February 2026 Snapshots

February is the shortest month but this February felt like it lasted two months. At least. I spent a week in New York, then a week in Chicago, and then I was basically housebound for a week because of the huge snowstorm, where I lost power … and heat … and wifi … It was wild, we haven’t had a storm like this in years. We were buried for about four days. We shoveled, and waited. The plow came a day after the storm. I didn’t lose power the day OF the storm – hurricane force winds! – but two days later and then it was out for two days. This storm “beat” the blizzard of ’78, a legendary event in my state. So I traveled far and wide and then couldn’t leave my house when I returned home.

I started off by going down to New York for a week of screening, friends, and theatre. I started off with the thrilling event of attending the screening of EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert at the Warner Brothers screening room. I was overwhelmed by it and immediately couldn’t wait to see it again. I reviewed for Ebert.

I stayed with Allison and we lay around talking, watching stuff, she cooked, I worked. On Friday night, we went to go see Adult Film’s production of Cimino’s Defeat at Torn Page. It was magical. I wrote about it on my Substack. Torn Page is the former townhouse of Geraldine Page and Rip Torn (get it?) and it’s one of my favorite performance spaces in the city. I’ve seen a couple of things there. The show was put on in the main room, with the chandelier.

It was so special. Afterwards, Allison and I walked up a couple of blocks to this Mediterranean restaurant she loves. The food was fantastic and we beat the late-night rush. We perched at the bar and feasted and talked about the play. I felt happy. When we came outside, snow was swirling through the air. There is nothing like a snowfall in New York City.

The next day I met with my old dear friend Wade – he of the legendary “Dude, you need to be gentle with people” – and also of the best love note ever. We’ve re-connected, we text, we get together, we’re in touch. We were just thick as thieves in grad school. He lived with me and Jen for a while, we were inseparable. Then came years of no contact. Not for any particular reason. He’s not on social media. We just lost each other. A little bit before the pandemic, he reached out and we started getting together a little bit. I realized suddenly, “Wait … how is it I haven’t spoken to him in 10 years? THAT’S gotta stop.” So we got together on a snowy morning at our old hangout. I waited for him at our old table. And we talked nonstop for a couple hours, with the snow piled up outside. Life just didn’t feel right without him.

While I was in New York, we had a massive snow storm back in Rhode Island. I couldn’t even believe the pictures. I thought about my poor car, sitting in the train station lot, buried. My dear wonderful brother drove through the snow and shoveled out my car, so that when I got off the train at 11:30 at night I’d not have to do it. A couple days later, I flew to Chicago. And – very weirdly – it was 50-degree weather in Chicago. 30 degrees on the East Coast, WARM in Chicago. Christopher and Mitchell were there to welcome me, their place is such a cozy peaceful haven, and I love being there. It was moving to me to get a glimpse of my book!

We met up with Jordan one early morning, got coffee, and went for a walk along the lake. It was an odd day, weather-wise. The lake was clear and still as glass, which never happens – and everything was milky and gauzy and the horizon blended into the sky seamlessly. It was so not February-like! BUT, along the shoreline were these huge banks of snow. So the whole thing was strange and out-of-season. We walked over to the beach near their building – a beautiful curving oasis with this shelf of snow sticking out over the water. We walked out to the pierhead light and then headed back, marveling at the stillness of the shoreline. Where’s the wind?? Jordan had just returned from Milan the day before where he had attended some of the winter Olympics! We bombarded him with questions. He was there for the opening ceremony, the ice dancing, etc. He said it was a “bucket list” item for him and he finally just went ahead and did it. Mitchell, Christopher and I were all about the winter Olympics, so we were so excited to hear a first-hand account.

Member what I said about the Winter Olympics? We really had no plans for the week except doing this. We watched most every event. Skiing. Snowboarding. Ice skating. Bobsledding. The best vacation ever. I asked Mitchell to make me his fried matzoh which he did. He showed me how to do it.

Oh, we did do a couple of activities. Mitchell was participating in an initial reading of a new script – basically about the rehearsal process for The Cherry Orchard, and the disagreements between Chekhov and Stanislavsky, and Mitchell said I could come. They did it in this little store-front theatre – oh, Chicago, I love you so! New York doesn’t really have these anymore. When I moved to New York, there were blackbox theatres everywhere! I’d never been to this particular theatre. I met all the actors, listened to the reading. It was so interesting, especially because I kind of know the story – but this was played almost as farce. I liked it! I also loved the space. One look around the lobby and I knew: These are my kind of people.

One sunny day we walked over to Andersonville and got some food, just walked around, ran into Parker, which was such a treat. It was literally 60 degrees. Mitchell wore shorts. What the HELL. Coming from the frozen East, I had only packed winter clothes so I was roasting in my sweater. We had to stop and visit my favorite sign, maybe anywhere.

On Friday night, we went to this gay strip joint – in existence since I lived there, it was right around the corner from my first apartment, and we used to stop in there and have a drink before careening out into the night to cause trouble up and down the Lake Shore, like going to find M. and end up having some 13-hour-long bacchanal which meant I would go to my temp job the next day in the same outfit as the day before … The strip joint was a cozy little place with friendly bartenders and a curved bar, and early in the night it was kind of dead, so it was a nice pit-stop. And it’s still there! I love it when things don’t change. Every Friday, is a collective Ru Paul’s Drag Race viewing, and people come just for that. So we “attended”, and we got there early and got dead-center seats at one section of the curving bar snaking its way through the space (where the strippers walk). As we watched, Mitchell and Christopher filled me in on which queen they like, which one they don’t, and the why of it all. The crowd was responsive, it was this fun collective experience. In the picture, you can see the old-school lighting fixtures and the bar, which snakes its way through the small space.

I flew home, got off the plane, and shivered in the 30 degree weather. Two days later, we were hit. Hard. Again. For once, the weather channel wasn’t exaggerating. The hurricane-force winds made total white-out conditions, not to mention creating vast mountains of snow, which are still everywhere. It snowed that way for a full 24 hours, obliterating everything, and there was nothing to do but hole up inside and wait for it to be over. As I mentioned, we lost power. The southern window – which I think of as Frankie’s window, since he has little furry hammock there and he spends most of his time there – was covered in a drift from the sloping porch roof below. We had a lot of help in clearing out our driveway but our neighborhood is maybe low priority for plowing, because four days later it still wasn’t clear. (There was a whole snowplow problem, in general.) We are pretty much back to normal now. But it was wild there for a week, where we really couldn’t go anywhere. It was also weird because I had already been gone for over two weeks, and I missed my family and then … I couldn’t go see them anyway.

Frankie was like, “WTF.”

Emerging into chaos. It wasn’t over yet.

Pictures don’t do it justice. Schoolkids were out for a week.

The boat in my side yard, with the mountain of snow literally covering my car after the plow finally went by.

Hmmm it reminds me of something …

Everything still reminds me of Frankenstein.

We’re all good here. We haven’t had a winter storm in a long while. We were due.