M and His Cooks

Names have been changed. This is from a while ago, but I like it. The start of something. 

some of my totally nonprofessional pics of M's beautiful food

M's cooks were all fiercely loyal to him, his apostles. Which is why they worked for us for terrible money, came in as the sun just came up to chiffonade and stayed deep into the darkest night to mop the floors, cryovac the kirsch-soaked cherries, leave the fragrant veal stock at a whisper of a simmer.

M and I had met, stayed up all night talking big dreams. We broke the chairs, making love. Four months later we were living together in Philadelphia, running a fancy restaurant in a historic Colonial hotel.

Each night, when the last plates were whisked away, M and his cooks Kevin and Zander and Zach opened their beers and left the hot kitchen for the cool garden, smoking cigarettes and bullshitting, gathering a second wind for the relentlessly thorough cleanup M mandated.

"Can't they clean without you?" I asked every so often, my eyes blurry after 12 and 14 and sometimes 16 hour days, the soles of my feet sore.  After all, he was the Chef. But it was important to M to scrub beside them. At night, his soft skin smelled of bleach.

Only I could write the menus each day. They changed based on what was in season and M's whims. He was up all night reading about savory ice cream texture and airy macaroons and tofu so rich with unami it might grow balls. In the mornings, he and his cooks brought these things to exquisite, intricate life. They dehydrated parsnips and turned gazpacho into popsicles and meat-glued short ribs into glossy towers.

yum

I tried to delegate the daily menu-making to our hostess, Jess, who was head-turning, red-haired, a student, and who M decided was horribly stupid. M is from Israel, his accent still syrup-thick after living here for nearly a decade, and when M said "fennel fronds," Jess heard "fennel (and) prawns."

After seeing this on the night's menu, whatever M told Jess left her pretty face ragged with tears. She called the next day, to quit. I asked her to reconsider.

I ran the front of the house, and M constantly terrified my staff. I apologized for him, smoothed things over, thanked my shaken waiters and busboys and bartenders for putting up with Chef's temper. Soon he'd be joking, cabbages stuffed under his Chef's coat like giant, misshapen breasts, and we’d all be a happy dysfunctional family.

This is for real. 

"What did you say to her?"

Jess was a good hostess. The guests loved her, she always said the right things to the grumpy ladies, always came early and watered the plants. It had taken forever to find a good hostess.

"Don't you see? She doesn't care at all about the food. She's just a pretty girl."

"Who cares if she cares about the food? She's a good hostess."

I told her she didn't have to make the menus anymore, didn't have to interact with M at all, could steer clear of the kitchen.

"That's ok," she said, "I need to focus on school right now. And I can't be treated that way."

"M," I said, pissed, "Now you gotta find us a new hostess."

"You know I don't have time," he said, "but I'd like to meet them before you hire them."

I gave him my angriest look.

I posted all the Craigslist ads looking for M's cooks. They got better as cooks come and went, didn’t show up, threw plates across the garden and stormed out, leaving their knives behind. They said something like:

Looking for a cook with a have a shitton of energy and a sizable dose of crazy. Helps if you are an ambitious and young, obsessed with fine dining and serious technique, but willing to work for nearly nothing, peel fingerlings until your fingers go numb, scrub the fryer til it shines.

Things went missing and cooks neglected to show up. Our kickass, pimply intern went back to school. We interviewed so many people we forgot who was who. I handed out W4's like candy. Slowly, we got M’s crew together. They moved like dancers in the tiny, heart-stoppingly hot kitchen, they knew all the steps, they finished each other’s sentences, fought with their hearts flung open, drank together, would fuck someone up for each other.

I liked Zander the best, who just graduated from college and talked way too fast. He was always reading, plotting, growing tomatoes in his little ghetto Philly apartment which he shared with a million guys and was caked deep in filth. “It’s so disgusting,” M complained, “But he grows some good tomatoes.” We ate them like apples, made them into gel and strung them throughout ribbons of parpadelle.

