I’ve often told people there are only two places I could live other than Boston. One is Washington, D.C. The other is San Francisco. I took one great business trip out to San Francisco during the late nineties (could have been 2000, not sure). I know the photo I’m using here in the intro is one of those typical San Francisco photos that you see everywhere. But I have to tell you that there is nothing quite like driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in the early morning hours. Instead of staying in a hotel during this trip, I stayed in a condo in Tiburon. Millipore had just purchased a life science instrumentation company (don’t ask me the name; I don’t remember) and I was tapped to work on the new literature and communications plan. I had been friends with Linda, who was the Director of Marketing, so I stayed with her. It was so much better than a hotel. On the way into the city, I had a great view of Muir Woods, and the fog over the bridge as the sun rose was just unbelievable.

I remember that the meetings I was involved in were really irritating, although I can’t remember all the details. But I do know that I had one sweet time in San Francisco. One of Millipore’s best graphic designers, Lisa, had fallen in love with an engineer named Bill. They had moved out to San Jose together and were living in an artist’s loft. She was the first person I contacted when I learned I’d be making the trip. I decided to get there on a Friday, before the weekend. It worked out well because Linda and Lisa also knew each other, and it gave them a chance to see each other again. I had rented a car, so we met near The Presidio and just hung out watching the old Italian guys playing Bocci. Then we all had lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf (and pretty much managed to get trashed in spite of the fact that we were eating).

On Sunday, Lisa and I planned to hook up again. I drove out to her place in San Jose. Not only was she a designer, but a painter. The whole top part of the loft was just filled with huge half-done canvases. I remember thinking this would be the perfect outlet for me; that one of the things I came close to doing when I returned to Boston was give up my apartment and get myself an artists loft somewhere in Cambridge. It never happened, but it was tempting. After we hung out for a while, she said, “Come on. Let’s go. We’re taking Bill’s car today.”

I remember thinking that I couldn’t figure out why, but I was about to find out soon enough. First, we took a trip down Lombard Street, or the Crooked Street, whatever you want to call it. That was interesting enough. But then, Lisa drove to the top of this incredible hill that just had dips in the road all the way down. “Ready?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I knew instantly what she was going to do.

“We’re taking a risk here,” she said, “but I haven’t been caught by the cops once yet.”

“Yeah,” I said, “with our track record, Lisa, today could be your lucky day!”

She started laughing and just gunned Bill’s car. We must have gone bouncing down that hill at about fifty miles an hour, bottoming out his car like there was no consequence.  Apparently she did this with everyone who came out to visit and, clearly, Bill didn’t mind.  More testament to the fact that love makes you stupid.

We were hanging out at their loft later in the day and I mentioned that the one place I had to get to on this trip was The Castro. I had friends who had lived there before. I also had friends who lived in Provincetown, even though it’s positively desolate in the middle of a New England winter, and friends who summered on Fire Island.  The Castro, however, was the stuff legends were made of.

The gay comfort zone

The Castro is like no other gay mecca on the planet. I had left Lisa’s late that afternoon and decided to go right in by myself. After I broke up with Miss Headcase, I took a week long trip down to Provincetown by myself to clear my head. Going to The Castro alone was not a problem for me. It’s incredibly comfortable and everyone is incredibly “out.” It’s a great feeling. Is it a shame that there have to be places like this? Yes and no. Everyone in America should be able to feel comfortable with his or her sexual orientation and gender identity. Honestly, however, places like The Castro and Provincetown are also cultural meccas, and that’s an important thing for the LGBT community…just as the North End of Boston is a cultural mecca for the Italian community, and Southie is for the Irish. How cool is the Castro? My political favorite, Rachel Maddow, grew up there and went to Castro High. Harvey Milk, one of my heroes, was known as the unofficial mayor of Castro Street.

Anyway, I hung around the Castro most of the day checking the area out and I thought it would be absolutely amazing to live there. The one place I absolutely had to go to was Twin Peaks, undoubtedly one of the most famous gay bars ever. It was the first gay bar in the nation with fully open plate glass windows. No hiding. That’s what I liked most about it. It was like telling the world this is the way it is. If you’ve got a problem with it, it’s all yours. The people hanging there are a bit older (as is the staff) and, instead of the pulsating video bar music, it’s just a great place to sit and meet people, shoot the shit, and watch the rest of the world go by at the intersection of Castro and Market.

Ah, but all good things must come to an end. By about ten, I was headed back to Tiburon. I had meetings in the morning and certainly didn’t want a hangover.

One last highlight Yeah, the next three days were taken up by meetings and business dinners. Honest to freakin’ God, you have to wonder why how this company ever made money. Their ideas about how to spend their communications budget were absolutely absurd. Try this one on: They spent somewhere on the order of $30K to produce an ad — just production (writing, photography, films, etc). Then, they spent a mere $18K running the ad, which is a frequency of about three times. What was worse, they ran the ad one time in three different journals. What a colossal waste of money. Here’s the rule of thumb: If you can’t run the ad at least six times in one journal (but preferably 8-10), don’t bother running an ad at all. It’s like pissing in the wind.

They were really irritating me. I’d listen to them. Then, I’d say something unbelievably sarcastic. Then, Linda would reach over and pinch my leg. I don’t have much patience for stupidity, and I really have no patience for these marketing clowns who think they understand marketing communications just because they have marketing in their titles. And I know Linda knew I was right because she had her hand over her mouth and was laughing while she was pinching me.

On my final day there, I was free all day. There was one other place I absolutely had to visit, and that was Haight-Ashbury. Somewhere in my vast collection of sixties memorabilia were several posters from The Haight. This was another one of those places that stood out in my mind from the sixties. I wanted to see what it looked like thirty years later. There are still some places reminiscent of that flower-power,  acid-dropping, ganja-smoking era…places like Pipe Dreams and The Love of Ganesha. However, much has changed. A lot of the old shops have been replaced by high-end boutiques, Internet cafes, second-hand stores and trendy restaurants. I would much preferred to have visited thirty years ago.

I stuck around for an early dinner at a place called The Citrus Club. It was basically an Asian noodle shop, and I love that stuff: Simple food, reasonable prices. It reminded me of a place I used to love to go to in Harvard Square called Ma Soba. When Thalia was really little (still being carried around in a Kelty Pack), I used to take her there and she’d eat the hottest freakin’ noodles you could give her.

After this day of walking around, I was pretty wiped out and headed back to Tiburon. I was flying out the next day so that I could be home for the weekend. I felt like I had been gone for a long time.

At one point in our lives, Greg, Jack, Sam, John and I partied like there was no tomorrow in Vermont. But we didn’t just party anywhere. We were partying in luxury homes at Hawk Mountain. There were two sets of these homes back then, one in Pittsfield and one in Rochester. The majority of these places were owned by New York doctors and attorneys. The rent was steep back then, but we’d just pool our Friday pay checks and head up. It didn’t matter how many of us stayed in these places. They were huge. Hell, once we got up there, we didn’t care if we ever went out, particularly if it was snowing…and it often was. All we cared about was that we had enough money left over for booze and ganja. We did. There was a security deposit and we’d get that back. So, we’d just split that money and we’d have money for the following week.

