GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DONNER

        Last summer, I became increasingly aware of a man wearing high soccer socks in the gym whenever I worked out early in the morning. He was obviously Irish, as the Irish usually are, with his golden hair, fair skin, ruddy cheeks and blue eyes. He wore soccer shorts too, but it was the socks that got me. I'm a sucker for high socks, even at 6:00 A.M. He had great legs with huge calves that looked even bigger with the socks tightly covering them. I couldn't help looking at him and soon he couldn't help looking back. Actively cruising someone so early in the morning felt a little strange, especially if I hadn't stayed up the whole night before, but it was the only time we ever saw each other. After a few weeks of nods and smiles, it was clear he was waiting for me to make the first move.

        " High Socks," I offered a handshake and smiled. " That's what I've named you. I'm Gary."

        " So is it a good thing or a bad thing that you call me High Socks? " he looked up from the seated fly machine without revealing anything in his expression until he was sure he wasn't being made fun of.

        "Oh it's a very good thing, believe me "

        " That's what I was hoping to hear," he smiled, allowing his face to show a little excitement.

     . ."  I love them on you. I think they're very sexy."

        " I wasn't sure how they looked," he shrugged his shoulders with false modesty, looking down at his socks and calves as if he never noticed them before.

        " Oh come on, I can't be the first one to compliment you."

        " I've gotten a few comments," he said nonchalantly  as he lifted each leg closer up to pull the socks up higher, knowing very well how sexy a move it was.

        " How many pairs do you have?"

        " More than anyone should have. I don't even know anymore," he shrugged his shoulders again.

        " I'll have to help you count."

        " The only way to do that is to open my drawers," he said as he started his next set of flies, squeezing the two cushions in front of his chest with his forearms, blocking his face for a moment and then releasing them. " And  I couldn't let you do that. I'm very private," he said, doing another fly.

         " I will respect your drawers," I smiled with a polite bow.

         " I would hope so," he said as he did the third fly, perfectly timed with his response. He didn't say anything else and continued to do his set. He did 20 instead of ten just to test if I would stand there and wait until he was finished, which I did.

         " Did you want this now. I'm done," he said , getting up from the machine and walking away. 

         "Hey wait!" I called out. "I never got your name."

           He turned around but didn't stop moving towards the staircase." It's in the phone book under Mr. H. Socks!" he called back to me then promptly turned around again and vanished down the stairs.

           He thought he was being coy but I could see right through him. By the end of the week  Mr. H. Socks and I were dating, and I got into his drawers after all. I made him wear different  high socks each time I came over to his apartment. He had so many pairs that by the time we stopped dating he still hadn't tried them all on for me.

     Why we broke-up  is not as vital to this story as what I discovered after. High Socks, or Darrell, and I remained on very good terms, and a few weeks later he had me over to his place for dinner. I also was getting back a copy of a manuscript I had written which he had read.  It had already been absorbed into his decor which included a wall of shelving he handmade, packed with all the books on design and antiques he collected. When I pulled my manuscript out the book beside it came out too. It  had a paper front and back and looked like it was bound at Kinko's and was titled Hutchison History.

     I held it up and Darrell told me it was about his family's history in California." We go way back," he said without any significance.

     I started at the end and turned the pages towards the beginning, and stopped at a page that caught my eye. DONNER PASS. ( For those of you who aren't familiar with this infamous event, in 1847, a California bound wagon-train led by the Donner Family along with the Breens was snowbound for the entire winter in the Sierra Nevada. Almost half of the 87 people in the group died, including almost all of the Donners,from either illness or starvation.The survivors, which included almost all of the Breens, had to eat the frozen bodies of the Donners to stay alive). I read the entire page and looked up.

       "Darrell, who was Patrick Breen?"

       "He was my great, great, great or great, great, great, great grandfather or someone like that," he said, continuing to cook a stew.

    I walked over to the kitchen with one hand holding the book and one hand on my hip. " I was dating the descendant of the family who ate the Donners and you didn't tell me!?"

      " Nobody cares about something that happened over 150 years ago," Darrell shrugged his shoulders the same way he did over his socks and calves when I first met him at the gym.

