Swagger
I can slice a bell pepper motherfucking thin. I chop chives so small they look like green glitter on a white plate. I can hold down a hot station on a Saturday night when all the 8:15’s came late and the 8:30’s came early so everybody in the restaurant needs their beets at the exact same time.
I’ve learned so much in the last year, and in the last few months especially. It makes me feel powerful to see what I can do and how I stretch myself to accommodate new situations. I’m in awe of my ability to learn new skills at an age, in my mid-thirties, when it felt like I already knew everything I was going to. (Though doesn’t it always feel that way?)
It feels uncomfortable to write about myself with such bravado, but all of this is as much about my opportunities as how I’ve used them. I’ve gained these skills through hard work, but I know how lucky I am to be in an environment where I get to grow and flex them. So many jobs don’t encourage learning new things, not really. The message from the top is to quietly take care of routine tasks and all the tedious details and the message from peers is to quietly get away with doing as little work as possible. When you do care, in those environments, you often end up taking on more of the administrative work that is necessary but invisible to the larger company. You’re an unsung bureaucratic hero who rarely gets respect from the colleagues and bosses taking advantage of your willingness.
Every single night, I summon everything I have. I pour all my energy and focus into getting plates of food out like it’s the most important thing in the world. It’s exhausting. Many hours of frenzied activity followed by laborious cleaning day after day after day. Sometimes in the middle of a shift, I imagine lying on my couch watching Star Trek and I ask myself why I’m doing this job. My answer arrives at the end, when I stretch my aching neck, receive my goodnight hug from Amanda-Lee, and feel proud of the work I did. I know that I pushed myself and I’m satisfied. I don’t love every minute of the work, but it sure beats the existential despair of boredom.
To be capable at skillful work, and to be surrounded by people who care about it, is a beautiful way to live. I know that even once attained, it’s a temporary state. To keep learning, I’ll have to keep moving and pushing myself into new situations. For now though, I’ve got enough on my plate. I can show up, do my thing, and exult in the satisfaction of work well done.
What I’m reading
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, by Anthony Bourdain
They had style and swagger, and they seemed afraid of nothing. They drank everything in sight, stole whatever wasn’t nailed down, and screwed their way through the floor staff, bar customers and casual visitors like nothing I’d ever seen or imagined. They carried big, badass knives, which they kept honed and sharpened to a razor’s edge.
This is not what I mean. I know how people feel about Bourdain and I know this was written two decades ago, so I’m trying to keep reading with an open mind. But this is the kind of swagger that makes the term repellant. Swagger traditionally has been so inseparable from machismo that it’s clear it wasn’t meant to be accessible to some of us. (When Bourdain does mention women line cooks, the only adjective he can summon to express his admiration for them is “studly.” His respect seems to extend just as far as they act like men.)
This brand of kitchen swagger is about sexual conquest, humiliation as a teaching tool, and a chain of contempt extending down the hierarchy of stations. I’m sure it was the norm in restaurants until fairly recently and probably still is in many of them. Certain types of toughness, like indifference to physical discomfort or pain, are still part of my experience at my mostly female/queer kitchen, but luckily the ideas of superiority and domination don’t have such a hold there. Turns out you don’t need all that to carry a badass knife and wield it with power.