Dan and I got married on Saturday. This news may be surprising, given my little peccadillo with Jack Fogg and the uproar when my stunned partner – now husband – found out. But it led to the talk we should have had years ago, a discussion too personal even for me to write about. Let’s just say that we came to an understanding, then made up, then out, and finally came in a very different sense of the word.

We’re beyond being best friends. My faults still register with Dan, but there’s a trace of a smile on his face when I tell the same jokes I always tell. And I’m proud of being married to the world’s greatest klutz. (Life with Dan: bang, crash, "shit!") We’re genuinely intertwined in ways we weren’t four years ago, when I....

Well, the fact is that I have Parkinson’s disease. I haven’t mentioned it before because it hasn’t been part of any of the stories I’ve told. It’s no fun, but I live with it, and if you saw me you’d never guess I had it unless you happened to catch me doing the last three reps of a weightlifting set. That’s when I tremor.

Dan has been there for me throughout the whole bad trip, and I’ve been there for him, too. (The six months leading to his promotion to V.P. at CogniTech was practically as traumatic as my PD.) So when New York granted gay people marriage equality, we went for it. The scene: the beach house. The characters: our friends Gary and Heath, Dan and me. The state legislature was taking its time. I checked the news just after 11 p.m.

"It passed!" I yelled. We toasted with what was left of the dinner wine. Then:

Me: "We gettin’ married?"

Dan: "Yeah."

Me: "When?"

Dan: "December."

We’re clearly not into the top-of-the-Empire State Building stuff.

So we got married. There were eight guests, including the judge who married us, who happened to be Dan’s father. We got the private dining room of a terrific restaurant in our neighborhood. The ceremony was one minute long. We said we loved each other, and Dan’s father said, "I now pronounce you married." Then lunch.

We left immediately for the beach, arriving rather late. I brought a rack of lamb to grill, some vegetables and two cupcakes. But yechhh: the only champagne in the refrigerator was bad not very good. (We keep some in there all the time – like Mary Richards and her can of artichoke hearts – "just in case".)  "I hate that swill," Dan said. "There’s no need to fear," I replied. "Underdog is here!’"

We had Creme de Cassis, a blackcurrant liqueur. Undrinkably sweet on its own, it’s the perfect solution to bad mediocre champagne. I grilled the rack of lamb, roasted some fingerling potatoes and sauteed Brussels sprouts in butter. We drank two bottles of bad bad champagne transformed into Kir Royales. The rest of the night I’ll leave to your imagination.

The Kir Royale

1 bottle of bad champagne
Crème de Cassis

Add a few drops of Crème de Cassis to each glass, then fill with champagne. Use cheap champagne. Don’t ruin a good bottle of bubbly by adding anything at all.

Imitation of Life: ‘The Faux de Vie’

From the mailbag comes this gem-like nugget: "You’re a really great writer, Ed. You’re also a mess." I say: True on both counts! I don’t think I’m bragging when I agree with the first part. I’m sure most of you have something you know you’re good at, whether it’s managing staff, making ceramic bowls, salesmanship or cooking. It’s good for your state of mind; it builds confidence to have confidence. As for the second point, I acknowledge that, too. I used to be more of a mess than I am now, but I’m still neurotic. Hey, I’m a gay Jew from a cruddy little town in western Pennsylvania. I got called vicious names every damned day until I escaped to college. What do you expect?

The message writer was referring to a specific column – the "Yankee Mint Julep" one, in which I respond to Kyle and Robbie’s acoustically vibrant and (to me) demoralizing sex romp upstairs at the beach house by swigging from a magnum of Jack Daniels. It was a pretty good column, I think, but the response brought up a fact I’ve not made a point of stating directly. As I near the end of my second season as "Cocktail Chatter" columnist, it’s time to set the record straight (so to speak):

Except for the recipes, "Cocktail Chatter" is pure fiction. I make this stuff up, people. There is no Kyle, no Robbie, no Craig, no Jack Fogg.... There’s sort of a Dan, but that’s not his real name, and he doesn’t work for a pharmaceutical company. Some of the characters were originally based on people I know, and some are purely my own creation. But their origins are irrelevant because they all grew into different, fully formed (albeit fictional) people the more I wrote about them. These nonexistent folks don’t let me put words in their mouth they don’t think they’d really say. It’s like I’m channeling them, and when I add a word they don’t like they make me delete it. A novelist friend of mine was not at all surprised when I mentioned this bizarre situation to him. He can’t force his characters to do or say what he wants them to do or say either. They, too, have their own voices and personalities, and he can’t control them either.

In that spirit, or perhaps in those spirits – or maybe even in the spirit of those spirits who drink spirits – I created an original cocktail: "The Faux de Vie." As you may know, Eau de Vie is a clear, double-distilled brandy that has the flavor of the fruit from which it is distilled. Varieties include pear, raspberry, plum and peach. Eau de Vie translates as Water of Life, but a fine Eau de Vie is pricier than even the most expensive bottled water. It can run you $120 or more.

So forget the real stuff and make yourself a Faux de Vie! Get yourself a copy of the extraordinarily gorgeous and superbly entertaining Imitation of Life, the 1959 tearjerker directed by the great Douglas Sirk and starring the inimitable Lana Turner, and you’ve got yourself a perfectly "faux" evening.

The Faux de Vie

1 jigger Absolut vodka
A couple drops of the liqueur of your choice

Get a small glass and carefully pour just a few drops of Chambord, Cointreau, or any fruit liqueur into it. Add vodka. Sip. Don’t overwhelm the vodka with liqueur; the drink should have just a hint of fruit to it.