The Beast was weary, like many before him, about turning 30. He had bouts of depression and anxiety over the milestone birthday, which he’s tried to alleviate by just looking fabulous and which I tried to remedy by taking him to New York City. We talked about going somewhere together, just the two of us, to lift his spirits. After all, eight years ago we celebrated my 30th birthday in Grand Bruit, NL, with a cake that the Beast made from a box, and the wind howling so fiercely outside that it felt like our little house might blow away to sea. We threw around destinations as diverse as Las Vegas to renting an isolated cabin in the Shenandoah Valley. In the end, Manhattan won.
He’s only been once before. I took some of his requests, like the American Museum of Natural History, into consideration but he left the rest, including restaurant reservations, up to me.
When I travel I follow roughly the same formula: Quick and easy breakfast, followed by museums and galleries, while you’re still fresh-eyed, followed by lunch, followed by explorations, which may include a cocktail or espresso stop, followed by adventures, some of which should be unplanned, and more explorations, followed by refreshing up at the hotel, followed by a late-night dinner. We didn’t exactly plan that these late-night dinners would be well after 10:00 p.m. every night, but those were the only reservations available. In the end, it worked out perfectly because we were never ready to eat at 7 p.m., or even 9.
There were celebrity sightings, no breakdowns, meltdowns or fights, plenty of laughs, a few blisters and one or two stops that we didn’t make it to. All in all, “The Beast Takes Manhattan at 30″ trip, with a loose theme of “let’s pretend like we’re early 20th century millionaire industrialists cocktailing, wining and dining about town, with a side of Uniqlo every day,” was a success.
Here’s our itinerary, photos and recaps, which I will try to keep short.
Isn’t it amazing when someone else decides what to cook for dinner? Ladies, am I right? Or am I right? LOL!
Recently, the Beast not only decided what we were having for dinner but he also made the dinner. He prepared a batch of Bolognese–meat ragu–from scratch and assembled his own lasagna.
Coming home from work to find the house filled with the comforting aroma of meat sauce and the Beast tending to a batch of beschamel by the side of the stove, made me feel like how I imagine a Mad Men man might’ve felt in the early ’60s: full of pride, wanting to take my work pants off to get into some joggers and needing a drink.
I fixed us Martini Rossos on ice, with a dash of orange bitter while we shared the happenings of our respective days. The Beast recounted what has now become a fairly typical work-related sentiment: misery, and the inevitable depression that follows from hating your job.
Beast: I watched this video over and over again at work. [Keep your eyes on the kid on the far left who gets on the table.]
Beast: It actually makes me worried for my cognitive abilities. Seriously. It’s the only thing that didn’t make me miserable today. I watched it 17 times.
Foodie: I don’t know if I find it funny because of your reaction to it, if it’s actually just really, really funny.
Beast: Oh, it’s funny. There’s just so much satisfying drama in it.
Foodie: Are there carbs in this lasagna? Because I’m not eating carbs right now.
Beast: I think so. But will you look at this beschamel? Just look at it?
Foodie: Don’t you sometimes crave North American lasagna, though? You know, with cottage cheese?
Beast: Ah, I don’t think you’d find cottage cheese under the ingredients for lasagna Bolognese in the Silver Spoon cookbook. How was your day?
Foodie: Well, I finally finished that podcast for the slideshow of the Sistine Chapel. I got it down to just 27 minutes!
Beast: [Silence]
Foodie: What?
Beast: I wonder if that might be too long. Think about an iPad user. The video we just watched, for example, is 17 seconds.
Foodie: [Silence]
Beast: God, I think this lasagna might be the best thing I’ve ever made.
Foodie: Well, look at you. What do you want? A fucking medal for cooking dinner?
And that is how our evening descended into Mommie Dearest-style territory. Instead of keeping that joy over having dinner prepared for me–from the initial conception, to the shopping, to the execution–I become heavy with rage and resentment over doing this very thing for years on end. Plus, he was right about the length of the podcast, of course. And instead of being thankful for his insight, as obvious as it was, I turned crazy. When I get like this, he pulls away from me, like a scared little puppy who’s been hit by an abusive owner.
It’s terrifying. I’m terrifying.
And I can’t even imagine how much more terrifying it was when the Beast found me some days later standing in front of the mirror, dressed in my running clothes, with a pair of scissors in my hands, looming over a sink filled with my hair.
Beast: What happened here?
Foodie: I cut my own hair. There were a few bits that were just bothering me. They kept flipping up, like a Jennifer Aniston cut, so I removed them. What do you think?
Beast: Are you okay?
Foodie: I think it will be okay in a few days, you know? And on the positive side, there’s nothing I can do about it now! [Laughing in a crazy way.]
The Beast decided that stuffed peppers were up next for his week-night dinner menu. He emailed me to ask for a list of ingredients, which I supplied, and then he picked up everything he needed and made these:
He was so busy in the kitchen that he wasn’t checking his iPhone, which was upstairs. Meanwhile, I texted him before I left the office, before I got on the subway and once I ascended from the subway. But there was no response. By the time I was on the streetcar, I was texting things like, “WHERE ARE YOU ARE YOU DEAD WHY ARE YOU NOT ANSWERING?”
I started to cry when I got on the streetcar.
After a few stops, I had hot tears running down my face. He was dead. And all I could think was how cruel I had been the other night. How would I carry on without him? Could I? No, I couldn’t.
