29 October 2005

Libby’s toast, and Rove is next. Patrick Fitzgerald is my new hero. It’s nice to see that not all government lawyers are treasonous felons like Libby.

Farmers’ market report: pork, dry-farmed tomatoes, sweet potatoes, chard, radicchio di Treviso, limes, and a few more peppers. We got there a little late, so I didn’t see the red-headed DILF, alas.

I spent most of the day getting ready to write my take-home final on Sunday, which means reading a 65-page paper by my professor full of statements like this: “In the U.S. today, law and economics has been finally unseated from the throne of legal objectivity, so that its normative recipes need a new contingent and local legitmization in order to compete with those of a variety of opposite political strategies.” Hegemony and counter-hegemony. Why did I decide to go to law school?

I worked out again with the 27-year-old. The jury is still out. As I was getting ready this evening, I kept thinking that I was resenting this imposition on my time (and also thinking that maybe I’m just being scared and resistant to a good thing.) He’s very headstrong. We did legs at his gym (the dreadful 24-Hour-Nautilus, whose doorstep I shall not darken again). I dragged him to pizza at Marcello’s, where we sat in the window and watched the Castro fill with costumed revelers, including Ambassador Wilson and his chic wife, Valerie Plame.

A big, blond angel in a skimpy costume caught my eye in the pizza place. I don’t know the 27-year-old well enough yet to be able to point out guys I like on the street as they walk by. In any case, I think the blond angel liked him more than me, but I’d be open to sharing. By the time we left, the police had blocked off Castro Street.

I went home, my date’s ex having arrived (from a small country village), and they decided to hang out in the Castro. It’s always interesting to see what the ex of the guy you’re dating is like — it usually makes me wonder what they’re looking for and what they see in me. This one was my opposite: big, loud, blond, chubby, common, and bitchy. (Meow.) He may have been a little drunk, but neither he nor his maroon Thunderbird were making a good impression.

27 October 2005

Another date tonight with the Puerto Rican. I’m going to have to think of a new name for him if he’s going to be a recurring element of Cunégondiana. We were just going to get a quick bite to eat before he went to his French class, but he came over, we hung out (chastely), he decided not to go to class, and then we went to the gym for a kick-ass workout (triceps, chest, and shoulders), and then for burritos and ice cream (so healthy, I know), and then he went home. He has to get up at 5 AM to go to work. This could go somewhere, just maybe. I’m trying to stay in the moment and not leap too far forward with my usual negative thoughts about relationships.

Harriet Miers is out of the picture. Oh, big surprise. We’ll see what zealot Chimpy picks next from the far right side of the Oort Cloud. And tomorrow could be Fitzmas! I’m hoping for indictments all around by the time I wake up. I’m going to bed with dreams of sugar plum fairies dancing in my head.

26 October 2005

A few things:

-         great dinner tonight at the restaurant. We ate in the kitchen. A salad of orange tomatoes and grilled fennel with an anchovy vinaigrette, stupendously good squash ravioli with brown butter and sage, pan-fried quail with fried green tomatoes and truffled polenta, a cheese course, and then a Meyer lemon meringue tart with pomegranate.  Prosecco, a Macon, a Brunello di Montalcino, and a Beaumes de Venise. (And Beefeater Martinis next door as aperitifs).

-         No school today, so I spent the whole day in my cloister. I don’t think I spoke to anyone in a real conversation until dinner.

-         I was monkish and melancholy today—couldn’t quite figure out why. And then I remembered: today would have been Steve’s 44th birthday. And tomorrow would have been our 15th anniversary. It seems like more than 15 years ago that I met him. It feels as if it was someone else’s lifetime ago. I was only 25, but with everything that happened since then . . . it’s hard to believe that it was the same me. Oh Steve, my sweet baby. Part of the motivation for this blog was to move on from that experience. Only a very few people I’ve met since then know the whole story, or even any  part of the story. It seems easier to tell 26,000 mostly anonymous readers about it than to tell the people I see every day.

-          Tomorrow’s plan: a quick visit to the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park, where his name is inscribed in the memorial circle, school, and another good meal.

-         P.S. I am concerned that “daddy” in the Southern vernacular is really a euphemism for “bear.”

23 October 2005

Farmers’ market report: eggs, Cire dates, a passel of apples, more peppers, a few late-season tomatoes, and fuchsia-colored dahlias.  Plus the tall-redheaded DILF was there (without Mom). He bought a ton of stuff and had his rambunctious son with him.  Would it be so wrong?

I’m down to the nitty-gritty on my first brief this semester. I can’t wait to have that monkey off my back.  If it has more than ten errors, we don’t pass the class, and the errors can be as insubstantial as leaving just one space after a sentence, not the required two. Asinine? Yes.

I had a nice birthday dinner at Café Claude on Friday night. We drank too much, which I regretted on Saturday.

I need a muse. Trying to do all this with a ready source of inspiration is not easy.

20 October 2005

-         It was a beautiful Fall day, at least until the fog came back.

-         I finally made it over the hump of the week. I slept 10 hours last night.

-         I got called on in class this morning. I think I acquitted myself well. Exceptions to the hearsay rule for state of mind. F.R.E. 803(3).

-         No more Friday classes!

-         The job search is not going well so far. Pray for me. I got yet another rejection letter, and a friend landed a great job.

-         The little Puerto Rican should be back from NY soon. I hope he behaved himself.

-         I fried up some okra for my dinner.

-         This weekend: finishing up the brief, starting the next one, getting ready for my first final next week, the gym, and a birthday party for my nephew.

