‘It’s a Dylan Thing: PART 2
A 'CRAZY DAYS' 'sorta memoir' excerpt from the author's first cappuccino in 1979, out in Bob Dylan's old Greenwich Village neighborhood. | january11.2024
EDITOR’S NOTE: January 10.2025: Below is a draft excerpt from my forthcoming ‘sorta memoir,’ tentatively titled ‘CRAZY DAYS: Confessions of a Fallen Altar Boy.’ I am sharing it as a companion piece to ‘It’s a Dylan Thing: Part 1,’ my take on the recent movie “The Complete Unknown,” since the excerpt includes a bit of Bob Dylan history from his Greenwich Village days, where that movie begins.
So, what is a ‘sorta memoir’? I coined the phrase as a synonym for what publishers call ‘autofiction,’ or autobiographical fiction (also, ‘fictionalized non-fiction’). To me, all of the phrases signify that I am telling real stories from my life, but using storytelling liberties from fiction. I am adding lots of fictionalized dialogue and scene-setting, but my goal is to remain true to the overall details of real events and the twists and turns in my life, as well as accurately recounting any external history I describe (such as the Dylan background below). In the preface to ‘CRAZY DAYS,’ I put it this way: ‘Everything is true — except for what’s not.’ That’s being a little coy, but all the major events and much of the lesser ones I describe, from Ohio to New York, Paris to Dublin, did actually occur. I flesh them out, however, with created dialogue, some manufactured scenes, and occasionally a rejiggered timeline. I am adding many flourishes and details from imagination and research, yet also mixing in details, descriptions and dialogue culled from the detailed journals I kept back then, long letters home, and memory.
I also like to say that the characters in the book — other then myself and my parents — are ‘inspired’ by actual people, yet have other names and often speak heavily created dialogue. They are similar to the friends, family, lovers, and acquaintances who figure in key stories from my life, but are not quite them. Still, as I say, almost all the events and encounters described are true-to-my-life, from fun and fabulous travels to the pits of self-destructive despair. ‘Crazy’ days, after all, can signify both splendid, globe gallivanting ones and very bad, actually crazy ones. (Free subscribe to this site for word of the book’s release and its memoir-ish tales from multiple lands.)
The except below picks up in early 1979, on the streets of New York in Greenwich Village. I have fallen for a woman I met in college the prior year, a senior when I was a junior. She has graduated and moved to the city so fine they named it twice, so as to pursue her art and creativity in the setting of her life’s dreams. I have been shuttling between my last year in college and New York, our romance unfolding on the streets of the Big Apple, where she is soon to introduce me to my first-ever cappuccino in a famous cafe in the Village. I should note that the book’s sections shift between first-person and third-person, in which I refer to myself as ‘the young man,’ affording a more novelistic perspective.
Excerpt from ‘CRAZY DAYS: Confessions of a Fallen Altar Boy,’ (copyright @ 2025, all rights reserved), by DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO
CHAPTER: The Bed
In the morning, her pillow was no longer the sole focus of Becca’s attention. As sunlight angled into the room — the young man had left the curtain open to awaken to a New York cityscape — they made love for the first time in a state other than Ohio. In fact, he thought a beat later, in one of the greatest cities of the world. And then, he wondered something.
‘Is this THE greatest city in the world?’
He caught his heaving breath, tumbling to her side. He landed atop the thick, white comforter.
“I could get used to this,” he said.
“You could move here, you know,” Becca responded. “After you graduate in May. Now that you’re a big-shot Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper veteran and all …”
She pulled the covers up to her neck as the chill in the room made the nipples on her small, but admirable breasts stay taut. The young man eyed the physics of this reaction before they ducked out of sight. His attention shifted to her remark. It was not the first time Becca had tossed out this tease, he thinks.
Come to New York. Live here. With me. My future. Yours … ‘Our’ future.
He tried out the line in his head.
Our future …
“Right …” he said, sardonically.
He caught himself so that Becca did not think he was being sardonic about her offer. He wasn’t. And It was an actual offer, wasn’t it? Yet, could he live in New York with all its crazy stimulations? Could he abide its round-the-clock arousals, distractions and noisiness, so unlike the Ohio towns and suburbs where he grew up, with their easy access to the sanctuary of deep, whispering woods? What was that word he once wrote down in his journal, an Italian term for ‘agitated’. It was a term used in classical music, but suitable to describe the other side of New York’s energy.
Agitato.
He had noted in his journal its musical meaning from some dictionary: “To play quickly; with agitation and excitement.” That was New York, too.
He returned his attention to Becca’s remark.
“I mean to say that an internship at the podunk Cincinnati Enquirer is not going to open many doors to me in publishers’ suites on Fifth Avenue …”
She sidled up beside him, sweat cooling on her lithe, dolphin’s body.
“That’s the point, though, isn’t it? You have to get here to make things happen. It’s the only way to make things happen. Go where they’re happening! Why do you think I’m here?”
The young man turned on his side to face her, feeling her body’s radiating warmth.
“You were meant to be here. Haven’t you wanted to move to New York since you were, like, age 9?”
