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.

Should I post this? Maybe not

I have my reasons for thinking these things, but in saying them, I break many taboos. That's why I need to say them. I came to the conclusion that there is no one on earth I can share this with, and that appalls me and doesn't surprise me.

Why did I keep this? Oh well. . .

Sometimes I'm like, I mean. I'm like, and he's like, and I'm. An icon, I mean. Iconic.

There. Now that I've got(ten) that out of my system. . . 'Jever wonder why it's so hard to throw some things out?

Like the bouquet from your wedding or something, now withered into a crumbling yellow horror with cobwebs and life forms living in it?

Hey?

So here's mine, what I can't throw out. Old columns. I started writing columns for teeny community newspapers in the mid-'80s, and soon became hooked. I kept them all. I was afraid, if I didn't, I would disappear (or at least the writing would).

I have kept everything I've ever written for publication. Over 25 years of weeklies, not to mention all the dailies and magazines, that's not just hundreds - it's thousands.

Okaysothen. So then, my best friend, the sister of my soul, the sister I never had coz my own sister is a poisonous banshee (and I hope she reads this!), the sister God sent me when I was about to fall apart, is going through a hard time about her high school reunion. She phoned me about it the other day.

Say the words "high school reunion" to the average sane person, and it will have about the same effect as the word "biopsy". It is not a good thing.

For you will see all the thrivers still thriving, or pretending to. Everyone else will have died, or won't show up.

Myself, I am sure nobody would remember me. Jeez, four years of my life! I was a cipher who drank on the weekends and attracted 35-year-old married men. A freak.

I got a whole novel out of it, Mallory (Turnstone Press - I'm afraid you'll have to get it used).

But in this crumbling old column, I played it for laughs. I can't find any other way to transcribe it except to take a quill pen and run it between my legs (oops) and write the damn thing out. But here it is, Margaret Gunning's Between the Lines, published in the Hinton Parklander on October 28, 1986.

Do you remember her?

She was the girl who sat in front of you in high school - the one with the long, straight blonde hair that always looked like something out of a shampoo commercial.

She also had a model's figure, a pert name (something like Pammie or Casey), perfect teeth, hundreds of friends, a Corvette, and a straight-A average. And oh, yes - she was head cheerleader in her spare time.

You don't remember her? Well, maybe you remember him. Roddie played the romantic lead in all the high school musical productions. (They didn't just pick him for his looks. He also had perfect pitch.) He was a pretty busy guy - captain of the football team, head of the debating club, president of Student's Council - so it was a wonder he ever found time to go out with that blonde-haired chick who sat in front of you.

But he did, every Saturday night. You'd see them together at all the dances - Pammie and Roddie, the dream couple of Everywhere High. Two perfect smiles, without the benefit of braces - and nary a zit between them.

One of my favorite activities in high school was dreaming up sadistic futures for these two. You see, I was one of those girls with a "nice personality", which meant I spent most of my time sitting by the phone and praying it would ring. It's not that I was jealous of them. Oh, no. Why should it bother me that they seemed to have every human advantage ever invented?

But sometimes I would get a little bored during science class, a little sick of staring at that perfect platinum waterfall of hair in front of me. When I wasn't devising sneaky ways to stick a wad of gum on the back of Pammie's chair (so that her fabulous tresses would get stuck the minute she leaned back), my mind would start to drift.

I'd dream that Pammie finally married Roddie, and on the first day of their honeymoon they'd discover they couldn't stand each other. Pammie would break out in a hideous red rash whenever she looked at him. And Roddie? The minute the honeymoon was over, he'd start making advances to his secretary.

From then on, things would deteriorate. Pammie's mother would move in with them and start cooking rich, greasy, fattening meals that would ruin Pammie's pert little figure within six months. Roddie would get caught up in some crooked investment scheme and be thrown in jail. They'd lose their home and have to move in with Roddie's mother (who made Pammie's mom look like Julia Child).

Meanwhile, their seven children (aged eight to fourteen) would all become juvenile delinquents.

Ah, me - the sweet fantasies of youth! Do you want to know what really happened to this golden couple, this Barbie and Ken of my teens?

I'll tell you. They've been happily married for the past 15 years, with a lovely home in a nice quiet suburb. Roddie is a corporate lawyer, and Pammie is a clinical psychologist. Their income allows them to take nice little jaunts to Europe every summer while their 2.2 children (who both have perfect teeth) stay home with their live-in nanny.

Pammie still has that long, straight blonde hair like something out of a shampoo commercial. She weighs the same as in high school, and can still fit into her cheerleader outfit. And Roddie has become even handsomer with age. Sort of like Paul Newman.

Is this fair? Of course not. But neither was high school.

So, I've decided I'm never going to go to my class reunion.

Or if I do, I might just accidentally leave a wad of well-chewed Juicy Fruit on the back of Pammie's chair. . .