March likes to remind us that she is still mostly winter, ready and able to attack with lion-like stealth and determination. Such was the storm scene this week when the season’s first true Nor’easter tore through our state, dumping a foot of snow in a 24-hour period (and a lot more in other less-lucky areas). After juggling my in-office schedule, I was able to work from home for the entire duration of this nasty weather event, and enjoy the whirling maelstrom from the comfy coziness of a warm interior.
My parents lost power briefly, but for the most part we escaped unscathed. There are whisperings of another storm, and such is to be expected through April. This is the way it goes at such a tumultuous time of the year. March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, then April showers bring May flowers, but the truth is we can have blizzards until mid-May, so I’m not banking on silly childhood rhymes, any more than I trust the weather prediction by a groundhog (even if it seems to be holding true)…
Fresh off her multi-award-nominated performance in ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ (an absolutely devious jewel of a film, and one of my favorites from last year), Kerry Condon lights up whatever screen or stage she is on, and for such talent she earns her first Dazzler of the Day crowning. Her turn in ‘Banshees’ provides the beating heart in a tense world of darkness and strange beauty.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who celebrate! Not gonna lie, I have no idea what we are celebrating, and I’ve long since lapsed in practice and memory to the point where I simply cannot recall who St. Patrick was. Regardless, today is their day, so kudos to all of that. My own hat tip will have to be done in the shades of green seen here. Fronted by a trio of Hermes fragrances, spring will come with its own olfactory soundtrack – fresh and bright and verdant.
May the luck of the Irish be with each of you today! [Launching the leprechaun kick-line now…] PS – Say hello to these gingers.
There would only be one good afternoon of sunny, almost-spring weather in my quick weekend visit to Boston, so I made the most of it and walked leisurely through the Southwest Corridor Park. The gardens were just beginning to come alive, and I found this grand swath of snowdrops to herald the upcoming season.
Given the lack of perspective in these photos, it should be noted that their stature is diminutive, but they make for that in their multitudes, while also demanding closer inspection. Greater pleasure is always gleaned when you have to work for the beauty you find in the world.
Happy harbingers of spring, the snowdrops here are accustomed to wintry weather, though I’m not sure what this recent storm has done to them. If it’s a quick dusting, they usually bounce back in a day or two; prolonged snow cover or freezing temperatures will take them out until the next year. Mother Nature isn’t always compassionate. I’m grateful to have found and appreciated these when I did.
Going make-up free as a woman today is a bold and revolutionary act unto itself, given the patriarchal nonsense and pressure society exerts on women. Going make-up free in a beauty pageant is one giant leap beyond that, but it’s exactly what Melisa Raouf did during the Miss England pageant, and such boldness has secured her a spot as Dazzler of the Day.
Usually I enter our Boston place from the front – walking along the main street from a visitor’s parking space that’s hopefully-close and doing the sensible thing of sticking to the sidewalk. Once in a while I’ll find parking a street or two over, and find myself closer by going through the back alley behind our condo. These little alleys are the secret side of Boston. They’re not through-ways so the only people driving into the dead-end spaces are residents, or garbage pick-up, so it’s rare to see regular traffic there.
This is where the real lives of Bostonians play out – the balcony dinner parties, the bedroom window peeks, the precious outdoor lots and parking spaces that only some select units can utilize. It was also where I chose to enter for a quick weekend visit to survey the place for spring.
Treading the gravel-lined driveway, I looked up at our condo from a vantage point I rarely use. It was the back-end of business in Boston, the behind-the-scenes machinations of those beautiful brick and brownstone buildings that line our historical streets. It felt hushed there, like I’d stumbled upon some reverential sacred spot where secrets were revealed and kept, and hints of spring in the afternoon sunlight added to the enchantment.
A magnolia tree behind our building provided support for a few vines of ivy, still evergreen in this relatively-mild winter Boston has had, and I made an internal promise to come back more when the trees started blooming. In the brown gardens nearby, a friend from the past rested in the sun, perhaps as grateful as me for the promise of spring in the air.
When I first moved away to Chicago to start a new life with a relatively new boyfriend (both of which clearly didn’t work out to last) my Mom gave me a cookbook of recipes that were supposed to be quick and easy. One of them was titled ‘Chicken Curry in a Hurry‘ and it was decidedly misnomered, as that recipe took my about five hours to make. New to cutting, prepping, measuring, and cooking, it was a trial by fire, and while the end result was decent enough, the time and effort it took to create that one dish was not worth it.
