Florent's loft

"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be."--Florent Morellet

When we left off, Florent Morellet had invited me to use his loft for a classroom of writers who had originally met at Gotham Writers Workshop and wanted to continue the party. The year was 2008.

Florent, he of the self-named, celebrated New York restaurant, had his loft on the 11th floor of a building on Lafayette Street just north of Spring Street.  It was deep in New York City’s Soho. 

Soho, a part of lower Manhattan—like the Meatpacking District where Restaurant Florent thrived for 23 years—became a place transformed.  It went from a sparsely-inhabited, semi-industrial area of the city to a glamorous, expensive, highly-trafficked showplace.  I was lucky enough to live in Soho in 1980 before all the metaphorical Botox had been injected into its visage. 

Still, with its imposing cast-iron columned buildings, Soho has a dignity and elegance that can’t be disfigured by money or fame.  I loved going there even as I found it harder to recognize.  I still do.

Florent had a spacious room in his loft, overflowing with natural light from large windows everywhere, with a Downton Abbey-sized table where we would meet once a week from 11 to 1.  The class took place in the fall and spring.  It continued for three years. I never had a better teaching experience.  I miss it dearly.

237 Lafayette Street, home of Florent’s loft on the 11th floor

I can see Florent now, in shorts and T-shirt, sandals, wandering in from the other side of his loft with a cup of coffee, sleep still hovering about him. He had a husky voice, big smile.  He also had strong opinions, and he wasn’t reluctant to express them.

He didn’t like France, for example, the country of his birth.  He felt America, and New York in particular, was his true country of origin.  He was unabashedly gay.   Not only was he out of the closet, I don’t think he’d ever walked into it.  He knew everyone, but never acted as if he did.  He believed in justice, social and personal, and put his money where his mouth was. 

1985, when he opened Restaurant Florent, the AIDS epidemic was raging.  There was fear in the air. He himself was HIV positive.  This was no secret.  In fact, the opposite.  He used to put his T-cell count, an indication of how his immune system was dealing with HIV, on the blackboard in his restaurant next to the day’s specials.  Where else have you heard of anything like that? 

Florent in his loft

One of the reasons he let us meet in his loft was because he was interested in writing his memoir—or at least people told him he should.  To wit: the story of how this unknown man from France could, with little more than gumption, guts and iconic determination, open a restaurant in one of New York’s seediest neighborhoods only to have it become the place to go for the next twenty years or so.

He wasn’t fazed by his fame or by his legacy.  “I hate nostalgia,” he would say again and again.  He meant it.  He never looked back. 

That’s why his memoir was doomed.  Ultimately he just wasn’t interested enough in writing that book.  He wasn’t a bad writer at all, especially when you consider his first language wasn’t English.  He wrote in his own voice, and that voice was without guile, straightforward and fearless—like the man himself. 

But it became clear that he just wasn’t motivated to tell the story of his life. Besides, sometime during the three years we met at his loft, a documentary was released about this same story he was trying, so unenthusiastically, to write, “Florent: Queen of the Meat Market.” I went to its premiere. Its energy delights.

I want to tell you about the workshop itself, and the people who came and went, and the lovely time we had there. And I will. But this prologue is dedicated to Florent Morellet with great gratitude. Unlike him, I love looking back on those remarkable hours we spent in his loft trying to be better writers.