New York Minutes, Vol. 2: ice ice baby

17 March 2007, New York City

Date Night, a regular occurrence. As it's St. Patrick's Day, we're able to secure a table at Chanterelle, one of Tribeca's most revered restaurants. (I guess fine diners drink green beer elsewhere.) We had a lovely meal, at the end of which we selected the cheese plate, also standard operating procedure. Adrian ordered us some champagne, sensible since we had recently attended a tasting that proclaimed champagne to be the perfect companion to any cheese.

I still had a bit of red wine left over, and deliberated whether to finish that as I started my cheese or cut straight to the bubbly. I picked up the red wine glass, to which Adrian barked, "Park it!" Goodness, he's quite determined about the champagne pairing, I thought, as I put down my wine glass and picked up the champagne flute. I turned to him to clink glasses, at which point he declared his love for me and asked if I would marry him.

Now, I suppose some people see this moment coming in their lives; I, clearly, am not one of those people.

"Are you serious?" I squawked, eyebrows contorted, flute hovering in front of my face.

He fumbled into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small box, which he put on the table in front of me. Then turned it around so that the hinges faced him. Then opened it.

You know how babies look when you put something shiny in front of them?

The champagne remained suspended in the air while my head dipped down towards the table. I stared. And stared. "That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!" And stared.

Finally I remembered that I wasn't alone. I looked up at Adrian, who raised an eyebrow. "Oh!" I exclaimed. "Of course I will!"

He smiled, and we looked back at the ring. Now what? It somehow made it onto my finger, at which point all surrounding diners burst into applause.

Needless to say, the rest of the night was a bit of a blur. (We don't even remember what was on the cheese plate, if that tells you something.) We proceeded to celebrate at our favorite wine bar with a bottle of champagne... then at another bar nearby that specializes in champagne... getting up the next day just in time to call Adrian's parents before the sun set on southern England.

So I'm sorry not to have written for awhile. I have had a bit to do, but more critically, I've been unsure how to treat this momentous turn of events in these virtual pages. I don't want this to turn into a wedding blog, although I will certainly be sharing some choice moments from this rather unique process.

To be honest, I've felt a bit awkward writing about it because as much as I'd like to invite every single one of you, and your partners and prospective partners and former partners and children and parents and pets, and everyone we went to school/camp/work/played rugby/golf/frisbee with/against/met in a hostel/bought a beer from/babysat, I can't. Adrian has this strange notion that he wants to know most of the people at his wedding ... and I've come to want a small gathering as well. (And that's not just because the cost of holding such an event in New York City rivals the GDP of some island nations.)

I know that those of you who have been through this understand, and those who haven't are sensible enough to know that we have a lifetime of partying ahead of us anyway. So whether or not you're with us in New York on December 1st, please raise a glass and know that you're in my heart, if not in the room.

And oh, what a fabulous room it is! We'll be in the Prince George, a landmark building that was one of New York's most glorious hotels from its construction in 1904 until it fell into disrepair some seventy years later; it's now a supportive housing facility run by an alum and trustee of my fairest college. The ballroom has been restored to its original neo-Renaissance glory, and the rental fee supports services in the building for its residents. It's quite a special place.

The only other bridezilla tidbit I will inflict upon you in this dispatch is the Dress Ordeal. As you might guess, I am not someone who has nurtured a vision of My Dress since childhood. But I figured this would be my only opportunity to experience firsthand the phenomenon that is Kleinfeld's, so I booked an appointment at their new Chelsea store that Heidie, my matron of honor (or MoH, as the wedding websites call her), points out has managed to maintain the Bay Ridge feel when they moved to Manhattan, with a faux classical aesthetic (if one can call it that) throughout.

The receptionist, without looking up from her computer screen, greeted me with a monotone "Congratulations and welcome have a seat your consultant will be with you in a minute."

My "consultant" eventually popped out from behind a Corinthian column, clad in a black pants suit and white slippers like everyone else in the shop, and escorted me and my entourage back to her dressing room. "So, tell me about your wedding!" she said, smiling until she did a double-take at the clipboard in horror: "December 1st... of THIS year? Oh, honey, ok..."

We tried on a few dresses, most of which were really quite horrible. The session came to an abrupt close when I tried on a dress by Rivini, a designer with some interesting features but an overall effect totalling well over a month's rent (and that's Tribeca rent, mind you), and my consultant and her boss both exclaimed: "OH - MY - GOD, you are TOTALLY a Rivini bride!" Thanks and bye bye!

