Friends, Friends Everywhere! -- take 2

My blogging was paralyzed for almost three weeks, not because I had too few things to mention, but because there were too many. Every time I thought of writing, then either I was having dinner with someone, or I was looking forward to the next dinner and thinking, "I'll wait another day, then there will be more to write about."

I had two trips almost back to back: the Stanford Pride Board held its annual face-to-face meeting (the rest are teleconferences) at Stanford on June 21-22, and I added some personal visits, so I was gone June 19-24. Then I had a business trip to Paris on June 29-July 8. So at the risk of sounding like a vapid star's journal for People magazine, here's what happened (there is a moral to all this, at the end, if you can wait that long):

• Thursday, June 21: arrived in the Bay Area, and had dinner with my colleague and friend Julien L. (there will be another Julien later) at Bambino's in the City. What do you mean, "which city?" We talked about social networking, among other things -- a common passion of ours. We're lucky that something we're passionate about is part of our jobs.
• Friday, June 20: I had lunch with B. at Café Brioche in Palo Alto. He is one of my "friends" from Facebook, with whom I originally connected because he was one of the first people to accept my invitation to join the Stanford Pride group after I created it. I've always been intrigued by his whimsical status messages, and I often ask him what they mean. I guess one thing leads to another, and we had decided to meet in person. I'll summarize by saying that I hope I can remove the quote marks around "friends" in the future, because the discussion confirmed that he is a really nice and thoughtful guy worth knowing.
• Friday evening, June 20: Dinner at "Home" in the City with a subset of the Stanford Pride Board. Nice, but I arrived last, and was at the end of a very long table that did not make conversations very easy.
  
• Saturday, June 21: First day of the Stanford Pride Board meeting. We recently elected 13 new Board members, 12 of whom (I think) were present. What energy and diversity in this group! What's funny is that some of them tend to act like my longevity on this Board is something amazing, and then I'm chuckling and thinking, "how would I want to leave something that puts me in touch with such great people?" And still it's hard work: we met from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., then we had dinner together from about 7 until 9.
  
• Sunday morning, June 22: end of the Stanford Pride meeting. I now have an Assistant Treasurer. Woo-hoo! And he is actually eager to pitch in, and seems very easy to work with. This is going to test my proverbial deficiency in delegation capabilities, but I'm working on it.
• Sunday afternoon, June 22: I don't know anyone else than my friend Carol with whom I can spend 9 hours solid, doing very little, both of us talking effortlessly about any number of things of varied importance, never worrying how to occupy the time or restart the conversation, never feeling like I should be on my guard or have to prove anything. At the end, we're always just surprised that so much time has passed and that it felt so good. This is just amazing. Totally drama-less, and boy, do we need this from time to time, both she and I! We always comment on this to each other, too: this is our little "mutual admiration society" topic.
• Monday afternoon, June 23: I visited with S. and N., who are back from their trip to India, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia, at the Emeryville Marina, where they currently camp on their sailboat. It's probably unrealistic to expect that they would make plans to settle down for any period of time, but this is taking an especially interesting turn with their idea to trade their current boat for a larger and much more comfortable one and live on it. That could make for some interesting visits. I'm not sure I'd want to live that way, but I'll sure come and visit!
• Monday evening, June 23: B. (that's B no. 2, not B. from June 20) and I had dinner at Maverick, in the Mission. Very nice restaurant, tiny but friendly. The price was what could be expected for a small nice restaurant in San Francisco, about $60 per head with wine. B. is from Stanford, is a geek (the smart kind, not just the well educated kind, that's a huge difference), is a skier (infinitely better than me), which is how I know him after two successive winter ski week-ends, is super-nice, and 100% unpretentious (otherwise, I would obviously never had had a chance to have dinner with him). And we had a chance to talk about our favorite acrobat... an inside joke that said acrobat, and a couple other people, will understand.
• Sunday evening, June 29: After sleeping all afternoon to recover from the flight to Paris, I decided to go to Josselin for crêpes, and took the subway to the Vavin station. I hesitated in the station: I could get out on Boulevard du Montparnasse facing west, and then turn left to walk up the rue du Montparnasse, or I could, slightly less obviously, take the opposite steps going east, turn the corner, go up rue Delambre to the Edgar-Quinet crossroads, and then walk down rue du Montparnasse. For some reason, the latter option appealed to me in spite of its lesser logic (drumroll, please). This staircase leads right in front of the terrace at the Dôme. I had probably taken five steps on the sidewalk when I heard my name, pronounced with a slight tone of interrogation. Here was, having coffee with a friend at said terrace, my ex-colleague, friend, and "comrade" (alumnus from the same engineering school) Jean-Christophe, whom I had probably not seen in ten or fifteen years! To make things even more eerie, I had just e-mailed him two days earlier announcing my trip and asking if he had time to meet. This is the kind of encounter that makes you say "I am not superstitious, but..." The evening did end with crêpes, but the three of us together instead of by myself, and at the Saint-Malo because Josselin was packed.
• Monday evening, June 30: Here's where Julien No. 2 comes into play. And he is also the third Facebook friend I met for the first time in this saga. Same Engineering school (many, many years apart) and he had missed a dinner of the gay alum club last time I was in Paris. He had given me a not unreasonably reserved "oh well, yes, why not?" answer when I had proposed to have dinner during this trip. I'm not sure what he thinks now, but I had a nice time, conversation seemed to flow easily over a great many topics, etc. I took him to l'Amazonial, which may be a little cliché for gays in Paris, but the place is good enough that it has become much more mixed over the years ("gay is the new black," some people say), plus it was the perfect weather to sit outside. Is there such a thing as making too many friends? Is it like the stock market, where when you issue more shares, it dilutes their value? I hope not, because I'd prefer not to stop given the quality of the people I meet.
  