Zach was tall, as if he had been stretched out, and tattooed and always high, sometimes out of his mind. His eyes were painted with a permanent film of far away. M had to pick him up from jail one day while I watched over his kitchen. We bought weed from Zach, and lent him money.

M wouldn’t hire women. He tried once—a blonde pastry chef with big biceps—and when she didn’t work out, he recommitted to his strict no-girl stance. So he had his boys.

 hamachi tartar with sesame clafouti and white soy gelee

One day I found Zander in the walk-in, crying.

“Are you ok?” I wanted to give him a hug.

“Sort of,” he said “Chef is not happy.” And when Chef was not happy, nobody was happy.

“M,” I said, “Zander is really upset.”

“So am I,” M said, his eyes bloodshot.

So I stayed out of it. I had my own staff to watch over, to make sure they weren’t drinking all the beers in the basement and the new waiter didn’t forget what an espellete pepper was and Julie’s creepy admirer, who sat on table 49 with a grin and a whiskey, was as far as possible from Julie.

In summer, Zach came to work more fucked up than usual, and M told him to go.

M and I were talking about breaking up, my heart felt sour and heavy in my chest. I worried for Zach, who seemed unsteady with hotel pans stacked in his ropey arms.

Zach said, I’m fine, I’m working, I’m staying.

M needed him, and so he took him out back and told him this was the last time. M wasn’t talking to me much, but still we had to go over the menu for the night: stinging nettle risotto, salmon belly ceviche, braised lamb shank.

It was some time when I was explaining to my staff—the risotto is garnished with lovage, fried jasmine flowers, thyme confetti—when Zach, high on who knows what, was frying up delicate, lovely jasmine flowers in a big vat of oil, with a slotted spoon. He dropped the spoon into the hot oil, reached in with his left arm to retrieve it, and screamed so loud in pain we all went running to the kitchen.

M called 911, and left with Zach through the green garden in an ambulance, the skin missing, scorched, red from Zach’s elbow to his fingertips, fried like the jasmine flowers.

They were two men down. We took the risotto off the menu, and I jumped in to expedite, hitting up plates with tarragon oil and carrot chips and whisps of basil foam, my head spinning like the earth, my stomach churning and bowling-ball heavy. 

It's Not Your Fault that You Have An Eating Disorder!!!

The headline at The Frisky reads "Feminist Blogger Reveals Eating Disorder, Apologizes to Readers." It's about this article from Feministing.com in which the writer Chloe asks her readers for for forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? For being a feminist and having an eating disorder.

Whoa!!!

Nobody should ever (ever!) have to ask forgiveness for having an ED. Being a feminist, that is a choice. That is about what you believe in. That is commendable and wonderful.

Having an ED is not a choice. It's just not. The same way we don't choose to have ADD, or choose our parents.

If you believe in 12 steps..."We admitted we were powerless over (alcohol, food, etc), that our lives had become unmanageable." It's the essential foundation for recovery. Some say it is a threefold disease--spiritual, emotional, physical. It is an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind...which means us anorexics/bulimics/compulsive eaters are wired different. If I'm powerless it's NOT MY FAULT. Shame, shame, go away. You don't belong. I haven't failed or fucked up. It's such a fundamental part of the disease, this shame. And it's so powerful and magical to toss it out the window, bid it adieu.

To break it down:

The allergy of the body: If you're allergic to peanuts, eating peanuts is a terrible idea. Your face swells, you break out in hives, maybe your throat closes up. People with EDs respond different than "normies" to restricting, to sugar, to whatever 'red light' food situations trigger their allergy. A "normie" eats a cupcake and stops because they are satisfied, they've had enough. For us--the cupcake is a trigger, or a alarm, or something much more dangerous and powerful than the sum of its parts. It's a very loud voice in our head that screams at us and calls us impossibly fat and worthless, or perhaps it coos for us to finish the box of cupcakes...

The obsession of the mind: I was explaining the physical allergy to my dad, who said logically, "Then why don't you just cease and desist from eating cupcakes?" Duh. No peanuts for me, please. The answer is we also have brains that whisper insistently, "The cupcake will solve everything." Or "just one, little harmless cupcake can't hurt me, or, "everyone else is eating cupcakes without repercussion! Unfair!" We have brains that make us forget the pain that the cupcake-cycle inevitably brings.

