Suicide Served Cold ~ Thoughts On Anthony Bourdain

No time like the present, this week, today, now to write about suicide. Rather attempted suicide from my pen.

Of the many things I have said, when I mentioned it, one is a trite saying of, ‘one of the worst after effects of one suicide attempt was the scars and my not being able to wear sleeveless tops for the rest of my life.”

Most do not know. I did have one lady in recent years to learn of my scars and she noted her friend’s daughter wore her scars like a badge of honor – or something like that. And from another supporter there had been a thought of going to the ink place and getting my scars made into a picture of a glimpse of life.

Anthony Bourdain killed himself – news today, and Kate Spade who I also know nothing about killed herself a couple of days ago. (I do have Kate Spade Gramercy Park, Rutherford Circle Pink and Green dishes in my cabinet. Gramercy Park is a ‘Me Too’ for me.)

My growing up memory years included my step father’s restaurant – a BBQ Drive-In and full-service restaurant with weekday meat and three veg meal plates. A small interior and besides the tables there was a counter with 6 stools, which had two grills across from the gleaming stainless counter like a “Waffle House”. The back had a full kitchen and there was an open BBQ pit for cooking meats and my step dad burned real hickory wood – nothing else.

When he married my mother he had to put a milk crate upside down for me to stand on to reach the grill and I learned the place from the front door to the garbage bins out back. You will find the largest rats you have ever seen near restaurant dumpsters – well you did then.

 

But drinking chefs – I knew a few. I was not much for drinking at work so I was blessed, but later I had other problems. But from my young age I remember my step father – long hours, and no off time in the evening so if he were going to have a drink it had to be at work. This had been fine as long as he was walking across the street to go home after closing, but when they moved across town, he was a brown man, driving at night, way too slowly.

But he managed to keep his license and just slowly kill himself drinking but did manage to live a relatively long life all things considered.

Naturally I worked in the same business and the life in the cooking industry is tough whether you do breakfast or dinner and all too often both. Close a place and go for a meal or a drink at the town’s late night place, your evening hours after work are 11 PM on and depending on the place you might closing as late a 2AM, midnight on Saturdays if there were blue laws. Restaurant and Bar people do the late night places because that is all that is open after work and they are the same places that if and when you needed a 2^nd job for the money you might also work at through the years.

I remember Rags Lorina insulting the hell out of me calling me a “food waitress” and telling Emil if he had to serve me, he was going home – he did not want to serve the drink that killed me. I came close to killing myself a few nights during that time. As a rule I did not drink – but drinking enough to kill a horse in one sitting was my shtick for almost a year of life after my Me Too. But it was better than killing someone else, I would just dare to tempt the devil with death by alcohol poisoning. Even the late night places closed eventually, and so to have a couple, no matter what, you had to do it fast.

How I lived through that year, I don’t know, and I repeated the feat several years later again, for a short spell. I tried pills that resulted in a stomach pump – the roommate came back early from her weekend; and a few years after that the roommate forgot her wallet and returned when I had slit my arm(s) from wrist to elbow and other sundry cuts.

All too often I have wondered if I lived. After a couple different times of trying, all those decades ago, is ‘life’ I live now really just some purgatory existence – maybe I am really dead.

Thoughts of suicide turn the thinking, and trying it changes the soul.

Bourdain had shared stories of his life in the food business and how being blessed to learn about and eat and cook many different types of food – meant being able to learn about many different cultures and not only be tolerant of foreigners and differences and so on but also to embrace others. You can’t cook it if you don’t love it and he knew then you fall in love with the food and the people. That is food service – it is really loving people – but maybe his was too temporary – constantly temporary.

Chasing food jobs and new recipes to make people happy is dangerous; it is living on the edge. Always being judged.

Even risks. I like ‘ta died in Iloilo from food poisoning – I was stupid, I wanted to be polite, they would have died of embarrassment had I spit it out and I should have spit it out – but I swallowed it and lived only by the grace of the medical staff at the hospital and every G-d that ever drew homage. Almost a week, I knew by the dates how long I was ‘gone’ in a memory-less illness of a bad oyster.

