Showing posts with label Jack London Square. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack London Square. Show all posts
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Food Hose to a Parallel Universe
Yesterday, some friends and I went out for dim sum—ordinarily a non-event hardly worth reporting. Millions of people routinely enjoy dim sum on Sunday mornings in the Bay Area. What catapulted our trip beyond the ordinary was that we went to Alameda; not San Francisco and not Oakland both of which have vigorous, lively Chinatowns larger than the entire commercial district of the little spot on the prairie where I grew up white as rice on a wedding day I never had. Alameda is not known as a culinary center of any kind unless you are willing to include donut shops and Kwik Marts in that category. Not only was the place absolutely ringing with multi-generational Chinese families--90 year-old grandmothers all the way to newborns were crowded around spinning lazy Susans--but there was a line to get into the parking lot and a line at the door to endure. From this waiting vantage it was obvious we were the only white people in a vast interior dedicated to eating long and hard. To be fair, that could be because all the white people of Alameda were at the Fourth of July parade streaming that very minute through the heart of this small town. I was with immigrants from Poland and our only patriotic concern was what we would wear to and eat at the rooftop fireworks party later because we are all queer and refuse to wave the flag until we have equal protection under the law and the full rights of citizenship. In other words, we long ago stopped paying attention to Yankee Doodle and instead are concentrating on Yangzi Noodle.
.
This place has the serving of food honed to a production line that would startle Henry Ford. We were still settling in our chairs when the first of a convoy of carts rolled up to offer the latest from the kitchen—crab stuffed peppers, shrimp rolled in bacon and deep fried with a dipping sauce of mayonnaise (mayonnaise!), sticky rice cooked in mango leaves, fried tofu, shrimp dumplings, mushroom dumplings, bean curd dumplings, pork ribs coated in a screaming red sauce, noodles in a slippery and peppery sauce heavy on the garlic, broccoli leaves sautéed in oil, pork buns, and shrimp balls wrapped in noodles then deep fried. We took it ALL. There were four of us and we quickly found our table was too small for the burden of our appetites. The woman who was our server gave us the once over and radioed instructions of some kind back to HQ.
.
There are perhaps 12 cart women on the floor, each wearing a headset connecting them to the kitchen. They radio in what is selling and what is not so they have real time food production keeping the fare hot and fresh and irresistible. We are eating like people rescued from a boat adrift for days on the open sea, speaking only when the next cart rolls up with new plates and steam baskets. Eventually, we simply point with dripping chopsticks and grunt affirmatively as the cart woman reloads our table. I love dim sum even though it ruins me for days afterward as food I do not customarily eat (fried, salty, fat) makes its laborious way through my suffering alimentary canal.
.
We all use both hands to push back from the table when we are done. Apparently, we are not alone in this custom as the tables are all bolted to the floor and good thing, too, as it is impossible to rise unassisted after this experience. In the harsh glare of the parking lot, we adjust our sunglasses and wonder if Farine’s is open on the holiday as we would now like to buy cake. We get in the car and count ourselves lucky that the tires hold. In a rare moment of judiciousness, we decide to skip Farine’s and go home to nap before the big party. Ubi sunt? And all that.
.
Later, wrapped in a bath sheet, I pace between my walk-in closet and sleigh bed laying out ensembles for the evening—planning for a Phoenician roof top experience requires at least three outfits because you will go through that many seasons in a six-hour period on a roof top facing the Pacific Ocean. I decide to go for surprise with my opening gambit and select a white linen A-line sleeveless shift. For accent, pearl earrings and necklace plus an ivory and nickel bracelet inset with a green stone matched by a silver ring and similarly green stone. I pull my hair up into a French twist, apply pink lipstick and spray Obsession over the entire construct. What has come over me? A pair of high black slides and I am out the door.
.
No one has seen me like this since high school and the reaction is immediate and loud when I hit the roof. The collective gasp almost suffocates the nascent flame under the BBQ. Men are throwing their arms around me, kissing me; women are nodding their appreciation and remarking how good I look in white. My neighbor, a drink in each hand, pulls me aside to offer one of the G&Ts and tell me he and his girlfriend are about done. He asks when he can come over. Dude, I tell him, you are barking up the wrong tree and you know it. He persists. I use what I consider to be a definitive squelcher line: I am 59 years old and queer. All couples have problems, he coos, sliding his arm around my waist.
.
My 15 minutes of fame are eclipsed by Danielle arriving in high summer drag. She is carrying a pitcher of her party starter: a blender concoction of several pints of strawberries, peach juice, rum and Canton, a highly successful mash up of ginger infused cognac from the Pearl River Delta of China's southern Guangdong province. It is now so popular BevMo has it on continual back order. I have the only bottle in the building. "I hope you don’t mind?" Danielle asks, jingling the key to my loft that I gave her so she could store huge bowls of her cucumber and cabbage salads in my otherwise empty refrigerator. I might mind but I love this nouvelle drink sometimes called a Phoenician and other times Hammer Blow. I down two immediately while it is still sunny and hot. The fog is piling up behind the hills of San Francisco and soon enough my little white dress will be history.
