Our second day in Boston was bright but slightly overcast. The flowers were all in bloom, and there was a breeze, on the cool side, which made for good walking conditions. Andy slept in and I went shopping for some snacks and whatever other silly triflings offered themselves up. Such a simple endeavor, but what a wonderful return to something I’ve not been able to do in such a long time!
Boston in spring bloom will always be a balm on the most troubled soul. These happy little faces peered out everywhere I went, a reminder that whatever state the world wound its way into, nature would maintain its beauty.
Meanwhile, music played in the mind as I walked throughout the city…
You’d be so easy to love
So easy to idolize
All others above
So worth the yearning for
So swell to keep every home fire burning for…
We’d be so grand at the game
So carefree together that it does seem a shame
That you can’t see
Your future with me ’cause you’d be, oh
So easy to love
Returning to the condo, I picked up Andy for our tradition of washing the rings. Shreve, Crump and Low is still blessedly in business, so we made our way to Newbury Street to have our wedding rings cleaned. We perused the gems and jewelry, but stayed downstairs instead of straying to the more tempting second floor of watches. When you’ve just replaced a furnace, a pink-diamond-studded watch is not on any list of priorities, sadly.
Neither is this cherry red Shelby, replica or not, but I asked Andy to pose in front of it anyway, on a stretch of Boylston beside the Lenox Hotel. Boston is lined with memories of past adventures, and we added this little encounter with Miss Shelby to that lovely reservoir.
Into every anniversary we usually add something new – in this case it was our first dinner at No. 9 Park – a Boston classic that we’ve somehow never managed to try until now. Peering over the edge of Boston Common, it made for a cozy little space perfect for the windy evening. Andy began with some recommended Blanton’s bourbon in this sunny sour, while I took the bartender’s suggestion for an elderflower and citrus mocktail.
I began with this beautiful red snapper crudo, served with rhubarb, watermelon radish, and kumquats while Andy enjoyed some shrimp.
We haven’t had an opportunity to break out the blazers in such a long time that it no longer felt like a burden.
No. 9 Park sent out a round of champagne, which Andy had the responsibility of finishing – a lovely complement to our anniversary weekend.
We both decided on the octopus for our entrees, and it was tender and almost creamy – a far cry from my three-hour braising attempt several summers ago. Best to leave the octopus to the experts, as I simply have to admit defeat when it comes to preparing certain dishes.
Topping the meal off was a pair of desserts – this was my mango dish; Andy chose a pineapple one. Both were grand endings to another delicious meal. Boston was welcoming us back in ways both sweet and satisfying.
The city looked and felt differently from when we last met. In a year fraught by a pandemic, Boston had been forced to update its cobblestone-weighted history and forge a new way, like the rest of the world. Yet spring still returned, and as we made our way back to celebrate our 10th and 11th wedding anniversaries, it felt like there was hope in the cool air. Happily, we would find Boston filled with blooms and sunshine and all the typical accoutrements of a proper new season, because no matter what happened in the previous year, spring would do her song and dance.
As we pulled out in Andy’s least favorite car ever, it felt strange and wonderful to be going somewhere at last. The drive was a sunny one, with a perfect blue sky studded with the occasional white cloud, and we arrived to blooms and blossoms along every path.
The Southwest Corridor Park – our main route and access to the condo – had just begun its season of glory, with everything from the lowliest geraniums to the American dogwoods that flowered even before their foliage deigned to peek through.
Even more dramatic was this yellow-hued bleeding heart, whose pink flowers danced thrillingly against a sea of chartreuse leaves, the combination a pretty little marriage of color and light – a celebratory pas de deux emblematic of all the love that was in the air.
There was music too, sweet music that called to us from memory, and a soundtrack largely culled from the work of Cole Porter.
You do something to me
Something that simply mystifies me
Tell me, why should it be
You have the power to hypnotize me?
Let me live ‘neath your spell
Do do that voodoo that you do so well
For you do something to me
That nobody else could do…
Andy graciously provided the new fragrance that will mark a new memory: Tom Ford’s latest Private Blend ‘Soleil Brûlant’ – an exquisite spring and summer scent that has already carved out a place in my cologne-loving heart.
After a largely gray and drab winter of discontent, the colors and sights of Boston were again a wonder to behold, and seeing them after such a long time away imbued them with an even greater freshness and potency.
We dressed for our anniversary dinner at Mistral – which was the only restaurant from our original trio of wedding restaurants that remained open. A sad commentary on what the past year has wrought, but we focused on the magic of Mistral and had a lovely dinner.
Andy tried out their Tahitian sidecar while I opted for this lemony fresh mocktail. We looked around at the other diners and felt a jolt of normalcy. Simply dining in the vicinity of other people was tinged with a giddy nostalgia.
Pistachio chocolate profiteroles capped off a wondrous meal, and I thought back to our very first dinner as a married couple eleven years ago. Many memories had been made since then, and we carried all the memories from the ten years before that, when we first met in 2000. They felt both far away and impossibly recent – the ticking of time a constant and unnoticed rhythm that fades into itself unless marked by something memorable, like this return to Boston.
“Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.” ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen
It should come as no surprise or secret that one of the things I’ve missed most in the past year-plus of not traveling is the joy and indulgence of staying at a hotel. There is something thrilling about inhabiting any home-away-from-home, especially if an establishment is skilled at the art of hospitality. Auspiciously, that spell away from such joy is about to come to a happy ending, as I’ve just booked a visit to the Mandarin Oriental in Boston for next month. No other hotel has their hospitality game as together as the team from MO.