      " Are you kidding me!? Do you realize all the jokes I missed out on? 'Darell is having me for dinner' takes on a whole new meaning now."

      " You can still make all the cheap jokes.What are you so disappointed about?"

     " It's not the same. Saying I dated a man who's ancestors ate the Donners is not the same thing as I'm dating a man who's ancestors ate the Donners."

     " Gary, it's nothing to brag about. If it was your family who ate people it wouldn't be as funny to you. It's not like my family sits around and talks about it at holiday meals."

     " Well I should hope not. ' Please pass the Donner, oh, and the mash potatoes too '. "

     " You're making a big deal out of something that is so in the past that no one even knows what it is anymore."

     " The Donner Party is one of California's most famous stories. It's almost as big as The Gold Rush and The 1906 Earthquake. You're California royalty."

     "  I look more like a kitchen maid than royalty, " Darrell said, holding up the big wooden spoon he was stirring with. " I've never met anyone else who was as excited as you are over this."

     "You act so nonchalant just to bother me."

     " I know chalant is not a word, but whatever the opposite of nonchalant is, that's what you are, Gary."

       I dramatically collapsed onto a chair at the kitchen table and dropped my head onto my stretched out arm. "All the one-liners," I picked my head up and bemoaned. " I've got a Donnerdate with my boyfriend....We made Donnerplans....Waitress, I'll have the Donner special."  I sat back up and looked at Darrell. "Think of all the possibilities.... I'm stuffed, I can't eat another Donner.... I'm as scared as a Donner at a Breen family picnic.... I'm as unlucky as a Donner in December.... I'm as hungry as a Breen in a snowstorm. Or the businesses they should have started.-- Breen Wilderness Tours, Breen Ski Lodge, Breen's All-Spice , Breen's Cutlery, and Breen's Preserves." I raised my hands and imagined a huge billboard sign that read:

" DONNOR PARTY PLANNERS for all your catering and entertainment needs."

    "Hope my invitations gets lost for any of those parties," Darrell stirred the stew.

    " Don't worry. You're on their DO NOT INVITE list," I told him.

    " Oh really?" Darrell smirked, pointing the spoon at me. "Come over here. I need you to taste this." He dipped the  big spoon into the pot and then held it up for me to taste. " Tell me what you think. It's just doesn't taste complete."

    " Maybe some salt," I guessed

   Darrell took a sip from the spoon too and thought for a moment as he licked his lips. " Of course! How could I be so stupid," he shook his head and turned to look right into my eyes with his beautiful ice blue eyes narrowed into steely slits to look especially sinister. " I didn't put in the most important ingredient--YOU. "         

  

SPOT me coming

     As soon as I heard the news that Logan Airport is starting a new one billion dollar program based on the highly successful airport interrogations of travelers done by Israelis, I knew us stutterers were screwed. The program is called Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT, which will identify potential terrorists just by the way they act, speak and breath during questioning. SPOT also stands for Stutterers Prepare to Open Trousers. I might as well just go to the airport naked and save the time it will take to strip down for the cavity search I'll surely be getting. The interrogators will be looking for increased heart rate, any breathing irregularities, shifting pupils, skin color changes, sweating , Adam's apple movement, and any obvious or subtle body shifts or tics. Essentially, everything that happens to stutterers anytime we say anything. We're going to end up on more No Fly Lists than Islamic clerics from Yemen. 
   There is no one more suspicious-acting than a stutterer waiting in a line to be interviewed. We actually radiate heat depending on how nervous we are. The man wearing a suicide vest isn't as anxious. To help us navigate through this insensitive process with less stress, we should be issued ID cards from a National Data Base of Stutterers funded by the government if we are now going to go through this every time we travel. I can just imagine what a hard time innocent Arab stutterers will have. They'll wind up being water-boarded by the time they're able to say their name, address, phone number, and reason for traveling.
       On the other hand, what happens if radical Islamists start recruiting stuttering Muslims to intentionally throw off the interrogators and ease their suspicions enough to get a stuttering terrorist on board a flight. Hopefully, he'll be too worried about stuttering to announce out loud that the plane is being hijacked, and he'll watch a movie instead.   