.
You know you are among queens when a simple change of clothes elicits screams of “Outfit #2!” the minute you walk off the elevator. I have reappeared wearing designer jeans, a black turtleneck, and a porkpie hat. Where is this sartorial instinct rooted? I am again welcomed for my style as most people are now wrapped in blankets or fleece which is a problem because the serious eating of ribs slathered in sauce has begun. Our party has grown in my brief absence to include the brewer who owns Linden Street Brewery, one of our neighborhood establishments. Nick is often seen making morning deliveries on a special bicycle he has tricked out with a platform running parallel to the ground between the seat and front wheel. He can load about two dozen large growlers on this and is often seen at sunrise clanking through the Square like an ersatz milkman making his deliveries.
.
Our newest Phoenicians, and my next door neighbors, have come up bringing with them a strange sort of fairy folk typical to the redwood glens of northern California. They wear tie dyed, flowing robes, crowns of stars and moons (in the hands of lesser beings these crowns would be used for holiday table decorations), and big crystal rings. They have walking sticks and speak of animate nature as might have Merlin had he gotten it together enough to make this party. Go figure. These queens prance around in a silver Jaguar when out and play Barbara Streisand albums all day and night when at home. Neither is bigger than a ten year-old despite being grown men. I like them. They are sweet and friendly. After I have had several more of Danielle’s fabulous red drink I wonder if maybe they are leprechauns and the fairy people have captured and enslaved them.
.
Their white magic has, inevitably, drawn a black magic to balance the universe and I am suddenly drawn aside by a very short, dark haired ancient woman wearing smeared red lipstick and a long black coat a la Matrix. Her age is inestimable but she is old, old, old. She inquires what it is I do as though she is inquiring whether I know the secret code to her inner circle. I give my most benign reply: I raise money for medical research. That usually causes people to drift into some vague cooing and gets me quickly off the hook for deeper conversation with strangers when I am loaded as I am now. I knew it, she says earnestly grabbing my hand and looking deeply into my eyes—or as deeply as she can from her vantage a foot below my nose. She has my hand. I am trapped and off we go into a very long conversation concerning her amazing discovery (by way of Canada, I didn’t really understand this part) of the cure for cancer! How, I ask stupidly. Herbs. But not just any herbs and not just delivered in any dose by any fool. I must train in her method to be effective. I notice that one of her fat short male minions is standing on either side of me, not saying a word but pinning me to the conversation. I can, of course, leave at any time but I strive to be polite and am about ready to concede she is indeed a genius when Danielle, at six feet six (the five inch stiletto heels giving her a commanding boost although they do ruin the moisture seal on the roof) abruptly appears and takes my hand away from the woman, asking: Is this bitch bothering you? Flaming daggers of steel pass between the eyes of Danielle and the evil one but Danielle is the stronger force. The three slink away to some other corner. Danielle, I notice for the first time, has green eyes—the sign of a witch. Or so I was told by Katrina, my former house mate who also had green eyes and broke every goddamed thing she touched.
.
Geez, maybe it was something in the several blunts that were passed around but I am relieved to be returned safely to the table that is, by now, a heap of plates and gnawed on ribs, pies, and cake. My companion at the table remarks that she has eaten some of everything here and is thrilled to report that no one copped out by making potato salad. This is apparently enough of an achievement for her to rate my building four stars. Who the fuck are these people and how did they get in? It doesn’t really matter. By 10 p.m. I am staggering around the roof bumping into chairs and knocking things off the table—not because I am drunk but because I am eating pie and shortcake covered with whipped cream and three kinds of berries. I am on a sugar high among a crowd of people similarly inflicted and we cannot seem to direct our legs under the avalanche of food we had steadily poured down our throats all day long. Music is now blaring from every room in the building and we dance looking like a promotional film for Lourdes— flinging our arms toward the sky while our legs shoot out in all directions like bird dogs revealing hidden pheasants in the bull rushes. Every few seconds, someone bolts up out of a chair, screams halleluiah, and dashes to the desert table. It is time to sign out from the land of the free, the home of the brave.
.
This place has the serving of food honed to a production line that would startle Henry Ford. We were still settling in our chairs when the first of a convoy of carts rolled up to offer the latest from the kitchen—crab stuffed peppers, shrimp rolled in bacon and deep fried with a dipping sauce of mayonnaise (mayonnaise!), sticky rice cooked in mango leaves, fried tofu, shrimp dumplings, mushroom dumplings, bean curd dumplings, pork ribs coated in a screaming red sauce, noodles in a slippery and peppery sauce heavy on the garlic, broccoli leaves sautéed in oil, pork buns, and shrimp balls wrapped in noodles then deep fried. We took it ALL. There were four of us and we quickly found our table was too small for the burden of our appetites. The woman who was our server gave us the once over and radioed instructions of some kind back to HQ.
.
