to the next kitchen and make a smashing success of himself; ten years in
the future, you might find yourself standing next to him at the James
Beard Awards dinner, where he's just picked up his award for Best New
Chef, and resplendent in his tux he turns and pees smilingly on your
pants leg. These are all considerations when peering down the line at
some troubled and troubling employee and pondering his fate.
Survival has its costs.
I took a fateful cab ride many years ago. Rolling back from the Lower
East Side with a bunch of close friends, all of us fresh from scoring
dope, I jokingly remarked on an article I'd seen, detailing the statistical
likelihood of successfully detoxing.
"Only one in four has a chance at making it. Ha, ha, ha," I said, my words
ringing immediately painful and hollow as soon as I'd said them. I
counted our number in the back of that rattling Checker Marathon. Four.
And right there, I knew that if one of us was getting off dope, and staying
off dope, it was going to be me. I wasn't going to let these guys drag me
down. I didn't care what it took, how long I'd known them, what we'd
been through together or how close we'd been. I was going to live. I was
the guy.
I made it. They didn't.
I don't feel guilty about that.
"We're in a lifeboat . . ." begins one of my standard inspirationals to new
sous-chefs. "We're four days out to sea, with no rescue in sight. There
are two Snickers bars and a tiny hunk of salt pork left in our stores, and
that fat bastard by the stern is getting crazier with every hour, becoming
more and more irrational and demanding, giving that Snickers bar long,
lingering looks—even though he's too weak to help with the rowing or
the bailing any more. He presents a clear and present danger to the rest