I'M AN EX-PERT AT THIS

      Alex has been a big part of the blogs, both in the stories and behind the scenes. He helped me to set-up the blog (which means he did it completely for me) and watched as I hit 'POST' for the first time. He made the TRAVEL BLOGS possible with his amazing generosity and his great companionship. He's a real smartypants and a great counterbalance for my lowbrow behavior where ever we go. Including him in the blogs has been so much fun, and I still plan on him being in many future ones.
     Have you figured out where this is going? Yes, he has entered the realm of my ex-boyfriends. It's a very special place to be, my personal  variation of the Promised Land. No matter how I am as a boyfriend, it's guaranteed that I'll be better as an ex-boyfriend. It's actually the thing I do best. Let other guys try to strive to be the best boyfriends they can be. I'll just wait until it's over to really shine. 
    Over the years, it's been no small feat making sure everything stayed copacetic between me and my ex's. Some took longer than others. Adding Alex brought the number to three who live locally, and the other two, who live out of state, are just a phone call away. Back when it was four ex's and I spoke with all of them on the same day, I called it a 'Four Of A Kind'. Now it's a 'Full House' when I speak with all five on the same day. There's a magic about it, like a potion or a spell that needs the combination of their different voices to work. A room full of money couldn't make me feel as rich as I do on those days.
     I actually have 6 official ex-boyfriends but number 5 made himself disappear. His name is Scott, which is also the name of my first boyfriend. To avoid confusion, the first Scott, The Good Witch, is known as Scott 1 and the fifth Scott, The Bad Witch, is Scott 5. Like most Bad Witches, Scott 5 is vindictive,calculating and extremely smart. He figured out the only real way he could hurt me would be to deny me a relationship with him as an ex-boyfriend if I ended our relationship.
    "If you think I'm handing you my friendship on a silver platter like your other boyfriends you're in for a big surprise, Mister, " he sneered at me with his sleeves rolled up like a guy ready for an old-fashioned boxing match, but instead of his hands in the air ready to punch, they were on his hips, like Bette Davis.
    " It's impossible, Scott. It's a small town and I won't give up until we're friends"
    " I'm telling you, Gary.You break up with me and you won't exist in my life and I guarantee you I won't exist in yours. It's the easiest thing in the world for me to do. I did it to Patrick, and I'll do it to you."
    " I'm not like Patrick. We can still be great friends Scott. I'll show you how easy it is."
    " Don't waste your breath, you dumb ape. I don't need you as a friend. I have enough friends already."
    " What are you talking about? You don't even have any friends."
    " That's what 'enough' is to me. None. Some people don't need friends like you do,you stupid Prom Queen!"
   Sure enough, he did what he said he would do. We both lived around The Castro, but we never spoke or even saw each other again. I'll never figure out how he possibly avoided me so well. How dare he, that Bitch!
   Alex might think I'm an ape, but he certainly doesn't think I'm dumb. And our break-up was so mutual that we each said the words to each other at the same time, like a duet singing harmony. We both jumped off the ride at the same time so no one felt like he was left riding alone. For this and many other reasons, I know that Alex will not be like Scott 5, and we will be a special part of each others lives. And I will keep my promise not to write certain private things about him in any blog. Even though I would LOVE to!








.

' DRILL, BABY, DRILL '

     I'm almost 50 and don't know what a vagina actually looks like. My experience is limited to exiting but never entering one.  I couldn't draw the shape of it to save my life. The vagina I just quickly sketched on a  pad next to my computer as I'm writing this looks like the bottom half of the mask the killer wore in 'Scream'.  It shows how amazingly little I, being a childless, gay, male, know about a woman's body. I'm realizing this now because so many of my female co-workers who I'm close with at the hospital are having babies, and I've been shocked to find out things that happen to their bodies that make being new mothers even more difficult than I thought.

   I used to be jealous of all the women taking maternity leave. It sounded like they were going on a half- year long "Spring Break" of leisure time and long lunches with friends. As a gay man it wasn't fair. I didn't get one day off when I got my first dog Bronski as a puppy or when his son Mack was born. I thought I was missing out on all the fun, stuck at work while each one of them took their " leave". Now that I have heard the truth I want to personally apologize to all of them, and I want to Thank God for not giving me a vagina and breasts.