Image: zigazou76

EDs are enormously big, complicated things. So of course our fucked up culture has something to do with it, and the giant food industry, the giant diet industry. Economics, psychology, culture. And of course it has so much to do with gender, and how our world does not make it easy to be a woman. But that doesn't mean that it is less of a disease, and it doesn't mean anyone is saying: "Ooooh, I want to get me an ED."

We admit we are powerless, not helpless. We DO have a choice about what to do, where to go from here. To seek treatment and recovery, or not. The options are vast. There's so much hope. Endless possibilities.

Sh Sh Sh Shame

"Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must lead." -Charles Bukowski

Charles B

She hurled it at me, an insult, her ammunition. "You are so fucked up--go be with your fucked up eating disorder people." (And she's a doctor! Shouldn't she know better? But that is a whole 'nother story, for another day.)

I was shocked. But I was not hurt.

I think I would have been, a year ago, even.

My food stuff/eating disorder (why do I still not have a good name for this?)--the dis-ease--is so much about shame. It was also my deepest, darkest secret for most of my life. Getting to know my fellow eating disorder people, I see so many common threads. One is having everything so damn together on the outside while suffering profoundly behind that shiny facade.

I write about food. I work with food. I love food. An eating disorder seemed so incredibly, fatally uncool.  Also, I knew better. I went to a girls school. On one hand, we were serenaded with an incessant loop of "love yourself, you are beautiful" messages. And on the other, the competition was insane, the cool girls were skinnyskinny without exception. And yet, to have an ED felt hugely lame, cliche. I wanted to be above such a thing.

Epoisses from Burgundy. Heaven. 

I wanted to not care. I wanted to live my life drinking wine I could never afford (thank you, restaurant jobs) and eating\duck fat gougeres and pillowy gnudi and dark dark chocolate like nobody's business, and be thin as air. A reasonable wish. I also wanted to not be me, not live in my body. To escape.

That the shame is loosening its death grip--that is a miracle. I learned that having ED is like being an alcoholic, or being tall, or having a big nose. It's not something you choose.

Although our society is rigged against us. Us being women, or perhaps everybody. The toxicity--the little-boy-skinny models everywhere, the crazeeee foodstuffs galore, the ubiquitous subtle and not-so-subtle thesis that your self worth = your body--it runs deep. But I don't think I have this story because our culture is fucked, or because I went to an all girls school, or because my mom has struggled with weight/body stuff, or because I care more than the average Joe(anna) what other people think. I just do. I got it, it's part of who I am. And that's ok.

Maybe it's even good. I've learned a lot of compassion, including some for me. I've learned a lot about who I am and who I want to be. If I can help a person or two, it's so very worth all the pain.

I don't believe I'm particularly crazy. I am, indeed, crazy. But so are most of us. And if not: how boring. We all have our hangups, our shit, our issues, our flaws.The thing is understanding your own personal brand of craziness, accepting that, and having an action plan for living your life. Serenity prayer, babeeeee.

Do They Hate Me? Do I Care? (Yes I Do!)

Understanding ourselves is just the beginning. "Self knowledge avails us nothing" and all that. Although it does, it avails us something. A jumping off place. First awareness, then acceptance, then action. Theoretically.

I know I'm a full-fledged people pleaser, and that people pleasing is lying.

It's not all bad, though. I like people. I want them to like me back. When I was a kid, I was great at winning over friends' parents. "Hannah's a good influence," I heard (HA!). One of the reasons I was elected prez of my coed literary frat was that I passed the "good at talking to old rich white men" test. I give good interview. All that. And sometimes, often times, it goes a whole lot deeper. I really, genuinely care. People I love are incredibly important to me. Ok! Enough PP (people pleasing!) justification.

Not everyone can be a Hannah fan. Nor should they be. My admirers all have haters. It's part of being a person. Especially a person with opinions, and a stance. A non-vanilla person.

