‘Sup, Nietzsche?

In the spring of 2007, I drove Krull’s sporty car from his apartment complex on Colorado Boulevard in Santa Monica to pick him up with a couple of colleagues for a leisurely lunch. It was a remarkably slow day in Investment Banking Land, and they had suggested some fantasy lunch destinations, such as Moonshadow’s in Malibu. We ended up going to the more practical Babalu on Montana, which is a delightful Santa Monican eatery—I am getting nostalgic thinking about it.

On the way to Babalu, with three or four young finance geeks in the car, the “shop talk” was off the charts. About 40 yards before we arrived at the restaurant, one of the young men (none of whom I had met previously, by the way) finally noticed my silence and said, “But that’s enough out of us. Let’s let Nate complain about his job.”

“I really like my job,” I returned without thinking.

“Oh. [Pause] Well, fuck you!” was the banker’s metered response.

That seems like such a long time ago. In fact, this blog is sort of a vestige of a prior phase. Disclosure: I do feel guilty for not posting to this narcissistic forum since February, but in times of transition, there are just some things that you can’t have floating around out there on the Internet…and I am sort of a miserable self-censor. I know, I know, I never finished my 25 Things About Me, but I think it was on February 5 or something like that when The New York Times ran an article about the Facebook phenomenon, and I really could not go on doing it without feeling like a douche.

Coincidentally, that date was also right about the time when Krull was offered a job in San Francisco, and life sort of just changed. Within a month, our gorgeous little house in Los Angeles was vacated, a new apartment on Russian Hill was leased, Krull was settled, and I had refocused my efforts away from blogging and vodka-ing (yes, that most certainly should be a gerund) and exploring L.A. job opportunities to apply to whatever law schools I could.

There has been very little stability in the last few weeks, which is quite a learning experience because the only things that are stable are those that sit at your core: family, values, ideals, friends, love, talents. This has been a great time to reconnect with all of those things, and I have a clarity and confidence that I feel I have been lacking recently.

So I am leaving my apartment and that job that I really like (I actually love it and have been crying for several nights thinking about leaving), and I am going back to school.

What do I think of all this? Well, I don’t really know. I know that I feel good about taking a step in a new direction and getting a degree I have considered for a very long time, but I am suddenly going to have a very different life when the end of July rolls around. While I am really looking forward to the change, leaving a situation that I have grown to love makes me curl my right nostril and contemplate whether I am doing the right thing, and whether this move will help me to build a life that will be satisfying and sustaining.

In the end, it will be a far cry from a mid-week’s lunch at Babalu, and I guess I had planned on that lifestyle being my reality for a good couple of years. I know that I am grieving on a lot of levels…the loss of our first house, the loss of Santa Monica, the loss of a return to California, the loss of a dream, and now the loss of an amazing job…and I am also proudly celebrating a new step into a new future. To paraphrase Nietzsche, to forge ahead into a new world, we must first destroy another.

N.B. RE: Nathan Kicks It—as I sit in LAX, across from the Hudson News whose attendants still recognize me, in the terminal that I entered seven months, two weeks, five days ago after having smoked my last cigarette—it is my intention, having gone public with my plans, not to be merely a fair-weather friend to this blog any longer. But the theme and context will be revised in the near future, I expect. Hey, if I have to deal with all this change, I think my blog might have to bear at least some of its brunt!

9. I am very tall but never have been able to hit a golf ball proportionately farther than anyone over the age of 10.

It's not that I don't meet expectations...well, no...it's exactly that I don't meet expectations. At six-feet, five-inches tall, my leverage should be such that I could have a hope at the pro tour, but I don't. I can't hit a ball any farther than I could when I was a freshman in high school. Maybe I should work out more? Maybe I should just play golf more regularly? Whatever the reason, I have made peace with it, as one must with that infuriating, money-pit of a game.

I also did NOT play basketball in school, in case you and everyone else wanted to know.

8. I have consumed thousands of bottles of wine, but not one of them has been an Amarone, and I intend to rectify that soon.

People think I know a lot about wine because I grew up on a vineyard. It's true; I know how to make wine, generally speaking. I know that grapes need to be in excess of 20 percent sugar when they are harvested to achieve 12 to 15 percent alcohol in the final product. I know that red wines are red because of the amount of time they spend fermenting on the skins. I know how to get a cork into a bottle. I don't really know the proper yeast ratios or what SO2 does, but I do know a thing or two about winemaking.

