Fried & True

by Fay Jacobs

Heterosexuals had been watching themselves clasp and gasp on film since Birth of a Nation, but this was our very first chance to experience a filmed love story about people like us. It was magic.

  So, too, is The L Word.

  Of course, by comparison, Desert Hearts was G-rated for clasping and gasping. The L Word has abundant sex, lingerie, strong language, strong women, nudity and more abundant sex.

  It’s great and terrible all at the same time. Sure, I wish there was more diversity in the characters, less sex for sex sake, and a cast that looks more like lesbian America.

  But why quibble. The show is about people I know, have known, or might know in the future. And despite its flaws, that makes it very, very special.

  Time wounds all heels. I’m sorry I was so hard on your show, fellas.

  The L Word is for learned my lesson.

  March 2004

  LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH

  TWILIGHT ZONE, N.Y.

  I took a walk up memory lane and into the Twilight Zone last weekend.

  The place was the Chelsea Pines B&B in New York City, where I climbed toward heaven in a five-story walk-up and came face to face with memories of my high school prom. Yes, me in a dress. If staring at my old prom pictures didn’t make me feel ancient, schlepping up those guesthouse stairs surely did.

  About a year ago, in a search of lodging in New York, I discovered that my former high school prom date Jay (Fay and Jay, it was cute) was now the proprietor of an internationally known gay B&B in the Big Apple. If we’d only realized then, what we both know now, we’d have saved ourselves a lot of angst.

  But each of us, having found our way out of the closet in our own sweet time, reconnected last weekend and laughed our heads off about it.

  When Bonnie and I arrived at the guesthouse, my high school honey’s front desk staff greeted us warmly, with devilish grins. “Where’s your corsage?” said the cute staffer. Uh, oh. Infamous. He smirked as he offered us a tour.

  Jay’s father had owned a movie theatre, and Jay was the proud owner of thousands of fantastic old movie posters, hundreds of which adorned the B&B walls. Each room in the 25-room building was named for an old-time movie star, and the place was high homosexual and positively wonderful.

  The general manager pointed us (up) to our fourth floor Donna Reed Suite to await our host. Like luggage-laden Von Trapp Family Singers, we commenced the climb from base camp to summit.

  Oh boy, (pant, pant) to borrow a line from playwright Neil Simon, if I had known the people on the second floor I would have gone to stay with them.

  Winded but no worse for wear, we arrived at Donna Reed, flung open the door and (cue the eerie Twilight Zone music) discovered why the front desk clerk smirked. Enlarged, grainy, frightening Xerox copies of my 1965 prom pictures, yearbook photo, and other assorted artifacts adorned the walls over the movie posters. Bonnie and I used up what little breath we had left laughing.

  I especially appreciated the Thelma & Louise-ish picture of me, behind the wheel of my parents’ sports car, wearing a ridiculous grin and humongous, dramatically pointy white sunglasses.

  Actually, when I got finished laughing and gasping for oxygen, I was touched that Jay had saved all that stuff for, omigod, 39 (!) years. It doesn’t seem possible.

  But almost four decades later it is. And while I haven’t changed much (Ha!) movie posters sure have.

  “He knew her lips, but not her name…” “Backlash! Suspense that cuts like a whip!” and my favorite—certainly prior to political incorrectness—Donna Reed starring as Sacagawea.

  The film was The Far Horizon, IN TECHNICOLOR no less, and it was a far horizon indeed to see my high school photo plastered in the middle of the poster. Bonnie, staring at the yearbook graduation picture laughed that she had Jimmy Carter type lust in her heart at the sight of that innocent young thing. Weird!!!!

  When our host arrived, he came bearing flowers and a huge smile. We stared at each other, searching for our former young selves in the middle-aged gay people we’d become. I recognized him right away, even if he was letting his natural blonde grow in (!!). I noted that perhaps he’d forgotten I was always a red head.

  We only had the afternoon to reminisce, because Jay lives the life we used to: he works at the Chelsea Pines during the week and then he and his partner flee the city Friday nights for their weekend home in the Berkshire Mountains. We told him of our five years commuting to Rehoboth.