Years later, after honing a bit of my kitchen skills, I can take a recipe that the New York Times published (their chickpea, coconut milk and curry dish) and roughly make it my own. In this instance, I diced up an onion and some carrots, then cooked those down in a bit of olive oil and generous helpings of curry and turmeric. Once soft enough to my liking, I added a can of coconut milk and two cans of chick peas, rinsed well.
Once the garbanzos were warmed, I modified the salt and pepper (lots of both) and piled the pot high with kale and spinach. A whole bag will wilt down into the manageable mix you see here.
Finally, I added some chopped fresh cilantro and a sprinkling of fresh lime juice, and the meal was ready in a matter of minutes. It’s a wonderful centerpiece for a meat-free Friday dinner, for those of us guilty Catholics who are still hedging our bets on making it into heaven.
Back when I was on the cusp of becoming a teenager, this cheeky song by Samantha Fox battled Madonna’s ‘Crazy For You’ on the Top Ten at Ten on our local radio station. I’m not sure how that happened, as they were released at such different times, but things worked differently in the 80’s. I was very much an 80’s child, for better and mostly worse, and I was just coming into my own, waking to the world around me and my place and presence in it. On the radio every other song was about sex, and while I had no idea what sex was, what a virgin might be, and how love did and didn’t always fit into the equation, I was fascinated by the forbidden aspect of it, the way it made the adults squirm whenever I would bring it up.
Full moon in the city and the night was young I was hungry for love, I was hungry for fun I was hunting you down, and I was the bait When I saw you there, I didn’t need to hesitate
The rainy month of March when this song first came out was filled with the usual paradoxes of this time of the year. Easter and Lent collided with the coming of spring, and all the birds and bees and dirty deeds that the less-spiritual part of the world got up into whenever spring arrived. On the windows of my bedroom, or the windows of the backseat of the car, I watched water droplets shape and warp the world. This song spoke to me with its over-the-top cheesiness, appealing to my love of the dramatic and histrionic, with more than a touch of sleaze. If Madonna’s ‘Crazy For You’ was the sweet little sister, innocently opining about a kiss and no more, ‘Touch Me’ was the sexier, raunchier cousin leading me into the night. Just a tween, I had no idea what any of it meant, nor any desire to learn. Instead, I felt the pangs of longing and yearning, the ache of a first crush on a boy who lived several streets away, and I had no idea why.
This is the night, this is the night This is the time, we’ve got to get it right…
Touch me, touch me, I want to feel your body Your heartbeat next to mine (this is the night) Touch me, touch me now… Touch me, touch me now…
When Samantha Fox sang this song, and whispers of her topless poses in certain scandalous magazines reached the boys, they felt something I simply didn’t. Immune to the charms of her ample cleavage, I had no desire to get into her ripped jeans either, but I watched other boys as they watched her, and I envied her transfixing hold on them. How could I cast such a spell? How to craft and conjure such rapt enchantment?
Hot and cold emotion, confusing my brain I could not decide between pleasure and pain Like a tramp in the night, I was begging for you To treat my body like you wanted to
This is the night, this is the night This is the time, we’ve got to get it right…
Touch me, touch me, I want to feel your body Your heartbeat next to mine (this is the night) Touch me, touch me now… Touch me, touch me now…
Later, years later, I would re-listen to this song and be horrified at the thought of me blaring it in the car while my parents gamely alternated between this and ‘Crazy For You’. It was just music and melody to me – the words meant nothing – but there was something primal and raw in it that appealed to my barely-burgeoning nature. As a tween, it wasn’t in any way sexual to me, just a bop on the radio that elicited thrills because I could see the reaction to it, not because I felt anything myself.
As a young gay man, that certainly changed over the years, but that’s another story for another song and blog post. This is just a quaint memory of S-S-S-S-Samantha Fox… because naughty girls need love (DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH) too.
Touch me, touch me now… Touch me, touch me now, yeah…
Touch me, touch me, I want to feel your body Your heartbeat next to mine (this is the night) ‘Cause I want your body, all the time…
Every now and then I miss having a bathtub. Not very often – I’m a shower guy through and through – but on cold, damp nights when the air can’t decide whether to rain, sleet, ice or snow, and the chill soaks into the bones, I would love to slide into a hot bath with some soothing lavender salts and a layer of bubbles.
