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I like to think it was Monsieur Saint-Jour's fault. But of course, it was me all along.

FOOD IS SEX

IN 1973, UNHAPPILY IN love, I graduated high school a year early so I could chase the object of my desire to Vassar College - the less said about that part of my life, the better, believe me. Let it suffice to say that by age eighteen I was a thoroughly undisciplined young man, blithely flunking or fading out of college (I couldn't be bothered to attend classes). I was angry at myself and at everyone else. Essentially, I treated the world as my ashtray. I spent most of my waking hours drinking, smoking pot, scheming, and doing my best to amuse, outrage, impress and penetrate anyone silly enough to find me entertaining. I was - to be frank a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking. Rudderless and unhappy, I went in with some friends on a summer share in Provincetown, Cape Cod. It was what my friends were doing and that was enough for me.

Provincetown was (and is) essentially a small Portuguese fishing village all the way out on the fish-hooked tip of the Cape. During the summer months, however, it became Times Square/Christopher Street-by-the-Sea. This was the '70s, remember, so factor that in when you conjure up the image of a once quaint New England port town, clogged with tourists, day-trippers, hippies, drifters, lobster poachers, slutty chicks, dopers, refugees from Key West, and thousands upon thousands of energetically cruising gay men. For a rootless young man with sensualist inclinations, it was the perfect getaway.

Unfortunately, I needed money. My on-again-off-again girlfriend spun pizza for a living. My room-mates, who had summeredin P-town before, had jobs waiting for them. They cooked, washed dishes, waited tables - usually at night - so we all went to the beaches and ponds each morning, smoked pot, sniffed a little coke, dropped acid and sunbathed nude, as well as indulging in other healthy teenage activities.

Tired of my drain on the household finances, one annoyed and practical room-mate hooked me up with a dish washing gig at the restaurant where she waited tables. Dishwashers (sud busters, aka pearl divers) were the most transient breed in the seasonal restaurant business, so when one goof ball failed to show up for work for two days, I was in. It was my introduction to the life and at first, I did not go happily.

Scrubbing pots and pans, scraping plates and peeling mountains of potatoes, tearing the little beards off mussels, picking scallops and cleaning shrimp did not sound or look attractive to me. But it was from these humble beginnings that I began my strange climb to chefdom. Taking that one job, as dishwasher at the Dreadnaught, essentially pushed me down the path I still walk to this day.

The Dreadnaught was - well, you've eaten there, or someplace like it: a big, old, ramshackle driftwood pile, built out over the water on ancient wooden pylons. In bad weather, the waves would roll under the dining-room floor and thud loudly against the sea wall. Grey wood shingles, bay windows, and inside, the classic Olde New Englande/Rusty Scupper/Aye Matey/Cap'n Whats's decor: hanging fishnets, hurricane lamps, buoys, nauticalbric-a-brac, the bars fashioned from halved lifeboats. Call it Early Driftwood.

We served fried clams, fried shrimp, fried flounder, fried scallops, French fries, steamed lobsters, a few grilled and broiled steaks, chops and fish fillets to the mobs of tourists who'd pour into town each week between the 4th of July and Labor Day.

I was surprisingly happy in my work. The Dreadnaught management were an aged, retiring and boozy lot who stayed out of the kitchen most of the time. The waitresses were attractive and cheerful, free with drinks for the kitchen and with their favors as well.

And the cooks?

The cooks ruled.

There was Bobby, the chef, a well-toasted, late-thirtyish ex-hippie who, like a lot of people in P-town, had come