There are perhaps 12 cart women on the floor, each wearing a headset connecting them to the kitchen. They radio in what is selling and what is not so they have real time food production keeping the fare hot and fresh and irresistible. We are eating like people rescued from a boat adrift for days on the open sea, speaking only when the next cart rolls up with new plates and steam baskets. Eventually, we simply point with dripping chopsticks and grunt affirmatively as the cart woman reloads our table. I love dim sum even though it ruins me for days afterward as food I do not customarily eat (fried, salty, fat) makes its laborious way through my suffering alimentary canal.
.
We all use both hands to push back from the table when we are done. Apparently, we are not alone in this custom as the tables are all bolted to the floor and good thing, too, as it is impossible to rise unassisted after this experience. In the harsh glare of the parking lot, we adjust our sunglasses and wonder if Farine’s is open on the holiday as we would now like to buy cake. We get in the car and count ourselves lucky that the tires hold. In a rare moment of judiciousness, we decide to skip Farine’s and go home to nap before the big party. Ubi sunt? And all that.
.
Later, wrapped in a bath sheet, I pace between my walk-in closet and sleigh bed laying out ensembles for the evening—planning for a Phoenician roof top experience requires at least three outfits because you will go through that many seasons in a six-hour period on a roof top facing the Pacific Ocean. I decide to go for surprise with my opening gambit and select a white linen A-line sleeveless shift. For accent, pearl earrings and necklace plus an ivory and nickel bracelet inset with a green stone matched by a silver ring and similarly green stone. I pull my hair up into a French twist, apply pink lipstick and spray Obsession over the entire construct. What has come over me? A pair of high black slides and I am out the door.
.
No one has seen me like this since high school and the reaction is immediate and loud when I hit the roof. The collective gasp almost suffocates the nascent flame under the BBQ. Men are throwing their arms around me, kissing me; women are nodding their appreciation and remarking how good I look in white. My neighbor, a drink in each hand, pulls me aside to offer one of the G&Ts and tell me he and his girlfriend are about done. He asks when he can come over. Dude, I tell him, you are barking up the wrong tree and you know it. He persists. I use what I consider to be a definitive squelcher line: I am 59 years old and queer. All couples have problems, he coos, sliding his arm around my waist.
.
My 15 minutes of fame are eclipsed by Danielle arriving in high summer drag. She is carrying a pitcher of her party starter: a blender concoction of several pints of strawberries, peach juice, rum and Canton, a highly successful mash up of ginger infused cognac from the Pearl River Delta of China's southern Guangdong province. It is now so popular BevMo has it on continual back order. I have the only bottle in the building. "I hope you don’t mind?" Danielle asks, jingling the key to my loft that I gave her so she could store huge bowls of her cucumber and cabbage salads in my otherwise empty refrigerator. I might mind but I love this nouvelle drink sometimes called a Phoenician and other times Hammer Blow. I down two immediately while it is still sunny and hot. The fog is piling up behind the hills of San Francisco and soon enough my little white dress will be history.
.
You know you are among queens when a simple change of clothes elicits screams of “Outfit #2!” the minute you walk off the elevator. I have reappeared wearing designer jeans, a black turtleneck, and a porkpie hat. Where is this sartorial instinct rooted? I am again welcomed for my style as most people are now wrapped in blankets or fleece which is a problem because the serious eating of ribs slathered in sauce has begun. Our party has grown in my brief absence to include the brewer who owns Linden Street Brewery, one of our neighborhood establishments. Nick is often seen making morning deliveries on a special bicycle he has tricked out with a platform running parallel to the ground between the seat and front wheel. He can load about two dozen large growlers on this and is often seen at sunrise clanking through the Square like an ersatz milkman making his deliveries.
.
Our newest Phoenicians, and my next door neighbors, have come up bringing with them a strange sort of fairy folk typical to the redwood glens of northern California. They wear tie dyed, flowing robes, crowns of stars and moons (in the hands of lesser beings these crowns would be used for holiday table decorations), and big crystal rings. They have walking sticks and speak of animate nature as might have Merlin had he gotten it together enough to make this party. Go figure. These queens prance around in a silver Jaguar when out and play Barbara Streisand albums all day and night when at home. Neither is bigger than a ten year-old despite being grown men. I like them. They are sweet and friendly. After I have had several more of Danielle’s fabulous red drink I wonder if maybe they are leprechauns and the fairy people have captured and enslaved them.
.
Their white magic has, inevitably, drawn a black magic to balance the universe and I am suddenly drawn aside by a very short, dark haired ancient woman wearing smeared red lipstick and a long black coat a la Matrix. Her age is inestimable but she is old, old, old. She inquires what it is I do as though she is inquiring whether I know the secret code to her inner circle. I give my most benign reply: I raise money for medical research. That usually causes people to drift into some vague cooing and gets me quickly off the hook for deeper conversation with strangers when I am loaded as I am now. I knew it, she says earnestly grabbing my hand and looking deeply into my eyes—or as deeply as she can from her vantage a foot below my nose. She has my hand. I am trapped and off we go into a very long conversation concerning her amazing discovery (by way of Canada, I didn’t really understand this part) of the cure for cancer! How, I ask stupidly. Herbs. But not just any herbs and not just delivered in any dose by any fool. I must train in her method to be effective. I notice that one of her fat short male minions is standing on either side of me, not saying a word but pinning me to the conversation. I can, of course, leave at any time but I strive to be polite and am about ready to concede she is indeed a genius when Danielle, at six feet six (the five inch stiletto heels giving her a commanding boost although they do ruin the moisture seal on the roof) abruptly appears and takes my hand away from the woman, asking: Is this bitch bothering you? Flaming daggers of steel pass between the eyes of Danielle and the evil one but Danielle is the stronger force. The three slink away to some other corner. Danielle, I notice for the first time, has green eyes—the sign of a witch. Or so I was told by Katrina, my former house mate who also had green eyes and broke every goddamed thing she touched.