I love the slogan: "it's none of my business what people think of me." On some level, I know it's true. I want to be a person who's so steady, centered, sure in herself that she is immune to validation or the sting of condemnation from others. On another level, I'm not there yet...like me, like me! If you don't, I'll squirm.

And I've found myself squirming a lot recently. It's part of the anatomy of my situation. Which is that my boyfriend is very recently divorced. Or more accurately, still trekking through the wilds of Divorce Land. Which is a weird place. I've never been there, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to discern such.

My boyfriend was with his ex for a really long time. Most of his adult life. With years and years, people get intertwined in each other. I can't image, or I can image, but it feels so heavy and sad. Even though my Micky relationship was scarcely two years, its ending was gigantic.

Most of his friends are his friends. They are loyalists--wife or no wife. But there are some couple friends, too. Some people in his life who were really close with his ex. And they all hate me. Or so it seems.They give me dagger eyes. I smile back. I'm really nice. It isn't til an hour later that I want to cry.

Gotta Get Me Some Compassion

And some perspective (perspective = who cares?). But mostly compassion. Because I wanted, for a minute, for the boyfriend to fix it. To say, "You don't have to like her, but be nice, please."

And then my wise friends dispensed their wisdom, as they do. They said:

Maybe that would make the sitch worse.

They don't know you.

With time they will come to love you. Or not! Whatev--their problem, not yours.

And it helped, most of all, talking to the boyfriend. Who has the biggest heart in the world, and also PP tendencies. He said:

Now you know I feel so much of the time.

And it broke my heart to hear that, but it also helped. Because it's easy for me to say to him--follow your truth, your heart, and fuck other people's judgement. But it's very hard for me to say that to myself and actually believe it. But if it's true for him, it is for me.

Haters will hate. My advice for me: pray for them, worry about me. Send 'em love. Send myself love.  

Nuggets of Wisdom to Save Me from Soul Crushing Insanity

My mom forwarded me a photo from her organization's big annual event. "Cute pic of you, W, C."

And I panicked. Like a dog on the way to the vet. The pup that knows. My stomach got all whirly swirly. I felt my heart beating in my face; my skin was hot.

I have a lifelong picture phobia. You see, I might leave the house and feel perfectly pretty. And then--the photographic evidence. The pretty is a heinous mistake. Really, I am a freakshow. Look out. I might make your eyes bleed river of ugly blood.

I looked. Then averted my eyes. Then looked again.

"Mom," I typed back, "C and W look great. I look huge and awful."

"No actually you don't. You look wonderful."

S (my lovely sponsor) had a different response. "So what," he said. "We know you hate the way you look in pictures. I know it, you know it. Who gives a shit. Go help someone."

For a second, I scowled. And then, I smiled. He was right.

I'm a little psychotic when it comes to pictures. Psychosis is "characterized by radical changes in personality, impaired functioning, and a distorted or nonexistent sense of objective reality." That's me. I'm nutso. I see myself through some really fucked, sad lens. It's freeing to get that.

I took S's sage advice. He says something else I like (he says a lot of things I like):

I am not responsible for the first thought. I AM responsible for my subsequent actions.

So my brain is broken, when it comes to certain things. I can not trust it. I can choose to believe my mom instead. Or I can just get on with my life and help someone or as S says "go wash my car" even though I don't have a car. But I do have dishes that need washing...

On another note I wanted a change. And so as of three hours ago, I am now BLONDE. Or ombre, as my proud hairstylist kept affirming. He even photographed the evidence...and I let him! Small victories, baby!

Don't Fall In Love with a Married Man

Photo: shoebappa

Friends and fellows and lovely ladies,

I beg you not to fall in love with a married man.

When he looks at you, your skin turns hot. When he kisses you, you feel it in your elbows, your toes. Your cheek against his cheek. The barometric pressure dropping when your fingers touch.

The people who love you say you deserve better.

You’ve never made out in so many cabs, steadying yourself to keep your cheekbones safe from plexiglass. You go all over the city, throwing back oysters at fancy places and wrapping yourselves in parts of each other—legs in legs, fingers in fingers.

