Guests

Guests were a great part of Big Gray's history. Sleepover or not, the presence of guests meant instant parties. That tradition continues at my little apartment in Queens. Yesterday, my wife and I entertained a certain Sam who came suffering guilt about not being there with his loving wife. Wifey and I put him right at ease and we had a very nice time and a great lunch. I love cooking for people, as most readers know. But being a private chef has made me really refine my technique. So I experimented on Mr. B. Made us spinach that I added to a pan of garlic, shitake mushrooms and boiled diced potatoes. I added a few beans and a little bow tie pasta and Shazam! Dessert later was World's Fair, Belgium Waffles! Who remembers them? Made them with organic strawberries I mulled in a little confectioner's sugar. Kitchen's open most Sunday afternoons.

Big Gray for Sale?

Today, John Morse sent me a notice from "Brooklyn Brownstones"saying that the current owner of Big Gray has it on the market for a cool 2.2 million dollars. Who wants a 15 room Victorian for that price? The church who sold it to the current owner paid $70,000 for it in 1972.It was then, and it is now a White Elephant. Besides its age and difficulty to heat, the six story building facing the backyard has weighed down the land so that the building is structurally lower in the back .I think a prospective owner would have to address that at some point. Better to turn it back into a commune. Anyone interested?

Facebook

If you are reading all or any of the posts on this blog, chances are you either lived at Big Gray, or were otherwise a part of our history. William, our last Fire Chief set up a Big Gray Alumni group on Facebook. It's a great way to keep in touch with other members (or not). I would like to invite you to join the group-there is the opportunity to join in a forum, post pictures, comment on pictures or just be silent. I'd love to know who finds there way here. If you were ever in Big Gray, wished you were or are just curious about the communal thing come visit our alumni group.

William FKA Bill and the Last Generation

The topping on the cake. The cherry on top.This group of Big Gray kiddos renewed my faith in the communal mischigas. (I'm sure one of the BG Jews will tell me how to spell that) When Bill (I'm calling him Bill) showed up, and it appeared that he might make it through the process which for him was maybe 3 or 4 days, I awoke from my apathetic slumber. I needed to get with him alone and create an idea for him of how the house worked--how the Fire Chief and the Peace Chief were kind of like "good cop /bad cop", or yin and yang, or maybe Abbot and Costello. Anyway,I wanted him, needed him to buy into my original idea of the house. After all, I was the last guy standing who actually cared. No, that isn't right. I'm sure Joyce, Kim and Kristin cared. On the other hand, there was Maureen who probably didn't care at all. But no one was going to discuss conflict resolution, or how to create a fire chief persona with Bill but me. So we talked. We talked a lot . Like a director and his lead actor, we talked. Bill stepped right into the role and played it to the hilt. The last years were great ones in the house. I have a picture of Bill and I hanging a "sweet sixteen" party gizmo over the front door at our annual summer party. a . That was probably his first summer party , so I'll call those six years till the decommissioning of Big Gray, the time of the Last Generation.

The players were Joyce, Maureen , Kim , Kristin, Bill, John D. , Vienna , Eric and Cathy, Hoopy , Eva, Anastasia, Ken ,Brenna , Judith and me. With the exception of Eric and Cathy who were a mistake , and Maureen who wasn't a strong contributor to group dynamic or our culture, we all contributed in a very positive way to what after all, were our best years as a community.
Many of these people are younger than my kids. But we bonded and the stories which I hope they will all finally contribute, are a fitting last note to my opera. So come on you Last Gen readers, it's your turn. What was your Big Gray experience like?

The Process of Finding Members

Finally, I am nearing the end of this sordid tale, dear readers. I find myself a little sad and nostalgic at writing those words as it means the tale of Big Gray is almost over is almost over. Perhaps it's fitting that Alfred Hoffman, the inventor of LSD died yesterday (at 102), as it was fitting that Jerry Garcia died a few months before the end of Big Gray in 1996. I look for those portends always- signs on the path. Anyway, back to the "Real, Real World" as we later called Big Gray in our recruitment ads. Recruitment was the lifeblood of the house because "house chemistry" was really key to enjoying living at Big Gray where we all, more or less suffered each other's warts, as long as we had that spark between us. For me, because I have always both recognized the need , and enjoyed the result, I sought that "chemistry" between myself and the house "fire chiefs" In meetings, I often took their side, but tried to stay short of creating rifts in the tribal fabric.
But, the prospect of getting someone to replace Sam (a Fire Chief who I bonded with) and Dan (who had a looser bond with me) , and someone who had the vision of Big Gray I did, was not something I looked forward to. The culture wars at Big Gray were becoming boring to me. Recruiting had become a tedious process. I needed someone who I liked, someone who had expertise , someone who wouldn't hide in their room, but instead, and this was always the kicker for me, I needed someone who would vigorously promote the idea of the communal experience. This is why I loved our parties large and small. It opened our home and exposed us, not as people shut off from each other , but rather as family members of Big Gray. If you visited one of us, you visited us all. You weren't just Sam's girl friend, or Kristin's mom and sisters, or Becky's friend or... well, you get the idea don't you? Aside from the "chemistry" component and the communal spirit, there was one other very necessary condition. We always needed someone who took care of business financially.We rarely found all of these traits in the same person. I don't honestly remember a single time in the house where everyone was paying their bills in a timely manner. We had always been home to people in transition. Lovely people with little money. Who among the thousands of people perusing the Village Voice wanted to move to the end of the line in Brooklyn, and live in a huge house filled with people who shared their business? They had to be a little crazy. It was our job on the phone and in subsequent interviews to weed out the very crazy, the very boring and the very poor. Then, we had to reach consensus, or continue our search. It's easier to elect a pope.

