Broken Bread
Photo: Mr. Stupidhead
Hello. It feels…quaint, nearly, doesn’t it, this thing we do each year together?
A ritual from another world, and I suppose it is, but the “we” and the “together” sustain, in the sense of a held note, but also in the sense of nourishment. Here in New York City, where the ritual began 19 years ago, the powers that be have decided to allow a modified version of a rite of the old world: indoor dining. Good news of a sort, though I’ll stick on al fresco for now, but looking at the calendar (empty of dinners off my property), looking at the pictures out of California (full of reminders of the ashy winter that covered downtown that day), I have the meals on my mind. Not the food, although often it’s great, and even greater in the memory. Not what we ate, but who was there. The chairs, not the table.
Pull some chairs up yourself, old friends. Bring a glass of your favorite and a covered dish to pass around, like we used to do. You’ve heard me tell some of these 19 meals before, but the stories we finish for each other fill us up just as well.
No. 1: Terry’s Lunch
A wood-paneled greasy spoon slung into a niche of Summit’s preppy downtown, it closed when I was still in school. My mother took me here on blue-moon vacation days when Mr. Stupidhead, still in diapers, was at playgroup; he must have come with us sometimes but I only ever remember my mother there with me, our having a secret, how good a grilled cheese and a root beer tasted. That I could have anything I wanted, and I pretended to puzzle over the menu, to drag it out, the time alone with Ma in our little club, playing the placemat word search.
No. 2: Ho Lee Chow
I forget how we arrived, Wing and Glark and I, at a noirishly shot bit in which, whipping a cloche off a meanly glinting silver tray, one of us would offer Michael “Ben Stone” Moriarty a chicken ball from Ho Lee Chow while he was getting drunk in a hotel bar. I do remember that this is the same cab ride on which I became “Buntsy,” as a joke, but it stuck. It was cold, so we were jammed into the back of a Toronto cab like a heap of coats with eyebrows. I was on the left, I remember that too.
No. 3: The Waffle Houses of Murfreesboro, TN
After a while, Dad and I stopped bothering to discuss it and just went, every morning, to the closest one to our hotel where they made the coffee the way we make it, strong enough to stand a fork up in. The waitress always put us at one of those two-top booths and our knees touched underneath.
No. 4-6: El Parador
Before I was born, my grandmother, who didn’t drink alcohol and couldn’t nurse any beverage, asked to taste my father’s margarita. Finding it delicious, she ordered one for herself and proceeded to pound it, because: Grandma. Cut to: my father pouring her into a cab and asking the driver to make sure she got to Penn Station, “she’s a little drunk.” “Great, so am I!” burbled the driver, and gunned it. Everyone survived. Years later, I drank two strawberry ‘ritas in 40 minutes, announced to Couch Baron that these daiquiris were the beshsshhht, went home, and slept for 14 hours. He still makes fun of me. Everyone survived. We had a TWoP summit dinner at El Parador back in the day; they put us in some well-appointed subbasement, which was smart, and discounted the sangria, which was not. Everyone survived.
No. 7: McDonald’s
Shotgun feeds the driver, that’s the rule. Two fries at a time, keep the line moving, don’t get cute with the skyhook. Many nights in many cars with many different seating configurations later, I can tell you that an oldest of two sisters is your ideal shotgun for fry targeting. Older sister of a younger brother will neighborhood-play it; more than one sibling, they’re on autopilot. A little Heinz on the earlobe never killed anyone but if you want to complete a highway merge in the rain without taking a shoestring to the nostril? Older sister.
No. 8: Neiman-Marcus
You may recall that time I ordered a turkey from Neiman-Marcus for Thanksgiving and it just didn’t show up, forcing Mrs. Mikey The K to cook us all Cornish hens instead. You may also recall that we wrote expansive fan-fic about the turkey’s The Terminal-esque adventures on Thanksgiving Day. You may not remember that the bird was delivered to Couch Baron’s mom’s house on Black Friday. I still get clocked for that, like, monthly? But if the thing shows up like it’s supposed to, nobody remembers that year. It didn’t, and the riff odometer on that story is still going up.
