West End Phoenix

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IN APRIL'S KITCHEN

FROM NOVEMBER 2019 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

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April Wozny was in her 20s when she launched the popular monthly queer party Business Women’s Special. But it wasn’t until she got sober that she learned she could really dance, and cook too

Ten years ago April Wozny was a 24-year-old party girl who was tired of going to the Village to dance. So she and her bestie, Mikey Yerxa, started a West End party of their own. Their queer dance night, called Business Women’s Special, inspired by the chutzpah of Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino wearing homemade power suits in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, has been running in Kensington Market ever since.

“However you identify, you’re welcome,” says Wozny of the inclusive event that runs the second Saturday of every month. She describes it as “just a lot of love. That’s what we pride ourselves on.”

Held at Augusta House, now called Round, the party spread through word of mouth. “We invited all our friends and it just snowballed.” At the beginning she knew everyone’s name. Now she doesn’t, which speaks to the reach of what they’ve built.

“I remember when Whitney Houston died. Sammy was spinning,” she says, looking back. “He puts on Whitney’s ‘I Will Always Love You.’ Everyone was singing along, and then he cut the music, and there’s two hundred and something gay men belting out the lyrics. It was just so beautiful.”

April doesn’t cook often – she confesses to living off roast chicken from Metro – but tonight, when I show up at her door, she’s making gnocchi from scratch. A recipe from Phaidon’s Vegetables from an Italian Garden, it calls for a mix of ricotta, spinach and herbs. Wearing jeans and a pleated top the colour of sea glass, she forms the mixture into little balls.

Growing up, in an apartment building off the 427 in Etobicoke, none of the food from her childhood was very memorable. “That frozen green bean/corn vegetable mix. I’ll never eat that again. My mom was a bad cook, because she had no interest in it, but she’s also mentally ill. She battles depression and bipolar and personality disorder.”

Her parents split when she was 14, but young April was anticipating it earlier than that. “I remember having diary entries when I was nine: ‘I think my parents are going to get divorced.’ It took them a long time to actually separate, because of finances – we didn’t have a lot of money – and my mom’s mental health.”

One dish that stands out from a dinner table of perpetual “bland” foods is her dad’s veal cutlets. “That was an actual family activity.” She smiles at the memory. Her grandmother on her dad’s side, Stella Anastasia, was another source of brightness in her food memory bank.

“She was this old Polish woman, such a grandma. I love her and I miss her.”

Stella grew roses and made pierogis, cabbage rolls and lemon meringue pie. April’s mom was adopted into a Greek-Macedonian family. “I was baptized Greek Orthodox and grew up going to Macedonian festivals and Greek festivals. My mom’s biological family is very Canadian; they’ve been here since the 1800s.”

When not running BWS, April’s day job is as an event and creative producer. “The events part is pretty obvious, but the creative part is producing photo shoots, marketing assets, billboards,” she explains as two pots of water bubble on the stove.

She separates the gnocchi and drops them in. As they boil away she heats a frying pan to melt butter with a handful of fresh sage leaves. The table is set with water glasses. There’s Perrier. No wine.

April is what is known as a “high bottom drunk” in recovery culture. That means that even though she didn’t lose her job, or end up on the streets, or develop cirrhosis of the liver, she still bottomed out. And in the Hamptons, no less.

“I grew up with no money, and I’m partying in the Hamptons. Look at my life, look at how glamorous it is,” she remembers thinking.

Her happy-go-lucky demeanour is dimmed, her eyes downcast at the memory. “I remember hating every single moment. I didn’t want to be alive. I wanted to kill myself.” She spent the train ride back to New York puking. “I am so hungover and I’m throwing up in this disgusting bathroom and I’m like, this is my glamorous trip? This is my life? That was my aha moment.”

