Stuck like a plum in a pound cake for a decade at the Philadelphia Inquirer, I wondered where to eat. Of course I cooked or defrosted and was lucky to have the progenitor of Whole Foods, Austin, Texas' Fresh Fields, walking distance from both my desk and apartment -- I lived right across the street from Walter Annenberg's Inquirer castle, a footstep commute. The Rodin Museum was a few blocks away, but you can't eat marble. Most of my colleagues had homes in the suburbs, so I rarely got invited. I didn't understand why they were there, … [Read more...]
Bent, or Give That Boy a Hand
Didn't notice until I pressed flat on a table and wondered if that hand were mine. Right index finger flirts into its taller, straight neighbor. What caused this? All my fingers hurt, especially when I pretend to play Bach or Scarlatti on my desk, a constant teen, not knowing a thing about real or phantom musical keyboards. My hands are so tiny I wear only "women's" gloves, which has given this queer cis male a slip-on drag pleasure. I hope anyone out there finds something they like that hugs like skin, even over mottled, wrinkled … [Read more...]
Nobel Prize: Sweet!
There's no Nobel for candy, hard or soft, which is too bad. It could bring peace, by pieces. That prize is an elite exercise, yet, as a teen science nerd, I shivered when introduced to one and then another Nobel winner, gracious, patient elders with remarkable Erlenmeyer memories. Lucky in Manhattan to have a Japanese market nearby, and because I'm enticed by anything in a post-Pop package, I fell for Nobel's Super Cola, three ounces for $3, a dozen or so globes of hot surprise. I told myself that I sprung for my candyphile boyfriend, but … [Read more...]
Clarion
Someone's calling, maybe me. C. C sharp? D? My scalp tightens, which makes me wonder where I am, and who, too. I've had this reaction before when I've been offered rare sounds from the past, oddly recorded. An incinerated Pompeii on TV in which fictional lava held screams of the dying. The first recorded song, "Au clair de la lune," using soot, in French. I've written about these in 2008. Some would have every reason to think that whatever of my own voice I may have recorded, tremulous and needy, would be a sonic fossil, too. But … [Read more...]
An -ing Life
No photo now, or photos. Not of November's election's "Dancing in the Streets": one of my favorites by Martha & the Vandellas, to which we lifted our swaying arms when wracked and strafed Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were finally left to themselves by our wretched and vicious government, like government now. I danced to this in my 20s with another mobile Martha, an already furious artist, and with Melvyn, a burning writer who wooed me to join him in his trade, my dear, persistent friend. It was 1970s San Diego. The only big gay bar was … [Read more...]
Beans in My Closet
Many of us in 2020 understand that we must retreat from strangers, sometimes even from our very closest, and do for ourselves. The threat of death by a new plague makes any comparison unusual, although comparing different threats of death in past decades and centuries puts some of the present danger in existential limbo. Small comfort. But I've been told that context is important. When I hear "context is important," I usually screw my face into a please, no. So I did some lookback and realized I had rarely written about beans, now a … [Read more...]
Breakfast With Bill
For the life of me, I can't recall where or when I found the pot, but I'm certain a cosseting dealer at some hodgepodge stand in Manhattan or L.A. must have told me it was an object effort to get U.S. support for England as it was attacked by Germany. Five inches tall and made in Staffordshire, like thousands of others, it was daubed with childish flowers by women in city factories. The teapot, as teapots go, is hideous, but I counted out my money and carried it home. I'm listening to Morrissey as I write. His voice is in Manchester, an … [Read more...]
Juice, Tomato
Of course, I had to grow, pluck my own and juice them. I even bit one on the vine like an animal -- I am an animal -- and sucked and chewed, thinking of another writer who acted on the same impulse before I was born, though with a different lure. Perhaps MFK Fisher transmitted that to me, a gastronomic Tesla. As I get older, and maybe as others do, I tend toward something I will call "jeweling" my past, surrounding habitual memories with Wordsworth halos. This happens more often now, under pressure to consider the present a permanent past. … [Read more...]
Kosher Becomes Croissant
How Jewish is he? Queen, bar mitzvahed in Queens. If I say big deal, certain readers will spit. It was a giant, sweaty deal way back, but evaporated fast. My sceptic father knew that. Still, if you hate Jews, you hate me, truer than true now that I'm 72. So Moishe's Kosher Bake Shop, the around-the-corner bakery that opened in '72, said goodbye late last year with a vague paper sign, the way they all do. How many tears am I supposed to ... yes, the word is shed. Never liked its grim unsweptness, couldn't finish the prune or poppy seed … [Read more...]
No Picture This Time, at the New Year
No picture this time because food was so bad. The kitchen, which prepared the takeaway in front of me, tried hard and worked like crazy, getting it hot and out. I was excited, in my narrow, private way, because it was New Year's Day, and I was solo. Waiters in Italy strew salt on platters as if they were trying to melt ice on streets. Invisible sugar fairies did the same on my chopped pork ribs, green beans in garlic sauce, wet-mop sesame noodles. Only the egg roll, a silly schoolboy crush, rose to its hot, greasy promise. Not a … [Read more...]