Peggy Knickerbocker - Love Later On

A LSO BY P EGGY K NICKERBOCKER

Olive Oil: From Tree to Table

The Rose Pistola Cookbook
with Reed Hearon

Simple Soirees
Seasonal Menus for Sensational Dinner Parties

The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market Cookbook
with Christopher Hirsheimer

For Robert

Love Later On Copyright 2021 by Peggy Knickerbocker

Illustrations Copyright 2021 by Karen Barbour

All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover & Book designed by

Christopher Hirsheimer, Canal House

Published by Gatekeeper Press

2167 Stringtown Rd, Suite 109

Columbus, OH 43123-2989

GatekeeperPress.com

First Edition: May, 2021

ISBN 9781662911675

Library of Congress Control Number 2021936548

C HAPTER O NE

B Y THE TIME I BOUGHT MY HOUSE on Russian Hill after forty years of an intermittent single life, I was sixty. Despite a few new aches and pains, I fully expected the approaching decade to be my best. Mind, body, and soul, Id never been in better shape. Since I didnt think of myself as a senior, what got to me were the checkers at the market asking if I needed help to my car or well-meaning people who offered me seats on the bus. With hair that was still blondish, an athletic vitality, and a good-humored attitude, I felt more like forty-two.

Once again, I was a woman without a man. But my acceptance of this statemy joy in the peace and simple pleasures of living alonewere new for me. Each morning when I pulled back the curtains in my bedroom, I could see San Francisco Bay stretching before me with ships gliding in and out of the Golden Gate, while my two snowy ragdoll cats purred in the warm white folds of my covers.

In 1896 my gray wooden row house had been built for a sea captain. During the fifteen years Id rented it, it had been the scene of considerable fun, a couple of failed attempts at romance, and a lot of deferred maintenance. When it went on the market after I had just extricated myself from a disastrous four-year relationship, I pounced. I planned to live in it alone rather than sharing my life with another man who didnt stack up.

Now that I owned my house, I made it fully mine, doing everything Id dreamed about, making it a welcoming place for the friends and house guests who filled my life. The living room, just off my little back garden had been lacquered red for years, just like my mothers. I painted it a more subtle color--a sophisticated grayish brown that warmed up at night in the light that glowed from the fireplace and candles and lamps with mica shades. With my bookcases completely filled, I stacked the overflowing books everywhere, with vases of flowers and little treasures perched on top of them.

With the aid of my stylish opinionated friend Randal Breski, who has an unerring eye and who, like me, had lived and shopped in Paris, I chose fabrics and paints for the rest of the house. We made the dining room feel French with pale green walls and taffeta curtains. On summer evenings, a low gold light streamed across the old hardwood floors and my mothers mahogany dining table that could seat up to eighteen. Winter dinners were candlelit.

My dinners were more casual and fun than my mothers. Hers tended to be boozy, heavy, and creamy. Mine were easy going and lighter, with fish or good red meat, lots of vegetables, salads, and fruit. While I served my guests wine, I no longer drank it myself, having given up alcohol when I was forty, after nearly letting it wreck my life. I cooked with ingredients my mother had never usedfennel, radicchio, hunks of aged cheeses, and essentials like good extra virgin olive oil and varied vinegars. Shed resorted to shortcuts out of a can or the freezer; I made food from scratch. Men wore neckties to her dinners and her guests didnt include writers, teachers, blacksmiths, artists, gay men, and women, or chefs, but she did invite Alan Watts and Dianne Feinstein along with other political types and theater people.

As a renter, I had cooked in my fifty-year-old kitchen, testing recipes for several cookbooks Id written and for dinner parties. It was beyond ready for a renovation and definitely needed more than the one heavily over-loaded electrical outlet. With the help of an architect friend, the room was transformed. We kept the black and white tile floor, and brought the electricity up to code, adding a commercial stove, a farmhouse kitchen sink, and marble counters. A glass chandelier provided a certain sparkle. At last, the room that was the center of my life and my work as a food writer was ideal for me and the food-loving friends who cooked there with me. Id met many of them in the late 1990s when I started writing about food for Saveur Magazine, and other publications. They were my people. But others went all the way backId known two of my closest friends Cal Ferris and Flicka McGurrin since we were seven-year-olds. With Flicka, Id opened a restaurant in North Beach in the 1970s and another one on the waterfront in the 80s. And alongside, we ran a cooking school and a catering business. When we started, we had no experience with business or cooking for more than 6 to 8 people, but we cooked what we loved and they sent back empty plates.

Another of my dearest friends had been the first to call my attention to my heightened domestic urges. The novelist Armistead Maupin had been introduced to my domesticity during the early days of my first and only marriage. Hed gone to college with my ex-husband Jay Hanan and later came out as a gay rights leader. Armistead and I had spent hours talking about men, straight and gay, but for a long time, neither of us had been terribly lucky in love.

Tending to act upon my urges more swiftly than was wise, Id repeatedly found myself with a man far too soon, since I had trouble being alone in a sea of couples-sometimes. My lapses in judgment had chipped away at my self-esteem. Id fall into a swoon, get into a romance and wake up a few years later wondering what hit me. The men I was consistently attracted to were roguish and immature, the more off-beat the better. I began to think I should hire a private eye before getting into something deep one more time. But what was the definition of a good man anyway? And what kind of good man would be the right one for me? Why had I been afraid to aim high, when Id always aimed high in my career and choice of friends.