Working off shore as in cooking in the oil fields was dangerous for food, for weather, for life itself. In my one year of licensed Merchant Marine cooking 4 people died that I had personally met. I cancelled a job – hours before I was due to report – and did not care if I were banned for letting him down – forever. The food was amazing the money was great.

But I preferred to be out of work and alive as opposed to dead fish food in the Gulf or Atlantic or South China Sea. So instead I moved to the Ocala National Forest with alligators but there was little food to sell and then soon to Coconut Grove and there were lots of hungry people again.

The point is, cooking is wild in some ways. To keep work during the oil embargo of the 1970s restaurants, motels and bars closed more than opened and this wonderful career I thought I could make from the experience of my step father’s restaurant was dog eat dog. And sometimes dying in your cups.

People eat everywhere so there is work everywhere – a beautiful hotel in Coconut Grove, a private home in Manhattan, a cozy room near the French Quarter, or a very old bar with history in the Quarter, a beach front open air covered deck or a 220’ ocean going tug off shore. A deli, a greasy spoon, steak house or a diner – if you can stay on your feet and flap a jack you can usually find some work.

Stress is not the word for it, to do it right, and it wears on you physically, mentally and emotionally. I have seen some kitchen fights man oh man. Southern kitchens I worked in were mostly just African Americans and Europeans the southern formula for so long. The new wave of immigration had not happened in the 1960s and 1970s. But those early years of food worker we stood together, helped each other find work, and met to catch up and kept up for decades.

Although I do not know where LeRoy or Diane are today, Eddie Rowell has passed, he had severe dementia and died in a nursing home quite slowly.

He was a food person. His wife told me about his passing when I called and finally made a link, she said she never knew any of Eddie’s friends. I felt sad about that, but it was part of this thing about restaurant and food people – the hours are different – I am not sure what to say – she would certainly have been welcome and welcomed at every gathering where Eddie was, that I saw. He never came on to me, and I never saw him with anyone so I have no idea about their rift that they did not mingle. But she was saddened to tell how hard and slow his passing was.

I might wonder if he remained mostly out of his head in agonies, were it me, wouldn’t I want a pistol before it was too late for me to pull the trigger.

 

I always confused, confuse suicide with euthanasia, but the issue is the rights and responsibilities of humans. Like you really shouldn’t claim the right to kill yourself unless you have really looked around at all the world has to offer. Like it might really be shitty where you are, but – so – move. Do something different, somewhere else – and maybe not start with la la land in a handful of pills and booze.

Anthony Bourdain broke the mold. He did do the world, a few times. He did move and tried another and another. What a shame, I can’t eat a bite.

Watching a pan of food fry, and another sizzling strip on a grill, and a steaming steamer, and a few other brewing drinks and burning morsels – cooking is a head job. Lots of thinking – lost in thought – can hear orders yelled over the din of kitchen noise, but nothing drowns out the voice in the head tormenting with memories of…

What ever or who ever any person’s personal demons are, there is something about burned hands and broken hearts that seems to magnify one’s pain with dinner.

RIP Anthony Bourdain – I loved the shows, the travels you shared. Living vicariously through your work gave so much joy. From No Reservations to Parts Unknown – thank you.

But this? G-d why? But it never makes any sense.

Bourdain (paraphrased): “its like I’ve stolen a (big fancy) car, and I keep looking in the rear view mirror for flashing lights.”

Part 2

https://marionettastrungout.wordpress.com/2018/06/09/suicide-24-hours-later-the-tony-in-paris-show/

 

 

My sister lost to suicide 2007

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/31121330/robin-anne-glover

 

Other tidbits, stories and thoughts about my mother and my stepfather’s restaurant and a few other people and stories

Our Colors ~ That Is My Mother You Are Talking About.

 

with Bill Murray – But the insects at my house are bigger at my house

 

Too Much – Last Meal?

 

If you need help for your self or another please ask for help. You can call 1-800-273-8255 these people – and see their website here

https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

 

International visitors

http://ibpf.org/resource/list-international-suicide-hotlines