Types of Gaze – Published in sidereal magazine
The Funny Gays
You were never the class clown in elementary school, instead you were mostly bullied. But now that you’ve come out as gay in High School, you have carte blanche to say scandalous things about sex which will make your friends howl with laughter. You take full advantage of this, especially after you date a few people who are really into stand-up comedy and you learn about famous comedians—Gallagher, Mitch Hedberg, Margaret Cho, Lisa Lampeneilli (briefly, and offensively). You repeat the things you hear them say and you get away with it because, just like Jack on Will and Grace, gay people are supposed to be funny. And you enjoy making people laugh, though you wish you could do it without being so offensive.
It won’t be enough for you to be out. That will just be the start of it. Sure, there will be offers from those looking for not just any kind of best friend, but a gay best friend. And yes, you will receive a sudden influx of invites from every which person. But they will be specific invites, that is, they will require something of you that you may not be prepared to offer. You will accept anyway, for acceptance is the one thing you feared you’d never get.
One day after you’ve graduated college, before you’re married but with the man you’ll marry, you overhear Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on NPR and listen to Paula Poundstone, Peter Segal, and Mo Rocca say hilarious things that aren’t all based on stereotypes or vulgar language. After that day, you only want to be funny without all the shock and scandal and stereotypes.
One day in graduate school you hear the teacher say “Rembrandt’s gays” when discussing On Looking, an essay by Randon Billings Noble. Your teacher says, “separate gays” and you think: well, that’s offensive. Then she starts talking about “the gays of the art” and you realize the whole time when you look down at the reading she’s been saying gaze the whole time and you choke back the giggles. She keeps going on about “the gays of animals” and “independent gays” and you can’t handle it. You write on your friend’s sheet of paper, “GAZE=GAYS,” and as she talks about “being under someone’s gays,” he starts cracking up. The jig is up, and when you tell the teacher about how she keeps saying things like “What do you read in someone’s gays” and “flicked our gays away” and “dropped my gays” and “gays skimming” and “outside of our gays” and “my gays is different from your gays” and “gorilla’s gays,” the entire class cracks up and she laughs so hard she has to leave the room for a moment.
You like being funny. This humor will guide you to your voice, the one that you’ll use to write an essay about confusing gaze and gays, and then gay expectations, some of which you will gladly meet, but others which will leave you feeling like you are coming up a little short on your gay agenda. It’s not your job to please everyone, even if you want to. You’ll feel better just being yourself. You’ll learn this in time.
The Star-gaze
When you graduate High School and move to a new city a fourteen-hour drive away from your old one, you’ll have to come out as gay to everyone new you meet all over again. Except your new boss at the flower shop, because right after meeting each other you’re just sort of out.
He will expect that as a gay man you know certain things. Most of which have to do with popular culture. This means you will have to admit you don’t know who Star Jones is and that you’ve never even heard of The View. He will look as if you have slapped him across the face. “Didn’t you hear she disrespected Barbra Walters?” Pretend to know who Barbra Walters is, for your sake.
You don’t really know anything, it turns out. You’ve never seen The Sound of Music (Julie Andrews sings), or The Bird Cage (Robin Williams plays a gay man), or Steel Magnolias (Gal pals and gay icons like Dolly Parton and Julia Roberts). You don’t know who Anderson Cooper or Cathy Griffin are. You watch TODAY on NBC every morning on the little TV that sits up on the shelf at work.
You make a new friend online, Sam, introduce him to Douglas, and he agrees to teach you everything he can about the gaze.
Sam tells you what to love. You learn to love the comedian Margaret Cho (who loves the gays), the youtuber Liam Sullivan (who dresses up as a woman named Kelly and proclaims her love for shoes) and the band Dresden Dolls (who do a music video with Margaret and Liam). He also gives you all kinds of quippy little things you might say if you’re out and about and feeling sassy such as:
“That boy is CFFBFFC,” (cute from far, but far from cute).
“Every time that boy opens his mouth a purse falls out,” (His voice sounds gay).
“That boy is dumb as a box of hair,” (Don’t believe me? Urban Dictionary).
Sam loves to shop for clothes; you just tell him everything he picks out is cute. You’ve learned better than to give your honest opinion. Besides, you feel insecure about your opinions around your new friends.
The Closet Gays
In High School you will be asked to help your friend go through her closet. She will try things on for you, and with a critical and discerning eye you must try and give her the answers she either is searching for or needs to hear.
