One man is trying to change the face of the Albany Food Scene. His name is Daniel and he writes one of the most intelligent and erudite food blogs out there, FUSSYlittleBLOG. For obvious reasons, I can’t help but love a guy who embraces his fussiness. And I’d love to see this year’s Times Union Poll break out of its mainstream monolithic rut. For the longest time, the same places dominated that list, and in an effort to shake things up, Mr. Fussy has devised a plan to democratically prove that Albany is more than The Olive Garden or The Cheesecake Factory.
He proposes the following choices for the ballot, and if we all take a minute to vote for these spots his theory is that it may make a difference. While part of me has a bit of an issue with voting for places I’ve never tried myself, I do see his point. If we scatter our votes then the same hum-drum places will win year after year as defaults and nothing will ever change. Is it more than a little manipulative? Absolutely. But that’s the democratic process of this country. Until I read a more persuasive argument for any other choices, this will do. (Besides, he has always had impeccable taste.) Here are his recommendations:
Dining (20 Selections)
1.  Best Restaurant to Open in the Past Year – Charles F. Lucas Confectionery & Wine Bar
2. Best Family Restaurant – Jumpin’ Jacks
3. Best Fish Fry – Off Shore Pier
4. Best Hamburger – Max London’s
5. Best Pizza – Defazio’s
6. Best Sandwich Shop – Andy & Son’s
7. Best Chinese/Japanese/Korean – Ala Shanghai
8. Best Indonesian/Thai/Vietnamese – Kinnaree
9. Best Indian/Pakistani – Aashiana
10. Best Mexican/Central/South American – Mr. Pio Pio
11. Best Italian – Cafe Capriccio
12. Best Ice Cream – The Ice Cream Man
13. Best Hot Dog – Famous Lunch
14. Best Sports Bar – Graney’s
15. Best Coffee Joint – Caffe Vero
16. Best Diner – Bob’s Diner
17. Best Barbecue – Capital Q
18. Best Restaurant for Outdoor Dining – Dinosaur Bar-B-Que
19. Best Restaurant for a Romantic Dinner – Lark Street Wine Bar
20. Best Restaurant in the Capital Region – New World Bistro Bar
Foodstuffs (9 Selections)
1.  Best Local Grocery Store – Niskayuna Co-op
2. Best Wine Store – All Star Wine & Spirits
3. Best Beer Store – Hoosick Street Beverage
4. Best Bakery – Mrs. London’s
5. Best Italian Market – Cardona’s
6. Best Ethnic Market (not Italian) – Asian Supermarket
7. Best Farmers Market – Troy Waterfront Farmers Market
8. Best Health Food Store – Healthy Living Market & Cafe
9. Best Standalone Butcher – Roma, Latham
Media (2 Selections)
6. Best Website – All Over Albany
7. Best Local Blog – Daniel Berman http://www.FUSSYlittleBLOG.com
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Now, those last two choices may seem odd. I mean, this thing you’re reading right now is my own blog. And everything that surrounds it is my own website. By egotistical rights I should be inserting myself into these categories, and once upon a time I would have. But aside from that ‘Best Dressed Man’ nod a number of years ago, I don’t stand a chance in hell winning anything in a Times Union Poll, so I’m lending my support to the above. The world needs more fussiness.
Every gardener has a heroic plant story ~ a tale of some green trooper that survived humble beginnings or ill treatment to become a prized specimen in the garden. They are our unlikely survivors ~ plants that should have been killed by winter weather, unexpected storms, simple neglect or downright abuse, but instead rally and rebound in the face of adversity. In their weathering of obstacles they somehow become more than mere landscape ornaments. Their endurance and perseverance lends them a well-deserved veteran-like status, a decorated soldier that has been to war and won.
I have a certain fondness for these fighters, the bold and brazen plants who have grappled with the odds and overcome them. A certain respect must be given to the lone bulb that blooms out of hundreds that have long-since died out, a choice peony which returns year after year without any fertilization, or the patch of thyme that withstands foot traffic, drought, and an out-of-control lawn mower.
Each year I grant one plant in my garden an imaginary award for ‘Best Comeback’ ~ given out to the individual who has shown a remarkable turnaround in growth and appearance, or has simply put on a grand show without any sort of special treatment. These become the unexpected joys of the garden, and such pleasant surprises are one of the main draws of gardening, one that keeps me coming back for more. This vague hope in the back of my mind is what propels my hands into the soil, my feet down upon a shovel, and my heart hardening at the loss of a delicate delphinium stalk. No matter how traumatic a plant’s passing is, I am reminded by the sight of past leafy generals to keep pressing onward.