My first brush with the Boston Mandarin Oriental came shortly after they opened their five-star spa and I won a certificate for a massage. Ever since then, I’ve been spoiled for massages and services, as the experience was beyond any other I’ve had the pleasure of enjoying. It isn’t only their spa that’s amazing – all of their services and spaces have proven exquisite, from the lobby to the restroom; I’ve stopped in whenever I’ve been in Boston, sometimes for a spa treatment, and sometimes just for a cocktail.
My first proper overnight stay at a Mandarin Property took place a little later in Washington, DC, for my cousin’s wedding. The pool and spa and other on-site amenities were such that one barely had the need to wander far to find beauty and relaxation – and the wedding reception that took place at the hotel itself was an essay in celebratory refinement. Since that time I’ve been waiting for the right moment to indulge in a stay at their Boston location, and when Skip and I started planning this year’s Boston trip, it felt like the perfect time.
We’ve booked a room to celebrate our comeback for another BroSox Adventure. Combining a Red Sox game and the fortuitously-tied LGBTQ+ Pride celebration in one glorious June weekend, it will mark a return to everything we once loved in an age of uncertainty and ultimate triumph. Boston, baseball, friendship and hospitality ~ I can’t think of a better place than the Mandarin Oriental to honor such a tradition.
“True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the stranger on his own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who ‘have found the center of their lives in their own hearts’.” ~ Kathleen Norris
NEW FRIENDS SILVER
OLD FRIENDS GOLD
WE’RE LIKE DIAMONDS
TRUTH BE TOLD
PEOPLE COME AND PEOPLE GO
WE KEEP SHINING SOUL TO SOUL
For our first few BroSox Adventures, the theme song was ‘Something New’ – it felt like a good embodiment of my friendship with Skip, but after our epic 2019 excursion we were planning on shaking things up a bit, since it was no longer so new. The world took care of that for us in 2020, shutting down all travel entirely, and forcing a change-up upon us even if it wasn’t entirely welcome. As we plan our return to Boston this year, it seems like the right moment for a new song to pair with the moment. As Skip is the newly-obsessed fan who brought me back to RuPaul’s Drag Race earlier this year, it’s fitting to make this one of the theme songs for our next journey.
SUN WENT DOWN IN OUR HOMETOWN
THEY ALL GOT MARRIED, I DIDN’T STICK AROUND
I SET MY SIGHTS ON HOLLYWOOD, OH, OH
I NEVER WENT HOME AGAIN, WENT HOME AGAIN
MOST THINGS CHANGE, BUT SOME THINGS DON’T
CAUGHT IN A CYCLE LIKE THE TWILIGHT ZONE
THEY WOUND UP IN THE LOST AND FOUND, OH, OH
NEVER HEARD FROM AGAIN, HEARD FROM AGAIN
The break of 2020 was a good delineation between those first chapters and what is to come. In many ways, we are starting a new story, a new journey, as we are both in very different places than we were when we last took Boston by gleeful storm. A couple of years into those early adventures, I remember sitting in Fenway Park remarking that I hoped we would still be doing this when we were 80 years old. To sustain it, we change and evolve as the years pass, and the world crumbles and rebuilds itself around us. Throughout it all, we maintained and sustained a modern-day friendship – by texting and social media interaction and the occasional socially-distant meet-up for shopping at Trader Joes or a shared coffee in the Starbucks parking lot, shouting from our cars as a late-winter snow shower began spitting from the sky.
NEW FRIENDS SILVER
OLD FRIENDS GOLD
WE’RE LIKE DIAMONDS
TRUTH BE TOLD
PEOPLE COME AND PEOPLE GO
WE KEEP SHINING SOUL TO SOUL
It takes quite a bit to break through into my true friendship circle, but once that happens, when my armor is breached, I tend to be quite loyal. Skip’s loyal in the same way, and I always feel a badly-needed sense of safety when I’m with him (and his amazing wife Sherri for that matter). During this past year, most of us have come to realize the importance of friends and family, and the way the simplest interaction and contact is vital to our well-being.
As we begin planning for our return to Boston, we know how much the world has changed. Will it go back to what it was before? I don’t know. Certainly not yet, and certainly not by June. But what has remained blessedly stable is the friendship we share, and the excitement we feel whenever the thought of a Red Sox game rears its head at this time of the year.
KINDA LOST TOUCH, BUT WE NEVER FELL OUT
FROM HAPPY TO HEARTBREAK, TURNING UPSIDE-DOWN
AND EVEN WHEN THE CHIPS WERE DOWN, OH, OH
I ALWAYS KNEW I HAD A FRIEND, I HAVE A FRIEND
NEW FRIENDS SILVER
OLD FRIENDS GOLD
WE’RE LIKE DIAMONDS
TRUTH BE TOLD
PEOPLE COME AND
PEOPLE GO
WE KEEP SHINING
SOUL TO SOUL
Gearing up for a couple of Boston weekends in the not-too-distant future, our first trips in far too long, I’m doing my best to contain my excitement, as too many exciting plans have been dashed int he past year. Instead, I’m taking a contemplative look back at some previous visits, such as this one from April 2019, in which a relatively large contingent of some of my favorite family and friends descended upon the city for one spectacular weekend. My Mom and my niece Emi arrived first, and I had an early dinner with them, then Kira joined me at the Copley Fairmont, and we made our way to the condo where the Montross family was cozily ensconced on a rainy and windy night. It remains one of my favorite Boston weekends that somehow worked out perfectly. Bonus: Madonna had just released ‘Medellín‘ adding to the magic and majesty of the moment. And soon, we shall begin a few new Boston chapters…
For the first time in forever, I got to do one of my favorite things in the world: plan a Boston weekend and reserve some restaurant dinner options for our wedding anniversary. We missed out on celebrating out tenth last year, so this time it’s going to be #10 and #11 at once. Originally I had thought we’d be doing a ten-year encore of that happy May day a decade ago, with the same cast of characters invited (missing Andy’s Dad) and going out to the same places. That was part of why we selected such stalwart establishments like Top of the Hub and Mistral and the Bristol Lounge at the Four Seasons.