Spoiler Alert: you have no discerning eye. You aren’t Tim Gunn from Project Runway. The closest you can get to him is plugging your nose and saying in a low tone “DESIGNERSSSS.”
Your friend hates your suggestions. The invitations to go shopping are now shopping for you; it’s clear you’re the one who needs the fashion advice so from now on you’ll be fashion chaperoned. You’re sort of glad about that, anyway. There’s nothing very daring about Khakis and polo shirts. You’ll get button down shirts, an expensive pair of jeans that were on sale, and a leather wristband / hemp necklace combo. I mean, you really should have been to Abercrombie & Fitch or American Eagle by now. Still, you start to curate a look.
One day your sister comes to visit you in Colorado and you take her to the outlet mall to buy a pair of snow pants. This should be easy, but you still feel that sense of unease as you enter the store. There, in the back, two pairs of snow pants, identical except for color. This should be easy, you think, a fifty percent chance of getting it right. Salmon, or teal? You point to the salmon colored ones, say how they’ll stand out against her black coat, say they’re bright and maybe like a fun lipstick color. She looks to you, wanting to please you as little sisters do, and then to the snow pants. She picks teal. Oh well—you’ve learned you can’t be good at everything.
The Flower-gaze
In college you go to work at a flower shop owned by a gay man. You should be able to design beautiful flowers, he tells you, it’s in your DNA. But after several failed attempts you’re relegated to washing buckets and trimming stems. Still, the least you can do is learn the names.
First you learn which flowers not to use: Baby’s Breath and Carnations. They are over-done, and the favorites of a generation long passed. Instead, you learn to use modern flowers. You trim the stems of lilies, Peruvian lilies or Alstroemeria, Anthurium the flamingo flower, purple tri-tipped irises, bright yellow daffodils, gerbera daisies (your favorite, come in every color and look great in your graphite Volkswagen beetle), big lettuce like hydrangeas, soapy smelling lavender and lilac, white and violet orchids, bright orange oriental poppies, loose-lipped snap dragons that speak when you pinch their buds together, bunches of pastel colored tulips every Easter, red and white roses for Valentine’s Day, bits of pine and poinsettias for Christmas. You measure your year in flowers.
You learn which flowers you like, learn how to describe the types of arrangements that create a “wow” factor, learn to hate the phrase “simple yet elegant,” learn that even years after you’ve left the flower shop, you still can’t design an arrangement to save your life. And what’s worse, now that you know which flowers you like, you’ll be unable to stop yourself from saying something about every arrangement your husband has delivered to you. You feel like criticizing a gift makes you a terrible person, but you do it anyway. You aren’t afraid of your opinions anymore.
The IT Gays
Tim Cook becomes the first gay major CEO. He is the head of Apple, and so you should know how to help your friends setup their new phones, decrypt their forgotten Wi-Fi passwords, and restore their failed hard drives. Luckily, you actually have this one under control since you got your BS in Computer Science and Math before you got married and stopped working to be a stay-at-home puppy Dad, which you love, for now. You still have time to figure out what you want to be when you grow up.
You can solve almost any problem, but not with the bedside manner you’d prefer. Your answers are short and frustrated, and no one feels especially flattered when you explain it to them in the simplest of terms. Your mother isn’t sure what to tell people who ask her what you do for a living (nothing), so she tells a few people you are starting your own computer repair business. This embarrasses you, and you wonder if she would say the same thing if you were a stay at home mother. Besides, she should know better; you always get frustrated trying to provide technical support for her, how would you ever do it for complete strangers every day?
The Interior-gaze
When you’re living in Denver, you’ll learn all about Capitol Hill where the gays live and, how before they moved in it was sort of neglected and not quite the shining jewel of the city that it is now. You’ll hear all about how “the gays moved in” and remodeled the homes, cleaned up the yard, gentrified the area. So, naturally, you’ll be expected to know how to do those things as well. You wouldn’t mind being able to design a space, and for a short while you even consider going to school for interior design. Why aren’t you interested in any jobs that make money?
HGTV makes everyone a little more design savvy, which just puts more expectations on you. Just like with Tim Gunn, you’ll be compared to male interior designers (they won’t even have to be gay) and half of your friends will become interested in or start selling real estate. Should you get your real-estate license too?