One of these is a clump of golden bearded iris that once again bloomed its head off this past year. I purchased the original plant (and a daylily) at a supermarket during my early gardening days. The following year the daylily flowered and multiplied, but the bearded iris did nothing but send up a few small silver-tinged swords. Undaunted, I moved it to a sunnier, drier location, exposing its small rhizomes and sprinkling some bone meal around it, sure of my reward the next year.
Alas, during the next year the plant seemed no happier, the same measly fan of leaves erect but without flower buds. When it came time to re-arrange the bed, I found myself at a loss for space, and so discarded the poorly-performing iris over the bank behind the house, its root-ball rolling to a stop near the bottom of a pile of grass clippings. Sure of its eventual demise, I forgot about the plant until the next summer.
At that time I was puttering around the backyard when something dramatic caught my eye: the architectural spears of a bearded iris, bravely poking through the rubbish behind the house. Without mulch or winter protection or even proper planting, the iris had fought back hard and won, determined to survive, no matter what the location. Such strength won me over, and I returned it to the bed. The next year it became the prize perennial, three spires of beautiful golden blooms burgeoning skyward without staking.
A similar tale of survival is told by the less traumatic journey of a Variegated Solomon’s seal. Planted lovingly in the woodland garden in a rich mixture of loamy, humus-rich soil, certainly the plant would reward me with grand arching sprays of fragrant bell-like flowers and sumptuous foliage. In its partially-shaded location, it was to be the focal point of the woodland garden, but that first year it steadfastly refused to rise to the occasion, content to remain hidden behind the evergreen foliage of a Christmas fern. I watered it generously, hoping to anchor it with deep strong roots from which more than one variegated frond would rise next year. And the next year all I got was the same little frond, with a total of two miniscule flowers.
Newly-impervious to rushing things, I kept it where it was, having gained a modicum of patience since the bearded iris resurrection. Another year passed, and then another, and still the Solomon’s seal refused to yield more than one spindly stalk. Having learned to deal with such disappointments, I simply changed the focus of the woodland garden, relegating the Solomon’s seal to the background, where I promptly forgot about it for a while. At one point I almost pulled it up, wondering how it came to be there in the first place.
Somehow it sensed its brush with death, for the next year (its fifth in the garden) it sent up five majestic stalks ~ each tall and proud and bearing rows of sweetly-smelling flowers, undulating in the wind, and the variegated foliage brightening its dim corner in all its glory. Of course it stole the show that year, much to the chagrin of the foxgloves I had planted during its slow-growing seasons. It is now a gorgeously grand stand, fighting off encroaching lily-of-the-valley with seemingly no effort.
Such comebacks are not limited to the wilderness of the outdoors. Many a gardener houses a number of chlorophyllous troops indoors ~ a scarred cactus that has lasted through three moves, a ponytail palm that almost succumbed to the family cat, or a dusty orchid that suddenly decides to send up an obscenely beautiful magenta bloom in the midst of an extra-punishing winter.
I know two such houseplants ~ a pair of simple spider plants whose brilliance does not in the least betray the punishment they received during an upstate New York winter. Their owner had gone to Florida for a week, leaving the house under the care of a neglectful friend, who had visited only once, and then briefly enough not to notice the twenty-eight degree temperature of the interior. The furnace had shut down, and for at least two days the house was as cold as the outside air of February. All the plants inside turned brown and wilted, before giving up completely.
Convinced that they were beyond repair, the disheartened owner hastily shoved the two spider plants into the basement, forgetting about them for a few months. When spring arrived, the two pots miraculously sported new growth, despite a complete absence of water and light. He brought them out and began to water and feed them, gently nursing them back from beyond the grave. Once restored to light and warmth and water again, the two plants sprang up, stronger than before, finally extending and lowering their little plantlets and tiny white flowers. To this day they thrive, at last at ease with the presence of an emergency thermostat that prevents the house from going below a certain temperature.
Such is the story of many well-worn friends. There is a reverence that these plants delicately demand, a respect which must begrudgingly be given in light of their resolve and determination to survive. They are the champions of the gardening world ~ our tried and true fighters. That which was once the barely-alive underdog seems to shine that much brighter in its unexpected latent glory. Gardening is quite often a bloody battle, and this is a salute to our valiant heroes.
