Writer Sprout

Monday, July 25, 2005

My weekend of Wan

Wayne Garrett. Or, Garrett Kostin these days, man of a trillion nicknames. I got five days of this fine fella, and what full five days they were. G-K and I go back, clear back to Eisenhower Middle School. These days he lives in Thailand w/ his boyfriend, whose name I won't try spelling. It's been two years since he was last statebound, and according to him, he's there for good.

So a month ago Kinip lined up a cruise, and as he'd never been the NYC, booked a week here, too. Well, about two weeks later, he randomly thought of me--it had been a good 10 years since we'd last crossed--and in a rather circuitous way, got in touch w/ me. He told me about his upcoming travel plans, NY included, then thinking I was still in Seattle, mentioned an end-of-the-year trip home to visit his family and that we should hang out. Upon learning that, no, I'm not there, I'm here, we immediately started planning. He already had a pretty stacked itinerary, but we made do....

Ahh, the highlights:

Beauty Bar on Tuesday. For those not familiar, BBs are 50s hair salons-turned-bars, complete w/ many of the old fixtures, including hair dryers and display cases full of pretty little potions and powders.
Din-din w/ the gang + one Kristin Proctor at Max. Best durn Italian ever--and for cheap!
All-day MOMA extravaganza, just Wan & I. Aside from overexcited nonstop chattering/catching up, high points included a giant projected lemon (pic says it all); a perfect square sectioned into smaller squares made up of single typewriter'd numbers, two mistakes; my beloved Mondrian; and a looped film about three women wrestlers, all quite large, occupying a single room each, same location on three different floors. While peddling an exercise bike, top woman would hold her hand under a lit bulb, her fingernails would grow in spindly and red, she'd cut them off w/ scissors, stick them in a ball of clay and roll it around, drop it down through the ceiling to middle-floor woman who would do something else to it (can't remember) then drop it down to third-floor woman who would catch it in a bowl and bam, it's a maraschino cherry. Meant to be commentary on the absurdity of assembly line production that turns out useless commodities. Ok.
The Edukators, German film you must see.
Post-film meal at one of very few Swedish restaurants in Manhattan, and I'm not talkin' no pickled herring either. The required Swedish Meatballs, a little venison, some Gravlax, too much Rye bread, and of course, some drops of Aquavit later, and we'd had enough. For all my love of Scandinavia, that food gets a little too serious, if you know what I mean.
Venison bones gone awry. No harm done.
Laughing 'til I cried, a lot.

Bye Wan!