I also am put in tough positions whenever wine is being purchased, my friends looking to me to tell them what is good because of my viticultural background. But really, my expertise in telling a good wine from a bad wine when looking at a wine list or standing in a liquor store is just as nuanced as anyone else’s. I have a general idea about what grape variety and/or region of wine would be nice with certain foods, and I know what my price range is. I know what I like, not what label is best. My parent’s grew grapes, not labels. (That being said, I do take more than a little pleasure when my companions pass me the wine list. The fact that I might drink more than most people also might give me a leg up on selection practice.)

My cousin, Dr. Marc, arranged for wine classes as a Christmas present last year. It was a great way to spend time together and indulge in mild excesses.

I learned what is generally known: that people love to over-think wine. That was not one of the course’s intended lessons, I am sure. The instructor had devoted his entire professional life to winemaking in regions around the world, and while I don’t mean to belittle his life’s work, it just seems that the whole industry is in need of a good humbling. The difference between a Barolo and a Barbaresco: opposite sides of a river in the Piedmont. A matter of yards, arguably.

But the mystique of wine is steeped in traditions and rituals: place, vine, heredity, technique, and savoir-faire. The two European wine powerhouses, Italy and France, take two different approaches to wine, in general. The quality of a wine largely is credited to three factors: the technique used to make it, the weather conditions of a given growing season, and terroir (the idea that a specific place, by virtue of the vines growing the grapes and the soil that grows the vines, has equally specific bearing on the quality of the finished product). The French consider a great wine the product of birthright, only certain vineyards being of the caliber to produce in the highest ranks of wine hierarchy. On the other hand, the Italians are much more focused on how a wine is made. For that reason, there is no Italian equivalent to the brand names of Lafitte or Neuf du Pape or Clicquot-Ponsardin; it doesn’t matter which vineyard produced it, but rather how it was produced.

With their heightened sense of process, it is no surprise that Italians have produced some amazing things in experimenting therewith. For instance, in the mountains outside of Verona, the Italians created a wine that is pressed from grapes that have been dried in the open air and sunshine for up to 4 months. Half the water evaporates to concentrate the sugars, and when fermented, what is pressed becomes a full, spicy and dry red wine. It’s called Amarone.

I’ve never had it, but I will change that soon.

7. I get indignant when I have had too much to drink.

Character flaw or just sensitive? Potato, potahto.

(By the way, S has requested that I come up with a better name for him in this blog, so I am going to try out a few new ones in the next couple of weeks. To keep things clear until I find that new name, S henceforth will be identified by a few asterisks around whichever tester name I may be using.)

**Krull** and I came to Charlotte to see our dear friend, Taylor, this weekend, and last night I had a lot of beer and some vodka (and, I hate to admit, some shots of Jagrmeister. Ick). And everyone was smoking cigarettes, and I got mad because I felt left out. So I got very indignant and stole a cigarette from a pack in the kitchen and grabbed a lighter, and in a fit of pagentry emerged on the porch and lit it.

Some people would say that in that instant I may have thrown away more than three months of working really hard not to smoke. Krull and Taylor tried very hard to stop me, but I did it anyway. I took a drag. And it was gross. Super gross. I wasn’t satisfied at all. I put out the cigarette instantly, even though I was still pretty indignant. I definitely learned that I don’t want to smoke anymore. It just took a drag to remind me of that after three months.

Krull also says that I get exponentially more indignant if gin or tequila are involved. Sorry, Krull. You are a great boyfriend.

(And I also get really emotional when I am hung-over. Seriously, I can’t hear Pucini without busting into tears sometimes. It’s that bad. But that is another post.)

6. The first time I went to a gay party, I stepped on John Cameron Mitchell’s foot.

You might know him as Hedwig from the seminal transsexual punk rock film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but I didn’t know him from Adam.

A filmmaker, a fantastic documentarian (check him out), was throwing his annual birthday party in SoHo, which he calls the Virgo Delight Party. I had been invited by my boss at the Whitney Museum, and as I was FRESH out of the closet, this was my very first gay function. And wouldn’t you know it? A giant zit appeared directly between my eyebrows the day of the party.

That just was not going to do for my début on the New York gay scene!

So 20 minutes before the party, I phoned for reinforcements, and a girl whom I had met in the elevator of my building (who became one of my closest friends) came up with a make-up kit.

I sat on a stool in front of an overly ornate mirror in my crazily decorated apartment, and my new friend “did my make-up.” When she was done, we decided I should wear my reading glasses, just in case.

I was in my tightest jeans and a brand-new shirt, with my new Prada sneakers on…you know, the ones that had the ridiculously long toe? Don’t judge me…so the combination was sort of ripe for disaster: too-tight pants, zit making me even more self-conscious, reading glasses skewing my perspective a little, and shoes making me just a little more clumsy than usual.

