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30 May 2003
Today’s Intervention: I live on a nice little residential
alley in a slowly improving neighborhood. The building next door to mine is a monster condo erected during the dot com boom
(it has an elevator (in a two-story building!), Japanese garden on the roof, etc.). The residents of the three units don’t
have any garbage cans or recycling bins. They just leave their trash piled on the curb, where it blows down the street, to
the detriment of passers-by. The garbage men will only pick up bags, not loose débris. I’m sick of the weekly mess.
When I saw this morning what the garbage men left, I picked some of it up, went around the corner to the front of the building,
which is on the main street of the neighborhood, and taped the trash to their front door: two cereal cartons, a tin can, and
a napkin. I left a polite note counseling them to get a garbage can. When I left for work an hour later, the door was clean.
29 May 2003
It’s a new moon and thus time to clear out clutter. What’s in the bag of clothes I’m
taking to Community Thrift? A stretched-out blue tank top. It’s one of the last pieces of Steve’s clothing that
I still have. I gave most of it away right after the end. I still wear his tight black “I’m going to fuck you”
t-shirt when I want to get laid. It took me five years to give away the black leather jacket he was wearing the night we meet.
I could never bring myself to wear it outside, but it putting it on was like a talisman from another life, someone else’s
life, the life of a naïve 25-year-old who never thought he’d really fall in love, who resisted it for the first three
months, who thought HIV wouldn’t matter since the relationship would probably fall apart before Steve became sick. A
few years before, that naïf had been in New York and had seen two hot 20-something guys in black leather jackets shopping
at Dean & Deluca and felt a small rent in his heart open: I’ll never have that, he thought: a cool, sexy boyfriend
who’d want to buy groceries with me at Dean & Deluca.
Of course, Steve was that guy; we were that couple. Without him to cook for and practice on, I would never
have become a cook. I had had Richard Olney’s Simple French Food for years, but it seemed daunting and not simple. One day, though, while reading
in bed with Steve, I picked it up and a new world opened to me:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like
stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men
Look’d at each other
with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
--On first looking into Chapman's Homer
Keats
28 May 2003
I joined Friendster today. I found southern B. on it. So foxy. It didn’t take long to find my young,
gay, former lover. The surprise was finding the cute blond in my Tuesday-night class. He’s a friend of B.’s and
appeared in the background of a photo of someone else. He and his boyfriend are also friends with my young, gay, former
lover. There is no escape.
At your request, I added a bio page.
So, Sharon now says it’s not “occupation” but “control over disputed lands.”
He’s learned the lesson of the last century: tell the big lie.
27 May 2003
This won’t be long, since I’m having a hard time typing. I whacked into the tip of my left
index finger last night while chopping a bunch of cilantro (seven vegetable tagine). Blood everywhere. It filled the finger
cot and dripped all over the counter, and I began to think it would never clot. I always feel let down, somehow, when I cut
myself like this. Betrayed by my knife, or the fragile skin on my finger, etc. I think I was in shock for a few minutes, but
snapped out of it and finished my shift. Dear Diary, you will be pleased to know that I did profit from my wound by having
young Jake (EMT in training) show me just where on my upper arm I should press to slow the flow of blood. He got a good feel
of my biceps, but it wasn’t as good for him as it was for me.
A few hours later: I’m in bed, asleep. I hear the doorbell. I ignore it and go back to sleep. Ring
ring ring. Again and again. I peep out the window: it’s 1 AM and C. (or K.) is on my porch. I hope he’ll just
go away, but he doesn’t. I turn on my phone to find two messages from him: “Why is your phone off? I want to come
over.” “Where are you? I want you to fuck me again.” I open the window and he’s all smiles. “Sorry
to be such a stalker. Want to have sex with me?” I send him on his way. He claimed later that he was wasted. I haven’t
seen my neighbors yet, but there will be some smirks, especially from the young straight couple downstairs.
25 May 2003
I love the smell of beeswax
candles.
I am ready and hoping for
some changes in my life. My mood shifted from deep gloom at some point during Friday night, so that when I woke up Saturday
morning, when I was at the farmers’ market, and when I was driving to work (and dreading the idea of it), the thought
running through my head was: this phase is over. This phase is over. I don’t know what exactly is over, but it’s
done. I’m in some kind of interstitial period. I was going to write that my chrysalis is unraveling, but that's trite and portentous. I was in an emotional abyss all week.
I arrived at Esta Noche last night in the midst of a Celia Cruz extravaganza. Once I found Y., we examined the merchandise, and Y. detailed the relevant
traits of his several ex-husbands who were also attending. It was flirty but not fruitful. We had to leave when someone released
pepper spray in the club.