   First of all, the word "leave" is totally misleading. A new mother is not 'leaving' work, she's 'arriving' at her new job in a brutal sweatshop that only allows her a few hours of sleep a day with a new cranky, demanding boss who is yelling at her the entire time no matter how hard she's working, and who takes too many bathroom breaks but allows her hardly any. The boss and she speak different languages and she desperately tries to learn how to understand the boss so she won't be screamed at as much for not knowing what the boss wants of her. She feels abused but there's no HR office to complain to. There is way too much focus on her breasts by the boss who is truly obsessed with them and won't let her keep her shirt or bra on for a good part of the day. If that's not bad enough, this new boss has sole rights to her breasts and feasts at will, clamping down then latching on and gnawing her nipples multiple times a day as mercilessly and as greedily as Exxon, sucking as much as possible out of her. She has to allow this though, or else her bloated breasts are going to blow like oil rigs at critical mass.
    One of my favorite people in the world, Ali, is the latest co-worker to give birth. She said that when she came home from the hospital her boobs were as hard as marble. The only thing that helped with the swelling and pain was putting frozen cabbage leaves on them. None of her bras were big enough or strong enough so she had to walk around her apartment holding up her boobs topped with cabbage using her hands as platters underneath, looking like a waitress carrying two huge hors d'oeuvres. Luckily, the really bad swelling only lasted a few days and she was able to stop using the cabbage, which was starting to make her smell like compost. Another co-worker who chooses to remain anonymous helped decrease her swelling by bobbing her boobs in ice cold water using the same big tin basin she used on Halloween to bob for apples.
   After hearing so many stories about the Purgatory of breast feeding, I started to wonder if my mother had gone through the same thing. There was no way she did. I know this for the simple fact that if my mother had gone through all that pain and effort, she would have certainly thrown it in my face and used it against me, like she's told me for the past 40 years about how she slept over in my hospital room the night I had an eye operation when I was 9 years old. 
     My mother, Priscilla, a woman who couldn't learn to sew a button or remember how to tie my shoelaces in a double- knot, was so inept her entire adult life that she couldn't possibly have mastered the simple art of breastfeeding. She did what all the other modern mothers did --went to the obstetrician's office for the hormone injection then went to the Supermarket for Baby Formula. It was a big enough challenge for my mother to heat up my bottle without scalding me. She needed everything spelled out as easy as possible for her not to do it wrong.

   My mother didn't have the self-confidence or the determination of the 30 women I work with now in the Rehab department. These women are the sharpest, most dedicated, hard-working, in-control people I know. They are all younger than me but I will never be as mature as anyone of them. Not only do these women give people back their lives after having strokes, brain injuries, amputations, and spinal surgeries, most of them either run marathons, swim in the Bay, rock climb, bungee jump, mountain bike, ride horses, dive out of planes, kayak, go white water rafting , kick box, walk miles for breast cancer, hike in the forest, or camp near bears. Anything they do, they do perfectly, which is what happens when you're born on the island Wonder Woman came from. ( By the way, Alex told me that the Island was named Themascara, which if he is right, makes him the gayest person in the world).