The party itself was dizzying. The small SoHo loft was filled with the gay Who’s Who of New York, each wearing a thin veneer of propriety, but my tush was getting far more pats than I would have expected. I would strike up conversations with people, and…Wait a minute…Did he just wink at me? What does he mean ‘if I ever need a lawyer?’ It is so HOT in here. And someone should tell that lawyer guy that he sweats too much to be handing 22-year-olds his business card. Whoa, these glasses make me feel drunker than I am. I am getting dizzy. I need to get out of here! PANIC! Must get air. MUST get air. Thank GOD I smoke! Great excuse!

So I burst outside to see my boss’s boyfriend smoking a cigarette, too, and talking to a perfectly nice looking young man.

“Jonathan! Thank GOD! Can I get a light?”

I think it might have been that lawyer’s residual sweat on my hands, but I dropped the lighter. When I bent down to pick it up, my super-long toe caught the tree grate, and I teetered precariously forward, about to take a dinger into the gutter. But I grabbed onto the tree, thinking madly how I was going to make this debacle seem graceful in front of an entire street filled with fabulous men. I righted myself, popping up with a smile, but had over compensated and continued backward. With frantic stutter steps, I finally came to rest upon the foot of an extremely annoyed, small man. But he graciously told me not to worry about it, and I sort of half apologized, too embarrassed to acknowledge what had just happened to me. Maybe I was in shock.

And Jonathan made it soooo much better by saying, “You know who you just stepped on, right?”

And the rest is history.

5. I don’t take much for granted, especially when it comes to friendship.

Everyone is at least a little selfish. Everyone wants at least some people to think the best of them. These two truths get people into trouble.

I was supposed to have lunch with one of my dearest friends after the holidays to catch up and talk about life, spew the stories of the previous month, and generally get some face time. I got stuck in a meeting and asked to reschedule with her. Her reply (paraphrased): “I am away for the next two weeks, but as soon as I am back, we will get something on the calendar.”

That was on a Friday.

The next Friday (one week later), I had dinner with a mutual friend who had been with her earlier that day and was told that she would be at a party four blocks away that evening. I went to the party. I was seething with indignation. I was just so mad that she had lied to me and that I was low enough on her social totem pole not to merit a re-schedule within two weeks. I saw her from across the room but just could not go over to say hello. I was so angry.

She looked up from the table and saw me. She came over and cooed something about what a pleasant surprise it was to see me and S there.

I clinched my teeth and told her how happy I was to see her. And I was genuinely happy to see her, just so upset that she had lied to me and didn’t seem to remember it. I was so offended.

Then she looked at me and said, “I have something for you, but when I texted you for your address, you never wrote back.”

Excuse ME?? I thought. I never wrote back?? You LIED to me so that you wouldn’t have to talk to me or see me for two weeks!! How DARE you??

And she pulled out of her purse a postcard from a restaurant where she and I had gone every week when we first moved to New York five years ago. On the back was the cutest note about her meal and the memories, written in a lazy scrawl.

And I was touched. Not only had she thought of me, but she had kept this beat-up postcard in her purse, awaiting a text response or a chance encounter.

Most of my angst over the whole situation was really that I have felt neglected by her, and I can’t say that I have given our relationship enough of the attention that it deserves, either.

And the truth is that I do not take her for granted at all. She is luminous and special, and I really need to try to bring her back into the fold more so that there isn’t another sequel to Much Ado About Nothing.

4. At one time, I was fluent in Spanish and French.

That time seems like only yesterday, but really it was seven years ago. Where does the time go?

I studied Spanish for eight years and French for four. I wrote a thesis in college on a photographer, but my real chef d’oeuvre was a paper on how the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao affected Basque nationalism. To this day, my favorite exclamation is delivered with a perfect southern French accent: “Champagne!”

I studied abroad in Madrid and Paris, working internships at Sotheby’s, which is where I cut my social teeth. Talking art in a non-native tongue with people who are announced when entering rooms as “Excelentísima Duquesa de Alba” or “Princesse Laure de Beauvau-Craon,” does something for how a person comports himself in many other circumstances. It builds a certain aise. At least it helped me to become quite comfortable in dealing with the more brash cultures of “society” on our side of the pond.

People often look at college as the best time of their lives, but I look at those 12 months abroad as the most important of mine. While having traveled extensively with my family early in life, being in Europe by myself made me into the person I am. I identified what mattered to me and what piqued my interest in many spheres. I cooked my first meal for myself. I traveled alone for the first time and was away from my family for Thanksgiving. I gained my independence and academic, social, and professional confidence. Perhaps most importantly, I began to deal with my homosexuality.

So while my lexicons are shrinking and I become increasingly less facile with subjunctive tenses, the fact that I was at one time fluent in Spanish and French is probably one of the most important random facts that a person could know about me.