The loud chorus of voices – a veritable Neapolitan soap opera – rises and falls in a lyrical lullaby. The stanza of uproarious laughter, the verse of teasing, the refrain of arguing, turned to fighting with actual fists. Waving wrists. Cigarette smoke curls above ashtrays fashioned from plastic cups. Lighters snap shut, punctuating sentences before they’re finished. On the rocky wall, the patron saint of Maradona reigns eternal in a framed photo against a backdrop of graffiti, a makeshift altar. He’s also on tattoos and keychains. Holy relic of Naples, king of kings.

The sea slaps the rocks, jutting out like coastline claws. Concrete corners clash against the flood of colour – fluoro speedos stretched over bronzed, sun-burnished bodies. The rocks burn beneath my feet; soles stung, forcing a dance, as the crunch of cut watermelon and the juice splashes on white cups sloshing with plastic-bottle wine.

Cards crack against a table, each hand exploding in shouts and mock outrage, gold-adorned hands gesticulating wildly. Peppino Brio songs crooning from the portable speakers. Buckets of fish hauled onto the rocks. Water bombing boys. Young women sucking spaghetti up over plates.

I’ve stumbled into the world of the Beach Nonnos, my name for the local elders of the rocky seafront of the Santa Lucia district in Naples. But there are Nonnas too, and Uncles and Aunties, youth and kids. The women in fuchsia pink, leopard-print bikinis adorned with light pink roses, proudly letting folds of fat hang out. Faces full of thick makeup. But the motley men dominate the scene. I hunt for my local Hinge match’s instructions – how to find these famous locals, immortalised by photographers like Sam Youkilis and Robbie McIntosh.

 

“Cards crack against a table, each hand exploding in shouts and mock outrage, gold-adorned hands gesticulating wildly. Peppino Brio songs crooning from the portable speakers. Buckets of fish hauled onto the rocks. Water bombing boys. Young women sucking spaghetti up over plates.”

 

The rock in between two big stands selling drinks and taralli.

The taralli is my North Star. I dodge the clustered crowd and claim a patch of rock, laying down my fire-engine red towel – MARZAMEMI blaring across it in big white letters. I type into my phone: ‘DOES SICILY HAVE FEUD WITH NAPOLI, WILL THEY HATE MARZAMEMI?’

The internet answers confusingly: Not really, but watch your back, paisan.

When I look up, he’s already there: tall, chest puffed, legs like toothpicks in fluorescent green board shorts. I recognised him from the viral Instagram photos. Later I’ll learn they call him Chicken Legs. For now, he’s just a deeply bronzed, leather-skinned demigod staring me down. Possibly judging my ghost-white skin in a frilly cream bikini stands out more than the slabs of stone. Cute in theory, outsider in practice. A rosary bead necklace with a cross dangles on his chest, cheap red Birkenstock-style sandals, and a receding hairline that has no impact on his confidence.

‘Perché sei sola? Vieni, siediti con noi.’

Why are you alone? Come sit with us.

‘Tutto bene, sono felice qui, vicino al mare.’

All good. I’m happy here, close to the sea.

‘Ahhh, la ragazza sa! Sempre vicino al mare, per tuffarse!’

Ahh, the girl knows – always near the sea, ready to dive in.

He beams, triumphant. ‘Va bene, ci prenderemo cura delle tue cose. Ora sei protetto con noi. Io, sono Franco.’

We’ll look after your things. You are protected now with us. I am Franco.

‘Piacere, Franco. Mi chiamo Sheree.’

‘Shri?” He bellows back to the group like he’s announcing a horse race. They howl with laughter.

“Her name is Shrimp!” Suddenly I’m less bikini-clad tourist, more circus sideshow. Step right up, the talking foreigner who burns prawn-pink. They eye me with curiosity, and I grin back, signaling: I’m one of you, just melanin deficient. I see another one shrug and gossip, ‘…and she speaks Italian? What are the chances? This never happens!’

I whip out my trusty SPF 50+ and slather it across my arms. White streaks everywhere. Immediately, as if summoning him, Franco materialises, scandalised by the streaks of white across my body.

‘NONONONO! I GET BABY OIL!’

‘The what? Che?’

‘Don’t worry it’s from Brasil, good quality!’ he calls out, as he vanishes, then reappears with a pink-tipped baby oil bottle, beaming like it’s the Holy Grail. ‘Posso?’ he asks, already squeezing. Before my half-hearted ‘si,’ he’s rubbing it into my shoulders. I’m laughing so hard, I can’t bear to stop him. The other Nonnos shake their heads as if watching a farce they’ve seen a hundred times.

