Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

by Anthony Bourdain

simple pleasures of cold beer, a hammock, and local BBQ joints,

I’d been weeks without shoes, eating every meal with my hands. Who wouldn’t love that? I thought.

nightly attempts at suicide ended—and I believed that I was good for her as well. She seemed, for a while, genuinely happy and relaxed on the island’s out-of-the-way beaches, perfectly satisfied, it appeared to me, with a routine of inexpensive johnnycake sandwiches and roadside pork ribs grilled in sawed-off fifty-five-gallon drums. She took long swims by herself, emerging from the water looking beautiful and refreshed. I thought, surely this is a good thing. Maybe we are good for each other. We drank at sailor bars, took mid-afternoon naps, mixed rum punches with a frequency that, over time, became a little worrisome. She was damaged, I knew. Like me, I thought—flattering myself.