• Tuesday, July 1, lunch time: Ben managed to make time (well, 20 minutes late, but he did manage) to have lunch with me. He is one of the most demonstratively affectionate straight men I know. That's a compliment, by the way.
• Wednesday, July 2: Went to dinner at my friends' P. and A. near Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Their boys make me think of the Olympic motto "citius, altius, fortius," except that in their case it would have to be something like "smarter, more mature, and more handsome" each year. P. was in engineering school with me, same year, but we really had no contact then. Our friendship developed later. We have fairly different political opinions, but we've always been able to have reasonable conversations, as intelligent people arguably should, Daumier's sketches notwithstanding. Their American friend L. also came, and the five of us talked about a lot of things, including American and French politics, switching constantly between French and English. That was easy for P., A.,L. and me, but I was pleased to see the boys follow us easily in this flexible exchange.
• Thursday, July 3: Back to Saint-Germain for the official business dinner of the week, at Le Petit Zinc. Charming Art Nouveau décor, especially the wrought-iron-and-glass canopy above the entrance, reminiscent of the original métro stations around 1900. But it wasn't the dinner that leaves me the best memory, it is the after-dinner drinks just down the street, in a jazz café with the Three Musketeers of IT innovation (yes, I know, that makes me d'Artagnan -- this was calculated): Julien no.1, David, and Laurent. I'm not sure we talked much about work, but it doesn't matter.
  
• Friday afternoon, July 4: This was the fourth and last instance, in just two weeks, of meeting a heretofore unmet Facebook "friend." This time, B. (no. 3) went to both Stanford and Polytechnique, and I had just recently noticed that he was in both schools' gay alum clubs. Having contacted him about this coincidence, I found out that he was travelling to Paris the same week I was. So we had coffee in the gardens of the Palais Royal, the original plan of meeting at the Café Marly having been thwarted by the heat and the café's attitude, relegating the non-diners to outside tables that are directly on the stone courtyard, under the sun, and that none of the arrogant waiters ever bother to visit.
• Friday afternoon, July 4, two hours later (this looks like a title screen from "Law & Order," doesn't it? Boom-boom!): soft drinks with A., an ex-colleague and perhaps new friend. We gave each other a kiss when we met, and shook hands when we parted -- I hope this doesn't mean anything other than the fact that we weren't keeping track of our protocol. He looks like he's floating on a little cloud because of a very positive turn in his private life. It's nice to see happy people.
• Saturday and Sunday, July 5-6: I had been so sad to tell J.-N. two weeks earlier that I might not be able to go to his wedding ceremony, and then when this business trip got scheduled, I was so happy to be reverse myself. And it was a really, really nice event. Three things will remain in my memory: the fabulously embroidered dress that his wife changed into in the middle of the reception; the rare sense of complicity and mutual love between the groom and his younger brother; and the fact that without anyone saying anything special, at some point, I just started crying with happiness realizing that the year-old kid I had bounced on my knee once when visiting his parents had just finally won three years of battles with consular and religious authorities to marry the love of his life, against all "reasonable" advice, and end their forced separation by winning the right to have her at his side permanently.
  
• Sunday, July 6: I messed up my return to Paris a bit -- I should have dropped the car at the entrance to the city, or even in Saint-Denis, and taken the subway in order to be on time to meet Jorge. But I insisted on driving all the way, so I arrived over an hour late. This limited our visit, but it was still nice to catch up, even briefly, before he left for a business trip to East Africa.
• Monday, July 7: I hadn't seen M. and R. for several years, and was a bit ashamed when M. told me, not too long ago, "ah, I see in your blog that you've been in Paris several times, how come we never hear from you?" Whoops. So instead of making excuses, I made time, which is better. We had dinner at the Pub Renault on the Champs-Elysées (classy... but somewhat logical since M. works for Renault). Another evening of good conversation aided by decent wine.

So here we are, and although it took me two hours to write this, I feel like I have just paid tribute to all the people who made my life so full during the past three weeks. I realize that apart from a few people looking for what I am saying about them, no one in their right mind will have read the whole thing. That's fine -- it served me well to write it, finding words that would hopefully be seen as positive by the people who will recognize themselves, and that at the same time are absolutely sincere, because I would rather shut up that make false compliments, as those who deal with me must know beyond doubt.

It sounds like after this, I need to take it easy for a little while. Fred, don't worry: I told you we'd have dinner this week, and I'll be ready to treat you like a friend too. For some reason, I'm not actually getting tired of having good times with good people...