Then the world stepped in and shut everything down, so no one was going anywhere. Worse, two of those restaurants ended up being casualties of COVID: Top of the Hub and the Bristol Lounge. So this year, we will return to Boston for the first time in months, taking tentative steps to something that resembles regular life, while celebrating the place where we got married so many years ago. The lessons of 2020 have taught me not to have great expectations, while enforcing the necessity of holding onto hope.
They’re having a rising season thus far, as the Boston Red Sox keep trundling along, and they have a series of home games in early June, the typical time Skip and I make our way to Boston for our annual BroSox Adventures. This year we are trying to resume the tradition after a year off when the world fell to pieces. There is much to catch up on – not just the changes the have come over Boston, but the deeper changes that a few quick meet-ups over the last year could never recapture.
Much like my upcoming anniversary weekend with Andy, I’m not making detailed itineraries – this is no time to tempt the fates. Instead, a more general announcement will go out, because I’m finally feeling a genuine sense of hope and happy gatherings on the vaccinated horizon.
That’s how this Sunday is vibing for me – hope and happiness and looking to the horizon. Even as the rains come – and we are badly in need of them – there are plans set not in stone, but in the wisps of Palo Santo smoke. Go Red Sox – we’re coming back, and it’s going to be a whole new ball game.
The devastation of missing pretty much all the social event traditions of 2020 was hitting me a little harder than usual when I wrote this somewhat-bitter post about canceling this year’s Holiday Stroll. Kira and I hadn’t missed one since we started strolling back around 2011. While I’ve done my best to make the most of 2020 as a year for resetting and clearing the entire deck of social activities, this one left me sadder than others. Maybe it was because I was hell-bent on making it happen in the face of all odds (going so far as to entertain a possible day trip on which I’d meet Kira on her lunch break and do a quick walk up Charles Street in half an hour then drive home). Maybe it was because I wanted to hold onto the one thing that might make us feel normal again. Maybe I just desperately missed a friend I haven’t seen since last winter. Instead, all I could do was recap our almost-decade-long archives of holiday strolls… or was it?
When seeking out a photo of me and Kira from last year’s stroll, I ended up back in the already-dusty vaults of folders that held pictures from early 2020, in the relative innocence of January and February, when most of us (with the notable exception of the fucking President) had no idea of what was about to happen to the world. As I opened up a few photos from a mid-January Boston weekend with Kira, I stumbled upon a group that I had never posted, from a snowy walk in the Public Garden ~ the original site of our very first Holiday Stroll. Suddenly I realized we had indeed done a Holiday Stroll in 2020 ~ it just came strikingly and unknowingly early.
And so, on this morning in December, when we might have been waking in Boston to the last day of our typical stroll, I’m assembling a virtual post to mark the crazy kind of time-warping enchantment required to move months in a year that has already stolen too much from us. I will go back in time, resurrecting a beautiful snowy weekend and transforming it into our annual Holiday Stroll through photographs and words, the way art can reform and reshape the world, conjuring what could have and maybe should have been, crafting a life that exists in the wondrously messy muck between a wish and a dream.
On our very first stroll, circa 2011, it was snowing as we headed out on that Saturday morning. Just a light snowfall ~ nothing like the foot-high blanket that transformed the entire park for these photos. On that first excursion, the snow was a welcome hint of the holidays.
Quite frankly, we had no idea what we were doing. I mean to say that we had no idea that it was the start of a tradition that would mark our holiday seasons from that point forward. Upon seeing the snow, and just being stupid and silly, I remarked that this would be our ‘Holiday Stroll’ as we descended the steps of our building. As amused and dismissive as ever, Kira just went with it, and by the time we made our way to the edge of the Boston Public Garden, a new tradition had been born.
On that fateful morning, the snow fell slowly and lightly. There wasn’t a single gust of wind, and while cold, the beauty of the scene gave everything a slightly cozy feel to it. We huddled together as we walked through the Public Garden. I’d just purchased a hat on the way – one that went over my ears and fastened around my chin, so I was actually quite toasty. Kira was on the hunt for some new gloves or mittens, so we hastened our pace beneath the barren willows.
We made our way out of the Garden and onto Charles Street. I knew of a Tibetan store there that would have some heavy and warm gloves and hats and scarves, and Charles Street was a quaint walk, especially during the holiday season. There, Kira found a pair of gray patterned gloves, knit in a heavy wool, and she sighed in grateful relief for the added warmth. We were back on the street doing a bit of window shopping, and that was pretty much the event of our first Holiday Stroll.
We didn’t know then that our little walk would lead to so many future strolls, or that they would become such planned and plotted extravaganzas. Looking back in subsequent years I would find myself simultaneously trying to recapture the simplicity of that first walk, while making each and every ensuing year that much better. A crazy losing battle of my mind, but that’s what holiday madness is all about.