.
Geez, maybe it was something in the several blunts that were passed around but I am relieved to be returned safely to the table that is, by now, a heap of plates and gnawed on ribs, pies, and cake. My companion at the table remarks that she has eaten some of everything here and is thrilled to report that no one copped out by making potato salad. This is apparently enough of an achievement for her to rate my building four stars. Who the fuck are these people and how did they get in? It doesn’t really matter. By 10 p.m. I am staggering around the roof bumping into chairs and knocking things off the table—not because I am drunk but because I am eating pie and shortcake covered with whipped cream and three kinds of berries. I am on a sugar high among a crowd of people similarly inflicted and we cannot seem to direct our legs under the avalanche of food we had steadily poured down our throats all day long. Music is now blaring from every room in the building and we dance looking like a promotional film for Lourdes— flinging our arms toward the sky while our legs shoot out in all directions like bird dogs revealing hidden pheasants in the bull rushes. Every few seconds, someone bolts up out of a chair, screams halleluiah, and dashes to the desert table. It is time to sign out from the land of the free, the home of the brave.
Friday, July 2, 2010
The Finger Tip Club
From the front porch and back garden of my house in El Cerrito, I had a rifle shot view of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. Now, standing on the roof of my building amidst the cranes and rail lines of the Port of Oakland, my view is of the graceful Bay Bridge, dipping and rising and dipping again like a bird in flight toward San Francisco.
.
The new summer smiles down on all of this, allowing us to wear our skimpy clothes if we are young or straw hats if we are not. I am on the roof surveying that non-stop ramble that is Jack London Square, the Warehouse District, the Port of Oakland, and West Oakland. For those at ground level, that’s more or less a rectangle at the back of San Francisco Bay outlined in cement lanes, steel tracks, and every known form of transportation: 880 on the north cuts us off from escape downtown should any shit hit the fan; the estuary and railroad yards to the south where cargo ships from China arrive day and night to ensure that we have enough hair dryers and microwaves. Oakland is a huge port, stretching east to encompass Oakland International Airport, once the size of a Dairy Queen and now poaching business from San Francisco and San Jose. Finally, we are contained on the west side by Mandela Parkway, our main drag out of here through West Oakland and its superfunds, train tracks, the old Army base, and, rising from this miasma, the economic miracle that is Emeryville.
.
I am living my first summer in my new home here among the artists, chefs, musicians, surgeons, drag queens, cop and train conductor, suits, and growers that make up my building. I sip wine and gaze out to the windy bay, my hair whipping about my head, and think: I am happy. It is the people, yes; the architectural wonder that is my loft, yes; the many recreations within a short walk in any direction, yes; but it is also very much of the season. The Square and summer are good to each other and, like Paris and lovers, make an attractive pair. The roof, particularly, is again in season.
.
It is our communal backyard and we gather up here weekends to have a family dinner around a long table bearing plates, dishes, towers of food and bottles of booze and to talk of the things that mean something to us. I am contentedly sitting between the two sexiest men in the building, the Square, Oakland, the United States and Europe. They are so equally adorable even their names cannot distinguish them, both are Michael. Michael is talking of food and cooking, describing one of the meterosexual dishes he has brought to dinner and complaining he once cut himself so badly making it he almost lost a finger tip. He thrusts his digit toward us revealing a thin, craggy white line circumventing the end of his finger. We gasp. I am keenly interested although one finger means nothing.
.
“Does it still hurt?” asks Michael, as he pushes his own finger displaying a matching gutter in the same finger, same hand, toward Michael’s . We gasp. A second self-inflicted knife slice that damaged a nerve. I cannot believe my Ugly Duckling luck at finding this tribe.
.
“Legio Irus Actica," I whisper adding my finger to the compass of collective injury. We gasp. We share the same ruined finger tip that twitches randomly with pain from a long ago injury. Kismet. We hug.
.
The new summer smiles down on all of this, allowing us to wear our skimpy clothes if we are young or straw hats if we are not. I am on the roof surveying that non-stop ramble that is Jack London Square, the Warehouse District, the Port of Oakland, and West Oakland. For those at ground level, that’s more or less a rectangle at the back of San Francisco Bay outlined in cement lanes, steel tracks, and every known form of transportation: 880 on the north cuts us off from escape downtown should any shit hit the fan; the estuary and railroad yards to the south where cargo ships from China arrive day and night to ensure that we have enough hair dryers and microwaves. Oakland is a huge port, stretching east to encompass Oakland International Airport, once the size of a Dairy Queen and now poaching business from San Francisco and San Jose. Finally, we are contained on the west side by Mandela Parkway, our main drag out of here through West Oakland and its superfunds, train tracks, the old Army base, and, rising from this miasma, the economic miracle that is Emeryville.
