midwestern fck all cookies

sometimes you’ve got to have it all. Like when your city is storm ravaged, and perhaps at its most New York. Everything altogether at once; dirty and busted looking but wholesome and voluptuous and dynamic. Slightly addictive. Like these cookies.

i’ve been tucked in the radical muffin kitchen, grateful for power and good stores and a little help from the up-stairs neighbor.

adopted from Midwestern Living magazine, Lindsay’s Chocolate Cafe Chocolate Chip Cookies, this recipe makes a lot of dough. If you are not making a batch for storm relief, bake sale, or other event wanting dozens of cookies then freeze some to bake later. Freeze cookie dough balls on whatever flat thing you have that will fit in your freezer. Pop the frozen balls into a bag or bin and have fresh baked cookies at your beck and call. Or eat the dough out of the freezer at 2 in the morning. Whatever.

grate 4 ounces of a milk chocolate bar, frozen. Chop and toast 1 ½ cups of nuts; we used almonds.

cream two soft sticks of butter with 2 cups of sugar in some combination of white, browns, turbinado, etc. I used 1 cup of white sugar, ½ cup of light brown sugar and ½ cup of turbinado. Beat in 2 eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla or the innards of a vanilla bean. Beat in 2 ½ cups of oats, 1 ¾ cup all purpose flour, and ¼ hazelnut meal (or as much flour or other nutmeal) also 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda and ½ teaspoon of salt.

stir in the nuts and grated chocolate with 2 cups of chips—we used 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate and 1 cup of peanut butter chips.

intended to be Big, 3 tablespoon sized blobs are called for in the magazine; we went with regular cookie sized blobs on a parchment lined cookie sheet.

bake in batches at 375˚ for about 9 minutes, until the edges brown. Let cool on the cookie sheet a bit, watch to be sure the centers are fully set.

and, yes, these are good for breakfast.

queer stuff: love, suffering and dancing

i stood in the little cheese etc. shop watching yet another mom wrangle her Sports Utility Stroller through the door, like a camel through the eye of a needle, and public radio repeated…kidnapped, beat, tortured and sodomized. Young men in the Bronx by other young men in the Bronx. Over my eight hours behind the counter through the trickle of customers, that was the refrain of the day. Each hour: kidnapped, beat, tortured and sodomized. They did not say raped; I keep wondering why.

this drawn out headline followed by NY governor candidate Paladino’s speech about “gays brainwashing our children…” corrected with a talk show tour where he clarified that he is no homophobe, he just doesn’t think gays should marry.  There’s a People magazine sprawled on the backseat of the preacher eater’s aunt’s car: cover story, bullying and teen suicide.  Mostly queer kids.

gay men saved my life.

against all the recent news of suffering, I vividly recall:

the fire circle.  after the talent show. drums cradled between knees in a ring in the dark.

standing woodside, pushing my hips off the beat, side to side, minidress sliding up black tights; the ground hard and cold under my thin soled boots, the laces tight. Wide-kneed stomping, he comes around the circle, naked from the waist down, pale cock half flopping, side to side, in a short formal jacket, wild white-faced with peaked sparkling eye make up glittering over his beard, over his big smile. The fire belches up sparks into the black, spraying light on his shiny elbows flapping. I step over the tarp where voyeurs curl up watching; he makes room. Slide into his square clapped out into the air for me, framing my body, we churn something older than us in the air, old like dirt. Snake through the warm pockets, sweating, long sweater sliding off. Turning, stomp hard at each other; asses jiggling. Beyond us, men share flasks of Wild Turkey, smoke out of an apple. Beyond them, a cluster of three slim figures stroke each other. My lover stretches on the blue tarp behind me into the folds of a big bearded man’s toga, glitter falling between them.

years ago, the back dance floor of DJ’s place, after the drag show, falling against the cook from the café where we all seemed to work, freckled, thin in his old jeans and white tee shirt. His arm curving around my hip and waist pulling me close, step to step, hips locked. His lips slid up my neck, “I never met a woman who loves food like you do.” “Talk to me about Garlic,” I hissed and bit his tongue.

i had a horrible eating disorder, lost whole days to it. Queers helped me get over it. All that affection. New scales for sexual desirability. New performances of femininity. All that unapologetic pleasure.

perched on a stool in the burgundy China Doll dress he had picked out for me, I looked up at his perfect cupid’s bow lips as the ice skater lined my eyes. We’d make-out with only lips touching in the parking lot before going into the Red Fox, the after hours gay club with the old high school lab tables. Kissing like the thirsty drinking water, crystalline, simple. He held me when I melted down after taking his boyfriend/my housemate’s ex-lover to the hospital when his mother had a heart attack he blamed himself for. After the little gay mechanic’s dad put his head through a windshield, and the opera singer went back in the closet so his parents would let him stay at home and in touch with his younger brother. After we unlisted our phone number because of the creepy calls. After my girlfriend’s gay sister was dragged to the front of the family church to be exorcised.

