Fly Fishing, Martinis, and Ben Webster

There has to be a connection

If you were single, or looking for romance in the 1980s, chances are you perused the personal ads of New York magazine, the Village Voice, or the New York Review of Books (NYRB). New York magazine seemed for upper east side singles looking for their "Prince Charmings." Sometimes I would answer these letters with intoxicated rants, like, "Oh, you're so perfect, Princess? Good luck finding that Prince!" For some reason, I never got replies. The Voice was, of course, more downtown, more writers and artists, and I did get a few dates between marriages. I asked one why she didn't want to go out again: she was a semi-famous writer, too. She said I drank too much. The nerve! I told her, "the problem is that you don't drink enough!" In the late 1990s, I noticed that prostitutes appeared to be advertising in the Voice for married men. I was writing a music column, Sounds, for Penthouse magazine at the time. They sent me so much money to investigate (though not participate) that even my wife said: "Go investigate (but don't participate.)" I took some attractive women on expensive dinners. The story never got published, but they let me keep the money. NYRB personals were and remain full of high-minded language, devilish puns, and seemingly sincere hopes for love and companionship for intellectuals and achievers of a certain age. I read one a long time ago that had three touchstones. I wrote this almost as a writing exercise: I could write an essay linking the three primary interests of the person who wrote the ad. Of course, we never met and I never knew her name. But thanks for the column idea.

I took up fly-fishing for one day in the early 1990s. I was working for a fine New York newspaper, and before the internet and 24/7 new cycles, August still had its dog days. There was a heatwave, I had vacation time to use, my beat was slow, and I thought a solo trip upstate to try something new would offer a respite. I had been reading Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis by Howell Raines, then a top editor of the New York Times. A few years later, he attained his dream of being the exectuive editor of the Times, only to be cast off to a life of fly fishing after his resignation following a plagiarism scandal involving a writer under his supervision.

I had also read Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan while I was in high school as did every other sentient yet stoned person my age. All of us young poets wanted to be Brautigan; we knew most of us were better poets than Brautigan, but he had a way with the epigram and the look, of course, the look — silver miner's hat, mustache that looked held together by hashish resin, round-lensed spectacles — that nailed that 1967 zeitgeist the way Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band did. I was troubled enough to envy Brautigan, but not troubled enough to blow my brains out in Bolinas, California, as Brautigan did in 1984, after the applause stopped. (He might have appreciated the idea that Harry Styles, formerly of One Republic, the rare talented boy-band breakaway solo artist, wrote his best song, "Watermelon Sugar," after spotting the similarly titled Brautigan book on a table.)

I hired a trout fishing guide, a crew-cutted retired New York State Trooper. I booked a solo cabin in a hotel said to have a fine chef and a selection of good New York State wines, and headed for Roscoe, N.Y. I was alone, got sozzled on my cabin porch before dinner, and was self-conscious that I was the only solo diner in the hotel restaurant. I drank the bottle of what I believed to be New York State's greatest wine at the time, Dr. Konstantin Frank's Gewurtztraminer (I shared it with myself), and then had some voka chasers on my porch. I was barely in condition to look at a fishing rod, much less learn to cast a trout rod, at 6 AM, for the meet-up with Jim, or John, the fishing guide.

In Roscoe, a fine trout river, an offshoot of the Delaware River called the Beaverkill, runs through it. Jim or John met me early the next morning, took me to one of the many trout supply stores on Main Street, where I procured a fishing license. I would later read an essay by John McPhee called "Elicitation," which I use every semester for my Craft of Interviewing class at a university in New York. The essay is about his lifetime of interviewing, as well as an instruction manual. He tells us to think of our stenographer's notebook, to be carried at all times, as our fishing license, which gives us permission to approach strangers and ask questions. At that point Ihave to digress and explain to my students what McPhee means by a fishing license and why it is so necessary: Game wardens and New York State Park Police are very active, and you will get a fine for fishing without a license. I tell some of this story, and hope to return to the main theme, an improv that strives to be crisp, modest, yet utterly affecting, like a solo by Ben Webster.

Ben, of course, may have been the greatest of Ellington's Hall of Fame of sideman, or perhaps constituents. The jazz DJ, teacher, and Charlie Parker scholar Phil Schaap, delivered an exegesis on WKCR about the word "constituent" as Bird used it to often describe Dizzy Gillespie. Schaap cited numerous dictionaries to show that "constituent" was not Bird throwing shade on Diz, but rather praise: one definition, the one Schaap meant was "to be an essential part of something."

