Jon Frankel's Blog, page 18

Hypervigilante

HYPERVIGILANTE

I’m so scared, bound

To eyes like shifting lakes

Rippled by the sound

Of autumn rakes,

By conversations studded with posts,

Words that look back and glare,

Words that creak like old time ghosts

And rattle up the stair.

No one is innocent

Beneath the smile they hate.

My attention’s never spent

And I always calibrate

The distance to a stranger’s

Shadow creeping up the path,

The speed and time of danger’s

Crest and crash. Calculate the math.

This is how I make it home,

With a bomb and a metronome.

VENUS

Venus

As I lay dead in your arms the dark

Whispered that I watched the night

With my father when I was four.

We sat in his giant chair and the light

Of the morning star at that hour

Was magnified in my small eye and stark.

It filled the window with its white

Corona and as the black receding shore

Gave way to dawn, it dwindled to a spark.

Reading of GAHA: Babes of the Abyss

I am going to be reading from GAHA: Babes of the Abyss at Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, on Saturday, March 28th at 4pm. I’m looking forward to this. It will only be the second time I’ve read publicly from the book. The last time was also at Buffalo Street Books, part of their Works in Progress series. That was a great experience. I think I had about 5 minutes. This time I’ll have an hour to read, answer questions, and yak over wine.

I’ve been very lucky to have Franklin Crawford and Tiny Town News in my corner. He wrote an excellent review for the Tompkins Weekly and held back (well, there wasn’t room for it!) much of our interview for Tiny Town Times, his website. It’s up now, in time for the reading. Read it HERE.

Warren Greenwood wrote a marvelous review in the Ithaca Times, also published in time for the reading. Read it HERE.

I’m grateful to both Warren and Franklin for articulating so clearly both what I’m trying to do and their reaction to it. It’s not an easy book, but even my father had a similar response of eventually liking my unholy trinity of characters, Bob, Elma and Irmela.

I love reading in public. There was a time when I would read regularly in Ithaca. I think it became an act of ego. It felt good to get the work out there, but it became about the performance. I want to deliver a good performance of course. And I always where a costume, which for me is a suit. The guy who writes my novels wears a suit, because that’s what you do if you want respect. Me, I don’t give a shit. Funerals, weddings, and readings are for suits. The only time I’ve worn a tie professionally was when I was a waiter at Around the Clock Cafe, 1985-1987.

Well, the suit thing is for another post. I can say with age I no longer feel like I’m being strangled and pressed when I wear one. I’ve gotten over the trauma. Except for the wide lapels. I don’t care what happens with fashion, I’ll never wear wide ties and wide lapels.

Exhibit One: Reviews of Dark Dominion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Artist’s Salvation

In 1990 Marianne Hauser published an autobiographical entry entitled “About My Life So Far”, in The Contemporary Author’s Autobiography Series, Volume 11.

BUT, the University of Florida Smathers Libraries – Special and Area Studies Collections, which holds the Marianne Hauser Papers, has posted a digitized draft of this autobiography. In About My Life So Far she cut the first paragraph and chose to begin with the beginning, her birth in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine and coming to consciousness during World War 1. I am going to assume for the moment that this cut was both to fit the allotted number of pages and also to tell a good story and not make artistic statements. She has no patience for theorizing, and was a tireless reviser. Her son M remembers her mantra: all writing is rewriting; that and the relentless clack of the typewriter, a sound now lost (and one my wife remembers well from her childhood with an author mother). The cut paragraph serves as an excellent introduction to her work and life and how the two relate, and the final paragraph answers the question I asked myself within minutes of starting The Talking Room.

Cut first paragraph of About My Life So Far

draft final paragraph of About My Life So Far

 

 

 

 

 

Dawn Powell on Coby Gilman

From Dawn Powell’s diaries, two Coby Gilman anecdotes:

‘Sept. 29, 1938: Coby spent the evening at the Players Club drinking. I asked him if the members did much drinking and he said, well, yes but real drunkenness is frowned on, so everyone sits there frowning at each other.

‘October 28, 1939: “Coby, drunk, tie awry, coat half wrong-side out, hair tousled, inspires a “Good God!” from group. Why? He wants to know. “Go to a mirror,” they suggest. “Just take a look at yourself.” He shakes his head complacently. “I look alright,” he says. “My genitals are covered, aren’t they?”’