 

“I’m laughing so hard, I can’t bear to stop him. The other Nonnos shake their heads as if watching a farce they’ve seen a hundred times.”

 

‘Ehhhh leave the poor girl alone, you creep!’ says one of the Nonnos, who becomes my favourite, always telling the others off for smothering me, and defending me. His face is perpetually perplexed by the world, but gives me a soft smile when he catches me looking.

I quickly learn they can’t speak English, but luckily my high school Italian holds up.

‘Don’t worry about Franco, he’s gay!’ someone else yells.

‘Non e vero!’ Franco shouts back. ‘La mia vita, will you go out with me tomorrow night?’

‘Oh Franco, I’m far too busy,’ I say, thinking of the two Giuseppes with sculpted abs from Hinge, quietly waiting in my phone.

‘Busy?’ He looks betrayed, as though I’ve just rejected the Pope.

‘Where are you from, anyway?’

‘Australia’

‘Australia?! How is this possible? You look like a Neapolitana!’

‘My family is Lebanese’ I offer.

He nods like it’s all finally making sense, the final puzzle piece.

‘Come for a swim with me’ Franco offers.

‘Soon. I don’t want the baby oil to wash off, Franco’

‘Very smart woman’ he offers. ‘Save every drop of gold, you need it! Troppo blanca!! We swim later.’

He pauses then says, ‘very soon’.

Then after less than a minute, ‘now?’

We banter a little more from my little rock perch before they tell me to come over and join them. I’m almost about to do it, when, in the corner of my eye, I notice someone new: a younger man pacing the rocks, stressed, frantic. The Nonnos tease him; Franco smirks.

‘Ehh this guy, he just lost his sunglasses. What a puss!’

‘They’re new! Expensive too,’ the young man protests, collapsing beside me with a theatrical sigh. Curly hair, big brown eyes like an older, more filled out, Timothee Chalamet. He looks up as if seeing me for the first time, really sees and notices me, then brightens like a spotlight’s hit and someone has called ‘ACTION!’

 

“We banter a little more from my little rock perch before they tell me to come over and join them. I’m almost about to do it, when, in the corner of my eye, I notice someone new: a younger man pacing the rocks, stressed, frantic. The Nonnos tease him; Franco smirks.”

 

‘I’m an actor,’ he says, chest puffed, like he’s just been knighted.

‘An actor? Anything famous?’

Franco stiffens, eyes narrowing. I can almost hear his thoughts: I just oiled her. Hands off, kid.

‘Do you know Gomorrah?’

‘What?!…Yes, of course! I mean, I know the film, not the show.’

‘I’m in the show. Anyway, are you free tonight? I’ll take you around Napoli on my moto.’

The audacity. I glance at Franco, whose expression is pure murder-over-salami. Like someone is about to sleep with the fishes.

‘Sorry, I’m busy.’ I say, steadfastly, and for his own sake.

‘Number, then?’ He takes my phone before I can protest, saving himself in my contacts with a flourish. Then he combs his hand through his curly hair and dives into the sea, not looking back.

Franco shakes his head slowly, like a disappointed father.

‘That guy is big trouble.’ He claps his hands, breaking the tension.

‘Basta! Andiamo! Now we swim!’

 

“He takes my phone before I can protest, saving himself in my contacts with a flourish. Then he combs his hand through his curly hair and dives into the sea, not looking back.”

 

I cannot delay any longer, and so we leap from the concrete into the blue. Salt, sun, chaos. Nothing better. I surface like a mermaid and laugh giddily, like a child. Franco and his friends are sputtering with laughter, cajoling and shouting over each other.

“You swim like a drowning fish!” Cue full slapstick: men flapping, splashing, collapsing across the rocks like tuna on ice. If I don’t understand their dialect, they act it out with exaggerated pantomime until I do. One of the younger guys throws an inflatable donut at Franco. ‘Don’t drown, old man!’ but he uses the donut to continue flapping about like flailing fish.

When I re-emerge, dripping, I catch the glances of the other beachgoers, the ones outside our gang. Their eyes follow me enviously, as if my halting Italian and accidental cuteness were a passport into this exclusive club and they don’t think it’s possible to be part of it. But I know they’re wrong.

Everyone is welcome. Everyone except Mr Gomorrah.

I return the next day but avoid their secret enclave. Shame pricks at me, as though Franco can somehow sense that I went out with the Gomorrah actor against my better judgment. Without them, the beach feels flat, ordinary. I leave promptly after 15 minutes.

The day after, I gather courage to return to their corner. As soon as they see me, the nonnos erupt, cheering and hollering as though Napoli FC has just scored a historic goal. This time, there are no formalities. Franco seizes my hand, dragging me into their circle. A cup of wine is pressed into my palm, taralli and almond biscotti into the other – crunchy rings that remind me of Lebanese kaak. Pasta arrives next: gooey lasagne-like squares, sliding across flimsy plates.

