foodwinesex

Recalibrating

foodwinesex. Hot and muggy. Occasional breeze. Recalibrating my sweating point. Sunday. Everything is closed on Sunday like when I was a kid. Catholic country. Recalibrating my expectations, but hold on...not so fast. Just walking around, this looks like a prosperous, stylish city. Very cosmopolitan. Restaurants are everywhere. People are crowding sidewalk cafes with a glass of San Miguel or a rioja and perhaps a bocadillo. The pace is quick but perhaps not as fast as San Francisco. Could be the weather or could be the internal clocks run on a different crystal. Could also be that the days are much longer. I'm getting on their speed quickly. My internal clock needs recalibrating and nothing like food, wine and sex to help get it there. Part of the whole clock thing is the schedule of life here. Dinner rarely starts before 10 PM and the streets are more crowded at 2 AM than at 11 PM.

We slept late, woke up and decided to walk over to the Museu Picasso. The day was the type of day you don't want to fight cause its gonna beat you every time. Hot and muggy. We took our time walking and passed under the Arc de Triomf. The boulevard it crowned was filled with men playing bocce and board games, families cavorting, kids with soccer balls practicing their footwork and people walking dogs. Lots of dogs in this city. We found our pace and wound up in the Old City section of town.

The first Sunday of every month means free admission at the Meseu Picasso and given the length of the queue in front of the place people took advantage of the subsidy vigorously. This reminded me of my trip to NY a few weeks ago with MOMA entry underwritten on Friday evenings by Target. I must be lucky. No matter, the line moved quickly and we were inside the museum within fifteen minutes. The museum itself was a string of small medieval mansions made into a common building. It was beautifully done. As we entered, I wasn't sure what I was seeing at first. Fine draftsmanship signed by Pablo Ruiz. It started coming back quickly. Picasso was Pablo Ruiz Picasso and his earliest works, the stuff he did before becoming serious about art, was signed Pablo Ruiz. Some of this was done as he was spending time near the art school where his father taught...it was in the blood. This was his earliest work and they had a lot of it. Wow. I've seen many Picasso exhibitions and have visited the Musée Picasso in Paris but have never seen anything like this. This was the missing link that drew the evolution to the Picasso that began amazing Paris (Blue Period, Rose Period) in the early twentieth century.

The crowd was all over the place. Some were art students. Others were tourists who wanted to check off a box in their "things to do" list. Others were there to meet people and yet others were locals who just wanted a free ticket to see the work of a native son. Despite the heat, long line to get in and a somewhat indifferent audience, this was a great show to see for anybody who appreciates the work of Picasso. Highly recommended.

On the walk back to our hotel, ChP and I stopped and had a glass of wine in a plaza. We made peace with the heat and humidity and then had a second glass of wine. Ahhhh...this is how the locals cope with a hot, muggy weekend. This works fine. When we got back to the hotel we realized that to go out to one of the better restaurants you definitely need reservations. On top of that, most major restaurants are closed on Sunday. We ended up skipping dinner but went out late looking for a cocktail. We wound up at a small club that was half filled and was notable for an area of the place that had sofas hanging from the ceiling. Couples sat and swung back and forth slowly. After two attempts we realized we were not gonna get a martini here. As it turned out, we were not going to get a martini anywhere in Barcelona. Vodka and ice in a glass was as close as it was gonna get so fine...we can deal. Besides, everything was back open tomorrow and the whole city was ours to discover.

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Jump...you might as well jump (with apologies to Van Halen)

BK is heading out of town. ChP still has family in town and is booked. I'm alone for the weekend and don't have plans yet. (Late breaking change...invited to a party in the East Bay tomorrow night.) I'll visit the gym of course but K is in Barcellona (or somewhere in Spain or Portugal) and so I won't have my usual Saturday breakfast at the SF Ferry building with her. Maybe I'll go solo.

Fuck it. I'm tired of not talking about sex. I'm tired of not talking about tugging-on-her-nipples-with-my-teeth sex...sticky, wet, sweaty sex...of not talking about the backrub that goes to hands between the legs and mouthlipstongue-to-pussy sex...of pulling her by her hips to the edge of the bed, putting her feet on my chest and fucking her sex. I'm tired of not talking about the "I'm-coming-from-every-part-of-my-body" sex...the chirping, panting, moaning sex...the doesn't-give-a-shit-what-the-neighbors-think kind of sex...the tasting-her-when-she-comes sex. I fucking miss it when it isn't there. I like waking up the next morning and smelling sex in my hair...smelling her on my hands and face. I don't want to wash her off in the shower. This is stuff that I don't want to hide, make neat or inoffensive, to perfume...obfuscate...make detumescent...flaccid. This is the best part of being alive. I won't apologize. Besides...I'm alone and what else can I think about? Dinner?

No dinner last night. Went to an open house at Jump, a very cool design firm in San Mateo. The husband of a very talented young designer I know works there and they invited me to an open house to christen their new space. Lots of finger food, desserts, open bar...there was a happening band on the patio with three girl singers, a super tight rhythm section and 3 horns covering very obscure R&B tunes. It was a little chilly out there but they were working it. The space itself is very cool...well thought out for maximizing small-cluster creative brainstorming. Got a private tour of the facility and met the architect, Michael Fazio of architecture firm Archideas. They did it right...I felt very comfortable there. I got a tour of a similar facility at the world headquarters of Sprint (Overland Park, Kansas) last month. They tried to do a simliar thing there but it seemed as if they did a tour of similar spaces (Ideo, etc.) and mapped it. I'd like to see how they actually use it. For all I know it could be the killer space but at the end its the quality of the products that come out of the space that determines how good it is.