TWO ROASTS

 

TWO ROASTS

Autumn Harvest Farm, one of my favorite local businesses (and Sarah is one of my favorite people, she is remarkably generous) had boneless pork loin roasts so I bought two and cooked one on Sunday. I didn’t want a day long braise, I wanted a good roast. M doesn’t eat red meat, or the other white meat, except when it is ensconced in a dumpling wrapper and on a Chinese menu, so I defrosted a boneless turkey breast and decided to roast that too. Grape tomatoes continue to fascinate me as a winter tomato. They aren’t very tomatoey, but they play the part better than the ping pong balls marketed this time of year under the name tomato. Even the ones attached to vines are blind alley. The dark red skin belies a watery tasteless interior. But these little suckers look great and taste good. So I used a whole container to make a sauce for the pork. The turkey breast I roasted whole after an agonizing Hamletish debate over whether ‘twas nobler to slice cutlets and pound or leave it whole with the skin on. In the end the lure of crispy turkey skin was too intense. But there was never any question about the sauce, this would be turkey sauced piccata, with garlic, lemon, white wine and capers. The two roasts were quite easy, and cooked together in a 325 degree oven. I served it with white rice (Sunday is white rice or white pasta day) and a salad of avocado, radish, kohlrabi and cabbage.

Roast Boneless Pork Loin with Grape Tomatoes

1 boneless pork loin roast, about 2-1/4 to 2-1/2 pounds

salt and pepper

3 T olive oil

3 anchovies

¼ cup coarsely chopped garlic

1 container organic grape tomatoes (a little more than a cup), tomatoes sliced in half

1 t dried rosemary

1 cup white wine

½ cup mixed cured green and black olives, (I used kalamata and picholine)

½ cup chopped parsley

Salt and pepper the roast generously, several hours in advance if possible. Heat an iron frying pan over high heat, add oil and brown the roast on all sides. Put in 325 degree oven and roast for about an hour, until it is just done. The internal temperature should be 150. Remove from oven and let the roast rest while you prepare the sauce. If you need to add more olive oil, do so. Over medium low heat dissolved the anchovies in the oil, mashing them with a wooden spoon. Raise the heat to medium high and add the garlic. Sautee until golden, turn heat high and add the tomatoes. Toss and stir until the tomatoes are heated and just starting to wrinkle. Add rosemary, stir and then add the wine. Cook until the wine has evaporated some and the tomatoes are soft but still retain their shape, add the olives and parsley, a pinch of salt and pepper. Slice the roast into ¼ inch slices and pour the sauce over.

Roast Turkey Breast with Capers and Lemon

Every Thanksgiving I buy an extra turkey to make stock from the bones, and freeze the boneless meat. So what I roasted was half of a whole boneless turkey breast. It weighed about 3 pounds.

1 3 lb boneless turkey breast with the skin on

Salt and pepper

3T olive oil

¼ cup chopped garlic

Pinch of thyme

Juice of 1 whole lemon

1 cup white wine

½ cup parsley

2T capers

Generously salt and pepper the turkey breast, several hours in advance if possible. Heat an iron frying pan over high heat. Add oil and brown the turkey breast. Roast in a 325 degree oven for about an hour, until the internal temperature is 160. Let the roast rest while you make the sauce. Heat the pan over low heat, add garlic with a small pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Sautee until golden. Add the lemon juice and a little thyme and then raise the heat high and add the wine and the parsley. Let it bubble away until it is a little thick and fragrant then add the capers. Heat through. Slice the turkey breast and pour the sauce over. Serve with rice.

Avocado Salad

2 avocadoes, halved, pealed, and cut into cubes

½ cup coarsely chopped cilantro with stems

½ cup finely shredded red cabbage

1 cup kohlrabi cut into matchsticks

½ cup winter radish cut into matchsticks

grated red or purple carrot (about 2-3T)

1 small clove of garlic minced

Salt and pepper

nuts and seeds and dried cranberries

3T walnut oil

3T red wine vinegar

Toss everything but the dried cranberry, carrot, nuts, and seeds together. Garnish with the carrot, nuts, seeds and dried cranberry.

 

SUNDAY FLAG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUNDAY FLAG

A Sunday Flag at Half-Mast

A Sunday flag at half-mast

The red and white stripes unwind

Forever like a barber pole in a blind

Of branches against the blast

Of solsticial sun that raises autumn’s

Awning of cloud, and wraps a sapphire

Banner round its dying fire.

A circular stair with endless sums

Of steps that stagger up and down

From rooms without light or air

To a bed where a man whose only care

Was broken from him, lies; and the sound

Of that care crying will not sleep

But wails, all waking to reap.

