Russ Cook Quotes

This is the underside of my world. Of course you don’t want me to be stupid, bless you! you only want to make sure you’re intelligent. You don’t want me to commit suicide; you only want me to be gratefully aware of my dependency. You don’t want me to despise myself; you only want to ensure the flattering deference to you that you consider a spontaneous tribute to your natural qualities. You don’t want me to lose my soul; you only want what everybody wants, things to go your way; you want a devoted helpmeet, a self-sacrificing mother, a hot chick, a darling daughter, women to look at, women to laugh at, women to come to for comfort, women to wash your floors and buy your groceries and cook your food and keep your children out of your hair, to work when you need the money and stay home when you don’t, women to be enemies when you want a good fight, women who are sexy when you want a good lay, women who don’t complain, women who don’t nag or push, women who don’t hate you really, women who know their job, and above all—women who lose. On top of it all, you sincerely require me to be happy; you are naively puzzled that I should be so wretched and so full of venom in this the best of all possible worlds. Whatever can be the matter with me? But the mode is more than a little outworn. As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest. But the frogs die in earnest.

What would your last meal be?" I asked suddenly. That was a night when I thought it would be all right if my life ended. "A really long omikase. Like at least thirty-four courses. I want Yesuda to cook them himself. He puts the soy sauce on with a paintbrush." "Salmon pastrami from Russ and Daughters. A ton of bagels. Like three bagels." "In-N-Out double double." "I'm thinking about a Barolo, something really ripe and dirty, like from the eighties." "ShackBurger and a milk shake." "My mom's was veal scallopini and a Diet Coke." "Nonna's Bolognese----it takes eight hours. She makes the pappardelle by hand." "A roast chicken---I would eat the entire thing by hand. And I guess a DRC. When else would I taste that kind of Burgundy?" "Blinis, caviar, and crème fraîche. Done and done. Some impossible Champagne, Krug, or a culty one like the Selosse, drunk out of the bottle." "Toast," I said, when my turn came. I tried to think of something more glamorous, but toast was the truth. I expected to be mocked. My suburban-ness, my stupidity, my blankness. "What on top?" "Um. Peanut butter. The raw kind you get from the health-food stores. I salt it myself.

If you feel overheated at any time, let us know.” He looked between us before stepping out of the enclosure. Without warning, dry heat blasted us from all angles. “Oh my God!” I cried. “What’s wrong?” Russ asked. “I was caught off guard by the desert-air blast.” He snickered. “I was more caught off guard by how hot that mud bath was. I felt like we were being cooked. Like the spa was a front for some cannibalistic shit. I was feeling a little too much like beef stew in that thing.” “We were in a Crock-Pot.” “Talking about it was one hundred degrees. Mannnnn, that shit was easily three fifty.” I giggled. “And now here we are … in the microwave.

With familiar archness he waggled his finger at me and said 'tsk tsk'; all that writhing and fussing began again, what fun it was for him to have someone automatically not above reproach, and I knew beyond the shadow of a hope that to be female is to be mirror and honeypot, servant and judge, the terrible Rhadamanthus for whom he must perform but whose judgment is not human and whose services are at anyone's command, the vagina dentata and the stuffed teddy-bear he gets if he passes the test. This is until you're forty-five, ladies, after which you vanish into thin air like the smile of the Cheshire cat, leaving behind only a disgusting grossness and a subtle poison that automatically infects every man under twenty-one. Nothing can put you above this or below this or beyond it or outside of it, nothing, nothing, nothing at all, not your muscles or your brains, not being one of the boys or being one of the girls or writing books or writing letters or screaming or wringing your hands or cooking lettuce or being too tall or being too short or traveling or staying at home or ugliness or acne or diffidence or cowardice or perpetual shrinking and old age. In the latter cases you're only doubly damned.