  Jay learned that Bonnie and I were celebrating what would have been our 22nd anniversary, if we hadn’t eloped to Canada last August, creating a muddled anniversary date. I learned the fascinating tale of his buying a run-down rooming house filled with “bums” and slowly converting it to the now-thriving gay guesthouse. It was a lovely reunion and we talked of doing it again, maybe here at the beach.

  As for the rest of the weekend, it had lots of blast from the past qualities. On Saturday afternoon we went to the Television and Radio museum on 52nd Street to see part of a documentary series on gay images on TV. The Saturday showing was The Early Years and included a 1964 episode of Espionage. Filmed in black and white, one year before my high school graduation, the program looked as prehistoric as my prom pictures.

  Jim Backus played a diplomat investigating a rumor that one of his staff was (big wide-eyed intake of breath) “a homosexual.” Lines like “You realize he is an expert in…antique furniture!!!” (gasp!), and “Isn’t he a little…light on his feet?” made the audience wince, then giggle. Frankly, as dreadful as the televised homophobia was, the treatment of women in the episode was even more disturbing, so lots of us have come a long way baby.

  And we went a long way, baby, all weekend. For the record, we’d get dressed for the whole day in the morning, and not return to Mt. Donna Reed until bedtime. One Stairmaster session a day was plenty.

  We spent time downtown in Chelsea and the Village, then uptown to Bloomingdale’s and Broadway. By Sunday, we toasted to our anniversary at a girl bar called The Cubby Hole on West 4th Street in the Village.

  In a very back-to-the-future moment, we played the state-of-the-art satellite jukebox, which can summon every recording ever made, and chose “our” song from 1982—Anne Murray’s “Can I Have This Dance.”

  As we sipped a drink and, to quote Anne Murray, “swayed to the music,” Bonnie slipped a bar matchbook over my way. She’d written our phone number on it, with the words “call me.”

  Cue the Twilight Zone music.

  Okay, we’re back, if not to the future, at least to the present. We’ve got six months to argue about whether to celebrate our anniversary again in August.

  In the meantime, if you happen to be heading to NYC, we heartily recommend the Chelsea Pines Inn. I’m sure my photos have been stripped from the walls by now. And I understand that the James Garner suite is fabulous. It’s on the ground floor.

  April 2004

  LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH

  MOW, MOW, MOW YOUR BOAT

  Much to Bonnie’s relief, I’ve kept the following story to myself for three long years. But the time has come to, well, come out of the closet about the riding mower.

  I’ve decided to do this, since I finally heard a more dramatic lawnmower story than our own. And the new story falls under the mantle of “no event is totally horrible if you can tell a good story about it.”

  So just let me say that when my friends up the street told me their lawnmower tale, I had to tell you ours.

  I’ll start by saying the obvious. Almost nothing is private in this town. I say “almost,” because the truth about our lawnmower has somehow eluded the community hotline. It’s about the only thing that has.

  If I show up at a CAMP event or some happy hour with a friend in tow but no Bonnie, she’ll get a call within minutes wanting to know who I’m running around with. Don’t try to pull anything off in this town. The whole population works for Magnum P.I.

  We were practically on the news when one of our cars went to the shop. Coming home we stop
ped by our local fancy car lot to ogle. Bonnie stared adoringly at a Mercedes convertible and the proprietor, to stem her drooling on it, offered to let Bonnie drive it for the day. With our car in the shop, it was an offer we couldn’t refuse.

  Not fifteen minutes after I got back to my office, I got not one but two phone calls congratulating us on the new convertible. In the seven minutes my spouse had been home, two busy buddies cruised by the driveway and zeroed in on the trophy car.

  “Get that thing back to its home NOW!” I hollered to Bonnie, not wanting to spend the rest of the day denying the purchase or the rest of the year convincing people we hadn’t bought a sexy speedster in lieu of paying the mortgage.

  Which brings me back to the riding mower. One day, shortly after Bonnie’s dreams came true and we purchased a tractor to trim the crabgrass, Bonnie came home with an extraordinarily sheepish look on her face.

  After serving me an anticipatory Grey Goose martini, offering me some un-requested canapés and sitting down next to me in an uncharacteristically humble pose, Bonnie said she just HAD to confess.

  “What????”

