First love

For the past week, I’ve been in hibernation mode. Hibernation takes on various forms depending how distressed/annoyed/fat I am, but this week it involved little-to-no contact with the outside world, a shit-ton of Greek yogurt, and several depressing films by Ken Loach. It also involved dipping into “French Women Don’t Get Fat,” which is perhaps the most loathsome and self-congratulatory book I’ve ever read. It includes such enlightening cultural tidbits as “Do French women eat standing up? Mais non! French women savor their food bite by bite.”

“Zut alors!” I thought. This was bad news. After all, I read most of the book while standing in the middle of my kitchen scarfing sugar-free jello and broken crackers salvaged from the back of the cabinet.

After a steady diet of condiments and chicken tikka masala spice mix, it was a treat to go to Prune with my friend Liz, whose birthday provided an occasion to splash out. We both love this little restaurant, which specializes in weird cuts of meat and sweatbreads. Liz and I did our usual bit, which is to agonize over the menu, plan our own meals, plan the meals of our fellow diners, and then plan the meal of the people at the neighboring table. I like to use what Fauxhawk calls the “Machiavellian Mind Meld” – a subtle and effective mind fucking technique that ensures that no one at the table orders anything that I don’t like to eat. Liz’s technique is slightly more overt – “GET THE BEEF MARROW” – but equally deadly. We had a delightful meal, coming up for air a few times to utter the words “big black dildo” and “strap-on” before returning to our feedbags.

Restored by good food and drink, Liz and I waddled over to a nearby venue to hear a band. The lead singer, dressed as Ayatollah Khomeini, was backed by a Benedictine monk on the sax, a burka babe on the horn, a Catholic priest on the guitar, and a Hasidic Jew on the bass. Wandering around in the background was Mr. Roboto, who was banging on some kind of handheld drum and looking rather stoned.

In the middle of the first song, Liz leaned over to me and whispered, “That’s my first love, Peter.” Peter – otherwise known as the Ayatollah Khomeini – was Liz’s mystery boyfriend for two years when we were in high school. He lived three states away and was the stuff of legends – the Snufalufagus who existed but never appeared. Liz could only see him by stealing away to Philadelphia, where she’d ride shotgun in Peter’s white Oldsmobile though the ghetto while he picked up dime bags of pot for his classmates. These romantic weekends were few and far between, which added to the frisson of their illicit relationship. Despite being a drug dealer, Peter was apparently a very nice boy. Nevertheless, he slept in Penn Station one night because Liz’s Cuban father wouldn’t let him step foot in their house.

When Peter saw Liz in the audience, fifteen years of history passed through them in a split second. It was an amazing moment of nostalgia, of remembering that heady, intense, all-encompassing passion that one feels for a first love. Watching them grin at each other, I almost felt it too.

I thought about my own first love. Dirty - often foul-smelling. Full of hassles and complications. Changing from one week to the next. Charming and cheesy in equal parts. Stimulating beyond measure.

New York – I love you. Without ambivalence, without equivocation. You are my first - and best - love.

Valentine's Day card by Anahata Katkin