  The new modern mother, who is the opposite of the old modern mother, has gone back to breast-feeding. The new mothers at work think Baby Formula is as good for an infant as Asbestos. You might as well give your baby thumbtacks to play with and breathe smoke in it's face.
   Dolores, who is another one of my favorite co-workers, is on the small side and was the only new mother who couldn't produce enough milk by feeding or pumping. She felt terrible and cried more than a few times over it, but after going to several lactation consultants, she still ended up having to use Formula for her baby girl. It isn't free like breast milk, but at least she saved a few hundred dollars on the breast pump equipment all the other new mothers had to buy.
   The whole subject of the breast-pump is fascinating and mysterious to me. I had no idea that a new mother MUST pump her breasts on a timed schedule, even if she isn't around her baby. For those of you who don't know this, if she doesn't get 'milked' by a baby or a machine, besides the pain that comes from being so engorged, her breasts will actually stop producing milk, shutting down the farm for good. This could be a disaster for a mother who wants her baby to be raised only on breast milk for the first year. That's why women go to extraordinary lengths to pump no matter where they are. 
    If you ask, almost every mother who has breastfed will tell you a crazy pumping story. The best 'emergency pumping' stories I've recently heard have happened in a stuck elevator during a blackout, on the 'It's A Small World After All' ride at Disneyland with a woman using Musketeer hats to cover her boobs, standing in line for Sheryl Crow tickets, and to a woman who had a Sky Marshall pull a gun on her after she came out of an airplane bathroom because some passengers thought her pump was a bomb.
    Whenever a mother returns to our department from maternity leave, she arrives with an extra satchel or knapsack that she didn't have six months earlier. Inside is her trusty pump which is more important to remember than even her wallet or keys. Being in a profession dominated by women, there is a shared understanding of the importance of breast pumping and a lot of leeway is given to the new 'pumpers'. Pumping time is scheduled into patient care hours and the 'pumping room' is reserved for them in advance. It has turned into kind of a rite of passage in our department. The 'pumping room' is just an ordinary treatment room with a lock on the door, but when it is being used for breast pumping, it becomes a mysterious sanctuary. No one would show me how the pump worked on them, or what they looked like with it attached. Even my Gay Card didn't get me inside. 
    I ended up having to go on-line to watch a headless stranger breast pump, just so I could finally understand how it worked. It was certainly not as glamorous as one would hope. As a matter of fact, it must have been designed to be especially not sexy. The 'bra' was a matronly, medical-looking, elastic beige breast harness. The suction cones looked like small versions of oxygen masks that jet fighter pilots wear, and clipped onto them were mini plastic milk bottles that could have come from a PLAYSKOOL kitchen set. 
    Ali came back to work this weekend armed with her pump, ready to enter the magical world of the 'pumping room'. Just as she was about to close the door I came up to her and demanded that as her daughter's unofficial uncle I be allowed to see her pump her breasts. " Just at least one time. Just one pump," I begged.
 She rolled her eyes and closed the door in my face, and made sure it was locked after.
  " I'll give you a hundred dollars!,"I called through the door. " How about 150?!"
  She ignored me of course, but I will not give up that easily. Plan B will be to  hire a locksmith and make a copy of the key, or Plan C  which is to install a two-way mirror in the room. I even have a Plan D, which is just to pull the fire alarm while she's in there so she'll have to run out with the pump still attached.     

  What is my obsession, you ask? I just hate not being part of something that everyone around me is doing, especially when Ali is doing it too. It made me wonder how Dolores was dealing with seeing all the pumpers on parade as they came in and out of the  pumping room.
  " Does it still make you feel bad?"  I asked Dolores as, Juliet,  another freshly pumped co-worker, came out of the room and headed to the employee refrigerator where they all stored the mini-milk bottles until the end of the day. 
  She shook her head and looked down to hide her smile. " I'm so glad I don't have to go through all of this. All that pain and all that pumping must suck. I know everyone felt so bad for me, and how bad I felt about it too, but after seeing what they all have to go through, I feel like I'm the lucky one. I feel guilty how much easier The Baby Formula makes everything. I love using it now. Everyone warned me that it wasn't good and the baby wouldn't be as healthy and adjusted but she's fine. It really didn't make a big difference. She acts like all the other babies who are breastfeeding. There's nothing different about her. If the Formula wasn't good for her, I would know already."
  " You're absolutely right. Look at me. I'm living proof. I grew up on Formula and see how I turned out."
          All of the sudden she stopped smiling and started to cry.

LEAVE IT TO CHANCE

  When someone is named Chance, that someone automatically gets more chances than other people just because it's what the name is about. How do you not give someone named Chance another chance? And if that someone named Chance happens to be our friend Chance in particular, he believes he is truly entitled to as many chances as he wants, by virtue of his uncommon name and his uncommon amount of talent in both the kitchen and the art studio. The only chance that Chance has yet to be given is the last chance, which he has somehow so far eluded.

  Chance doesn't even believe in the concept of a last chance. He has already made it over so many personal and professional hurdles which other people would consider 'last chances'  that Chance probably won't even recognize his last chance if one day he's ever faced with it. His confidence and his ego stand like bodyguards protecting him from the daily difficulties of life  pressing against him in a city as expensive as San Francisco. On the days that his confidence does waver Chance retreats to the nearest kitchen where he can re-charge himself. By the time he's through, he usually creates a few dishes along with a grandiose business plan for them. He's constantly trying to come up with ways to better market himself and find the perfect venue to showcase both his food and paintings.

