Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?
I don’t cook anything for holidays anymore, because when I got divorced and moved to DC, I moved in with a family who already had Thanksgiving wired, and I wasn’t the only cook in the house. One of my housemates when I first arrived had gone to Johnson & Wales, and was the chef at Jaleo Crystal City (Jose Andres is the executive chef, I mean the guy who actually ran the restaurant on a day-to-day basis). Therefore, I know Jose Andres intimately, even if he doesn’t know me…. and all of his secrets are safe. đŸ˜‰
We used to laugh together about the things that happened around us that we were helpless to stop. Neither one of us in all of our cosmic culinary power could get people to stop putting knives in the dishwasher or in the bottom of the sink. More than once did we look at each other and say, “I can’t.” We honestly didn’t spend that much time together, it’s that our relationship was like all brothers in arms. We had an emotional shorthand not there for others in the house. If you are not a person with ADHD/Autism when you start a kitchen job, you will gain the ability to see the kitchen that way. Everything in cooking is a sensory issue, and you’re learning to fine-tune it. The tiniest changes will cause absolute anarchy.
For me, a big one is soap. They’re all concentrated differently, and it seems there is a large leap from generic to brand. It also affects the kitchen to change the smell of the dish soap, because you get used to how those fragrances mix with spice. For instance, going from a floral scent to a lemon scent gave me gastrointestinal issues because the lemon mixed with the scent of eggs and ruined Hollandaise sauce for me because every time I think of it one of the flavor notes is surfactant.
Soap is a trigger for a much bigger sensory issue overall. Most autistic people who have sensory issues with smell are because it’s turned up to “pregnant woman.” I throw up more due to bad smells than anything else, and why when I live alone and have a cat, I have disposable litter boxes and change them out often rather than ever force myself to change it. I was lucky in that Dana didn’t mind and had permanent boxes at her house, but I wasn’t counting on her to care for Asher. I had my own system, I just didn’t have to use it. I wasn’t allergic to chores. I traded that one out.
Being married is really the last time I had any holiday traditions, because when I moved to DC, I was folded into an established family here, Lebanese heritage and not Irish. For Thanksgiving and Christmas we have turkey and dolmades. Stuffing and kibbi (Kibbi is actually one of our dog’s names, too- “meatball,” basically, in Arabic). It’s a wonderful life. Hayat and I have talked often about the fact that “I’ve picked up Arabic,” because when I first moved in, Hayat spoke Arabic and Nasim spoke Farsi. I asked both of them if it would bother them for me to listen in on their phone calls, because I didn’t want it to feel creepy and I knew they wouldn’t really, either since I don’t understand either language. I just wanted to take away the feeling that I was trying not to watch them by making it obvious that I was.
Listening to Nasim was hearing the end of “Argo” all day long. Learning the Levantine dialect of Arabic was learning the rolling lilt of the ocean and not the Middle East RP equivalent, Cairo (I checked). Some words in Egypt and Lebanon are different, some words are the same because Lebanon has had a bigger influx of Mediterranean immigrants. In fact, my cover photo on Facebook is a picture Hayat took of the marina in Beirut, now a city on my bucket list if it ever calms down enough for me to go. I would feel comfortable with Daniel or Zac in that situation, but I would not feel comfortable traveling without someone who could defend both of us. That whole idea started the romance with Daniel, because I initially wanted a travel companion and then I realized I wanted him. I don’t know whether Zac and I will ever travel together or not, but what I do know is that he may have not been in the same situations as Daniel, but not because he didn’t train for them.
But Zac and I haven’t started our own traditions yet because we haven’t spent a Christmas together. Since he celebrates Yuletide and not Christmas proper, it doesn’t matter whether I see him on the 25th or not. What I do know is that we as people are a spectrum. Maybe we’ll go for Chinese, maybe we’ll finally watch “The Pigeon Tunnel,” the Apple TV+ documentary based on interviews and John le CarrĂ©’s last book. I would have jumped on it the moment I saw it if I wasn’t so insistent about not cheating on him. Infidelity is one thing. This is couple TV. THERE ARE RULES. There are shows I still haven’t finished because I promised Dana I’d wait. It’s getting a bit ridiculous. Still can’t do it.
I have been asked to make a Christmas list and so far the only thing on it is a long-sleeved SAS t-shirt. I’d also like a Senators baseball cap because of the Duke Ellington concert in the spring, because even if I didn’t wear it, oh my God would it ever look good with Jason’s signature on the side. For my international readers, the Senators are the current hockey team in Ottawa, but the baseball team in DC was called the Senators when we first joined the league. Duke Ellington started selling peanuts when he was like, 11?
When Jason told me that he was going to do a Duke Ellington concert in The District, I told him that he was a brave, brave man. He laughed because he knew exactly what I meant. If you come for Ellington in his hometown crowd, you best not miss. Here’s what I know that you don’t. Jason is objectively better at piano than Ellington ever was. He can take Elllington’s ideas to a place that the composer himself couldn’t- another brain seeing different patterns. Ask me how I know that? He’s been doing it since he was 17 (probably younger, but I’ve known him since then), the Mozart of jazz, too many notes that boggle the mind.
I do not say this lightly. It probably sounds like I’m just part of the Houston jazz scene and trying to promote my boy. No. Jason is different. Jason goes to places I don’t like and I don’t know why and then I fall on my ass when I figure out the chord structure. It’s not that I didn’t like Jason, it’s that my mind wasn’t big enough to hold Jason yet. I had to grow into him. He’s an artist that is perfectly capable of giving you a beautiful haircut that you don’t like until you realize you were wrong. You thought it was a mess, and it makes your whole face.
The last time I saw Jason, I left the Kennedy Center and walked around for two hours trying to deconstruct that concert in my mind. Every time I came to a new metro stop, I decided I wasn’t done thinking about jazz yet. If you’ve never been to see Jason, I do not believe you have a grasp of modern jazz and where it’s going. I hope the concert is not too esoteric for Zac, but I don’t think it will be. I just think the difference is that when he looks at Jason, he sees the finished product. I see every iteration. Tall, skinny, quiet, softspoken when he does, can’t get used to the fact that he doesn’t wear a stocking cap every day. Can’t believe he and John Schutza aren’t a thing at lunch anymore.
Zac is going to become a bridge from my old life to my new one, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. I know Jason wouldn’t necessarily look for me at the concert, but what I do know is that he would be disappointed if I came to the concert and didn’t say anything. If I had my life to do over, I would have loved to be as serious a jazz musician as Jason. But, on the other hand, I did not have the ability of Konrad Johnson to “see where they were going and go with them.” I did not have Jason’s ability to see the rules of composition in such a way that he plays as if they aren’t there. No open fourths? Here’s seven in a row. Deal. Not a real example, but on brand.
Jason, like I am, is an unapologetic artist trying to get the audience to come to him, and he’s so good at his craft that he deserves to be a leader.
If there’s anything in my family that starts with me, it’s a love of music- the only special interest I had before intelligence because the first time I ever sang in front of an audience (congregation), I was three. Never in my lifetime did I think I’d get involved with it enough to understand what an open fourth might be, but here we are.
I know that when we talk about dishes, we’re often talking about the things put on the table. To me, sharing music with someone is every bit as important as a Christmas or Thanksgiving table. It’s where my mind goes now that I don’t have to cook for either holiday.
I also talk about music not to talk about what is going to be missing.
Also, here is a meme to express my feelings, one of my love languages:
Stories That Are All True 