5 Things About Me... (perhaps you did not want to know...)

Tag, You're "IT".

Let's see, 5 things about me... hmmmm...


1). I am the oldest of 3 boys. When we were young, I had to 'watch' my brothers because both of my parents worked. Needless to say, our house was the neighborhood 'hangout' for all the kids on my block. Looking back now, I can see that we were the "crazy family down the street", and the other kids' parents restricted their kids from playing with us. That never stopped any of them, though...

...And how the hell did I get into cooking?
Well, if I didn't cook, we didn't eat. Simple...


2). When I was in second grade, our Nun told us a remarkable Bible Story about how Jacob burned a lamb on the altar - to atone for his sins. Later that day, I remarked in the playground that I had never seen our altar in the Church on fire with or without a sacrificial lamb... A few of the older kids heard this, and egged me on to start the altar on fire, which I did (I was totally obsessed with fire when I was young). Well, I got beat so badly by the Nuns, the Priest, My Parents and my Grandfather that I couldn't sit down for a week. You'd think that would have cured my obsession with fire... Needless to say, I was banned from ever becoming an altarboy... Perhaps that was a good thing.

Today, I'm a saute cook (still amazed with fire) and I have absolutely no use for any 'organized' religion - whichever one it might be - so go figure. Why do they tell those stories to little kids with 'far out' imaginations?


3). In college I studied Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Yoga and Art, I was a wild little Hippie (see self portrait). If there was any cause that meant anything... I'd be at the demonstration. You could bet on that. When Kent State & Jackson happened, I was out in the street demonstrating. When Jane Fonda and the anti-war movement came to town, I was there. When Angela Davis was thrown in jail, I was that white brother on the street corner asking for your signature on the petition to free her. I was all about getting the Communist Party [Gus Hall & Jarvis Tyner] on the ballot in CT for election year 1972 (even though I ended up voting for George McGovern...) And when I was the only white person there representin'... That never bothered me. I was out there in the community doing service with all the Black Panthers and the Welfare Mothers... Always colorblind and still am after all these years.


4). Finally settling down (only an opinion) in the mid-seventies, I became that Pagan Bartender at the Local Biker / Strip Bar, and after being kidnapped quite a few times by our local chapter of the EZ riders club (very rough trade), and while beating the clientele back from the 'stage' with a stick (literally sometimes), I met a girl I thought I could settle down with, but she took me on a journey half way around the country and back again to drop me off back here; and it seemed that there was more to life for both of us.

Our son is now 32, also a cook (and lives next door to my partner & I in the garage apartment), and my ex-wife and I are both 'remarried' (or re-partnered, whatever the hell you'd like to call it - it's the same damn thing); she to an 'ex-gay' man in Arizona, and I, being the 'Heathen-Pagan Deadhead' that I am... partnered to a certain ex-Ukrainian Orthodox Priest from Texas. (but that's another complicated story...)


In the mid-eighties (1985), I attended my first ever Gay Pride Parade in NYC as a member of BWMT (Black & White Men Together) New Haven Chapter, and got involved in the AIDS awareness campaign (SILENCE = DEATH), since my best friend & roomate from college was infected; and it seemed that the whole universe was ignoring the fact that this fucking disease was stealing more & more lives away every day. Back then, herpes got the biggest promotion as disease of the century, not that it's not a serious condition also, but that's the way it was in those God-forsaken "Regan Years"...
(RIP Alfons... I still MISS & LOVE you with all my HEART, Bro). Not a day goes by that I am not thinking about our lost brothers & sisters. I think most all of us have lost someone (or a few) we've cared about over the years to this dreaded killer with no boundaries...


5). And now... I've been in the restaurant business nearly 35 years, and I'm still trying to find a way out; but I think that I'm cursed to live out the remainder of my time in "Ye Old Gay Cooks & Waitresses Home". The 'culinary field' was a good outlet for me to use my artistic and creative talents earlier on - and it has always been the one thing that I've always happened to fall back on - but now I just want to do paintings and sculpture, which I have denied myself from doing for various and sundry reasons all these years. My interest in music has also been suppressed, and has also been rearing it's ugly head here of late...

It's no use, though... I'll probably be buried with a silver spatula up my ass...

You may consider this to be a game of "blog tag" if you wish. Give us a link back...

PEACE