Becca giggled, the young girl laugh coming out of the grown-up, sophisticated woman he so adored. He liked both of them. The odd mix of her. She was someone so certain and clear about her track through life. She had known so early on, he thought. An artist from the Midwest hinterlands, gone to the Big City and never looking back.
“Age 10, actually,” she said. “After my Mom and I watched ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” She made Jiffy Pop popcorn …”
He admired her blue eyes. How they complemented her short, straw-yellow hair just like harmonizing colors in a painting. She had taught him about harmonizing colors. Were she and him harmonizing colors?
“Let’s make something else,” he said, parting the covers.
So, they did.
READ: ‘It’s a Dylan Thing: PART 1,’ which takes a personal dive into the new Dylan biopic ‘A Complete Unknown,’ profiling the launch of the singer-songwriter’s career in Greenwich Village and beyond.
Awhile later, dressed and a just over an hour away from check out, Becca handed him a pamphlet.
“Today, we are going to do some not-usual sightseeing,” she said. “This is from the Greenwich Village Historical Society. Have you ever had a real cappuccino? We, my dear Douglas, are going to the place that introduced cappuccinos to America. Cafe Reggio. Being the good Dago that you are, you’ll appreciate this place’s history. It’s about as Italian as you can get in this city, my half-Italian stud. Study up, sir!”
The young man took the pamphlet. He folded into an easy chair near the window. Read. He looked up now and again to gaze out over the city, then returned to the pamphlet. The storyteller Muse in him — when given enough redolent, evocative details — would go to town without him even asking. It proceeded to go to town. His journal now in hand, he began jotting down details. How would he write this, he wondered, if he were writing the cafe’s history as a story?
CHAPTER | The Idea
With a snip of his scissors, Dominic Parisi pares away at an old Italian guy’s flyaway white hair. The man, who says that his name is Luca-something, is new to the Greenwich Village barbershop. He has found his way to the shop at 119 MacDougal Street just like they all do.
“How you find your way here?” Dominic asks him.
Luca, who had lightly dozed off, startles awake, so that Dominic has to pull back his razor-sharp scissors.
“Some guy on the East Side recommended ya,” says his new customer.
Dominic nods his head.
“Yeah, I gotta sign and bought a small ad in the local paper. But words of mouth …” he says to the man. “That’s how I get most of my customers.”
Three other men wait in spindly chairs in the wan light let in by the long window which looks out onto the busy street. It needs cleaning, Dominic thinks. One man peruses that day’s Sept. 25, 1919, edition of the New York Tribune, featuring a banner headline on its sports page that reads: ‘Babe Ruth, King of Home Run Hitters.’
“He hit number 28 yesterday!” says one of the men in the chairs, Eduardo, a regular. “One more and he’s the home run champion of all time!”
A younger fellow in a natty black wool suit and black fedora speaks up from his chair.
“Hey, Mr. Parisi. I just want a shave! How much? And how long is it gonna take? I gotta be places, ya’ know?”
Dominic lifts his scissors off Luca’s head. Looks over at the man. He explodes the fingers of his other hand into a blossom of annoyance.
“Santo cielo! I’m-a working quick as an old guy can! But you wanna know? I tell ya’. I charge you 10 cents for a shave. But you gotta’ wait. How many hands you think I have?”
Dominic holds up both of his hands. The one holding the scissors points to the other for emphasis. The barber’s shoulders rise in emphasis.
“Hey, Dominic,” says Eduardo. “You made me an espresso last time I was here and had to wait …”
The nameless young man takes off his fedora. Runs a hand through his thick, black hair.
“So’s a man can get an espresso here?”
Dominic tries to fix both men in his eyesight in the dim light of the dark shop. After nearly 35 years as a barber, his sight is beginning to fill with annoying curlicues and fuzziness at the edges of his eyeballs. It can sometimes make it hard to focus on the hair when it gets really bad.
“I can’t keep giving my beans away. Il caffe e costoso!” Dominic says.
Then, pondering something, he speaks again.
“How much you pay for an espresso?”
The young man returns the fedora to his head. Rubs his chin with one hand. Looks over at him.
“As much as I’d pay for a shave,” says the fellow.
Dominic’s eyebrows rise. Two espressos, twenty cents. Faster than a haircut.
“Hey, Luca!” he says.
The man, who has dozed off once more in his chair, startles awake again.
“If I make you an espresso, would you pay ten cents?”
Luca heaves a world-weary sigh.
“Yeah, sure,” he says. “What is that thing Americanos say? Two birds and one stone. Haircut, espresso. Same place, same time. It’s good.”
His scissors momentarily freeze in the air above Luca’s head as Dominic gazes off into space. In his line of sight is his old espresso machine. And, then, fresh curlicues fuzzing one of his eyes. He tries to bring his attention back to the head at hand. But he’s still thinking.
‘What if it was all espresso and cappuccino? And no hair?’
