For almost six years now, I’ve devoted myself off and on to one of Chicago’s best known deep dish pizza chains. I started off just answering phones and routing deliveries, but jumped ship to being a waiter as soon as I recognized hourly wages are essentially meaningless in the eyes of a weekend serving shift. Of the unfortunate resignation of being “paid enough not to quit, not enough to be content,” I’m perpetually on the verge of “today I look for something new.” But then, after a long shift, I go to a show, have band practice or get absolutely shitfaced on a two-dollar Tuesday pint special and show up to work hungover, hoping the lunch shift is busy enough to recoup my unnecessary expenses from the night before. Never again, I vow. There’s no reason to go out to two (2) 4am bars the night before I have to be at work and caffeinated at 10:30 the next morning. But then, you know, I do it all over again the next week (if I even wait that long).
Maybe it’s because I work such an erratic and inconsistent schedule that when I have a chance to see my 9-5 friends, or other service industry brethren / sistren that work opposite hours, I want to take advantage of it. Besides, at 23, I might as well enjoy the sensual pleasures and hedonistic tendencies my brain desires while my body can still accommodate them. I’ve overcome my post-graduation “what do I do now” despair by picking up writing for local blogs, joining a band, appreciating food and drink beyond a means of sustenance and intoxication, really just forgetting everything about school, plans, integrity and just going with life. A bit cliché, for sure, and nothing too different from other privileged twentynothings throughout the ages.
But: I was feeling proud of myself for finding the balance between a stressful job, while adhering to responsibilities and obligations to multiple social outlets, remaining close (and getting closer) with family, and still finding enough solo time to read a book or catch up on the Criterion flicks no one else has interest in seeing. I’ve been economically conscious enough to treat myself to some lavish international travels over the past few years as well, an act as addicting as it is expensive.
And yet, one man made my whole world come tumbling down: Anthony Bourdain. Such as Carrie Brownstein exemplifies a woman who at no time can you question the perfection she’s attained at kicking Life’s ass, so too do I never wonder if Bourdain is sitting around in his boxers in an un-air conditioned apartment eating a plate of homemade nachos watching 30 Rock reruns on Netflix that keep cutting out. It was in fact that watch-what-you want-when-you-want service that introduced me to the man in the first place. In a “the more you learn, the less you know” type deal, I realized I didn’t even know parts of my own city as well as he did. I watched episodes on New York, Shanghai, Paris, other places I’d been to see what I had missed out on. I watched the episode on Sweden to confirm that I want to live there some day. I watched Mexico City to convince myself to save money and finally visit the place I’ve long talked about with a friend. I wanted to travel more, I wanted to eat weirder things, I wanted to experience it all.
Never one to even consider any sort of spiritual or religious interference with the physical world, I would hate to admit that fate is what led me to buying Bourdain’s breakthrough memoir Kitchen Confidential. Alas, stumbling around Printer’s Row Lit Fest in a post-late-night-Lake-Shore-bike-ride-euphoric-haze, I found a tent that had some good titles. Camus, Eggers, Sedaris: time to catch up on some of these books that have been unforgivingly ignored by me. And oh yes, amongst the pile of modern and contemporary literary classics: the chef himself. Not a chance I was going to ignore it (of course, I couldn’t ignore the Thax Douglas poetry collection Tragic Faggot Syndrome either, but I’m a sucker for a catchy title). Fate, divine intervention, a Sign, whatever you want to call it, it was a four dollar collection of pages and tiny symbols forming words that found its way into my backpack.
So not only do I know this guy’s whole life is a win, witnessing revolution in Beirut, suffering the consequences from the chance you take from eating undercooked animals in Namibia, etc., but I learn, for one, his pen is as strong as his palate. Like Ginsberg or Larry Heinemann, you can hear his voice as you read. But not to mention, this dude was living even fucking crazier when he was actually working in a restaurant. I’ve dabbled with some white lady, but not to this guy’s extent. Heroin? I appreciate Burroughs and Iggy Pop as much as the next guy (that next guy apparently being Bourdain) but that’s where I’m drawing the line. I’ve never been up for 48 hours straight. I’ve never screwed anybody at work. Whereas he has Chef Bernard and Bigfoot, I have La Diabla, whose intimidation factor just decreased significantly. Getting hounded for texting during a slow time of day (oh, and there are plenty) will never achieve the same humiliation of fucking up the soufflé station at CIA’s E Room. I’ve singed and scarred my flesh on pizza pans fresh from the ovens, but I’m not to the point where I can pick up a burning hot frying pan and not even flinch.
I feel slightly closer to Bourdain when I can understand some of the subtleties and connections between restaurants: the harsh fluorescent lighting in the kitchen, the ubiquitous and endearing term papi-chulo, the tension between the waitrons and cooks. But more interesting is what I can’t relate to. The descriptions Anthony gives of his former coworkers and his own past experiences are brutal, depicting the professional kitchen as a place full of transient, seedy people, looking for the next fix, whatever it may be. Perhaps its big apples to oranges to compare a kitchen in 1970s New York to one in Chicago today. And perhaps the local chain that employs me is essentially just an hour-plus commitment fast-food joint that attempts a classy exterior as a veneer. Don’t get me wrong, the place is generally and comparatively sanitary to other restaurants, but for fucks sake, we have plastic plates. Is it that big of a deal to want to wear some comfortable jeans while I work, Diabla?
Alas, the freedom and flexibility of the job is what keeps me there. I can keep an apartment in a trendy neighborhood, enjoy an occasional exotic meal and more often unnecessary drinks. I’ll make that trip to India eventually, and I’ll keep writing with my time allotted. I can’t expect myself to be someone I’m not. I take comfort in the fact that I can be inspired by Bourdain (or Sarah Kane or Francis Bacon or Carrie Brownstein). I recognize I will never achieve their level of craft or artistic ingenuity or general ability to kick Life’s ass. But the life of a server is different than that of a chef. For them, it is life. 13 hour days, six days a week and then some. That’s the norm. For a server, it’s more, as a coworker pointed out, limbo. It’s between things. It’s while you’re waiting for a writing career to take off. But the cramped spaces of a restaurant aided by the microcosmic server station in an over-capacity restaurant evolve into existential claustrophobia. Which means I have no one to blame but myself if things don’t go my way: my books are still being written. Shit. I’ve got work in the morning. Let’s go to Estelle’s.