.
I am living my first summer in my new home here among the artists, chefs, musicians, surgeons, drag queens, cop and train conductor, suits, and growers that make up my building. I sip wine and gaze out to the windy bay, my hair whipping about my head, and think: I am happy. It is the people, yes; the architectural wonder that is my loft, yes; the many recreations within a short walk in any direction, yes; but it is also very much of the season. The Square and summer are good to each other and, like Paris and lovers, make an attractive pair. The roof, particularly, is again in season.
.
It is our communal backyard and we gather up here weekends to have a family dinner around a long table bearing plates, dishes, towers of food and bottles of booze and to talk of the things that mean something to us. I am contentedly sitting between the two sexiest men in the building, the Square, Oakland, the United States and Europe. They are so equally adorable even their names cannot distinguish them, both are Michael. Michael is talking of food and cooking, describing one of the meterosexual dishes he has brought to dinner and complaining he once cut himself so badly making it he almost lost a finger tip. He thrusts his digit toward us revealing a thin, craggy white line circumventing the end of his finger. We gasp. I am keenly interested although one finger means nothing.
.
“Does it still hurt?” asks Michael, as he pushes his own finger displaying a matching gutter in the same finger, same hand, toward Michael’s . We gasp. A second self-inflicted knife slice that damaged a nerve. I cannot believe my Ugly Duckling luck at finding this tribe.
.
“Legio Irus Actica," I whisper adding my finger to the compass of collective injury. We gasp. We share the same ruined finger tip that twitches randomly with pain from a long ago injury. Kismet. We hug.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The Doctor Is In and Will See You Now
One of my favorite people in the building is my neighbor who came to the U.S. as a teenager from Berlin, his first home away from home having been born in Poland and lived there as a child. He is every woman’s dream European man—suave and cultured, he speaks five languages fluently although English, his fourth language, can wobble when he gets excited about something and, admirable trait #2, he is frequently excited about something. That’s another thing I enjoy about him, his contagious and unsinkable joie de vivre. Daniel loves life and embraces every aspect of it with heart and soul. He is a gourmet cook. He is the sommelier you want at your dinner party and, best of all for me, he is a walking anthology of contemporary culture, haute and base, able to engage in the most erudite conversation on topics ranging from the rise of impressionism in the ateliers of Paris to the dawn of disco in West Berlin to who’s doing what to whom in Hollywood. He knows music; you cannot name a piece by any composer or arranger he does not know. He showed me a picture of him on his first day of kindergarten. He is wearing a full tuxedo with tails and holding a baton. Opera? He can quote from any libretto and sing the major arias. Early jazz standards are his specialty and he has a record collection rivaled only by the Smithsonian.
.
Perhaps best of all, Daniel is a true wit. As we walked down Montgomery Street arm-in-arm one splendid evening, a disheveled and grimy man holding a “Jesus hates queers” sign called to us to inquire whether we have considered the wrath of Jesus as a consequence of our lifestyles (in truth, the man’s question was slightly more vulgar). Daniel, my elegant European prince, suavely replied, “The only Hay-Zeus I pay any attention to is the one who trims my bush and blows me.” Then, he swung from his shoulder a Prada bag the size of a steamer trunk and inquired, “You wanna keep your tooth?”
.
I should point out that Daniel was, at the moment, Danielle standing over six feet tall in his size 12W stiletto heels. Danielle is one gorgeous woman, I must say and I believe most would agree with me. She favors short dresses that show off legs Tina Turner would kill for, and accents her couture with Tiffany’s jewelry made in China by forgers so skilled even the people at Tiffany’s cannot tell the difference. The wigs, however, come from Japan and it is here—the hair—where no expense is spared and it shows. Danielle announces her arrival anywhere by fabulous coifs in sunset colors: orange, red, pink, purple, and blue. Often, butterflies or dragonflies adorn her up-do, never anything as mundane as a headband or scarf. “Puh-lease,” she snaps when I show her a Hermés I think would look good on her.
.
Going out with Danielle invites stares at a minimum and intrusive comment as a rule. Danielle embodies the essence of drag and drag, when done right, is and should be an affront to the dominant culture. I will return to this idea in another post but for now all you need to know is that Danielle confronts the world and engages on her terms. It’s one of the many aspects of her character I sincerely admire. Of the many schools of drag, Danielle is strictly illusion. Were it not for her size, one would never know Danielle is carrying a standard male package tucked up in her thong because Daniel is a certified, credentialed, card-carrying Hollywood makeup artist who worked at Paramount for years. He also did a lot of time behind the counters of Yves Saint Laurent, Kenneth Cole, and Chanel. Even better, he knows skin.
.