He can write you love letters but you can’t reciprocate, lest they be discovered. You can take pictures of him, rolling up his sleeves and squinting into the sunlight, but there can be no pictures of you together, faces close, eyes shiny.

You dream about the wife. You dream you are sharing her cocktail, then she is pouring pickle juice over your head until your lips are caked in brine.

Before you say goodnight to him, you stop for three ice creams, one for her and one for you and one for him. You go home and look at yourself in the mirror and think, “what the fuck are you doing.”

Photo: rubber_slippers_in_italy

He takes you shopping, buys you whatever you like, sneaks into the dressing room to put his hand on your stomach, the backs of your legs. He takes you on a boat ride on a hot day, and then he is always having to run, and apologizing. 

Don’t call, he says. Don’t text, he says. Stick to email. So you do. You make up secret codes. Smiley emoticons mean “I’m with you, I love you.”

He is not going to leave his wife for you, everyone says, but he does. You stay with him at a hotel for a week, then at a friend’s house. You do his laundry. You buy him boxers, because he needs boxers.  You leave the room when the wife calls.

Later, you help him move into an apartment in Soho. You sit cross-legged on the floor, counting the 84 beams that make up his new Ikea bed frame. You fall off the ladder, painting his bedroom a cool sage-grey, and he photographs the green-blue bruises that creep up your thighs.

You go for long walks and stop every block to kiss and kiss and leave your hand on his shoulders and his hand on your ribcage. You cook expensive steaks and feed each other saucy bites. You drink cocktails on rooftops and dance.

You have dirty jokes, and inside jokes.  Sometimes, you fight. You cry into the soft space between his face and shoulders, because you are violently sad. You love him, deeply, and you hate this. 

My Jewish Christmas

"The only gift is a portion of thyself." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am ambivalent about Christmas.I love the glittery lights, the smells of trees on the streets, the people in silly sweaters. I like how Starbucks starts using red cups after Thanksgiving. I love carols and cookies. New York's magic gets amped up. The tourists, I don't love them so much. But I understand--they want some of that magic, too.

But I'm Jewish, so Christmas is not my holiday. Not my catchy music. Not my cozy and warm feeling. Not my Hallmark moment.

From adventure journalist

I was never one of those Jews who had a Christmas tree, or stockings. It was very simple, especially to my dad. Christmas was Jesus's birthday. We don't believe in Jesus. That's that.

I don't remember asking, but I do remember looking upon my friend's colorful Christmastime paraphernalia with longing. I remember being invited to Elisa's for ornament-hanging and hot chocolate-drinking and loving every minute of it.

On one hand, I was liberated from the yoke of stress and pressure that Christmas seemed to entail. I could mooch off my friend's trees, hanging baubles, and twinkly lights without any obligation in my own life. But the lack of Christmas was another notch on my "woe is my, I'm so left out," belt. Another way I was different from my ribbon-wearing classmates. From the rest of the universe, for all I believed.

As I talk to friends, fellows, strangers, it delights me that I am not alone in a complicated and ambivalent Christmas relationship. A Hindi immigrant buys a tree for his kids, because he feels it's American. A Jewish family hangs up stockings because it's a secular...er, consumerist(?) gesture, not an inherently religious one. The Muslim, smiley guy from Iran who works at the deli near me insists he totally celebrates Christmas: "It's everyone's holiday! We go out and have fun!" Fair enough.

And then, there are many who spend the day hungry physically, spiritually, or emotionally, or lonely, or sad. Christmas is a topnotch stirrer-upper of feelings, be they wonderful or excruciating.

Make Your Own Traditions! 

I'm a believer in tradition. My Christmastime tradition is movies and Chinese food with my parents. Sometimes friends come alone. I love it. And the movies and Chinese restaurants are always buzzing with fellow non-Christmas celebrators with the same brilliant idea.

On another note, my heart is heavy. I'm missing Micky, and I don't know where he is. I'm also missing this little guy, so much it hurts:

I hope you are well, little amazing puppy with a big heart!!

Wishing you a dose of serenity and sanity during this whirlwind time of year.

xo,
Hannah