 

A CURMUDGEON’S DINNER

The family were away in the city this weekend leaving me alone with two dogs and Antarctic weather. It really was incredible by Saturday night, bleak, with high gusting winds and temperatures falling a degree an hour. All night and into Sunday the wind blew the snow into crests, frozen white waves poised to break over woodpiles and fences, the essing shape of the wind written across fields and yards. Each trip out for wood was worse than the last as the light, dusty snow filled in any path I could dig from the porch to the logs. It will be noted by some that Saturday was Valentine’s Day. I am an atheist and a curmudgeon, so I don’t celebrate the pagan holidays any more than I celebrate the Judeo-Christian ones. One god is one god too many. I am also a Romantic, a serial monogamist who is quite happily in love after 20 years of marriage. Anyway, enough of that!

Sunday I spent reading Marianne Hauser and The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and writing about Hauser’s unbelievably beautiful and haunting story Allons Enfants, about the death of her sister at age 14 of meningitis, during World War 1. Saturday I went to The Kingsmen at the mall, directed by Kick Ass director Matthew Vaughn (you know, good enough, with caveats) and ate one of my favorite dinners, a dinner I reserve for solo dining, because it is expensive, a seared tuna steak served with a Thai inspired sauce of tomatoes, onions, garlic and jalapeno. Tomatoes suck this time of year. Sometimes you can find a decent plum tomato. What I do is buy organic grape tomatoes. These seem to have the sweetness. It is spicy, salty, sweet and delicious with a bed of white rice and steamed broccoli. I murdered a few glasses of red wine with it.

This recipe is for one tuna steak. I had a particularly large one, nearly a pound. I could not and did not finish it, but 3/4s of a pound would have been just fine. I liked this one because it was thickest. I don’t think you’d have to double the recipe to make two, just increase everything by a bit.

Spicy Seared Tuna Steak for one

1 tuna steak, ¾- 1 pound

2T cracked black pepper

2T cracked coriander seed

2 good pinches of salt

2T safflower, peanut or canola oil

½ of a large red onion, sliced into ¼ inch wedges pole to pole

2T ginger chopped into chunks, skin on

2T garlic chopped coarsely

1 jalapeno pepper (find a hot one, with a black blush) chopped coarsely

1 cup organic grape tomatoes, sliced in half

Juice of one big juicy lime and an equivalent amount of fish sauce, mixed with 2T sugar

½ cup shopped cilantro

Sprinkle each side of the tuna steak with cracked pepper, coriander and salt, and push the spice rub into the steak. Get the frying pan very hot, add the oil. Sear tuna over very high, smoking heat for about 4 minutes per side, so it is not cooked through but has a nice crust. Add a little more oil and then fry the onions, ginger and garlic rapidly. Add the jalapeno. Lower the heat, add the fish sauce and lime juice mixture and the tomatoes. When it boils, throw in the tuna steak and cook another minute on each side, until just done. How rare you want your tuna is up to you. It dries out quickly, but I’m not sure in upstate NY I should be eating raw fish. So I do it until it is just done. The Canadian rule is 10 minutes per inch. So boys, measure your fish, and back off the rule slightly. That oughta do it. Add the cilantro and serve with white rice and a vegetable.

WAITER

WAITER

My first job was at Dunkin’ Donuts in High School. I worked the graveyard shift. It was the kind of job right wing nut jobs have in mind when they say the minimum wage is for teenagers. I was a teenager. They paid me and trained me. It was a sentimental education. Ray, the cook, mixed, kneaded, cut and fried donuts, while listening to preachers. I’m sure he had a day job. Ray never said more than two words to me. I think after a year he knew who I was, but I can’t be sure. I made coffee, served customers and, because it was the graveyard, had to prepare trays of donuts for the morning rush. Occasionally Ray would change the music to a black music station. This was a lot better for preparing donuts. It was the glory days of disco, not the Ur days of Do the Hustle, or the dark days of Stayin’ Alive, but the scary, post-apocalyptic disco days of Macarthur Park and Good Times. There was really nothing like filling a tray of jelly donuts to Good Times or We Are Family. There was a big plastic jug of jelly with two sharp steel spouts at the base. You could fill two at a time. I would impale two donuts, press the lever beneath the spouts until the jelly erupted from the holes. Frosting and dusting with sugar and cinnamon were other stages of production. I was a good donut decorator. And I was a good counterman. The coffee was always fresh. I talked to all of the schizophrenics, insomniacs, fucked up teenagers and truck drivers. The only people I didn’t speak to were the cops, who didn’t like my long hair. I did a lot of nefarious things that won’t be noted here. 1970’s kinds of things. Waiter kinds of things. Maybe the cops knew.

