“A good friend is a connection to life – a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.” ~ Lois Wyse
The mark of any great weekend can usually be found in the first stirrings of Sunday morning. If something exceptional and soul-warming happened, that initial crush of the Sunday scaries is a telling indication. Such were the dismaying notes of dread and disappointment that were starting to appear as Skip and I made our way to retrieve the bag of contact lens items and glasses I had inadvertently left at the Mandarin Oriental. As we walked in the brilliant sunlit warmth, and I munched on a mobile breakfast of croissants from Cafe Madeleine
Alas, I felt the keen pang of heartsickness upon leaving Boston. There was never enough time… but the results and aftermath of a wild weekend won’t mean much without the lead-up and adventures that ended on this bittersweet note of Sunday clean-up, so let’s return to the highly-anticipated start of everything on a sunny Friday, late in the morning, and the first stop at Price Chopper before hitting the road…
Excitement and electricity were in the air, and Mercury was in retrograde motion. The opening salvo of ‘Shipping Up to Boston’ fueled the very first turns we made, a driving song suggested by Skip, and one that marked the dramatic collection of music I’d selected for this trip, to mirror the dramatic year and half we’d all had. Checking out of our quick Price Chopper stop, I noticed that the total for the water and gum for the ride to Boston read out an ominous $6.66. Skip mentioned the infamous bad sign of the goocher before the boys in ‘Stand By Me’ began their coming-of-age journeys. I hoped we didn’t share a similar fate, not being in any mood for dead bodies near train tracks. Skip and I were far from boys, and had long since come of age, so I wondered if this trip would be a turning of the page in our own BroSox Adventures, if not an entirely new chapter. After 2020, it might be a completely new book. As such, I had been tamping down my own expectations and tendency to hype things up in breathless anticipation of our first trip back to Boston since 2019. It would be enough just to make this journey again after a year off.
This year, the drive itself into Boston would prove to be an integral part of things, worth mentioning for the quick pot-pick-up now that it’s entirely legal in Massachusetts to use cannabis – and we all know that I’m a mellow kind of girl. The process was fascinating, as the young woman who was taking Skip’s order stopped by and asked us to turn on the hazards (which I’d never done before). She was extremely affable, telling us about her recent effort in saving a baby bird from being run over by a car. Even indirectly, cannabis seemed to be making people much happier – or maybe this woman was an isolated moment. Across the street, we paused for a piss-stop (ten glasses of water a day will do that to a forty-five-year-old bladder). In the bathroom of McDonald’s a gentleman was just coming out of the stall, making guttural sounds and noises and carrying a crumpled paper bag, acting all kinds of crazy while I stood at the urinal and did my best to ignore his noises, and the responsive noises of Skip in the stall mimicking his nonsense. Everything was as if we never said good-bye. These were the moments I’d missed over the last year and a half – silly, foolish stuff that only good friends find funny.
The day ripened into afternoon as we arrived at the condo, dropping off our stuff and taking only what we would need for a night at the Mandarin Oriental. Since Skip’s dog Cooper had won us a gift certificate, it seemed only fitting to use it with Skip in tow. I’d been wanting to stay there properly ever since experiencing their spa, a visit to heaven on earth. We paused at the condo for drinks and snacks, then walked to the hotel, where I hoped to partake of some spa time while Skip napped.
The scent of the ocean was on the wind – an invigorating and intoxicating fragrance that would rival the sprays of Barney’s cologne I asked Skip to don for our check-in. Rain always seemed to bring out the sea – water calling to water – and in the air hung the first hint of the wet night to come. It wasn’t here yet – only the hints of it.
Mercury in retrograde reared its tricky head shortly after we checked in and I headed down to the spa. The vitality pool – their luxurious hot tub – was closed for service, leaving only the steam room, which cut my time there quite short. A disappointing moment, but after 2020 it was a minor incident not even worth inquiring about a rain check for. Returning to the room, Skip was back up, and we headed out for a beer and a seltzer, and a power meeting on dinner options, ultimately settling on Boston Chops. As we approach the breaking mid-point of our forties, and another summer of potentially shirtless moments (our pool is open and Skip has the wedding of Sherri’s sister to attend in the Caribbean next month) we had both been doing some intermittent fasting to shed our extra Covid weight. That discipline was suspended for the weekend, as we headed to a favorite steakhouse and tasted the first few frites, and a béarnaise sauce that was to-die-for. Breaking bread with a good friend you haven’t seen in a long time has got to be one of the most soul-enriching experiences our time here on earth still affords. As enjoyable and satiating as dinner was, it was merely a preamble for the fun we were about to have.