We gather around a table. Franco pretends to ignore me.

‘Perché, Franco? Why?’

His eyes flash. ‘I know you went out with him. Not with me.’

I gasp. ‘How did you know?’

‘I know everything in Napoli. I told you — he is cattivo. Bad man.’

‘You were right, Franco. You were so giusto for that.’ I shake my head ruefully, and I mean it.

He softens, triumphant. ‘It’s okay. You came back to us. Yesterday is gone. Today is now. Tutto passa. Look. Guarda!’

He gestures to the man across from him, with the words tattooed on his chest: TUTTO PASSA. I let out a laugh at how literal it is.

‘Everything passes. And we will protect you now from the nasty Gomorrah wannabe.’

The tattooed man looks up at me, as if from a nap, and nods solemnly, as if granting me absolution, the way a priest forgives you in confession. I nod back. It has already passed. The unease in my gut, thinking of a stranger ending the moto tour at his house, insisting on cooking me pasta and then trying to non consensually kiss me while the pasta boils, has eased. Now Franco seizes the moment. “Anyway, there was another guy here that day with him, did you see him? Ciro? He is a better option! Nice man. Also an actor in Gomorrah, but a good one.”

 

“The tattooed man looks up at me, as if from a nap, and nods solemnly, as if granting me absolution, the way a priest forgives you in confession.”

 

I actually did remember him. He did seem better. How did I miss that?

Franco dials his number furiously, then shrugs.

‘He’s not answering. Actors! Always sleeping in. Here you call him…’

‘No no, I can’t….I’m too shy!’

‘SHY?’ he bellows. ‘What’s shy?’

The table dissolves into hijinks, a botched group photo ‘la ragazza looks too blanca! A ghost! No flash!’ My bodyguard, taking the photo, sighs like an Instagram boyfriend. Franco takes a selfie of me and him, and barely a beat passes before he shows me what he’s doing with it – he’s made it his phone background and is using it to post to Instagram Stories with the song ‘La Vita Mia’ by Amadeo Minghi crooning out, the lyrics appearing on the screen as captions.

If this is life, I have touched it,

I felt it on me, I embraced it in you,

I take a better look and there is no

more doubt that you are, you are, my life.

I am laughing so hard at Franco hard launching me with such a dramatic and romantic song. Franco’s nephew has also become my number one fan, a man in his late 40s, insisting I come to dinner at his mother’s house with everyone and giving me her home number and waiting for me to call her and let her know I’m coming. I call and get a frustrated ‘PRONTO?’ before promptly hanging up and apologising to the Nephew, who shakes his head, defeated. His attempt at spontaneity dashed by a mother who’s had enough of his bullshit. The wine flows.

I freeze mid-cackle, suddenly watching myself from outside my own body. A thought dawns on me: I am as alive as I will ever be. The youngest I will ever be. And the oldest I have been. But there are perhaps more years to come, days not entirely promised to us. The vibrancy, the technicolour, the clamour, the community – the way it keeps stretching into old age here, unbroken like well-kneaded pasta dough.

The moment is suspended in time. What really matters remains. Not obsessing over the fat rolls that bulge when you sit. Worrying if your mascara has flaked off in the water, leaving you with panda eyes. When you completely let go and dive in, as the Nonnos (and Zios, let’s be real) showed me, nothing can stop you. The simple rituals. The daily dive towards joy, laughter, sharing what you have, always showing up, welcoming in those around you.

Are we truly free in this life? We work ourselves to the bone, wait for a retirement that is increasingly delayed or never seems to come, before we do anything, by then too bone-creaked and struggling to really do all the things we put off doing until this moment that wasn’t even promised. Then we’re wheeled into fluorescent rooms that smell of disinfectant instead of sea salt, television droning instead of card games and cackling laughter. Even worse, it’s the way aging is treated in this world. The disdain we all have towards it. The dread – as if we were bruised fruit at the bottom of a supermarket crate, waiting to be thrown out. The narratives we indoctrinate ourselves with. But in places like Napoli, your age is worn like a badge, your wisdom a passport to another world, like a stamped ferry ticket crumpled in your pocket after a long day at sea. You squeeze joy from every last drop, keep showing up, keep diving in, until the very end, with salt drying on your skin, the faint taste of espresso still on your tongue, and laughter echoing across the rocks. Not later, not soon, but now. Adesso.

 

 

Experience the UNITY! issue in its entirety this November, available on newsstands from Monday 17 November 2025, and through our online shop. Find a stockist near you.

 

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