Tuesday, September 1, starts off beautifully … nice temperature, low humidity.  After work, Bryan and I walk to the West Village to Burritoville, which seems to be better than I remember.

Wednesday, September 2, a simple ; Bryan even makes tuna helper and we spend most the evening just relaxing.

Thursday, September 3, dinner at Café Cento Sette, around the corner, where I have a superb chicken breast in mustard sauce; everyone else always gets it, so it’s finally my turn!

Friday, September 4, I meet B at the Burlington Coat Factory where we pick up two Perry Ellis tuxedos for only $140 each!  My friend Albert O is getting married in October, and it’s black tie so this is the perfect excuse.  We then stop at Moe Ginsburg’s where we get a pair of Perry Ellis tuxedo shirts and some gay cufflinks (they have black triangles in their centers).

Saturday, September 5, is it any surprise that my cold hasn’t left me?  We get up around noon, have lunch at the Lunch Box and spend the afternoon working on the hallway closet.  At 7 pm, we meet up with Joe Fiore and David Feight at Brunetta’s for dinner, then we walk over to the Variety Theater on 3rd Avenue (W.C. Fields once performed there, it’s an historical landmark) where we see Alan Ayckbourn’s Communicating Doors with Mary-Louise Parker (with significant cameo time by David McCallum).  It’s not bad, even considering the mediocre reviews it’s gotten; although Gregory Young says in HX …

“Ayckbourn’s play of shifting realities makes as much sense as all time-travel stories, which is not much.  And yet here, it doesn’t seem to make that much difference; the story is at turns hysterically sly, chilling and heartwarming….  Its intentions are instant, present gratifications.”

Sunday, September 6, we’re up at 9 but don’t get out of the house until noon to meet with Bryan’s boss Michelle Petersen at Lighting by Gregory (every light fixture known to man) and then Goldman’s Treasures.  See, we never take people to normal tourist spots!  We’ll take you there too if you come to NYC!  Around 4, we eat at Edo, a Japanese restaurant on 17th Street near Union Square.  Not bad, not great.

Monday, September 7, Labor Day … so we work, right?  After breakfast at the Lunch Box, we drive into NJ to IKEA to pick up a new CD rack for the closet.  And we get caught in a horrible thunderstorm!  Well, good excuse to stay and work on the closet.  We finished off around 6 pm, took a nap and then went to Pangea around 11 pm for dinner (and great pina coladas for Bryan and Mai Tais for me).  A couple of syndicated Star Treks and we were asleep around 1 am.

Tuesday, September 8 … Indian food at Haveli, the upscale restaurant on 2nd Avenue near 6th Street.  We have the vegetarian dinner for two; pick your drink and they do the rest – and very good it is!

Wednesday, September 9, all the commotion regarding the President has me a bit down, psychologically.  I am the only person left in the country who doesn’t want him to resign or be impeached.  All the work we did in the late Sixties regarding “free love” and all that has been turned completely around.  I believe the country will now be tacking right, when it comes to “morality” and I don’t think that’s a very good thing.

Driving music is old Jona Lewie (You'll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties), then off to K-Mart (ah, what smart shoppers) and then to dinner outside at the Cloister’s Café (where obviously the regular chef had the night off).

Thursday, September 10, an easy day at work and then off to Cranford for the first choir practice of the season.  Yes, I’ve decided to re-up for another year.  I enjoy the camaraderie and I think Bryan enjoys a night off.  And it’s a good practice; we’re practicing for the end of October, in a service with the local Lutherans singing Bach’s “Eine feste Burg.”

Friday, September 11, beautiful weather.  After work, I picked up Bryan at work at 5:45 and drove up to 77th Street to the Blue Nile (right off Columbus Avenue); Bryan and I join his friend Greg (and his fun friend Robin) for Ethiopian food.  No utensils are used; instead one scoops up the food (everyone’s orders are piled on one big platter) with a spongy type of rice bread (looks like uncooked fortune cookie dough).  Lots of fun was had by all (I also had three martinis) and then we dropped them off at Grand Central on the way home.

Saturday, September 12, we’re off to the Museum of Modern Art, where I want to catch the Rodchenko exhibit (not as good as we hoped) and the oft-written about Pierre Bonnard (we agreed with Picasso – second rate) along with some other artists.  Although a nice time, we really weren’t thrilled with anything new that we saw (even including their new Cezanne acquisitions).