In previous years we had walked past and toyed with the idea of stopping at Cathedral Station, a gay sports bar of sorts. It’s been literally years since I’ve been to a gay bar, and this seemed the perfect moment to fix that, while watching the Red Sox game on television with Skip and his expertise in tow. We got a table and asked the host to put on the Red Sox game. Shortly after our beer and cranberry-club arrived, a figure decked out in head-to-toe Ariel garb from ‘The Little Mermaid’ began slinking around the room.
Oh how I love a drag queen.
And more than that, I love ‘The Little Mermaid’ even if brings to mind this rather embarrassing episode.
Put those two things together and I was utterly enchanted for the first five minutes of our interaction. Upon learning that Skip was straight, she quickly turned her back on him and spoke only to me – which she would do sporadically for the remainder of the evening. It’s practically impossible to ignore Skip, even with years of practice, but Layla did it flawlessly. While entertaining as hell at first, it quickly grew slightly rude and tiresome, to the point where I tried to avert eye contact so she wouldn’t seek out our table again.
The game was a doozy – and Skip seemed to be the only one in the whole place actually paying attention and watching, excitedly cheering the Red Sox on and screaming his usual nonsense; our initial plan to watch the game this year from afar didn’t seem all that bad, even if it rang a little hollow. Near the end of their comeback, I was blessedly in the bathroom when they made their winning play – and even though the bathroom was on another floor, I could hear Skip’s shouts and the pounding of his feet on the floor. I may have stayed there a little longer than necessary to allow the hysteria to die down, and to let Skip talk up his Tatum O’Neal game show encounter at a nearby table (for which he’ll have to write his own blog post because I’m not repeating that kind of desperation). Whatever he said left them supremely unimpressed as they all departed before I got back.
In his own advancing age, Skip has been making some hilarious mistakes when it comes to names and trivia, so when I mentioned Pedro Guerrero as a possible father to Vlad Guerrero Jr. he laughed and didn’t believe such a player existed. A quick Google search proved my answer not entirely foolish (well, except for the Jr. aspect – but I knew of a baseball player that Skip had never heard of, so it was a draw). He also confused the years that the Red Sox won the World Series – maybe it was his beer – and when I have to correct him on baseball trivia you know we are in a brave new world.
A few inside-side-notes to Skip directly:
It’s ‘Weber’ grill, not ‘Wagener’.
It’s ‘Holyoke’, not ‘Housatonic’ (or vice-versa).
It’s ‘Blue Jays’ not ‘Blue Rays’.
And, my personal favorite, it’s ‘Room service’, not ‘Room rental food’.
Bonus of not drinking: I had the frame of mind to jot these gems down.
We departed with a vow to return here again next year – it was a happy mix of people, maybe a little more giddy than usual to be out and about once again – and now a new memory of joy in Boston exists where only possibility lived before. Exiting and not really thinking through our next steps, we walked right into a first for our BroSox Adventures: steady rain. While we had skirted one quick thunderstorm during dinner and drinks at Hojoku before a game, on that night the skies had rather miraculously cleared right before the game, as if on cue from a very kind God. On this night, with Mercury in retrograde, the rain did not let up for a minute, and we found ourselves trudging through the wet night, and somehow laughing our way through every step. Finding a way to laugh while walking through rain without an umbrella is a testament to the magic of being with a longtime friend.
A final bite at Solas ended our first day back in Boston on a filling, and happily fulfilling, note. We crashed quickly, and soon were out. Maybe we should have made more of a room at the Mandarin, but Boston had beckoned and we were at her wish and whim. Or maybe we did grow up a little, and such things as ritzy hotel rooms weren’t as important as time with good friends.
{To be continued…}