   He invited Alex and I to a small dinner party in hopes of his guests helping him to brainstorm ideas. Alex has a great head for numbers and understands the best and worst ways of going about business ventures, and I have the sometimes appreciated, often unappreciated gift of honesty, which comes in handy when someone really wants to hear the truth. My face can never hide what I feel about something. Chance knows that I love what he cooks but I never think its enough and the courses take too long to be served. I have written about Chance in my blog before, specifically about being given  'sublimely small' portions of his delicious yet quickly disappearing food and still being hungry after the meal was done. I've always been a 'quantity over quality' kind of guy so the art of fine dining is wasted on me. I wasn't going to risk being left hungry this time so I smuggled in two Beef Teriyaki Slim Jims bent in half inside the big  pocket of my army pants. 

  Sure enough, when we got there the mouth-watering appetizers of grilled prosciutto wrapped green figs were already out on the table, but as soon as I  took the first step towards it, Chance intercepted me. " I promise you'll eat soon, Tarzan. We're just waiting for two more guests, and for the appetizers to be photographed."

   "Of course, what was I thinking, beast that I am. How rude of me. Food so beautiful is worth the wait," I apologized with a dramatic bow to Chance.

   " Finally Alex has trained you," Chance said, tapping Alex congratulatory on the shoulder.

   "Yes, my Eliza JewLlittle is beginning to learn," Alex jokingly bragged.

   "Yes, he's taught me well," I agreed.  A minute later I went into the bathroom and stuffed one of the Slim Jims into my mouth.

   When I came back out, a photographer and his assistant were busy taking pictures of the figs. He was very animated while he snapped shots and gave directions in French to his assistant who had the boring yet difficult job of holding a light perfectly still. After he was finished shooting  he introduced himself exuberantly with a big smile and a handshake while still holding the camera in his other hand. I immediately thought Jacques was gay as I do with every man I meet who is artistically talented at something, but then he introduced his assistant, Isabel, who turned out to be his wife.

   " You obviously love your job. It shows in how you move your camera. You do it with such--- finesse ," I said to him with a touch of exaggerated French at the end.

   "Ah ah, you speak French?" Jacques asked me.

  " Only the words that sound gay."
  He and his wife both laughed, understanding the nuances of English perfectly. It always amazes me how people from other countries can master English so well, or any second language. Some people are born linguists. Being a stutterer, the thought of learning  another language to stutter on is as appealing as carrying a second heavy bag of groceries home in my hand that was free. As we talked more, the French couple quickly caught on that I stuttered. I asked what the French word for stuttering was, and there was actually a choice of three: bafoulier, balbutler,  and my favorite, bygayer, which I made them swear wasn't a joke.

   The conversation went back to Chance's food and his paintings, which Jacques and Isabel were very impressed by as well. " We hope to spend more time with interesting people such as Chance and with his friends such as you after meeting him today," Jacques said.

   " You're just meeting Chance for the first time now?" Alex asked. "Aren't you his friend who does freelance work for Gourmet Magazine?"

   "No no, not yet. But one day, I hope. This photographer cancelled  the plans to come here so I am, you say stand-in, aah, pinch-hitter, no?" he laughed as he held his camera like a bat punting a baseball. " For me it is still what you call a hobby. For my job to make money  I do computer programming. But for my heart  I take pictures, " he looked down adoringly at his camera in his hands,
    " So did that photographer from Gourmet Magazine tell Chance about you?" Alex asked, more confused.TAK

    " No, no, not at all. I read Chance's ad on  Craigslist at 3:30 in this afternoon. ' TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS OF GOURMET FOOD AND EAT IT AFTER  '. Sounds good to me, no? " he shrugged his shoulders and smiled. " I  take photos of high-class food for my portfolio without paying for it and Chance gets copies of the photos without having to pay me. Perfect deal for both of us. And Isabel gets to eat too. Right, my lovely assistant ," Jacques put his arm around Isabel and pulled her close to him.