A friend will ask you over to help her decorate her new room. She’ll show you some colors and ask you about her curtains, and you will make a suggestion. Then, your other gay friend, who you had tag along so you wouldn’t be the only gay at the party, will jump in and start making more and better suggestions, like replacing the orange curtains which are giving the room a strange tint. He’ll recommend a floor lamp to go in the corner and some plants to give the place a more lived-in feel. You’re happy for the back-up, but also wonder if it’s not design you should be doing, then what is it? You start to feel like you’ll never find “your thing,” never have a career.
The Wingman Gays
Both your gay friends and your female friends will hop on the Craigslist / Tinder / Grindr / Bumble / PlentyOfFish / eHarmony romance app-train. You will be expected, on demand, at any moment or location, to be ready to rate an infinite number of nameless faces on a screen. You should possess the ability to identify true love between those on the app and your close friends at a glance, and more importantly, to identify any red flag suitor and help shut those down immediately.
At the club on days when you’re tired from work and just want to hang out with your friends, you will still be prepared to go home alone. After all, you can’t expect them to make time for you when they have that tall guy who they met at the bar waiting to see them. Especially when you told your friend the tall guy’s bag looked like a purse. What are friends for?
You put up with more than you should sometimes, because you feel guilty about being gay. Your church told you that you were making a sinful choice, even though you didn’t choose anything. Your parents didn’t understand at first, how could you do this to them? You apologized for coming out, for being different, for needing extra attention, for having to explain the way you are to everyone you meet. You think maybe, if you can be good at things, that will make up for the way you are. You try to be a good neighbor, a good friend, a good student. All those things are good, but you have nothing to apologize for. Your gaze is special.
The Kitchen Gays
If your friend is hosting a party and invites you to come, be prepared to show up early and have something unique to contribute. Be able to name all the cheeses, both hard and soft. Know how to make a mixed drink, because once in the presence of the gay man all your friends will forget how they ever made a cocktail for themselves and will want your signature cocktails and will want you to keep them coming.
How many shitty cocktails will you have to make before you can confidently bartend? You will make the mistake for a long time of using store-bought lemon juice instead of freshly squeezed lemons (you had it right as child eating them in the restaurant that way). For a while you’ll try new and exciting recipes, but your friends will dump them out because they’re too sweet, too bitter, or too strong. Later, when you start nailing the whole cocktail mixing thing, they’ll ask if you went to bartending school, so try not to worry too much about it.
You start thinking about cooking school, but after a move across the country you start to doubt it. Being gay, even though it hasn’t defined you, has taught you and changed you. You aren’t just one thing, you’re an entire cast of Queer Eye in one person. You sit at your desk, alone with your thoughts—but not lonely—and you see if hiding behind second person “you” will help you figure out what to do next. Even if it doesn’t, you stop worrying about it so much—you’ve made it this far, right?
BON APPÉTIT! – Published in Entropy Magainze
I’ve tried to reason with my obsession with this movie, to explain what about it draws me in so intensely. I enrolled (briefly) in cooking classes, I learned to write. I pretend I’m being subtle when I ask a friend or family member if they remember a specific scene from it, when we both know I’ve made them watch it with me on multiple occasions. Again and again I find myself fixated on the screen, watching Julia and Paul’s blue Buick, nicknamed “The Blue Flash”, being lowered off the boat from America by a big crane, ready for them to start their new adventure in France.
* * *
I’m twenty-three when on a late afternoon in Denver a new friend and I decide to watch Julie and Julia in her apartment. After we finish the movie, she tells me that Amy Adams has a John Denver haircut and I never un-see it. We decide to cook together the next time we hang out—Boeuf Bourguignon, just like Julie makes from Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the movie. On the day we’ve arranged to cook I get up and start planning our meal. When I realize that we won’t actually have time to finish the recipe when she arrives later, I begin to have second thoughts. What if it doesn’t turn out? What if we don’t make enough? What if we’re not good enough cooks to make this?
