A full moon last night, in the city decked out in its holiday best.
We went to hear the Count Basie Orchestra at Davies Hall, backed up by the SF Symphony. Except for Midnight Mass in a cathedral with a full choir, it’s the best way to experience Christmas music. Lots of brass, with an emphasis on the sax, and a singer in a multicolored sequined formal that, under the lights, was sending out flashes that could bounce off of satellites.
We all went home earlier than usual, at about 5:00 PM, to get ready for the party. Woody called us at 6:50 to tell us that, because of a backup on Sacramento, he’d meet us at Hyde and Clay. We found him standing beside his BMW. Woody is a rather good-looking fox-faced man in is thirtes, with a goatee and a bald, possibly shaven head. He was dressed very snappily with a white shirt and dark tie that made me think he was wearing a Tuxedo until I saw his colorful, gold-colored vest. His girlfriend, Dominique, is a tall, frond-like dancer, very delicate featured, with long blond hair.
The drive to the Golf Club was lengthy. I sat in the back and watched neighborhoods spin past, Polk Street, the Tenderloin, Van Ness, Lombard, all the way out to the neighborhoods near the Panhandle with the rows of stuccoed houses. Woody talked to Michael about real estate and the wonderful things Mayor Giuliani had done in New York City. I was too carsick to say much of anything except to ask Woody, after he’d expounded about how MAGNIFICENT New York is now, if anyone could afford to live there. He allowed as how it was a bit expensive, then went on about how concerned he was about certain liberal elements in San Francisco’s current city government, and the possibility of a mass exodus if they pass any no-growth measures. I refrained from observing that there has already been a mass exodus of the middle and working class over the past ten years, but it took an effort. I did demur once, pointing out that, after the Amadou Diallo shooting, I doubted black New Yorkers felt safe walking there at night, but Michael changed the subject and I fell back into sullen silence.
The conversation turned to the much more congenial subject of Dickens. Woody is taking part in a local festival where people wander about playing characters from Dickens — rather like Ren Fair, another institution Woody is involved in. (That was how he met Dominique — through sword fighting at Ren Fair.) Woody is going to play half of the two gentlemen who visit Scrooge asking for “some provision for the poor.” We traded Christmas Carol quotes until he pulled into the long, elegant driveway of the San Francisco Golf Club.
On Friday, not much got done at work. Everyone’s mind was on the Christmas party that night at the San Francisco Golf Club, which is back of beyond somewhere past the Stonestown Galleria. I had no idea how Michael and I were going to get there until Woody, an agent who lives nearby on Pleasant, said he’d give us a ride.
The comroom felt oddly slow and airless, though Kay provided one diversion by having a phone conversation, obviously with Lou. “Oh damn!” he exclaimed. “That’s just too bad! Oh well, you know, it would be better if she didn’t go.” He hung up the phone. After a moment, he sighed heavily.
I finally obliged him by asking, “What’s the matter?”
“Both our dates cancelled out on us!” he said, and then went on to explain, his face doleful, how his date had studying to do that night. (On Friday. Right.) He provided no explanation for Lou’s date not coming through.
I pretended to believe him and looked forward to seeing Kay and Lou finally coming out of the closet as a couple at the Christmas party.
For Christmas, at Michael’s request, I made sausage Jambalaya. It’s not a dish I cook much anymore, given concerns about fat and sodium content. Last night, just as I was stirring it before serving, I realized I’d left out the Thyme. That was an accident, but I also deliberately cut the amount of salt in half. (Why even add salt when you’re cooking with ham and sausage?)
Michael didn’t seem to mind, and it turns out I actually like it better this way. It’s creamier and got a nice sweetness offsetting the heat.
Also, I made a chocolate apricot cake. And a pot of Smoking Bishop. Lovely celebration.
After Midnight Mass, there was the usual confusion of departure as carriages edged past each other, drivers holding up their whips in salute. Their carriage, unlike the others, turned down dark, silent Drum Street, and Amadeo rested his head against the backrest, looking towards the bay and at the stars.
They were passing the closed stalls of the market when Corl said, “Look sir,” and pointed towards the blackness of Sanctuary Bay. “The Little King is coming.”
Teach had mentioned this to him. Every Christmas, in the dark hours of the morning, the Out Easters brought the Holy Infant into Saint Nicholas.
Amadeo had thought Pinny still asleep, but she sat up in his lap. “Oh! Papa, can we see?”
