blonde roux

my friend, the then-assistant-to-the-assistant-chef at the then-ramada inn over the mass pike in newton corner, once explained the tricks behind his clam chowder, which was particularly good, and the sublime secrets of blonde roux. ("you take butter, eh? a pound of butter, ya know? more if you have it... low heat... don't forget only a low heat... and then you fold in the flour slowwww 'til it won't hold any more, and you let it thicken and take it off the moment it don't taste like flour no more but it's still gotta be light colored, or else you'll have a brown roux, and then you'll need to add the beef drippings...")

i was relating the joys of halifax once again (it's what i do) and replying to a question about seafood chowder (no, it's NOT a euphemism for oral sex, but thanks for asking) by listing the usual ingredients as a proxy for a description: blonde roux, onions, potatoes and bacon, the contents of a small fishing trawler... what? blonde roux? flour and butter, ya know?

nope, didn't know. not so hard to figure, i guess, but, beyond that, there was this implied sense of cultural separation that caught me scratching my head. is it because the expression is in french? i guess, these days, the "earth" that we're down to comes out of a styrofoam serving container plucked from a drive-thru (or "dive-thru" as i like to call it) and paid for out of what would have otherwise gone to next months rent, and the mysteries of staple cooking are all but lost on the world. (and, besides, everybody is rankled by the french). flour. butter. maybe a small bit of bacon if you have it. onions and potatoes from the root cellar. cream if the milking is going well. the discarded pieces of sea clams and mussels and all the other seacoast ubiquity that mean the difference between eating protein today and not. heat long and slow. it's the antithesis of highbrow, except for the fact that people with money recognize delicious when they taste it, and "New England Clam Chowder" gets put on the menu at some significant markup beyond the soup du jour, and folks forget where it came from, and where THEY came from.

lobsters used to wash up on the beach after particularly energetic tides, and they used to give 'em to the poor folks to eat because they were "trash" food. think what we'd think if someone tried serving us rats for dinner next time we were in the city. or pigeons. (oh, wait, that's "squab"...) so how'd we get lost?

i like my food simple. flour & butter sound great to me, even if you have to speak a little french to serve 'em.

and don't forget the beer.

cognitive dissonance

got dragged into a carfuffle this weekend involving a trio of pre-teen girls. (that parenting thing). seems that emotional sensitivity (and, ironically, insensitivity) starts early with the distaff set. rather than try to unravel that gordian knot this morning, i'm thinking rather of the cognitive dissonance we heap upon others with all best intentions, though unknown consequences.

"are you mad at me" receives "no, of course not", when, in point of fact, the whole process of being called in on the carpet belies that politically correct response. tying this back to my own situation, (after all, it's all about what it means to me, al franken), i realize that marriage itself is a near-constant stream of well-intended pleasantries at full odds with the emotional truth our inner reptile easily senses from its surroundings.

i had to bite my tongue not to contradict the company-line absence of judgment as we talked through the various steps of avoiding becoming a "mean girl". there's always a evil instigator behind every plot, and thankfully that was on someone else's little angel this time, so part of the charade was at least plausible. but i still was hit by the gnawing sensation that the seeds of her eventual undoing were being sown right then and there by the two people who ought to be giving things to her straight.

i wonder how many times i've been told the exact opposite of her true feelings. being a guy, and not being blessed with finely tuned female emotional radar, it kind of sets the stage for failure even before things begin. fair enough. but am i complicit while raising the next generation? that would be depressing...

here's my new perspective: do you care? be brave enough to show it. are you mad? be honest enough to say it. do they deserve it? sure, but why waste your time on vengeance when george herbert's advice is still so sound almost 400 years later:

"living well is the best revenge".

the only exception has to be given in service to children. there is no life for me to live well without them...

getting it good

i think that women think that men's penises (as a proxy for our sexuality) are possessed of a defined personality. we're suspected to have a sexual "type" and a pattern of desire, and to become spontaneously erect and functional at any sort of internal or external stimulation towards that type or desire. and any lack of erection at an appropriate moment, or, worse, presence of one at an inappropriate moment, is construed to reveal a previously hidden "truth" about the man, and creates dissonance to any explanation of the subtleties of our perverse natures.

but lets look at the converse, shall we? women lubricate. yes, we men are told that emotional intimacy and foreplay and a host of other factors are required to have these proper results, but lets be honest here: you'd swear you love us and want us and desire us even through a dry and sandpapery clench, and you're just as adamant that dripping isn't sufficient to construe an invitation to take liberty or for granted since your love and/or desire is "different"...

