My Apollonia

"Fuck The Godfather!"

That's the first line, the very first phrase of a book named Joey The Hitman. It's sort of a memoir of this guy who hangs around a real-life, honest-to-God murderer. I saw it a long time ago in a Barnes&Noble bookstore in the True Crime section. I wouldn't see it again for at least three years, before I got on the first cruise ship in my life. When I saw it on the library of the ship, I picked it up along with several other books, most of them novels which I only read about two-to-six pages, I don't remember why.

And that was the very first thing I read, I skipped the introduction by the author. I strongly believe introductions that aren't linked directly to the story (i.e. are part OF the story) aren't really part of the book as it is. They're a must read, but you aren't reading the book till you get to that one first sentence. Prologues do count.

So, anyways, I read that and a little bit further on. The premise was that the media and Hollywood had done their fare share of misdirecting the general public to what the Mafia was really all about...as with absolutely anything in life. Now I haven't read that book and I own it...It would take me a couple more years to be in one of those moods were you go "hey, what was that one book I saw once I promised myself I'd buy?". I haven't read it because I have the lousiest reading habits in the world, but, I love to read. Eventually, I'll get down to it.

The reason I'm even bringing the book up is for that first sentence. Some of you may have already experienced this, it happens mostly with movies and such other fare. You buy something because it sounds interesting and promising, and what the hell, the cover-art looks fantastic (so much for that old saying) and you expect something that will blow your mind, but instead you get something that blows your bowels, spraying hot, steaming shit over everything you own and love. Well, the same can happen with books, hasn't happened to me, thankfully, but I've been stuck with "Mehh....it sounded cooler on the jacket" books.

I don't think this is one of those books, but that first phrase bothers me, it's like an omen. It feels that it tries hard from the very begging to punch you in the gut. And it's just to get your attention. Usually, the books that really change your life do that, but sometimes it's just a bad sign.

I love the Godfather, I really really love the Godfather. Both the book and the movie, specially the movie since it was the first time I saw Al-Pacino's work, real work, and it was my starting point that would later develop into my fascination with him as an actor and with serious dramas and oscar-worthy performances. It would later bring me to Taxi Driver. But I digress, see I love the film for all the right reasons and the book as well, but as it is, the book covers a different ground in my Things I Most Absolutely Fucking Love chart.

I saw the movie for the first time when I was 13 or 14 years old, and I got the book as a present round those years. Almost 10 years later, I read the book again. And it would be this last time when I read it that I'd see things I didn't even notice back when I was a teenager. Since I started reading it back in January of this year, I've been announcing and promoting this book like no other (perhaps not as much as John Dies at the End by David Wong which will completely obliterate the universe you know and love from all the bad-assery that is that motherfucking book) for the sole reason that it is, undoubtedly, the one manual, the only manual, on men.

Men and all things men, and like Mr. James Brown said, this is a man's world. So naturally, The Godfather is a manual on society, politics, culture and ethics like no other, forget about Niccoló Machiavelli and his prince or Socrates, this book explains them all better and faster. And so, this post truly begins.

You see, there's this little thing...Honor, it gets thrown around in both the book and the movie a lot. It seems that to these people honor means everything, but the funny thing is that everyone has a different concept on honor. Sonny, for example, the eldest of the Corleone children and heir to the thrown cheats on his wife, is known for his extremely short temper and speaking out of order. To top it all off, during his childhood, he earned the title of the only person in the world who could make Don Vito Corleone angry.

Yet, he would never hit a woman, to him, to Sonny, it was Infamita to lay anything but a loving hand over a woman, even if said woman happened to be the wife of the one committing the crime.

Fredo, Connie, Michael, they all had different takes on honor. Fredo and Connie were the ones most lacking of, but Mike, Mike knew honor. Shit he had been the most honorable of the four, up until the run-in with the danger of loosing his old man and certain Irish cop's fist. The Don, fawgett'boutit, this was The Big Cheese. He was the Don, the very principle of dishonor would send shivers down his spine and cause the most destructive cycles, if needed, to unleash upon the world just to recover whatever honor, whatever dignity had been lost.

The Don was an old fashioned man, a reasonable man, a proud and serious man. A loving father and husband, and a very smart Caesar to his immense Rome called America, from his very own small, Little Italy. To the Don, as to the more real, actual-human-beings counterparts, like Bruce Lee or others, Honor was more than just a title or an ability. Honor had to be maintained and supported, it didn't gave you the right to walk on higher ground than the rest or, for that matter, to walk over anyone else.

And to me, honor means a lot. It always has, it always will. I, much like anyone else alive, would love to feel like a Don Corleone, A Vito Andollini Corleone, a respected man whom everyone trusts and loves. A powerful man. Or better yet, a Michael Corleone, a willful man. A Strong man, both feared and respected, more feared than respected of course. Death himself.

