, suddenly, I stopped. A terrible cramp seized my right calf. In the middle of my charge, surrounded by the enemy, I found myself completely unable to move. The soldiers who moments before had been frozen in terror now stared at me in bewilderment as I stood there helpless, my leg locked in agony. And then I woke up. The trenches, the smoke, and the enemy had all vanished. But the cramp in my right calf was very real.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, September 22nd, Feast of St. Maurice and Companions 

Dreaming Into the Woods

Into the wood, into the wood inside, let it go
~ Roma Amor, Into the Wood

By day, New York City drowns the soul beneath glass, concrete, deadlines, and endless noise. By night, its towers glow like electric monoliths, illuminating a weary civilization that mistakes perpetual motion for life. One walks among millions and yet remains profoundly alone.

Beneath the starless canopy, the city seems incapable of silence. Even in the darkest hours, its lights burn and its machinery hums. Yet amid that tumult, I sense another realm, not a place of comfort, but of freedom.

Jünger understood that the forest is not merely a landscape but a condition of the soul. Long before one flees outward, one must withdraw inward. The first forest is entered without taking a single step.

Perhaps that is why I don't dream of cottages or pastoral tranquility, but of primeval woods where forgotten paths disappear beneath twisted oaks, Cyclopean stones rise from the moss, and eagles wheel above verdant valleys. Every shadow hints at something ancient and forgotten.

The metropolis demands conformity, while the forest—indifferent, austere, and uncompromising—demands character.

I return each morning to elevators, meetings, flashing screens, and crowded trains. Outwardly, nothing has changed. Yet in my mind I see roots cracking the pavement, while vines steadily climb toward the water towers and spires. The forest has already begun its reclamation, not of the city, but of the soul. Until then, I continue dreaming into the woods.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, August 27th, Feast of San Baccolo di Sorrento

My Beloved Patroness

Santa Patrizia di Constantinopoli, ora pro nobis

Among the many saints who have accompanied me since my reversion, few have affected my life as profoundly as Santa Patrizia di Constantinopoli.

Years ago, on the night of her feast, Santa Patrizia appeared to me in a vivid dream, urging me to return to the Church. I have never doubted that it was through her intercession that I found the courage to take those first steps.

Each year, her feast reminds me that God’s grace often comes through the guidance of the saints. We do not always recognize their presence until we look back and discern how faithfully they have accompanied us. For that reason, Santa Patrizia will always remain, for me, the saint who led me home. Evviva Santa Patrizia!

Prayer to St. Patrizia

O wondrous Virgin, St. Patricia, mine advocate and protectress, who in the last moments of thy life didst obtain from Jesus counsel and divine protection for all who seek refuge in thee: obtain for me from Almighty God health of soul and body, victory over the Devil and over the passions. Drive away the adversities that surround me on all sides; in this present tribulation, console me. Obtain for me the pardon of sins and entrance into the heavenly kingdom. Be thou a haven of safety unto sailors and a safeguard unto our city. Spread forth thy special patronage over me and over all thy devoted children, that the most holy Name of God may be ever blessed, glorified, exalted, and praised by all unto the ages of ages. Amen.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, August 24th, Feasts of Sant’Audeno, San Bartolomeo, and Santa Giovanna Antida Thouret

Ghost of Princesses in Towers

It is curious how the mind works. Whenever I walk through Central Park and catch sight of the stark glass-and-steel skyscrapers rising above the trees, my thoughts wander elsewhere. For a fleeting moment, they cease to be office buildings. They become lonely towers standing over a forgotten kingdom, their highest windows concealing princesses imprisoned by dark sorcerers and guarded by fire-breathing dragons, awaiting the arrival of some knight-errant.

As a boy, I often dreamt of riding beneath storm-filled skies with a sword at my side, like Sigurd of old, seeking ancient Hindarfjall, where noble Brynhild, bound by dark enchantments, lay asleep behind a wall of shields and a ring of fire. I knew, with the unwavering certainty of childhood, that somewhere there were dragons to be slain, curses to be broken, and black keeps where fair maidens awaited deliverance. The world seemed vast enough to contain such wonders.

That world has changed, or perhaps only our imagination has grown dim. We live in an age that deconstructs and subverts tales of valiant knights and damsels in distress, reducing them to outdated, childish fancies unworthy of serious men. I cannot help but pity such disenchantment. A society that no longer dreams of heroes is, I think, poorer for it. Though such longings have become unfashionable, I cannot abandon them.

Thankfully, the dreaming boy remains. Whenever those towers rise above the trees, some forgotten part of me still believes that behind one high window a candle burns, a princess waits, and a knight, though long delayed, is still riding through the darkness.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, August 12th, Feast of Santa Chiara d’Assisi

Wolf Girls

Stirred deeper than I realized, my recent visit to the Asian Art Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art conjured unsettling visions and old memories long forgotten. What seemed serene beneath the museum’s subdued lights followed me home, shedding its stillness in the dark. I offer this as a caution: some images do not remain on the wall, and some histories, once awakened, do not easily return to sleep.

