Drag Seder

[All in all, there are worst ways to experience one's first real seder than with three drag queens, a somewhat cynical woman who nevertheless clearly got off on orchestrating the event, and one's boyfriend.]

[You must understand at the outset that I grew up in the most goyische place on Earth, Sonoma Valley in the 1970s and '80s. One of the fifth grade teachers at my elementary school, Mrs. Tiefenthal, was the only Jew qua Jew I knew until I went to college. I know there were others, but not so one would have known it.]

[One of my first good friends at UCSB was a Spanish/Irish-American girl from Santa Monica whose stepfather was Jewish, and she invited me to her stepgrandparents' for Passover in 1989. These colorful old birds remained married while living in two separate apartments in the same building in the Beverly Hills flats. The dinner was Ashkenaz, heavy on the meat, the pickled fish, and the noodle pudding. While some attempt was made at storytelling, I now know it wasn't a seder in any traditional sense.]

[That's been it until last night. The Jewish friends I've made since then aren't religious or haven't held holiday celebrations when I've been around. While I have lots of half-formed ideas, one couldn't call me well-versed by any stretch. Chris, however, had a partially Jewish upbringing, and his flatmate Elisabeth is Jewish. The three of us had a pleasant Hanukkah dinner last December, and they decided to put together a more involved seder last night. Invited were three of Elisabeth's friends she knows thru her long involvement with Midnight Mass and Trannyshack, and little old me.]

[All Chris asked me to bring was two bottles of Manischewitz wine, which I remembered from '89 and dreaded drinking. But I'm a sport, so I said I would. I told you I have had negligible exposure to the practicalities of Jewish culture didn't I? In my folly, I thought I'd wander up to the supermarket after work yesterday, pick up the vino, and head over to Maison le Trou. Fool! Cala Nob Hill. Nob Hill Liquors. Safeway Church Street. Haight Street Whole Foods. Liquid Experience. That other wine store on the other side of Haight. Cala Upper Haight. Nuthin.' With exception of some Kedem cooking wine at Safeway, kosher wine wasn't to be had for love or money anywhere in San Francisco. I finally bought a couple of bottles of decent, but trayf, wine and hoped that the prospect of drunkenness would outweigh any shit I'd get for not shopping ahead.]

[Chris and Elisabeth had set a beautiful table, and beautiful smells were issuing from stove and oven. Elisabeth is vegetarian, and Chris's tradition Sephardic, so the following menu obtained: grand artichokes and melted butter; vegetarian matzoh ball soup; rice pilaf with raisins and toasted almonds; and that salad that is so often called "Greek," minus the tomatoes. There was the edible centerpiece with the herbs, horseradish, etc., with the piece of sacrificial lamb replaced by a sacrificial yam. Elisabeth had printed out modified Haggadah for everyone, informed both by the millennia and by feminism. We went around the table and all read. I learned a lot, and was quite moved a few times.]

[I also learned that I don't hate artichokes after all. They were a favorite vegetable of my mother's all thru my childhood, and the smell as she boiled them to death, not to mention the endless dip, dip, dipping of the leaves into mayonnaise, made me gag at the prospect. But I was a guest; there were little bowls of melted butter for dipping; I tried it; I liked it. Another vegetable beginning with 'A' added to my repertoire.]

[Oh, and the drag queens? Three nice, hirsute young men whom you'd never have known wielded a mascara wand in their lives. There was some talk of Trannyshack Reno (coming up this weekend) but other than that, no Drag Seder this time.]

[There was a lot of wine drunk (including several bottles of Baron Herzog bought by Elisabeth, so we weren't all that trayf), and the evening didn't end as well as it began. Never mind that. It was an interesting, good time at Maison le Trou. Next up: Easter at my parents'. Oy.]

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