In the middle of the recipe the dish goes in the oven for two and a half hours, so I decide to make the first half in advance on my own. A sink-full of measuring cups and spoons later, I am pulled out of a trance by the ringing of the front doorbell. My friend is here, and we realize by the time she is settled that I’ve worked my way through more like all of the recipe instead of just half. But the house smells savory and sweet, and she doesn’t mind that I’ve all but cooked dinner for us on my own. We eat and talk excitedly about the flavors: savory pearl onions, rich red wine, tender salty beef, smoky bacon, bitter carrots, and butter. When she asks what kind of beef I used, I tell her filet mignon. I assumed since the dish was French and I wanted it to be delicious, I should get the most expensive kind of beef they sold. She tells me with both shock and humor that I could have used stewing beef for a fraction of the price (and when I look it up, Julia agrees). We both slow down and devour it even more religiously after discovering this fact. We taste garlic, caramelized mushrooms, and thyme. And when we finish, I make us a chocolate soufflé courtesy of Martha Stewart, so warm and soft it’s almost a pudding. Even though it was a bit of a waste to use such a good cut of meat on stew, we still talk about it every now and then. Later, I buy Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France, and read “’You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made […] after you eat it, it stays with you – always.’”
* * *
Having been so successful, if not a little misguided in regard to cuts of meat in my boeuf, I’ve decided to move on to something more challenging. I’ve discovered while watching the Food Network that there is a dish that can be set on fire. I’ve watched the chefs on TV flambé chocolate fondue, set fire to some kind of chicken dish, even torch marshmallows, and I want to light something on fire, too. Partially because, of course, it’s cool, but also because I want to taste something that has been set on fire and somehow tastes better. I search for “dish you set on fire,” and find Coq Au Vin, a recipe that happens to be in my copy of Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. A quick skimming of the recipe lets me know that just like the boeuf, I will start with simmering bacon rind and then sauté it in hot butter. I dry the chicken (Julie says, “if you don’t dry meat, it won’t brown properly,” which I find is a combination of Julia’s advice in Nora’s voice.) When it’s assembled, I put my flame-colored casserole dish in the oven, and when I take it out, I do exactly as Julia says.
“Uncover and pour in the cognac,” Julia writes. I have set up a camera to record the whole thing. When I re-watch the video, I see that I combine this step with “averting your face, ignite the cognac with a lighted match.” I almost light the cognac while it’s still in the measuring cup which is still in my hand, and then sort of follow the flow down into the cast iron where nothing happens for a moment. Then, at the last second it lights, and my elbows pull my arms back and away like I’m doing the chicken dance. I quickly remember that I’m supposed to “Shake the casserole back and forth for several seconds until the flames subside.” I pick it up and start violently thrusting the pan back and forth. (I’m home alone, by the way, and the fire extinguisher isn’t exactly sitting out on the counter.) Later, the video will show that I emit a “Woohoo!” as I’m shaking it; I laugh like a maniac, and then say “Wow, oh my god I feel so cool.” When I set it back down, I say, “Oh my god that was awesome,” then bounce up and down, clap, whoop again, look directly at the camera, bow and say, “Thank you, thank you.” My version of the truth is that I was incredibly humble and felt my soul kind of emanate out of me like the wings of a dove. The one thing the two sources agree upon, however, is that afterwards I’m overjoyed.
Tim comes home from work a little early. I am ecstatic, almost bouncing as I run from the kitchen to the front door to meet him, and before he has even set down his briefcase, I am playing the video for him. And realizing—what a mistake this was!—as I watch his eyebrows raise, then his mouth drop.
Faced with the realization that I might have burned down the house that day, Tim scoots his chair closer to mine, probably thankful I’m still alive. We eat a delicious pot of seared chicken flavored with merlot and brandy, mushrooms dripping with butter, and tangy pearl onions.
The last few minutes of Nora’s movie play in the living room.
Julia’s books gaze from their place on the counter.
* * *
Another day while watching the movie, I decide to face Julie Powell’s fear and cook a live lobster. Back when I was taking writing classes at my undergraduate college, one of the first pieces I ever read was about lobsters—specifically, about the central nervous systems of lobsters and how they process pain. The short answer is: we don’t really know. But there are some generally agreed upon ways to be humane about making lobster.
I call a few places asking if they sell live lobsters, and finally a store gives me the number of a restaurant about twenty minutes away. I call ahead to reserve two and get in the car. What to bring with? A dog-kennel? I decide to just go, or I might abandon the whole idea altogether.
Inside the restaurant, while other people are peacefully enjoying their lunches, I approach the counter. A staunch woman bravely grabs my lobsters with her bare hands, one at a time—their claws already banded—and puts them into a plastic bag for me. While the little lobster legs twitch inside the bag, she runs my card. I am almost certain everyone in the restaurant is mortified; somehow, they know I’m not with the lobster rescue mission. They know I’m one of those people. A lobster killer.