I hung out with Y. this
morning. He helped me figure out the name of my new favorite song (“Give Me the Sunshine” by Leo’s Sunshipp),
which I had downloaded it from some blog (whose?). I wish now that I had bookmarked the site. I play it everyday. We visited all the record stores from the Haight to the
Castro, but the search was not fruitful.
The gym, however, was fruitful,
in the person of a blond sculptor, C. (or K.? I don’t know how he spells it). I am hoping we can go for the pony ride
again soon. I am turning into a Total Top Daddy. Perhaps my willingness to be a bottom was only a phase, too. I’ll be
glad if that’s over, since it’s so boring after the first five minutes. Just close your eyes, dear, and think
of Rio.
Tempura asparagus. Look
for it while asparagus is still in season.
23 May 03
First, a sketch of a recipe: a lovely potato gratin. Peel your potatoes (something firm and waxy, like
Yellow Finns, not russets). Neatly layer a buttered baking dish with thin slices of potato, sprinkle with salt, drizzle with
a soupspoon of duck fat and a little gruyère (a few soupspoons’ worth — don’t go overboard). Cover this
with another neat layer of potato slices, and then more salt, duck fat, and gruyère, and finish with a very neat layer of
potato. Pat gently to even it out. Sprinkle the top with salt and duck fat. Add enough whole milk to come about halfway up
the stack. This will be less milk than you think you need. Cover tightly with foil and bake for 45 minutes at 400°F (200°C).
Uncover, pat down the top with a spatula and return to the oven for another 30 minutes or so, until the top is nicely browned.
I had a dream about Steve last night. We were in an awkward position (in a car?). He rarely appears in
my dreams anymore except at this time of year. Once again, I am not looking forward to my birthday next month. I’m hoping
to let the day pass unremarked. I got inured to not celebrating my birthday on the actual date since my immediate family includes
five people who have birthdays within 20 days of each other. One cake is enough, says my mother. I am also hoping to glide
past my natal day because the end with Steve came two days after my birthday. From what he told his mother, I learned that
he was considerate enough to wait until my birthday had passed. Demanding, sometimes insufferable, massively self-absorbed,
but always sweet. I’m not still carrying a torch for him: I doubt that we’d still be together today, which I’ve
known for a long time; what I found in him when I was 25 is not what I’d want in a boyfriend now. I haven’t had
a boyfriend since. I’ve dated, but only when I knew it probably wouldn’t work (e.g., I knew J.J. was moving to
South America in three months’ time when I started going out with him). I’ve only dated when I had grounds for
an annulment in the Catholic church, that is, I had a “mental reservation” preventing a true commitment.
When I was younger I greatly envied guys who seemed self-sufficient: they didn’t need me or anyone
else in their lives to feel fulfilled. As A. pointed out, I have become one of them now. I thought, after the end with Steve,
that my heart was too full of him to allow anyone else in, and that I wouldn’t be able to have another boyfriend until
my heart grew another chamber to hold him. None of the guys I’ve dated induced angiogenesis.
I
just looked up the spelling of angiogenesis and then realized that I’ve constructed a lovely metaphor: boyfriends as
cancer.
I do meet attractive,
smart, unaffected guys now and then, and that reminds me that I'd like to have a boyfriend again. And I swear there is no
clutter in the romance corner of my apartment.
21 May 2003
O! to be in Paris this spring. Robuchon's new place sounds marvelously attuned to our times. Perhaps it's the first modern approach to restaurants of the 21st century. On
verra. Many of the dishes sound like tiny versions of food we've been doing in California for the last 20 years, though
the japonoiserie is more evident with Robuchon. Does R.W. Apple Jr. not have the best job in the world?
“The more one pleases generally, the less one pleases profoundly.”
--Stendhal, De l’Amour, 1822
20 May 2003
If, as Armistead Maupin once wrote, you can have a hot job, a hot boyfriend, and a hot
apartment, but you can’t have all three at once (hasn’t this been true for you too, Dear Reader?), why do I have
no job, no boyfriend, and a tiny, overpriced apartment? Can’t I have just one?
I woke up in the foulest mood this
morning. I’m ready to pack it all up, sell my stuff and my car, and live in Rio for a year.
Another die-off at the
beach yesterday: this time it was ladybugs, drowned en masse at the water’s edge. They were the same size and color
as the carnelian pebbles you can find there. I’m glad that the Bay Guardian gave the Black Sands beaches a D (treacherous
access trails, poison oak, dangerous waves, and, dispiritingly, instances of public sex).