    " I'm really not his assistant. He doesn't even have an assistant.  I'm a teacher at The French-American School on Gough Street but we didn't have any dinner plans so tonight I'm Jaques' human lamp stand. Usually he just clamps the light wherever he needs."

   Alex grinned when he finally understood how this all came about. "Leave it to Chance. No one can get people to do things for him and make everything come together at the last minute like he can." 

    "I didn't know you could find people on Craigslist to do things with their clothes on, " I said. Jacques and Isabel understood that joke too, and we all toasted Craigslist with our champagne glasses before making a second toast.

    "To Chance!" we all clinked again and took another sip. My sip was actually a gulp, which made me burp right in Alex's face.

     "Why do I smell Barbecue?" he whispered to me suspiciously.

     " It's Teriyaki ," I grinned at him and turned to talk to Jacques and Isabel. 

    Chance stuck his head out of the kitchen for a moment holding his cellphone. " I know the meal is moving a little slower than anticipated, but I promise we'll be eating soon. The two women we're waiting for are very special to me so I don't want to start without them. It just takes them a little longer to get places because one of them is blind."

   "Oh my God, this is a disaster," I said in my most overly dramatic voice. "A blind person and a stutterer is the worst combination of handicaps to put together. A blind person can't see that a stutterer is stuttering. All they hear is silence. I had a blind patient in the hospital once who thought I kept leaving the room every time I would get really stuck on a word."

  I laughed along with everyone but part of me was truly dreading this upcoming encounter. When the doorbell rang I turned to Alex with a look of panic. "This is going to be the worst meal of my life,"  I assured him.  

  As we all listened to the footsteps of the two women and the seeing-eye dog coming up the long wooden staircase, I could tell that everyone was slightly nervous. Most people get uneasy around the handicapped, especially around the blind, who are the royalty of the handicapped.  

  "Everyone, this is Esperanza and this is Beth Ann, " Chance stood between them with his arms pulling their shoulders close to his. " These women are my mentors and muses. Beth Anne helps me to see the work I've already painted more clearly, and Esperanza, with her amazing visions, guides me in which direction and to what level the paintings I haven't made yet should go.  Together they are my perfect inspirations."

  " Please call me Espe," Esperanza smiled broadly, looking around the room to make us feel individually noticed as if she could see. " This is Helen," she leaned down and stroked her brown German Shepard as Chance guided her into the chair at the head of the table. " She's very friendly but she trained to just stay by me so don't take it personally if she doesn't come to you."  

   I moved closer to Alex and whispered as we sat down." Do you realize what she did? "

   "What are you talking about?" he whispered back.

    "She named it after Helen Keller.  Every time someone calls the dog, it must look like they're calling her Helen instead of the dog."

    " Shut up, she'll hear you, " Alex warned me, lowering his voice even more.
    Beth Ann came to sit at the other end of the table closer to us. She was tiny, with the face of a woman in her fifties but the body of a 13-year-old girl and bright red hair in pigtails to match. Immediately you could see just by the way Beth Ann looked at Esperanza across the table and by the gentle way she called to her to make sure Esperanza had everything she needed that Beth Anne's concern and love for her blind friend was very real. You could see how she protected her, though Beth Anne was half the size of Esperanza and of everyone else in the room.
     Finally, we were allowed to eat the green grilled figs, but only after Chance asked Jacques to take pictures of us cutting and lifting them with our forks up to our mouths.
   As I devoured my figs, I watched in amazement how skillfully Esperanza ate her figs after she assessed their size and shape with her utensils. Each slice she made was methodical and slow, and she was barely done with one by the time my three were gone. The thought of stealing one off her plate when no one was looking crossed my mind but I didn't know if Helen would bark at me. I tried to focus on the conversation happening, but I couldn't stop wondering how long it was going to take Esperanza to finish the appetizer, and how much longer the entire meal was going to take because of her.
   Besides eating slowly,  Esperanza also spoke in a very calm and evenly-paced manner that totally went against my strategy of 'dive-bomb 'n retreat'  which suits my stutter and comedy style very well. She asked me four different times to repeat something I tried to say before I had to explain to her I was a stutterer. Seeming a little embarrassed, Esperanza apologized over not recognizing sooner that she wasn't the only handicapped person at the table.
    She finally finished the figs and Chance brought out the next course, a creamy scallop soup drizzled with truffle oil served in Martini glasses. Chance asked us to pose with our spoons as Jacques took pictures of us having our first tastes of the Scallop Martinis, but it was so delicious I couldn't stop eating it.