-         A great piece on Towleroad about twenty years of Florent, a restaurant that I first started going to in the late ’80s, before the Meatpacking District became visitable by yuppies. It brought back many fond memories. Check it out, especially if you were there then. Steven and I ate dinner there once, right after Wigstock (when it was still held in Tompkins Square). One of the waiters gave a reprise of his performance that afternoon. He got up on the counter, out of drag, knocked over a few glasses, and lipsynched a Jennifer Holiday number. It was electrifying. We were there once on a warm summer night, late, after clubbing. While we were eating, the sun rose and the bread was delivered. The smell was so compelling that we asked for a baguette to go. They obliged. We walked hand-in-hand back to the East Village in the silent, rosy dawn sharing the still-warm bread . . . . I was young once.

16 October 2005

Full moon on Monday. This may portend something Rovian.

Farmers’ market report: pork, peppers, apples, quince, chard, okra, semolina bread, and orange lilies. I spent the rest of Saturday studying and cleaning. I’ve been working on a nearly final draft of my first brief this semester. I have one more due in about five weeks. Yikes.

I spent most of Sunday (after reading the comics) writing and revising. The little 27-year-old came over in the afternoon. He was hungry, so I made him a honey-and-hazelnut-butter sandwich on the semolina bread. He was pleased. We had a little nap and a nice visit, and then I was pleased. I say no more.

14 October 2005

11:20 PM

It's raining tonight. The first real rain we've had since late May or early June. It's about time.

9:00 AM

I'm busy writing again.  As we await the indictments of Ms. Rove and Scooter, here’s an apposite quotation from Theodore Roosevelt (1918, emphasis added): 

"The president is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able and disinterested service to the nation as a whole.

"Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right.  Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.  Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or anyone else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

10 October 2005

6 October 2005

It was a very October-in-San Francisco day. I grabbed a tea at Peet’s in the Castro to avoid the street sweepers in my neighborhood, and I parked my Golf at 15th and Noe in a line of VW products: Golf, Golf, New Beetle, Jetta, and then an A4 at each end. It was warm enough to have my pot of Keemun on the bench outside, but the pleasure ended when a neighbor decided that it was a good day to wash her sidewalk with Lysol.

Fleet Week is here, which means (1) warm weather, (2) sailors, and (3) the fucking Blue Devils roaring overhead for hours as they “practice.” They make the Canadian Snowbirds we had last year seem like paper airplanes.

5 October ’05

Another palindromic date. Thank god for therapy. It was just the adjustment I needed. And my cold has waned enough that I could finally get back to the gym. Plus I got a little useful validation today in my most demanding class  — I brought up an issue in the case we were discussing that none of the smarty-pants had thought of, and that the professor hadn’t thought of, and he referred back to it more than once during the rest of the discussion. My issue was the obvious subtext of the whole case (the one issue that shaped the Court’s decision even though the Court referred to it only obliquely).  A little literary training comes in handy now and then.

3 October 2005

A new moon. I wish I felt like starting something. I’m wiped out from this cold. Instead of the gym, I stayed home tonight and poached the chicken to make a little broth and a little chicken for tomorrow. A clove or two in the broth is just the thing. I also shelled some beans to cook and have as a first course. Better than reading about exceptions to the hearsay rule.

In lieu of many more words, here’s a photo. The yellow-green plums are the Emerald Beauties. The red plum is the Casselman. The apple is an Esopus Spitzenberg. The pears are Comice. The oval things on a stalk are fresh, crispy Barhi dates (a September specialty). A few of them are on their way to turning into the soft dates we all know. Next to them are the pods of the beans I shelled this evening. 

2 October 2005

It was a long weekend. Despite the nice weather, I’ve fallen into a snivelly cold and a melancholy spell. School in general, and the lack of benefit from the on-campus interview process specifically, have me down in the dumps. I need a muse.

I spent most of the weekend studying, so I’ve caught up with my reading (more or less). We’ve completed the first full draft of the first brief I’m working on this semester. Tomorrow is the student-teacher conference—our first evaluation.

It was not all dull, however. I had dinner with friends to celebrate A’s fortieth birthday. We’ve now been friends for 21 years, or over half our lives. We ate at the new Americano. It was fine, but I don’t need to go there again. We had crab salad with lemon, apple, and candied walnuts; panzanella; and little pastry-dough pizzas of fig and gorgonzola, queso fresco and chiles, and pesto. I had wild salmon in a light tomato broth, a tired-tasting cucumber garnish (mis en place leftover from lunch?), and a lovely grilled toast (the best part of the dish).  Because I ended up carrying the baby holder/car seat thing, everyone at the restaurant treated me as A’s husband and the father of her baby. I didn’t mind.

I went briefly to the Castro Street Faire, preceded by a brunch at a classmate’s house, for which I made Elvis Presley’s Favorite Pound Cake. Next time, six eggs and less sugar.  The Faire was its usual anticlimactic self—the end of Gay Season (we don’t count Hallowe’en, which has become a forum for loutish display by our less well-mannered heterosexual neighbors). 

Farmers’ market report: Esopus Spitzenberg apples (Thomas Jefferson’s favorite), a small Crenshaw melon, Emerald Beauty plums, Cassleman plums, a Pullman loaf from della Fattoria, eggs, shelling beans, chard, and a fat hen.  I did see my future husband there—slim, my height, scruffy beard, great sunglasses, flip-flops, probably a cook or an architect, because he had an odd collection of items—squash blossoms, watermelon radishes, winter savory. He, too, selected the Spitzenberg apples. . .