I don’t know how many freakin’ trips we made up there. They kind of all run into each other in my mind, and for good reason. I’m lucky I can remember any of these trips. Forget the hooch. That was fine. Nobody ever died from that shit. The drinking, however, was crazy. I was lucky I didn’t die of alcohol poisoning.  It was always the five of us, and then there would be several other people who would come at different times. Hell, we met people at the general stores in Vermont who would end up partying with us. It was absurd. We didn’t even know these people. They could have been serial killers for all we knew.

How old were we? Well, one of us had to be at least twenty-one to rent and I was the oldest in the group by a couple of years. The homes were always rented in my name, so I was probably about twenty-three or twenty-four. I was working at Millipore at the time, but it was early in my career there (I started working there when I was twenty).

What were we drinking in those days? Name it. Rum. Jack Daniels. Tequila. Sometimes we drank all of them together. We were just whacked out back then. I remember one day we were waiting for a bunch of people to come up after work. It was a Friday, and we’d been up there from late morning. By the time the early evening arrived it was pouring outside. It was fall, because I was sick as a freakin’ dog and I was sitting outside in the pouring rain in the leaves feeling like death. Buddha only knows what I was drinking that day. I think it was probably Jack Daniels on the rocks.

It was freezing out, so the rest of the gang came out and got me to come inside. They put me in the bathroom because I told them I was sure what went down was going to come up. And that’s when the adventure began. They left, I was about to be sick and, instead of picking up the hopper, I just stuck my head in the toilet. That’s when it got stuck in there. It wasn’t really stuck. It was just that I had absolutely no motor control, and neither did any of them. So, they couldn’t get my head out once it was in. They kept flushing so that I wouldn’t drown…at least they thought I was going to drown. I probably wasn’t. Worst of all, as sick as I was, I was laughing my ass off and so were they. If there’s one advantage to all of us being gay, it was that there was no sweat when I took all my clothes off in front of them and got in the shower. Know what happened after that?

I got my second wind. The rest of the party goers arrived and I dressed in clean clothes, went upstairs and promptly resumed partying. I never even got sick. This particular party went on until about seven in the morning, when we all finally collapsed. We slept pretty much all day. We woke up sometime late in the afternoon to eat dinner and start partying all over again.

There are other unbelievably psycho scenes from this particular movie in my life. We managed somehow to pick up this guy who worked at a gas station across from the entrance to Hawk. His name, if you can believe it, was Silvertooth. Yeah, he had one, right smack in the front.  We met him at this local bar called the Roadhouse, and he was funny as hell. He fit right in. His only problem was that he just couldn’t get it into his head that lesbians didn’t sleep with guys. Don’t know what he was thinking, but he never managed to get what he was looking for. Too bad he wasn’t gay himself because every freakin’ guy there wanted to sleep with him. He was pretty good looking and  could have had an excellent time. Needless to say, Silvertooth became a fixture for a number of months, then he moved out of state. That was the end of that. Seems we had some other transient partiers that I can’t really remember.

Probably one of the most bizarre nights in Vermont happened for Greg and I at the same time. He ended up in the bedroom with a woman, and I ended up in a different bedroom with a guy. We all knew each other, but  neither of us have any idea how it happened. I can tell you that I was drunk. I can also tell you that dead drunk or dying absolutely nothing happened except I said to this guy, “Put that thing away. It isn’t happening now or ever.” Like I’ve said from day one, gay from the womb, baby, and lovin’ it. We both escaped the bedrooms at the same time and just sat on the living room floor laughing.

I’m not sure when the Vermont experience ended. I know it had to have gone on for at least a year. In that time, we probably made more than twenty trips up there. It was surely one of the most out-of-control times of our lives and, while I can’t remember much of it, I know for sure we had one hell of a ride.

Never let it be said that business travel isn’t sometimes adventurous. It is especially adventurous when you’re somewhat fearless and have no idea WTF you are doing or where you are going. That would sum up my trip to Chicago for the Pittsburgh Conference. I’m not sure when this little event took place, late eighties maybe early nineties. The Pittsburgh Conference is an analytical instrumentation show. Prior to moving it to the McCormic Convention Center in Chicago every other year, it had always been held in New Orleans. At the time, I was the Marketing Services Manager for Millipore’s Analytical Division, and was attending the show to conduct a Press Breakfast and work the booth.

But first, we had to get there and that proved to be a challenge right from the get go. The guy who worked for me, Brian, and I left on a Saturday morning so that we could go to the convention center and supervise the booth assembly.  We only had forty feet of booth space, small for us in comparison to other shows, but it was a key market for both our HPLC sample prep filters and our lab water purification systems.

I know that we were flying right after some type of international terrorist event, so it was particularly touchy going through the gate. So, here we are standing in line and the woman in front of me sets off the alarms. I’m thinking. Okay, this will be simple. The problem was that she kept setting off the alarm. First, they had her remove all her jewelry, including her earrings. She still set off the alarm. Then, her belt. She still set off the alarm. Then, they asked her to remove her shoes. That’s when my alarm went off. Why?

Maybe because I had a quarter ounce of hooch in my shoe. I remember turning around to Brian, “Hey, I need to get the fuck out of this line.”

“Why?”

“Because I stuck the ganja in my shoe.”

“Yeah, in your sock, right?”

“No, in my shoe. I didn’t have time to put it in my sock.”

He was very comforting, “Oh, then you’re screwed.”

Yeah, thanks, Brian. What a pal. I was at the point of no return, however. The woman had finally cleared the security check. It was my turn. After all that sweating, I cleared it the first time. Don’t ask me why I didn’t set off alarms, but the best part of all was that Brian did. Yeah, sometimes I love payback, man.

The flight was pretty uneventful and it was, as unusual as it sounds, right on schedule. We got to Chicago and got settled into the hotel. Then, we headed over to the McCormick Convention Center to check on the progress of the booth assembly, and go through a dry run of the press briefing. The booth looked great so far. There were no problems there. But I have to tell you the worst thing about working with tekkies is that they just don’t get what kind of material to present to editors. These guys were writers, not chromatography scientists. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to drill that into their heads before the trade show. Now, I was at the trade show going through the dry run and they were editorializing again.

It started with the first guy. He started his portion of the presentation and made it so complicated I wanted to just tell him to STFU and let me do it. I remember telling him to stop, and then I told him if he went into this kind of an explanation half of the editors in the room would stand up and walk out. I remember saying, “Just tell them in layman’s terms what the products do and the benefit to the customer.”  That’s all they need to know. Every editor in the room would be given a package of detail, a copy of the presentation, and access to one-on-one discussions with the scientists in the room while they ate breakfast. Still, they insisted on cultivating what I like to call the deer-in-the-headlight effect.

After two hours of this torture, Brian and I headed out to dinner with Ed Black, the sales manager from Analytical Chemistry magazine. Ed was one of my best friends even though we were on opposite ends of the political spectrum. He was a true conservative from Georgia, now living in Connecticut. His wife Lynn was an airline stewardess, and she was just an awesome person. She was so funny and quick witted. We were close enough on the friendship scale that I’d go to Connecticut and spend the weekend. We had one rule: He and I never discussed politics. But that didn’t mean we didn’t jab each other good naturedly once in a while. We surely did.

