Manhattan Bridge Overpass

My nephew Zach is a middle-aged lesbian.

Zach's mom at the reRun Gastropub Theater

Okay, no, really he's a straight guy, and he just turned fourteen. As a matter of fact, we took him out for his birthday this weekend, his parents, my husband and I. Saw a documentary called Beijing Taxi in Brooklyn's artsy DUMBO neighborhood (for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass"), at a really cool theater called the reRun Gastropub. They serve white Russians, duck confit sausage, and, our choice, the garlic popcorn drizzled with bacon fat (I'm still humming). You sit in car seats with the belts still available, and chat with the director afterwards.  Then we had dinner, great pasta, lots of atmosphere, and the conversation turned, as it often does with Zach, to literature, politics, urban adventures.  He insisted, from firm personal experience, that my Linguistics professor is misguided when he claims, too loftily, that language teachers need to know all about the deeps roots and structure of language.

Birthday dinner and fine conversation

Now don't go worrying that the rude label I slapped on him up top is a gratuitous swipe at an undeserving birthday boy -- it's his own self-description. And as I see it, it's actually high and apt praise.  You see, Zach has the interests and mind of an adult, an analytical, urbane, klatschy adult very much like his two moms. Prefers an evening at a foreign documentary to a rock concert or a Harry Potter premier. He's pretty comfortable in the company of his smart, edgy peers at the Chapin School, rehearsing theater productions, playing guitar, but he'd just as soon be railing about Glenn Beck's latest blackboard inanities with adults.  And before you go assuming that his intellectually superior head must be a tight fit through the door, let me say that the qualities that strike most folks first and deeply are his earthy sweetness and honest humility.  (He is not, as it happens, a perfect deity -- he has flaws, just so you know, but they are not the subject of this entry!)

The subway ride home

Zach spent most of his early years in the suburbs of the Metropolitan area, but always knew something was amiss, the fit off just a bit.  As a toddler he told my sister, while gazing at the New York skyline, that he would like to get his own little apartment in the city. He insisted, still does, that it's in his genes, and I have to agree. This fall they did move to Manhattan, and he immediately seemed like a new man.  There was a comfort, a bounce to his gait that I had not seen before, and he moved through the hustle and thrum with not a shred of overload -- he was home.  His parents settled on the upper east side due to work and school considerations, but Zach is already drooling over the hip allure of lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, of artsy enclaves like DUMBO and booming Bushwick.

I'm so excited for Zach, and thrilled to be witness to his adventurous homecoming -- no matter what his wonderful secret identity. It couldn't be happening at a more perfect time in his life, just as he needs and can benefit from the indie life and culture.  I'm really just so damn glad to have my Zach this close.

But I'm a city kid, too, born, bred and proud myself.  So I'm sneaking through his turnstile for as long and as much as he'll allow. Yeah, I'm pretty pleased that close is a subway ride away.