And they don’t come much cheesier than Starship and ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.’ A perfect slice of 80’s camp, this is from a film called ‘Mannequin’, the plot of which is basically a mannequin coming to life and a man falling in love with her. But if Kim Cattrall is the mannequin, we are all on board. The movie defines ‘cheese’ in the best possible ways, and something in the melody and the trite lyrics spoke to a boy not-so-bravely embarking on his adolescence.
Looking in your eyes, I see a paradise
This world that I found is too good to be true
Standing here beside you, want so much to give you
This love in my heart that I’m feeling for you…
The song peaked at this time of the year (actually hitting #1), and spring is something which makes pop songs more potent. (Maybe not as much as summer, but powerful in other ways – in the release and relief from winter, in the thawing and the awakening of the earth again, in that scent of life being reborn, carried on a warm wind.) Before girls (or boys), I found comfort in the company of friends, hanging out on a weekend in April, itching for the school year to enter its final throes, and seeking out whatever excitement that an eleven-year-old can possibly hope to find. Our concerns were still confined to baseball card trades, sleepovers, and who got to sit where at the movies. Movies like ‘Mannequin’ – which we saw at the Cinema 4 in the Amsterdam Mall – which is where I saw most of the movies of my childhood. (Yes, ‘Cinema 4’ meant there was a whopping total of four theaters.)
We didn’t know or care that there was more out there. Nor did we care about the impossibility of a mannequin coming to life or even the whole notion of falling in love. There would be time enough for that, and something in me pushed that time far off into the future – I somehow knew it would not be an easy thing for me. But that night, on the sparkling pavement of the upper floor of the mall parking lot, we weren’t looking for love. We were just looking to be kids. The weekend was ahead of us, and we were invincible. Nothing was going to stop us now. Cue the cheesy guitar solo – extra cheese please.
Growing up on the twisting Zone 5 border of upstate New York, my most magical moments of childhood occurred in the garden, during our warm, sunny summers. The backyard, considered large for a small town, was bordered by tall, ancient pines, great oaks, and middle-aged maples that grappled with one another for sky space. This forested area extended down a steep embankment, where I played as a little boy.
Dad had two vegetable gardens then ~ one in the partially-shaded edge of the woods, where he somehow managed to keep us fully stocked with zucchini summer-round, and a raised bed in full sun, which filled the garage window-sill with ripening tomatoes, and also produced beans, peppers, and the occasional eggplant.
I remember sitting on the lawn as he worked the ground – hoeing and tilling and throwing out random rocks. My brother and I were welcomed to break down any big chunks of compacted soil, and I can still feel the way those balls of earth crumbled to a satisfying, feathery powder between my small grinding hands. It was fun to pulverize the dirt like that, unless it was windy – then a surprise gust might throw the falling particles back in my eyes. These were the great inconveniences of the moment; bugs, heat, and boredom would not bother me until years later.
As Dad finished his vegetable planting ~ the last tomato plant buried sideways up to its neck ~ he closed the self-made fencing. This was a five-foot-high wall of metal netting, held up by steel stakes at various intervals and meant to deter rabbits and other herbivores from feasting on our family’s summer crop. Despite its seemingly frail construction (my brother and I bounced against it like it was a vertical trampoline) it worked: we never lost one tomato or bean.
The vegetable plot neatly planted and watered, my attention turned elsewhere when the pool was opened. Splashing the mid-day away as Mom sat by reading a book, I made brief excursions to the cool shady edge of the woodland, where a semi-wild patch of rhubarb and bleeding hearts made an unlikely, yet happy, marriage.
The delicate hearts on drooping stems were little gifts I presented to my Mom with a dramatic bow. Bleeding hearts and rhubarb may sound like an off-match, but it was improbably pleasant ~ the graceful, arching sprays of the quietly-colored bleeding heart and its dainty deeply-cut fern-like foliage was a striking complement to the grand darkly-ruffled umbrella-shaped leaves and thick, deep-maroon stems of the rustic rhubarb.
Mom made rhubarb pie with the harvested stems, and to this day I do not understand how the stems can be edible when the leaves are so poisonous. I didn’t take the chance; rhubarb was never a favorite of mine. I waited until the zucchinis grew long and plump, and Mom made zucchini bread – the shredded squash taking on entirely new meaning as it melted sweetly in my mouth, warm from the oven and completely transformed in its tantalizing mixture of sugars and spices.
