I spent Fourth of July weekend at a gathering for gay and bisexual men up in Lake County. I slept in a tent for four nights, hiked, swam, meditated, wrote (though not as much as I should have), wandered around, caught up with a lot of old friends (though not as many as I wish I had), made a few new friends, took part in rituals that were beautiful or silly or sometimes both at once (though I skipped the really messy one), ate terrific meals, helped Burt in the kitchen preparing a couple of those meals, danced around a bonfire until I was exhausted, continued dancing beyond that point until I was in a meditative state and my mind was blank, and other fun stuff.

There’s almost always a talent/no-talent show at these gatherings, but this one was especially elaborate and memorable, with an odd, rambling story about a teenaged girl searching for her absent father running through it and loosely (very loosely) tying the various acts together. Some standouts for me were my old friend Michael playing guitar and singing (his voice sounded stronger and more secure than ever), my new friend Eric singing what I assume is a number from some musical I don’t know (I didn’t think all that much of the number itself, but Eric’s performance of it was a showstopper), Naveed reading from a book of sexual advice (I don’t know how to convey what was funny about it, but it was absurd and very funny), and the finale of the show, in which the girl meets a giant papier-mâché caterpillar and — well, no, I don’t know how to describe that, either, but it was also very funny. Kudos to Aaron for tying all the pieces together with such, um, flair.

My contribution was an early scene from my work in progress, the as-yet-unnamed rewrite of Magic Flute, with myself as Papageno and my friend Paul as Tamino. I sang Papageno’s entrance song and we read the scene that follows on it. It went over very well, and afterward one of the men told me that German is his native tongue, that he likes Flute very much, that he doesn’t care much for productions that move an opera to a new setting just for the sake of being different, that he bristled at the new words when the scene started, and that by the end of it he was won over because he could see that it wasn’t going to be Flute with a few cosmetic changes but a fully thought-out and independent story. As that is exactly what I hope to get across in this work, that was very gratifying to hear.

Another high point was the commitment ceremony that my friends Greg and Tad held. They wanted to hold it at the gathering because it was here that they met five years ago. It was especially poignant because Tad has been battling leukemia for about a year now; it’s in remission now, but of course that could change at any time. But then, so it could for any of us. The doctor who first diagnosed Tad’s illness was another regular at the gatherings, much loved by all of us and a wonderful fit and healthy guy, and he died unexpectedly of a heart attack a few months ago, and he was fondly remembered by a lot of us during the ceremony. Tad has been through a lot of pain, and he looked happy but very tired during the ceremony. It was beautiful to see our motley community gathered to witness their commitment to each other and their exchange of vows and rings.

It brought up some poignant memories, too, of my time in New York City in the late 1980s caring for my dear friend David Sherblom as he grew sicker with AIDS. I think it would have meant a lot to me to have had so many friends around us being so supportive of our love for each other. Instead, many of my friends back then advised me not to get so involved, to protect myself and let David’s family take care of him. I’ve mostly gotten over it now but the lack of support pissed me off no end at the time.

Another wonderful thing: There was an art show one afternoon, and I had greatly admired one painting in particular by my friend George, but could not possibly afford to buy it. When the show was over, George gave me the painting, saying that he wanted me to be the one to have it. Oh, man. George is a terrific artist and a lovely, quirky, big-hearted man. It’s a wonderful, whimsical, lively painting and I am already enjoying living with it and looking at it, both for its own sake and for the associations it has for me.

I don’t have to be back at work again for a week and a half! Took a long hot bath this morning when ordinarily I’d be on BART commuting to work. Then went back to bed! Now I’m up again and getting back to work on the Magic Flute project (still no official name). It would be a Very Good Thing if I could have a good first draft of about half the first act done by the time I go back to work. (Well, back to my paying work.)

We’ve been chatting on the WELL about Mexican food and when we first encountered it (I won’t even try to explain how the topic drifted there — we were talking about sustainable food practices and somehow we veered to this), and I wrote the following, and I feel like cutting and pasting it here, too.

I grew up in Southern California and can’t remember back far enough to know when I first had Mexican food. It was very much part of the landscape — tacos were a regular meal at home and in the school cafeteria, quesadillas were an option for a simple quick snack, there were nice restaurants where my family went sometimes and there were hole-in-the-wall places where I’d get a cheap lunch on my own or with a friend.

When I moved to New York City in the 1980s, there seemed to be one Mexican restaurant in all of midtown Manhattan, where I worked, called Caramba I think. I ate there once — very pricey, even allowing for everything in Manhattan being more expensive, like three or four times what I’d expect to pay for the meal back in California, and the food was very plain and bland. I was astonished.

Eventually I realized that Mexican food was an exotic novelty in Manhattan, not a genuine part of the local mix of cultures. And New Yorkers didn’t seem to be used to spicy food — I remember bringing homemade guacamole to a party in my first months in NYC, and I was feeling apologetic because it had come out a bit on the bland side and if I were at my own apartment I could stir in some more Tabasco or something, but our host didn’t have anything like that in the cupboard. But before I had much opportunity to express my apologies, somebody dipped a chip in the guacamole and took a bite and a moment later starting fanning her mouth and saying, “Wow! That’s got a kick to it!” Everybody loved the guacamole because it was on the hot side but not unbearably so for their tastes, and I had been thinking it was a botch because I could barely taste any heat in it. So I stopped apologizing and just accepted the compliments and figured I’d learned something about cultural differences between So Cal and NYC.

And I also discovered that Indian food, which was pricey and an exotic novelty in Southern California in those days and which I hadn’t eaten much of, was part of the local culture in NYC, and it was all over the place and very inexpensive, even for very good Indian food. So my diet underwent some changes in NYC.

So it turns out that Patrick, who likewise grew up with Mexican food (he’s part Mexican), lived in New York City at the same time I did, and remembered “that horrible place Caramba’s with the god-awful blue margaritas”. He said that the best Mexican he knew of in New York City at the time was in Astoria, Queens, in the back of a pizzeria. My response:

Oh, God, I forgot about the aqua blue margaritas. I never actually had one — an experience in my freshman year of college going out with a few friends and being persuaded to order an “Adios Mama” has caused me to distrust all aqua blue drinks ever since.

I lived in Astoria in ’88 and ’89 but don’t remember any Mexican food. On the other hand, it was my first real experience with Greek food. I lived half a block from a restaurant with a Greek name that translates to something like Papa George’s All-Nightery or Papa George Never Sleeps or something, and one day I got up the courage to go inside. Not a word of English to be seen or heard, including on the menu, which was a chalkboard on the wall. But I became a regular for a while, and the waiters got to know me and stopped wincing when I asked them to translate the chalkboard for me. Though most of the time I got the lamb with spaghetti — anything else, half the time the waiter came back from the kitchen to tell me they were out, but they never ran out of lamb and spaghetti, so after a while I usually just ordered that in the first place — and a glass of retsina.