Just as I turn to leave in a moment of total panic, I admit defeat and tell her, “Uh, sorry I’ve never done this before… do you have any tips?” She nods slowly, hiding a grin on her face, and tells me to keep a bag of ice on them so they stay still on the drive home, and if I’m boiling them to make sure I remove the rubber bands from the claws. If I don’t, the entire dish will taste like rubber. I drive home with them in the back of my car, one eye focused on the rearview mirror to make sure they’re not crawling up from the back seat to get me.
Once I’m home, I dig under the sink for bright yellow latex dish-washing gloves and stretch them over my hands. I pick up the lobsters with my thumb and pointer finger. The other three fingers flare out wanting nothing to do with them. I, for some reason, perhaps to prove to my future self that I really did this insane thing , decide to take selfies with the lobsters. There are three or four pictures where I have my face scrunched up like Godzilla is attacking, and the lobsters, numb from the ice, are just kind of I don’t know, glad to be taking pictures instead of boiling I suppose.
After our photo shoot and just before I name them, I read in Julia’s Mastering “A NOTE ON DEALING WITH LIVE LOBSTERS: If you object to steaming or splitting a live lobster, it may be killed almost instantly just before cooking if you plunge the point of the knife into the head between the eyes, or sever the spinal cord by making a small incision in the back of the shell at the juncture of the chest and the tail.” I lose all my nerve. I put the knife down and instead I do what Julie does in the movie; I toss them into the boiling liquid and slam the lid on. I breathe a sigh of relief.
Then I remember the rubber bands. I panic, I don’t want the entire dish to taste like rubber, not after all this! I grab the lid and take it off. I try to pick the rubber bands off the lobsters, who I notice aren’t dead yet. I pull, but the rubber bands stick to the claws, and they’re hard to grab onto with the dish gloves. I try a little harder, and the entire arm detaches from the body. “OH MY GOD I AM SO SORRY,” I say, as if it can understand me, as I scramble to finally get the rubber band off the amputated limb and then toss it back on top of the steaming lobster before doing the same with the rest. I quickly slam the lid back on, turn up the heat to max, and step back. I notice the brandy sitting next to me so I grasp around quickly for a glass before giving up and just taking a swig from the bottle—there will still be plenty for the sauce, after all. Brandy, it turns out, is delicious. I take another sip, a toast for the death of a lobster. It does the trick, maybe a little too well, and I confront Julia with my new courage. After all, she was fearless. Soooo Julia…. How long do we cook these things for? I ask, looking to her book for a response. She writes, “The lobsters are done when they are bright red, and the long head-feelers can be pulled from the sockets fairly easily.” I add on her behalf, “Pretty soon, judging from the way you pulled their arms off while they were still alive.”
Despite the fact that I am now a murderer and didn’t object to steaming a live lobster, I feel my heart lighten and my pulse quicken. I stay in the kitchen for another three hours after steaming the lobsters to make the sauce, sauté the lobster meat, and assemble the entire dish. Not once does the cooking high begin to fade.
Tim works late that night, gets stuck in traffic, so by the time he gets home, I’m just putting the finishing touches on my Lobster Thermidor. I’m a weird combination of thrilled and traumatized. I wonder what on earth I was thinking, and then we taste the first bite and the thinking stops. Buttery, savory, creamy lobster cheese casserole obliterates everything but the present. Time seems to slow and though we only eat for half an hour for a day’s worth of work in the kitchen, it’s half an hour that stays with us for weeks. Afterwards of course I’m exhausted, but again Nora and Julia keep me company in the kitchen as I clean up the dishes. I’ve started Julie and Julia over from the beginning (I know, it’s a disease. It will probably be in the DSM VI just wait), and Julie is asking her husband Eric, “You know what I love about cooking?”
Later, when I sit down to write this essay, and I search for the exact quote, it will be credited to Nora—her words: “What I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there is something comforting about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get thick! It’s a sure thing! It’s a sure thing in a world where nothing is sure; it has a mathematical certainty in a world where those of us who long for some kind of certainty are forced to settle for crossword puzzles.”
And when the movie cuts back to Julia as I’m hand-washing my knives, I hear Meryl Streep-as-Julia: “No matter what happens in the kitchen, never apologize.” So, to my lobsters: Sorry, not sorry!
I’m grateful to these guiding voices that keep me company, and I want to do what they do. I consider professional cooking school.