  “The only reason I’m telling you this is that I’m sure you’ll hear about it any second. I’m surprised the phone isn’t ringing now.”

  “What, What?????” I stammered, looking to see if the two dogs at my feet were healthy or if the sky was falling.

  She then described her trip to have the blades sharpened on her pet lawnmower. Apparently this took a day or two and involved leaving the lawnmower at the kennel overnight—I have no idea about this stuff.

  However, upon picking the beast back up and loading it into the truck, as politicians are fond of saying, “Mistakes were made.”

  Suffice it to say, when Bonnie and her mower stopped at a traffic light, Bonnie glanced in her rear view mirror to see her prized mower lurch backward, then fall out of the truck onto the pavement. Good God! If a car had been back there it would have been vehicular mower slaughter. As it was, it was just plain mower slaughter.

  “I thought the mower sharpener man tied it down and he thought I tied it down,” Bonnie said, staring at the floor.

  Apparently, the behemoth yard vehicle landed on the pavement on all fours, bounced and returned to earth somewhat splayed, its wheels going east and west, it’s hood cracked and several of its vital organs hemorrhaging fluids.

  A car screeched to a halt behind the mess, and a quartet of young men ran to aid the mortified dyke in distress. They scooped up the machine with most of its parts and hoisted it back into the truck. Bonnie, completely humiliated, having caused a huge traffic back-up, and sure that she was already on candid camera, transported the patient right back to the stunned mower repairman.

  Ultimately, he fixed the thing so it would mow, but cosmetically it’s been a candidate for Extreme Makeover ever since.

  So, what could be a worse, therefore a better, story? Well, my friend the boat captain also owns a riding mower and she lives adjacent to a canal off Arnell Creek. Uh huh. She was going for that last, errant blade of grass, at the very edge of the lawn, by the bulkhead at the water, and…Geronimo!!!!!!!!

  Fortunately it was low tide.

  Fortunately she wasn’t hurt going in.

  Unfortunately this tractor driver is also the owner of a very expensive computerized prosthetic leg.

  Now I have to stop here and tell you how much I admire the captain. She’s made an amazing and audacious recovery from the accident that caused her to own this high-tech kneecap and all that goes with it. She’s able to captain boats, play golf, and do far more athletic things than I can on my own two feet. It’s amazing and wonderful.

  However, the leg is not waterproof.

  That’s right, not only did she drown her $1000 lawn mower, but she shorted out her amazing, golf-enabling, trick knee that costs forty-five times what the lawnmower cost. Euwwwww.

  Thank goodness her mate came running when she heard the scream and the splash, and all was well that ended well. For the driver. The mower was given a decent burial and last I heard, the snazzy prosthetic leg was beeping and blinking like an extra-terrestrial and will probably have to be Fed-Exed overseas for an overhaul.

  Shortly the story will become funny at that house on Arnell Creek, just as Bonnie dumping her mower out of the truck has become humorous in our house (although when she sees this in print, my luck may run out).

  But you know, as I write, Bonnie is outside, riding our poor banged up tractor. It mows a lopsided swath, is missing its hood and one headlight, but like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps going and going.

  As Bonnie and the bummed up mower wobble by the window there’s an analogy in all this. Even as I type, words that would have been on the tip of my tongue a decade ago, are now retrieved a whole lot slower. And lots of us are becoming chronologically, aesthetically challenged. But while we may not be spanking brand new anymore, and some of us may not have all our parts, we’re all still going strong. And that’s a good thing.

  Of course, now Bonnie is lusting after one of those new John Deere mowers at Home Depot. She hasn’t had the nerve to start lobbying for one. Yet.

  April 2004

  LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH

  GRAPE EXPECTATIONS…

  I’ve been thinking about wine a lot lately. Well, not first thing in the morning with Boone’s Farm apple in a paper bag. Although I actually did think about it first thing in the morning, when I helped promote the April wine and food festival in town. While I was consumed by wine the minute I walked into the office each day, luckily I wasn’t also consuming.

  One thing I learned by being involved in the wine fest is that all bets are off. Everything I thought I knew about wine is up for grabs.