Christmas at Big Gray

Here in the real world Christmas is finally behind me. Actually, so is Easter. I managed to keep up the tree and Christmas decorations till January 27, my way of saying I hadn't seen enough of friends and family for the Holiday. At Big Gray, Christmas was a special occasion for me as well. From the time Kim crawled out from the attic and hung Christmas lights around our round window at the very top of the house, Christmas has also been a very public celebration .We decorated in our usual anarchistic way, but always managed to end with a beautiful house. Our dining room with its five over sized windows was a cold place in the winter, but on Christmas was transformed into a spacious warm and inviting place to gather and eat.The party was always on Christmas Eve so I could spend Christmas day celebrating with my actual family. Often, I was in the minority of those who both celebrated Christmas and had a family in New York. But at Big Gray, in spite of our association with the feast, we all did Christmas Eve, had a big Christmas tree, and participated in a sit down dinner for as many as 20 plus individuals. I met many brothers, sisters and parents of family members along with scores of friends during those parties. It was always interesting and informative to meet the families of the people I lived with, particularly when family members stayed as two or three day guests. The dinners were crazy affairs, mixed-up and delicious. I learned a lot about cooking for people doing those big Christmas Eve feasts. As many of you know, I am now a private chef and get to both practice my passion for cooking and get paid for it.If you're interested, my daughter Jenn and I are planning a blog on food. If you think I have a lot of opinions about living with people and are still reading this, you'll love (or hate) my opinionated take on food, restaurant reviews, restaurant customers , cooking, eating and life in general.

But back to Big Gray I loved the way our group of Christians , Jews , Atheists and Goddess worshipers managed to put aside our differences and create a joyous, loving celebration . We evolved a Kris Kringle style of gift giving to create some Advent drama. Sometime before the big day, we all picked names out of a hat and became that person's Secret Santa. I enjoyed the bartering sessions after the hat picking , where we secretly exchanged names so as not to have to buy for anyone we currently hated. Then, we would leave small presents for the person of our choice leading to the surprise final gift session after dinner on Christmas Eve. That was fun.

Inevitably, after one of our long Christmas dinners, there would be a feeling of unrest in the room . A chant would silently begin, then fill the house with a crescendo: "Toothpaste, toothpaste, toothpaste! " the crowd would shout,accompanied by the raucous stamping of feet and wild cheers. Then, I would reluctantly rise to my feet and explain that it was time to repeat an ages old tradition at Big Gray. At one of our first parties, I would explain, in order to entertain the guests, Richard (our first Fire Chief) and I enacted three stirring performance pieces.The three were named, "Toothpaste", "Bacon" and the awe inspiring, "One-Armed Janitor".For those readers who saw them only once, they are I know, embedded in your psyches. No further description is necessary. And for those readers who somehow missed Christmas at Big Gray, all I can suggest is invite me over for a big family meal and get me whacked.

Pets, from Aacha to Temes plus Burt , Chelsea and Dylan

When Sam left,I felt detached from life at Big Gray. So much of the daily social interaction for me was among the old warriors of my tribe. Sam had become a trusted friend to Kim and me.While his leaving didn't effect our friendship, it did effect the inner life of the house. I was starting to feel the "communal movement" had past me bye. Increasingly, I felt a strong preference for how things ought to be done. And these were issues much more easily communicated to men of my own age group.. Even my ideas about having fun usually clustered either among certain wild people from Circles or Kim, Sam and me. I was turning into a male version of Carrie Bradshaw. With Sam gone, my connection to Big Gray began moving out too. Nevertheless, as we had many times before, we survivors announced ourselves to the readers of the Village Voice Classified..."Communal house in Bayridge, beautiful 15 room Victorian seeks male , non-smoker". I forget whether we stipulated " no cats", at that time. For a while, we had a "No New Cats" policy in the house. Not that it ever prevented us from taking someone , but it provided a way out of conversations with a potentially creepy person, "Oh! You have a cat? I'm afraid we have an iron clad rule. Too bad! We'll let you know when one of our cats die, ok?"