Day 1 of the horrid temp job
begins in 50 minutes.
16 May 2003
Lists:
- Directionless
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Dilatory
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Avoidant
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Slothful
I now release:
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being cynical and contemptuous of the normalcy of others.
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the agitation and restlessness of my mind.
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feeling that I always need to know more before I do anything.
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avoiding my life by escaping into my mind.
Don Richard Riso
Enneagram Transformations, 1993
13 May 03
Beans, beans, the musical fruit: the more you eat, the more you toot. I did not get a good score on my practice test, but I did unload the dishwasher, so it wasn't an entirely wasted day.
12 May 03
Thousands of indigo jellyfish stranded at Black Sands beach today. The color faded as the day went on and they dried. The oldest ones were completely transparent—a
flat oval with a perpendicular semi-circular (or catenary?) sail. A yellow-green border trimmed the sail on the fresher ones.
I first saw them with Steve, probably on one of our first trips there. He knew of them from Hawai'i and warned me not to touch
them. The beach was my sanctuary when times were bad — I ‘d slip off for an hour or two after we went to the farmers’
market and before Rimpoche’s teachings. For years the floor of the apartment featured tiny grains of black sand. Steve
first took me to the easternmost beach, but it became too popular with Bay Guardian readers, so we moved on to the little
beach to the west. I realized at the gym this afternoon that I haven’t really spoken to anyone all day, except for a few words at
the beach, a brief but unwanted conversation about missing socks at the laundromat, and hellos at the gym. No phone calls,
either placed or received. The world is my cloister.
11 May 03
Driving to Elk Grove up Highway 80 today reminded me of trips to the Yuba River. Maybe by the last weekend
in June it will be warm enough. I’m going to skip the parade and the film festival. I’ve gone every year for almost
20 years. Even with Mikes on Bikes, I’ve had enough: the parade doesn’t go down Polk Street anymore, and it isn’t
Gay Freedom Day either.
Nice meal for mother's day: a spring onion and artichoke tart with salmon and salad, then a chicken
and morel pilaf with Michel Bras’ asperges vertes à croquer (tips “breaded” with hazelnuts and sautéed),
and a dessert (also inspired by Bras) of coconut panna cotta with strawberries. Coconut and strawberries: voici un plat à
se damner! Impressed my sister’s in-laws. My father wouldn’t drink the French wine I brought. This would have
incensed me a few years ago. Now I just read it as an eccentricity.
I finally met, Dear Diary, the tall slim silent guy: Joey.
His hair was awry adorably. I was still in a glow about Joey when I made it to Rainbow and saw my longest-running crush ever,
P. Ten years of lust. Short, foxy, and built. He’s the reason I became
a committed Rainbow shopper. I used to know his schedule by heart and only went when he’d be there. I asked him where
could I find the maracujá, but he told me instead where they stock açaí.
9 May 03
Parataxis or hypotaxis? I am stuck in one mode. I can’t get to the other.
Does Earthlink DSL suck, or is it just that Mercury is retrograde?
We had flats and flats of Swanton strawberries left over after the job today. Not terribly tasty, but just
under-ripe enough to be good for preserving.
Some of the others took them home to make jam. I didn’t. I haven’t made as much jam as I used
to with Steve. We canned all summer and winter — jams, jellies, marmalades, syrups. We bought jars by the case to get
the discount. He gave me a candy thermometer as a birthday present one year. Strawberries, raspberries, sour cherries, Meyer
lemons, apples and quince. It was financially ruinous, since we paid full yuppie price at the Embarcadero farmers’ market ($60 for a flat of sour cherries that made about 5 pints of jam), but it was nice
to have on our Sunday morning baking powder biscuits on the thin yellow plates. We never served anyone else on those plates—they
were for us alone. Steve scrambled the eggs and made his coffee, I fried the bacon and made the biscuits and my tea. Ten years’
work as a professional cook and I still can’t make eggs the way he did.
Where did this Pioneer Lady urge come from? His grandparents were of old Mormon pioneer stock (from the
days of Joseph Smith, not the Brigham Young parvenus), who canned out of habit and out of necessity and out of desire (no
bought or gift-given jam is as good as the one you put up yourself in a steamy kitchen with your beloved; a souvenir of a
sunny weekend on a gray winter day), but his parents didn’t can anything; my parents canned the fruit of the trees in
the yard as they came into season: cherries (last to bloom, first to bear), apricots, peaches (Alberta for canning, Babcock
for eating), and then apples for sauce. Steve and I had cupboards full of preserves. We gave them away to anyone who didn’t
have the foresight to say no.