My expertise does not draw deeply into Webster. I have quite a lot of his LPs, from Verve to Pablo sessions, including one smashing Verve session with his teammate Coleman Hawkins. Webster died too young, too far away, for me to recall ever seeing him live, although I did see Gillespie whenever and wherever. My expertise is rock/soul/pop, but not obnoxiously so; I have written about jazz, but as a fan who knows what he likes, what he does not like, and can explain to the reader why. But the great thing about Ben Webster is that there is never a time when communing with Webster is inappropriate. It is always Webster Time; it is always Webster weather. He was never one to make a foolish move.

When I burned out for a while on the music beat around 1993, I went to the food section of the once great New York City and Long Island newspaper for which I worked. The food editor, an elegant and lovely woman, walked into our Two Park Avenue office and came to my desk one morning. She asked a fateful question: "Do you like cocktails?" Indeed I did. Although I was married with young children, I had one true love since my first job after college at a major New York record company, where the Mad Men ethos ruled. It went by names: Finlandia, Stolichnaya, Smirnoff, Zubrowka. I never liked Absolut: the truth was, the man who created the famous "Absolut Everything" advertising campaign so famous in the 1990s once told me, was that it was all about the bottle. The vodka itself, separated from the bottle, was ordinary, and I found it to have a slightly unctuous texture.

I preferred an extra dry, straight up vodka martini. The Bond myth of shaken vs. stirred is an urban legend; it does not matter. I was one of those "pass the vermouth bottle over the cocktail shaker, say 'vermouth' but don't pour any in" kind of martini drinkers.

Here's a cute story: When I got hired by Newsday on staff  in 1977 after a year and change of full-time freelancing, I had to go to the main office, still in its founding headquarters on Stewart Avenue in Garden City, to fill out all the appropriate forms for human resources. Two old school reporters: Dick Zander, who covered state politics, and George Wheeler, the business columnist, invited me for lunch. I was flattered: These guys were Newsday legends, real newspapermen. Zander smoked cigarettes; Wheeler a pipe.

I knew there were excellent Italian restaurants in the area: Giulio Cesare in nearby Westbury was a favorite of Newsday executives, and quite a few were just as close in Mineola. When we started to leave the building, I asked where we were going.

"The Garden City Bowl," Zander said. I grimaced. A bowling alley? I said, "do they have good food?"

"Oh no," Wheeler said. "The food is terrible. But they make great martinis." I stopped at two. They looked at me like I was alright, that I had potential.

A lemon twist was standard for a vodka martini, but I preferred olives, all kinds of olives. Green olives, black olives, olives stuffed with blue cheese. Or onions, little chunks of sliced Vidalia onion (rather than tired bar Gibson olives), but really, it did not matter. Or pickles! If you are a gin martini purist, I offer no apologies; gin as the sole measure of martinis went out when William Shawn left the New Yorker. I tried, many times, but always ended up ill, since I also liked a bottle of wine with dinner, and gin + wine = spinning wheel, for me.

"Well, I think cocktails are making a comeback," my editor said. I told her, "to me, they never went away." So for the next few weeks, I left the office every day in mid-to-late afternoon, to research on the company's time and dime what would be a New York Newsday food section cover story: "The Best Vodka Martini in Manhattan." The winner was the Temple Bar on East 10th Street in what was then called NoLita. Possibly, it was because they introduced the notion of cocktail as goldfish bowl. Strong women and men found themselves paralyzed after two, although if Zander and Wheeler had lived to drink there, they'd just be getting started.

During my travels in solo 4 pm martini drinking, I only met one person who scared me. It was the at the bar in the Grill Room of the renowned Four Seasons restaurant. He was drinking martinis too, and we had a conversation. I don't remember what he said because he was sloshed. He handed me a business card: president of an ad agency. I said to myself, "wow, this guy really has a drinking problem!"

 I stopped drinking in 2010. It's a long, spiritual story, full of miracles and wonder.

There was no succor from the heat wave during the trout fishing expedition; the temperature was in the 90s even in the shade at the Beaverkill, and my guide could not find a nibble. Trout are smart; if the water's too hot, they stay in their air conditioned trout motel, and watch fishing shows on TV, the better to add to their abundance of evasive tactics. Favorite trout TV now would be "Spongebob Squarepants" and "Fishing With John (Lurie)," a musician I once interviewed under his rarely used pseudonym, blues singer Marvin Pontiac.

We did wade into the unusually warm waters of the Beaverkill. I did not invest in wading boots, so I ruined a pair of flourescent green sneakers, the loss of which was not lamented by any of the women in my life (first wife or current). As I gazed down the Beaverkill, there were always a few fishermen out and about. They all looked like Sherlock Holmes without the sense of humor. They did not wave to us, or each other. I liked having a fishing license; I did not care for the uniform or the people who wore them.

I have heard stories in recovery of people who enjoy fishing in sobriety. God bless them. I always thought to myself: Fishing sober? What is the point of that? I get it now, but it's not for me.