When I got off the streetcar, someone called my name. It was a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, Natalie.
Natalie: Hey! How are you!
Foodie: I’m great! Oh gosh, sorry I’m crying like this it’s just that–
Natalie: Are you okay?
Foodie: Oh, totes! I’m awesome! Just a long day, you know?
I actually don’t remember what I said. I do know that Natalie was very kind and made me feel like it was typical to be crying on the street.
I ran up Garden Ave. with my stupid tote bag filled with all my stupid lunch containers and they were hitting each other and making so much noise and the thought of life without him by my side was making my legs shaky and there was no light on in the front window, which means I was right. He was dead. A terrible accident? Oh, Christ. I raced up the stairs, and at the top of them, that’s when the tears pounded out of my eyes. I heard Ella Fitzgerald playing in the kitchen and smelled those fucking stuffed peppers.
We ate them while watching the recently released Criterion Blu-ray of Heaven’s Gate; the ’70s film perhaps most famous for being the biggest financial flop in cinematic history, by the same director of the Deer Hunter, Michael Cimino.
Still traumatized, but slightly less crazy, I couldn’t be physically far from the Beast during dinner. Our elbows touched for most of it. Or I would stop eating and just hug him, my eyes swollen–and probably stained with mascara–and my Girl Interrupted tresses tucked behind my ears.
Beast: I wish Google had a function where you could just type “Kris Kristofferson” and it would tell you how to get his look.
Foodie: You are so much more handsome them him!
Beast: That’s a lie.
Foodie: Well, there’s a slight resemblance, at least. God, my mom used to play one of his records when I was five or six, and there was a line about him being in his underwear and I would listen to it over and over and just be rolling on the ground laughing whenever he said it. “Underwear.”
Beast: He was a Rhode’s Scholar, you know. Just incredible. And one time he delivered songs to Johnny Cash’s place by helicopter, unannounced! Hey,do we have hair products here that I could use to make my hair look like his? That soft? That shiny?
Foodie: I’m not sure that your hair will ever look like that.
Beast: Mr. Hands was my father’s name. Please, call me “Jazz”.
The other night the Beast and I got home at the same time and prepared dinner together in the kitchen. We settled on a pasta dish we used to make all the time but hadn’t enjoyed in years. It’s dead simple to make: slice up a couple heads of radicchio and brown in a pan with some olive oil. Add a big wedge of gorgonzola cheese and a splash of milk or cream. Continue to cook until the sauce is thickened. Meanwhile, cook a bag of strozzapreti pasta. Add that to the sauce and top your portion with lots of salt and pepper. Eat. Enjoy.
Last week I humble-bragged about how I’ve come out unscathed during the past two years of cold and flu season. I also said that I wouldn’t mind getting sick because I desperately wanted one of those sick days where you stay in your jammies and watch TV all day, without feeling guilty.
And then yesterday I came down with a pretty nasty cold. I watched three episodes of House of Cards, the movie Mr. Mom and the first half of The Hunger Games.
There was a night last week when everything changed. I still don’t know if it’s for the better or worse.
Despite having been gifted an old router some time ago, the Beast and I have never set it up. So we have never had WiFi. We were also recently gifted an Apple TV thing from my brother. But we didn’t have WiFi so we couldn’t use it. And I recently got an iPad. But you need WiFi to run it. Also, my brother tries to Face Time with me so I can see my nephew. Again, that requires WiFi, so it never works.
So, the night everything changed, we plugged in the router and in 30 seconds, we had WiFi; a functioning iPad; Apple TV; a subscription to Netflix and I was Face-timing with my brother.
As we fumbled with the TV, my iPhone, the iPad–which all sort of magically connected–there was a feeling of information overload. The Beast and I sat transfixed in front of the television as we scrolled through all the Netflix options trying to settle on our first viewing.
I worry that 2013 will mark the year that the Beast and I morph into some crazy Grey Gardens-like couple, who hoard stuff and forget how to communicate with the outside world. We’ve both exhibited an unhealthy obsession with material things–of the fashionable sort–as of late. I’m only now becoming acutely aware of it.
On a recent Sunday night, we had 15 minutes to kill before visiting my new nephew Ben so we decided to pop into The Bay at Queen and Yonge. We got separated in the store, where everything was 40 per cent off the last sale price, and were forced to rendezvous out front. In that 15 minutes, the Beast bought a green and white striped Polo shirt and I bought three pairs of shoes. We showed each other are wares like we were common criminals. “Whatchoo get?”
After consuming a meal of leftovers–cabbage rolls from the freezer, a couple pieces of winter greens gratin and freezer-burned corn–the Beast and I managed to pull ourselves up from the floor in front of the coffee table up onto the couch to finish watching Last of the Mohicans on Blu-ray, a Christmas present from the Beast to me. It’s director Michael Mann’s definitive cut, and there are subtle differences, which someone who knows the theatrical version intimately, like me, would be able to point out, which I did. I know the script so well that I will say lines of dialogue out loud before the actors do, a habit which I deplore in others.
The Beast didn’t seem to mind. He did, however, show concern when my eyes rolled back in my head like a shark before feeding on its prey when Daniel Day Lewis says things like, “I’m looking at you, miss,” to Madeleine Stowe, and he tears off her bodice with a metaphorical glare that must’ve penetrated her soul.
“So you’re telling me if I said that to you, we could go upstairs right now,” the Beast asked. “
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