As far as history goes, I'm up to Bill's Generation. I'm rarely satisfied with my writing, so I guess with the exception of a few, you're all anxious to stop reading.Only, I feel I've only touched the surface of what the experience of 21 years was like for me. I guess I was hoping for a lot more feedback when I started writing But other people have advised me that this is my lonely process to complete. So, in that case, I'm not finished. There are still many details for me that form a more complete picture of life at Big Gray . Part of that picture is the story of the pets of Big Gray. I had never suffered from any strong allergic reactions before living at Big Gray, but Dr. H' daughter who ran an amateur animal shelter at the house laid the seeds of my cat allergies. By allowing cats (especially male, unfixed cats)to freely roam the house, she guaranteed that our baseboards would have a coating of cat spray. Although we painted over these sprays, future generations of cats always seemed to locate them and add their own signatures guaranteeing itchy eyes for me. And yes, for you feline defenders, I also worked in a dusty Manhattan bookstore that might have magnified the problem as well. In spite of this however, there have been members of that unpredictable species who have managed to crack through the tough male exterior I wore and win my heart. Here's their story.

Aacha was Silvia's. She along with The Cat I Killed were one of our original 7 cats. Like the spicy, Puerto Rican beauty who owned her, Aacha was a diminutive Persian with long black fur and a peppery nature. She was really fun to watch when she had her catnip. In contrast, Susan had two hulking overfed monsters who rarely left the third floor except to feed owing to their preference for her bedroom and the spring door which closed off the third floor hallway. Alan had twin Siamese that looked like sickly prison camp survivors. They had access to the rest of the house because he lived in the room off the third floor landing which is outside the third floor hallway door. There was another cat too, but I can't remember its name or who it belonged to. Then, there was the Cripple Family. Ma Cripple was another of Sylvia's cat projects. Like everything else in Sylvia's life, there was an accompanying drama with Ma Cripple, a tiny Siamese whose back legs were useless. She would haul herself up and down the flights of stairs that connected our floors dragging her useless back half behind her.The sight was shocking at first, but then you got used to it and the "thump, thump thump" sound of Ma's back half coming down the stairs became a part of the crazy fabric of our lives. Through some apparently cosmic intervention, she was befriended during what I call the Cat War of 1975, by Pa Cripple, a street cat one of Richard's friends had found. This cat had been terribly abused. It's front claws had been removed, and it was let out in the street- a death warrant for a male cat. He was spooked by any human contact other than from Sylvia. As if he was following some Disney screen script, he took to Ma Cripple and they had a litter before we realize that Ma C was even capable of littering. When their kittens arrived, the Cripples took up residence in the second floor hallway closet. (We used the closet door for some other project) House mates will remember the location of that closet at a key cat juncture in the house situated as it was between the front stairs and the back winding stair case leading down to the kitchen ,and at the foot of the hallway stairs from the third floor where Alan's ugly cats and Susan's monsters lurked. I witnessed Ma and Pa Cripple vigorously defending their tiny family at that now sacred to memory landing. Pa would attack any passing cat with teeth bared and Ma would ambush from the closet lurching herself into battle. Those famous battles ,outside my bedroom door by the way,were memorialized with the erection of the second floor chalkboard, a monument to free speech . Not everyone shared my amusement with the cats. (As the peace chief , I took everyone's side ). Jaime hated the cats, and spoke out against them at house meetings . He especially hated Susan's cats who were among the indoor sprayers. To be truthful, Jaime also had issues with Susan who was not the most fastidious of our membership and whose stone chips cluttered the floor of the front room which she used as a sculpture studio in the winter. That led to spirited debate within the house- a debate that lasted 21 years. Kim, by the way, though he rarely spoke out knew a lot about cats as many of my readers will attest. He could tell many cat stories if he wished.

We also had several of our prominent female wild cats fixed. Among the were Ma Orange, and Ma Black, a big female we inherited from the wild . She wound up with my ex-wife and kids in the suburbs of Connecticut where they lived the year before the kids moved in with me. I remember Jennifer at 5 years old trying to carry her around the house clasped to her chest . She was a good one too.

After that, we seemed to get a break in Cat Karma. Matt brought Larry with him when he moved in. He found him abandoned by his mother, and hand raised him. Because of that,Larry allowed Matt to carry him around and do things with him I've never seen a cat endure. For example, Matt would cradle Larry in his arms upside down while he smacked Larry's face with his tail, or he would hold Larry's two front paws in one hand and his back paws in another. Then, he would extend his hands so that Larry's body hung U- shaped between them.Larry would meow mournfully, but never tried to escape by using aggressive tactics like biting or scratching. Kim told me that was because he considered Matt to be his mother.

