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30 November 2003
I just finished two long weeks at the restaurant. I haven’t
worked there full-time for a few years. I learned a lot this time—mostly about my own motivations. What bugs me is always
the same, and it’s the frustration that accompanies me wherever I go. It’s not the job, it’s me. Working
so closely, and in such close confines (the main work area of the kitchen is about the size of four office cubicles) with
the same group of people throws into sharp relief all of my bad habits, external and internal.
My “persistent vagabondage,” as C. calls it,
has flared up again. I’m going to LA for a few days. I’m also monitoring United’s Latin E-fares, hoping to snag one of their $499 SFO-GIG or SFO-GRU specials next month. Y.
will be there for most of December, and I need an escape hatch. The regular price is about $1,400. I can’t afford $499
either, but I might by Xmas. I won’t go into rant against the “shopping season,” since I’ve already
ridden that hobby horse twice today (and it’s only 3PM).
I have a date tonight, my first one in months with a single
guy. I agreed to it partly to get my therapist off my back. I’m trying to keep an open mind. Part of what makes him
unappealing is that he’s available, even though he's tall, friendly, and handsome.
28 November 2003
How distasteful to see a deserter strutting in an Army uniform.
This is the second time Our Leader has violated the taboo against a president appearing in military uniform. I suppose we
should just relax and get used to it, since it's going to happen again before the next "election."
However, you know that times have changed when he can say
that he rode with Ms. Rice in the back of a car and they looked just “like a normal couple.”
27 November 2003
Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers!
24 November 2003
3:40 PM
“Anybody who has several
sexual partners in a year is committing spiritual suicide.” Somebody please contact a hotline! Check my spiritual pulse!
So far this month I’ve already had several sexual partners! Am I a suicider, as Our Leader likes to call them? Am I
already spiritually dead? Mr. Brooks, are you suggesting that as a bachelor, I should be celibate? But isn’t celibacy fundamentally selfish since it means
withholding the pleasure I could give to others out of some imaginary concern for my own well being? Who benefits from my
celibacy? No one. Not me, certainly, and not my buddy.
As Foucault
noted, what’s really frightening and threatening about gay people isn’t their “unnatural” sexual acts,
it’s that they can actually, truly love one another. Sodomy is one thing*, but a strong, committed relationship between
two men or two women means that heterosexual marriage is not the domestication of our animal urges, the pinnacle of all relationships,
and the sacred foundation of civilization.
Of course a
marriage between two men wouldn’t be the same as that of a straight couple, but that’s the great thing about being
gay: without the institution of marriage, we have been free to mold our relationships into the shapes that work for us. Do
you find monogamy too corrosive? Don’t do it. Bored with your boyfriend? Go out and find a third for the two of you
to toy with. I think that the straits of marriage and the difficulties of divorce will help gay men make better relationships, but gay marriages won't be anything like straight ones. Why would we want to emulate a paradigm that goes disastrously wrong
fifty percent of the time? Anyone remember the sacred nuptial union of Liza Minnelli and David Gest?
11:12 AM
It’s very heartening that a Google search for “Bush is the
worst president” gets 1000+ hits (and only three years into his reign), while the same search for Clinton gets only
78 hits. Pass it on.
1:10 AM
Other guys' boyfriends: gotta love 'em.
__________
*
Of course, if god hadn’t meant for people to have anal sex he wouldn’t have put a hole there.
23 November 2003
It’s colder here in San Francisco than it is in
Toronto, but on the bright side, Cal beat Stanford yesterday in the Big Game. Ha!
That’s the first and last football post you’ll
ever read here.
21
November 2003
I've spent
the day on my personal statement for my application to trade school. I scrapped all the drafts I've written since July and
decided to take an autobiographical approach in order to explain why I’ve taken a detour from my first career into cooking
and why I now want to return to that career. My time with Steve of course played a large role in that decision. It’s
still too long, but that gives me room to cut.
19 November 2003
Miss Trannyshack Pageant on Sunday! I can't wait. The drag will be overwrought, unoriginal, and over-applauded (we're in the provinces,
what did you expect?), but the crowd....
18 November 2003
It was all going well until I said something to someone in
a fragile mood, something that everyone in the room thought was inexcusably caustic and hurtful. It seemed so anodyne as the
thought formed in my head, and as soon as I said it, the silence around the table made me realize that I had missed the mark
and had insulted her royally in front of everyone else. This is not the first time that a mild remark (to me) has come across
as much worse to others. I usually tone down my thoughts to make them palatable for general consumption, but even so, they
still can sting unexpectedly.
Tomorrow, the first task of the day is to make amends before
I burn another bridge.
16 November 2003
A quiet weekend. It included a lovely nap this afternoon.
Farmers’ market with C. (ground lamb, rapini, buttercup (not butternut) squash, and Winter Pearmain apples
from the Anderson Valley). My landlord has agreed in principle to reduce my rent by at least another $100 since I’m
threatening to leave. I can’t afford this place anymore. I want to pay $1,000, but I doubt he’ll agree.
