You told Yesenin you’d begun to doubt if the two of you ever would’ve been friends.
He said yes to the darkness. You said yes before breakfast to bacon. Two yeses don’t
always a friendship make. Yet, you did add writing him letters may have kept you alive.
Maybe just getting it off your chest to a dead Russian poet was poor American poet
therapy. You definitely called the daily plate of shit a plate of shit: How fun to have no
money at all. These rejection slips are making me a bigger person. I can’t pay my taxes and
will be sent to prison but it will probably be a good experience. This thin soup tastes great.
Do the things that don’t kill you make you stronger? Well, maybe, unless they kill you.
But it all makes me wonder about your friendship with Bourdain. True, he came along
later in your life when your daily plate spun vivid with truffles and Bordeaux. But he
said yes to the darkness too. For some of us the darkness is always crouching at the
door whether life is plated with shit or Muscovy duck. I’d like to believe your
friendship with Bourdain kept him alive a little longer than if you hadn’t been there.
You know he did say he wanted to be you when he grew up. But then he said it was too
late. Still, it’s possible that date on the calendar when he would visit your kitchen and
the two of you stood shouldered, beers in hand, over a stove stirring the elk and
antelope carbonnade was enough to keep going, to keep returning to earth, to say yes.
I suppose that was his last meal with you. A carol sung, and then he went out. You
walked with him as far as you could, the kind of friend you both needed so badly.