Insomnia has a way of thinning the veil. When sleep finally comes, it arrives like a trapdoor giving way beneath the feet. When they deign to visit, my dreams are brief and feral. I do not always remember them, but when I do, they are disquieting.

Years ago in Montreal, three young women from Mumbai flirted with me in an elevator. Silk scarves, dark eyes, and lupine smiles, they invited me to their hotel room. Like me, they were on holiday.

Tempted by the prospect of engaging with adepts in the Kama Sutra, I reluctantly declined, bound to a prior engagement. It was the sort of scene Western Orientalism makes of the exotic—an old male fantasy dressed in sapphire and perfume, worthy of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Eugène Delacroix, or Domenico Morelli.

At the time, I was deep into Eastern art and philosophy, and desire felt almost metaphysical.

In the dream, their disappointment turns confrontational. They press against me, pawing and pleading. They try to place consecrated sugar—a hit of acid—on my tongue. The fantasy turns feverish. Something archetypal surfaces, impersonal and merciless. Their movements grow frenzied, ecstatic; their bodies blur and begin to merge into a single six-armed temptress.

I begin to yield, drawn toward surrender like William Savage among the Thuggees in the cult classic film The Deceivers (1988).

Then, in a flash of cold lucidity, I turn on them. With sudden, inexplicable force, I cast them into the dark elevator shaft—the Abyss.

I wake before they reach the bottom.

Sleep does not return.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, March 7th, Feast of San Tommaso D'Aquino

The Toll of the Corbies (A Halloween Tale)

The Italian brigand's wife (c.1825-26),
by Léon Cogniet (1794-1880)

It was neither night nor morning when I set out—one of those gray, unholy hours when the world still seems half-dreamt. A mist hung low over the fields, and the air smelled of damp stone and smoke. As I walked the familiar path toward the old road, I noticed them: two corbies, black as ink, perched upon a leaning crossbeam of the ruined fence.

They watched me with the solemn patience of undertakers. When I turned away, their wings rustled—a dry whisper like ashes in the wind. They followed at a distance, gliding from tree to tree. Even when they vanished from sight, their mournful kawing echoed through the fog.

When I reached the gate, they were waiting. One cocked its head, the other spread its wings as if in benediction. Then, in a voice like the grinding of bones—slow, hoary, unfeeling—one said to the other, “Pay he shall, for failing to pay the toll.”

I do not remember falling asleep. I only remember falling.

When I opened my eyes, I was somewhere else. The sky was the bruised violet of late autumn, and the air was thick with smoke and pine. Around me, a few men huddled near the embers of an extinguished fire—gaunt, unshaven, eyes hollow with hunger. Brigands. My band.

At my side sat Doña Martina, her embroidered shawl drawn close, her eyes distant. Once the daughter of a slain local barone, a Bourbon loyalist descended from an old Spanish house, she had been my lover. Now, in the faint afterglow, she looked like something remembered rather than real.

No one spoke. We ate a little stale bread and passed a flagon of new wine. In the distance, a wolf howled—a long, mournful cry that seemed to answer something primeval inside me.

I tried to recall how we came to this place. The mountains were familiar—Lucanian, perhaps, Monte Vulture—but the years were wrong. Some old blood memory stirred in me, reaching back untold generations. There was no sound of automobiles, no hum or din—only, somewhere beneath the fog, a single rifle crack.

We waited for dawn to grant us passage, but the full moon betrayed us.

They came through the fog like wraiths, rifles glinting, shouting in the tongue of the new Italy. The invaders. We fought with what little we had—pistols, knives, and desperation. Martina fired once, twice, and then fell. The world rang like a struck bell, its knell resounding through me. A blow to the skull—the butt of a rifle—and everything went black.

I awoke gasping, tangled in my sheets, the room cold and still. My head throbbed where the rifle had struck me in the dream. I rose, half-expecting to see the pale glow of embers still smoldering.

Outside, the first light of dawn seeped through the open shutters.

Then I heard them.

Kaw.
Kaw.

Two corbies perched on the railing, watching me.

One turned to the other and whispered, almost mercifully, “The toll is paid.”

And they took wing into the mist.

Prone to dark, disturbing dreams, I found this one—a smorfia delight—lingering still, rich in omens. I cannot shake the feeling that those birds were not mere watchers, but collectors, psychopomps: each cry a tally of my debts, each dream a payment made in full—perhaps for what I failed to do for my beautiful Martina.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, October 30th, Feast of Sant'Angelo d'Acri