One doesn’t realize an ‘annual’ tradition on the first or second try, though, so the next year when I suggested another ‘Holiday Stroll’ we still weren’t quite sure it would be a thing, but we did it, adding a few more stops, incorporating some dining and drinks along the way, and making it quite a merry and festive affair. That solidified the event, carving it into our friendship history.
By the third year, I’d developed an itinerary, right down to the minute, and expanded our stroll from Saturday to Sunday. There was too much fun to be had in limiting it to a single day or walk. As with many best-laid plans, that first itinerary blew up in my face. The weather was foul – an infuriating mix of rain and wind that rendered umbrellas trifling things – and the stores nearest the condo that I had planned on hitting first, at precisely 9:15 AM after a ten-minute breakfast stop at Cafe Madeleine, didn’t open until 11. Approximately 75% of the rest of that ridiculously-detailed itinerary went by the wayside, a valuable lesson I needed to learn the hard way.
It was also becoming clear to both Kira and myself that these strolls weren’t about the actual walk, or the shopping, or the dinner reservations we sometimes had to hurry to meet. It was about the in-between moments, the lulls that revealed a true friendship, when you could sit with someone in silence and have it mean more than any fancy, gussied-up dinner appointment.
At the end of each of our Holiday Stroll weekends, it wasn’t the actual walk I remembered, it was a little jewel of a moment with Kira…
…the brief pause in the lobby of the Lenox Hotel, where we sat by the fire and the Christmas tee, setting our bags down and letting our feet rest…
… the endless parade of dim sum in the heart of Chinatown, where we stopped on a whim of sustenance…
… the sweet potato pause in the middle of ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’, wherein we would stop the movie and move our cozy party to the kitchen where we’d share a ‘Hot Sweet’ from the oven…
… the fragrant whiff of pine and fir as we passed an unexpected pop-up Christmas tree stand in the South End…
… the little Christmas markets that would suddenly appear as if by magic along our route…
… the ice skaters drifting by on the Frog Pond that made Kira insist on a questionable improvised ‘skate’ on the pond in the Public Garden…
… the Christmas trees suspended upside down from the vaunted heights of the Liberty Hotel, and the glass of holiday merriment in my hand as I waited for Kira to finish her work day next door…
… the bowl of steaming pho in a now-defunct restaurant along the endless stretch of Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge between Porter and Harvard Squares…
… the cups of hot chocolate we ordered as we ducked into a shop along Charles Street and the cold of the darkening evening crept into our bodies…
… those are the little things I remember when I think of our Holiday Strolls. Nothing extravagant or fancy, nothing exceptional or ground-breaking – just the simple camaraderie and companionship of a good friend in this precious pocket of the holiday season. We tucked into our time together as one would a favorite blanket on a blustery winter’s night.
And that is what I almost mourned this year, before remembering the stroll we took in January of 2020, when a Holiday Stroll would have been the furthest thing from our mind having just completed one. But it made for a tradition-saving episode that we can use as our Holiday Stroll 2020. Backwards, as so much of this year has been, and fitting all the more because of it.
In a way, this works out rather nicely. For the majority of our strolls, with the quaint and notable exception of our first, snow doesn’t usually play a big part in our holiday excursions. This year, we unknowingly made our trek through the snowy Boston Public Garden, site of so many happy times over the years, and kept our tradition intact, even if we didn’t realize it then.
Because we were strolling unawares, we also managed to recapture the simplicity and essence of that very first winter walk, when it was just two friends making their way through a snowy day.
The morning came with its own magic and enchantment too, like this Japanese lantern, something we don’t usually notice in the spring and summer, when blooms and buds draw focus to showier scenes. On that morning we paused and looked at each of its forest reliefs.
Without the hustle and bustle of the typical holiday time-frame, the Garden was largely uncrowded. The sun crept quietly into the day, joining us with its brilliance.
As cold as it was, the beauty of the day worked to warm us.
More than that, the companionship of a good friend worked its warming spell as well.
Unwittingly, we concluded our Holiday Stroll 2020 – about eleven months earlier than we usually do – and so I close this post with the hope that next year may return us to our typical trajectory in what will be our tenth anniversary of strolling together. Here’s to that future – and here’s to that January day of the past that enabled us to have this virtual stroll in a year when almost everything was lost.
At first there was the idea: a home away from home.
A place where spring might be found in February, and in my mind that’s all I could envision.
It was November, which always felt like the darkest month of the year. Thoughts of the coming spring, even if we hadn’t even entered winter, kept me going. As did the idea of a place in Boston, away from the campus of Brandeis. Having persuaded my parents of the wisdom of purchasing a condo in the South End of Boston, where real estate was just beginning to take off, I’d wasted no time in starting the search. This song led my heart, and I remember hearing it for the first time in the music store on the second floor of the Copley Place Mall, back when such garish haunts still had a home in Copley.
IT FELT LIKE SPRING TIME
ON THIS FEBRUARY MORNING
IN THE COURTYARD BIRDS WERE SINGING YOUR PRAISE
I’M STILL RECALLING THINGS YOU SAID
TO MAKE ME FEEL ALRIGHT
I CARRIED THEM WITH ME TODAY
The fall day on which I started the hunt for our Boston condo began in rainy form. Living on campus at Brandeis at the time, in a castle from whose balcony the city of Boston appeared like some little glowing visage of Oz far in the distance, I longed to be in the middle of the city, longed to find a place there as I’d dreamed all those years ago on one of our first visits to Quincy Market. Somewhere in my head, amid the magical little bull markets and twinkling trees, beside the wavy cobblestone walkways, and the centuries of history, I felt my own history being built.