I thought this little job of mine, or racket (a racket that had been passed on from teenager to teenager for god knows how long), would prepare me for the real world, but it did not. I discovered it was useless on a resume when applying for work at Crepes and Cappuccino up near Columbia. All it meant was that I had learned to show up on time.

BEFORE HITTING NIGHTBIRDS

The next waiter job I got was several years later in NYC. S and I had returned from traveling and we needed work badly. We got jobs at Nightbirds, a dive for downtown punks on Second Avenue and maybe 5th street. I had the Graveyard shift, S had the morning shift. I remember Philip coming in on my first night with a bunch of friends. I was failing. I fell running with food. I dropped a hot chocolate. I spilled soda. They ordered drinks and I carried them as you would empty glasses, with my fingers in the rims! Philip, an experienced waiter, laughed at me and said, thanks for the fingers in my drink. That was night one. By night five I could carry three plates up my arm or a tray full of drinks without spilling. And I was the king of sidework. I cleaned, cut lemons and limes, restocked the ice, married ketchups. I was also a sucker, because the snotty, pissed off, depressed waiters who refused to do this were sent home early by the psychotic owners. I was so good! I got to stay. I soon took on the color of the place, grey. I became a sad, angry waiter who despised the customers, who were mean, spoiled, cheap and loud. They were scraped up off the bottom of places like Danceteria, The Peppermint Lounge and Area. Slugs would roll in around 4:30 for eggs, coffee and pancakes. If I was lucky it would be employees from Limelight. They tipped well. One night a woman came in to talk to the bartender, Kenny. She was kinda drunk, had a junky vibe, but intelligent. She left around 3. She came back two hours later in tears. When she left I asked Kenny what was wrong. He said she had gone home to discover her building on fire. Her boyfriend was dead. A fat woman came in every night and deposited 12 quarters in the jukebox. She played ‘What Do You Get When You Fall In Love’ and went in the bathroom where we could hear her sob.

I couldn’t take this anymore, but I was now a battle hardened waiter. On New Year’s Day, at 8am, I walked out, leaving the owners with a restaurant full of gasping, psychopathic drunks.

Fortunately the legendary restaurateur TONY of Dojos fame was opening Around the Clock Café. We knew the Dojos crew. This got S and me interviews. Because I would work graveyards (I was an expert now in graveyard shift food delivery) I got the job. S was pissed, but she got a job at a better restaurant, a ‘fancy’ restaurant (sigh) The Pharmacy over on Avenue A and 9th Street. Around the Clock was part of a big expansion, and Tony was ambitious. We served a menu of savoury crepes and 12 varieties of eggs benedict. That didn’t last long. It was a more controlled, nicer space, romper room for a higher class of unpleasant jerk. By now the streets of Manhattan were completely dedicated to housing the homeless. Heroin was available every few blocks. Rents were soaring, the vacancy rate plunging and the haves were rolling in money. The avant-garde was no longer underground but an ongoing celebrity driven party. Downtown Manhattan was in the possession of a cadre of 20 and 30 year olds who serviced this party. All night we poured drinks, hung up coats and served and prepared food. We also stole enormous amounts of money and gave away free shit to everyone we knew. Everyone was stealing, everyone was on drugs, and no one cared. You could walk down the street at 5am screaming at the top of your lungs. You did I say? We. The night ended at 10 am with a pocket jammed with cash. Cabs, restaurants, movies, bars, after hours clubs. It was really a good time.

Then people started dying of AIDS.

When my kids were born, in 1986 and 1988, S and I were still working in these restaurants. By then we were on the best dinner shifts. But by then the wage, and the tenement, started to mean something different. Working for tips, for restaurant wages, living in an apartment that frequently lost heat and hot water in the winter, carrying a double stroller, groceries and two babies up five flights of stairs, was really hard. But that’s the reality for most restaurant workers, not the 24 hour party. The older I got the more I had to live on these wages, and life became difficult and depressing. Not because a bunch of assholes had insulted me. Because living on a substandard wage, raising a family, and living in the housing the poor can afford sucks. I was becoming Ray. But S and I had an escape valve. Most people don’t. Ray didn’t.

Please, write to Cuomo about raising the minimum wage for tipped workers: support tipped workers