      " I can hear by the speed of a spoon hitting the glass that someone on this side of the table is eating much too fast," she said with her ear aimed in my direction as her head rotated slightly like a satellite dish to pinpoint me.
      " That would be Gary, " Alex chuckled, wanting to make sure she knew it was me and not him.
      " You should be glad you can't see me eat because it looks even worse than it sounds," I said to her, which luckily made everyone laugh even though she didn't.
      " Such delicious food shouldn't be gobbled down.You should relax and try to savor Chance's creations. It's much more healthy for the soul and the body to eat slowly," Esperanza looked straight at me with her eyes rolled up to the back of her head.
       " I know, it's one of my worst 10 habits," I admitted.
       " 10? " Alex raised his eyebrow.
        "O.K,  20," I corrected myself. "It's just that I didn't even get a chance to eat lunch today. Work was so busy. "
       "What kind of work makes you so hungry, Gary," Beth Ann asked in a kind attempt to rescue me from what would have been am embarrassing moment to anyone except me.
        "I do inpatient Physical Therapy in the hospital right across the street," I proudly pointed towards the window where it was in view.
        " How funny, the one place I've never been. I'm a follower of Christian Science so hospitals don't exist in my life. I've trained myself not to even see them in the landscape. They've become invisible to me. But please tell us what you do in one. I'm sure it's interesting."
       Alex and I squeezed each others hands under the table. He had escaped from a Southern Baptist upbringing so he was particularly allergic to the religious, but he was better at hiding his shock than me. I had never met a real live follower of Christian Science. It was like meeting a Leprechaun, except that Leprechauns don't believe in as much magic as Christian Science does. Who would have ever imagined that I would meet my first Christian Science believer in the San Francisco art community!
      " Wow, you're my first. Congratulations," I smiled dumbly, still amazed.
      " Well I'll take that as a compliment then," she smiled back.
      "Can I ask you a question?"
       " Only if it's a question I haven't heard. I'm very aware of how people feel about Christian Science so I ask you to be polite.  Remember, ' it's fair to choose but not fair to judge'. "
       " Oh it's not a rude one at all. Being in the medical field, it's just something I should know since I'm eating with you. If you start choking, should I give you The Heimlich Maneuver, since it was invented by a doctor?"
      " Well, I never heard that question before so I'll answer it, " she chuckled. " If I'm signaling you to help me, then you can and I will consider it an act of kindness. But I would ask that you say a prayer for God's help before you touch me."
      "Then how about if you have a heart attack and I do CPR on you until an ambulance gets here?"
       " An ambulance is a hospital on wheels so please don't let me be put in one.  But you can do CPR for as long as it takes God to revive me. Is that a good enough answer?' she smiled.
       " That means I'll  have to keep doing CPR for God knows how long. Just the thought of that is so exhausting. Please do me a favor tonight and don't have a heart attack."
        "Everybody please do Gary and me the favor and not choke or have a heart attack at my dinner party ," Chance joked as he stood up and removed the empty Martini glasses. " To clear our palates, and our conversation," he looked back at me and said, " the next course is a sorbet made from berry iced tea and Himalayan salt that is the perfect sweet and sour taste to prepare us for the course after that." The sorbet was a wonderful blend of flavors I had never tasted before, as was the nori-encrusted salmon served over asparagus that followed. The last course was a cheese plate to make sure everyone, especially me, didn't leave hungry. I was so stuffed by the end that I didn't even have to eat the second Slim Jim in my pocket.
     The night as a whole was a success for Chance, who got great business advice from Alex, free photographs from Jacques, more inspirations from Esperanza and Beth Ann, praise for his cooking from everyone, and special praise for the bigger size of this portions from me.
    Personally, I learned a few key lessons about food and the art of dining, the most important being never to eat with the overly-religious or the blind again.