I remember we got home in the early morning hours and we were wasted. Nevertheless, we had a free day Sunday. The only thing we had scheduled was a three o’clock review of the hospitality suite set up and a meeting with the convention center support staff. Brian and I made plans to go to this great flea market we saw in the local paper.

Our second close call: WTF were we thinking?

Brian and I ate breakfast and immediately hit the road. We hailed a cab and told the driver where we wanted to go. “Are you sure?” I guess I was kind of puzzled by his question.

“Yeah, we’re sure. Let’s go,” was my response.

When the driver had gotten us to our requested drop off point, he turned around and said to me, “Are you sure you want to be here? I’m not sure I should leave you here.”

We looked around. It looked perfectly fine to us. I replied, “Yeah, we’re good.”

I paid the driver and he drove off. We started heading down the street toward where the flea market was supposed to be when we saw this gang across the street with baseball bats. Yeah, that was comforting. The fact that they were looking at us was also comforting.

So, Brian and I started walking. “Can you see that they are walking with us across the street?”

“Yeah, Brian, I can see that.”

“You know, we’re dead meat.”

At that point, we started looking for somewhere safe to hide. Brian first suggested the church. I thought that might be a bad idea. Aside from the fact that I hadn’t been in a church for about a hundred years and was afraid of it collapsing, it didn’t seem like there was any action going on there and the doors might be locked. So, we started looking for any open stores we could find. We were sure we’d be safe there. Brian found, of all places, a hat shop. We talked about it for a few minutes, then the two of us broke into a hell-bent run and managed to get ourselves into the shop safely. We explained to the shop keeper what was going on and he started laughing.

“This isn’t a good place for you two. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers. This may be an ordinary flea market, but this is not a safe part of town. The gangs don’t bother the shopkeepers, but they like to victimize visitors to the city.”

He was a really nice guy. He called a cab for us and told him to pick us up at the back of his shop. As fate would have it, the driver was the same guy who had dropped us off. When he saw us, he laughed.

“I told you, man, that I couldn’t figure out why you wanted to get out here. I don’t even like driving in here.”

We sat in the back seat and, once we were safely out of there, Brian and I started laughing. “How many days are we here for?”

I looked at him. “We’re here through Wednesday, why?”

“I can’t wait to see what other kind of trouble we can get ourselves into,” he responded.

When I was going to school at both Aquinas and BHCC , I had a great Pontiac GTO. I loved the thing. It was mint and it was a teal blue. Okay, so it had a few problems, not the least of which was the driver (that would be me). This is the infamous car that I unwittingly parked on my front lawn.  After a day of partying at school — and I mean partying — I drove that thing home. This was when the old Thompson Square elevated train station was still intact. I have no freakin’ idea how I negotiated all of those poles on the way home, but I managed to get there without cracking the thing up. Then, I kind of missed the curb, wound up on the lawn, turned the car off, went inside and passed out. About two hours later, I heard this unbelievable banging on my front door and I dragged myself down the stairs. It was my friend who just happened to live next door.

“What are you doing with the car on the front lawn? Your mother’s walking up the street from work.”

“Wow,” I said, “did I do that?”

“Well, it sure wasn’t me. It’s your car, and you’re the only one home at the moment. But if you don’t hurry up and move it, someone else will be home and you’ll be dead meat.”

I handed her the keys. “Here. You do it. I obviously was in no condition to park it then, and I’m not sure I’m much better now.” I shut the door and went back to bed. Needless to say, she moved the car onto the street in front of the house just in time, and put my keys back in the mailbox.

We had plenty of fun in that car. The trunk was a virtual wet bar. Everybody kept their party shit in my car because I had a car to myself. It wasn’t my mother’s (she never drove a car). It wasn’t my sisters’. It was mine, and it was the group party vehicle. I had one friend I absolutely hated to drive around in that thing because she was a lightweight when it came to drinking and I was terrified she would let it fly all over the inside of the car. Then, I pictured the warm weather setting in.

Luckily, she had a drinking pattern. She’d start with beer, then move on to whiskey sours. What a freakin’ disgusting combination. I can’t drink either one, so the thought of combining them was more than nauseating. If you paid attention to Karen, she could suck down about three whiskey sours after a six-pack, then she’d pass out. We figured we had about an hour from the time she passed out until the time she started hurling. (I used to call her Yakmaster Plus.) So, we’d time our leaving the event carefully, laying her across the back seat. Then, we’d drive to our school parking lot and roll her into the grass near the bushes. (And I mean roll.) She’d wake up, get sick for an hour or so, so we’d listen to the radio or nap ourselves. Then, we’d retrieve her and bring her home and tuck her in. In the three or four years I owned that car, I managed to keep it yak-free.

The car with an extra-special talent

I mentioned earlier that the car had a few problems. One of those problems was a leaky driver-side window when it rained. The rug was constantly damp and it was highly annoying. But I inadvertently found a way to turn that into a positive. Not only did we drink in this car, but we smoked a lot of weed in my Pontiac back in those days. Never let it be said that we didn’t push the party envelope.

One day I dropped the lighter and couldn’t find it. I pulled the car over to look under the driver’s seat and lo-and-behold found a marijuana seedling farm under my seat growing in the the ever damp carpet. It makes sense. A lot of seeds were dropped in the GTO. Nobody vacuums under the seat (at least nobody in my world). I’m lucky I vacuumed the car at all! I mean, these things were impressive. At first I thought I was hallucinating, but I certainly didn’t have any blotter acid with me that day. I rubbed my eyes to be sure I was actually seeing what I thought I was seeing. And I was. Needless to say, my little farmer friends and I carefully extracted these gems for further cultivation.  It was at that moment that I decided not to fix the leak. Ever.

That parking thing again

About a year later, I was coming home from a long night out drinking tequila shooters somewhere on Route 9 in Framingham. It must have been two in the morning before I got home. In Medford, you can only park on one side of the side streets (or at least that’s the way it was back then). Unfortunately, I was too wasted and tired to do something as trivial as try to find a legal parking space. So, I parked the GTO on the opposite side of the street, risking a ticket.

About an hour after I fell asleep, we heard a huge bang outside. My mother tried to wake me up. I rolled over and told her, “Don’t worry about it. Some idiot’s car probably just got totaled.”

Yeah. Now, who could that idiot be?

Vacation? Well, let’s just say that vacations are a thing of the past these days. Okay, so there are the yearly visits to the evil mother-in-law, but that stops this year. Our August 24 foray into hell will be cancelled, at the suggestion of Beth’s therapist. Frankly, I’m relieved. The thought of having to deal with the mess left behind after that trip was not pleasing me. We went there about four months ago for several days and almost had to check Beth into the local looney bin to recover. It was tough at home, I’ll tell you. But that’s another post for a different day. Today, it’s all about our RV adventures!

Now, I’ve been camping. (I’ll tell you about the moose incident some day.) RVing is not camping as most people would define camping. The first time we went on an RV trip, it was just me, Beth and Thalia. We got a small Winnebago. The photo here is an accurate representation of the size. It was an easy drive, sort of like driving a U-Haul. It was great for the three of us, and Thalia got the thrill of sleeping in the bedroom above the cab with her own little television set. There’s plenty of storage space, so we managed to bring all of Miss T’s favorite tapes to play. You know, the standard fare of the day: Bear in the Big Blue House (one of my favorites, actually), Rollie Polie Olie (ever watched this one?), and of course –Scooby Doo (I happen to love “Scooby Doo and the Witch’s Ghost). She was, well, a happy camper so to speak.

