written by guest blogger and newborn cook, Brent Lambert
It’s early September and I found myself leaving Montreal for a three-week vacation in Vienna. It’s here where my beau, Dominic, has freshly transplanted himself for a year of music studies (he’s an excellent violinist.) After coming down with a cold, Dominic had been ordered by his male nurse, yours truly, to get plenty of rest, fluids, and of course: chicken soup. Now I’m no whiz in the kitchen by any stretch, but I can certainly whip up a homemade chicken soup if I follow the recipe, and that I did. The soup was a big success and there was easily enough for me and Dom to eat for two days straight. We had the healing food, but what about the entertainment? Dominic quickly found the solution: every single episode of The Golden Girls is uploaded on YouTube and available for free viewing. It had been a solid fifteen years since I had seen one so I ask, “Why the hell do you wanna watch ‘The Golden Girls’?”
The show is actually quite a big deal in the gay community of Vienna and Dominic, who grew up in French-speaking Montreal, had just discovered it. Go figure. It was his choice, so I said “Why not?” and after a few episodes I went from being completely indifferent to being completely hooked.
The whole thing sent me spinning in nostalgia to when I was just a young teenage boy and how much I used to love watching “The Golden Girls” with my family. Perhaps growing up deep in the rural route forest (and when I say deep I mean hermit territory deep) of the Ottawa Valley had something to do with it. Who wouldn’t get a kick out of a bunch of senior-aged women and their adventures in Miami, especially if there’s snow up to your roof outside and your closest friend from school lives a twenty-minute drive down the snowed-out gravel road. Not that I had much of a viewer’s choice in the matter with our rickety aerial television in charge. Those crazy old broads in that far away land with those far away ages sure knew how to keep me entertained.
After spending two days in our Vienna bed I think we watched at least two seasons worth of shows, and even after his runny nose had stopped the reruns kept running. The theme song “Thank You For Being A Friend” was now burned into our brains (we found ourselves singing and humming the song incessantly). Dorothy (my personal favorite), Blanche, Rose and Sophia were still up to their old shenanigans and they hadn’t aged one bit after all these years (unlike me). In their late fifties and early sixties (except for Sophia who was in her eighties) there was no problem that these four women couldn’t solve over a cheesecake at one in the morning.
When the Golden Girls Vienna Marathon came to an end and I found myself back in Montreal I couldn’t quite shake a little voice that was nagging me with the question: who will be in my kitchen at one in the morning when I’m fifty-five and have a problem that needs solving or a story to tell about my crazy youth back in Saint Olaf–I mean–The Ottawa Valley? Because in a little more than twenty years’ time I’ll be nearly the same age as the amazing Dorothy Zbornack was when she met crazy Rose Nylund and the always horny Blanche Devereaux. Who will I be living and loving with in my own home when I get older? Will I have someone to share my cheesecake with?
Before the question could nag at me further, Dominic suddenly returned to Montreal for a few days to fix a visa issue and once again found ourselves curled up in bed watching more Golden Girl reruns and getting more and more obsessed with cheesecake. We decided it was a sign from the late Bea Arthur herself telling us to bring back the spirit of the Girls into our own kitchen and make a cheesecake of our own.
The next day we gathered only the best and most decadent ingredients for our ultimate chocolate espresso cheesecake. After sitting the cheesecake in the fridge overnight for the flavors to meld, night turned to day and then evening and we found ourselves surrounded with our own “Golden” friends (golden by candlelight, that is, not by age): Laura, the FC, and Georgia. After sharing a rich chocolate cheesecake slice each, as well as a bottle of sparkling Hungarian mousseux, I realized there might just be something to this whole cheesecake/friendship combo thing. We talked and laughed about so many things that night, just like we always do, the kind of conversation that warms your heart and feels just as good as a warm bath or even an ocean view in Miami for that matter.
It was somewhere between having a respectably thin second slice and the tissane that I realized the little voice inside of me that was pestering me all week had vanished. It had quite simply just disappeared. Somehow I had found the answer I was looking for. The answer was in the love that surrounded me at my kitchen table that night.
My cheesecake guest list twenty years from now will be staying exactly as it is.
Thank you for being my friends…
October 17th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Enjoyed reading this very much. Miss you, maybe we will have cheesecake one day and catch up.