Spring in Queens

Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.

Spring in Queens. Northern Boulevard between 72^nd and 73^rd streets, East Elmhurst/​Jackson Heights, 6 April 2010.

Thanks again to my friend and former coworker Mayouko for another great dinner party, a tradition in which I have participated nine years.

Neglected ☹

The friend who had been entrusted four days earlier to invite me had neglected to do so and telephoned me at 21:15 when the dinner party was already in progress. My inability to leave my home in any reasonable time frame, the significant subway delays I faced, the uncharacteristically cold night and the walk from the subway station meant I arrived at her place after midnight after a number of guests had already left. I removed my sneakers while I waited for the door to be answered to discover nearly every other guest was wearing shoes.

Carbohydrate concerns

The hostess was very pleased to see me and made another batch of beef possibly primarily for me. I couldn’t have the traditional sugary sauce, so she put salt and pepper on the meat and it was very good. I had some of her pork and cabbage dish (presumably made without sugar, unlike coleslaw which it resembled) and seafood and cucumber salad (sunomono 酢の物) which a guest assured me was only seasoned with mayonnaise. (Most of the recipes for it I now see online include sugar.) Even though I was drinking a dark beverage (diet root beer) in a big cup, I mistakenly picked up a light‐colored beverage in a small cup and downed the rest of someone’s likely alcoholic beverage. (This and the later Diet Crush discovery may have sabotaged my diet.)

Chat

I met Mila Jam who was wearing her sensational shoes she had bought fewer than twenty‐four hours earlier. J.J.’s dog calmly sat on his lap dressed as a huge strawberry. A friend and I were talking about unusual food, particularly insects, when he abruptly asked me what celebrity I find sexy, apparently changing the subject. Distracted, I came up with Çağatay Ulusoy and Adam Levine (אדם נח) on short notice, so he asked if I would have sexual relations with one of them in a big vat of live cockroaches if it aroused him and were the only circumstance under which he’d have sex with me. In another discussion, Laverne used some well‐paid entertainment professional as an example of someone who makes “down loot.”

Leaving

Little by little, guests started leaving. The last three guests and I cleaned up and left together, and it was just too late and cold to do anything else so I got into Second Avenue station and fled home. I usually ride the second car from the last when traveling home but I kept rejecting car after car because each was full of homeless people. I got near the middle of the train and finally settled on a car with only two homeless people in it who were both on the other side. Another passenger and I smiled to one another as he saw me looking ahead through the cars and seeing endless homeless people.

Because I am literally months—and in some cases, years—behind in publishing my pictures online, I offer this picture from a 2009 dinner party when she served the same thing.

Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam. Mayouko’s dinner party, 27 May 2009.

Previously

• Google Buzz, 23 June 2011.

• Last modified 12 April 2012.
• Versions of this article are reproduced at elyaqim.tumblr.com/post/20449678288 and webcitation.org/66fYgJXhb
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