No. 9: Ben’s
Every day at the Cape, Dad would flea-dip us in sunscreen, pick out a presidential memoir to fall asleep under, and pile us and our towels and chairs and inflatables into the wagon to go to the beach for the day, but first we had to stop at Ben’s to get turkey hoagies and Cape Cod chips and whatever violently sugary Crush the owner got for cheap that week — usually strawberry, which had no damn business going with a turkey extra mustard extra shell fragments, but it really did. Dad never rigged up the same towel/raft shade tent twice, but mostly they worked. Every now and then, on the downhill side of college, you still get a summer day like that where you feel like you won something.
No. 10: West Windsor
We’re at Gen’s parents’ for some occasion. My nephew was still a little loaf of a thing. Gen’s mom calls out from the kitchen that she cut up some watermelon, would anyone like some? Gen, in the politest, cheeriest, “It’s A Sunshine Day”-ingest tone you can imagine: “Noooo thaaaanks!” Gen’s mom, from the bowels of a volcano for some reason: “FUUUUUCK YOUUUUUU.” Someone may have grumbled something about Cthulhu not needing to take fruit so fuckin’ personally, but I think we were all laughing hysterically. To this day, I cannot see watermelon in any form without thinking about that exchange; I cannot hear anyone sing-song “no thanks” without muttering “fuuuuuck youuuuu” under my breath in a Sam Elliott voice; none of us can! People who weren’t even there have this problem now! Someone hollered a “noooo thaaaanks” down our street the other day and there’s Dirk, rumbling “FUUUUCK YOUUUUU” from the pantry! I have called watermelon “no thanks” instead of “watermelon” and been understood! “You want some of this no-thanks and feta?” “I’ll fuck-you a bite of yours.” Now y’all are stuck with it but it will bring you joy, I promise. PS Gen’s mom is a peach, this is just one of those dumb things that becomes a layer of glue in a family.
No. 11: A Closet In 9R
The Hobe had had all these surgeries. They sent him home in a cone, with some kind of appetite stimulant, which didn’t really work, so I climbed into the closet and tried to get comfortable on top of a pair of boots, next to his hidey nest on top of a stack of TN shirts, and I fed him lemon Dannon, one fingertip at a time. It took a while, so the next time, I brought a magazine. The time after that, I brought two magazines, a cushion from the couch, and a sleeve of Lorna Doones. By the end of the week, half the desk and half the fridge were stacked up in there, along with a makeshift hammock and a ziggurat of sneakers with the top one a cupholder. When Hobey wandered back out into our life, I was a little sad that it was over.
No. 12: Tuscany
Ernie’s family friend M drove us to Lucca, to a cemetery with a long table under a big tree, set for lunch, although “lunch” isn’t really what happened. Plates came and went. I wasn’t seated near Ernie or M, and I didn’t speak Italian, but somehow my end of the table made do with Charades gestures and my teetering Spanish. In between courses, our tablemates wandered into the stones and had little lie-downs with their dead. I took pictures of the vitello tonnato with my disposable camera. There was a heat wave, but I didn’t feel it, under a big tree. The meal took hours, but seemed montaged even as it was happening. Everything was just so: enough garlic, enough bites. The very definition of “companionable.”
No. 13: The Test Kitchen
It was actually my dining room. Mark and I thought sure we’d make a million dollars marrying my two favorite ice-cream-novelty concepts together: the ice-cream sandwich and the creamsicle. We put sherbet on Nilla Wafers; we put vanilla bean ice cream on lemon cookies; I felt vaguely ill and sugar-twitchy for three days. I got sherbet in my hair. We laughed and laughed.
No. 14: King Killer Studios
The heater by the main stage downstairs didn’t work back then, so wintertime shows meant ordering a stack of pizzas and sitting under them for warmth. We drank a bunch, and our fingers still ached but we didn’t care. I still love Angela and Nat’s “Wagon Wheel” better than the original. Whenever I hear that song I think of our whole AIDS Walk team locking elbows in a whipchain on hills. I think of getting to the tops of those little rises in the park and looking back at the sea of people.
