Marco Drago: «What men don’t say»

Phat an obsession with a woman last forty years? Can the memory of the first kiss erase the memory of all the events that took place before and after? There are also “men who love too much”? To read Fell in love by Marco Drago we would answer: definitely yes. «It wasn’t supposed to become a novel, I started writing it because it’s a story I’ve had inside for a long time, precisely since August 6, 1988, when it ended». In autofiction, a genre whose latest success has been Nothing true by Veronica Raimo, «nothing big happens», as Drago explains: there is a fifteen-year-old boy who happens to see, at school, what will become his greatest love, but he lives in secret, never declaring himself, and not knowing her. Thus four years pass, until, in the fifth year of high school, she fulfills his dream: they get together. The story will last two and a half years, and every detail is gutted in detail: “his voice, his sweetness, his facial expressions, his ways of saying, his movements, his smell…” writes Drago.

Was writing therapeutic?
«As I write in the book she became a shadow, over time, and I also understood, much later, that we were very different, and perhaps it was a coincidence that we were together… Of course, putting all the emotions in line that have invested me for years has certainly served to let them go ».

Had she ever confided in a therapist about her obsession?
«Never, I’ve talked about it a lot, however, with the wrong people. My friends, at different times, infecting them, seeming for a long time like a mythomaniac, on occasions that had nothing to do with it, were inopportune, like once at a meeting of Zappiani…».

Here, Frank Zappa: alongside the yearnings of love there are many references to the music of the 80s, from the New Wave to Duran Duran, from the Cure to Zappa precisely, to Soft Cell.
«An extraordinary period, very lively musically, which in those years was my other real center of interest besides my classmate».

She writes: «All my friends buy The Joshua Tree of U2, I respond by buying The London Orchestra Vol. 2 by Frank Zappa.” How much self-satisfaction is there in such a sentence?
“Very, very much. In fact I didn’t bond with peers, I accompanied myself to people older than me, who had more refined tastes, which allowed me to pose. Adolescence is all about posing, all about wondering, as Moretti says: do you notice me more if I come and stay to the side or if I don’t come at all?».

Speaking of Moretti: he is in love with Jennifer Beals, at one point she confesses that she has a crush on Diane Keaton.
“It’s still like that, I’ve followed her throughout her career, all her films, though Reds remains what marked me, I’ve seen it a million times.

She talks about herself without filters: not only positive passions, but also sex, paranoia, drugs, fears, unspeakable thoughts at inopportune moments.
“Yes, I got naked, something men rarely do. Women are more used to talking about relationships, men never do it, but here is every inch of my thoughts, dreams, foibles, tics, for years. It would be nice if some reader could tell me if you see yourself in certain things.’

What “men” don’t say. But maybe also Smells like Teen Spirit.
“Yes, in addition to women, the utopia would be for kids who are the age of the protagonists of the book to read it, fifteen-year-olds, teenagers, so they understand what adolescence was like for their parents”.

What was it like to love each other in the 80s?
«It seems like a century ago, life without the Internet, without a car with which to travel the kilometers of the province. A moment in which to demonstrate and communicate one’s love one resorted to exchanging records, going to the cinema, dressing in a certain way: we were victims of a crazy cultural consumption, which our older brothers, who grew up on bread and politics , in the 70s, they scolded us, or at least they took the piss out of us. We were consumerist natives, like digital natives are today».

The book can also be read as a sentimental education. I quote: «From the Provençal poets to Claudio Baglioni, passing through that asshole of the young Werther, it’s all a bombardment of bullshit that is neither in heaven nor on earth».
«My reflection starts from the fact that sometimes, I’ve realized, I’ve argued to replicate clichés about couple quarrels, and who knows how many other things I’ve done by passively copying romantic novel clichés. I wonder: what was it like before Werther? People screwed, they got married out of interest, a completely different paradigm, without too many worries…».

Speaking of clichés: the book comes out just before Valentine’s Day. Have you ever celebrated it?
«Now that I think about it, I got engaged to her on February 9, 1986, it was just before… I don’t think so. I remember every poem I gave her, every song I told her about, everything but ever celebrating Valentine’s Day, whatever it’s called. Today, since my wife’s name is Valentina, I happened to have done something, but more to celebrate her than anything else».

About his wife: in the book he writes that he let her read the book, fearing her jealous reactions, and that she gave her the green light. A bit paraculo, right?
“Totally, but I was really wondering about his reaction, luckily it went well. And then this constant telling of the past and returning to the present worked».

Do you think that the protagonists of the story, even though you don’t mention names of people or places, will show up?
“I would not know. I haven’t had contact with my first love for years… But maybe her husband shows up at a book presentation, the one she married decades ago, and who, if I think about it, is perhaps the real reason why I wrote the book : annoy him…». He laughs.