“Cher, it is late, and your mother is tired. If we wait too long, Papa Noel will find your little sister sleeping alone and leave only one stocking behind.”
A distant “pop,” and what looked like a sputtering star rose and fell over the rooftops of the market. Someone was firing Roman Candles on the beach.
“But I am not tired, Husband” Hortense said. “And I am sure Papa Noel will understand.”
“Turn around,” Amadeo told Corl. “Let us off at the Long Steps.”
“Aye, sir. You won’t regret it.”
Usually, when Amadeo thought of the Long Steps that led down to Sanctuary Strand, he pictured the summer day they had landed. He saw Dr. Teach with his ledger in yellow sunlight and heat. The steps had led down to the blazing expanse of sand where people moved about and shouted at each other. Wheels had creaked and weary horses huffed as they climbed the hill road, their flanks smelling of wet horsehair and dust.
This was not the same world.
They paused, Amadeo, Hortense, and Pinny in between them, at the top of the stairway. Someone had set out torches every few yards alongside the stairs. The stone steps, harsh and gritty in daytime, looked golden, and led down to a pool of darkness as profound as the waters of the bay. Across that black a small cluster of lights flickered on the beach near the shore. The moon was in its last quarter, and the waves glowed in white curves as they crested.
Hortense bent. “Look,” she said to Pinny. “It is like the Arabian Nights.”
They descended, hand in hand.
My morning glimpse of the city — gray and rainy. I like it.
Christmas looms. On Sunday night, on our way to a dinner party, a car tore past us, the vague shape of a fir tree strapped to the roof. “Is it legal to ignore the light if you’re bringing home a Christmas tree?” Michael asked.
Didn’t this holiday begin as a celebration of time? The darkest, longest night of the year, the present dying into the past as we slide into the future, that faint touch of the sinister that gives it a richer, more adult flavor as we age. So, people reach out to each other, and our calendar is crowded with meals out, parties. Lunch yesterday with old friends we haven’t seen for months in a dim sum place out on the avenues, eating food I should not eat, gossping about ourselves, watching rain pour down the windows, people hurrying past, hunched forward under umbrellas. ”This used to be a video cafe,” someone said. “Hamburgers and fries and shakes and VHS rentals over there behind the counter. Remember when that was new?” Which really meant “Remember when we were young?”
We stayed until we were the last customers left.
The city is emptying out. The echoes are beautiful.
I’m too old to feel the excitement of the Christmases of my long, happy, gentile childhood, but a hangover remains. It’s a pleasant, umber shadow constantly falling over me, jangly with bells, lit with colored lights and smelling of cinnamon.
There’s always a moment in December when I see something that makes me think of a New Yorker cartoon from around the mid-twentieth century. A woman sitting at a writing desk looks at her husband and asks “Do you realize another Christmas is practically at our throats?”
This week it was my night-time walk through Huntington Park, which is now brightened up with lights — all white this year — outlining the trees and bushes and curved in an elegant arch over the entrance. Clever and restrained. After dark it gives the effect of a snowy landscape.
Yesterday afternoon was Santacon. Clots of 20 and 30-somethings wearing everything from Santa Hats to Santa Suits, (and a few elves) moved up and down Polk Street in the dirty afternoon light. The young men who costumed wore the usual red jacket and trousers trimmed with white cotton, while the young women supplemented their hats with mini-skirts and boots. I saw lots of red sequins, tight tops and bare arms. Saturday was brisk, but no judgements here. I can remember being that age and shivering on Halloween night as I walked across campus in my devil costume.
This is a young person’s celebration, and every year I hear older San Franciscans grousing about it, many of whom, I suspect, would have loved it if it had been happening two or three decades ago. I wonder how enduring it’s going to be as a Christmas tradition. Will we see tipsy groups of middle-aged to elderly people in Santa hats wandering downtown San Francisco twenty/thirty/forty years from now? Will a Hallmark Christmas movie depict a gorgeous divorcee from the Financial District finding love and a meaningful life in Walnut Creek with an adorably scruffy misfit dresssed in an ugly sweater at Santacon? Will a new generation take over as the world closes in on the current crop?
Or will it die out completely?
As the cartoon put it, another Christmas is practically at our throats. Which cheers me because I like Christmas. Commercialized? Hell yes. That’s the nature of any festival that involves partying, feasting and gift-giving. I am firmly on the side of Charles Dickens here, however clumsily, however tackily it’s celebrated.
“I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
Pam Troy 