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between the wines
Friday, May 31 2002setting: five miles south of Staunton, VirginiaBefore we learned Gretchen was sick, my mother Hoagie had been entertaining the idea of going with me to Arlington to see her poetry reading. But then this week when it seemed like Gretchen wasn't going to be able to do it, my mother started making other plans. More recently, after Gretchen committed to doing the reading, I managed to rekindle my mother's interest. But, for a variety of reasons peculiar to her personality, she had the crazy notion that the best way to get there would be to take a Greyhound Bus. Yes, she actually thought that. I'm pleased to say, however, that by sometime yesterday I'd managed to get her to change her mind. Our method of travel would be Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Hoagie likes Enterprise because they actually send someone out to your house to pick you up, as seen on teevee. I never really noticed it when I was growing up, but my parents have unusual hangups when it comes to using their own vehicles for transportation.
The guy Enterprise sends out to our place is always the same guy, since not everybody knows how to find Folly Mills Road. He's an oldish gentleman, and, as one might imagine, the topics of his conversations are largely restricted to such non-controversial topics as the weather and the good job VDOT did when they "fixed" Old Greenville Road. Oops! Actually, Hoagie and I feel a little nauseated every time we drive through that swath of unnecessary landscape-insensitive destruction, but how was he to know? "Yeah, they did a good job," I agreed.
Nothing unexpected happened on the three hour drive to Arlington. Hoagie had warned me not to speed before we left, but she was so comfortable with my driving on the interstate that she didn't complain about my going 75 miles per hour most of the way. She seemed a little surprised by how non-aggressive my driving is. I never tailgate, I rarely use my brakes, I never change lanes without giving a signal, and I keep an eye out for the adolescent children of millionaires (they're everywhere).
Arlington is an especially ugly city. Buildings seem to be arranged in a way that maximizes stylistic clash. Picture a building made entirely from awkward imperfectly-fitted rectangles of mirrored glass squatting beside a cheap attempt at Jeffersonian Classicism. That's Arlington. But Arlington's biggest æsthetic sin is the absence of history. The whole thing looks like it was thrown together from prefab parts about two weeks ago, as if lifting the corner of some café salon mini-mall would reveal trampled clover and a smashed bunny rabbit. What with its earthquake cracks, even Los Angeles has more signs of history than Arlington.
We parked in the basement parking garage of the building housing the Ellipse Art Center and then, because we were hungry, we went across Fairfax Drive to look for a place selling something small and quick to eat. Unfortunately, all the restaurants, even the fast food joints, seemed to be impersonating chic nightspots for mainstream 25 year olds. It was only 4:30, so they had the somewhat depressing quality of a saloon in the mid-afternoon. Hoagie and I went into a Mexican restaurant and sat at the bar, immediately ordering chicken fajitas. Since we were sitting at a bar anyway, I decided to order a margarita as well. I know Hoagie likes margaritas, and, as expected, she ordered one too.
Whoah, those margaritas were strong! I'd be tempted to conclude that they're always this strong at this restaurant, because they come pre-mixed out of a machine, but perhaps something about the way the mix settles overnight gives the mid-afternoon margaritas a little extra kick. Anyway, Hoagie isn't as acclimated to strong drinks and I was wondering if we were going to be in a fit state to meet Gretchen's parents, who would be coming to the reading tonight from their home in nearby Silver Spring. They had originally been planning to go to New York to hang out with a group of people who have hung out with their pet tribe of African Jews, but somehow Gretchen convinced them to come to Arlington instead.
Gretchen was the first to arrive, looking a little overwhelmed by being out in the world. She'd spent most of the last two weeks convalescing at home, staring at the same uncaring walls. We were outside when we met and we just kerplopped down there on the sidewalk because Gretchen needed to rest. Before too long, both of Gretchen's parents had arrived. Her Dad had a brand new digital video camera, as his old one had been stolen during a recent visit to his favorite tribe of Jewish Africans.
Hoagie had actually visited Gretchen's parents once before on her way north to Connecticut, but this was the first time I'd seen them together.
[REDACTED]
It turned out that our rendezvous had been scheduled hours before Gretchen's reading and we were all supposed to eat out together. Happily, the Mexican lupper Hoagie and I had shared hadn't completely ruined our appetites.
We went to a restaurant called the Flattop Grill and ordered food under their peculiar system. The grill, you see, is run as a buffet. You go to a salad-bar-style array of stir fry components and combine them together in your bowl and then hand them to the chef and he cooks them up for you. If you don't like what you get, it's your own damn fault. As I see it, the main problem with this system is that it's too much like cooking. When I go to a restaurant, most of the reason I'm there is to delegate the balance and seasoning of my entree to a professional chef. When it's on me to throw together a stir fry, I feel like there's a spotlight shining on my ignorance. Do these two things really go together? How much will these mushrooms cook down? Is this red sauce mild or spicy? In the context of a fancy-looking buffet, it didn't seem appropriate for me to be tasting ingredients as I added them, but that's the only way to get it right. That's how cooks do it, and they're professionals.
