Try arguing the virtues of Nello on chowhound.com, or a similar online meeting ground for knowledgeable food nerds, and prepare to get pilloried. So, why would people who can afford to eat anywhere obligingly allow themselves to be charged outrageous amounts of money for food that’s, on its very best day, mediocre?
A clue came to me on St. Barths as I lay on a chaise lounge, half drunk in the moonlight, various Gaddafis and their guests frolicking in the background. Perhaps it’s that they’re so ugly, these “beautiful” people. They wear the same ugly clothes, designed by the same misogynistic old queens—who must privately piss themselves with laughter seeing their older, richer clientele squeezing into these outfits…leading one to the observation that the style-makers themselves, the people who decide what the world will wear next year, who’s pretty, what’s “hot” and what’s “not,” are uniformly hideous beyond the lurid imaginings of Cub Scouts round a campfire. Just look at the guest judges on Project Runway or America’s Next Top Model—or at the front row of any fashion show—and you’ll get the idea: a dumpier, less attractive, more badly dressed bunch of customers would be hard to find outside a suburban Dress Barn. Rick James—in the ’70s—could never have gotten away with what Karl Lagerfeld wears every day. He’d have been hooted off the stage. If Donatella Versace showed up at your door selling Amway products, you’d slam it and double-lock it—before calling the neighbors to warn them.
As I looked around the beach, I saw, in the jaundiced light of my unhappiness, the full extent of the horror of this Island of Dr. Moreau I’d willingly marooned myself on. The full spectrum of plastic surgeries gone wrong—right there in the open, curiosities of the flesh, which at a lesser income level would have been confined to the carnival sideshow: mouths that pulled to the side, lips plumped beyond credibility, cheeks filled with golf ball–like lumps, and foreheads frozen so tight you could play snare drum on them. Identical noses…eyes that refused to blink and could barely even close…
And there was my date for the night, in her thousand-dollar plain white T-shirt. Searching—once again—for her cell phone.
It makes sense that restaurant operators—and Robèrt—would prey on these people. They should. They are, after all, in the business of desire—of figuring out what fulfills their clients’ wants and needs. What they want on St. Barths—as elsewhere, I’m guessing—is to feel secure among others of their ilk. Secure that they’ve chosen the right place—the place everybody else in their set will choose. Secure that, if nothing else, everyone else in attendance will have bought into the shared illusion. Where no one will point out the obvious: that they’re too old and too ugly to be wearing what they’re wearing. That the surgery didn’t help. That they can’t—and shouldn’t, in fact—dance, ever again. That they’re eating food that the cleanup guy, who’s going to sweep up after closing, wouldn’t touch with rubber gloves and and-irons. That the rest of the people on this planet, if enough of them knew who they really were—and how they’d made their money—would have their heads quickly on pikes.
In the end, I walked away.
After she lost her cell phone for the fourth time, I saw her drunkenly survey the room, eyeballing other partygoers for suspects. I watched as her insane gaze finally settled on the entourage of a prominent gangster rapper who’d taken over the VIP section of the tented restaurant patio. Specifically on two very large women, thick-necked and unfriendly-looking to begin with, both wearing midnight sunglasses—either of whom could easily have taken me in a fair fight. In the kind of slow-motion approach that so often precedes disaster, I watched as my companion confronted the two women, accusingly demanding to know where her cell phone was.
The music was playing—very loud. So I didn’t hear their reaction.
But assuming they responded with “What the fuck do I want with your cell phone, bitch?” and “You’re accusing us ’cause we’re black!,” they would have been demonstrating impeccable logic. Utterly disgusted, I now no longer cared if, in the weeks to follow, I was found in a culvert, with my feet sawed off. I no longer cared if there’d be a price to pay later for escape. It was all just too awful to bear—much less look at—anymore. I needed to get out now. I’d had enough. Let her dig her own crazy ass out of this ever-building shit storm.
I pulled her over and said as much—then lurched out of the restaurant and down the road. I packed my bag, arranged with the front desk for her to have two more nights at the hotel, should she need to, and then walked the mile or so to the airport, where I spent the night on a bench. I took the first flight out and landed on my old, familiar—and decidedly more friendly—island ten minutes later.
I retrieved my rental car from the long-term parking and drove gratefully home, where I quickly curled up in the fetal position and slept like the dead for twenty-four hours.
I stayed home, avoiding bars, brothels, and even beaches for the rest of my time on the island. I’d had enough. Somewhere along the line, I’d stared Evil in the face and it had frightened me to my core. I don’t know whether it was something I saw on St. Barths—or in the mirror during the worst year of my life—but something had to change. I knew that now.
I Drink Alone
People call me “chef.” Still.
Walking down the street, I’ll hear somebody call that out and my head still swivels to see who’s talking to me. Nine years now since I last took up a pan in anger and I still whip around automatically to that title. Of course, it’s no longer true. I am not a chef. Still, it usually makes me happy when I hear that.
There’s something wonderful about drinking in the afternoon. A not-too-cold pint, absolutely alone at the bar—even in this fake-ass Irish pub. It’s new, built to look like old. Erin Go Bragh bullshit with its four flat screens silently flashing sports crawls for games I don’t care about. The generic Irish bric-a-brac they deliver by the truck-load. Empty moving vans roaming the Irish countryside right now, I imagine, waiting for old Missus Meagher to drop dead into her black pudding so they can buy up the contents of her curio shelves. All of it shipped straight off to a central clearing house, where it’s divvied up between Instant Irish Pubs in New York, Milwaukee, Singapore, and Verona.
I’ve been at this bar before, of course. We all have. Yet I’m strangely, indefensibly happy here. Even the stink of Lysol from the too-clean floor, the fruit flies hovering over the garnish tray do not distract me from a general feeling of well-being.
The food, were I silly enough to ask…well, I know what’s on the menu without looking. Fried zucchini sticks, fried mozzarella, surely there’s calamari in red sauce. Look deeper and there will be indifferently prepared shepherd’s pie; a French dip with salty “gravy” made from canned base; a burger with a limp pickle, an unripe tomato slice, and Simplot Classic frozen French fries. “Bangers and mash” will be an Italian sweet sausage—and there might be a gummy approximation of Irish stew, containing too-lean lamb bits and lots of potatoes.
And what of the seafood options? You are on your fucking own there, boyo.
The bartender is Irish. Jumped a student visa about ten years ago but nothing for him to worry about.
The cook, though, is Mexican. Some poor bastard at ten dollars an hour—and probably has to wash the dishes, too. La Migra take notice of his immigration status—they catch sight of his bowl cut on the way home to Queens and he’ll have a problem. He looks different than the Irish and the Canadians—and he’s got Lou Dobbs calling specifically for his head every night on the radio. (You notice, by the way, that you never hear Dobbs wringing his hands over our border to the North. Maybe the “white” in Great White North makes that particular “alien superhighway” more palatable.) The cook at the Irish bar, meanwhile, has the added difficulty of predators waiting by the subway exit for him (and any other Mexican cooks or dishwashers) when he comes home on Friday payday. He’s invariably cashed his check at a check-cashing store; he’s relatively small—and is unlikely to call the cops. The perfect victim.