After dinners of homegrown vegetables, BLTs, and barbecued burgers, I strolled the path in front of our house. Two rigid, brick-lined borders framed the front entrance, backed by twin euonymous hedges. Rather than conforming to the strict structure suggested by the layout, these beds instead ran riotously free from any proposed order ~ wave upon colorful wave of simply silly annual chaos broke freely onto the brick path.
My favorites were the snapdragons ~ so impossibly sweet of fragrance and so inviting with their velvety tufted lips, that I had to force myself not to eat one. A crazy range of petunias offered another creative outlet ~ I loved dead-heading them, how neatly and easily did they offer spent blooms for clean-up. Marigolds grew freely there as well ~ small bushy clumps of burgundy and orange colliding with tall pom-poms of golden yellow exploding garishly and mimicking the brilliance of the summer sun. As the late-afternoon rays slanted through the colorful bombardment, I walked leisurely along the borders, an ice cream cone melting in one hand and a small haphazard bouquet in the other. These were happy days ~ fleeting days ~ of carefree youth and garden mysticism.
As evening fell, and my childhood dissolved, the gardens seemed to lose their magic. Year after year, the plants seemed less vibrant, less enchanting. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t the garden, it was me. I saw only the dissipating mists of happy illusion, and the dim reality of the world closing in on a little boy’s garden. Insects became an unbearable nuisance, the hot days and beating sun lost their brilliant charm, and the harsh winters killed the vivid annuals and my innocent impressions.
The watering and weeding grew tiresome, the arriving boxes of bulbs became an ugly added chore, put off until the last possible moment when the earth was brutally cold and the first flicker of flurries floated down. I couldn’t see then the imminent arrival of spring, and the new beginning afforded every year.
Back over a dozen years ago, I put out a Project entitled ‘Words of a Gardener’. It was conceived and hatched that winter, as I was finding my way back into gardening. As a written work, it didn’t get the reaction that some of my photo-centric works did, but it remains a favorite of mine. In the revamping of this site, some things had to be excised and left out, and this was, sadly, one of them. I may put it up again in some form, but for now I’m just going to post an excerpt a day from it on the blog. Partly because I’m busy (or lazy, it’s a fine line) and partly because I am simply fiending for a taste of spring and this is the closest thing I can find. Here’s the first story:
A Gardener Returns To His Roots
Somewhere along the rocky path to adulthood I lost my garden. As a young boy, I had an odd passion for gardening. I say odd because at the age of ten I could find no other comrade who shared my intimate interest and knowledge of plants and flowers. Devouring books and seed catalogs during the winter months, I trained and nurtured myself into a horticultural expert. During the springs and summers of our Zone 5 climate, I’d put my mental practices into effect, subtly drawing forth a perennial bed from Dad’s old vegetable plot and laying claim to a wooded portion of our backyard with a woodland shade garden.
The backyard border, long a place for Mom’s rhubarb, Dad’s zucchini, and a riotous selection of garish marigolds and vulgar-red salvia, was overtaken by my enthusiasm as well. It too transformed gently into a perennial bed ~ tall spires of foxglove provided a perfect transition from the woodland garden to the bed, as bursts of Helianthus shot skyward, Echinops captured the sky in its pincushions, and Monarda crept stealthily onward.
In the last few years of childhood, my gardening experience had surpassed that of my parents and the local nursery-owner. Such knowledge set me apart from most people my age, but I didn’t care ~ the garden was a place of peace for me, a safe escape when worldly concerns, like pesky purple bugleweed in the lawn, threatened to encroach on an ever-receding childhood.
Back then, the plants were my friends and playmates, and I took their health and happiness to heart. Each successful planting was a triumph, each failure a personal affront. When plants thrived and multiplied, my heart soared; when they refused to grow, or, worse, died, I took it as an attack on my very hope for the future. I was a young boy then, and the garden was teaching me about life in a way that my schoolmates would not understand until years later, if they would ever understand at all.
The shifting of seasons and the gentle onward march of time were incontrovertible aspects of gardening. Neither can be fooled or changed much, and the gardener, despite one’s best efforts, is never completely in control. Most little boys don’t care about such matters. Rain or shine they will find a way outside, impatient and implacable in their demands. I learned that the best way to get something to grow was with care and coaxing, a gentle tug in the direction you’d like things to go, and if that didn’t work, then try something else.