Under the continued effects of that one margarita, Hoagie's memories of her recently-deceased horse (a subject brought up by someone at our table) suddenly overwhelmed her emotionally. It was about as odd as the time I saw Jessika cry.The Ellipse Art Center has the conventional appearance of a contemporary art gallery. None of the art was even remotely shocking, though some of it had a intriguingly whimsical quality.
This evening's poetry readings were part of an event called "Reading Between the Wines." There would be poems read, then there would be a flight of wines to taste, and then there'd be more poems, and then there'd be another flight of wines. The poets selected for the reading had been drawn from hundreds of submissions. Since she'd been awarded an honorable mention, Gretchen read first.
Considering she didn't think she'd even be able to do it, Gretchen did amazingly well, Whatever nervousness she might have otherwise had was completely suppressed by the exhaustion of her illness. It gave her poems a serenely relaxed quality that they might not otherwise have had. She even dedicated her poem "Love" to me, her "beloved." LoveIt's true about the burn,
and the way the heart is pulped
and reshaped, sometimes
with a shaving brush,
sometimes a sickle.
Love is unusual. Promise me my red blood cells
will stay donuts, not morph
into reliefs of your hands.
The Scientist in you knows
all about this; the Creator
in you is raving to toy with me.
You're capitalized! I'm
even more boldfaced. Why does the world pretend it's
commonplace?
Nothing
is more unusual. The first flight of wines were all white wines, Chardonnays I think. None of them tasted like pickle juice and I would have been pleased with any of them in great quantity if they could be obtained without expenditure. But that's just my initial reaction. The quasi-objective discussion of flavor, especially with the assistance of an almost astrological wheel of flavor classifications, seemed to place the entire exercise in an almost intellectual context. I actually found myself caring more about the flavor than the prospect of catching a buzz, if you can believe that.
The second-place winner was a woman who had an almost "performance poet" quality to her reading. It wasn't obvious in her poetry, but I got the impression that she spent a lot of time thinking about men in the way that insecure women do. And then I heard her rhyme fire with desire, something that precious few poets can get away with (the Backstreet Boys not withstanding).
The last poet, the winner of first-place accolades, was an older gentleman with the shtick of a standup comic. This was perfectly appropriate to the mood of the audience as they grew restless for the second flight of wines. The first poems he read were tightly-crafted in the way that I admire in Gretchen's poetry, but the poems he read later tended to ramble a bit, rather like prose. In between his poems he'd tell us funny little anecdotes, and a few too many of these were about his mother. What with the accessibility of the more prosy of his work and his manifest graciousness towards the other poets, he was a huge hit with the parents.
During that last flight of wines, all of them Cabernet Sauvignon reds, my mother was in such a chirpy, punchy mood that she heckled the master of ceremonies a bit more than a sober person would think appropriate. Actually, it was rather interesting how quickly order broke down in that last flight of wine. You'd have thought it was a tequila tasting. Indeed, I don't think anyone actually said the event was over. People just sort of started talking to each other and the din rose up and drowned out the guy at the podium. Finally people started getting up to leave.
For a combination of reasons, I ended up driving the rental car to Gretchen's parents' house in Silver Spring with two passengers: my mother and Gretchen's mother. Gretchen's mother was essential to keep me from getting lost. My mother was essential to keep her from spending the night in jail.
Back at Gretchen's parents' house, we were eating cookies (or pretending to) when suddenly Gretchen decided we should call up my cousin Bumble who lives in nearby Tacoma Park. Hoagie had been telling Gretchen various things about Bumble, and Gretchen was intrigued. Not only is Bumble a vegetarian, but she is also the pink sheep of our family. Just like one of the Vice President's daughter, she is in a committed long-term relationship with another woman. But then we realized that we didn't have a her phone number. At this point everyone lost interest except for Gretchen's father, who grabbed a phone book and periodically read out the names of various people matching what we knew about Bumble. He then went downstairs to the computer and did some internet research, eventually unearthing her results in some foot race competitions. By now the "let's call Bumble" idea had consolidated into a comic thread through our conversation, and, by way of contribution, I would say such things as, "Let's go to Tacoma Park and cruise around looking for Subarus and rainbow flags."[REDACTED]
Gretchen and me in the land of poetry (the Ellipse Art Center in Arlington, Virginia).
My face on the viewfinder of Gretchen's father's new videocamera.
He's even more gadget-obsessed than I am.
Gretchen's mother is on the left and her father is on the right.
When it doesn't make you cry or fall asleep, poetry can sometimes make you smile.
My mother Hoagie before the reading of poems and tasting of wine.
Gretchen moves through the audience.
Gretchen reads her poetry.
A view from above.
Wall art viewed from near the floor at the Ellipse Art Center.
A "bird lady" with wacky feet at the Ellipse Art Center.
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