I didn't want to be a killjoy. To dampen the enthusiasm at this proud and
happy event by being a naysayer and a cynic was too close to what I'd
been at Vassar, and those days, I liked to think, were behind me. I was
sneakier in my strategy to put an end to this outrage. I submitted my own
earnest proposal, requesting that I be allowed to contribute a pièce
montée to the festivities, even going so far as to submit a sketch of my
proposed project:
It would be a life-sized tallow sculpture, depicting a white-toqued baby
Jesus, with knife and steel in his tiny hands, held by an adoring
Madonna. Needless to say, my beef-fat Madonna horrified the
graduation committee. Rather than offend my disturbingly sincere, if
quirky, religious beliefs, they scotched the whole display. An animal-fat
Sistine Chapel was not something they wanted all those parents and
dignitaries to see. And who knows what could happen if they opened the
door for me? What other demented expressions of personal hell might
wind up lining the Great Hall?
The ensuing ceremony was thus spared the prospect of decomposing
aspics depicting Moses parting the Red Sea, or melting wedding cakes. A
few days later, I had my diploma. I was now a graduate of the best
cooking school in the country—a valuable commodity on the open
market—I had field experience, a vocabulary and a criminal mind.
I was a danger to myself and others.
THE RETURN OF MAL CARNE
MY TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO Provincetown—halfway through the
program at CIA—came the following summer. Newly invigorated with
obscure cooking terms, The Professional Chef and the Larousse
Gastronomique under my arm, and my head filled with half-baked ideas
and a few techniques I'd seen and maybe even tried a few times, I
rejoined my old comrades at the Dreadnaught, to much curiosity and