When bearded irises found my soil too rich and moist, I offered the spot to their distant Siberian and Japanese relatives, who happily bloomed and multiplied in their new home. As a tree peony leaned a full forty-five degrees out of the shade of an evergreen, I moved it to its own spot in full-sun, only to have it punish me for my mistake by dying. A rabbit’s quick work of a lovingly-tended patch of Lilium had to be replaced by the less scrumptious daylily. These were the ways of the garden, the ways of the world, and I was lucky to learn them then.
I saw firsthand how back-aching work was always rewarded, somehow. The last-minute scrambling to get spring bulbs planted on Columbus Day (my one day off from school in the fall) was a bothersome moment of chagrin until I saw my handiwork poke through the last vestiges of dirty snow. A strict regime of watering during dry spells brought the ostrich ferns back stronger every year, their black elongated creepers naturalizing beyond the woodland garden and into the unworked area of our backyard forest. The lessons of life were being instilled as I weeded and mulched and dead-headed. A garden, like a person, can be both unforgiving and merciful. It will refuse to yield in some circumstances, bend and sway under others. In the garden I learned about nature, human and otherwise.
With the onslaught of adolescence, I lost my interest in the garden, and for a few years lost a bit of myself. The gardens were under the care of my parents, who did the best they could, but never quite understood when to divide or when to cut back. When I returned home for summers and holidays, I saw the overgrown garden and felt a gentle, dull ache ~ a surprise feeling of guilt. I had abandoned my old friend, and in my absence the most sensitive parts ~ the Delphiniums, the lilies, the clematis ~ had been overtaken by their rougher, rowdier neighbors ~ the Malva, the Rudbeckia, the Monarda. These were colorful, pretty, proven performers, but they overwhelmed the place with their imposing power and lack of grace.
At the time, I didn’t have the effort to fight. The seemingly fanciful garden days of my youth gave way to more pressing concerns. But I didn’t forget entirely. Like a pocket of collected seeds, something had been locked away inside of me, waiting for the ideal conditions to germinate and spring back to life. It took a few years, but eventually the subtle call of the garden became a full-fledged beckoning cry, and I heeded the voice from which I had learned so much.
During the last year I returned to the magic and wonder of the garden ~ the garden in my mind, and the garden in my backyard. I have rediscovered its simple joys, its ever-unfolding enchantment, and its magical way of imparting worldly knowledge. The vigorous, rampant growth of undesirables has been checked, and the more delicate and sensitive plants have been carefully cultivated. It is as an ongoing process, always evolving, always challenging, but for the moment I have returned, a grown man who somehow found his way back to the garden.
And so we close, and open, another week. Without much change, without much excitement. We’ve been here before, and we’ll likely be here again. Is there the beauty of reassurance in that, and is there beauty in such reassurance? I do not know. I only know what I do, and lately it is the same. The routine. There is something deadening about that. Here is a prayer that we will survive together. Onto the past…
Whenever I’m feeling down or dejected, unsure or unsteady, I play this performance by Madonna, and I feel a little bit better. I put on the wardrobe for the day, I march into wherever I’m supposed to be, and I rock it like a star. This was Madonna’s Oscar performance of ‘Sooner or Later’, and it never fails to move me.
Here was a woman playing to a less-than-embracing audience (the Academy has never liked her, let’s be frank), and in the face of such veiled hostility she comes through like a champ. If you’ve never been disliked, you can’t know how difficult this must have been. If you’ve never been the target of rumors or gossip or simple talk, you can’t know the loneliness. And if you’ve never walked into a room full of people watching and whispering, you cannot know the immense fortitude something like this takes. I have luckily never had to face such a firing squad – not in this sort of arena – and thank the Lord. But I do know what it’s like to be talked about, to be judged, to be watched and rendered all sorts of things you never were. And that’s why I love this.
The man sits at the bar, smoking. He orders an Old-fashioned. Canadian Club. A beautiful woman approaches and requests a light. “Are you alone?” she asks. He looks up at her, and the shot fades out. Thus ended Season Five of ‘Mad Men’ last year. Tomorrow it returns, and just in time; my mind was almost made into mush by all the Real Housewives programming I’ve had in the interim.
‘Mad Men’ is the best show on television right now. (And I can honestly say that as it’s the only show I’m watching right now.) Apart from its sleek 60’s style and period-piece authenticity, the characters are complex and real enough to resonate today, and never more-so than in the protagonist. Don Draper may be surrounded by beautiful women, powerful men, and all the creative freedom in the world, but he remains almost-heartbreakingly alone. A cigarette and an Old-fashioned will only ever hide that, no more. Too few have the strength and audacity to answer the ‘Are you alone?’ question affirmatively. Those of us who do, well… we need all the smoke we can muster.