Nos. 15-17: Far Thill
Our old house worked great for Thanksgivings — two kitchens, two ovens — but when it came time to transfer the side dishes I was responsible for from the top of the house to the ground floor, it was a mission-control situation. “Extra mitts?” “Go.” “Both doors wedged?” “Go, flight.” “Patio-door slingshot sequence is go?” “Go, flight.” Mr. S and I talked on a weekly basis about rigging up a dumbwaiter, but clattering down two storeys, lids rattling, pets scattering, hollering “FIRE IN THE HOLE” became a part of the tradition. The last dishes would hit the table, we’d cram in and bow our heads, and in the moment of silence before grace, someone still chuckling at “fire in the hole.” Well, multiple someones. Fine: all the someones, except Miss S, who’s laughing because everyone else is.
Our old house also worked great for launching Peeps into the backyard and filming it in full makeup and a lab coat.
And for getting married in the backyard, and eating flag cupcakes G Force made in the downstairs kitchen. The only wedding-y thing we really did besides the ceremony itself was feeding each other those cupcakes (and stashing one in the freezer to eat in a year). The day after, I found one in the medicine cabinet of my downstairs bathroom, waiting for its owner to return.
No. 18: The Shores Of The Fragrant Gowanus
Dirk and I took our anniversary lobster rolls to a dead-end street — Huntington, maybe — and ate on Edie’s tailgate, looking at the canal. After months of quarantine and quiet, it felt more like a stereotypical canal and less like an oily hazard, flowing instead of lurking. I had a bourbon rickey in a to-go cup. Across the way, a boy tried it without training wheels, unwillingly, and I remembered that feeling of being let go of, the dread and then the pride. Everyone survived.
No. 19: Prospect Park Southwest
I forget when Ice-Cream Sundays started. Before we got married, I know that. Dirk would appear with two pints from Uncle Louie G’s, some kind of chocolate diabetes bomb for himself, birthday-cake ice-cream for me. That particular location does it the best, not just a gesture at icing but a wide, bright blue swath that carries the heart back to pool parties, more and more candles, the shiny tall grass where the catchable lightning bugs lived, the smell of new Barbie hair, falling asleep in a station wagon’s way back with your three besties, a row of little damp spoons.
Happy birthday, Don. We saved you a seat.
Tags: September 11th
Happy birthday, Don! Dinner’s on us tonight
As ever: thank you, Sarah, and happy birthday, Don.
Glad to see all these faces around the table again. Happy birthday, Don. Thanks, Sars.
Thank you Sars. Happy birthday, Don.
Thank you, S. Much love to you and yours.
Happy Birthday, Don.
Thank you, my Mediaraman of old, for helping this day to have a positive sense of tradition for all of us. I think of you on days other than today—of the days before TWoP—before Mighty Big TV, when XIX still liked us all and 90210 was still being wrapped up and you and I were making long-distance Red Sox/Yankees bets. But I think of you today without fail, and send birthday wishes out to Don. Wherever he is.
So glad I KEPT checking today. Tomato Nation is a necessary and much-appreciated touchstone. Thanks for your memories that spark ours, Sarah. And everyone: VOTE!!
happy birthday, Don. thank you, Sarah, for continuing to hold this space. sending love to everyone here… this year is bonkers and we all need a little extra love right now, even if from an internet stranger.
Thank you Sars. Every year–even the unreal ones like 2020.
Happy Birthday, Don.
This year there’s only one distinction for me: things that help and things that don’t help. This helped. Good to hear from you, Sarah.
Hello old friends. I hope you are all doing well in these strange, unprecedented times. As much as the world is changing and life is weird and hard and unexpected, this is an unchanging, always present focus point of love and remembrance. I’m grateful that hasn’t changed.
Happy birthday, Don.
Thanks, Sarah. I come back every year to read and remember. I also crawl through the archives several times a month.
Happy birthday, Don.