perched in the dirt at our campsite, I closed my eyes as the drag queen glued false lashes like pink polka dotted butterfly wings to my lids. Slipped into the circling conversations of foreclosure politics, fabric dying, and perverse non-sequiturs. After the majority of my closest gay men friends sero-converted to HIV-positive, and I remain relieved most live in cities with access to services and community. After the young violinist jumped off the bridge. After all the break-ups, layoffs, depression, and drama. After taking my friend to the emergency room to have a sex toy removed from his ass that, although beginning pleasurably enough, had been up there over 24-hours and another 24-hours at the hospital before surgery.

okay, the last incident was really one of the highlights of my year so far since it all turned out happy hinney. (sorry, bunny, but it was rather exciting…)

there was a Love-In in Times Square on Friday evening in response to the spasm of anti-queer hate crimes. I was in the boug-box, and Loved-In from there. I hope you’ll Love-In from where ever you are.

soupe bonne femme avec faggot

“Many recipes call for a faggot.”   — Louis Diat

mais oui—everything is tastier with a dash of faggotry!  I’m not talking buggery— although many of us could use a soupcon of that too, survey says up to half of gay men never do it up the butt anyway — but the joie de vivre, the je ne sais quoi of a fabulous queen.  In the radical muffin kitchen, cooking gusto evokes a certain make-do and then some learned at the hip of sassy men who could out stomp me in their platform shoes and draw suitors to them through the din of crowded bars with their eyes.   Certainly, a femme is better with a faggot.

this is perhaps not what monsieur Diat had in mind.  No, the French born chef was the head at the New York Ritz-Carlton kitchens, where he not only trained many chefs in the U.S. but also made it his life’s work to translate French cooking techniques into English.  In Gourmet’s Basic French Cooking: Techniques of French Cuisine, published for the first time in 1961, he includes among Tricks of the Chef:

Faggot Many recipes call for a faggot.  To make a faggot, cut a stalk of celery in 2 pieces 3 or 4 inches long.  In the curve of one piece, tuck a few sprigs of parsley, folding in the ends, lay on this a bay leaf, and sprinkle with a little thyme.  If the recipe does not include carrots, a small piece of carrot is sometimes tucked in with the parsley.  Place the other piece of celery on top very firmly and secure the faggot by winding a long piece of string closely around it.  Unless you assemble a faggot firmly and bind it tightly with plenty of string, it is apt to roll apart during the cooking.

Soupe Bonne Femme is simply potato leek soup, although all the following “bonne femme” recipes in his magnum opus seem to be “with mushrooms” and how this all relates remains a mystery to me.   The soup would probably be delicious with mushrooms, but as it is or rich with cream, Soupe Bonne Femme is perfect fare for blustery March weather.

scrub clean 4-5 potatoes.  chop them and put them aside in a bowl of cold water.  Slice the greens and roots from 4 medium-small leeks, clean them well in cold running water.  Dice the white part of the leek along with 1 small onion and a few peeled garlic cloves.  Melt a tablespoon or so of butter in a big, heavy pot, add the leeks, onions and garlic, and cook until soft but not brown, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.

drain the potatoes and stir them into the leeks, turning to coat with butter; cook for about 5 minutes.  Pour in 4 cups of hot water or stock.  Assemble and bind a faggot of celery, carrot, parsley and thyme.  Add this to the soup pot along with a dash of salt and pepper.  Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for ½ an hour to 45 minutes or until the potatoes are beginning to fall apart.

serve as is or…stir in another tablespoon of butter  and 2 cups of whole milk or 1 cup of cream.  If you add the cream or milk, be sure not to return to a boil but only gently reheat.  In the alternative, to go entirely vegan, cook all the veggies in olive oil.

the savior comes on friday afternoons

sitting on the bench at the shoulder of the greenery at the west side of the park, the sunlight comes through kaleidoscopic on the people on the perimeter of benches, in line for sandwiches, sitting at the banks of the fountain. It reflects off the black path like a river I’ve pulled my bare feet up from. My shoes are lost in it.

he walked up the river, his eyes blue under eyebrows springing with extra-long silver hairs. Three feet from me, he stops, just on the far side of the bar dividing this bench from the next. This is not a chance meeting, he says. I am here to bless you; you’re sins are forgiven.

my arm slung over the back of the bench, the smoke from my cigarette curling into the leaves. Awesome. That’s way more accomplished than I had expected for the work break.