We decided to walk most of the way home, stopping for a drink at T.G.I. Friday’s for a drink near Grand Central before going back to Union Square and the new Virgin Records megastore.  He got the new album by Hole and classical/pop violinist Vanessa Mae, among others, while I continue my wild span of musical interest by getting Ralph Vaughan William’s Mass in G minor (paired with a Howell Requiem), the new Fear Factory (and I fear a dying niche of music), the debut album by Adam Cohen (unfortunately a bit boring but he is the son of Leonard, of whom I get his second greatest hits album as well) and old collections by Book of Love and Falco (who recently died), also Jethro Tull’s A and Japan’s Adolescent Sex; unfortunately, none hold up as well as memory would lead one to believe.

Eat at Pangea.  Guest diner alert – tonight it’s Diamanda Galas and her boyfriend!  They’re regulars there, but I’ve never been there at the same time.  Anyway, I had their wonderful mussels and Moroccan chicken, B had a salad and blackened striped bass.  We also had many pina coladas (for B) and mai tais (for me) before stopping off at Niagara (7th Street and Avenue B).

Sunday, September 13, around noon, we’re off to pick up Uncle Ralph and brunch at Manatu’s in the Village (it used to be Aldo’s, a rather infamous gay restaurant in the 60’s, and later a steak house).  A stop at A Different Light Bookstore for magazines (I think we’re going to start subscribing to Out & About, the gay travel source) and Felice Picano’s latest, Looking Glass Lives.

Around 5 pm, Bryan and I go to the store for provisions; he makes me Kraft macaroni and cheese for dinner.  Don’t tell me we don’t know how to live!  While he naps, I watch the 50^th Emmy Awards.  My impressions?  I thought Tom Brokaw’s speech on impact of television news was very strong; Ellen DeGeneres had a very strong introduction that could have been heavy handed but wasn’t – I was surprised they gave her as much time as they did; Julie Louis-Dreyfus showed clips of the ending of tv series that brought a tear to everyone’s eye and then introduced Mary Tyler Moore – they were both very gracious to each other, indeed the whole show showed much graciousness; the awards for comedy writers on a variety show amazed me as I knew maybe half of them from the Boston comedy scene!  All in all, four hours that flew right by; and then lights out by midnight.

Monday, September 14, I went for my ophthalmologist appointment with Dr. Eric Kanter; once again I passed with flying colors. Then I drove immediately into NYC where I saw Bryan for about ten minutes before he went to his first night of bowling for the season.  This year, he’s bowling near Port Authority so it’s unlikely that I’ll be hanging out much with the team as I did last year.

So I walked with him to the subway stop in Union Square and went record shopping at Virgin; this time I attacked the LMNOP section.  Among the dozen cd’s:  the new Monster Magnet (hey, a Jersey band! but a poor sequel to their last), Italian dance king Robert Mile’s first album “Dreamland,” Material with the vocals of William S. Burroughs (we're scratching the bottom of the Burroughs barrel I fear), the Moody Blues’ “To Our Children’s Children’s Children” remastered to 20-bit, M “Pop Musik” album, a new dance mix album by Club 69 (particularly great for driving), a greatest hits collection by 999 (but I'm cheated as they're generally second mixes or bad live versions), New Order’s Movement (oh, more beautiful than I recall), Boston’s O-Positive (didn’t even know it was out on cd), Gary Numan + Tubeway Army and more.

Got back by 8 pm to see the 200th episode of  Melrose Place  then read until meeting B around midnight at Pizzeria Uno and coming home to crash.

Tuesday, September 15, we eat at Lanza’s Italian Restaurant on 1st Avenue (between 10th and 11th Streets); I have very good clams oregonata and fusilli in a tomato, onion and prosciutto sauce (filetto di pomodoro), Bryan a simple mozzarella cheese, sundried tomato and olive salad followed by tagliatelle in tomato/basil sauce.  We also shared a bottle of decent pinot grigio.

Wednesday, September 16, I stopped by Cranford to get my father’s truck and my antique bookcase which will look great in the apartment.  After Bryan and I carry it upstairs, we have dinner at Pangea (a Tuscan bread salad for both of us, then a light chicken cutlet with arugola and tomatoes for me, pasta with peas in cream sauce for B).  I even have dessert (nectarine pie and a couple of Monte Negroes).  Being tired, we both go back to the apartment and watch the last season’s finale of Third Rock from the Sun (with the late Phil Hartman) and the Conan O’Brien 5^th Anniversary Special (hey, he’s funny!).  I fall right asleep by 11 pm.

