CW: drugs, suicide.

Chef (1)  [english]

My teenage diary records the exact date i moved in with Chef.
Friday october 26 1979.
What is not mentioned is that it was the rather nasty beginning of a 7 month rollercoaster, which i now have some difficulty calling a relationship. Perhaps i should call it an attempt at a relationship. I was 16, a beautiful young flower, and i suspect that many men thought i was older and more mature than i actually was. That had already caused problems, also with men who were totally aware of my age.
Because of the latter i ran away from home a lot, i wanted to immerse myself in pub life, get away from everything i didn't understand, away from that home situation, which i didn't dare talk about with anyone anymore, away away away and dance, laugh, drink and... play pinball.
Not that i was a pinball wizard, oh hell no. But i knew a few machines well at some point, and that felt great; knowing when the right movement of the machine could manipulate the ball in the right direction, making the flippers do their thing at the right moment, all the bells and whistles when it went really crazy... i thought it was absolutely great. Every now and then i managed to beat my opponents, and that got better and better. Like that night, when i amazed a group of guys who were really good, and i proudly let the compliments sink in. And the beer, that too.
And suddenly there was this cute guy, he was a lot older, but funny and sweet and we played pinball and ended up outside in the alley across from the pub, and kissed and he took me home.
He lived in a large, legalized squat, which NB used to be a police station, in a wing of the building on the top floor. There was only one other resident on the same corridor, and a toilet. To get up there, you had to go up a number of stairs and through corridors.

Our first night together should have raised red flags and sent me packing, but i was too tired and scared and inexperienced. He wanted to have sex with me right away, but i wasn’t ready for that at all, and when i told him he got really angry. He threatened to throw me outside and throw my clothes out the window. I begged him not to and tried to explain. He backed down and then went to bed angry.

He had a lovely friend, Fiodna, who after talking to me, helped him understand what it was like for me, and so it all seemed to go better after that. He was very patient, and we even set a date to do 'it'. He provided candlelight and wine and it was all very sweet and nice. I had fallen in love with him, whether he was in love with me i don't know.



He told me all sorts of things about his life, like how he had a girlfriend who had died of an overdose. He still missed her every day, he said, and that made me insecure.
He also used hard drugs, and on the days he didn't use them, methadone. And booze. A lot of booze. He didn't want me to use smack, but of course i got curious. He shot up, his friends did too, but luckily i didn't dare and i snorted it, like people do with cocaine, for example. It was a nice feeling, i felt more confident and loving and as if there were no problems. While there were plenty of them, of course. And with every sniff or shot or glass of booze, they got bigger.

Chef occasionally worked as a construction worker, although he was trained as a chef.
But he didn't cook much; we usually went to the neighborhood kitchen to eat, where you could get a oldfashioned Dutch meal for little money. Or we ate sandwiches with hussar salad at a sandwich shop around the corner. Very occasionally he made soup, and then it was really delicious: Chef stood singing in the big kitchen and threw all sorts of things in it, it was a pleasure to watch. Especially probably because we were under the influence of one thing or another.

Sometimes friends came over, and one of them was a sweetheart of a man, Tommy. He was quite a rascal, but always enthusiastic and super busy and above all very sweet. But also always under the influence. People in the house thought he was unreliable. Things were said to have been stolen, things had disappeared from the kitchen. In a meeting in which i was not asked anything, an ultimatum was given. Tommy was not allowed in anymore.
There were also some very bad things that had happened.

At the beginning of this drama i was still in school, and when i came home at the end of one afternoon, it turned out that Chef had been up to strange things.
Once i opened the door to our room, i was immediately on guard.
He wasn't home, but the room was a mess, like a fight had taken place. I closed the door behind me and started to clean up, until i saw what was wrong with the door: there were several throwing knives stuck in it. I didn't even know he had them! I found it soooo scary. I went to the other resident, a somewhat older man who drank a lot. He didn't really know what had happened either, something vague about Chef having gone crazy and having been taken away by the police. I didn't dare ask others what i should do. And eventually, a few hours later, he came home again, with a super confusing story. He brushed off my questions about the knives by telling me not to whine. I had to get him drinks, at a café a bit further away in town he was allowed to buy drinks on credit. A few weeks later it would turn out that he had built up a huge bill there... now years later i still wonder how that could have gone on for so long.

Another time after school he was in bed, unconscious. He was still breathing, but i couldn't wake him up. This was long before the mobile phone era, so i had to ask someone in the house if i could call for an ambulance. There i was, just after school, on my way to the hospital with a half-dead lover, the sirens blaring. His stomach was being pumped, i wanted to get out of the room, but the doctors kept me there: i had to stay there so that it would be a good lesson for me. As if i was to blame... my god. So now i know what that looks like, and it doesn't make a very happy person. Not much came out of his stomach, except gastric juices and a lot of pink, frothy flakes: those were the heavy tranquilizers he had taken - there were so many of them, he had clearly intended to end his life. He was lectured, and had to go home straight away, so i had to get a taxi, while i was scared and sad. What was i going to do? Why had he done this?

I tried to talk to him, but all he would say was that he wanted to be with his deceased girlfriend. I felt terrible for him, but also for myself. He didn't trust me enough, maybe he thought i was too young and immature (although he never said that) and i felt more and more like a surrogate girlfriend.

[to be continued]

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