Heidie's two-year-old son Ellis, a veteran of New York's bridal shops, helped eliminate another dress when upon seeing me in it he shouted a line from his Dora the Explorer books: "Steep and hard to climb!" Again, I have no strong views on what I should look like in a wedding dress, but a mountain is definitely not on the list.

The end of the Ordeal (or at least the selection phase) arrived when I visited one shop during a trunk sale, during which a designer brings in her latest samples. I tried on one of the dresses on offer (and when I say "tried on", I really mean "subjected myself to having the dress clipped onto me like a paper cut-out while I stood there in my underwear, since samples are made for models the size of my forearm") and it seemed to work, as far as one could tell under the circumstances. We invited in the designer, a totally chilled-out older woman from Atlanta, and she suggested a few additional changes we could make (in addition to making sure it fit all the way around my body). I figure if I'm going with the genre at all, "working" directly with the designer could actually be a fun way to do it.

On the way out, we walked by another room with a bride-to-be squealing about how much she LOVED the dress she had on, but how her father was questioning whether she could really know what she'll want in 18 months' time. "A bit harsh on the groom, isn't it?" whispered Heidie. "I think they're talking about the dress," I replied.

...

Moving from Modern Bride to Business Week, some of you may have caught wind of the recent leadership transition at my company. (If you missed it, you can google my company and "gay CEO" on your own.) It's been a rough period; our now-former CEO was a remarkable leader, and I certainly hope he eventually re-emerges proud of who he is and what he's done for the world.

In the meantime, however, I'm quite happily out of the morass of uncertainty that is headquarters and continuing to enjoy my work. The UN mandate on business and human rights to which I am deployed was extended until June 2008 by the Human Rights Council, so I should be set for the time being.

Which suits me just fine, since with a few short words traded over a cheese plate, 2007 suddenly became The Year of the Wedding.

Please send news from your corner of the world.

Much love,
cb

New York Minutes, Vol. 1: I’m back and I’m proud

ode to my stepbrothers

This dispatch begins with a tribute to my two stepbrothers. First, a big round of applause for Rupert, who continues his winning streak by naming this series as well as the Anglo Files. Well done, sir.

Second, a hearty congratulations to Nick, who was part of NASA’s Mission STS-116, which sent the space shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station in December to continue the station’s construction and rewire its power system.

We went to Cape Canaveral for the launch and a few days of friends and family activities. Astronauts who had been to space before held Q&A sessions to field enquiries ranging from what it’s like when the engine starts up (“you definitely feel like you’re going somewhere”) to whether you can drink coffee in space (of course, “which is good news for us coffee drinkers”).

We gathered in a designated parking lot three hours before the first scheduled launch attempt to be herded onto buses and taken to the building that houses an actual Saturn V rocket from the late '60s – a massive piece of kit. We bought the requisite NASA paraphernalia at the gift shop (I’m sure the agency’s government funding pales in comparison to retail income) and took our spots in the bleachers with a clear view to the launch pad three miles away.

The audio from Mission Control was broadcast over the loudspeakers, a television monitor was sharing video feeds, and the veteran astronauts were providing commentary and answering questions. Everything seemed to proceed smoothly, with the weather the only questionable element.

I’d never appreciated why shuttles need a clear sky to launch if airplanes could take off in storms, but this was among the many things I learned that week. First of all, there needs to be an unobstructed view to see whether there’s any damage to the shuttle on take-off. Secondly, the shuttle (which I was most familiar with from MTV’s early station id’s) is made up of three elements: the solid rocket boosters, two skinny things that get jettisoned into the Atlantic first; the big orange fuel tank, which falls off next once it’s empty; and finally the orbiter, the small glider that makes the rest of the trip. The orbiter needs decent weather to land, so in case an emergency landing is necessary, weather needs to be ok at Cape Canaveral for a little while after launch and at one of the three emergency landing sites in Europe (in France, Spain, and North Africa), which the orbiter would be over mere minutes later.

The cloud cover that night was just over the maximum acceptable thickness of a few thousand feet, so the mission controller stopped the countdown clock at 05:00 while we all waited with baited breath, watching the weather plane dart in and out of the clouds and listening to the pilot’s reports. (Apparently this is much more stressful for the friends and family than for the astronauts, since the crew are busy and have simulated this many times before.) At the last possible second – each day there’s only a ten-minute window within which they can launch and meet up with the Space Station’s orbit – the mission controller said we’d have to give up for today, so we boarded the buses dejectedly and headed back to our hotel.