* * *
A few months later, just as I’m about to start cooking school, we get transferred to Pennsylvania for Tim’s job, and have to move. My culinary degree is put on hold again. In Pennsylvania, I look for an alternate culinary institute, but the degrees are longer and more targeted to the restaurant industry and I feel mismatched.
Then, one summer afternoon on the drive home, Tim hears an ad on the radio for a writer’s retreat at a nearby school and suggests I go. I decide not to, with the excuse that I haven’t written anything in years, even though I know I could scrape something together. But then that fall I register for Creative Writing classes, not because I want to be a writer or make a living from writing specifically, but because I haven’t worked in six years and if I don’t take a step forward it may be another six until I get up the courage to try something new again.
The classes are challenging, but they fill up my time, and on the nights I’m home with Tim, I cook. I make all kinds of things: bread from scratch, Irish stew with Guinness Stout, barbecue mac and cheese, tostadas, buffalo chicken pizza, milk chocolate fondue, beef wellington, burgers, biscuits and gravy, deep-dish cast-iron pizza, and filet mignon with twice baked potatoes. I spend entire days in the kitchen after entire days at my desk (with naps in between) filling our life with prose and parmesan, satire and sauces, humor and hotdogs.
* * *
On summer vacation, I return to Colorado and spend a weekend in Keystone with a teacher friend and a poet friend. We sip on sparkly cocktails and mocktails and discuss publishing, teaching, writing, and passion. In the afternoon sunsets that stage-light us in the living room, I realize that to be surrounded by people who both inspire and challenge is a rare blessing. And so, I can think of only one thing to honor the three of us. The next day I put on Julie and Julia, get out the ingredients for Chicken with Mushrooms in a Wine and Cream Sauce, and I make us the simplest and most delicious French recipe I know.
Picture: the azure lilac mountain range out the window to my left, a cooktop under a single flame-colored casserole dish filled with the ambrosial smell of shallots and mushrooms simmering in butter in front of me, while just in front of that my two dear friends sit on the couch and all of us fixate on the screen to the right, watching what I begin to realize isn’t just a story about cooking, but also about writing. About friendship. About passion.
When it’s finished, we sit over the counter and tear apart a huge loaf of warm ciabatta bread, dip it in a gravy of mushrooms, heavy cream, chicken stock, and Riesling. We make ridiculous sounds—our proud vocabularies fail to communicate what we already share.
* * *
Back home in Pennsylvania, my thesis advisor gives me an article written by Nora Ephron titled My Cookbook Crushes, written in 2006, about three years before Julie and Julia. In it she writes “[… I cooked] half the recipes in the first Julia, and as I cooked, I had imaginary conversations with [her].” I recognize this as a line from the movie, spoken by Amy Adams, that I thought originated from Julie Powell. But the voice no longer belongs to Amy, and I don’t think it belongs to Julie either. The voice I hear is Nora’s.
These voices can be confusing, so I draw a chart. A map of my essay:
Even so, it doesn’t change the fact: so long ago now it seems I picked up a stick of butter, a pan, and set it over an open flame. I cooked because of a film I saw, based on a novel, based on a blog, based on a cookbook written by Julia Child herself.
And I’m sure that Julia sparked this whole thing for me, that the ten years she went through trying to get her book published will remind me when I’m getting down on my writing that “it’s not going to be easy, this whole getting published business.”
And just like Nora had conversations with Julia, I catch myself now having conversations with Nora. I often tell her what I tell Julia, I miss you, I wish you were still here. How did you get so damned good? What should I do next? I hang a tea towel over the handle of my oven with the phrase, “What would Julia do?” and I keep Nora’s essay folded up inside my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking which sits on the kitchen counter.
And when I’m feeling lost, I hear them ask me, “What is it that you really like to do?” To Julia, I say eat. And to Nora, I say write.
SOMETIMES I HEAR JULIA CHILD’S VOICE NARRATING MY LIFE – Published in Entropy Magazine
You have to learn how to eat.
I’m about seven or eight years old and my parents have taken me out to eat at a restaurant in the foothills of Colorado. I’ve been screaming for a few minutes now, not just being fussy but having a complete meltdown. Usually my parents hold a wet washrag over my face to shock me out of crying, but they don’t have one on hand this time. I open my eyes for just a moment, probably to see if I’m making them as miserable as possible, and I see it—a bowl of bright yellow lemon slices— . The server sets them down on the table, my mom passes them over, and I begin. I put them in my mouth, one slice at a time, bite down and suck in. My mouth puckers into my face so hard it disappears and all that’s left is my chin and forehead. My parents’ faces go from scrunched to half-smiles. They laugh at me, proud to have soothed all of us in one attempt, as over the course of the next few minutes I eat slice after slice, lemon juice and bits of zest dripping down my cheeks.