Afterward and alone, I kept it up for a few years. Now I just make a few jars at a time; one for myself
and the rest to give away. Apple and quince jelly. Strawberry jam with whole berries from the school of Alice B. Toklas:
Take equal weight of carefully chosen berries and sugar [or use three-quarters weight of sugar].
Macerate [the hulled but not sliced berries layered with the sugar] for 12 hours. Then bring to a boil. Boil up three times
and then quickly remove berries with a flat perforated spoon. Replace syrup over medium heat, skim completely, boil until
a spoon is lightly coated. Remove from flame and cool. Put berries in glasses and cover with warm syrup. Cover. [Boil sealed
jars 10-15 minutes to sterilize.] The berries prepared in this way retain all
their flavour.
— The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (1954)
A jar of homemade jam does come in handy now for the occasional sleepover guest: “Would you like
to run out and get yourself some coffee at Momi Tobi’s while I make some cornmeal pancakes? We can have the strawberry
jam that I made last summer on them…” You should see their little eyes light up. Even a fox-trickster like Gabe
sat on the floor and read me the funnies while I made breakfast for him. I give good trick.
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| Steve cooking |
8 May 03
Today at the gym I saw the guy I want to look like when I’m his age. He makes me unafraid of getting older. S&P
hair, nice build, nice bearing, nice proportions. He was a little cruisy as usual, but withdrawn. I’ve never been able
to connect with him. I look for an opening, but he’s distant. He probably thinks I’m standoffish. He seemed melancholic.
I wanted to tell him when we were alone for a few minutes that he had inspired me to get my nipple pierced. His piercing is
gone.
Getting up early is a jolt. Too tired to cook or study this evening. I might have a temp job next week.
Hurrah. My hands still smell like salmon from my work this morning.
7 May 03
A little story with a happy ending. Today M. introduced himself at the gym and suggested that we hook up again. I demurred,
claiming that I’m in a monkish phase now. It’s true. I have a one-time-only rule – anything else would lead
to complications. He pressed for details (“Were you having trouble before?” “Do you have a boyfriend?”),
but didn’t get any different response. What I wanted to say is that I’m not all that attracted to him. I assured
him that we’d see each other around. Sure enough, who was already in the shower but M. and my #2 favorite at the gym (a tall, shaved head, scruffy beard, lightly muscled, beautifully proportioned,
dirty blond who never talks)? Though the blond and M. were sitting next to each other, they seemed to be ignoring one another.
As soon as I told M. that I liked the blond, he went into action to seduce the
blond a little ostentatiously. I let him. The visuals were good enough for me, and I know by now that the blond won’t
return my favors. Everyone is happy — I liked what I saw, the blond got some, and M. got some and got to get back at
me in a way.
I’m having a hard time extracting a sesame seed from under the function key on my laptop.
6 May 03
A fruit stand carries at least one kind of the following kinds of fruit: figs, kiwis, oranges, pears, tangerines,
and watermelons. The stand does not carry any other kind of fruit. The selection of fruits the stand carries is consistent
with the following conditions.
If the stand carries kiwis, it does not carry pears.
If the stand does not carry tangerines, then it carries kiwis.
If the stand carries oranges, then it carries both pears and watermelons.
If the stand carries watermelons, then it carries figs or tangerines or both.
Gentlemen, make your deductions.
4 May 03
I saw a three-legged racoon at Ivy and Laguna tonight when I parked my car. I think it wanted to shelter in my trunk.
Surprisingly quiet at El Rio this afternoon. Usual suspects.
3 May 03
Another palindromic date. Farmers' market was nice this morning without the looky-loos. Wild salmon, peas, artichokes,
fava beans, spring onions, duck legs.
My sweet peas are blooming.
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| Sweet peas |
2 May 03
A long day of work. I’m sweaty and tired and slightly manic. I didn’t want to go in today.
I thought I was over that place, but a hard challenge and a successful outcome changed my mind. I do get satisfaction
from working there on days like this. I didn’t have my mise en place ready until very late. The sexy intern,
Rob, turns out to be straight. He brought his girlfriend by tonight, but I don’t know if she’s just a beard.
I can’t believe that he hasn’t gone for the pony ride with another guy.
I hooked up with Sp. yesterday. It was both more and less than I had hoped, but I did something I'd never
done before...
Layoffs and break-ups among those in my univers affectif this week. And triumphalist swaggering
by Our Leader. Is it hard to become a Canadian citizen? Would Brazil take me?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
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