Another thing about Larry, he was always one of the guys. At that time, the Big Gray
Men's Club had it's largest membership consisting of Steven, Kim, Matt, John, Michael, the Professor (one of our "extended" family)and me. We usually met in the Library unless warm weather forced us to the backyard. Often, we sat on the floor in a circle for power ceremonies and pots of tea. Larry, if he was around would join us, situating himself in the center of our circle, content to just hang out. If no one was home, he liked to lie on our neighbor's lawn across the street.When he recognized one of our cars turning onto the block, he would race across the street greeting us at the end of the driveway (Barbara, a fierce pet lover, was always afraid one of us would kill him). Often, we would find there the decapitated bodies of mice Larry had hunted down and lined up in formation for our admiration. Matt took him with him when he moved. Ironically, after surviving years of Brooklyn traffic and our driveway, he was killed by a mail truck in a rural area of Maine. He's buried there.

After Larry, we had a few notable cats that lived at Big gray during Dan's tenure. I can't remember all of them by name. Dan and Kristin had one which was fairly unspectacular, and Becky had a little gray cat whose name I can't remember, but who had a great little personality. After Becky went back to England, Kim and Joyce wound up with her. She moved to Pennsylvania with them and lived a good life hunting in the country . Probably the most controversial cat at Big Gray was Kitty, a male Siamese that Joyce owned. He had several annoying habits like pissing in the plants that we had in our dining room, and spraying his noxious signature all over our walls. And like all Siamese, he had that annoying whine most of them make. We had a lot of meetings devoted to dealing with the cats and never were able to stop Kitty from smelling up the house. Joyce was a staunch defender of her cat. I hated him. That's why it was ironic that when Joyce went on vacation one year, she asked me to watch and feed Kitty. I reluctantly agreed since no one else could handle it. Don't you know that little SOB took off the day after Joyce left. I searched everywhere for him, and gave him up for dead in spite of signs we put up all over the neighborhood. Secretly, I was relieved to have this cat issue off the agenda of our meetings. Then, a day before Joyce returned from vacation, someone called us about a cat seen on Shore Road (blocks away from the house) We went to check out the call, and sure enough, it was Kitty. Sam started a rumor that I kicked Kitty out, but Joyce was grateful for the trouble we went through to find him. Then, to make it seem even more suspicious to Sam, a week after Joyce's return, the damn cat ran away again. This time, for good. Sam still asks how I managed to get Kitty to climb into the trunk of my car. "Come on Kitty, we're going to Bensonhurst for a picnic".

Our last cat was Temes who belonged to Bill. He was one of my favorites as he hid under Bill's bed all the time.

As opposed to unpredictable, temperamental cats, there were three predicable, loyal , good time friendly dogs at Big Gray. The first, like many other events and people connected with Big Gray, came to us out of a psychedelic experience. Burt or Bert as some liked to call him, was a scruffy gray and brown mutt with a terrier heritage. He followed Susan home from a walk in our neighborhood while she was tripping. While he was with us, he occasionally got out and wandered the neighbor's yards in search of his favorite meal, garbage. Burt had been a stray and a hobo too long . He needed a change of environment. He needed some land to roam. He wound up, like most of our adopted pets, a great success story. It was Susan and Jackson who found Burt a home on a farm out of state with a lot of space and a big friendly dog pal to roam with.

Our next dog was one of the best experiences I personally have ever had with an animal. Chelsea came to the house with Eddie and Martha. She was a small, pretty dog , a border collie mix with a herding extinct and a tremendous heart for play. I took her for long, long walks along the fields and paths of Shore Road which follows the curve of Long Island at South Brooklyn. On one side, you had the massive Verranzano Bridge, and at the other side of our neighborhood, New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. Many times Chelsea and I made that great mile and a half walk where she chased squirrels, ran with other dogs, always singling out the males who were far bigger than she, but unable to match her hair pin swerves in a chase.Chelsea also loved to roll in dead things which she would occasionally find-one of her few unladylike traits.
If I were minding her for Eddie and Martha, I would fill her food bowl in their bedroom on the first and second night. Once she decided Eddie and Martha weren't coming back , she would pad down to my room, and using her head push open the door and lie at the foot of my bed till the day they returned.

Our last dog at Big Gray was the giant, Dylan. He was a Lab mix ( with mastiff blood from the size of him). Dylan, at his advanced age was the most docile dog I've ever known. The cool thing was no one else knew that. When you were walking down the block with him, people would shrink out of the way, afraid Dylan might dispose of them with one bite. He was Vienna's dog, but we all took care of him. Like everything else at Big Gray, boundaries were often blurred.