All or Nothing (4 page)

Coddle

Coddle
: A method of cooking eggs by cracking them into a small buttered dish or ramekin with a lid, adding seasonings, and then partially immersing the dish in near-boiling water for several minutes.

I
was twelve years old in 1994. On a Friday night in late June a summer moon peeked through the light silvery clouds as my cousin Keith and I made the rounds through New Paltz. He had turned sixteen that year, so this was the first summer he could drive, and we navigated our way down a dark, leaf- and branch-strewn road in his red Toyota Tercel, which had been handed down through his family. In the distance, a faint sound beckoned, a low, synthesized bass that beat like an anxious heart. I knew that rhythm all too well.

I had always thought that rave music was kind of meaningless and repetitive. I am, and always have been, an alternative rock guy all the way. But that night the relentless beat called to me. The freedom it represented was intoxicating. Ten minutes later Keith and I were surrounded by dizzying lights, deafening music, and a bunch of kids like us who were also looking for a break from reality.

At that point drugs weren't on my radar, but when the group of guys Keith and I were talking to started passing around a joint, I didn't hesitate. I took my cues from Keith and watched how it was done as he grabbed the joint and took a hit. I felt giddy, full of excitement and nervous energy, like the first time I kissed a girl. When my turn came and I took a drag, my lips were so dry they stuck to the joint. Then I immediately started coughing. My chest hurt. It wasn't what I had expected. But then, as soon as I stopped coughing, it felt as though a part of myself had suddenly been lifted away. Ever since I was a baby peeling wallpaper from the walls of my room, I had never been able to get rid of that twitchy, anxious part of me. The big wool blanket that I'd been carrying around my whole life like a fucking disease suddenly lifted, and that feeling trumped any escape I'd previously found through acting out, clowning around, or even cooking.

I went into that rave as one person and came out another. Deep down I knew that a metamorphosis had taken place. I had turned into a pickle and would never be a cucumber again. The innocence was gone. I was changed forever. And there was no turning back.

For the next year my life completely revolved around cooking and getting stoned, often at the same time. Back in Parkland, I started acting funny. I was always on the lookout for pot, desperate to re-create that feeling of ease I'd experienced at the rave. It didn't take long for me to figure out that alcohol helped. I started stealing my parents' booze and hanging out with older kids who had access, hiding out in the woods and smoking joints we rolled using dollar bills. One of the older kids I hung out with was Sam, who was always getting in trouble for one thing or another. I looked up to Sam in a weird way. He was tough and intimidating and taught me by example how to hold my own in any situation.

If my parents noticed the change in me, they never said anything. But it wasn't long before I was hanging out with an entirely new crowd. One of those new friends was Mike Charnam, a formerly pudgy kid I had known since Little League who was now a cocky, confident teenager who wore Slayer and Metallica T-shirts and torn jeans and rode around on a blue dirt bike loaded with decals. Girls were always hanging around Charnam, and he knew all the cool kids. A group of us started sitting in the back of the school bus together, always causing some sort of trouble: Andre, Charnam, and me.

After school we often retreated to my backyard or sat by the Cypress Head lake smoking cigarettes and listening to music. Though I was heavily into pot, I still held on to my interest in food. My dresser drawers were stuffed with menus alongside rolling papers, pipes, and matches. I raced home after school, arriving just in time to watch
Great Chefs, Great Cities.
Other times, Charnam and I ditched school just to watch
Iron Chef America.
Food and pot became part of our shared experience. We pitch a couple of tents by the lake, have a barbecue, and get loaded.

Other times we invaded my kitchen. One day all of us, maybe five or six guys, were smoking pot at my house when I decided to make a feast for everybody of grilled cheeses and cream soda floats. I got the cream sodas out of the fridge and put them in the blender with some ice cream. While they were still going, I started fucking around and released my hold on the top of the blender. Cream soda went everywhere, especially all over my friend Mike's face. He picked up another can of soda from the counter, shook it up, and then sprayed it all over me. The next thing I knew we were embroiled in a huge cream soda fight, and the sticky substance was bubbling from the ceiling, the floor, the cabinets, and was all over us. The mess didn't bother me. I just continued cooking the grilled cheeses with bacon and mixing together barbecue sauce and ketchup to go on top.