But most of us, are stuck in the middle ground. We're the Fredos and Connies of the world, a few lucky ones get to be the Sonnys, because dear old Santino was, at the very least, an honorable man. I'm flawed, broken, but I haven't strayed to far off the line. At the very least, I'd make both Dons, Vito and Michael, proud of me. But the thing about the book, the thing about Mario Puzo, the way he writes, the way he tells the story is that all throughout there are these little details that can't go unnoticed.

He conveys honor in a way that would make anyone thirst for it.

Yesterday, I got the chance to be at a thesis examination, a final exam of sorts for three dear friends of mine. Not best friends, dear friends, and I got to see them triumph, step up and do everything they were meant to do, socially speaking. Personally, they bested themselves a long time ago and they still do since every day is an equal chance to win or to fail. If you win, then you keep on winning. If you fail, you just brush it off, learn, practice and prepare to fight again 'till you win.

At the same time, I had a chance to stay with a fucking waste. A guy that by all standards and comprehension, is a Douche Bag, capital letters, no question about it. This guy, preppy little bitch, hasn't been the bane of my existence. I don't hate him, he just displeases me, a lot. And this is why; he conveys absolutely everything to despise in another person. He's no criminal, as far as I'm concerned or a kiddie pornographer or a woman beater or any other ungodly scum.

He's fake, you can breathe it in. But I don't mean someone who lacks the knowledge and tries, a lot of people mix that up, calling all the new kids at rock concerts and similar type of social venues "fakes". Usually, it's the elder stupid posers that call anyone else trying fake. No, this guy doesn't try, he does. He speaks with an unquestionable fixation in that everything he says and does is right, is true. His jokes, his ideas, his motivations, they're all the product of a person who strives to be taken seriously, but that you know are the product of mass media.

He is the mainstream real hipsters hate. Not because he doesn't know the bands you listen too or sings them right when they become famous. It's because he appropriates them, like he was there from the beginning. Speaks of them as if he has known them for ever and, worst of all, emits opinions based on his poorly constructed mind.

This guy is close minded, weak and the rest of him isn't even himself, it's all the things popularity had fed him. Again, don't confuse my anger with preposterous views and holier-than-thou attitude. I don't mind people who try, I even encourage people to get interested. This isn't that type of person, this is the guy who sees an internet joke about mac and suddenly he's an apple expert, watches a movie based on a comic book and is a comic book expert, reads a line on a popular internet blog about a famous book and suddenly knows all about the author.

All this, without ever even dedicating a moment to just open up a book, comic or reading about macs. He's views aren't objective, they've been spoon fed, and he walks with the utter confidence that what he's doing is right.

A friend of mine, the girlfriend of one of the guys presenting they're thesis yesterday, told me about him. About a part of his past. She told me how he changed, from pretending to be weird in that way when you know someone just tries to be weird, pretends to be weird, otherwise known as a very peculiar way of attention whoring, to the now, a preppy Abercrombie&Fitch poster boy, with a different speech pattern and a different view on things.

Neither of the Dons would've cared much for him. They would've called him a clown, and instead reprehend me for paying too much attention. Yes, he has no honor, so what? What is it to you? And I don't know, the proximity, the affection, the way I can't avoid him.

Then work hard, get out of there. You can't stand him, don't. They would say.

And that's when it hits me, just how flawed I am. I haven't had my big break, that success to trample the rest, the one where I can demand respect and build upwards from there. My big break, my moment, the one that hasn't come, or perhaps the several I've missed so far. And when you start thinking about missed opportunities, that's when things start to get complicated, for you, for your brain. You stay up, late at night, and think about how badly you've screwed those opportunities up. But some aren't there for the taking, some just come to brush of on your nose like a gust of wind and then go.

No explanation, no nothing, just a promise, a fleeting light.

Apollonia is a character in the godfather. After Michael, the one innocent man in the Corleone family, a civilian, makes his bones, because even he is a business man, and kills Virgil Sollozo, the only person who could ever get close enough to the Godfather to hurt him and the certain Irish cop, he flees to Sicily. Under the protection of Don Tomassino, he lives worry free in the hills of the beautiful village of Corleone, the place from where his father came from almost 50 years ago, in time of the story.

One day, a group of young women going about, frolicking as village girls tend to do, one of them caught Michael's eye.

From The Godfather by Mario Puzo:

"The girls, not seeing the men resting on the orange grove, came closer and closer. They were dressed in cheap gaily printed frocks that clung to their bodies. They were still in their teens but with the full womanliness sun-drenched flesh ripened into so quickly.

Three or four of them started chasing one girl, chasing her toward he grove. The girl being chased held a bunch of huge purple grapes in her left hand and with her right hand was picking grapes off the cluster and throwing them at her pursuers. She had a crown of ringleted hair as purple-black as the grapes and her body seemed to be bursting out of it's skin. 

Just short of the grove she paused, startled, her eyes having caught the alien color of the men's shirts. She stood there up on her toes, poised like a deer to run. She was very close now, close enough for the men to see every feature on her face.