Aside from the storage space that allows you to bring as much stuff as you want to provide all the comforts of home, there are other things about  RV travel that are cool. Having a fridge and a stove is awesome. You know, I have “roughed it” in Vermont with my friends and had greenheads land in my frying pan. They are disgusting. I love to cook, and I’m always elected to be the cook, but cooking is never fun when you’re fending off a swarm of fucking locusts at the same time. And greenheads do not taste good either. So, on those days when the sky is falling, it’s always great to be able to have an alternative. RV travel is also great in the bad weather. Where would you rather be when it’s pouring, inside a tent worrying about touching the sides and letting the sky in or in an RV where you can pull out toys, games and videos? That’s a no-brainer for the normal. But aside from all that fun stuff, there is one dicey little responsibility that is a bit ugly. (Naturally, it was a responsibility that fell in my column.)

Emptying the shit tank (or gray water) on one of these things isn’t for the squeamish. No sir. You know, you’ve got all these little controls and lights inside the unit and you monitor how much fresh drinking water you have and what the level of gray water is. The idea is to fill up the fresh water before you head out and keep in replenished on the road, and to find places to dump your gray water when the shit tank fills up. (The gray water also includes your shower run-off.) If you’re staying in one place for several days, you simply hook up the shit tank with the hose and leave it open so that it’s like a functioning home toilet. That’s the easy part, except the gases can sometimes smell bad and then you have to create a trap. It’s when you’re on the road and not connected that can sometimes be unpleasant because that means when you get to your destination, you have to hook up and dump what has collected in there. Just be sure the hose is connected properly, that’s all I’m saying. And gloves. Gloves are supremely important. Now, I’m not squeamish about this stuff (vomit is a bit different; it’s a phobia, I admit), but gloves are important. And make sure they fit you properly. If they are loose, it can cause all kinds of problems. Then they are just getting in the way of a problem-free connection. Campgrounds tend to look down on those who dump shit on the ground, folks. And it wouldn’t be an RV trip if you didn’t spring a leak in your hose. No sir. If you don’t have a spare (and you should), they usually sell them at the campground store. Here’s a hint: If you are renting an RV and there’s duct tape wrapped around the hose in several places, do yourself a favor and invest in one.

One of our first trips out in an RV was to Jellystone Park in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. We went there for Thalia because it’s totally geared to kids. It’s a pretty great take. I have fun with my kids, so it was fun for me too, especially since Yogi Bear was one of my favorite cartoon characters growing up! We also took a trip to Acadia National Park in Maine when Thalia must have been just a little more than three.

We spent the first two nights at Bayley’s campground in Scarborough, Maine. We would stay here several more times over the few years we spent RVing. It had lots of stuff for Thalia to do and that’s what was important. We felt it would be unfair to drag a child out on the road and expect them to sit around while we read or watched TV. We had to find a happy medium, so places like Jellystone and Bayley’s were perfect. This trip also harbors a memorable event.

We took Thalia to Pirate Cove mini-golf in Old Orchard Beach. We were making our way around the course and she was actually doing pretty well. At home we often took her to mini-golf on Route 114 (Danvers, I think) where Richardson’s Ice Cream is. She used to run around on the course stealing everybody’s golf balls. She was being remarkably reserved at Pirate’s Cove and we were happy with that. It was a weekday and the place was pretty empty. Beth and I were clowning around at one hole and Thalia kind of drifted off to the previous hole. When we turned around, she was peeing into the cup. All I remember is Beth saying, “Oh, fuck!” Then we started laughing hysterically while running after her. Thalia told us she didn’t want to pee on the grass, so she chose the cup instead.

Movin’ on up and livin’ large

All the while we were renting mini Winnies, we had been looking at Class A vehicles. They were impressive. We decided to rent one after Aaron was born. He was pretty young when we went on these RV trips. He couldn’t have been more than six months old. When you’re carrying stuff for a six-month old, you need more space. That was our logic. So we moved up to an Infinity the first time out. This was at least at 32-footer, and the cost to rent it for a two-week period varied between $1,800 to $2,000. (The cost isn’t for the squeamish either.) That’s a pretty good indication of how my business was going at the time because I was self-employed by then, happily running New Wave Marketing & Public Relations. We used to rent from a place up on Route 1 North, although I can’t remember the name of it. It was an independent operation and the owner’s name was Steve. The people who worked there were great. Then, he sold to Moturis and things went to shit. The prices went through the roof (as if a couple of thousand plus insurance wasn’t enough).

Class A’s are massive compared to something like a mini Winnie. Everything about driving them is different, but I was up for it (Beth didn’t want anything to do with these). I love to drive and I’m fearless in most instances, so it was fun for me. When you plan a trip with one of these, you do so differently. You have to worry about the height of overpasses, and you really want to stick to a 32-footer because some states forbid anything bigger on certain roads. (And yes, a bigger vehicle means…a bigger shit tank, folks.) Best of all, however, are the comforts. Let me tell you, in one of these you won’t care if it’s raining greenheads or if it’s a hundred degrees outside. The one we rented had two side-outs in the living room and master bedroom, make it huge inside. There were sofas and chairs, wall-to-wall carpeting, a big screen television above the driving area and a multi-speaker stereo system. We had central heat and central air. In short, it was like driving around in a house.

Maine was a popular destination during this time. That’s because Beth and I love the ocean. We’ve only lived in a land-locked town once, and that was Winchester. Other than that, we’ve been near water: Gloucester, Beverly, and Amesbury. Amesbury may not be near the ocean, but the Pow Wow River runs through the center of town and the back road ride to our next-door neighbor, Newburyport (which is right on the ocean), is a beautiful one along the Merrimack River.

We took a second trip to Maine in a 32-footer. This time the destination was the Bar Harbor area. On the way up, we made a stop in Camden because, first and foremost, it’s beautiful. It also has Planet Toys, one of my favorite toy stores. We used to stop and get Thalia and Aaron one present each for them to use in the RV. You know, nothing extravagant. We also stayed in a great campground called Hadley’s Point. (For some reason, I could not access its web site so I couldn’t put in a link. I’ll keep trying!). On the same trip we also stayed at Megunticook RV Resort in Rockport because we had told Thalia about Andre the Seal (he actually died in 1986) and wanted her to see his memorial statue.

More than just the sole proprietor of Grim Reaper Airways

Yes, on another trip Beth proved her versatility with vehicles of size. Thank Buddha that it’s just simulated with an airplane. It was not simulated with a 32-foot RV. No siree. Motorcycles. Fine. Honda Civics. Fine. Toyota Camrys. Fine. Things get a bit dicey after that. And let me give you immediate proof. We are sitting here at the kitchen table. I am writing while Beth is using flight simulator. I heard the alarm go off and then a crashing noise. Beth then announced that she landed too hard next to the runway in Lugano, Italy. Apparently, this was a good thing since Beth had messed up and was trying to land on an outgoing runway. She would have been creamed by a huge jet. Between the sound and our laughter, Aaron figured out what was going on. “What happened? Did ma just crash land again?” Just another day of sheer hair-raising adventure with Grim Reaper.