I ran into a couple of friends at the Jump party. One was SL. I hadn't seen him for a couple of months and it was good to catch up. SL is an industrial designer at a big company in the valley. We always enjoy talking design. Last night we also got to talking about divorce and he was telling me about what he went through and how he came out the other side. He's been happily married to CL for years now. We made vague plans to get together for a beer. Great guy. I'll definitely follow up on that.

I'm back.

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The oddest combinations (or how chemistry sets usually result in a mess but every once in a while...)

foodwinesex. Another beautiful day in SF yesterday...another perfect Sunday. Gym, coffee, shower and a late breakfast at Absinthe. I usually go there for the creamy polenta with mascarpone, toasted walnuts, bananas and maple syrup but its better with cool weather. I went with their house-made granola, yogurt and fruit. Light and fresh.

After a bit of work I headed out mid-afternoon to SFMOMA. There were a couple of exhibitions I wanted to check out...particularly Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint. I had seen some of his Cremaster Cycle a few years ago and knew of his involvement with Björk (who appears in a number of his pieces and who supplied the score for this installation). The breadth of media types and range of scale were both amazing. There is a room specifically set up as an educational appetizer to use before you tackle the exhibit. Highly suggested that you check out this resource. There is plenty about this work on the SFMOMA site.

Being a design maven I also had to check out Xefirotarch/design series 4....cutting edge architecture. (Xefirotarch is Hernán Díaz Alonso's Los Angeles–based architectural firm.) Think Frank Gehry in the form of undiscovered deep-sea creatures. Forces you to rethink basic assumptions about architecture and technology. There was a model of a structure designed for U2. The rest of the design exhibit is on permanent display but they've added a few new pieces. One in particular has been an object of overt lust for me for several years...the Aprilia Moto 6.5 motorcycle, designed by Phillipe Starck. Damn, a nearly perfect embodiment of my ideas of design, sex and masculinity.

As I was leaving the museum I got a call from jevering. He and Brooke were over on Chestnut Street and had reservations at Mamacita's. SteveD and Patrick, two guys who work with jevering (SteveD deserves an entire post himself) were to join us when they got in from the airport. Long story short...lots of appetizers, pitchers of margaritas (all tasty...esp. the pomegranite but mixed on the weak side) and a long wait for the guys. So long that I never got to my entree...too chipped out. Next time...it did look promising. On the other hand, the crowd was great. Lots of women. There was a group of three in a row at a table facing me. (Sidebar...why is it that when three women go out together and sit in a row that the hottest one is invariably in the middle? Is this some under-reported subtlety of Buckminster Fuller's thinking on groups of threes? Is the brain in being wired to appreciate beauty forcing a symmetry in social situations?) As they were getting up to leave I approached the middle woman, gave her my card, made some small talk and waved as they left. She was just my style. I hope she calls (she said she would). She told me her name but I forgot it instantly. Not a good start on my part. (Update - ChP just reached out to me....nice.)

Last night I thought a lot about the whole chemistry thing I've been contemplating and how I might have been affected in my youth. There was a familly across the street and a couple of houses down from where I grew up (Long Island). They were Irish/Italian Catholic and had nine kids. The oldest, Philip was 4 years older than me and the next oldest was Patty and she was 2 years older than me. Patty was my best friend for years. Total tomboy. She (and her sister Kathy) would wrestle me to the ground, sit on me and tickle my balls. Think about what that sets up in the head of an 8-9 year old boy. Philip was my babysitter. He'd come over, play records, show me how the high-school kids danced, turned me on to the Beatles before they hit the US and in short taught me how to be cool. Philip was gay. As it turned out, Patty was lesbian. I adored them both but couldn't get on their bus. But one time and one time only, Patty got on my bus.

I must have been 18. We were at a party. I was hormonally-driven, still pretty inexperienced and in no way prepared for what was coming. We'd had a beer or two (as I recall, Grolsch ceramic caps were the beer of choice then) and sat on opposite sides of the room. Patty leaned over and asked at a volume that insured the whole room would hear, "Hey G...you hungry for a ball?" My astonishment was no match for my hunger. "Wow...absolutely." We headed out and made a stop along the way at a bar. A gay bar. I had never been to one and was again unprepared. Patty wanted to play a game. We slow-danced (actually we sort of stood they and grinded together) in full view of all her lesbian friends. I was oblivious to the animosity. We headed back to my place and had an evening I never forgot (and I never knew how Patty remembered it). I do know that this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for both of us. What the hell kind of chemistry was in the air that night?

Life goes on. I have two brothers that came out years ago. Philip died of AIDs in the early 90s. I continued to stay in touch with Patty whenever I was visiting my family on the old block until she died about 10 years ago. I'm sure she offered a big contribution to who I am today. Psychological, chemical or something else altogether? I do miss both of them.

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