Of course my mom went nuts when she saw the kitchen, but I pleaded and cajoled my way out of a punishment and didn't even have to clean up the mess. I never felt guilty for making her clean up after me. Maybe deep down I was trying to get back at her for the way her obsession with looks made me feel. It was around that hormone-fueled age when her appearance really started to bother me. I was messing around in the kitchen with some friends another time when my mom came downstairs all dressed up to go out. She had on these skintight pants and high-heeled stiletto boots, with bright lipstick and her hair all done up. My friends were staring at her and giving me shit, talking about her body. My mom was beautiful, but who wants their friends to look at their mother that way?

My parents tried their best to control me the only way they knew how—by managing my appearance. As if scratching the surface would have made a difference. I became friends with some skateboard kids who wore jeans with holes and shirts embroidered with band logos. I wanted to get piercings, but my dad hated all of that. “Those are bad kids,” he told me. “You're just asking for trouble if you walk around looking like that.”

But the truth is, I
was
looking for trouble. I kept pushing the boundaries and never bumped up against any consequences, so I just kept pushing harder. By the end of seventh grade I was smoking pot every day. There was a silent, malevolent force driving my behavior that compelled me to keep pushing the envelope. In a way, Charnam was my safeguard because he never went further than pot or booze, but nothing was off-limits for me.

I celebrated my bar mitzvah that year. The religious aspects of Judaism never clicked with me, but I loved the traditions and the feeling of camaraderie that came with sitting around the table with my family at Passover and other holidays. I loved being a part of that fun-loving, close-knit Schenker clan. My mom's younger sister, my aunt Stacey, and my uncle Mark were always at the house hanging out with us, and I looked forward to family gatherings. It's customary at a bar mitzvah reception to have your loved ones come up to the podium and each light a special candle, and I called my dad up to light what I called a “best friend” candle. But I didn't need a best friend. I needed a parent.

With my inhibitions down and hormones raging, my interest in girls suddenly picked up. It was Charnam, in fact, who introduced me to my first girlfriend. Jen was a year younger than me, with wavy brown hair, dark eyes, and an infectious giggle. I was smitten.

At first Jen and I just made small talk. I was only twelve and didn't have the nerve to do much else. Charnam broke the ice by hanging out with Jen, her friend Katy, and me after school. He attached a cart to his dirt bike and pulled Katy and Jen around Cypress Head. At that point the only two things I was interested in were pot and cooking. But I couldn't smoke (or cook, really) all day long. Jen filled the void. She also probably slowed down the snowball, as even my interest in pot waned a bit when I was around her. Somehow Jen was able to fill the hole—that relentless, empty feeling that followed me everywhere. I felt good around her. I liked myself in the relationship because I had integrity. There was no plotting or scheming. I never tried to manipulate her the way I did my parents and teachers.

Before long Jen and I were going home together, usually to her house since both of her parents worked and were rarely home. At night I'd cut through the bushes to get to her street, which was just a few blocks away, and sneak in her window. Jen positioned her mattress close to the wall so I could hide in the space between the wall and the mattress if her parents ever walked in.

For the next year and a half, Jen and I were inseparable. We spent hours making out and exploring each other's bodies. We never spoke about it, but the next step was becoming abundantly clear.

One Friday afternoon I walked into a drugstore and stole a box of condoms. My parents had split for the weekend, and Joee was gone. Jen and I started out in my bedroom, rolling around on my bed with our legs intertwined. Slowly, I moved my hand up her shirt, unbuttoned her bra, and started squeezing her breasts. We were both shaking with excitement. Somehow we ended up in the guest room, where I laid her down on the bed and slowly started to undress her. We had gone this far before, but this time it was different. With Pearl Jam's “Indifference” blaring in the background, I lost my virginity.

