Anthony Bourdain: the making of a saint

I can't write about celebrities like Anthony Bourdain, whom I didn't particularly admire, with any great degree of understanding, because I didn't know the man or his work to any depth. I do notice however that the "bad boy" of the foodie world is now being treated like some kind of saint, rhapsodized over in a way that probably would have embarrassed him.

I doubt if it will go down well with people to reveal that I am miffed and even disturbed by all this "but he had everything" talk that I am hearing, over, and over, and over again, even from celebrities whom you'd think would know better.

They don't, apparently.

If they would dig just a little bit deeper into Bourdain's life history, they'd see something different. He was very honest about the lowest times in his life, and left some cryptic clues even in his last few months that more than hinted at his thoughts and even his intentions. Why did no one notice when he left such an obvious trail of bread crumbs (so to speak)?

I've lifted this small piece from one of those entertainment websites - so sue me, people, it's just a quote! - which tells a totally different story from all this "but he was so happy/looked so good/was doing so well" stuff going around, the "we had no idea" that reveals how shallow his surrounds must have been, and the so-called loyal, loving people in it.

Such people, if they were really loving and loyal, would be telling some sort of truth beyond the lionizing bathos I am reading. Wasn't HE known for his honesty? No one is as saintly, as loving, as perfect as all this, especially not a "bad boy" known for using heroin (and heroin addicts, I know from grim experience, are extremely ruthless people until they get into recovery).

I get the sense of someone who had been screaming in pain for years, who had  carefully maintained a facade (which I thought was ghostlike at the end, the eyes frighteningly dead and glazed), and whose friends did not WANT to connect with that other, much more complicated, tortured soul. The regular Anthony they had known all along matched all their expectations and met all their needs. You don't tamper with that, because then you might have to try to have those needs met elsewhere, and that's too much work.

"But he had money and power and fame, so how could he be unhappy?", "But he had so much to live for","But he looked fine to me" and similar statements make me bloody sick. People die from this, and I have seen enough of it.

Anthony Bourdain Revealed He Was 'Aimless and 
Regularly Suicidal' in 2010 Memoir

By DANIEL S. LEVINE - June 9, 2018

After his first marriage ended in 2005, Anthony Bourdain felt
suicidal, the late celebrity chef revealed in his 2010 book Medium Raw.
In 2005, Bourdain's 20-year marriage to Nancy Pitoski came to
an end. In Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of
Food and the People Who Cook,

Bourdain said he felt "aimless and regularly suicidal" while in
the Caribbean after the break-up, reports Page Six.
He described getting drunk and stoned - “the kind of
drunk where you’ve got to put a hand over one eye to
see straight." He said he would
"peel out" in a 4X4 after nightly visits to brothels.
Bourdain said he met a woman in London, and his
"nightly attempts at suicide ended."

Two years after the divorce, Bourdain married Ottavia Busia,
with whom he had a daughter, Ariana. They split amicably
in 2016, and Bourdain soon began dating actress Asia Argento
before his death. The Kitchen Confidential author was always
open up his personal battles.In a 2016 episode of CNN's
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,
Bourdain saw a therapist in Argentina, where he discussed
the feeling of loneliness he gets on the road.

"I’m not going to get a lot of sympathy from people,
frankly,” Bourdain told the therapist. “I mean, I have

the best job in the world, let’s face it. I go anywhere
I want, I do what I want. That guy over there loading sausages onto
the grill, that’s work. This is not so bad. It’s alright. I’ll make it.”
In his last PEOPLE interview in February, Bourdain said he felt a
"responsibility" to
live for Ariana, who lives in New York
with her mother.

"I also do feel I have things to live for,” Bourdain told the
magazine at the time.
“There have been times, honestly, in my life that I figured, ‘I’ve
had a good run — why not just do this stupid thing, this selfish thing
… jump off a cliff into water of indeterminate depth.'"

Bourdain also said he never saw himself retiring.
“I gave up on that. I’ve tried. I just think I’m just too nervous,
neurotic, driven,” the Parts Unknownhost told PEOPLE.
“I would have had a different answer a few years
ago. I might have deluded myself into thinking that
I’d be happy in a hammock or gardening. But no, I’m quite
sure I can’t... I’m going to pretty much die in the saddle.”

Bourdain was found dead in his hotel in France on Friday at the age of 61.

If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Postscript. Of course I am in favor of people getting help and reaching out to talk to someone if they are in pain or despair. But think for a minute. If you were suffering from the worst depression of your life, how could you summon the energy to "reach out for help"? The very phrase puts all the onus on the sufferer, and NONE on the people around that person who are never (ever) expected to reach out to THEM. If they do, it's often with those "cheer up", "life could be worse", "stop feeling sorry for yourself" messages that just make a person want to end it right here and right now.

I am also here to tell you that all this "help" very often doesn't help, or just isn't available. I was fifty years old before I got a correct diagnosis and found a competent medical practitioner and began to truly recover. Civilians don't know about this and will maybe pile on me and say I am a naysayer, but those times I've talked about this in front of a room full of sufferers, heads are nodding all over the room.