She started drinking at 14 and stopped at 30. “I prided myself on never being carried out of the bar,” she says. It wasn’t until she’d been sober a few years that her friends told her otherwise. “I thought I held my liquor, but it turns out I have been carried out of a bar. Everybody’s alcoholism is different – it could be binge drinking, it could be daily drinking, it could be morning drinking.” April was a binge drinker on weekends, eventually becoming a daily drinker who couldn’t stop. “I lied about how much I drank and was still told I had a problem. When I lied about it!” The booze had lost its buzz and that weekend in the Hamptons was last call.

When April got sober she went at it with both barrels. “I went to AA, I had a psychiatrist, I had an addictions counsellor and a spiritual guru, plus all the support of friends and family,” she says.

As someone who had a similar high bottom, after a depraved weekend in the significantly less glamorous Key Largo, I can empathize. Like April, I made my living hosting boozy parties. And when I dried up, I didn’t know if I’d still have a job.

“There was no way in fucking hell I was going to give up BWS just because I was sober,” she says. “There are people out there who are in recovery who can’t go in a bar. It’s way too triggering. Luckily, I am one of those recovering alcoholics who can.

“I white-knuckled my way through,” she recalls of those first few nights back at BWS. It was no party, not for her, the sprightly blonde host in the sequined dresses and fringed bell-bottoms.

“When I was drunk, there was this persona. I thought my persona was me. So, when I first went back to BWS as a sober person, I suddenly realized, oh my god, alcohol was my persona! It’s this whole charade. And I was trying to fake it, and being this loud, obnoxious person. I was trying to be fake drunk, because I didn’t want to be reserved or a little bit more subdued. That was really scary for me.”

When we sit down to dinner, with our quietly fizzing glasses of Perrier, the gnocchi are piled into bowls – bright and herbal, topped with fresh grated parmesan. The scent of sage and butter fills the room and the chill of autumn from outside is vanquished.

“I bought this cookbook and it sat on a shelf. It wasn’t until I got sober that I found this recipe and made it. It’s the one recipe that resonates with me. It feels like a big-girl recipe. Like wow, I can cook.”

She definitely can. Gnocchi are always described by food writers as light and airy and in this case, that description is apt.

April moved to this Parkdale apartment in February and soon became a regular at the Skyline Diner and at Capital Espresso. She is a big fan of Nouveau Riche Vintage, evidenced by the bright gowns, gold sequins and shimmery silks spilling from the open-concept dressing room in her bedroom/living room. Her bookshelf holds the collected works of Shel Silverstein alongside a pair of red sequined Dorothy shoes. They were a gift from a friend, given to April on the day she moved in, with a note that read “welcome home.” The shoes sit on the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf by a stack of volumes on witchcraft and wiccan lore. Behind the large and inviting green velvet couch, the wallpaper evokes a dark leafy garden filled with birds. An encyclopedia of roses on the coffee table echoes the rose tattoo on April’s forearm, inked in memory of Grandma Stella.

It is often said in recovery that getting sober is the easy part – we can do it over and over again. April is one of the lucky ones who, four years ago, got sober and stayed that way. She moved on from AA, found her own program that works, ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), and kept hosting BWS. She just had to find a way to sparkle without the buzz. The party provided the stage, and April herself, after years of being masked in a haze of spirits, is the grand reveal. She’s not a party girl anymore; she’s a fully realized person. “I had to relearn how to dance when I got sober. Before I’d been doing that drunk dance where you think you’re sexy and you’re throwing yourself on everybody. Now I actually have fun. Now I’m fully experiencing it. I’m immersed in real life. I’m cognizant, I’m alive and, it turns out, I can dance.”


April’s butter-sage sauce for gnocchi

Make gnocchi from your favourite recipe and toss them in this simple sauce.

ingredients

  • 6 tablespoons salted butter

  • 2 cloves garlic, peeled
    (April usually uses 3 because she’s a self- described “garlic freak”)

  • 6 fresh sage leaves pepper

  • ⅔ cup grated parmesan to sprinkle

method

While your gnocchi is boiling, melt salted butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add garlic, sage and fresh cracked pepper to taste. Let cook briefly until aromatic, then remove from heat. When gnocchi is cooked and drained, toss into the butter mixture in the skillet until evenly coated. Serve with fresh grated parmesan.

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