Where The Boys Are

Jack and I drove up to Napa yesterday, to visit our friend Ace, who plays bass. When I say Jack and I drove, what I mean is Jack drove, in a fabulous fire-engine red Nissan 350 Z. Beauty is in the shop, you see.

And when I say our friend Ace, what I mean to say is, Jack's friend Ace, with whom I am also acquainted, though only because he was Jack's friend from a long, long time ago.

Napa is stunningly beautiful. The leaves turn colour up there — even on the grape vines, something I've never seen before, and I come from grape & wine country.



That sea of red, with its border of yellow, is a vineyard. It seems different kinds of grape leaves turn distinctly different colours. Where I come from they turn black, freeze, and crash to the ground, all within seconds following the harvest.

Driving through the quaint towns of Yountville, Calistoga, and Sonoma, was almost like being in New England in early fall, if you squinted your eye to block out the occasional palm tree.

Yountville is home to this restaurant, called The French Laundry.





To say that The French Laundry is an exclusive restaurant is to say that the Mona Lisa is a painting. It's the restaurant, at least in this part of the world. There are websites dedicated to giving tips on how to get a reservation there.

It was closed, yesterday, because of the Thanksgiving Day holiday, which is just as well, because Jack and I were planning to have dinner with the vegans.

That's right, Ace and his wife, and their two little boys, are vegans. That means no turkey for us.

Incidentally, I'd like to take a moment to point out, for those of you unclear on the concept, that Jews are not vegetarians because they don't eat pork, and neither is your best friend Buffy Sue, who doesn't eat red meat. ("Ewwwww!") A vegetarian is someone who doesn't eat the flesh of animals. Any animals. And yes, an Orange Ruffie is an animal. So is a chicken, and so is a salmon.

It's not just Americans that irritate me, Gentle Reader; I have many pet peeves, one of which is having this conversation with people:

"I don't eat steak. I'm a vegetarian."

"You mean you don't eat any meat?"

"Well, I eat fish and chicken, and some seafood. Like Chicken of the Sea."

"Then you're not a vegetarian."

"Oh yeah? What am I, then?"

"You're a person who likes to eat some foods, and prefers not to eat others, you stupid fuckhead, which makes you exactly the same as every other human being on the fucking planet, so stop acting like you're in some fucking special, superior category just because you don't like steak."

And you wondered why I had to travel three hours north to get a dinner invitation.

Vegans don't eat anything that comes from animals. Which is why, in the end, Jack got the whole pie that I made yesterday.

You see, the primary motivation for yesterday's baking experiment was not so I could bring something to the party, it was to bake a pumpkin pie that Jack could eat. He's diabetic. Bringing something to the party was secondary, and, in the end, I brought nothing, because when Jack arrived to pick me up, and I told him about the pie, he asked,

"Does it have milk in it?"

D'oh!

So we drove pieless to Napa.

I was excited about seeing Ace again. It had been ten years, almost exactly, since the summer in New York, when I was working for that Internet startup, and he was playing bass with a band that had a gig in the Village, and we'd walked around the city together, both of us over six feet tall and dressed in biker jackets. His hair had been long, then; I mean all the way down his back long. I remember him commenting, "Nobody's going to fuck with us, are they?"

Jack told me that Ace had cut his hair to normal guy-length short. That his wife's name was Maggie, and that she was a dancer he'd met in New York — a real dancer, Gentle Reader, get your mind out of the gutter — and that their little boy's name was Rowan.

They'd also recently had another baby boy, and named him Oak.

Rowan and Oak. And their father is a musician. Shall we start guessing the name of the band they're going to form in ten years or so?

The red Nissan pulled up in front of a tiny house on the outskirts of one of the Napavilles; I forget which one; and shadows of figures gathered behind the glass door to watch us get out. We made our way up the sidewalk, to the porch, and there was Rowan, four years old and long, streaming blond hair, looking every inch the rock star I have no doubt he will one day be. Barring our path with his arms crossed. He looked at Jack and smiled, then looked at his father, then back to me. He set his little mouth firmly, pointed straight at my head, and declared, "I don't know her!"

To be concluded in Part II.