Just when my relationship with Jen was picking up, I had to contend with an entirely new experience—loss—when my Grandma Rosie lost a long battle with brain cancer. Of course my Nana Mae had already died, but I was so young when she passed away, and she was quite old. With Rosie, it was different. A wave of sadness like I'd never experienced before ran through our house. I can still remember the look of pure despair on my Grandpa Laz's face. I'd loved Rosie too. I didn't know how to process my emotions, so I found another place to stuff my grief.

I poured myself into cooking even more, no longer just experimenting but actually creating. Some of these creations were spectacular failures, like the chicken I marinated in blackberries with Coca-Cola and garlic that was totally inedible. But the more I practiced the more I finally started to make things that tasted good. One weekend my buddy Fred and I took some soft challah bread my mom had sitting around and stuffed it with creamy peanut butter and jelly. Then we soaked the whole thing in eggs, cream, sugar, and the slightest hint of vanilla. We pan-fried it until the edges turned crispy but the inside stayed gooey and creamy. Picture a grilled cheese sandwich, but with warm peanut butter and jelly inside instead of cheese. It took a few attempts to get it exactly right, but when we did we had created the perfect stoner sandwich. Of course, this creation later became one of Recette's signature brunch dishes, PB&J Pain Perdu.

Before long it seemed like everyone in Parkland knew about the PB&J. My parents often went out for dinner with their friends and then came home and asked me to make it for them for dessert. But that wasn't enough for me. I wanted to learn everything I could about food—what dishes they served in restaurants and how the chefs made them work. I started reading restaurant reviews in the
Sun Sentinel
each week, selecting a restaurant for my parents to go to. Then I'd ask them to bring me back a menu. At home I studied those menus with a focus I never had for schoolwork. I was eager to learn every detail of those recipes so I could take them to the next level by creating something of my own.

After we'd been together for a year and a half, Jen left me for a high school senior. We had been hanging out less and less for a while, so I sensed it coming, but nothing could have prepared me for the loss of my first love. She called it off over the phone. “I don't know about this anymore, Jess,” she told me. “I think I need some time.” And that was it. She hung up, and it felt like a punch to the gut. I sat on the edge of my bed for the next few hours crying like an infant. Jen had been the perfect distraction from my anxiety, and once she was gone it came rushing back, only now with a vengeance.

That's when things changed for me. When I was fourteen, I started hanging out with two guys named Chris and Riley. Chris lived in a nearby town, Coral Springs. Chris was privileged. We all were. Parkland and parts of Coral Springs were crammed with oversize McMansions that were designed to look like fancy chateaus, farmhouses, and Renaissance palazzos. I was lucky to grow up in such a close and loving family, but with my new friends I formed my own identity by rebelling against the privilege I'd been raised with. Riding skateboards, vandalizing property, smoking cigarettes, getting high, causing mayhem—we'd do anything we thought would piss off our parents.

Riley was a couple of years older than me and Chris, and he had a car. In our minds this represented freedom. Chris and I snuck out at night, and then Riley and one of his friends would pick us up down the road, out of view of our parents. Then we'd drive around for hours, smoking weed and causing trouble.

Fourteen years old and hooked on pot—at a certain point money became a problem for me. I got a job at McDonald's, but seven bucks an hour wasn't enough to support my burgeoning drug habit. Chris solved the problem by filching a couple hundred bucks from his parents. That night Riley and his friend took us to meet a dealer. We parlayed Chris's windfall into four ounces of weed, which was a shitload for two reckless fourteen-year-olds who already thought they owned the fucking world. I kept the stash in my backpack. We smoked most of it ourselves and sold some to the other kids at school. There we were: two baby-faced pot dealers. As kids clamored around us in the hallways, looking to score, I had never felt so popular or important. In my own way, I finally fit in.

With tennis courts, a volleyball net, a pool, and a basketball court, the Cypress Head clubhouse was a gathering place for residents on the lake. In back of the clubhouse was a massive deck that was used for parties. The lake was stocked with bass, and you could fish off the deck. A massive overhang covered the deck, so no one could see what you were doing, especially after dark. It was the perfect place to finger some chick, vandalize property, or get stoned.