The year was 1995, and I’d taken my father’s offer to start looking for a place in Boston at face value, hopping on the commuter rail into the city, and walking into the South End to the first real estate place I saw on Tremont. Expecting some introductory small talk, some vague promise of a meeting in a week or two, I suddenly found myself walking out of the office and onto Clarendon with the handsome real estate agent, beneath a suddenly-blue sky and the late afternoon sunlight.
Perhaps it was all part of his master plan, but the first offer was a smaller place right around the block on Clarendon Street. I remember a brick wall in the kitchen area, where a single small batch of dried, almost desiccated flowers, hung in a sad sort of way. It wasn’t ideal, and there wasn’t a T stop nearby, but the notion of waking up in white sheets, when the sun poured in and illuminated every crack and crevice of brick, was rustically appealing in its simple way. The idea of sharing that small space with someone suddenly imprinted itself upon my mind, an idea of making a home, and of finding love there.
The second home we saw was deeper into the South End. Even further from any T stop, it offered the most space, but was unfortunately divided into several smaller rooms lending it a claustrophobic feel, where no light reached some of the inner-rooms. That old real-estate adage about location, location, location ran through my head, and as we walked the long way back to the real estate office, I felt a little despair that we were down to one more option.
NOW, AS I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
THIS I PRAY
THAT YOU WILL HOLD ME DEAR
THOUGH I’M FAR AWAY
I’LL WHISPER YOUR NAME INTO THE SKY
AND I WILL WAKE UP HAPPY
It was dark when we visited the condo at Braddock Park. Located on the border between Copley and the South End, it was in a brick building along the Southwest Corridor Park. Steps from the orange line, and a few more steps to the green line, it was the closest to just about everything. In the night, I could locate where we were based on the twin hotels of the Marriott and Westin nearby, and the John Hancock Tower slightly beyond them. Their lights broke the blackness around us. It felt like we were on the doorstep of Boston. More than that, I somehow felt like I was home.
The condo was on the second floor, which rose even higher than a typical second story based on the fact that the first floor actually started about a dozen steps above the sidewalk. Coupled with high ceilings, we were indeed at the doorstep of Boston, and somehow looking down over it. Even without being there during the day, I could sense there would be good light. It was a floor-through unit with bay windows in the front and the back. A bit foolish to make such an investment without seeing it at both day and night, but something just felt right about it. There, in the darkness of a Boston evening, it felt right. Just me, and the city, and the night.
When November arrived, and the cold days settled in, it was time to close on the condo. My Boston dorm had taken on a decidedly dreary aspect ~ both in its suffocating communal shower, where a house centipede was lurking around every corner, and in the coldness of its painted cinder block walls, the sad little sink and mirror by the tiny window.
I WONDER WHY I FEEL SO HIGH
THOUGH I AM NOT ABOVE THE SORROW
HEAVY-HEARTED TIL YOU CALL MY NAME
AND IT SOUNDS LIKE CHURCH BELLS
OR THE WHISTLE OF A TRAIN
ON A SUMMER EVENING
I’LL RUN TO MEET YOU BAREFOOT
BARELY BREATHING
On the day we closed on it, the wind was strong and the air was chilled. It was November, and we’d turned past the point where warm and sunny days could still heat the earth. For such a transformational event, it felt oddly uneventful, and as my parents signed all the papers, and the condo became our second home, the little set of keys hardly seemed like they could open the portal to the next part of our lives.
It would be a couple of weeks before I moved in, and in those weeks I steeled myself for a life alone. Now that the deal was done, there was no reason for the real estate agent to hang around, and I was left by myself, with all the trappings of an exciting single life in Boston, but none of the happiness or excitement or hope. Gradually, by little and insubstantial bits of furniture old and new, I furnished the condo, in minimalist fashion by necessity, and sparsely by tentativeness. In those first few days, I wanted to take it all in in its most simple and basic form ~ the warm, newly-refinished hardwood floors, the bit of exposed brick wall in the bathroom, the little counter that separated our small kitchen area from the rest of the front room, the marble mantle around the fireplace from who knew how many long years ago.
While the main room had lovely recessed lighting in its ceiling, the bedroom was bereft of such luxury. A little fringed lamp was all I had to illuminate the space at night, and I slept on the thin almost-mattress of a cot we brought in until a bed could be ordered and delivered. There wasn’t a television or a stereo in the place, and I didn’t need or want for any. In that stillness and quietude, I forged a love for time spent alone. Somehow I knew it would be the singular love affair we all need to find to be ok with whatever ways our journeys wound.
AS I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
THIS I PRAY
THAT YOU WILL HOLD ME DEAR
THOUGH I’M FAR AWAY
I’LL WHISPER YOUR NAME INTO THE SKY
AND I WILL WAKE UP HAPPY
The idea of sharing this space with someone, or sharing a life with someone, was the way I romanticized in those days. And especially those nights. I played this song over and over, longing for such a scene, longing for companionship, longing for the fix that would heal my heart. I wasn’t quite sure how it had been broken, there simply came a day when, upon examining it, I realized that yes, there were cracks, there were fissures even as I didn’t recall the jolts that did it.
Was it the man who scraped my face so viciously with his stubble, the first man who ever kissed me, the man who took that special moment and in his alcoholic madness in turn took my innocence? I honestly didn’t think he had broken it ~ even when we saw each other randomly a year prior to that, when he told me it just wasn’t working out before I even realized we were actually dating. I was so young and naive, I didn’t even know that.
