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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_water |
When I worked out of the Brooklyn Public Library in Park Slope, I was often beset by the usual characters one would expect lurking idly about during the day, in a space designed for heavy public usage. My friend named "Cotto" was just such a person. He sat next to me huffing and puffing away to attract my notice, shuffling in his seat and looking around, until I finished writing my piece and my headphones came off. Now! He hit me up for my earbuds as soon as I laid them down to the right of me, next to his workstation. Sure...I was a little hesitant about loaning them out, since they're designed to go directly into dirty waxy ear canals but he looked decent enough, so I said "yes".
He thanked me and went back to his work, while I finished my day writing publishing-related emails and copyediting. After we were both done working on the public-access computers (just around the same time, wink wink), we easily struck up and conversation as he handed my little earbuds back to me. He was filling out a test online for a type of hygiene certification that was his boss' direct orders to him because (as he told me), he was a "chef". Aha! I always brighten up around other working artists, since we're rare in the real world. We have a lot in common creatively, and we share the same types of problems out in society. I told him about my website that has "food" built right into its subtitle because I'm on par with a low-level cook, even though I'm not certified to do professional kitchen work, which would be a whole other life trajectory that I do not have time for.
But he certainly did have available time, and from what he told me, it was definitely worth it, at least at first. He was working (at that time) in the kitchen that serviced the VIPs who came to see the Jets play football at the Meadowlands. Whoa! That's a big name to drop 'round the way. Good for him! Finding quality work is the biggest challenge a real working artist has. He said his boss was very strict while running his kitchen ("Top Chefs" usually are, since the competition is fierce and their reputations are always on the line), and he was "riding him" at work about his cleanliness. In order to keep this plush gig, he had to do coursework for a certain type of kitchen certificate, if he wanted to keep his job washing dishes (read more about Cotto's bottoming-out phase here: http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2015/10/dirt-weed.html).
It was a start. I gave him one of my black "Illumination" stickers with my email address written on the back, and told him to keep in touch with me. He was new to the neighborhood, and very excited to show me the place he scored through a bodega contact about ten blocks from my apartment building. After our first meeting for coffee, he told me that his rented room didn't have a kitchen, and he was worried about losing his skill sets as a chef. Could he use my kitchen? Okay, why not? I was in the middle of an eviction case and in serious limbo. Who knows how much longer we'd have access to it? Besides, I hadn't eaten all day and I was feeling lightheaded from hunger. It was worth a shot. He seemed clean and respectable, even buying me a Chai Latte at the local hippie cafe in the 'hood.
We went to a nearby grocery store, and that was when Cotto quickly began losing his bearings. The old Nuyorican neighborhood had slowly changed from gentrification, with the typical influx of rich white out-of-town hipsters and "wanna-be" art fags, which seemed to throw him off, plus the layout of the store had changed with recent renovations. Where to go? Also, he had no shopping list, preferring to dazzle me with his limited memory. I wasn't that worried, because his food was free for me with my kitchen use serving as his fee, so I tagged along as he aisle-surfed. We left, bought some wine, and then he hesitated outside the store again. I forgot something! And that wasn't something a pro would do. Ever. Without a firing. Huh...
He also made a relatively simple Italian-American dish called "Fettuccine Alfredo" that I could have made in my sleep, if I cared enough to do so, which I didn't. Let him try to "dazzle" me with his prowess! I happily played the role of "Sous Chef" to him as a kitchen second (I like being an amateur, at times), thinking he'd enjoy being the lead guy after working at the bottom of a creative hierarchy, like those in the top kitchens of New York. I chopped as he added ingredients to the pots and pans on the stove, but my kitchen quickly threw him as a new environment for him to maneuver around. I turned my back to empty off my cutting board into the garbage for a mere second and when I turned around, Cotto had a bizarre wide-eyed look about him, as we watched one of my tea towels go up in flames.
Oops! He'd used it as a pot-holder in lieu of my actual potholders within easy reach of the stove (it was a small apartment kitchen), which caused him to let the corner of the small flammable towel drop directly into an open flame. Uh, that's more than a ten-point deduction, dude. I calmly put out the fire in the sink within another couple of seconds, and before he knew what to do, I had another tea towel in his hands so he could get back to work. The dish came out lumpy and overly rich, with chunks of congealed cheese clumped together in sodden clumps, which was his ultimate finish for me as part of any ongoing "Demo Team" I might have. No "personal chef" work for you, esse! Besides, after we ate, he noticed me as I laid down on the floor with my feet propped up on my couch, where he took up residence as my house guest while I sat on the floor, and he began to notice my beauty, with first one comment followed fast by another that betrayed his dawning nervousness about me and my excellent home.
After my housing deal went bust and I moved into his "Casa Crack Shack", we had plenty of more time to get acquainted, which we did quickly as I lead our conversations. Turns out, Cotto had to pick a training program as part of his release from prison, so he picked "cooking" at random, though as he told me, he "never really wanted" to be a chef. This, as he played his video games, chain-smoked, and then blew part of his city funding for school on more tacky "hood rat" shit, like shiny new gadgets and other things dumb stoners really like, but that's a story for another day.
Suffice to say, after generations of a paid education with special ESL classes, free cell phones and public utilities, mass transit, welfare, Section 8 housing, incarceration, rehab, drug and alcohol addiction recovery programs, medication, healthcare, psychotherapy, institutionalization, and crime, we New Yorkers managed to completely piss away millions of dollars on one very sick Puerto Rican guy whose greatest feat of cooking will be passing out underneath a palm tree somewhere near a turista beach cabana back on his warm tropical island home, waking only after one particularly large coconut falls hard on top of his big round head, finally rousing him from his comatose-like slumber brought on by his raging manic obsessive schizoid bipolar identity disorder (because he likes skipping doses to bring out the psychotic in him: much easier to commit crimes that way), preferring instead to "slow-roll homie" his way late in the afternoon to shake down the wealthy Americanos who are already a couple of drinks into their Puerto Rican beach "vacay", paying for his spot beneath the tree by helping the cabana cook crack open a couple of conch shells for the grill, because that's all he can really do. Really. He's that sick.
The real deal: https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Public-Policy/Social-Security-Income-%28SSI%29-and-Social-Security-D