We came back two nights later with a less-than-favourable forecast, wondering how many more days we could milk what the town of Cocoa Beach had to offer, but miraculously the clouds cleared and the big red clock raced down to 0:00:00: We saw the exhaust cloud form, then the rumbling sound reached us and turned into a loud crackle, then the cloud expanded as the shuttle slowly rose and started to accelerate. The glow around the shuttle grew and lit up the 9pm sky like it could have been midday.

After about a minute, the shuttle faded into a dot and appeared to descend – luckily we were warned that that visual effect was actually due to the curvature of the earth.

As the overwhelming sights and sounds receded, I remembered why we were there and turned to Rupert: “Dude, your brother’s IN that thing!” (He was busy retrieving his son’s toys from under the bleachers, as four-year-old Charlie had been chattering away but was so stunned by the launch that he dropped everything and froze, eyes up and jaw on the ground.)

In a clever ploy to get us back onto the buses quickly, we were warned that the exhaust cloud was heading our way and could produce a sort of acid rain effect that “might” cause “minor skin irritation”. By the time we arrived back at the parking lot, we were informed that they had already orbited the earth once.

There are some wonderful photos and video clips on nasa.gov, so I’ll add just one here:

The mission was indeed successful, not just because the crew completed their tasks and came home safely in time for Christmas, but because the Swedish astronaut on board, a keen ultimate player, set a new world record for Maximum Time Aloft for a frisbee. Not surprisingly, debate is raging on the disc blogs, as some have posited that the world record actually needs to take place on the world.

back to planet earth…

My first moment of readjusting to New York came very early on, when I took Adrian to an improv show. For one sketch, one of the improvisers left the room while the others asked the audience for a cliché that they would act out for the absent one to guess. There was a moment of silence from the audience, so I shouted out, “Bob’s your uncle!” This provoked a less-than-enthusiastic response from my fellow audience members (“No one’s ever HOID of that,” “Could we, like, VOTE or something?”), but the cast got it, eventually.

Of course, the rudest welcome-back-to-New-York of all is the apartment hunt. Can anyone explain to me why brokers haven’t gone the way of travel agents towards obsolescence? They all use the same central “database”, actually a publicly-accessible website, but also tout their “exclusives”. So you have to work with multiple brokers, who then get grumpy about your working with others – which is almost understandable, since there’s no justice in that the winner is the one who happens to produce the right apartment for you at the right time, regardless of how helpful or unhelpful he or she has been throughout the process. And once you start working with a broker, God forbid should you look at any property on your own, even if it is in the public domain where anyone else could rent it without the hassle, delay, and 15% fee of the middleman.

In spite of this truly unpleasant process, we’ve landed squarely in Tribeca, where Adrian can walk to work and I can work at home overlooking the Hudson River (well, I can see bits of it between the big buildings), with an easy subway ride to my midtown office when necessary. I was never well-acquainted with the bits of Manhattan that have names and crooked streets, and even if I had been, the area’s changed so much since I left the city in 1997 that it’s a whole new town to explore.

…and down south

I went to Colombia with my UN gig in January. I was very excited to finally go there, having gotten to know a number of Colombian colleagues over the years – it’s our largest exporter of labor within the company after the US and UK. Our meetings in Bogotá were sandwiched by visits to my company’s facilities, a human rights training facility for the army, and a bottling plant and sugar cane plantation and mill that supplies one of the world’s largest beverage companies. It was a fantastic week, full of challenging issues but incredible capability, passion, and optimism; wonderfully gracious hospitality; and a night out at one of the most fabulously fun restaurants I’ve ever been to, a maze of a place crowded with bric-a-brac and people celebrating every occasion imaginable.

Now down to the business of building a new life in New York, including re-connecting with friends from every episode of my life so far. In every station abroad, I had a frisbee scene, a work scene, and a few other great friends, but I’d forgotten how rich it is to have so many different circles of people around: classmates from grad school, college, high school, and even elementary school; former colleagues from city government; and friends from other phases who have taken the inevitable path to New York.

Our house has been warmed, and Adrian took me to Per Se for my 35th (partly in response to my treating him to Masa for his most recent birthday). We’re off to a good start.

Here’s to a fun filled 2007.