It almost feels strange to focus one terrible day that happened so long ago while we’re in the midst of the year from hell. It’s like: “Aren’t we already waist-deep in crap right now? How can and why should we make emotional space for this when everything around us is (literally and metaphorically) on fire?”
And yet I think it’s important to call this day out, to make it stand on its own, to remember the people lost, to recognize the the day’s impact on events and decisions that continue to have consequences for us today.
Like many of us here, I come here as my annual memorial tradition, and I’m very grateful to Sars for hosting us on this day every year and to all TNers for sharing. Wishing you all safety, health, and awesome lobster rolls.
And as always, Happy Birthday, Don.
I hope this never becomes a burden for you, as I revisit every year and read your always-lovely words. You never disappoint. Thank you.
Hope all is well despite the day and the times…
Happy Birthday, Don.
Thanks for this. It’s good to have a place to go.
Happy bday Don
Happy birthday, Don. I still wish after 19 years have passed (19!?) that you would find us somehow. Wish you could see how Sarah keeps your memory alive and how we all come back ritually every year to read her amazing writing and wish you a happy day on September 11. I keep hoping.
Thank you, Sarah.
I’m here (and grateful) every year. I love to see the way these essays change over time, just as the way that we remember changes over time. I’m close to you in age, I think, Sars, and the new Barbie hair and the besties in the way-back just got me. Thank you so much for this.
Happy birthday, Don. Beanie: so sorry. West Coasters: my thoughts are with you.
Everybody be safe, and let’s look forward to the days when we can share a table (and a watermelon!) with the ones we love once more.
Checking in to say I haven’t forgotten. Love you all.
thank you so much Sarah, this and every year.
Beanie, I hope things get better more swiftly than expected.
happy birthday, Don
Happy birthday, Don.
“The chairs, not the table.” This hits hard today. Thanks for writing it.
Ah, TWoP… I still miss you. Nothing else I’ve found compares.
Good to see you’re still here, Sars, and all my fellow readers.
9/11/20
@Abby, I’m glad.
Happy birthday, Don.
Thank you, Sarah. The smiles and chuckles and outright laughing-til-crying (watermelon is indeed changed forever) these memories brought are a true gift. Time is so weird, even more so this year obvs. Thank you for marking it with us.
(I have a distinct memory of the first meal I had with you, at Orlogio. You looked at my plate, saw I had pushed aside the nightshades, and asked, “What, you got a problem with tomatoes?”)
haha, Orologio made the shortlist! (because of the time Couch Baron and I eavesdropped on Real World’s Montana at a nearby table…because that’s how you went out to eat in NYC back then, elbow to elbow with strangers’ stories)
This is still the first place I check on this morning. Likely to make sure the world is still moving on even if, every year, my personal world shrinks with losses both natural and unexpected.
I was too early this year and nothing was posted. I am glad I came back to check.
Thank you, Sars.
Happy birthday, Don.
Every year I tell myself I’ll be okay if last year’s was really the last. In the same way I tell myself vacation calories don’t count.
Except for this terrible, no good, very bad year. Thank you for gifting us with this space to meet and reflect. And see the good in one another.
And Happy Birthday Don.
Aww, I remember reading about Hobey’s post-surgery hidey-hole meals! |
Happy birthday, Don. Thank you, Sars, for being you <3 I can’t even remember when I first started reading Tomato Nation but I think it was 2004??? I started reading TWOP in like, 2000 :-O
I got takeout tonight from a local gastro pub, while finishing up work. I’m glad my company has decided to let us WFH basically forever—especially because my body decided that Fall 2019 was a great time to become even more of a garbage fire (no COVID though, thankfully). So now my workdays mean dashing off to various specialist appointments (because they’ve all switched back to in-person visits apparently) and then finishing up work at night.
I have no idea where I was going with this so: stay safe, everyone <3
Came back just for this. Thanks, Sars. Happy birthday, Don.
Happy birthday Don. Wherever you are I hope you and your family are safe.
Thank you Sars, and thank you for keeping it going in such interesting times.
Stay safe everyone.