Was it my favorite Uncle who laughed at me when I was a kid, when in a rare moment of excitement I showed him a flower arrangement I had made and he asked with a smirk if I was gay? I couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve, and still I remember the sting of it, the way I hid in my room and cried until my Mom asked me what was wrong as I was avoiding my favorite Uncle and I just blurted it out in pain and anguish.
Was it when one of my only friends in college jokingly and derisively said he hoped I wasn’t going fag on him when I innocently pointed out the moon on our way back from dinner one night?
I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t any single event, maybe it was the gradual erosion of our lives, the mean stuff and tough stuff of life that eats away at all of us, some more than others, some much more harshly than others, until we reach a point where our hearts are so delicate and worn that they break at the silliest and most trifling of things. A culmination of continual little heartaches resulting in a break that is, at that point, almost a tender sort of relief.
IT’S NOT TOO NEAR FOR ME
LIKE A FLOWER I NEED THE RAIN
THOUGH IT’S NOT CLEAR TO ME
EVERY SEASON HAS ITS CHANGE
AND I WILL SEE YOU
WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT AGAIN
Then, at the not-so-ripe age of twenty, in that rather lovely year of 1995 ~ a loveliness I would come to appreciate more and more as the other years went by ~ those little breaks and cracks had forced me to rebuild a stronger fortress, a defiant set of armor that would steel me against future heartbreak. I needed that whenever I descended and entered the city. Only within the brick walls and the lofty vantage point over Braddock Park did I feel safe enough to let down my guard, to be myself and to be ok all by myself. It was in that way that I shaped a new sense of home.
My adult life was forged there, for better or worse, and it prepared me for hardships and celebrations and love and loss and loneliness and betrayal and redemption and survival. All those facets of living the fullest life, when we are brave enough not to shy away from those feelings.
AS I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
THIS I PRAY
THAT YOU WILL HOLD ME DEAR
THOUGH I’M FAR AWAY
I’LL WHISPER YOUR NAME INTO THE SKY
AND I WILL WAKE UP HAPPY
Home is a habit, and sometimes you have to make it up as you go.
Home is stability and safety, even when your own heart invites in all sorts of dangers.
Home is a quiet place of refuge when the wind whirls in wicked ferocity, when the rest of the world deserts you, when you have to face the demons all by yourself.
Home doesn’t have to be a physical space bound by wood and clay and windows, but when that place forms the background and base for those moments when you realize what home is, it can’t help but take on some of that history, to become imbued with some of that spiritual matter that we shed as we grow.
There, in that Boston wilderness of a heart tamed by a solitude and stillness, protected from another brutal winter by centuries of brick and mortar, buffeted by the history of a city defined by its singularly American story, of revolution and rebellion, of defiance and devastation, I made a home a quarter of a century ago.
I WONDER WHY
WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT AGAIN
I WILL WAKE UP HAPPY
Exactly 25 years ago, I took this selfie in my Brandeis dorm room. In the first days of November 1995 we were awaiting the closing on our new Boston condo, and until then I lived on campus and commuted to my job at Structure. The better I did there, the more hours they gave me, until I was working 35 hours a week while attending school full time. If I had class in the morning, then a closing shift at the store, I would get back to Brandeis on the 10 PM commuter train from North Station, arriving at my room around 10:40 or so. This picture was taken right about then, as I summoned the energy reserve of Youth and fought with the precarious emotional state of the same.
Occupying a single corner room in the upper turret of Usen Castle, I was largely left alone. With only a few more semesters of college to go, my heart had already flown from Brandeis to Boston, and supremely uninterested in the student body around me, my focus was on my work, and on the excitement I found in Boston rather than on campus at Cholmondeley’s, the campus coffee shop a few floors below my room. On Saturday nights, when I’d be holed up finishing homework after working all day, I’d listen to the other people in my class laughing and screaming with the delight of college-age enthusiasm, and want no part of it. At the time I felt slightly ashamed of it – I knew it was odd to prefer solitude, and I knew others would think me strange for it, yet I knew that I genuinely preferred to be by myself. I didn’t begrudge them their fun, nor was any part of me envious of the fun they were having. I was facing my differences, my social anxiety, and I was all right with it.
Madonna sang ‘You’ll See’ back when they played her on the radio, and I took it on as my saddest anthem. If I hadn’t been directly wronged by a lover it was only because I didn’t have a lover. Which was sadder? Being hurt from once being loved or not being hurt because you were never loved? My heart was intent on ravaging itself to find out. On the cusp of moving into Boston, I wanted to feel something. I wanted to feel everything. Even if it was heartbreak. Even if it was the heart breaking from happiness.
My birthday dawned as it usually does – quietly, calmly, without fanfare or excitement. Technically I didn’t come into the world until about 3 in the afternoon, so birthday mornings have been quiet since way back then. Andy slept in while I took a shopping walk on my own; when solitude is an option, it is made more delicious. Especially on birthday mornings.
I made my way downtown before doubling back and pausing with a slow walk through the Boston Public Garden.
As is typical of all things 2020, the pond was drained due to invasive wildlife. So accustomed to such bullshit have I become that it didn’t even register as disappointing. It was interesting to get this glimpse of how it works anyway – I love a behind-the-scenes, or below-the-water, peek at what goes on behind the beauty.
Meanwhile, the zinnias continued their blooming show nearer the condo. By early afternoon, I returned there just as the sun was growing hot. Like it always has, the condo provided comfort and respite from all sorts of weather, allowing only the best light indoors, and as the time of my actual birth arrived, we sat in the splendor of the space as Cole Porter played on the stereo.