CHAPTER | The Cappuccino
Rocco, their waiter pipes up. “And that Is how Dominic got his big idea!” Becca and the young man sat on spindly ice cream parlor chairs inside Cafe Reggio on MacDougal Street, their knees touching beneath a small round table with a marble top and black iron legs. They had passed into the coffeeshop underneath a green awning which declared in big, uppercase white letters:
‘ORIGINAL CAPPUCCINO.’
For a place with such a big reputation, its interior was not so big, the young man thought. Plus, the place looked a bit like a funky knick-knack shop. The milk-chocolate colored walls featured faded yellow Italian newspaper clippings and a handful of what looked like reproductions of Old Master paintings in ornate wooden frames. Medallions hung here and there plus a small troop of bronze statues of figurines, and all manner of bric-a-brac on shelves and in the window.
The young man had been quizzing Rocco to learn more of the cafe’s history. Six-feet-tall and dressed in black, the cadaverous waiter resembled a large, gaunt crow. How old was he? Maybe 35 or 40? His fingernails were painted as black as his thick mop of hair, which flowed like a waterfall off his head onto part of his face, concealing one eye. That is, until he tossed his hair back to reveal two eyes that peered closely at everything.
The young man looked over his shoulder at the elaborate cappuccino machine.
“So, that’s the original machine Dominic bought after he re-opened the barber shop as Cafe Reggio in 1927?”
“With his life savings,” said Rocco. “It cost $1,000. He had it sent over from Italy, where he emigrated from. He was from Reggio-Calabria — hence and voila, the cafe’s name! The very first cappuccinos ever sold in America were sold here,” Rocco added.
It sounded like patter the man had unspooled a hundred times. Yet he infused his words with professional enthusiasm, which the young man appreciated. He arose and walked over to inspect the espresso machine. It was a mammoth chrome and bronze thing, half as high as a full-grown adult. A foot-tall silvery angel with splayed wings topped the device while dragons swirled around its base. His hands caressed the beasts.
‘Made in Italy … Just like my father …’
“That would have got you in trouble in Dominic’s day,” Rocco interjected. “No one else was allowed to touch it back then. When Dominic was sick, they closed up shop. He once told a reporter ‘You need to be an expert to run him …’”
Becca, who had come over to appreciate the machine, too, rolled her eyes dramatically.
“You men! How do you know the espresso machine isn’t a girl? That angel looks as hot as Cheryl Tiegs …”
CHAPTER | The Tourist
Back at their table, Rocco asked them what they wanted. “We came for the cappuccino,” said Becca. She nodded her head at the young man. “He’s never had a real one …” Rocco tossed his hair back and gave her companion his two-eye look.
“Tourist? Where from?”
The young man hitched on the word ‘tourist.’ It sounded so superficial, so, transitory. Here today, gone tomorrow. He could be back. He would be back. His lover lived in the city, he thought. He felt suddenly defensive. Recovering quickly, he trotted out his standard line when people not from Ohio asked him that question.
“The country I come from is called the Midwest …”
Rocco’s eyes lit up. He nodded his head vigorously, grinning.
“Dylan! ‘With God on Our Side.’ He’s been in here lots. Not as much as when he used to live on West 4th Street. He supposedly started writing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ at the Fat Black Pussycat over on Minetta Street. Did you know that when he was first playing clubs here they didn’t pay the acts and just passed a basket around? And that’s why Dylan started wearing hats all the time! To pass his hat, not just wear it.”
Becca nodded, smiling indulgently.
“Sorry,” said Rocco. “I’m a Bobcat …”
He turned to go. Stopped and swiveled.
“Oh, wait, we just made fresh Baba au Rhums. You guys want?”
Becca’s face lit up. The young man’s eyebrows raised in a question.
“It’s a cake, studded with dried fruit and soaked in hot rum syrup. It’s to die for,” she said.
The young man nodded.
“Well, let’s die, then!”
“We’ll take two,” Becca told Rocco, who bolted away.
Their eyes returned to meet one another.
“Babe,” she said. “This city will suck you in.”
She smiled at him. Leaned his way from her chair. Their heads touched, resting upon each other’s weight.
“When are you coming back to the City?”
The young man considered the question. After his return home from New York, he and Bradley — part of their high school bunch who had moved on to Miami University — would move into an Indiana farmhouse about ten miles over the border from the university. An older friend of Brad’s who lived in the house was headed out on a post-hippie walkabout — to Nepal, of all places. He had made the place available to them for their last semester at school.
“Sooner …” he answered Becca. “Rather than later.”
Their heads separated. Came upright. Rocco returned. A white linen napkin now adorned one forearm and he balanced a circular tray in one hand. He delivered their steaming cappuccinos from tray to table. Then, two Baba au Rhums on small white porcelain plates. Becca and the young man leaned their noses to the table. A heady aroma of warm vanilla, orange zest, and sweet rum filled their nostrils.
“Good?” asked Rocco.
“Very good!” said the young man.
Over his shoulder as he departed, Rocco called back to them.
“The tourists call them ‘Rum Babas.’ Don’t be a tourist …’
Becca, meanwhile, just beamed at the obvious wonderfulness of her new forever home.
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