Thursday, September 17, I’ve a morning appointment with Dr. Gigi Diamond, my infectious disease doctor; my blood tests are revealing of recent stress (but also of plateau effects of the drugs).  T-cells, which had peaked at 148 a few months ago, have now descended to 98; this is not statistically significant.  Viral load remains undetectable.  I have choir practice and, after choir, I go to Jim and Jamie’s along with Doug and Donna Reagan, have snacks and drinks.

Friday, September 18, and I listen to the Robert Miles album; it’s really very good and puts me in a peaceful mood.  Indeed, in the liner notes, he says, “This album is dedicated to all those people who seek emotion, reflection and peace in music.  It doesn’t take much, you only need to close your eyes and let the music take you away as I have tried to do during the endless nights spent at the mixing desk.  Music: indispensable component of life recognizes no limits and no confines … uniting black with white, young with old and the good with the bad.”  OK, so he’s an Italian hippie!

Around 7 pm, we walk to Lucky Chengs, a famous drag queen Chinese restaurant near 1st Street and 1st Avenue, but there’s a very long line of tourists, so we eat at Cucina di Pesce at 87 East 4th Street, near the corner of 2nd Avenue.  We’ve been meaning to eat there for a very long time; unfortunately, there’s a very large and loud party in our room, but it’s still worth checking out again.  I have the calamari and chicken parmigiana, Bryan has the portobello mushrooms and shrimp scampi; oddly, none of it is truly superb but we do see some dishes go by us that are so we will go back again.

Saturday, September 19, we pick up Uncle Ralph in the car and head over to West 14th Street, near the corner of 10th Avenue.  Our first stop is Lee’s Mardi Gras on the fourth floor of one of the buildings (ring the doorbell, that sort of thing).  It’s a store for men who wear women’s clothing!  Just in case we should ever need it, I guess.  Very strange (unless you’re in the market for 12WWW shoes).

Then it’s the Chelsea Market in the old Nabisco building.  We’d walked by there many times but never went in; our mistake!  The place is incredible with about twenty different gourmet stores!  Our first stop is a wine-tasting at the Wine Vault where we buy four bottles, two for Ralph’s dinner (one muscato for dessert, one chianti for Bryan who has never liked red wine before!) and for me a Cennatoio Chianti Classico 1996 and an All'omo il Vino Sangiovese Toscano 1996 (both reds) for the future.  We then cruise the market and then head over to Western Beef, a supermarket for supplies for the evening’s carbonara dinner.

Being a bit peckish (and in the area), we have brunch at Florent on Gaansevoort Street; Ralph having a fine pate campagna, B a  goat cheese salad and me mussels in a scrumptious butter and wine sauce, along with more wine for us.  Across the street is the Gaansevoort Gallery, with “antiques” from the 30’s to 50’s, great stuff.

We head off to the apartment Ralph is staying at (Carl Morelli and Jeffrey Ryan’s place) at 8 pm.  We start off with goat cheese and blue cheese and Perrier-Jouet brut champagne, then green linguini with carbonara along with the red wine that B picked, a 1995 Bucciarelli Chianti Classico, followed by the muscato dessert wine.

Sunday, September 20, I’m up at 8 am and off to sing at Trinity Church in Cranford.  We go to a frame shop around the corner to frame an oddly perspectived view of the Empire State Building (and the NY skyline) that’s been bouncing around the apartment for a year.  Then off to K-Mart, a great iced herbal tea/apple juice near St. Mark’s Place and back home.

For dinner, we eat at the 9th Street Market on 9th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues that we’d always meant to eat at (indeed, one time we actually sat down there, but because of the crowd, the delay in service led us to leave).  Well, this time, it wasn’t crowded, the service (by a hunky mid-Western boy) was superb and the food incredible.  Bryan had chili-dusted shrimp followed by a cornmeal dusted catfish and apple crumble; I had a salad (with great dressing) and grilled vegetables over rice.  Oh, Dana Wharton, I also had a glass of 1995 Concannon Cabernet Sauvignon … just perfect.  And the waiter told me don’t get the 1996, it’s got to be the ’95.

Monday, September 21, Rosh Hashanah; I also have a rehearsal with my fellow basses at the church.

Tuesday, September 22, dinner at Mie, the Japanese restaurant, at 6:30.  Donn “waiter boy” gets to our place at 8 pm and we walk down to the Bowery Ballroom, a new performance space on Delancy Street near Bowery, to see Diamanda Galas.  But first we stop downstairs to have a drink with Dangerboy’s girlfriend, Susan; it’s her first night as bartender there.  And for those who wondered, it was one of most amazing performances this year.  She’s known for a large octave range, but also for screaming her way through songs.  What we saw was moving interpretations of her own and other songs, accompanied by some stunning piano work on her Steinway.  The highlight for me was her cover of “My World is Empty without You, Babe” – yes, that song!  But with a minor chord setting and some chilling piano work.  Sent shivers up my spine.