But Grim Reaper Airways isn’t her only claim to travel fame.  Her RV adventure was on a trip to Saco River Camping Area in New Hampshire. This time we were pretty much staying put once we parked the RV. I found a great car rental deal in the area and rented a mid-sized car for the long weekend so that side trips would be less taxing on the driver (read: Me). For the moment, however, we were done with driving. Aaron had just about had enough of being on the road, so he was in his chair in the wailing mode.

Beth was outside directing me into the spot. Now, I have no problem driving these things so I was just fine. I was ignoring Aaron. For some reason, Beth was distracted by his crying even though she was outside. She wanted to be inside where he was screaming just in case he was dying or something (not very rational, but that’s our Beth). Why she thought it would be better inside was beyond me, but I wasn’t about to argue. At that point, I wanted the RV parked and Aaron picked up. She decided that she was going to pull it in. I went out to direct her. Meanwhile, Aaron was still screaming. So, if she was distracted outside where the screaming was muted, imagine how distracted she must have been inside. (And yes, you may question my judgment in allowing her to back a 32-foot RV into a space. I question it myself.)

It went sour from the beginning. I was directing her one way, and she turned the RV in the opposite direction. Even though I was yelling “Stop!” she managed to hook the bumper onto the water spigot. Then, for some unexplained reason, she put the RV into drive and almost pulled the freakin’ water spigot out of the ground. I remember running up to her door and just banging on it to get her to stop. She did. I managed to disengage the bumper from the water spigot, got in and parked the RV. The good news was that the campground equipment was fine. The bumper, was pulled out from the RV, but it was relatively minor. Luckily, I had put Beth on the driving list and I had purchased additional insurance above my own private policy. Normally a great driver, Beth would never drive an RV again. She wanted no part of that.

It didn’t matter, though. Our RVing days were coming to a close. The economy was getting tighter, and my business was sliding a bit. Our very comfortable world was about to come crashing down on us. But I’m not ready to talk about that one yet.

I loved New Orleans so much that I wanted to take Beth with me on one of my trips so that she could experience it. I was lucky enough to have a manager who allowed her employees flexibility. We didn’t want to fly, so we decided to go by Amtrak train. Since the cost was actually less than what a flight would cost at that time, the Company had no problem picking up the charge. My manager allowed me to wrap vacation around the trip — at the beginning and at the end. We didn’t have kids yet, so there was no issue with just packing up and heading out!

The first leg of the trip was Boston to New York, and we took a pretty old Amtrak train. We had a private room, but we were moving backwards — which did not do much for Beth’s stomach. The porter came to our rescue by giving us a pill called Bonine (a variation on Dramamine, I guess) and it worked perfectly. Beth also suffers from PTSD and has panic disorder. Normally, this means she climbs the walls, gets claustrophobic and ends up in full panic attack mode (very unpleasant) in small quarters…like, maybe, a train car? However, the only thing that can be more problematic is meeting new people and being in crowds. The first night, the room won. We ate dinner in our car instead of going to the dining car. She did fine with the room. This was not a sleeper because it was a short trip.

We switched to a new train at Penn Station. Our room had a sleeper with a very small shower. This train took us all the way to Chicago. I don’t remember very much on this leg of the trip. It was probably spent reading and just laying back. We started eating in the dining car and met some really nice people. There is one specific incident I remember vividly. The bed had an upper and lower berth, but we decided to sleep together on the lower berth. We’re sleeping together buck naked as we pulled into the station in Pittsburgh and came to a stop to pick up and drop off.  Half asleep, I asked, “Why am I so fucking cold here?” All of a sudden, Beth bursts out laughing, “Because you’re naked ass is pressed up against the glass and we’re in the middle of a train station.”  It was early March, so it was still cold early in the morning and late at night. Wow! I can’t tell you how quickly I moved to remedy that situation. The station was packed.

We had a layover of several hours in Chicago, another fun town. We shoved our luggage into one of the lockers at Union Station and took a cab to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch where we had two of the most unbelievable burgers on earth.  Then it was back to Union Station to board the City of New Orleans for the 900 mile journey to our destination. The City of New Orleans is a superliner, and our room was something we’d never expected. It had a bed, a full shower and a refrigerator. It was roomy. We didn’t have to worry about anything; the meals were included in the fare.  The dining car experience could not have been better. We sat with the same people and got to know them during the time we spent together, while the Sightseer Lounge was a great way to take in the scenery. They also ran feature movies in the evening, but we didn’t have a chance to do that.  Best of all, our porter was a big old queen and we had the best time with him the rest of the trip. He gave us a list of ‘gay’ places to check out in NOLA, but we never had the chance.

Reaching our destination

We arrived in New Orleans around mid-morning on a Thursday. I had no idea we would come in through the bayou, so that was an unexpected treat. It was an amazing sight with all the cypress trees, crocs and alligators. As soon as we had collected our luggage, we took a cab to the Sheraton and slept for a few hours. It was only Thursday and I didn’t have the pre-show meeting until Sunday night. That gave us plenty of time to start seeing the town. It’s different when you travel for business. There’s typically not a lot of time to walk around during the day and explore the city. Your free time is usually spent with business associates at dinner and maybe at a club after for a few drinks. I didn’t want to spend my time at bars on this trip.

Our first day there, we visited Voodoo Authentica — just one of the Voodoo shops in the French Quarter. There was a huge cauldron cooking in the middle of the room (to this day, I wonder what was brewing in that thing), and I was completely taken in by their collection of voodoo dolls. We also visited the French Market. This place carries everything from hot sauces, to ristras, to velvet Elvis paintings.  It’s the home of the famous (or infamous, depending upon how you feel about it) gator on a stick. We had dinner at Cafe Sbisa, a restaurant that opened back in 1899 and served authentic Creole dishes. I had discovered this restaurant during a business trip and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, it was damaged by Hurricane Katrina, reopening in 2008 under new ownership.

We missed breakfast in New Orleans the first day, but we were up bright and early the next day to go to the world famous Cafe du Monde for a traditional breakfast of Community Coffee (dark coffee and chicory) and Beignets. We had intended to go to Brennan’s at least once during the trip, but we simply couldn’t tear ourselves away from  the beignets at the Cafe du Monde. I could bore you here with the freakin’ history of the beignet — the original donut, folks, no matter what Dunkin’ Donuts and Krispy Kreme tell you, but I’ll just send you to this link which gives you its history and the authentic recipe. Every morning we were there, we’d leave the hotel and walk to the Cafe for beignets and coffee, and then we’d walk down near the Mississippi and enjoy some party material. Then, we’d set off to explore the city.

I can’t remember what we specifically did on each day, but it was a great adventure. I took Beth to K-Paul’s because it was legendary and I really wanted her to experience it.  By the way, a bit of trivia: His wife’s name is Kay. Therefore, the name K-Paul. Anyway, it was Paul Prudhomme who put cajun cooking on the map.  It was his original head chef who came up to Boston to open the Cajun Yankee that graced Inman Square in Cambridge for so many years. I used to love that place and was extremely sad to see it go. We also went to Antoine’s one night.