i’ve been in 43 states. The Lord told me to go to Chicago. He said I had to go bless people and their sins would be forgiven. That I am the twin of Jesus.

i was in New Orleans then. He came to me three times in dreams, and I denied him in my heart. You know, they’re dreams. You’re sleeping, you cannot make out what’s real. And the third night—I woke up. There was a fog on the ceiling. I thought it was a false fog, and I stood up into it. Out of it came a beast, a beast with red eyes. And I waved my arms and drove it away. Then there were voices in my ears. Fingernails short and dirty, his long fingers static-ed at his ears on either side of his head. God the Father spoke, asked if I knew who that was. Said that was Satan himself. That I drove him out. I had power. I was born without original sin.

people think Jesus is a skinny man. Jesus was a beautiful man. He had 18 inch biceps. Golden, he was gorgeous and golden. This man’s shorts are long, navy blue; they’re printed with Fashion Phys Ed in gold.

let me tell you, and he sits down, resting his forearm on the bar, gesturing in languid waves into the path with his right arm. I’ve done so much. I closed the massage parlours here.

called the mayor; that’s when Koch was mayor. I told his receptionist that I was the President of the Saint Williams Society, and I am not, and I gave her a fake name, but then she let me talk to him. Thought I was somebody. I waited 20 minutes, and then he came on.

i told him about the massage parlors. There were 46 at the time. 46- and one at Rockefeller Center. You, you should have seen Times Square. They would be a deli or whatever at the bottom, and you could get a girl. $20 and you could get a girl, and a dirty bed up-stairs. Or it would be a massage parlor. The police couldn’t go in there. So we changed the law so they could go in there, if a girl didn’t have her dress on or if he didn’t have his pants on. They’d get $500 fine and 5 months in jail. Then I had to go out and do the same thing in L.A., and when they started happening again in New York, I did not want to have to come back. So I called the mayor. You, you are going to get disease everywhere, AIDS everywhere. $20? For a girl? Young girls?

do you know about Mary?

i drag. See myself sitting in Grace Cathedral, kneeling below the Marys in luminous color above me. Mary, the young miracle mother in blue. Mary Magdalene, in stained glass script below her beautiful bare feet: Her Sins are Forgiven for She Hath Loveth Much. Yes.

she ascended into heaven. Her whole body. Her whole body was so precious, it was lifted whole into heaven. She is the most beautiful woman there, the queen of heaven. My mother is in heaven too; she is also beautiful there. God the Father told me I would be the most beautiful man in heaven. Jesus is the most beautiful God in heaven, but I will be the most beautiful man. I will be in my 20s. I am 47; I am old now. He kicks one foot in a shaky way, annoyed.

there will be pleasure. It is not sex. There are kisses and hugs from the saints on all sides. Kisses and hugs. It is not that God denies the pleasure of sex, God the Father told me: I am the author of sex. But in heaven, our hearts are globes of ecstasy.

when I feel pressed to return to my work, I thank him warmly.

it was not by chance, he reminds me, pumping my hand gently and reverently up and down.

congregation of Coney Island in the church of Brooklyn lights

in the long shadow afternoon, the sun silver plates the red beams of the parachute drop where it stands into the sky, an empty unapplied framework. Silk parachutes were once affixed to its intricate circles, and people dropped from them at the World’s Fair held in Queens then later here, after it was disassembled and moved. Imagine them, silhouetted jellyfish floating down silently in staggered sixes. In real life, there must have been screaming. Now, it is too close to the a fence to allow for jumping.

the boardwalk boards stretch out like rough skinned lizards absorbing the heat under the wind. The pale newer planks sport American flag stamps like rub on tattoos. On the left, the ocean heaves forward and curls back in on herself endlessly. On the right, the wind blows through the Astroland space needle at half mast, the wooden Cyclone rollercoaster, the still Wonder Wheel. Wailing as it does where it finds emptiness.

the pier is a cross, and I walk its entire perimeter. On the far end, the fishermen sit with their poles, unwrapping sandwiches from Cyrillic newspapers. There is one woman fishing today. My age, I think; Philippina, I think. The ocean is louder here, the wind unimpeded; we’re all extended out into the middle of everything. Two elder Hasidic men walk in symmetrical steps in identical long trenches and beards. Their shiny black shoes. Their black cookie cutter hats. The third in their party, a grandmotherly woman, huddles into her big black coat, her teeny black hat miraculously perched in her cumulous hair. We all breathe in and out with the ocean.