Was a more perfect end-of-high-school song ever written? If so, I haven’t heard it. (And don’t throw that ‘Theme from Ice Castles’ bullshit this way…) This is ‘Never Say Good-bye’ by Bon Jovi. It was not my theme from high school graduation, as I was not quite graduating from elementary school when this song came out. Instead, it reminds me of someone else, and of a summer day when we were still too young to shine.
Remember when we used to talk about busting out
We’d break their hearts, together, forever
Never say goodbye, never say goodbye
You and me and my old friends, hoping it would never end
Never say goodbye, never say goodbye
Holdin’ on, we got to try, holdin’ on to never say goodbye
We were hanging out under the picnic table at a high school graduation party for a neighbor. We were young – only ten or eleven, maybe twelve, but old enough to comprehend what was going on. The graduate – God-like, blonde, golden boy – came out of the house looking forlorn. The kids watched him walk by, basking in the glory by proximity, in awe of his ease among adults, wanting only to be older ourselves. He was so cool. One of the other kids said he looked dejected because he was about to break up with his girlfriend.
But they had the whole summer ahead of them, I thought to myself. As if reading my mind, the kid said, “He wants to end it now so it’s easier.” I nodded, taking in this sage bit of wisdom, thinking we were somehow cool for getting it, for feeling it a little bit too.
I watched him put his arms around the girl, marveling at the easy way he did it. I also held the secret we knew inside, emboldened by knowing something that she didn’t quite know yet. Part of me wanted to be there when he told her, to see how something like that worked. Would she take it well? Would she understand? Would she cry? Would she walk away? The scenarios unfurled before my active imagination, and I found myself selfishly, insanely, wishing he would do it soon, while we were still there. It appealed to my soap-operatic love of drama, fed by the likes of ‘Santa Barbara’ and ‘Days of Our Lives’.
The white tablecloth fluttered above our heads as we sat beneath the picnic table. Kids can go unnoticed like that, seeing what goes on, taking it all in, and processing it in our childhood minds. It was another step to adulthood. One day I might have to be the strong one, the person who moved first to end a relationship that would never work out. (In truth, that would prove to be a lesson I would never learn; I could not be the first to end something, as later years would attest.) For now, it was exciting just to be in the atmosphere of someone to whom real things were happening, someone not on a daytime drama, someone we kind of knew and cared about. Someone whose life was just taking off. We had a few more years to go before taking such flight. And we didn’t know how lucky we were.
The brownstones stretch around Union Park. Street lamps light the way. The tell-tale scent of spring carries on the night wind. It is the smell of awakening, or the re-awakening as it were. As it is. There will be a re-birth, like there is every year. We will celebrate anew, both forging and remembering. Whenever I begin to mourn the past, Kira reminds me that we are making new memories every day. Her optimism is like the spring – ever-renewed, everlasting – and the perfect antidote to my wintry pessimism.
On this Friday night, I wait for the spring to slip in while I sleep, longing for the first nights we can sleep with the windows open, air out the staleness of winter, rustle the dusty curtains.
Whether it’s the rotten cold weather we’ve had of late, or something deeper driving it, I’m finding it difficult to get excited, or even minimally inspired, to move on some home improvement projects. I’m equally unmotivated to get started on the gardens. Contrary to popular belief, I’m a pretty sensitive soul, and those around me have a direct effect upon my bearing and mood. When Andy is down, I tend to follow suit. In my case, it removes any sort of enthusiasm for a new couch and family room color, negates any thrill in the coming gardening season, and just makes me want to lounge around and do nothing.
To combat that, I picked up some paint chips for the family room, and browsed the Crate & Barrel catalog for ideas. I started reading ‘The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life’ by Margaret Roach. And I may even shave my beard off. A change is needed. A re-boot is required. A new way…
I’m often given to hyperbole on this site. It keeps things interesting, and it’s more fun rising to the histrionic. In this case, I’m making the bold, and perhaps overused, proclamation that this is one of my favorite photos of all-time. Since it takes pride of place on our photo wall, there is something to back this up. It’s a photo of JoAnn and myself, taken by our friend Kira. And it comes with a short, silly story.
