This is For the Lover in You: Anthony Bourdain

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

To open, Anthony Bourdain is one of my heroes. He’s up there with James Baldwin in my heart. Tony is actually one of the few celebrity deaths that took a moment to recover. Heavy D, Big Pun, Anthony Bourdain. Judge yo mama.

I resisted watching the documentary because halfway through Parts Unknown he tells us, so clearly, that he is fatalistic, suicidal. He tells us that he is crushed by pressure and guilt. He warns us like Phyllis Hyman warned my parents in her songs. “Living in Confusion.” “Living All Alone.” But just like Phyllis Hyman his words were too beautiful for us to stop and say “Is Tony okay?”

So I watch the documentary, and I think I want to cry, but the tears won’t come. And at the end, I think will people remember me so?

Tony is so human, so real. He says “happiness is a fresh pack,” as he smokes his first cigarette of the day. I think of him smoking and writing and cooking and loving with all his heart. He is counterculture which in his case is to be a lover.

One of the things I love most about Tony is that he was a a reader, a hungry reader. In the documentary Anthony Bourdain muses, saying “My early heroes were musicians and writers. The idea that you could have adventures, no matter how antisocial you were, and then make them somehow legitimate by writing something beautiful about them was a concept that took an early hold on me.” When they started filming A Cook’s Tour, the producers realize quickly that Tony’s knowledge is not from travel, it’s from books. In this way, his shows are that too—we can’t afford to go to Cambodia or Laos or Beirut, but we get to be there with Tony.

Of course, like me, Tony is a romantic. How could he not be? Food and love have always been intertwined in the senses. “I love Vietnam. Maybe it’s a pheromones thing. Like when you meet the love of your life for the first time. She just somehow inexplicably smells and feels right. You sense, given the opportunity, this is the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with.” Art, food, and love. You can’t be a creative without that flash of desire to freeze the moment, everything from the sunlight to the croaking frogs (or the honking cars), and try in some way to bottle it. On paper, on canvas, or on a plate.

I want what Anthony Bourdain had. For him, “the greatest sin was mediocrity.” I want the lived experience of visiting the unknown, for once, outside of books, just as he did. I also know that I would be, just as Tony was, incredibly morose and difficult as I dealt with these prized experiences. I would be giddy, then guilty, then insecure, then depressed. I think perhaps that’s the cycle of lovers. Tony, take it or leave it, was a beautiful writer precisely because he was a true lover.

I love lovers. I gravitate towards those who love something or someone. It’s hard to find lovers these days. But Anthony Bourdain was a lover—a fierce lover. I miss feeling like his companion on his adventures. I miss Tony.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is now streaming on HBO Max.