First Date with Anthony Bourdain

Run, Don't Walk

The first movie we saw together was a documentary about Anthony Bourdain, which, in hindsight, is like gifting your personal well-worn paperback copy of “Misery” to someone you just started sleeping with. In my defense, it wasn’t my idea. Before this relationship, I didn’t even really know about Bourdain—the punk-rock epicurean who smoked like a French philosophy professor and made hand-feeding look like a profound act of rebellion. The Bourdain idolization was, at least initially, my nice-girl girlfriend’s. She’s really into dark ponies. Bourdain, David Foster Wallace, Mary Karr…. I’m not comparing myself to any of the idols above, but I’ve also lived a cinematic (read: fucked up) life, and sans fame, fortune, and global audience, she was into me too.

So we went to the local movie house to see the documentary Roadrunner, which starts with the bleak finale of Bourdain’s life. In true No Reservations fashion, Roadrunner unflinchingly declares, “Yes, he killed himself and we’re all still some combination of pissed off and heartbroken over it. It was a fucked up thing to do. Now, sit down and shut up because this is a movie about how he lived, and if you cry too loud, you’ll miss the part where he insults Emeril.” It’s bracing. It’s direct. From what I know about him now, it’s very Tony.

The thing about Bourdain is that he never asked to be in the spotlight. Not really. Sure, he must’ve liked the sound of his own cynical monologues over sweeping drone shots of Mexican food carts. Still, in the tension between being a working stiff nobody and the last great artist fantasy, I can see how everyone saw themselves in him, especially the insecure, awkward, hungry parts. The parts that whisper, “You’re not lovable, but maybe you’re interesting enough to distract from that.”

In the theater, my big-feelings girlfriend, with blue eyes as wide as any ocean, did all the things: gasped, clutched, and discreetly cried into the sleeve of my shirt. Ever the ADHD stereotype, I struggled to stay seated despite being a little stoned (this was pre-sobriety) and tried not to obsess about the two women behind us who arrived late and loudly, dragging purses the size of Fiats and crunching popcorn like it was broken glass.

As the credits rolled, we walked out into the humid July evening, with the kind of air that makes you feel like you’ve been soft-boiled. We stood at the curb and hugged longingly. Our relationship was brand new, but our friendship was years old and pandemic-bonded. Our connection radiated: "Maybe we’ll stay alive a little longer if we hold on to each other.” We didn’t directly talk about suicide that night, but we kind of did—through hand squeezes and weepy eyes whose heavy silences expressed a shared hope that we might keep each other anchored.

We sat at a picnic table on the empty patio and pulled out our respective notebooks. I ordered kombucha that claimed to taste like beer but didn’t (they never do), a pulpy lime soda water, and a small buttered popcorn - because my stomach didn’t quite hurt enough from who knows when any of us will die, anxiety. I love to rub salt in the wound.

Maybe it was the lingering high, but definitely it was being in love with someone who understands what it means to write your own meaning into existence.

She’s a writer too, which is both intoxicating and profoundly unsafe, like dating someone who also knows where you hide the spare key to all your childhood trauma. But she’s the kind of writer who makes me want to write full sentences instead of cryptic poetic fragments, so I stay. Challenge accepted.

We sat there, drinking our drinks and watching the traffic blur into something vaguely beautiful. “The real show’s out here,” I said, which sounded like something Tony might mutter in a place where the political situation is described as “complicated.”

She nodded, because she’s kind enough not to correct me when I’m being pretentious. Or maybe she knew what I meant.

And what I meant was this: The world is too brutal to get through alone.

But also, nobody really wants to hear that.

Watching Bourdain’s friends eulogize him felt like watching a wake thrown by the only people who didn’t think he was immortal. They knew him. They knew the rot that settles in your soul when you’re brilliant and lonely and the brilliance stops being enough.

So there we were, future wife and I, trying to stitch together a whole new life, an Us, in a world that feels like it’s been through the wash too many times. So many former safe places now threadbare, but love—that’s the stitch. That’s the part that holds.

And maybe that’s the real inheritance of Tony’s influence. Not the legacy of his success, or his books, or the episodes that made you wish you were brave enough to eat cobra heart, but the lesson that no one is an island. We all need someone to know us. Someone to hold on to.

Even if that someone has kombucha breath and buttered fingers.

Even if you’re terrified.

Even if you don’t believe in happy endings.

Hold on anyway.

Always,

Frances

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