Dreams and Nightmares 13: Burnt Spatula


13 Burnt Spatula


We were standing in my kitchen one summer evening. Paul and Jimmy had flown out from Cincinnati for a short visit. I remember it was dark, but we were just getting to the point of making dinner. We were having a stir-fried something, and I was using a wooden spatula.
It’s a wonder we ever got anything done, really. The three of us would spend most of our time teasing each other, commenting on movie stars or singers or other gay idols, and making constant jokes about whatever we were doing that would keep us laughing and snorting until our cheeks hurt.
As we were standing there chuckling, The house began to shake. Paul screamed. Jimmy stared at me, wide-eyed. And I began to howl with laughter even as I continue to stir. “It’s just an earthquake,” I told them. “It’s nothing to be concerned about.” I was trying to calm them. And just as I said that there was another jolt! We all three screamed and then held our sides as we laughed. 
It wasn’t until I straightened up that I noticed that the spatula got burned. I had left it in the wok. I still keep it in the drawer to the left of the stove. When I see the burn marks, I remember that night, the earthquake, my friends Jimmy and Paul—now gone, how much we loved each other and how happy we were together.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dreams and Nightmares 4: Disinvited

Disinvited In the spring of one of those years in the late 80s I heard that my youngest brother was going to get married. Weddings are always huge family events, with many of the plans happening at all intervals and in chaotic ways. Vince decided that he didn’t want to go in so I made reservations to fly alone. I would use that time to reconnect with some old friends in Cincinnati, Jimmy with whom I was especially close, and my cousin Paul. I was happy and relieved that Paul and Jimmy had become friends because I had felt guilty about leaving both of them behind when I moved to San Francisco. Sometimes we get so absorbed in our day-to-day lives that we don’t realize how much time is past. But suddenly it was three weeks before Kevin’s wedding and I have not received an invitation. Not unheard of since the formal invitations were more of an obligatory detail rather than an actual guest reference. Yet even in a family as large as mine this was an unusual oversight. I called my mot
Read more

Dreams and Nightmares 1: Driving throught Rabbits

Driving Through Rabbits  My friend Denise and I had planned our trip from Cincinnati as well as we could. We both would need our cars in California so we decided to drive separately, together. We didn’t know how long it will take us to get to there, but we figured it would take five or six days. Looking back from an era when we have electronic supports for maps, planning, and finding resources along the route, it seems like a rather risky and difficult trip to undertake, but at the time it seemed ordinary. I can’t imagine now taking off and driving across the country not knowing where we would stay, or the exact path from day to day. But that’s what we did.             We left on the morning of June 5, 1981, and headed west. Through the use of flashing our headlights and beeping our horns we signaled to each other when we need to pull over to go to a rest stop, or to get something to eat at a restaurant. There we would plan our next leg of our journey, including looking for a h
Read more

Dreams and Nightmares 2: Panic in the Break Room

Panic in the Break Room The Flood Building stands at Fifth and Market in downtown San Francisco. It was built before the 1906 earthquake and was considered one of the new “skyscrapers” at the time. Now it’s dwarfed between real skyscrapers, but it holds onto a classy style of architecture with certain elements that no longer exist. The doorway and windows have carved ornamentation. There is a solidity, an ornate heaviness which proclaims stability and protection for the people inside.   There are marble floors in the hallways, real wooden stalls in the bathrooms, and windows that actually open to let in fresh air during the many nice days enjoyed by the city.             In the early 1980s I was working for a health insurance company whose offices were in the grand old Flood Building. Each morning I would emerge out of the MUNI station after my commute from the Sunset neighborhood, and come up to meet the decorated façade. The antique elevator, with its folding gates, would tak
Read more