Wednesday, September 23, I pick up Uncle Ralph; he joins my parents and I for ravioli (with a very good Chianti Classico Riserva), then cantaloupe and figs with the Grappa that I bought my father in Milan.  Very good!  Then he and I went to Trader Joe’s in Westfield before driving back into NYC.

Thursday, September 24, we were going to get up early; instead we got up at the normal time.  We were also delayed by stopping at Michelle’s to pick up some carpet remnants for her (I’m hiding them in Cranford for her).  Work was all about Connections, which was almost completely finished when I left a little after 6 pm.  Unfortunately, Bryan is working really late,  he’ll be there until 10 pm.  And that means we may not get to go wine-tasting in New York State this weekend.  I went to choir practice and then to Jim and Jamie’s (alone, Doug and Donna didn’t show up) where I had his great Portuguese soup.  Home by 11:30, watch Melrose (and talk to B a few times) and bed.

Friday, September 25, my father comes by the office with Masahiro Matsushita, our Japanese friend who will stay at my parents for the weekend.

this is Masahiro Matsushita at my parents' house

Saturday, September 26, there's a street fair right near our apartment on 3rd Avenue (where we get some bad Chinese food and new pillows, which smell like bad Chinese!).  We’re back at the apartment at 4, then get very productive, re-building the closet and fixing up the living room (I’ve brought in the antique oak bookcase I’ve had for years).  By 9 pm, we’re ready for Pangea (I have a very good cold tomato and orange soup and spinach fettucine w/ tuna, capers and olives, B has incredible chard with garlic and white beans and then crab cakes … plus pina coladas and mai tais).

Sunday, September 27, we’re both up early so I go to sing at church.  The anthem is Virgil Thomson’s "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need" – hey, everyone I know remembers him from NY years ago.

Bryan and I meet Ralph Taylor at El Cantinero, the Mexican restaurant on University, near 12th Street.  Ralph has great fun teasing Jose, a waiter we’ve had before.  But the sangria (for Ralph and I) and the margaritas (for B) make us sleepy so it’s nap time when we return to the apartment.

Later, Ralph comes over and we go to see the Joe Goode Performance Group at the Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church.  I think this would have been very avant-garde in the 50’s, now it’s a bit cliched (about his lover dying of AIDS); we actually leave at intermission.  But not before we see what could have been the best part of the show.  The drag queen Imelda (played by Vong Phrommala, he’s very funny) leads the troop in “Jackie O” – with everyone dressed in pillbox hats and Jackie outfits; plus the song was great also.

Two things from the program:  To illustrate the ultra-cliché … Goode writes:

The events and characters in this story are drawn from the many “true” stories of my neighborhood in the Castro district of San Francisco.  I wish to thank all of those who contributed their tales of survival, of extended family, of finding ways to be deeply there when it was necessary.

St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery stands on the oldest site of Christian worship in NYC, dating from the 17th Century Dutch Reform chapel of Peter Stuyvesant’s farm or “bowery.”  A brilliant reminder of New York’s past, St. Mark’s is on the National Register of Historic Places.  Ministry through the arts is just part of the spirit of St. Mark’s.  Episcopalian services are held every Sunday morning at 10:30 AM with special services, programs and, study groups scheduled throughout the week.  The parish of St. Mark’s has a powerful tradition of community involvement and activism – addressing a wide range of social issues.  All are welcome!

Monday, September 28, Bryan is bowling and doesn’t get back home until after midnight (with bologna and cheese sandwiches).

Tuesday, September 29, Bryan and I go to his boss Michelle’s for dinner.  The official reason is Yom Kippur, but from what I understand, we would have had to be done eating by sundown.  Nonetheless, we can’t get there until 7 pm anyway!  Joining is her son, Matt, and her friend, Art.  After very good chicken and matzo ball soup, she brings out the brisket along with potato pancakes (don’t even think I’m going to try to spell all the Jewish foods we ate!) and more.  Then Metaxa (hey, Art’s of Greek descent) and coffee.

Wednesday, September 30, a late dinner (almost 10 pm) at Pangea; we split the zesty tomato/walnut puree and then I have their standard pasta special while B has the chard followed by something else.  Anyway, that’s how September ends.