After Paul and Jess left the company, Steve was my “closest” colleague at work. We both got where we were at by surviving acquisitions; in the early aughts, Technicolor was expanding and diversifying its offerings to the motion picture and television industries by gobbling up independent studios and post houses throughout the Los Angeles region; they got me when they acquired Pacifica Media Affiliates in Burbank and they got Steve when they acquired VidFilm in Glendale.
Our backgrounds were remarkably similar. Steve had been the principal programmer on VidFilm’s facility management system, O.A.S.I.S. (Orders-Assets-Scheduling-Invoicing-System), while I had invented and been the sole programmer at PMA with my program OpsPro (Operations Professional). Between you and me, I always thought the name of my facility management system was better. Regardless, Technicolor came along and scrapped both proprietary systems, replacing them with a commercially available 3rd-party system called ScheduALL (what a dumb name!). Steve and I are both self-taught programmers, and we were, at the time, both unmarried. There was one difference: Steve is straight, and, if you didn’t know, I am gay.
We should have been mortal enemies. We had identical skillsets, and ScheduALL made us both obsolete. It was a classic redundancy after acquisition conundrum, but it had a happy ending. Within Technicolor’s “creative services,” Steve was put in charge of IT for those divisions having anything to do with picture, while I was put in charge of IT for those divisions having anything to do with sound. We found ourselves overlapping on some Technicolor facilities in Europe (and one in LA) which provided both picture and sound post, and that is how our friendship developed – through meetings designed to foster mutual collaboration between our two departments.
Now, I mentioned Steve is straight. He also lusted after and was madly infatuated with his boss’ secretary, a woman named Keisha. Both Steve and Keisha love football. So one evening after work, as Steve and I sat sipping Gran Hornis (margaritas made with Grand Marnier cognac and Hornitos tequila) and nibbling on Camarones Costa Azul (deep fried bacon-wrapped shrimp) on the patio at Mucho Mas in North Hollywood, a plan was hatched. Steve had been whining on and on about how he couldn’t get Keisha to notice him, and then comes up with, “you’re gay, so you can cook, right?” I went to great pains pointing out the flaw in his logic – how sexuality has no connection to prowess in the kitchen – but his express train to Kookytown kept barreling right on down the tracks. “What if I invite her and some people from work over to watch the Super Bowl and you hide in the kitchen and cook? That should impress her… that I can cook!… don’t ya think?”
Maybe it was the tequila, but I agreed to participate in his little subterfuge.
The day of the game, I got to Steve’s house in La Crescenta around 11. Good thing I arrived early, because when I got there all I found in the cupboards was diet Pepsi, a couple of cans of SpaghettiOs, and a drawer full of unopened hot sauce packets from Taco Bell, chopsticks, and soy sauce.
Not only that, but there were no pots and pans, except for one in the sink waiting to have last night’s SpaghettiOs washed out of it, no spices, no condiments (hot sauce packets from Taco Bell don’t count), and literally nothing to cook, unless I planned on serving microwave popcorn.
So the first order of business was to go to the store to buy food, and then to my apartment to get cookware. I got a Tri-Tip roast, dry-rubbed it with my own signature blend of salt, fresh ground black pepper, granulated garlic, and brown sugar, which I sliced and served alongside fresh salmon garnished with sprigs of Rosemary from my garden and seasoned with lemon zest for a bit of sour zing to cut the fishy taste. And then for preprandials, I whipped up a batch of hors d’oeuvres, small melba toasts each with a dollop of cream cheese mixed with red pepper flakes and dill. Of course, you need beverages, so it was Bellinis (a cocktail made with Prosecco and peach purée).
I was hidden away behind the swinging door to the kitchen, while Steve would come in and out pretending to be very busy preparing things behind the scenes and then serving them; we even smeared his shirt with some sauce from the Tri-Tip’s roasting pan when it came out of the oven, so it all looked legit. I would prepare something, hand it to him, tell him what it was, then he would take it out to his guests. When I told him the hors d’oeuvres were Canapés (kan-uh-pays) and the cocktails were Bellinis, I heard him go out and announce, “here’s some Canopes (ka-nopz) and Baloneys for ya.”
For afters, I had decided on Flaming Cherries Jubilee, but this involved lots of prep work and instruction of Steve, so I told him to meet me when the fourth quarter started. First I had him scoop some French Vanilla ice cream into a ramekin for each guest, and deliver them to his guests but telling them not to eat it until the game was over. Then, back in the kitchen, we combined dried cherries, cherry juice, sugar, and a scraped vanilla bean which we boiled to make a sauce that was thickened with powdered arrowroot. To this we added cherries and orange peel to make a lovely orange-scented chunky cherry sauce.
I poured this into a large bowl, then handed Steve my cigarette lighter and a bottle of kirsch (clear cherry brandy) and told him, “heat the kirsch in a small pan, light it on fire, and pour the flaming kirsch into the bowl of cherries! Immediately take your flaming bowl of sauce out for your guests to see it on fire; the flame will linger for a bit and go out on its own as the alcohol from the brandy is burned off. Then, using a ladle, drizzle some cherries onto each guest’s ice cream.”
I left out the back door.
Steve and Keisha’s courtship lasted for a year and a half. He proposed to her in Paris along the Seine and they were married in June of 2007. They are still happily married today, with two beautiful children (a son and a daughter), and now live in La Cañada Flintridge just up the street from where I went to high school. Their wedding was a beautiful outdoor affair at the Inn of the Seventh Ray along Old Topanga Canyon Road in Topanga, California.
I was seated at the Ex-nicolor table with all of Steve’s former colleagues (I was on a medical leave of absence at the time and already wheelchair-bound). As the newlyweds made their rounds, visiting each table and thanking people for joining them on their special day, Keisha placed her hand on my shoulder and bent down to whisper in my ear.
“I knew you were in the kitchen. He can only make SpaghettiOs.”