Daniel ministers to every woman in the building, guiding us through moisturizers, serums, firming lotions, and eye and lip restoring creams. His first gift to me was a collagen mask. I have been shopping with him and can attest to the fact that no sooner is he in the door than throngs of women begin to flock to him as he stands at the counter and delivers 15 minutes of spontaneous instruction on how to rejuvenate the face and décolletage. These women then trail after us buying whatever we buy and asking questions Daniel is always too polite to ignore. Every sales person in every store is dying to attract Daniel to their counter to tout their brand. It is the closest I will ever come to celebrity.
.
Daniel routinely monitors my skin and advises on product. Since beginning my regimen with him about four months ago I can honestly say I’ve seen remarkable improvement. I even have independent verification in the many compliments I’ve received in return for a half hour of work each night applying everything it takes to keep me from sliding further down the path to crone. When I jokingly suggested I’d reached the point where shaving would make more sense than plucking, Daniel immediately gave me a run down on the razors he uses to keep Danielle never farther than a makeup case away. He shaves everything—knuckles, toes, back, chest—as an illusionist would.
.
Hair, as one might imagine, is a big topic and I have received his version of a total smack down for the sorry state of my mop in that he gently knocked on my door one evening to inquire whether I was busy. When I said no and invited him in, he replied by hoisting his index finger in the air and actually running back to his own loft. When he returned, he had an arm load of gels, sprays, and masques to coax my hair to luster. Even the man who cuts my hair has remarked on the improvement.
.
The upshot is—I don’t even buy lip balm anymore without consulting Daniel. No woman in this building would. We are his loyal students and his living creations; his art extended from Danielle to all of us. So when you are at my loft for dinner or a party and an elegant and refined European man approaches you with the line, “I want to do you,” ask if his name is Daniel. If it is, throw yourself into his eager, hairless arms and whisper, “Je suis vôtre.”
.
Perhaps best of all, Daniel is a true wit. As we walked down Montgomery Street arm-in-arm one splendid evening, a disheveled and grimy man holding a “Jesus hates queers” sign called to us to inquire whether we have considered the wrath of Jesus as a consequence of our lifestyles (in truth, the man’s question was slightly more vulgar). Daniel, my elegant European prince, suavely replied, “The only Hay-Zeus I pay any attention to is the one who trims my bush and blows me.” Then, he swung from his shoulder a Prada bag the size of a steamer trunk and inquired, “You wanna keep your tooth?”
.
I should point out that Daniel was, at the moment, Danielle standing over six feet tall in his size 12W stiletto heels. Danielle is one gorgeous woman, I must say and I believe most would agree with me. She favors short dresses that show off legs Tina Turner would kill for, and accents her couture with Tiffany’s jewelry made in China by forgers so skilled even the people at Tiffany’s cannot tell the difference. The wigs, however, come from Japan and it is here—the hair—where no expense is spared and it shows. Danielle announces her arrival anywhere by fabulous coifs in sunset colors: orange, red, pink, purple, and blue. Often, butterflies or dragonflies adorn her up-do, never anything as mundane as a headband or scarf. “Puh-lease,” she snaps when I show her a Hermés I think would look good on her.
.
Going out with Danielle invites stares at a minimum and intrusive comment as a rule. Danielle embodies the essence of drag and drag, when done right, is and should be an affront to the dominant culture. I will return to this idea in another post but for now all you need to know is that Danielle confronts the world and engages on her terms. It’s one of the many aspects of her character I sincerely admire. Of the many schools of drag, Danielle is strictly illusion. Were it not for her size, one would never know Danielle is carrying a standard male package tucked up in her thong because Daniel is a certified, credentialed, card-carrying Hollywood makeup artist who worked at Paramount for years. He also did a lot of time behind the counters of Yves Saint Laurent, Kenneth Cole, and Chanel. Even better, he knows skin.
.
Daniel ministers to every woman in the building, guiding us through moisturizers, serums, firming lotions, and eye and lip restoring creams. His first gift to me was a collagen mask. I have been shopping with him and can attest to the fact that no sooner is he in the door than throngs of women begin to flock to him as he stands at the counter and delivers 15 minutes of spontaneous instruction on how to rejuvenate the face and décolletage. These women then trail after us buying whatever we buy and asking questions Daniel is always too polite to ignore. Every sales person in every store is dying to attract Daniel to their counter to tout their brand. It is the closest I will ever come to celebrity.
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Daniel routinely monitors my skin and advises on product. Since beginning my regimen with him about four months ago I can honestly say I’ve seen remarkable improvement. I even have independent verification in the many compliments I’ve received in return for a half hour of work each night applying everything it takes to keep me from sliding further down the path to crone. When I jokingly suggested I’d reached the point where shaving would make more sense than plucking, Daniel immediately gave me a run down on the razors he uses to keep Danielle never farther than a makeup case away. He shaves everything—knuckles, toes, back, chest—as an illusionist would.
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Hair, as one might imagine, is a big topic and I have received his version of a total smack down for the sorry state of my mop in that he gently knocked on my door one evening to inquire whether I was busy. When I said no and invited him in, he replied by hoisting his index finger in the air and actually running back to his own loft. When he returned, he had an arm load of gels, sprays, and masques to coax my hair to luster. Even the man who cuts my hair has remarked on the improvement.