At the time (late 90’s) we were all working at John Hancock – a temporary job that consisted of microfiche and insurance numbers and a class-action lawsuit against the company – blah, blah, blah. To be honest, I wasn’t altogether sure what exactly we did, but I did it well enough, and was actually made a team leader (?!). It was my first office job, and it was filled with the variety of characters that comes in an office setting. Of course, in a few short weeks you whittle down those who will become friends, and JoAnn soon became one of my closest. We were just another ‘Will & Grace’, involved in the same riotous hi-jinks, and reveling in our foolishness as much as we laughed at ourselves.
On this particular day in spring, we sat on the steps of Trinity Church after lunch. It was sunny, and warm enough that we didn’t need jackets. I’d always scope out potential guys for JoAnn, and if a cute one came along I’d urge her to say hello. She never did. Sitting a few steps down from us was a guy smoking a cigarette and enjoying his lunch hour. I nudged JoAnn in his direction – she brushed me off. I laughed a little and told her to bum a smoke off of him to start the conversation. She ignored me. “Just ask for a light!” I demanded. Hey, it was lunch. I was working at an insurance company. I was bored. And I could be relentless. Exasperated, she turned to the guy and asked for a light. He brought out a lighter and was about to flick it.
“Oh, do you have a cigarette too?” she asked. He looked slightly confused and annoyed, but gave her one. I started cracking up then and there. I couldn’t stop. It was one of those laughs that leaves your belly aching and your eyes wet with tears. We had asked this guy for a light without having a cigarette (we didn’t really smoke that much), then we displayed the idiocy to ask for a cigarette after that. JoAnn kept a straight face, took the cigarette, and handed it to me. “Here, you wanted this?” she said. I roared. After the guy left (which he did pretty much immediately), Kira took this picture as we recounted what just happened.
It’s one of the rare photos of me where I am genuinely laughing and not paying any attention to the camera. It still cracks me up, and whenever I need a laugh I think of that day, those moments, and these friends.
The pond at the Boston Public Garden has not yet been filled, so the footbridge looked odd above the muddy expanse. Still, the anticipation of what was to come made things all the more exciting, and as I watched the leaf-blowers begin their winter clean-up, the heart thrilled at the prospect of a warmer season. Witch hazel, crocus, and a few snowdrops were all that bloomed, but they were at least a start.
The willows were just beginning to show their yellow-green color. The sky looked promising too. We’ll get there. All in good time.
Long before ‘Bridesmaids’ usurped ‘Hold On’ and Wilson Phillips for its own iconic ending, some of us remember when it came out for the first time, way back at the dawn of the 90’s. That’s the last century to you youngsters – hell, it’s the last millennium. And I was a wee lad of 14, enjoying the last few months of my freshman year of high school. Oddly enough, it would prove to be my favorite year of high school (I usually like the beginning and the end of things – high school and college were very similar in that respect – it was everything in between that kind of sucked ~ which has always proved unfortunate, as most of life consists of the in-between). As we neared the last quarter, and spring was indelibly in the air, I went on what I now see as my first date with a guy. At the time, I honestly wasn’t sure.
I know this pain,
Why do you lock yourself up in these chains?
No on can change your life except for you
Don’t ever let anyone step all over you
Just open your heart and your mind
Is it really fair to feel this way inside?
He was two years older than me, a junior already, and part of the older crowd. His interest in me was as puzzling as it was flattering, and would have been more enjoyable if it wasn’t so confusing. I didn’t even know for sure that I was gay at that point. I was still sort of hoping I wasn’t, and trying desperately not to be. And, it turned out, I wasn’t attracted to him in the slightest. That didn’t mean I didn’t like him. In fact, we quickly became good friends, exchanging long notes to one another (which should have clued me in to the gay thing a lot sooner, but alas…) His friendship and camaraderie shielded me from certain taunts, protecting me in a way I would only later realize when he would graduate and leave.
As the spring arrived, and Wilson Phillips ran up the charts with their California harmonies, we felt the antsy pull of the end of the school year. We wanted out. The weather had turned bright and balmy again. Trees were leafing out in bright lime green, and the bulbs were just finishing their show. He asked me if I wanted to go to the movies with him and his cousin, one of my friends. When she was unable to go at the last minute, he still wanted to do it, so I said sure.