With provisions from Eataly filling the dining table, we made a pre-dinner snack for ourselves, and I took a quick siesta in the bedroom – one of my favorite things to do, and very much a happy way of marking my birthday.
We dined at Eddie V’s, one of the closest restaurants so we wouldn’t have to be bothered with public transportation or an Uber, and on our way there were more flowers to help with the quiet celebration.
Low-key and lovely, my birthday came to its contemplative close. In a crazy year, we made the most of it, and that was more than enough. Anything that’s not a complete bonkers disaster has to be considered a stunning success at this point.
Boston retains its beauty, if you know where and how to find it. If that beauty is more subdued these days, and a little bit hidden, that only makes it all the more wondrous.
The body of a 44-year-old just one day removed from 45 is different from the one I had at half this age, but I’ve been taking a little better care of it now than I was back then. That’s what happens when you get older. Rather than fight it, it’s best to embrace those changes, leaning into ways to live a little healthier.
After returning from a pre-birthday dinner, I prepared to take a quick shower in the hazy nether region before another birthday. Forty-five years ago tonight I did not exist. In the way that birthdays sometimes bring about a moment of melancholy, I wondered briefly if there would have been any discernible difference in the world if I hadn’t entered it the next day. Even the most influential among us have very little say or sway in changing the world in sweeping ways; the best we can do is nudge and cajole in small ways the shifting trajectory of the universe.
Looking back to when I stood in the same bathroom twenty five years ago, I wondered at how much had truly changed. I didn’t feel all that different on the inside, but how unrecognizable the outside world had become from just five or ten years ago. Upon closer examination, I suppose I had changed quite a bit too, and not just on the outside…
After making a solo test-run day-trip to Boston a couple of weeks ago, I knew the city was as safe (if not safer) than where we were at in Albany, so Andy and I made our first journey out-of-state in many months for a birthday trip to Beantown. In Boston, masks were worn all the time – even on the street when no one else was around – and there are sanitizing stations at every store and entrance. Our plan didn’t involve much public interaction – two dinners out was all we had planned, and if we felt uncomfortable with anything we reserved the right to hunker down in the condo and not go anywhere. In the end, our time there was delightfully uneventful, even for a birthday get-away, and it felt good to be doing something closer to normal.
As we pulled onto Braddock Park, my heart leapt a little from simple joy. Oh how we have missed you! It reminded me of friends and gatherings and happiness and weddings and love. In the middle of the island, the fountain was playing and spraying its happy song, the trees were still green, and the gardens of the Southwest Corridor Park were dizzy with zinnias in full bloom.
We unpacked and settled in while sunlight poured into the bedroom and the air conditioner cooled the stuffy space. It hadn’t been opened to any air flow since March, and you could almost feel the condo breathing again. A ZZ plant stood near the window, still alive after all these months thanks to its water-storing tubers, like a little green camel. Hurriedly, I gave it a deep drink of water. Life stirred.
While Andy took a nap, I walked around the old haunts, meandering along Newbury Street and through Copley Square. The city was quieter, even more-so than the usual slumber of summer, and I embraced the change. Oddly enough, my time in Boston has never been to plug into the noise and excitement of a city, but to find the peace and stillness amid all the hustle and bustle.
Our first dinner was at Terra at Eataly – a new restaurant on the upper floor of Eataly. Its glass ceilinged beauty was given a dramatic flourish as a lightning storm descended and gave us a show of strobes throughout dinner; the universe was not going to let me leave the age of 44 without some drama. The storm let up just in time for us to make our way back to the condo. My last night as a 44 year old had arrived…
Let’s begin with the happy ending: this delicious berry crumble from Cafe Madeleine in the South End. It formed the last treat of a birthday trip to Boston, spent largely (and safely) in the condo, where Andy and I escaped for our first joint outing since the world lost its shit in March. One of the things I’ve missed most since then has been sweet treats from Cafe Madeleine, so on our last morning in town Andy walked down to pick this one up for me on the day after my birthday.
Our Boston jaunt will be recounted in the next couple of posts – they got delayed with the calamity that continues to be 2020, but will form a nice final flourish to the summer, and a foreshadowing of the fall; Boston has its act together when it comes to mask-wearing and sanitizing, and our condo can be its own little isolation oasis, allowing for us to visit the city without the worry of a hotel or public accommodations. That’s precisely what happened when we made our way back to our beloved city…
There’s something that I never really got to experience before Skip became a friend: the straight-guy bonding of a sporting event. Most of my straight male friends up until that time weren’t really into that ~ and if they were they weren’t including me on any of the fun (and to be fair, I likely pooh-poohed the notion in image or downright dismissal). Skip pulled back the curtain on all of that, and though it was a strange and often confounding landscape of over-priced beer, oversized t-shirts, and over-used crocs, there were glimmers and hints of what made baseball so captivating for so many in our country. There was, to begin, its history. Sepia photos lined the interior of Fenway Park, drifting back decades. There was also the ongoing saga of the Red Sox and their mostly-underdog glories. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there was the feeling of community in a stadium full of fellow fans, the way we were all there to enjoy ourselves, no matter how different or strange we might otherwise have appeared to one another. When Skip would heckle the other team, he got applause and cheers and support, knowing nods and friendly smiles, and as embarrassing and irritating as it might have been in any other realm, here it tickled me.