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The upshot is—I don’t even buy lip balm anymore without consulting Daniel. No woman in this building would. We are his loyal students and his living creations; his art extended from Danielle to all of us. So when you are at my loft for dinner or a party and an elegant and refined European man approaches you with the line, “I want to do you,” ask if his name is Daniel. If it is, throw yourself into his eager, hairless arms and whisper, “Je suis vôtre.”
Saturday, June 12, 2010
The Role of A Lifetime
When she accepted her Tony for portraying the young Big Edie and, after Intermission, middle-aged Little Edie in the runaway Broadway smash Grey Gardens, Christine Ebersole thanked Hollywood for the “role of a lifetime.” But wait, you say, Tony? Broadway? Hollywood? How does Hollywood figure into this?Using a math all too familiar to women “of a certain age,” Ebersole calculated that her fall from female lead as she aged in Hollywood was in direct, if inverse, proportion to her rise on the stage where acting chops are valued over boob jobs and other heavy lifting. Had she stayed in Hollywood, Ebersole reasoned, she would never have played any Edie. Instead, she played both to such thunderous critical acclaim that fags the world over can recite every line and vamp every gesture Ebersole used to bring both women back to life long enough for us to be enchanted with them and look back to Camelot through a dark lens. Ebersole’s career, in the Hollywood toilet, rose to stratospheric stardom in New York.
In my own version of this very same math, my interpretation of E=mc2 goes like this: Escape El Cerrito = metro-condo, return 2 fun. After 15 years of waiting for accrued equity to launch me to something other than a daily gauntlet of homophobic idiocy, I sold my house in whitechristianland and returned to the city where I am most comfortable among the misfits, outlaws, and genuinely creative. Now that I’m here in the other city by the bay, my life has begun to parallel another grand dame of the boards, Olympia Dukakis or, rather, her most widely seen role, Anna Madrigal.
At 59, I am not the oldest woman in my building of renegades. There is a woman in her mid-sixties. She is corporate counsel for a certain motorcycle gang that calls Oakland home, to the degree that bunch can be said to have counsel of any kind. (She keeps her Hog parked in the garage stall directly below my second floor bedroom and the rumble every morning as she kicks that pig to life is my ersatz alarm clock). Rather, I am the aging hippie lady who opens her door to one and all, comforting the recently dumped, cooking for the abandoned stray, and rolling a joint to make it all better, dear. Okay, this is not 28 Barbary Lane. It is, in fact, better.
To be fair to El Cerrito, my transformation to Ms. Madrigal can definitely be traced to the home of The Gauchos. I even had my own Mary Ann Singleton, the young straight chick who wandered into Gomorrah and was lost in a sea of man and other troubles. The difference being that my straight chick (let’s call her Katrina as she destroyed almost everything she touched) invented Gomorrah. Otherwise, the man troubles necessitated the same herbal smoky contemplations of what went wrong and what to do about it. But a joint in the late-night kitchen of a sleepy suburb is not a life style whereas a loft in an old iron works factory in the Port of Oakland is . . . or could be if managed properly. Enter Ms. Madrigal II.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Just So's You'll Know
It is a few minutes after 10 p.m. on a Sunday evening in early June, 2010. We are just finishing up a party that began almost inaudibly, with the deflowering of a bottle of cabernet on Friday after work and built steadily until, by Saturday night, in the wee small hours, it had become a howling frenzy characterized by several self-inflicted calls to the police to report ourselves for fear that we might soon actually cross the consequential, and not too distant, line that separates the as-of-yet unindicted from the incarcerated.
I face these periodic uber parties the same way I imagine a pioneer woman out on the lonely 19th century prairie might have stoically endured a wall of locusts or a towering cloud of sky-obliterating dust tearing up the known world at 200 mph. Mobile destruction is the defining characteristic of parties in my building—once a warehouse serving the Port of Oakland and now a residence hall for grown up artists, doctors, lawyers, advertising moguls, professional chefs, and Indian chiefs. At some tipping point I am too far past my sell-by date to notice, the party suddenly, synchronized, breaks from its moorings in the host loft and bursts into the hall to hunt out and settle a new hive where the food is better and the liquor cabinet not so ravaged.
This is not the first time this has happened since I moved to the building nine months previously and I am prepared. Knowing that I must protect my property with any and every resource available to me, I keep the swarm away from my unit by containing the revelers on the roof. First, I give them a bottle of Canton, the ginger infused cognac that we have taken to like bees to the blossom, burying our faces deeply in the cocktail shaker to draw out the last drop of sweet goodness. Quickly, however, before the crowd can grow restless, I up the ante with a barrel of beer followed by a donkey pulling a giant, oaken cask of vin on a rustic cart surrounded by garland-festooned maidens singing of the coming rut.
