My younger sibs went to high school with a trio of kids, the Pea
nut Children, whose shared deadly nut allergy kept them bound in a constant threesome. The school rendered a certain table in the cafeteria peanut-free, created peanutless class schedules, and peanut-proofed some clubs and afterschool sports in order to keep the Peanut Children safe throughout high school. As a result, the three were never apart. I don’t know their genders or sexual orientations, but I do know that all this shared proximity led to a tragic but predictable occurrence: two of the Peanut Children fell in love with the third. I’m not sure there’s ever been a sadder love triangle. This week’s Modern Love, about allergies and alcoholism, comes from an anthology called Death by Pad Thai. For a minute, I took the title literally and thought of the poor Peanut Children, but it turns out that Death by Pad Thai is less about anaphylactic shock and more about really memorable meals. The premise is questionable—“This one time, I ate really good ravioli? And I’ll never forget how it was, like, really good?”—but Michelle Wildgen’s elegiac tone in “We Ate and Drank While the Warning Lights Flashed” made me hungry and sad at the same time. About which: buh? I open the Style section looking for stories on how to train my man by bribing him with raw fish. If Modern Love is going to be all, you know, moving, and well-written, then I might have to find a new paper to patronize. But it gets worse. Not only was the Modern Love essay good, but then they ran the cutest, least obnoxious wedding announcement of all time. Adam Berger, a Goldman Sachs i-banker, and Stephen Frank, a lawyer, were best friends and Harvard suitemates. They were, in a word, bros. Then, a couple years out of school, Berger announced that he was gay. Said Frank, in a line one can only assume he'd been rehearsing for the past decade: “I haven’t been totally straight with you either.” They’ve been together ever since.
How awesomely stereotype-busting is that? All the i-bankers I know spend their free time playing Beirut and trying to impress girls with the size of their billfolds, and these guys are busy quoting Wendy Wasserstein at their wedding. Adorable.
Seriously, though. NYT, if you keep this up, I’m going to have to spend my Sunday mornings with the Post.
Didn’t the pagans come up with some way too cool holidays?