I waited to check until the day was winding down; I didn’t think I could handle a cry first thing, with all the requisite doomscrolling and the smoky skies outside. I kept it together up to No. 11. So glad to see you still here, Sarah, and happy birthday, Don.
Happy birthday, Don.
Thank you again for this, and all the ones before.
Thanks for doing this every year, Sarah. Happy bday Don. Hugs to you, Beanie. And hang in there, all.
I am trying to regain a little bit of sanity by avoiding reading what passes for news these days, so — even though I knew in my core the significance of today — I didn’t even think about looking at TN until 8 pm. Then it hit me what was missing today, and I opened Chrome almost panicked that I wouldn’t find you — all of you — here … but I should have known better. Sarah, you never fail to amaze me with your tenderness, humor, and relevance (“The chairs, not the table”). Especially in these end times (well, that’s what it feels like) when I had to miss my best friend’s 60th birthday because we wouldn’t have been able to NOT hug after 6 months. Still waiting to find out if I’ll be able to share a Thanksgiving table with my Colorado family.
I thank God you’re still here to share THIS table — all of you — because you’re my extended, unknown family.
Happy birthday, Don.
Thanks, Sars. Happy birthday, Don. Much love to everyone here.
Here we all are again. 19 years. Rueful doesn’t even begin to describe it. Thanks,Sars.
Happy birthday, Don.
Happy birthday, Don. Thanks for always setting the table here for us, Sarah.
Ah…I remembered last night, as I saw the “Never Forget” posts pile up on FB, that this was my one required stop today. Nineteen years ago feels like another lifetime – so many changes in the world and my life, both connected and unconnected to those events, and yet I found myself looking at the sky here in NY and realizing it was the very same sky. Clear, blue, with the slight coolness and welcome breeze of the coming fall. There’s really no way to forget, is there, for those of us who were witnesses?
Thanks for providing this place, and your art, to acknowledge and honor that. And to send our happy birthday wishes to Don.
Tweeted you before I realized you’d posted this.
Happy birthday, Don.
Xoxo to you, Sarah.
11:57 pm! Happy birthday, Don. Thank you, Sarah.
Happy birthday Don, and good to read your words today and every year, Sarah.
Thanks, Sars. I remember reading the first one the day you wrote it. This ritual has become how I mark the years since. We were so young then, though we didn’t think so at the time. I watch my daughter and wonder how she will remember this year, in the years to come.
Happy birthday, Don.
Thanks, Sarah. Happy birthday, Don.
Happy Birthday Don.
Late this year, I was at a double funeral on Friday; will be glad to see this year go.
My God, I don’t blame you. Or any of us. I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you for the laughter despite the tears, Sars. Thank all of you, fellow TN citizens; you make me feel less alone. And thank you, Don; we appreciate you, and make me glad to remember that decency and kindness shines brightest in the dark times, so practicing them daily polishes them for such a time as that/this.
I’m a little behind this year, but this is great. This is always a weird highlight of the year for me, thanks for keeping it going and gifting us your words, Sarah. Today you’ve reminded me of many happy meals in my own life. With the current isolation (I’m on the west coast, so Covid + crap air quality means even less outside time than before) it’s nice to hear about these fun times with other folks.
Happy belated birthday, Don.
Late to the party as usual. Can’t believe it’s been 19 years – I remember reading the original 9/11 post waaaaay back then.
Happy birthday Don!
I wandered far away, didn’t get back here ’til today.
I didn’t mean to forget, but this year has done so many numbers, we need a new math.
But you’re still here, Sars. That’s meant a great deal in the past four years especially, and will do so for many in the future, especially this next one, the twentieth anniversary, where we just barely installed a functioning adult and not a walking, blaring insult to humanity to preside over it.
We’re going to make it. We made this far and we’ll keep making it over and over. Every year Don, you, all aof us.
I should reread 2001 again. Haven’t been here in a while, still listen to you and Wing talk GBC while on a road trip though. Thanks.
I come back here every year, but somehow I missed this one from 2022! Thanks, Sarah.