I have to tell you that I’ve been in the immediate proximity of famous people before, and I always fail to complete the loop and ask for an autograph. Like the time I stood shoulder to shoulder with Emmylou Harris (who was waiting for her tour bus) in the lobby of a crowded Lenox Hotel in Boston. I just stared at her. Well, Beth and I decided to go to the House of Blues for lunch one day. The place had not yet filled up and we were sitting near the stage when Allan Toussaint and Aaron Neville walked in and stood right next to our table while discussing a gig they’d be playing there sometime in the future. Aaron Neville even tipped his hat to us. We waved and then I just sat there staring. My food got cold. I’m like an idiot in those circumstances.

It’s tough to remember every thing we did. I know I bought Beth a harmonica in some downtown record store, but I can’t remember the name for the life of me. We spent a day at the Aquarium of the Americas. They had a great rainforest exhibit running during the time we were there. I remember bits and pieces of that, especially the glass archway with fish smimming above you. You’re actually walking through the middle of a huge tank exhibit.

Beth remembers that we did the Riverwalk on the same day that we went to the Aquarium. I remember the Riverwalk trip as well, but not the specific day. We went to a cooking store there and they were giving cajun cooking lessons in the morning. Beth really wanted me to sign up, but I resisted that idea because I was trying to keep from scheduling my trip the way I schedule my everyday life. I had so many deadlines and delivery dates driving my professional life that I really hated being tied to a time when I was on my own time. That’s why I never take tours. As an aside, this is the same Riverwalk that was taken out by the barge a few years after our trip (I think the accident happened in 1996).

NOLA is an incredibly interesting town. It’s historic. It’s unique. It stands out from the rest. While I know several people who have lived there and hated it (these were mostly people transplanted to NOLA from other cities), I also know many more that absolutely love visiting there for the things that make it so culturally diverse. For those who were born and grew up there, it is home.  In my mind, the unconscionable way our government handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is as big a moral crime as Iraq. Somehow, somebody decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to try to save Louisiana. Then, they decided it wasn’t worth it to rebuild it, leaving so very many people like nomads without a home. Yet, we can spend billions upon billions of dollars on these two disgusting, illegal and immoral wars. I could go on about this, but I won’t here. There’s another forum for this kind of stuff.

Business crept back in for a few days, but we had two days after the show to continue exploring the city. We were exposed to our very first jazz funeral as it went through the French Quarter. It was quite a spectacle. Again, just more stuff steeped in history and tradition. And there’s just so much music everywhere there. It isn’t uncommon to just stop and listen to whomever is playing in the middle of the street. As for the train ride back, neither of us has a real clear vision of it. I think we were just plain old wiped out and probably slept most of the way home.

Let’s just say that Beth and I are both eager to return to New Orleans some day,, and this time we’d love to take the kids with us.

There are nine and eleven years respectively between my sisters and I. When I was growing up, I really got into music. All I really had to listen to, however, was what my family members were listening to. Elvis Presley was big with both of my sisters, but especially my sister Mamie. Frank Sinatra was a family favorite. My sister Jo-Anne was listening to Brenda Lee and the Shirelles. My dad loved Nat King Cole and Mario Lanza. I’m probably missing a ton of stuff here, but you get the point.

The Beatles landed in America on February 7, 1964 and changed everything for me. I also got “Meet the Beatles” from my mother for my tenth birthday.  The Beatles really gave me my own music, and I was instantly hooked. I’m of the opinion that they remain the most innovative band in the world. It’s popular now for rock bands to play with symphony orchestras. The Beatles were doing that back in the sixties, including the London Philharmonic Orchestra on several albums. They used the French Horn, sitars and synthesizers in their songs. They had a very distinctive sound, but no two songs sounded the same. They deservedly remain a force to this day. They changed the rules of the game.

They had so many unbelievably cohesive albums, like Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, The White Album and Abbey Road. Each one represented a new evolution of the band’s music. It was simply amazing and you found yourself just waiting for the next album to be released. I remember that Greg and I were just the biggest Beatle fans. We followed everything they did, from visiting India to meditate with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to the “Paul is Dead” crisis. We spent hours looking for clues on album covers and listened for hints by playing the records backwards.

Back in the day, it wasn’t about FM radio. Everything was happening on AM radio, to be specific 1510 WMEX with disc jockey ‘Cousin’ Duffy. He had come out here from California, where he was infamous and was actually mentioned in the song “Creeque Alley” by The Mamas & The Papas. We all saved our money to buy and mount Eight-Track Players under our dashboards. Yes, you heard it right. Eight-Track Players.

I’ve seen many concerts in my day with various people. But there was a period in our (Greg, Jack and I) lives there — probably the mid-to-late 70s — where we went to concert after concert after concert. I don’t remember how many years it spanned, but it was just a blast. And I don’t necessarily mean just in the state of Massachusetts, either.

It’s really hard to remember all of these concerts, but there are some extremely vivid memories that live on in my mind, like:

Chicago at the Boston Garden. I took my two sisters and my mother. It was a crazy fucking night. People all around us were getting stoned and my sister turns around to me and says, “Ew, what is that smell.” I just shook my head. “Shut up.”

One night it was blowing snow and absolutely freezing outside and Greg, Jack and I were walking around Harvard Square. We wanted somewhere to get warm, so we took a walk down the alley where Passim’s coffee shop was. (Passim’s is a storied place in Cambridge history. There were stories of how Linda Ronstadt sang there when she was very young and used to go to Elsie’s for roast beef sandwiches.) There was a live show that night, but there was no cover charge. We went in to get out of the cold and sat up the front near the stage. What followed was simply one of the most amazing things we’ve ever seen to this day.

Someone named Guy Clark walked out on stage to perform. He was huge, over six feet tall and he played the fiddle. I remember to this day what he opened up with. It’s a song called “Virginia’s Reel,” and he played that fiddle like I’ve never seen before. We had the best time that night. The guy played for probably two hours and it stands out today as one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen. That was the one and only time I ever saw him live, but I have a lot of his music.

We saw the J. Geils Band at the Boston Garden on November 15, 1975 in a performance that would become part of the Blow Your Face Out album, considered one of the greatest live albums ever.

We saw another pretty hot country band called Asleep at the Wheel at the Paradise and people were dancing on the tables by the time they got to the song “Route 66.”  Or how about Jonathan Edwards at the Paradise? When he sang the song “Shanty,” you swore that everybody in the place lit a  joint (we certainly did). I remember that the security staff there had no fucking idea what to do. Throw us all out? I know that didn’t happen and it was a hell of a concert.

We were there at the Who concert the night that Keith Moon collapsed on top of his drum kit within the first twenty minutes of the show. They rescheduled and we saw a great performance several weeks later. Just months after that, Keith Moon died from an overdose of a prescription drug he was taking to help him detox. Keith Moon had an affinity for trashing hotel rooms. I had no idea he used to blow up toilets until I took a look at Wikipedia.

It’s hard to pick the single best Linda Ronstadt concert when you’ve seen her more than thirty times in your lifetime. I’d have to say that her performance at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center was one of the very best. At the time we went to that show, I was driving a white Buick Skylark. It was mint. I had a vanity plate that read BLU BYU (obviously for the song Blue Bayou). You drive through the Saratoga Spa State Park to get into the performing arts center. Basically, you drive down a long two-lane blacktop surrounded by these huge trees on either side. Well, we were sitting in traffic on that road when somebody saw my license plate and became convinced that my car was carrying Linda Ronstadt to the show.

