What are you the Anthony Bourdain of?

I'm rereading Kitchen Confidential and it's like having a good man in the house for the holidays, and I don't mean the kind who puts the Christmas lights up.

I first read this book as a freshman in college, having only been poked and prodded a couple of times. Still a thoroughly unseasoned piece of meat yet to be shellacked by life, many of the sensualist metaphors were lost on me. The book left an impression on me, but it's doubly impactful now. After college I went on to have various stints in the food business as a prep cook, waitress, and club hostess. I even danced in a lounge in a pink sequined top, red mini skirt, and go-go boots at a place on the strip that no longer exists. As sexy as it all was, I have no desire to work in nightclubs again. A part of me yearns for my days in fine dining though. You develop a confidence when you learn how to work a busy room like that and it's hard to find elsewhere. It doesn't have to be highbrow. A meat and potatoes diner full of regulars clinking away at a breakfast they could have made at home. A pizza kitchen with no space for women with hips to move in without brushing. That'll do.

I stayed away from all things Bourdain after he died because it was painful. He was the only famous person other than Kobe whose death I heave-sobbed over. I was mildly obsessed with him in my 20s while working in Las Vegas. When I went strictly back-of-the-house running the family business, looking like shit, feeling spent, Anthony Bourdain made me feel in a spotlight still. Vital to some operation. Part of the great fraternity of the unseen suffering. Reading Kitchen Confidential now, dialing back to the beginning as opposed to watching late-stage reruns of his show, feels like experiencing the truest version of him. Sharp, delightful, and as necessary as a freshly cut lemon. The opposite of a celebrity. It's been quite the erotic experience reading Bourdain in bed at night. Usually the books that turn me on have nothing to do with fish guts and addiction. But Anthony was as skilled with juicy words as he was with a knife. Yes – I said Anthony. It should surprise no one that I'm interested in a dead man. I mean, how much more deliciously unavailable can you be?

You know what this reminds me of? The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Not the TV show, the movie with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. It starts out with the most haunting atmospheric score composed by Bernard Herrman. For those unfamiliar with the movie or TV spinoff, it has to do with a young attractive widow who moves into a seaside cottage with her small daughter and maid, only to find it haunted by a long deceased surly sea captain. I think they took liberties with the romantic lead being a ghost because it's implied he watches her undress and sleep. Racy for 1947.

Captain Gregg and Mrs. Muir, whom he chooses to call Lucia instead of Lucy, develop a quarrelsome affection for one another. She finds herself in dire financial straits and they end up collaborating to produce his memoir, Blood and Swash, an "unvarnished" account of his life on the sea replete with f-bombs and tales of debauchery. They even go on to talk about their respective sex lives in taciturn golden era movie-speak. She talks about being kissed in a garden and he teases her. He boasts about all of the misguided women who showed up to his funeral while she looks at him with disgust. Kitchen Confidential feels as close to Blood and Swash as we'll get, and the ghost of Anthony Bourdain as close to the churlish-but-dreamy Captain Gregg as I will get.

Lately I've wondered what I am the Anthony Bourdain of. What could I write so deftly and memorably about? Food? Schools? I value my breadth of experience, but the working people I most often admire are those who eventually made a choice and went all the way with it. People like my father and Anthony Bourdain, Malcolm Margolin, or the Rutabaga Paddlesports guy. But I also remind myself that my father was in his forties when he started his small business in earnest, his life leading up to it one giant appetizer sampler platter.

Where am I vital? I have time to figure this out, to let my life speak.

I read a lot of books this year, but the one that left the deepest impression on me was Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. What struck me most about this story was how Chris McCandless's obsession with getting lost in the hinterlands of his life landed with the numerous adults who crossed his path who wanted desperately to intervene, but showed restraint as elders who recognized the irrational purist impulses in him as a familiar friend of youth. How can you rob a young person of that discovery? Of not knowing how far is too far, of figuring things out just in time, or never figuring anything out ever again. Sometimes answers aren't neat. Am I trailing off? I'm trailing off.

Whatever genre any or all of this is, it's helping me answer questions of life and vocation at forty. Questions about what I should be doing and telling. Who I should be loving or leaving. What I should be blowing up in my life to find the right new path in the clearing.

Link Pickles 🥒

I'm a huge fan of the romantic dinner conversation scene in movies. I scratched this itch a little in my last Somethingburger on Katie and Hubbell bonding over beers in The Way We Were (1973). Here are a few seriously exceptional examples.

Middle of the Night (1959)

Middle of the Night knocked my socks off. I caught it on TCM late one night when I was out of town for a conference. I was a zombie during the morning sessions the next day, but it was worth it. This movie does the fraught May-December romance justice. It puts everything on the table. The shame and insecurities, the hope and misery that coexist at the polar ends of romantic life. I thought the dialogue in this scene was so revelatory, so raw and honest. I like how Frederic March kept half getting up and sitting down, trying to leave, but his affection becoming quicksand. The whole thing – two protean actors yanking us between cringe and endearment – is worth the watch.

Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)

Who knew Steve McQueen could be a tender romantic? His chemistry with Natalie Wood in Love with the Proper Stranger is delectable, but don't let the low neckline and pearls fool you. Sure there are some funny moments and smashing smooching, but this is mostly a sensitive drama centered around the topic of abortion, and falling in and out of love after a fateful one-night stand. My favorite part of this scene is the FOMO Steve's character feels looking around a soft and sweet single girl's apartment as she plops ice cubes into a glass. Natalie Wood screaming, "Don't you understand! I didn't know you then! I didn't care about you! But I know you now! I LIKE you!" is a close second. The whole movie is free on YouTube right now.

Bridges of Madison County (1995)

I don't know what scene Bridges of Madison County is most known for, but for me it's this one. There is the conversation about relationships – ownership and boundaries, aloneness versus loneliness. And then there's all the texture of the 1960s maximalist Midwestern kitchen, and the atmosphere of a storm brewing outside. Sometimes I watch familiar movies while doing chores, but I always stop and sit for scenes like this – conversations written and scenes designed with full attention in mind. This one could only take place in the kitchen where intellect and sensuality share counter space.