  No vinophile, my first taste was sipping Manischewitz at the Jewish holidays. I’d rather drink Robitussin. Actually, I suspect that the infamous Kosher Concord grape is from France’s illustrious Nyquil region.

  Although even Kosher wine is improving. In fact, there’s a web site called Kosher Wine Connoisseur, which, only a few years ago would have been a major oxymoron. Apparently, some of the stuff is really good now. But that news does little for the fact that my introduction to wine gave me a sugar high and cured bronchitis.

  By high school, we’d sneak across state lines to small towns where you could drink legally at 18 and get away with it at 16. At that point we thought we were real cool to get the boy with the most upper lip fuzz (as opposed to the women with the most upper lip fuzz now that we’re in the AARP) to buy us bottles of Lancers in those darling red crockery bottles. I don’t remember what it tasted like, but we thought we were really cool for drinking it.

  In college I moved on to Mateus, a vaguely foreign-sounding imbibement which, concurrently made us feel sophisticated and nauseous. It’s a wonder we ever sipped wine again.

  Welcome to the 1970s. It was all Chianti in cute straw-covered bottles, with or without spaghetti. And a little Blue Nun. Public relations programs all over the country are still citing those Anne Meara/Jerry Stiller radio ads as an example of the greatest brand identification ad campaign of all time. All of America was drinking that sweetly anemic German Leibfraumilch wine. Ptooey.

  I think it was replaced in the 80s by Riunite on Ice, remember that one? After that, Chardonnay became the rage and it’s still hanging on.

  Around about 1985 though, George DeBeouf importers played the brand ID game again and gave us Beaujolais Nouveau. They got everybody excited about a grape that had gone from the vine to the liquor store in about fifteen minutes. Okay, it was longer than that. But it was very, very new wine.

  On the third Thursday in November, regardless of when the wine from the Beaujolais region of France was actually harvested, DeBeof released that year’s Nouveau. Sometimes it was really good, and sometimes it was swill. But it always came with big fanfare, pretty labels and parties starting at one minute past midnight on release day. In New York one year, an entire motorcycle gang of wealthy wine drinkers from
the Hamptons drove their Harleys to the docks and welcomed the freighters with the first batch. Now that was a PR man’s dream.

  In our house we always gamble on the Nouveau for Thanksgiving, but our favorite wine is actually Chateauneuf du Pape. I was introduced to it in the late 70s through friends with an educated palette (and wallet). I loved the hearty Burgundy wine, loved its romantic sounding name, and loved remembering all the celebrations it invoked.

  All that love was reinforced on a 1998 France trip when we literally stumbled upon the region and the ruins of the actual Chateau of the Ninth Pope. After drinking and dining al fresco with the sun, the vineyards, the divine food, live chickens strolling around, and the imposing, crumbling chateau neuf itself in the background, I was in love to stay. It happens to be a great wine, but with the romance of that afternoon, it could have been Welch’s grape juice and it would still be my favorite.

  So by this time, while I’m no connoisseur, I figure if wine costs a lot, has a real cork, and comes in a bottle instead of a cardboard box, it’s the good stuff.

  But no! Now I learn that real cork, in addition to being expensive, can develop a smelly, nasty fungus called cork taint to contaminate even the most lovingly cellared wine. All of Europe seems to be talking about, “When good corks go bad!”

  That being the case, synthetic corks are popping up. However, they take the Incredible Hulk to pop them up. I tried to smell one once and had a dozen dinner guests laughing at me.

  “Good thing I didn’t try to smell a screw cap!” I joked. But now it’s no joke.

  The formerly déclassé screwcap is entering the upscale wine market. Who knew. The new screwcaps are in. Come on baby, let’s do the twist. I’m sure some of it is expert marketing (shades of Blue Nun) but the truth is, I just tasted some really good wine in a screw cap bottle. Although the first few times it’s hard to be serious telling someone to unscrew the wine so it can breathe.

  What’s next, a good vintage in a box with a spigot? The answer appears to be yes. Some West Coast wineries are actually experimenting with good wines in the old bag-in-the-box. They call them cask wines, but it’s really just a sack of wine. I hear they’re pretty good. Are we being manipulated? Maybe a little. But wineries are finding ways to make good wines more accessible at smaller prices.