Now, that’s not even logical. Why would she ever come to the venue via this route and why would she be arriving so close to show time? But those logical thought processes had left these people. We’re stuck in about two miles of traffic when people suddenly start banging on the windows and doors, asking where Linda is. I’m like, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Who are these people?” We opened the car windows and all this smoke went streaming out. We assured these idiots that Linda Ronstadt was not in the car. We even let them look in to convince themselves. That was truly an unbelievable experience.

People used to assume that my fascination with Ronstadt was because I had a gay crush on her. They couldn’t be more wrong. The fact is that Linda Ronstadt is like a female version of the The Beatles. She’s done it all — country rock, rock n’roll, cajun, big band and mariachi — and she does all of it so well. Her voice at 62 is actually stronger than it was in her thirties because she took on a voice coach prior to the Nelson Riddle phase. She made a lot of money for the record companies and that kind of contribution gets a performer the latitude to do whatever he or she wants. She made great choices.

There were other great shows at the SPAC, like the Emmylou Harris tour the year she released Luxury Liner, and the Bonnie Raitt tour the year she released Sweet Forgiveness. I feel the same way about Emmylou as I do about Linda Ronstadt. She really defied the traditional definition of a country and western singer. The concerts were always in summer, so we’d spend a few days and camp out. One year we were lucky enough to be there during the month of August — the only month of the year when the Saratoga Race Track was open. I remember that we spent one Sunday there. We had breakfast at The Paddock where we drank Bloody Marys. Then we went and played the ponies, where we promptly got trashed on martinis. I have absolutely no memory to this day of actually walking up to a window and placing a bet. But I’m sure we must have done that at least a few times?

I also flew out to see Linda Ronstadt at the Los Angeles Forum on Christmas eve 1978  for the start of her Living in the USA tour. This came about because I had a pen pal living in Westminster, California, who was a huge Linda Ronstadt fan. She suggested I come out for the show and stay with her family, so I took her up on her offer. I got there a couple of days early. The night of the show, we checked into a hotel near the Forum because that’s where we were going to stay after the show. It was near the airport and I was flying home early Christmas morning. The final song was “Living in the USA,” and when the song began, they released 10,000 red, white and blue balloons from the ceiling.

There were so many Linda Ronstadt shows it was crazy. In the 70s, we were like Linda Ronstadt “deadheads” because we traveled to New York routinely to see her at SPAC. We also drove to Connecticut and Maine several times to see her. I can’t remember who I was with, but I also saw her “Canciones di me Padres” tour at Great Woods during the 80s. I remember almost belting the guy sitting behind me because he was screaming at her to sing in English throughout the whole show. I finally told him to STFU and, surprisingly, he did. Had I known that was all it would take, I’d have done it sooner.  I also saw her at Radio City Music Hall in NYC when she went on the road with Nelson Riddle. The last time I saw Linda Ronstadt was 2005 on the revolving stage of the South Shore Music Circus. Beth and I had tickets to see her with Emmylou Harris at the Orpheum after they released Western Wall, but Beth became ill so we gave those tickets to my sister and her husband.

We saw Elton John’s bicentennial concert at what was then called Schaefer Stadium. It was July 4, 1976. Greg had a station wagon, and we tied a huge American flag to the top of it and drove to Foxboro. I couldn’t venture to tell you how much we smoked on the way down and during the huge tailgating party that went on for hours before the show. Elton was notorious for his wild outfits, and the one he had for the Bicentennial Tour was no exception. It was the one in this photo and I believe he wore it at all the concerts that year. We blasted the song Philadelphia Freedom from his 8-track (yes, you heard it right, eight track), even though it had absolutely nothing to do with the bicentennial. (It was a tribute to Billie Jean King.) Fleetwood Mac opened the show. When it was over, we were stuck in traffic for what seemed to be hours. Finally, Greg got so sick of waiting, he drove through a chicken wire fence and onto some back road in Foxboro to get out of the parking lot. It took us a while to find the highway, but we did.

Beth and I saw a ridiculous concert at what was then called Great Woods with Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Shawn Colvin, Bruce Hornsby and David Lindley. Beth was pregnant with Thalia at the time, so it had to be the summer of 1996. They each performed individually and then all together as a band. They were so good together we just wanted them to keep playing. And just before I met Beth in 1992, I saw two concerts at Great Woods (or was it the Tweeter Center by then?) with my marketing services department. One was Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and the other was Steve Winwood. (Just wait until we get to the “team building” parties I used to have with this crew.)

For all the people I have seen, there are so many I haven’t seen. I never had the opportunity to see the Beatles, but I doubt very much that I would have enjoyed the concerts anyway. I didn’t want to hear a bunch of people incessantly screaming. I wanted to hear the music. That’s why they stopped touring so early in their career. I’ve also never had the opportunity to see Paul McCartney. The closest I’ve come to seeing him live was when I saw the Rock Show movie. (I loved Wings, by the way.)  McCartney is coming to Fenway Park in August, but the tickets will be unaffordable for me right now. I am a real Deadhead, but I never saw The Grateful Dead perform live. I know The Dead still tours today, and then there’s Bob Weir’s Ratdog,  but it’s not the same without Jerry Garcia. On the bright side, Beth and I have just about everything The Grateful Dead has ever done, including all of Dick’s Picks (live recordings of their shows). I’ve also never seen several of my other favorites, like Janis Joplin, The Doors or Bob Dylan. Regrettably, I never made it to Woodstock, billed as three days of peace and music.

Anyway, I’m sorry if this musical trip down memory lane was a bit long in the tooth, but it’s been banging around in my head for several days now. I’ve thrown in a lot of links to make it interesting. Music was — and still is — a big part of my life. I have over 9 gigs of music on my ITunes. If you enjoyed it, I’m glad. Thanks for reading.

I was never much a fan of business travel. I always thought it was overrated. The only good thing about it was that you kind of got to preview a place before you ended up spending your own money traveling there. My absolute favorite business travel destination? Well, it was neither Paris, nor the French countryside. It was not London. It was not Germany. It wasn’t San Francisco or D.C., although I absolutely love both places and they are probably both the only places outside of Massachusetts that I’d ever live. It was New Orleans, a place I’d probably never live.

Yes, I have a good friend who will tell you what a swill-bucket existence it is in New Orleans, and I am sure this is particularly true post-Katrina. In fact, one of the most vivid images I have in my head happens to be a huge poster in the French Quarter that displayed the differences in pay, crime, poverty rate, etc., between New Orleans and Boston. The numbers told the ugly story. However, if you are an outsider visiting New Orleans, you have an entirely different perspective because you don’t have to live there.

I may not want to live there, but partying there was a trip. You could work all damned day at a trade show, have to go to dinner with the ’suits’ at night, and you could still get some decent partying hours in. That is particularly true of the French Quarter which simply never shuts down. Leave a drink behind because you’re late for dinner? Unheard of. The bartenders in the hotels simply poured them into a plastic cup so you could finish your drink in the cab on the way to the restaurant.