I have a lot more to say about this, but I doubt if I can stand to open that box. Though others gain a huge audience from this sort of tell-all confessional, in my case it tends to make everyone jump ship in a hurry. So I will end it here.

And he glittered when he walked

Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

I remember that we "took" this poem in school, way back in Grade 7 or thereabouts, and the chagrin, the consternation of the class: "But why did he DO that?" "He had everything." "Everyone envied him." "It's not fair." "It's a joke, isn't it?" " That would never happen."

My "favorite" was this lovely statement, which I have heard echoed many times and from many people - I mean adults who should know better, not kids:

"You kill yourself because you're crazy, and you're only crazy if you want to be."

I wonder now, if that kid is still alive, whether he thinks the same way.

I'm not supposed to think about any of this, of course. As one writer said, Robin Williams' death caused many people to suddenly come out of the closet and proclaim, "Yes, me too". But where are they now? No doubt they have retreated in terror, hoping against hope that no one remembers their foolishness.

I've written about this before. Halloween is coming, and in the past I've seen "mental patient" costumes, often with restraints and lurid "nurses" with syringes full of "sedatives". It's funny, isn't it? Come on. Come on, don't you have a sense of humour?

No. If that's what humour is, then no.

My brother was in these "loony bins", "nut wards", etc., on and off for years. I loved him dearly, and by his own admission he was not just crazy but "ca-RAZY". Eerily, I used to compare him to Robin Williams in his madcap ability to riff on outrageous themes, putting on characters and taking them off like masks, only to change at light speed to another subject entirely. One time he did a riff on the '60s TV show The Real McCoys, doing every voice from Grandpa to Luke to Little Luke to Hassie to  Kate to - his personal favorite - Pepino. Some of it was so x-rated that we fell out of our chairs.

He died in 1980, not of suicide as almost everyone assumes, but an accident. Two months later, John Lennon was shot and killed. It was a point of despair in my life.

So what is it about people who seem to have everything, who do themselves in anyway? I think of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, relapsing most awfully into a habit he thought he had beaten. I think of Amy Winehouse drinking a gallon of vodka and poisoning herself at age 27. I think we think they are immune. Not just that they are rich and famous, but loved - aren't they loved, too, I mean by friends and family?

Are they? Is there - is there balm in Gilead?

I have already published a couple of eerily similar photos of Robin Williams with dear friends who hold him so tenderly, he looks like a baby bird fallen from the nest. I once read that people who don't feel loved are like sawdust dolls with a tiny hole in the bottom. It keeps trickling out, almost imperceptibly, until the person is desperate for more supplies to keep from bleeding out.

What got all this started again? Well, it's close to Halloween which makes me think of all those awful mental patient costumes, totally dehumanizing but seen as ghoulishly funny, and CERTAINLY not anything to be offended about.  (You're too sensitive, you know? That's your whole problem.) We don't have Parkinson's or MS or ALS Halloween costumes, but then again, these illnesses are "physical", "real", no one's fault, with the sufferers seen as dignified and courageous, and therefore not frightening or subject to mockery. After all, it would be in very poor taste. 

 It's also from remembering Williams, who seems to have died a very long time ago (but at the same time, only yesterday), but most of all it's because yesterday I bought Billy Crystal's memoir, Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys? It's typical self-deprecating Crystal humour, but not excoriating, with a sweetness, a gentleness that I have always loved about him. In fact, he is my favorite comedian.

He and Robin Williams were best friends. Closer than brothers, in many ways. This book was written and published before his suicide, but on the back is a quote from Williams that now seems poignant and unsettling: "This book is kick-ass funny and truly unique. A Hollywood autobiography with only one wife, no rehab, a loving family, and loyal friends."

I wonder if Williams secretly feared he had none of those things. It's a bit scary that he focused on that, as if to shame himself for having three wives and multiple trips to rehab.  To imply, almost, that Crystal was a superior version of himself - or, at least, not so scarred, not so vulnerable.

I don't want to go much farther into this because I don't fancy triggering off a lousy day of depression. It wouldn't do anything to change the situation. But oh how I wish people would wake up. I thought of a scenario that might have saved him - everyone has a theory, so here goes, here is mine:

He is pacing the floor, both despondent and frantic, knowing there is no way out of the crushing adversity that is coming at him from all sides. Soon he will be paralyzed from Parkinson's, his career will be over, and he won't be able to take part in the cycling that has kept him sane. Rehab did no good at all and made everything worse. He looks back with shame over the battlefield of his life, and for that moment he can't see anything good about it. At all. He has made a mess of things, and there is only one way out.

Though it is agonizing to do, though he has to stand up to an immense shame that is nearly overwhelming, he goes over to the phone, picks up the receiver, dials 9-1-1.

"Hello. I'm going to kill myself. Come get me, please. NOW."

CODA. From Leonard Bernstein's Mass. I used to carry this around written on a little piece of paper. Once a counsellor took it from me and read it in a sing-songy, Betty Crocker voice, then handed it back to me saying, "Oh, that's nice."

I don't know where to start

There are scars I could show

If I opened my heart

But how far, Lord, how far can I go?

I don't know. 

What I say I don't feel

What I feel I don't show

What I show isn't real

What is real, Lord

I don't know 

No, no, no. . . I don't know.