Lacking that dream bathroom scenario, we must make do with another bath – this one of light, and it’s just as soul-sustaining, especially coming at the tail-end of winter when a snowstorm is the last thing anyone wants. A candle glowing of three wicks, gently warming and perfuming the air, bathes the room in light, calmly flickering and letting its shadows dance across the ceiling and walls. It gives off a different kind of warmth, emanating a different sort of glow. When you stop and still the scene, pausing for a moment of mindfulness and serenity, it can be just as powerful as a more traditional bath.
Sounds baths, I imagine (as I’ve never tried one), may be similar in their calming power. It’s the same idea: a bath in something soothing – whether water, light, or sound – is a way of immersing the senses in a single sensory experience, allowing the mind to focus on one thing, and let go of all other concerns.
Never one to poo-poo an unorthodox food idea until I’ve tried it, I shall keep an open mind to the Ranch Ice Cream being released in a few days. First thought on this idea: abhorrent. Second thought: while not a ranch fan, I’m more open to this than the dill pickle ice cream that ran its course a couple of years ago. Third thought: I didn’t hate peanut butter on a hot dog, so why not? Ranch ice cream it shall be.
(If I end up hating it, I’ll just serve it to our next dinner guests without telling them what it is. That’s the kind of host I am.)
Oh winter, we knew you would pull this shit, saving your snowy nonsense for the end when we are all entirely over you. You’ll probably do your damndest this week, dumping a few feet on us now that we are ready for spring. It’s just the way of the world, so I’m going to embrace it because there’s no point in fighting it. Spring can begin in the heart, and if that’s how it has to be, so it shall. For the grand finale of winter, and its last full week, we not-so-eagerly await a doozy of a snowstorm. Let’s look back a week, and hurry through this one.
From the outside, the little wooden storage shed sagged like a well-worn face, caving in on itself with years of weight and rot and worry. Inside, it looked no better, with crooked shelves only half-heartedly hanging on, and piles of debris and rusty tools dangerously strewn about. The air in the dilapidated structure was still and stifling. Bits of dust floated in the light that managed to intrude through the broken windows hung heavily with spider webs; any bits of glass that remained were coated with grime. It was the perfect hiding place for a kid, or for a dirty book, and both were present on this summer day. It was also an unlikely location for an introduction to sex, but most of us don’t get to choose how we first brush up against that. Dropping my bike at the door, I shut the rickety thing behind me and began my furtive exploration of that word which suddenly tingled with illicit thrill and danger.
There’s things that you guess
And things that you know
There’s boys you can trust
And girls that you don’t
There’s little things you hide
And little things that you show
Sometimes you think you’re gonna get it
But you don’t and that’s just the way it goes.
Earlier that day, we’d been hanging around with my brother’s friend, who lived a few blocks away. Back then, we’d hop on our bikes before we even had breakfast, jump from pool to pool and house to house, and not return home until it was time for an early dinner. We were roaming through his friend’s house – nobody’s parents were home during the day then – playing hide and seek or giving chase the way that kids do, and at one point I found myself upstairs alone. His sister’s bedroom door was open and on the wall was a poster of George Michael in a skimpy white Speedo. All that I was supposed to feel toward a poster of Kelly LeBrock hit me when I gazed upon the hairy, lithe body of Mr. Michael, squinting happily from some beach in Greece, backed by a blue sky and flagrantly displaying most of his skin in wet, glistening form. I was transfixed and bewitched all at once, and I remember standing there stunned, caught by the surprise of all that I was feeling, and not understanding any of it.
I swear I won’t tease you
Won’t tell you no lies
Don’t need no bible
Just look in my eyes
I’ve waited so long baby
Now that we’re friends
Every man’s got his patience
And here’s where mine ends
Eventually, I roused myself from my visual inquisition, but soon made excuses to go back upstairs, where I surreptitiously indulged in more lustful gazing and looking. My awakening to a physical attraction was confusing, but came in what felt like completely natural form. This wasn’t something I had been conditioned to experience – if anything, I was waiting for the day when I found the same reaction to a woman, and that day would never come. This was a primal, powerful impulse that drew my eyes and head and heart to a handsome man with a teasing smile, speaking to something deep within, speaking to something I’d never seen portrayed in fairy tales or books or television. It was the same stirring I was starting to feel when our neighbor – some blond high school boy who seemed so much older than us then – doffed his shirt and ruggedly strode into our pool on the hottest summer days.
I want your sex
I want your love
I want your sex
I want your sex.