There were always things going on at night. Some of the publishers would have parties on river boats with gambling; others would have buffet dinners with an open bar in their hotel meeting rooms. I preferred to hang out with my favorite sales people one-on-one because you’d actually get out and see the town. My absolute favorite sales guy was a guy named Ed from a publication called Analytical Chemistry. Ed and I couldn’t have been more different. He was a conservative from “the great state of Georgia,” and I was (and still am) a liberal from Massachusetts. We simply didn’t let it get in the way of our friendship. We never talked about politics.

Every time we’d go to New Orleans for the Pittsburgh Conference, Ed and I end up at  Commander’s Palace in the Garden District.  At the time, the head chef there was a guy named Emeril LeGasse — now one of my all-time favorite chefs. A couple of times we went to Brennan’s for breakfast and, if we did lunch instead of dinner, we loved the food at the Hard Rock Cafe. It was definitely New Orleans style food and the memorabilia in the place was regionalized as well — like Fats Domino’s piano top hanging on the wall, one of Doctor John’s outfits in a glass case above the entrance, or videos of Professor Longhair playing away in the background.

No bad food in New Orleans

Regardless of the size of the place, there is no bad food in New Orleans. If you love food, this is the place to be. I had my first alligator dish there; it was alligator sausages at breakfast one day in the French Quarter. It was a really small place and I cannot remember the name of  it. I liked it so much that I ended up having it stir fried at a Szechuan restaurant in Jackson Square and had the famous “alligator on a stick” at the French Market.

The Sheraton I stayed at on one trip celebrated Happy Hour by putting a row boat in the middle of the lobby bar filled with boiled crawfish and handing out free bottles of Blackened Voodoo Beer for the first hour. It was just awesome. In fact, Beth and I went on one trip together by train (this trip is one that deserves its own post, and it will get one down the road) and we made sure to stay at the same Sheraton.

On one trip, about fifteen of us were determined to eat at K-Paul’s. Paul Prudhomme is the grandaddy of cajun cooking. The lines outside his restaurant were legendary. They could extend the full length of the street, and you would wait for hours. As soon as we saw the line forming in the early afternoon, we pulled someone off booth duty and told them to stand in line so that we could get in when the place opened at 5:30 p.m. It worked perfectly. We ran over there after the show and were seated by about 6:30 p.m. There’s no flash in K-Paul’s. It’s rustic with family-style seating. We all got to sit together at one table, so we ordered a bucket of Cajun Martinis. I had the most amazing blackened yellowfin tuna I’ve ever had, and Paul Prudhomme was there that night. I still have the menu he signed and gave me. I also bought his first cookbook there on that trip. It’s one of my favorites.

The real fun started later

I never worried much about being gay at Millipore. (Well, let’s put it this way: I wasn’t worried at this time. I found that I had to worry later, once the Europeans took over.) I was pretty much out and headed for the bars after hours. Some of the Millipore revelers even came once in a while. If you’re gay, it’s not hard to find a place to party in New Orleans. A must see is Cafe Lafitte in Exile on Bourbon Street, which just happens to be the oldest gay bar in America. But things could get much more interesting than that late at night in New Orleans.

If you wanted to blow somebody’s mind, you took them to The Dungeon on Toulouse Street. The Dungeon was not necessarily a gay bar in the true sense of the word, but plenty of gay people frequented The Dungeon. This place was just amazing. Hell, it didn’t open until 10:30 p.m. Trust me when I tell you that your first trip there would amount to you walking around with your mouth open for what seemed to be hours. According to legend, the dungeon was where Prince Suleman of Turkey lured young women and prepared them for the harems of Istanbul by “psychological indoctrination, opium-induced submission and torture.”  I could spend hours describing it, so instead I’ll just rely on the link to tell the story. Besides, you get pictures.

For some stupid reason I’ll never understand, they decided to change the venue of the Pittsburgh Conference so that it rotated between Chicago and New Orleans, so the trips to New Orleans slowed down. However, on one of the final trips I made, I took Beth with me and we wrapped some vacation time around the business trip. That allowed us to take the train all the way to New Orleans. It was a blast. That story is coming up soon.

(Oh, yeah, I had a freakin’ ass kicking experience in Chicago once at this show as well. I’ll have to tell you about it some time.)

I spent more than eight years involved with Miss Headcase, and not many of them were positive. This fact is just testament to both my perserverence and stupidity. She had her problems and we’ll get into some of that later, but for now the first trip we took together was one for the books. It was to Newport, Rhode Island. The first thing I remember — and it’s absurd — is that we both just bought new sneakers and it was pouring rain. We walked around with plastic bags on our feet.

I remember that I took Friday off and we headed down early in the morning. We had reservations at a place called Cliff House, a really beautiful bed & breakfast run by two elderly lesbians. They were really so sweet, and the place just had so many twists and turns, like a hidden staircase. On the very top floor, there was a common kitchen where you could cook dinner if you preferred staying in. We did that the first night we were there. You could climb out to a balcony through a window in the kitchen. The view was just unbelievable.  I can’t find the place anymore. I’m sure it’s under new ownership but I really cannot seem to match the memory to anything I can find on the web. It’s been a long time. The place was called Cliff House because it was right near Cliff Walk, of course, a beautiful mile-long walk overlooking the Atlantic. This was a walk you should not miss even in the dreary weather. We held off until the second day.

The second day, Saturday, was the best. We got up early and ate breakfast at the inn, then we walked downtown for a while and visited the shops. We had lunch at the Brick Alley Pub (and this place is still there). Then we headed toward Bellevue street and toured the International Tennis Hall of Fame. We went to a few of the mansions, the most opulent and absurd was The Breakers, the summer home of the Vanderbilts. The place had hot and cold running sea water or fresh water for the baths. I think it had something like 70 rooms, and it was a summer home only. That’s fucking crazy. I can’t remember where we had dinner that night. It could have been La Forge Casino on Bellevue. That restaurant would be a favorite of ours and it would figure in a later trip to Newport. Just wait for that one. We were driving back  on Sunday, so we were in early Saturday night. The funniest thing happened Sunday morning.

Sunday was just beautiful. The sun had returned on Saturday, but Sunday was really bright. The night before, the place was buzzing because two people from Rolling Stone magazine had checked in. The guy was pretty notable, but I cannot remember who it was all these years later. All I know is that it wasn’t the sun that woke us up that morning. Apparently, the two writers from Rolling Stone had spent the night together — in a room right next to ours, and now they were engaged in wanton sex.

They were so loud it was hysterical. We could hear everything they were yelling. They were moaning; she was shrieking. We were laughing so hard we had to put the pillows over our faces. This went on for what seemed like hours and we just couldn’t move. Every time we thought it was over and we stopped roaring, they’d start up again. I mean, wtf were they thinking? This was a b & b. The place was old. The walls were thin. I’m willing to bet the whole freakin’ place heard them. I could imagine the entire place with people hiding their faces under their pillows that morning, just roaring laughing.

We wanted to head back early on Sunday because I had to be back at work early Monday morning. Our last visit was to Brenton Point State Park and a trip down Ocean Drive where people hang out and fly kites all day in the summer. The International Kite Festival is held there in July. The colors and images are just beautiful. It was a great ride that morning with the sun so bright. After that, we headed back to Boston.

That was the first time Miss Headcase and I went away together. The relationship was new; things were great. It was very romantic and a wonderful time. There was absolutely no hint of things that would to come several years later.