Do you remember Poplar Creek? No? I guess it depends on how old you are, and how long you've lived in the area.
Poplar Creek was an outdoor music pavilion not far from where the Allstate Arena now stands. It wasn't nearly as big as the rotten Tweeter Center, didn't have that hippy vibe of Alpine Valley, and was three times as close to the city than either of those.
I saw a lot of shows there, from The B52s to Eurythmics to Howard Jones to Blondie, with Duran Duran as openers before anyone knew who they were (we did love their t-shirts with the new wave Nagle image, though).
Yes, this was the height of the '80s, God love 'em, but unlike those new wave acts, my first show at Poplar Creek was timeless. That's the first time I saw Bette Midler, at the height of her mermaid-in-the-wheelchair outrageousness. I loved every minute, and went home with a t-shirt, a bunch of memories, and an excited ride home with my dad.
Yep, my dad. See, he and I had stumbled into Midler's great concert movie, Divine Madness, a couple years earlier when my mom was out visiting her folks. Sure, we could've gone to The Swarm or Semi-Tough, but we went to Bette Midler in Divine Madness—and we were hooked. It was fate.
So, while my friends went to basketball and football games with their dads, me and Marvin trekked out to Poplar Creek. There were a lot of other men there too, but I don't think too many were fathers and sons, even if they called each other Daddy.
When I think back on this now, my being gay seems overly obvious, but my dad never picked up on it. Hey, I wasn't picking up on it, so you can't really blame him.
Recently, I was in a restaurant with a friend who ordered quiche. I haven't had quiche in decades, probably because of all the cheese and the buttery crust, but, really, you just don't find quiche on that many menus anymore. When I was a kid, that was different.
Quiche of every kind, French Onion Soup covered in gruyere and served in its own brown crock, petite white rolls with a sprinkling of salt on top. And crepes. We were always eating crepes, filled with creamed chicken, or melted cheese. After, we'd make room for a dessert crepe, probably chocolate banana, smothered in whipped cream.
When I was a kid, and I went with Mom for lunch, this is what we ate. Didn't all kids? Wasn't this the world of a seven-year-old boy, delicately piecing off bites of a crepe with a delicate fork?
Well, even if it wasn't the world of most boys, at least it was my world. I loved quiche, and, again, this sent up no red flags for anyone in my family. That old and tired cliché of Real Men Don't Eat Quiche may have been invented simply to describe me in the early '70s.
Who says there's no such thing as gay food? My favorite activity wasn't going out for hot dogs and cheese fries at Big Herm's with my friends, but to go to the Magnificent Mile with my mom for Quiche Lorraine at Jacques, a long ago shuttered restaurant in a lovely old building, bulldozed to make room for one of the nasty structures taking over that stretch of Michigan Avenue.
I thought we were so sophisticated, sitting among the potted ferns in the airy room, lit by natural light, nibbling on quiche slices, and the spare leaf of lettuce tucked beneath. The waiters all exuded an air of pleasant disdain, in their black tuxedo jackets, and slight French accents.
While we spread small rounds of iced butter with our special butter knives, ice cubes tinkled in impractical goblets, and a harpist played soporific melodies, while never once catching her oversized gauzy sleeves in the strings of her instrument. We were surrounded by ladies who lunched, the kind of women for whom spending a great deal of money on a two-hour lunch was serious business, and their chosen profession.
If only. I'd still love to be a lady who lunches, but these days, I also love being a big homo. Still, I find that the two don't always go so easily together. All that cheese and butter fights against the constant trips to the gym. I have foresaken quiche and my gay food beginnings.
Maybe that should change. Maybe I should make a big fat quiche tonight. I could invite over my folks, put on a Bette Midler record, and even though we're all OK with me being gay, they'll still think this is what their friends are doing with their sons at the very same moment.