At some point in all the games, I would pause and look around at all the people en masse together. Maybe I appreciate it more considering the current state of our socially-distant world. But even back then, when standing shoulder to shoulder was commonplace, I felt the warm kinship of rooting for the home-team, to be a part of something in a collective sense ~ something that so rarely happened to someone who so unintentionally fought to distance himself from others. I owe many things to Skip, and showing me how it felt to be part of the crowd, to be included, will always be one of the most important ones. Here’s the second part of our baseball recollections:
BroSox Adventures 2018
The detailed, in-depth multi-part blog posts for our annual Red Sox game pilgrimage was combined into a single end-of-summer post since I took the summer of 2018 completely off from blogging (on Skip’s sage advice). That said, our Red Sox trip went on as planned, without the bothersome intent to capture it all for posterity. We still managed to remember and recap. That was the year we went on the hunt for a serial killer by the Charles River, Skip went dumpster diving and planking, and we took our trip in August rather than June, switching things up a bit. It was also the year I thought we could pawn him off on the bear community, and it was a dismal failure. A bit of payback for the I-Wanna-Dance-With-Somebody-who’s-not-you encounter a few years back.
SKIP’S TAKE ON 2018:
I just told this story the other day. How you were taking me on a “serial killer” tour while we were 3 sheets to the wind and me realizing halfway through that there was no killer we were just walking on dark half alleyways WAY TOO close to the Charles River and were probably going to fall in the water and drown just like the “murder victims” did. You recall the Bear Community much differently than I do. It wasn’t payback. I didn’t feel slighted. Quite the opposite. As a straight man I always assumed a “bear” to be 6’4″ with a dark beard and probably wearing a leather vest. I was shocked to see a bar full of guys who look very much like I do. And that was the moment that me, a doughy, middle-aged, dad-bod white guy who holds very little appeal to straight women, realized “Holy shit… I’m actually someone’s fetish!” No one offered to buy me a drink… but still. If I’m not mistaken this is also the trip that I brought an edible gummy that my brother-in-law had procured for me in Colorado. You mistakenly tossed out the half that had gone uneaten on the first night which then made me do a goddammned dumpster dive the next morning in a fucking Back Bay playground trash-can. Which you filmed without my knowledge btw…. asshole. SEATS/GAME: Another Saturday Night game. Loge Box not far behind home plate. Ray’s Pitcher walked three. Couldn’t throw a strike to save his life. I yelled so loud he could hear me. “You can’t fucking see the strike zone. It’s INVISIBLE!!! INVISIBLE!” He walked in a run. Got pulled. People high-fived me because I caused the run. Sox won. SIDENOTE: Red Sox won the World Series this year.
ALAN’S FOLLOW-UP: Listen, if you’re going to leave a ratty plastic bag twisted into a foil ball on the credenza for longer than a minute, I’m going to throw it out. I set that video clip to ‘Bad Boys’ and it was fucking brilliant. For some reason the crowd always loves your inane screaming. I do recall the word ‘invisible’ being hollered maybe three more times than necessary and then laughing at that. It’s one of those mysterious intricacies of game life that I still don’t quite comprehend. Fellow fandom? Shared joy in the abuse of the opposing team? Can’t we just get matching hot dogs and have that be enough?
I think that this was my favorite trip. They seem to have crazily gotten better every year which seems unlikely (and probably why the universe forced a year off). Soooooo many memories on this trip. For the first real time we had a “theme” aka “Chinatown.” Damn if it didn’t live up to it. Where to start and where to finish? Awesome sandwiches packed by you for the drive. Google Maps saving the day (and an hour and 20 minutes). Bleacher seats suck when you’re used to Loge Box or better. I did make friends with the “Set It Off” girls and we found them again downtown. Eating past close at a Chinese restaurant while the staff played cards waiting for us to finish. Amazing walk on Saturday. One of my favorite quiet and undersold memories: drinking on the stoop in the summer, just chatting and waving at passers-by whilst enjoying the remnants of a long awaited tradition. Unintended test run Chinese dinner where the waiter didn’t speak a lick of English. FINALLY getting my Peking Duck and it being so much more than I thought it could be. SEATS/GAME: Friday night game. First time we did the game on a Friday. Center/Right Bleacher seats. They sucked. Felt like the game was happening without us participating. First time ever we witnessed a Sox loss.
SIDENOTE: We had to leave first thing because I needed to race back to get to Mia’s dance recital.
ALAN’S FOLLOW-UP:Who knew Peking duck would become such an ordeal? Glad it was worth it in the end ~ and it’s a pretty cool testament to our friendship that one of the best parts of all these trips was sitting on the front stoop of the brownstone and watching the world go by.
BroSox Adventures 2020… 2021?
Originally, we had a brand new set of plans for this year’s BroSox excursion with a fancy night at the Mandarin Oriental (thanks to the above-photo of Skip’s dog Cooper – another story for another time) and a totally-switched-up game plan. That is obviously on hold until further notice, and until such time that we can make them happen, I’ll hang onto the memories here. Bookmark it for when you need a laugh at our silliness. As for the final word on our trips thus far, I have to give that to Skip, who in typical fashion puts our momentary sorrow for losing out on this year’s trip in perfect perspective: after five years of successively-excellent trips, maybe the universe was giving us a year off for an off-year.
SKIP’S FINAL NOTES: Holy shit going back in time brings back so many amazing memories. Just a true and unbridled camaraderie with one of the best friends I’ve ever been fortunate enough to have. When you look back at this tradition in such a way, a clarity is shed upon its evolution. It makes me exceptionally sad for this year’s lost trip. Yet I remain hopeful for next year’s trip. I expect it to be the best yet and I think in honor of all that is lost in this world, in this nation, and in this lifetime… we kick it up a notch.
