Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [99]
I stood in the doorway to the cellar prep kitchen and smoked a cigarette nervously. We were in that eerie, eye-of-the-hurricane calm. In ten minutes, when the next wave of hungry public had been seated and breaded and watered, there'd be a punishing rush - the slide filling up with orders all at once, the action swinging from station to station, boiling up the line like a Drano enema. First, the salad guy would get hit, then the saute station and finally the grill, until everything came down at once - the whole bunch of us in the cramped kitchen struggling and sweating and cursing to move orders out without falling in the weeds. We had only a few moments of peace to go, and I smoked and fidgeted and half-listened to what my crew was talking about.
The tone of the repartee was familiar, as was the subject matter, a strangely comfortable background music to most of my waking hours over the last two decades or so - and I realized that, my God. . . I've been listening to the same conversation for twenty-five years!
Who's the bigger homo? Who takes it in the ass? Who, exactly, at this particular moment, is a pédé, a maricón, a fanocchio, a puta a pato? It's all about dick, you see. It's chupa mis huevos time, time for mama la ping, take it in your culo time, motherfucker, you pinche baboso, crying little woman. And your vierga? It looks like a fucking half-order of merguez - muy, muy, muy chica . . . like an insecto.
This is the real international language of cuisine, I realized, watching my French sous-chef, American pâtissier, Mexican grill, salad and fry guy exchange playful insults with the Bengali runner and the Dominican dishwasher. It's been, for twenty-five years, one long, never-ending game of the dozens, played out in four or five languages.
As an art form, cooktalk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules, with a rigid, traditional framework in which one may operate. All comments must, out of historical necessity, concern involuntary rectal penetration, penis size, physical flaws or annoying mannerisms or defects.
The rules can be confusing. Cabrone, for instance, which translates roughly to 'Your wife/girlfriend is getting fucked by another guy right now - and you're too much of a pussy to do anything about it' can also mean 'my brother', depending on inflection and tone. The word 'fuck' is used principally as a comma. 'Suck my dick' means 'Hang on a second' or 'Could you please wait a moment?' And 'Get your shit together with your fucking meez, or I come back there and fuck you in the culo' means 'Pardon me, comrade, but I am concerned with your state of readiness for the coming rush. Is your mise-en-place properly restocked, my brother?'
Pinche wey means 'fucking guy', but can also mean 'you adorable scamp' or 'pal'. But if you use the word 'pal' - or worse, 'my friend' in my kitchen, it'll make people paranoid. 'My friend' famously means 'asshole' in the worst and most sincere sense of that word. And start being too nice to a cook on the line and he might think he's getting canned tomorrow. My vato locos are, like most line cooks, practitioners of that centuries-old oral tradition in which we - all of us - try to find new and amusing ways to talk about dick.
Homophobic, you say? Sub-mental? Insensitive to gender preference, and the gorgeous mosaic of an ethnically diverse work force? Gee . . . you might be right. Does a locker-room environment like this make it tougher for women, for instance? Yep. Most women, sadly. But what the system seeks, what it requires, is someone, anyone, who can hold up their station, play the game without getting bent out of shape and taking things personally. If you are easily offended by direct aspersions on your lineage, the circumstances