so which is it going to be???

men know first hand that our penis (and our sexuality) often remains stubbornly beyond reliability and/or indication of our true selves. viagra stands testament to the lengths we will go to overcome penile perversity (think of it as the converse to a little well-placed saliva or ky jelly) and we're here to repeat again that just because we were caught looking or even in flagrante delicto doesn't always mean or change things about our devotion, or potential lack thereof. we're just as desperate to feel the connection as you, and though we can't always divert all that energy into our conversation quite as easily or loquaciously as you, and though we sometimes put too much confidence in and emphasis on sex to express ourselves and receive love, we're just as vulnerable as you.

ever get damp unrelated to sex with your mate? ever feel like you couldn't or shouldn't share your innermost thoughts in case our fragile egos would be overwhelmed? ever fear (or not) that being dry (or wet for that matter) says something about you and your sexuality?

well, guys have and lose erections, and try not to hurt those that they love, and live entire lives beneath the microscope that everything about them and their penis betrays either their inner ascetic or their inner pervert.

but erections and extramarital sex, like spontaneous lubrication and the emotional confidences shared only with girlfriends, are simply symptoms of what lies between people who might love each other, even if they cannot find the way to lose their fear of each other at the same time. there should be equal blame for randy hard-ons and constant, copious flow, as there should be between emotional illiteracy and sandpaper clenches. hiding behind the exigencies of over-sexuality isn't any more constructive than denying responsibility for impotence/frigidity. yeah, there are physiological issues with the latter that mean the generality might not be perfectly fair in all cases, but let's be honest:

if you can't keep it in (or out of) your pants, just like if you can't open your legs along with your heart, then you're not the man or the woman who should maintain unreasonable expectations of your mate. take the log out of your own eye, as a wise person once advised. (i'm trying to see better, honest i am. are you?) And put the mask on yourself before trying to assist others.

los pobrecitos de uruguay

they wouldn't break, and they wouldn't bow, and they left the field feeling not a whit less deserving than the brasileiros who bested them at the spot, and every bit as contentious as when they had taken the field over three hours earlier. in this rough world where power never ceases to matter, that they will never stop coming is inspiration to me.

saludos, diego--es un honorario para usar su camisa.

getting it

got a 4am wakeup call today from the good doctor, seems his schedule-keeping is as shoddy as ever. i recall one of the first weeks we'd confirmed a date change and he pulled the same thing. at the time i was extremely suspicious it may have been one of his tests to see if i was going to react emotionally to the implication of my fault and personal disorganization. that being too much emotional energy to waste on trivia, i never really made up my mind. now, after reminding i'd be on a ca business trip several times over the past month, here's that accusatory phone call again. "i thought we had an appointment".

if there's one thing i think i've proven through all of this, is that "high functioning" is what i'm all about. emotional and marital wrack and ruin are one thing, but if there's a calendar to be kept, i'm all over it. my mistake, though. have to remember to always get it and put it in writing, because everybody is prone to not "getting it" from time to time, and they're quick to point blame everywhere but themselves. (yeah, i know, pot to kettle).

it's a hard thing, when people don't get what you're telling them. i've been a reprehensible, contemptible, and (it would seem) irredeemable scoundrel, but i'll also tell you that such judgments are based as much on what people wanted to hear or get from me (or not) as what i've said or done. now the double-edge has turned it so that i'm held guilty as often despite all faithful efforts and evidence to the contrary as i've been in the past for words and deeds said and done in faithlessness.

the crowning irony is how the one to whom i am legally and quite purposefully devoted stands suspiciously and vigilantly poised to see only evidence of faith misplaced. it's as if she's waiting for nothing so patiently again as my potential failure to keep her first and foremost and only. too bad for her as well as any of those elsewhere ruining their lives waiting for such a thing to happen. they're all going to be disappointed, though you know what they say about all this and a couple of bucks when it comes to what this means to me, al franken...

women can be real fools when it comes to getting it. or not.

so what does that make me?

goin' haligonian

the granite brewery folks moved their kettles down the street, but the basement pub at 1222 barrington street is still as always should be. order the seafood chowder along with a pint of peculiar, and i guarantee you won't have had a better pub meal in your life. it was my enduring memory from more than 15 years ago, and again the capstone of my latest trip. (the best bitter is no slouch either, but that chowder... it's off the scale).

there are a lot of reasons to go a lot of places, but right here is one of the best.