at the crook of the cross, an old Asian woman in baggy khakis and thick soled sneakers faces out to the blaring runner of light along the water to our setting white star. She drops over, touching her toes. Toe touch toe touch toe touch. Then her arms reach out wide wide. Then she uses them to carve great spheres out of the air in font of her heart center. She turns the air like spinning cotton candy. She draws it all to her chest, palms together, bows again, humbling down. Coming up, her palms grip the wooden railing, and she rises up like a seal, pumping her old woman body into the sunlight. Over & up, over & up—glory glory hallelujah.

a white man in a purple wind breaker on his bike with his brown buddy on foot linger near the beginning end of the pier. As I pass in my silence, he shouts, not uninfluenced by alcohol, Hey! Hey! Can I ask you a question? This pauses me reluctantly, ready to offer the time or directions or rage depending. I am across the width of the pier. No question is coming. Instead, he is coming, getting off his bike. I hold up my hand at arms length, palm up, what’s your question. He stupidly requests to ask one again.

you can ask it from there, but I am already picking up my pace since he clearly does not want information. Do you know who I am? he demands. You want to know who I am; you want to know me, he shouts at my back. Somewhere in there, he throws in his would be compliment: I like the way you look.

i step into my shadow walking slowly along toward Brighton Beach. Solitary runners pass me, popping their lips in rhythm or flapping them like horses. A man in light sleek black running wear reclines on one of the benches without arms, hooks his sneaks in the bar arching over its middle, sits up sits up sits up. The patrolling cops won’t bother him; he’s not sleeping.

i keep in my silence, veering around a trio of ebullient dudes who try for my attention. There’s a homeless couple, colluding and comforting each other, and a man biking, two puppies in his wicker basket, radio lashed behind them.

then there’s a girl flying into my path. I suddenly feel an obligation to tape cut out bird silhouettes to myself so she can see the glass, so she won’t fly into me and break her neck. Her turquoise skirt billows around her white thighs. Her dirty t-shirt, white with light blue and red bird shapes, is half-tucked into it, her denim jacket open to her fancy camera around her neck.

Hi! Hi! Ummm—may I take your picture?

the wind throws her curls nervously in her face; they tangle briefly in her nose ring, her glasses. She pitches forward, I’ve never been out here, my friends live in Brooklyn but I’ve never been to Coney Island and I am out here alone, and I don’t have anyone to take pictures of; I never have anyone to take pictures of. May I take your picture?

she already has my “yes” smile. She doesn’t know it, but I’d say yes to anything she asks of me. I say, Do you want me to take your picture?

oh no, oh no…I don’t like my picture taken. I know, but you look great here at Coney Island. It’s okay; you look right here too. I promise. But I do not say these things. I say, What would you like me to do? Where would you like me to stand?

she isn’t sure, spastic in her successful recruitment. I squint into the sun, consider our proximity, turn left, stand on the sunny edge of the dark shadow in front of the shooting gallery. She’ll only fire off a shot or two.

how about in front of the Shoot the Freak? That seems right…

her smile cranks up, delivering wattage. I like the way you’re thinking, she chirps. I wonder about the lighting; it’s a difficult shot—me washed out in the brightness, the freak pit in deep shadow. We’re at angles with the light coming over her left shoulder. It could be worse.

Where are you visiting from?

Toronto!

Those are some awful nice cowgirl boots from Toronto.

They’re from a thrift store! proudly announced, followed by five minutes on Value Village, which are called Super Savers here, she elucidates.

at the other end of her lens, I must look a part. I wear rainbow socks with my hiking boots that have carried me miles and miles just today and, over the past few years, through waterfalls and urban slums in Ghana and back alley markets with fish guts running in the gutters of Hanoi. I wear black leggings with a pattern of hearts and flowers worked up their sides that remind me of my Swedish and Dutch friends. I wear a faded denim skirt, hacked off and raw edged at the knees. It used to be floor length and fish tailed. The edge of my red slip may be showing. My sweater is from Sears from the 70s, bought at some Midwestern thrift store for less than $5. It is pine green with a subtle horizontal pattern in tiny v stitches in white and orange and yellow. The ribbed neckline is torn at the center an inch down, but that’s hidden under my scarf, pearlescent and grey, wrapped round and round with long fringes sending off wishes and blessings like prayer flags. The hippie bag slung at my shoulder is stitched together once by Laotion hands then once again by mine in careful cross stitches in yarn that turns from blue to lavender and back again. It has three pins: Food Not Bombs Brooklyn, “We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness,” and a safety pin, a tool.

pale lipped, no make up, my face wears only huge round black sunglasses, held together on one side with a toothpick broken off. My hair—the ends red, the beginnings sparrow brown and grey; not short, not long—is pinned every which way and wind teased.

so I wonder, young woman, what you saw of me and Coney Island? My heart hardened like crème brulee? What did you see here of yourself?

there is tinsel in the sand.