She was all ovals; oval-shaped eyes, the bones of her face, the contour of her brow. Her skin was an exquisite dark creaminess and her eyes enormous, dark violet or brown but dark with long heavy lashes shadowing her lovely face. Her mouth was rich without being gross, sweet without being weak and dyed dark red with juice of the grapes..."

"...Her haunches moved like an animal's beneath the tight print of her dress; as pagan and as innocently lustful. When she reached her friends she whirled around again and her face was like a dark hollow against the field of bright flowers. She extended an arm, the hand full of grapes pointed towards the grove. The girls fled laughing, with the black-clad, stout matrons scolding them on. 

As for Michael Corleone, he found himself standing, his heart pounding in his chest; he felt a little dizzy. The blood was surging through his body, through all its extremities and pounding against the tips of his fingers, the tips of his toes. All the perfumes of the island came rushing in the wind, orange, lemon blossoms, grapes, flowers. It seemed as if his body had sprung away from him out of himself..."

"...Michael wasn't too pleased about his emotions being so easily read. But this was the first time in his life such a thing had happened to him. It was nothing like his adolescent crushes, it was nothing like the love he'd had for Kay, a love based as much on her sweetness, her intelligence and the polarity of the fair and dark. 

This was an overwhelming desire for possession, this was an unerasable printing of the girl's face on his brain and he knew she would haunt his memory every day of his life if he did not posses her."

Apollonia is to me, now, so much more than the most pleasant and unbelievably beautiful woman on the face of the earth. But far from it, I've felt a little like this on several occasions, mind you Mario Puzo's certainly goes beyond his way to make you comprehend in civilized and artistic terms that this girl was so hot, Michael Corleone may or may not have gotten a boner by just looking at her. I've felt, sort of this way before, but to best of my knowledge not like this before.

The truth is that I've encountered hundreds of Apollonias throughout my life, women who by some sick and twisted sense of the universe just appear before my very eyes to flee from my presence the minute I'm aware of their existence. And sure, in today's world, technology has made it idiotically easy to stare all day at pretty girls. However, nothing ever beats that feeling of coming across such gregarious beauty in real life.

And it would have it, under the experience granted by life, that I did indeed came across a woman with such features as those described by Mario Puzo. Everything from the almost skin tight ware, to the beauty of a dark brown flowing hair with big eyes, rich lips and a full womanly body, undeniably a glimpse of divine perfection on a girl, enough to leave me a blabbering, thumping mess of a man and filling me with a dreaded necessity of possession.

Unlike Puzo's story though and just how life would have it, I came across this woman, not on the florid hills of a beautiful and exotic island in Italy, under the cover of a local Mafia chieftain, escaping from the fiery embers of the law in America, but rather in line of a sandwich stand in La Guardia's International Airport in New York. The girl, as it would happen, wasn't also Italian, but Muslim.

For you see, life has this tendency, how to say it...to completely obliterate everything you believe in, just so you can build new beliefs on which to decompose later on. She wasn't dressed in familiar burkhas or other middle-eastern clothing to make that claim, I asked her, in an attempt to...I don't know, something. I had to talk to this one girl, had to, so I ended up asking what was with her and all the other women wearing the similar looking credential round their necks.

All I got out of her was that she was a Muslim and that her name is Hel-something. That's all I heard, I don't even know if that's how it's written and very probably I was breaking some rule to talk with this woman. Although her companions, the other girls, looked nothing like stereotypical Muslims, very few of them even wore that head piece that covers the hair, the rest was a track suit or sweat pants and a shirt. They were all in line to buy doughnuts and coffee or something (I'm guessing they weren't gonna try the ham sandwich).

But as I said, to me Apollonia means so much more. It's not just the pretty girls in my life that have come and gone. It's the concept, perfection that bests all other things in a way that you can't think of anything else but overwhelming possession. Wipes out every other thought, leaves you grunting like a savage.

How many times we've had that feeling, anyone, at all. Not of a woman, but of something, and how many times has that feeling passed without us being prepared for it. What of all the could'ves and should'ves in life. Those moments, or things or places or people were you just ask yourself "why can't that be me?".

Last night I got that feeling, I left an awesome get together for a party, venial I know, superficial, you betcha, but it was that very same feeling. And it stops being superficial when you realize that the small get together was filled with awesome and chill people. In my case it was, the other was a party with few good friends and alcohol, which I don't drink. I cannot convey this sensation but it goes with it all. Just a few moments a part and my night could have been different, and really, to some people, to me, it's much more important to laugh out loud with others than to attend a place were I only know so many people and none of them can make me laugh hysterically.

To top it all off, I agreed to a celebratory tequila shot which left me buzzed on the way home, and the way home was in someone else's car, next to a drunken loud mouth and Ibiza-level music. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't what I would've wanted.

And that shit always leaves you thinking. What you wanted.