Had a great day in Philadelphia today with the Baron. Despite what I'm now willing to admit is a headcold, it was sweet delight hanging out with him and talking a blue streak as we are prone to do in each other's company. The Baron met me at Market East Station when my train got in, then we headed to his fav coffee place, La Colombe. I have to admit, it really is absolutely the best coffee I've ever had in my entire life. It's the Yorkshire Gold of coffee! We talked for a while there, then headed over to Rittenhouse Square to finish up. Then, it was off to an Episcopal Church on Locust Street (St. Mark's maybe?) to hear a program of works by Ned Rorem. The music was okay. Nothing really floored me. My cat of many years who shuffled off this mortal coil a month after my sister did was named Ned after Mr. Rorem. I didn't do the naming. I inherited Ned from a friend of mine in Philadelphia who had a job that was taking him to South America for long stretches at a time. During the music, I thought about Ned the cat while listening to the music of Ned the composer, his namesake.

This reminded me that there is a CD I want to buy: when I had eggs and tea with Diabolique on Wednesday night, he described how he had been haunted by a piece of music: Elgar's Enigma Variations. I wasn't familiar with it, but wanted to be. So we headed over to Borders to buy me a CD. Then, it was off for dinner. The first choice was an italian restaurant called Spasso down on Second Street. We walked all the way down there to find that they were closed for a private party. The second choice was the Baron's favorite chinese restaurant, a cantonese place in Chinatown. Cool. Given my mucous situation (swimming in it!), something brothy was much more to my tastes. The soup I had was good, but the entree was awful, a casserole thing made from duck bones, gizzards, enormous pieces of ginger, and other suspect items that I thought were vegetable but that the Baron was certain were innards of some sort.

After dinner, we went to a great place (when in Philadelphia, don't miss...) called More Than Just Ice Cream. I had a celebratory piece of pumpkin pie.

While there, I saw a familiar face from the last time I lived in Philadelphia thirteen years ago: an insane Irishman. It's so strange how I never see anyone I recognize. What happened to the big guy who was always flagging yellow left and right at the Bike Stop? What happened to the steel grey haired muscle guy who once shattered my self esteem at Woody's? What happened to Gregory of Fort Lauderdale, who got fired from the GAP when it was determined that his skull rings were not sufficiently "GAP or GAP-like attire"? What happened to the big, beautiful butch leatherman who had me take a belt to his back? Where are these guys?

Well, in this day and age, questions like that are a little depressing to contemplate. I'll tell myself they're all having a hell of a time in Palm Springs. Except Steel Gray Hair guy. He's rotting away in a Turkish prison in the wake of getting caught with hash going through customs. He used to get gang raped by all the other prisoners nightly, but the tertiary syphillus has made him pretty rebarbative.

But, we wound down the evening at the Westbury. The Westbury used to be my home bar. There was this bartender there. I'll use his real name, because if anyone has any knowledge of his whereabouts, I'd be keenly interested to hear. His name was Ron. Ron always paid me a lot of attention. I though Ron was hot stuff. But, because he was such a hot man (hairy, beer gut, beard) and I had terrific self-esteem problems, I was sure he was way out of my league. I thought Ron gave beer to all of his customers for free. I would sit there at the bar just staring at him. One night, Ron drove me home after he got off shift. We sat there awkwardly in the car outside of my apartment. I didn't ask him upstair, terrified of rejection. Ron moved into an apartment across the street from me not long before I moved to NYC.

Uh huh.

After I moved, Ron spilled to the Baron that he totally had the hots for me, but thought that I was way out of his league.

Ain't love grand? I could be planting spring bulbs in the garden of the house I share with Ron, my lover of almost two decades, right now!

Anyway, it seems the tradition of hot bartenders for me to moon over at the Westbury continues: very toothsome man pouring this evening.

I'll be back.

And I'll be forward.

But at 10:10 pm, my carriage was turning into a pumpkin, so I had to hustle back to Market East Station to catch my train home.

By the way, any recommendations for a cold remedy that absolutely positively won't leave me dopey for my first day at work? And puh-leeeeeze, don't say Echinacea or Tea Tree oil or whatever, both clinically proven to do not a damned thing. We're talkin' drug store purchases here. Although I'll probably get some Cold-Eeze with Zinc. Proven benefit there to lessen the duration and severity of the common cold. Actually, they've known that about zinc for a long time, but the innovation there was putting it into a palatable form, apparently no mean feat when you're talkin' about zinc.

Well, time to take my dog out for a walk in the torrential downpour. The things we do for love...

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