This is when it sort of turned into a date without me knowing it was a date. And my parents, protective or curious or who knows what, had to meet him before he drove me to the movies all the way over at the Mohawk Mall. Mortified, (it was too late to argue since he was arriving at the door any moment), I braced myself for the embarrassment. He pulled up to the house and got out of the car. I blocked much of this from my memory, but I think they shook hands and introduced themselves, and then I waited in the front seat of the car. I still didn’t think it was a date. We were just friends going out to the movies, as I had done countless times, with countless girls, and boys, and it didn’t even dawn on me that it might be something more.
I still remember the movie, as notable for its awfulness as its place in my adolescent heart – ‘Bird on a Wire’ with Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn. Not exactly my choice, but at that point I just wanted to get out of my house, out of high school, and out of the small town of Amsterdam. If putting up with Mr. Gibson and Ms. Hawn afforded just a few hours of relief, it was worth it. Besides, there was popcorn. In a mostly empty theater, we sat and talked a little before the movie began. It wasn’t entirely awkward, but I wasn’t entirely at ease. I’d only hung around him when other people were present – his cousin or other kids my age. Now, in the intimacy of just-the-two-of-us, I worried over what to say, how to act, what to do. He set my mind at ease with an easy rolling laugh and a casual way of leaning back into his seat, while I remained perched upright and almost on the edge of mine.
When it was over, we walked out to the deserted parking lot. The air was still warm. I didn’t want the night to end. In the amber light of the parking lot lamps, he started the car and we sped away. I can still see it all so clearly. At the wheel was a young man – not much more than a boy, like me – who had taken me under his protective wing. I sensed something different about the way he treated me, but didn’t dare believe it was anything more than friendship. I didn’t want it to be anything more than friendship. What would I do with that? And how could I do anything? I couldn’t be gay.
On the ride home, the night wind tore in through the window, and it felt like we were flying. I allowed my hand to reach into the rushing air. He turned the radio up. ‘Vogue’ came on, and I admitted that I liked Madonna. It wasn’t a popular thing for a boy to admit. Not then. Maybe not ever. At least, not in front of the boys I used to hang out with. But he held no judgment. And then ‘Hold On’ – and I think he said he liked it. I did too. Again, not a popular thing to proclaim, but there, in that car speeding along in the spring night, it felt good to be so honest. It felt safe. If there’s one thing for which I have spent my lifetime searching, it was that sense of complete safety. It never came from hesitant, slow-to-accept parents, it never came from lovingly-misguided friends, and it had yet to come from any secret lover, but here was that sense of surety, of inclusion, of it not being a big deal that I liked Madonna – and it made me want to weep.
The night was beautiful, but drawing to its close. It was a little after 11 o’clock. I’d never had a curfew – I’d never really gone out for one to be in place. My younger brother went out more than I did. As we neared the street where I lived, my heart ached that the night had to be over. He pulled up the right side of the street, then kept going, past my house, up to the top of the little hill that comprised the road. Around an island grown thick with manicured yews, he parked the car. My house was just a short walk away, but hidden from view. And I still didn’t know it was a date.
“What are we doing?” I asked, half quizzically, half accusingly, half rudely. It was the only defense I had. Or have.
“Nothing, I just wanted to ask you something,” he began, before turning silent.
“Well?” Impatience. Flirtation? Would I always be so mean to people who were trying to be nice to me?
“Never mind, forget it.”
“No, what is it?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
“Come on, you have to tell me now.”
We waited a few more minutes in silence. He had turned the car off.
“Well if you don’t tell me I’m going to get out and walk home,” I said, starting to feel weird about the whole thing.
“Okay.”
I still don’t know if I thought it was a date, I don’t know if he thought it was a date. But it was, looking back, very much a date. And a rather sweet first date at that. Neither of us was ready to put that into words then.
“I just wanted to know…” he paused, “If you had fun tonight.”
“Yeah,” I admitted, in one of the rare snark-free moments of my teenage years, “I did.”
And then, in one of the most tender ways anyone had treated me up until that moment, he asked, “Would you like to do something like this again?”
I think it was then that I knew it was a date. Whether he did or not, I knew, and part of me would always love part of him for that. I also knew I wasn’t in love with him, but in gratitude. No matter how rocky romance would prove to be in the future, this was a night of purity and innocence and tenderness that I would bury in a safe place which no one would ever reach. I will always be grateful for that.
“I would very much like to do something like this again,” I declared, before adding, “Are you going to bring me home now?”
He smiled, as I instantly regretted the last part, and started the car.
Snippets of song lyrics… wet & a mess… lying naked on the floor… they cannot see me naked, these things they go away, replaced by every day… it’s in your eyes… I want you to remind me…