The dim, shadowy recesses of that house fade into memory here, and our little band of boys moves back outside, into the sun, into the heat, rolling down banks of green grass, horsing around as boys do, making the most of summer by doing the absolute least, and somehow exerting all our energy in the process. We found our way into that barely-standing wooden shed that was set nearer the road and away from the house. My brother’s friend beckoned us in and showed us a pile of paperback romance novels, some pages of which had been earmarked, and we took turns reading what would likely amount to some very tame sex scenes today. At the time, however, they were gleefully scandalous to our naïve eyes. More than that, they made room for the imagination to take over, and mine was thirsty, boundless, and bold.
It’s playing on my mind
It’s dancing on my soul
It’s taken so much time
So why don’t you just let me go
I’d really like to try
Oh I’d really love to know
When you tell me you’re gonna regret it
Then I tell you that I love you but you still say no
Sex, then, began as a matter of the mind. That’s where it was taking place, that’s where my notions of it were forming, and that’s where it felt most exciting. When reading about it in some cheap paperback novel, my mind focused on the man. Unforced and unswayed by all the hetero-normative shit around me, I still wanted to connect with the guy instead of the girl. My body, my physical and mental make-up, and my own baseline of emotion were all drawn to the male form. It was natural, it was elemental, it was where my first inklings originated. Only when social constructs and pressures came into play did I realize what I was feeling would be deemed wrong. That sort of shame was almost irrevocably harmful, and it’s the sort of thing that would shade many of my subsequent romantic relationships.
I swear I won’t tease you
Won’t tell you no lies
Don’t need no bible
Just look in my eyes
I’ve waited so long baby
Out in the cold
But I can’t take much more girl
I’m losing control
Back then, it was more innocent. Before the shame, there was only curiosity and the inquisitive pinprick of wanting to know more. The boys left the shed, but I lingered, telling them I’d catch up later. This was forbidden treasure, and I wasn’t ready to let it go. I quickly thumbed through the pages of the scandalous tome, re-reading certain passages to better grasp what was going on in all the metaphors and coded descriptions – the way humans sometimes do their best to disguise and beautify sex. I don’t even think I got a hard-on (surely I didn’t hop on my bike with a chub and gym shorts and ride through the streets of Amsterdam on that summer day) because it was more fascinating than arousing at such a young age. Still, I knew what direction I was headed in, even if I didn’t fully fathom the ramifications, and my cock was pointing me to men. I speak so frankly not in an effort to demystify sex, but to celebrate its integral and healthy place in our lives. That my first sexual explorations would be found in a book is fitting for someone who finds enthrallment and passion in a chosen cadence of words.
It’s natural
It’s chemical
It’s logical
Habitual
It’s sensual
But most of all
Sex is something that we should do
Sex is something for me and you.
Sex is natural, sex is good
Not everybody does it
But everybody should
Sex is natural, sex is fun
Sex is best when it’s one on one
One on one
Leaving the book in its run-down shed, I got back on my bike and rode away, rejoining the boys for whatever our next adventure was, and returning to the cares of a summer that felt endless and all-to-brief all at once. At night, alone in bed, when the air-conditioning gave off the slightest, softest moans, and I still couldn’t cool down, my mind would return to that poster and that book, and ideas of men started the beautiful haunting that would dog me for all the days since.
This powerhouse of an orchid has been in bloom since January 30 – that’s six weeks of this beauty going strong – longer than any other bouquet I could have purchased. Best of all, this marks its second blooming cycle with us, so double that number for the real flower power at work here. I thought I’d give an update, as no one has asked, because that’s what I do.
It’s just beginning to show some browning at the edges of some blooms, but this has held up remarkably well. I’ve been upping the humidity to prolong the blooms for as long as possible, and it seems to have helped. We will likely get a good two months of bloom, which is unprecedented in this house, where paperwhites and butterfly amaryllis and the odd Christmas/Easter/4th-of-July cactus are all that provide brief and unpredictable floral exhibitions.
Once upon a time my Sunday brunch libation of choice would have been a Bloody Mary, or perhaps a Last Word if I was feeling decadent. I never got into the mimosas, but in a pinch they would do. These days I still crave the bite of a Bloody, and that delicious horseradish burn, and thankfully it doesn’t require liquor to duplicate the taste, so the Virgin Mary is my current Sunday sustenance when I want something savory.
Most weekends, however, aren’t calling out for a savory breakfast treat, and so a simple decaf latte will do, when I’m not doing the usual tea. It’s a treat in which I indulge for those lulls in life when you just need a little dose of self-pampering. A spell of solitude in the local cafe, idly scrolling through your phone or reading a book, is one of life’s greatest and easiest pleasures. Happy Sunday morning to you.