Another ball buster at work on Saturday. It didn’t
help that I started my fire an hour late. Just before service started I realized that I had nothing to grill on. Squab sashimi
anyone? To make it worse, the only thing left in the bag of mesquite was just crumbs—the kind of stuff that won’t
light readily. I had run out to the woodshed to restock on wood and mesquite. I dumped a bunch of fig wood on the three pieces
of charcoal that I had burning and began to manipulate. My longstanding pyromaniacal tendencies came in handy: I had a nice
bed of coals by the time I had to fire the first of the 400 pieces of squab. Fortunately, the other cooks were too busy getting
their mise en place ready to notice my lapse.
I drove by Sugar at the Stud on the way home and thought about going. I was sweaty and grimy from the grill (enticements to some) but had only my
work shoes with me (enticement to none).
This is the first time in all the years of growing moustaches
that I’m seeing more and more of them on guys my age, and not just on Elizabeth Street in NY.
15 November 2003
Never mind the fact that L. and I have nothing in common and nothing to
talk about. I still want him.
14 November 2003
I just read Douglas Coupland’s charming City of Glass, an abecedarian on Vancouver. I wish I had read it before I went the last time. I can’t wait to go again.
I left the gym in a funk.
11 November 2003
I'm busy working on my trade school applications, which has been a kind
of personal archeological expedition. Here's a bit of buried treasure I found.
8 November 2003
If I could give milk I’d bring my nephew here and keep
him with me for awhile. He got fussy in the evening so I picked him up and sat in the big rocking chair — the chair my mother sat in when she nursed us —
and in a few minutes he was asleep in my arms. Why do I have such nice big nipples if I can’t use them to provide nourishment?
I think the cassoulet came out well. I had duck fat all over
the kitchen by the time I was done. I brought the cassoulet up to a small winery in the hills east of the Napa Valley. They
gave me a half-case of their wine as a tip—the wine was worth more than my fee. They’re famous for their chardonnay,
but I found it undrinkable: oaky, buttery, and overwrought in the classic Napa style. Can’t even cook with it. Fortunately
the other three bottles are a syrah, a merlot, and a grenache, so we’ll have something to try at Thanksgiving.
My psychic powers* were working well today and saved me from
getting a whopping speeding ticket. I was coming down the hill into Vallejo on Highway 80, bored, going at least 95 (since
I had been going a good 90 up the hill), when it occurred to me that the highway patrol was nearby. I took my foot
off the gas just as I flashed past a cop lurking in the slow lane. Quick downshift into fourth (vrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmm) —
no guilty-looking brake lights for me, thanks. He pulled right behind me and tailed me pointedly until I was down to a steady
75, and then he zoomed off to harass another person with somewhere to go.
No sign of tall & freckled tonight at the gym, but my hair was a mess, so perhaps
it was for the best. I am not a fourteen-year-old girl.
________
* I usually know who’s calling when I hear the
phone ring. Not as good as J.’s mother, who would turn to look at the phone just before it rang.
5 November 2003
My apartment smells good right now. I’m putting together
a cassoulet tomorrow for a catering job. I’ve got a tomato-y lamb stew in one pot, three pounds of fresh shell beans
in another, and the pork belly that I salted on Friday in third. Each pot has its own faggot of herbs (thyme, parlsey, bay,
and savory). I cut out the two nipples from the pork belly before I cooked it because I know that I’ll forget about
it tomorrow when I’m putting it together. I made a confit of duck legs on Sunday; they’re resting under a blanket
of snow-white duck fat until tomorrow. Still left to do: make the crumbs and cook the sausages. For those who wish to follow
along, I’m using as inspiration the recipe Richard Olney gives in his magnificent French Menu Cookbook (1970,
1985). I think there will be enough that I can take the remainder to my sister’s
tomorrow when I go visit my favorite nephew, little H.
3 November 2003
I love the internet. I was looking up something else and
I came across this charming case study of factitious bereavement, which lead to a long conversation with my sister (a therapist) about Munchausen syndrome
and Munchausen by proxy.
After going to visit another trade school, I got a little motivated to do something about my applications, which are in a sad state. I rushed home
from the gym, but not before having a quick chat with Tall & Freckled.
2 November 2003
In the last eleven months, I’ve gone on about three
real dates and one or two coffee dates. Perhaps my “rich inner life” is getting in the way again.
1 November 2003
OK, time for the Hallowe’en candy report:
Farmers’ market report: dried white beans, lamb shoulder,
onions, garlic, a few carrots, a big loaf of levain bread (cassoulet!), red peppers, apples, quince, collard greens,
and marigolds (for my Day of the Dead altar). Yesterday I salted a nice piece of pork belly, and I’ve got duck legs
trimmed, salted, and waiting to be made into confit tomorrow.
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