At this point, I take a potty break that extends to a shower, a full-night’s sleep, and breakfast with a friend. Coming home mid-Saturday afternoon, I can hear the party in my building from two blocks away. When I arrive, I am hailed in the hallway as though a sailor long lost at sea and presumed dead. They cannot believe their luck at seeing me before them. If anything ever called for drinks, this is it.
By now, the building truly has become a hive. Industrious worker bees fly in and out of open doors carrying plates of food, newly cooked, cork screw reinforcement, “the CD I’ve been looking for since dawn,” and buckets of ice. Other drones have been dispatched to perform specific tasks essential to the survival of the hive: get propane, buy toilet paper, cocktail olives and a bucket of chicken. People now are laughing and throwing their arms around complete strangers vowing never to part. I’ve had several of the newly devised cocktail christened hammer blow.
Even the stalwarts start to drop after 33 hours although a few wanderers cluster around a laptop, watching Google Earth of someone’s home town. 1990s Euro Pop and dance blares from the second floor—our version of house music. Someone on the roof is screaming “please” at the top of her lungs but in a manner that is asking for trouble rather than trying to fend it off as evidenced by her devilish laughter when the object of her desire relents. It’s 4 a.m. and a third wind, less gusty than the second but by no means trivial, has swept up those who were previously comatose and vivified them enough to reconnect with the source of their banging heads.
The sun is up splintering off the true believers, myself among them, who attend services at the Laney College flea. We are carrying the bucket of chicken and attracting roaming curs at an alarming rate. Once through the buck-a-head gate and safely among the heaving throngs we sober up enough to strategize our morning. First, we diversify our diet with corn-on-a-stick and fish tacos sold from a big truck. Then, we aim and launch into the souk earnestly searching for the Balenciaga parfum at a price more reasonable than the $100/bottle last seen at Nordstrom. We are immediately distracted by a table of nail polish in colors reminiscent of automotive touch up paint and buy several bottles including a small vile of glitter additive. It is, after all, June—the month of pride.
I face these periodic uber parties the same way I imagine a pioneer woman out on the lonely 19th century prairie might have stoically endured a wall of locusts or a towering cloud of sky-obliterating dust tearing up the known world at 200 mph. Mobile destruction is the defining characteristic of parties in my building—once a warehouse serving the Port of Oakland and now a residence hall for grown up artists, doctors, lawyers, advertising moguls, professional chefs, and Indian chiefs. At some tipping point I am too far past my sell-by date to notice, the party suddenly, synchronized, breaks from its moorings in the host loft and bursts into the hall to hunt out and settle a new hive where the food is better and the liquor cabinet not so ravaged.
This is not the first time this has happened since I moved to the building nine months previously and I am prepared. Knowing that I must protect my property with any and every resource available to me, I keep the swarm away from my unit by containing the revelers on the roof. First, I give them a bottle of Canton, the ginger infused cognac that we have taken to like bees to the blossom, burying our faces deeply in the cocktail shaker to draw out the last drop of sweet goodness. Quickly, however, before the crowd can grow restless, I up the ante with a barrel of beer followed by a donkey pulling a giant, oaken cask of vin on a rustic cart surrounded by garland-festooned maidens singing of the coming rut.
At this point, I take a potty break that extends to a shower, a full-night’s sleep, and breakfast with a friend. Coming home mid-Saturday afternoon, I can hear the party in my building from two blocks away. When I arrive, I am hailed in the hallway as though a sailor long lost at sea and presumed dead. They cannot believe their luck at seeing me before them. If anything ever called for drinks, this is it.
By now, the building truly has become a hive. Industrious worker bees fly in and out of open doors carrying plates of food, newly cooked, cork screw reinforcement, “the CD I’ve been looking for since dawn,” and buckets of ice. Other drones have been dispatched to perform specific tasks essential to the survival of the hive: get propane, buy toilet paper, cocktail olives and a bucket of chicken. People now are laughing and throwing their arms around complete strangers vowing never to part. I’ve had several of the newly devised cocktail christened hammer blow.
Even the stalwarts start to drop after 33 hours although a few wanderers cluster around a laptop, watching Google Earth of someone’s home town. 1990s Euro Pop and dance blares from the second floor—our version of house music. Someone on the roof is screaming “please” at the top of her lungs but in a manner that is asking for trouble rather than trying to fend it off as evidenced by her devilish laughter when the object of her desire relents. It’s 4 a.m. and a third wind, less gusty than the second but by no means trivial, has swept up those who were previously comatose and vivified them enough to reconnect with the source of their banging heads.
The sun is up splintering off the true believers, myself among them, who attend services at the Laney College flea. We are carrying the bucket of chicken and attracting roaming curs at an alarming rate. Once through the buck-a-head gate and safely among the heaving throngs we sober up enough to strategize our morning. First, we diversify our diet with corn-on-a-stick and fish tacos sold from a big truck. Then, we aim and launch into the souk earnestly searching for the Balenciaga parfum at a price more reasonable than the $100/bottle last seen at Nordstrom. We are immediately distracted by a table of nail polish in colors reminiscent of automotive touch up paint and buy several bottles including a small vile of glitter additive. It is, after all, June—the month of pride.
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