Cupcakes & Cocktails (pt. 1)

The first time I was with you outside of rehearsal, little sweetheart, was the night you invited the entire cast and company over to your place after for a “cupcakes & cocktails” party. It was a beautiful, generous, lovely and, as I was to learn, typical Summerlove gesture. In advance, you’d gone out and bought a set of gorgeous vintage cocktail glasses – highballs and those iconic parfait-style ones – and spent hours baking and frosting the detailed and delicious cupcakes yourself.

That night, after rehearsal finished up, you gave everyone printed directions to your apartment in the Inner Sunset. It was dark when we left the theatre and as I actually had use of a car lent me for the week, we walked across the parking lot and you directed me to follow you in your famously battered blue Prius from the Marina to your home. I dutifully tailed you down Marina Boulevard to Old Mason, past Chrissy Field until we were eventually tooling along the 101 and approaching the Golden Gate. I got confused. Didn’t you say you lived in the city? Where were we headed, Marin? A sign to the right alerted “Last Exit Before Bridge” and I watched as you abruptly made a 180 and descended into the twists and turns of the road that cuts through the Presidio.

After a few minutes of meandering through the heavy old-growth forest there at a stately pace, you finally pulled onto the shoulder, hitting your hazard lights, coming to a stop. Wondering where the hell we were and what on earth was going on, I pulled up behind you, got out and walked over to the driver’s side of your car. When you rolled down the window you were doubled over in delirious, infectious, wonderful gales of laughter. “I’m lost!” you managed to choke out between giggles. I couldn’t help laughing now, myself. I couldn’t help falling a little in love with you in that very moment – still pre-desire, a more brotherly love than a romantic one, I didn’t get it yet entirely, I simply adored you, felt something ancient and connected, felt I was somehow home just being in your presence. “Whaddya mean you’re lost?” I said. “Don’t you live here?” Another roar of giddy Summer laughter and, nearly hyperventilating, you reached for the GPS device you had stashed in the glovebox. Firing it up, a British woman’s robot voice came on (you’d customized the settings – you liked her voice better than the standard American robot default) and we got our bearings and set off again, this time in the right direction.

As we neared your neighborhood, I saw for the first time all the sights that would be become so familiar and now altogether lost – the Beautiful Life, that I was about to begin and even now feel I can nearly touch, with you. Through the heart of the city and then east toward the Sunset.  That little fork in the road, the Haight to the left, the park to the right. Past the ballfields and playgrounds, the green, rolling, gorgeous expanse of Golden Gate Park. The left turn off Lincoln onto 7^th Avenue, nearing your home. UCSF and the hospital to the left, crossing the trolley tracks of the N-Judah. The little coffee place and Crepevine and all the charming spots we’d come to spend time in together there to the right, just blocks from your house. Sutro Tower and the hilly road toward the Mission rising in the distance ahead. Fog enveloping everything, cool and iconic and like stepping into a dream. Quite right.

I followed your car until it came to a stop at the right curb just shy of Kirkwood. I saw a garage door open as you got out and directed me, like one of those guys on the tarmac leading a 747 into its proper gate, to the narrow parking space reserved for your car in that tiny eight-car garage underneath your building (more, to be continued…)