* * *
In cooking you have to have a what-the-hell attitude.
I’m now in middle school in Moorhead, Minnesota and my Mom works nights at the gas station down the road to help out with the bills. Some nights my Dad is working late too, so I stay home and babysit my sister and me. She’s six years my junior, and most of the time she annoys every fiber of my being. Every now and then she doesn’t, and I agree to make us our favorite meal, mac and cheese with hot dogs, and watch the show “Cow and Chicken” with her before our parents get home. I dump the pasta and chopped hot dogs into boiling water, barely pay attention to how long they cook, stir in the packet of cheese, and scoop it out of the single pot into bowls. It’s hot and cheesy and we sit together and eat, my sister and me. The pitch of her voice when she thanks me, the extension of her smile, and the way she sits close and acts proud of me for making mac and cheese with hot dogs—praise I quickly take for granted until I grow older and it becomes forever the standard I strive for in every dish.
* * *
Life itself is the proper binge.
Now in High School at Moorhead Senior High I start spending fewer nights at home and more at a boy’s house whose parents are usually out of town. We aren’t quite dating (he is bi-sexual) but we spend a lot of time together and are close friends. On a cold Minnesota night, we hop into his Pontiac Grand Prix and drive to the West Acres Shopping Center. At the food court, he convinces me to try “take-out” for the first time, and we walk over to Panda Express. I’ve never had “authentic” Chinese food like this before, and although I’m a little nervous I’ll get sick or won’t like it, I decide to follow his advice and order something called “Orange Chicken.” I love it. I finish my entire serving and he shares a few pieces from his. We will continue this trend for the next two years, after we move to Denver, until we split up and he moves to Arizona and marries a woman with whom he has children. I will later act like I’m above eating Panda Express, of the Orange Chicken. But every now and then, when I’m alone, I’ll sneak off and scarf it down.
* * *
People who love to eat are always the best people.
While attending the Metropolitan State College of Denver I find myself in a classmate’s apartment with some friends one night. The dimly lit not-quite-garden-level studio apartment has enough room for all four of us if some of us sit on the bed and some of us on the floor. It’d probably seem more uncomfortable but for the fact that we’re all halfway through our first double plastic-bottle-vodka and Orange Crush cocktails, and we’re all gay. We feel comfortable being ourselves around one another, each of us anxious to share everything about our lives. It’s in this spirit of sharing that I decide to share a part of my Minnesota upbringing, a dish made by middle-aged-women both Lutheran and Catholic which they bring to church basement potlucks along with cookie-bars and coffee, the Tater Tot Hot Dish.
My cooking skills have not progressed much since my mac and cheese with hotdog days and it’s probably only the second casserole I’ve ever made. But we’re all broke, and I was able to afford on my own the corn, cream of mushroom, tater tots, and hamburger to feed the four of us. So, as with the hot dogs, I try to “WOW” my new “little sisters” with my hot dish prowess. I over-brown the beef on the electric oven, undercook the tater tots, and forget to season the dish with either salt or pepper. The result is a goopy mess of meat and cream of mushroom soup with soggy tots. My friends eat it anyway, washing it down with generous amounts of plastic-bottle vodka and Crush. Everyone is grateful, and later, when I confess I could barely choke it down myself, we all laugh and try to imagine what a good tater tot hot dish might taste like.
* * *
You’ll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.
Six years into my four-year degree I start dating a man who takes me to San Diego one weekend so that I can see the ocean for the first time in my life. On the night we arrive at the Hotel Del Coronado, I run towards the sound of the crashing waves, the soft sand like gritty butter underneath my feet, until I see it. I stop, take in a quick breath, and stare. Its presence is more than I had imagined; the crashing waves fill my ears and my heart, and I reach out to everyone who has ever touched it. I say something to Tim about the Titanic, about the ages gone by, about the world before and the world to come. He stifles a smile, gives me a hug. I think the mountains must be like the ocean—you don’t ever really get over seeing them.
