some of you might remember from "I Am Not Myself These Days" the story of how my mother "outed" me.
she, like all moms of gay boys, had a hunch i might be one. but knowing that if she were too forthright in asking, i would shy away from the question. so she decided to ask me in a roundabout way:
"if you were going to live a life like your uncle arthur, you would tell us, yes?"
uncle arthur is, of course, gay. fabulously wonderfully gay. he's been gay since WWII. around that time is when he met his partner, bob.
They've been together ever since. well over fifty years.
after the war they moved to geneva, and were fabulously gay there. then, when a countess friend of theirs died, she left the couple her fortune. they immediately retired and began spending their summers at home in switzerland, and their winters in the south of france.
so yes, mom, if i possibly could live a life like uncles arthur & bob's, i certainly would. (ailing countesses, please make yourself known in the comment section below.)
i really first got to know my uncles after college when i did the obligatory back-packing trek across europe. by then they were permanently retired to france, and lived smack in the middle of a tiny village called maussanne. there they are the center of the social scene, even though they've grown much frailer.
arthur still walks the block to the outdoor cafe at least four times a day to be sure not to miss any town gossip. or make some.
uncle bob is the one who introduced me to cooking. that very first trip, when i was barely out of college, he taught me how to make mayonnaise by hand. and he made me swear that i would never buy it in a jar. i've kept my promise (mostly.) i describe bob as "orson well-ian." a large man. who loves to cook, and loves to eat. and loves to feed people - which i think is one of the greatest traits a man can have.
bob is the most accomplished drinker, smoker, eater, carouser, griper, bellower, guffawer, talker, painter, gardener and hugger i've ever met.
one of my favorite stories about the pair was told to me by one of their friends. in the early seventies, arthur and bob were throwing one of their famous dinner parties. one of their friends, a well-known french actress, was admiring the goose that bob had in a wire pen in the back yard. he was raising and fattening it for christmas. he would never think of serving store-bought fowl on a holiday. (if you think there's a parallel to last year's adventure with my own personal thanksgiving turkey story, you'd be right. bob has always been a great inspiration to me.)
the actress, hoping to pet the bird, opened one end of the pen. geese, not known for wanting to be petted, escaped through her legs and began chasing the actress around the moonlit yard.
hearing the honking ruckus, bob went to the kitchen window (during parties, bob rarely left the kitchen) and saw the actress running around the yard, followed by the flapping goose, followed by the rest of the dinner guests trying to save the actress from the chase.
he disappeared from the window, only to reappear a moment later, this time with shotgun in hand.
flinging open the window, he took aim, and shouted for the guests to 'get the hell out of my aim!'
most of them did. except the actress, of course, who had no say in her proximity to the goose chase. she couldn't get away from the goose on a mission.
the actress's status as a french national treasure didn't deter bob one bit. he fired away, repeatedly, until the bird was laying dead on the ground.
the actress, luckily, was not. she was shaken, of course, and probably even moreso after bob spent the rest of the evening yelling at her for ruining his christmas dinner. bob dressed the goose and served it the next night, to other guests, and watched them pick shot pellets out of their main course.
arthur and bob are opposite but equal. no one says either of their names in singularity. for over half a century they may as well have both been named: "arthur&bob."
bob died this morning, at home, while arthur was in the kitchen making toast. bob still had his double whiskey by the hospital bed that had been set up for him in the living room, where he lay for the last three years.
arthur said that they'd held hands last night just before arthur went upstairs to bed.
for anyone looking, arthur won't be at the cafe today.