Later that night we approach the hotel concierge, a flirty man who asks us if we are visiting “for business or for pleasure,” and when we say pleasure it sounds weirdly thick and taboo. We ask for a restaurant recommendation and he gives us directions to a local seafood restaurant just down the street, Maretalia.
When we sit down to read the menu, I find all kinds of dishes I can’t pronounce. I don’t know what a scallop is (and at the time I don’t know that eating them is like chewing fish gristle). I’ve never had lobster (and when I someday do, I will have to ask the server to show me how to use the tiny fork to pry it out of its shell). I’ve never eaten a prawn (and I don’t know that sometimes they serve them with legs and shell intact). Since it’s my first time to the ocean though, I vow to try something new, something with real seafood. I find a risotto (which I later learn is a rice-based dish) whose ingredients include almost nothing I can pronounce and in a show of bravery and also partially to make myself look cultured and attractive, I order it. Tim asks me if I’m sure, and I nod. I’m ready to expand my palette.
While we wait for the food, we sip our drinks. I romance about the sea. Tim romances about our day together. Suddenly they set the dish down in front of me and for a moment I panic.
There are two antennae sticking straight up across the risotto on the dish from a lobster that has been split like a cross section in a biology book. There are small clams or oysters, I can’t tell which. And for the first time I have prawns of the style that look like they may get up and walk off my plate at any moment.
I take a large sip of my martini, fill my mouth with biting pine tree gin and briny olive. I think about the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. And as I breathe in, I smell the savory aroma of what I can now identify as sautéed shallots in butter. The tangy combination of white wine and chicken stock that were used to simmer the rice draw me in further, enough to brave my first bite. Imagine: tangy butter and sea salt, tender lobster simmered in a dry chardonnay, and of course, lemon. There are other flavors I can’t identify, (later I will guess sweet saffron, spicy chili, herbal tarragon) flavors I desperately want to know. I vow to learn everything I can about food. We order tiramisu for dessert.
That night, I fall in love.
Heiwa – Published in Metrosphere Arts & Literary Magazine @ 2015
There is an image somewhere, on some hard drive or in some forgotten pile of photographs, that I have never seen. It depicts me, two years ago, standing in front of the Genbaku Dome in Hiroshima making the peace sign with a stranger, his arm around my shoulder.
There is no obvious evidence in this picture that identifies the building behind us. It just looks like an old building that is in the process of being decommissioned. There is only rough wire where the dome should be, atop a cylinder surrounded by a rectangular structure. Chunks of broken building adorn the ground and we stand in front of a black gate, my eyes teary in the warm afternoon sunlight.
Before this picture was taken, I knew that on August 6th, 1945 the city was hit by the first atomic bomb. I did not know that there was a structure (and only one structure) left standing in the area where the first nuclear attack in human history had occurred. I knew that the city would be filled with memorials and there would be mourners remembering and paying their respects to the people who died there. I did not know that these people saw the city and the attack as a call for world peace. I knew that the Japanese stranger who came up to me was about my age and he was asking me something about taking a picture. I did not know he was asking if he could take a picture with me, and I did not understand what was happening until afterwards.
I had been staring at the dome behind us, reading the plaque on the ground with a heavy heart. “As a historical witness that conveys the tragedy of suffering the first atomic bomb in human history and as a symbol that vows to faithfully seek the abolition of nuclear weapons and everlasting world peace…” I’m sorry we did this was all I could think. I looked about paranoiacally for scornful glances in my direction from locals or surviving granddaughters or sons but found none. The looks I got were friendly, even warm.
So when the stranger approached me and asked something about taking a picture, I enthusiastically said yes. I was confused when he then gave his camera to his friend, put his arm around my shoulder, and held up the peace sign. “Heiwa!”, he cried out. That must mean smile. I smiled and automatically made the sign too… as if in some strange dream where I had been mistaken for someone else. The picture snapped, he turned to me and said “We are like brothers, we have peace now”, and left.
As I turned around and looked down again at the plaque, the tears overpowered me. All of the guilt I had been feeling, thinking I had been a part of something that was unforgivable, had blinded me from seeing that this place wasn’t about pinning atrocities of World War II on the US, it was about peace and the decommission of nuclear weapons for everyone, everywhere.
Later, I read that “Heiwa” was the Japanese word for peace, but when I hear it, I will be reminded of an image somewhere, on some hard drive, or in some forgotten pile of photographs, that I have never seen but carry with me everyday.