Bon Voyage
A listener’s companion to Action Bronson’s debut album, “Well Done”
1.
Gary and Justine walked in silence down the beach under the Southern California stars. They never took vacation. Mostly because of Gary, but both of their jobs as accountants for San Francisco-based fortune 500 tech companies kept them busy. It was only under special celebratory circumstances that they took this Friday off to visit her Dad’s beach house in Santa Barbara.
The waves breaking forty yards to their right reminded Gary of the hisses and gargles that the coffee maker in his office’s break room makes.
By Gary’s calculations, in his eight years working at IntuiCom, he’d drank 4,000 cups of coffee from the coffee maker in the break room. 48,000 ounces, give or take, from that simple Mr. Coffee coffee maker, with its shiny black plastic parts and glass carafe marked with crisp white lines indicating how many cups of joe it contained. It was a humble machine considering the size of IntuiCom.
Two cups a day. One at 8:45am, one at 12:00 noon. 50 work weeks per year. Eight years. 4,000 cups. 48,000 ounces. Black coffee, every one. With a packet of Splenda added to the cup at noon.
His bosses praised him for his consistency. “Mr. Reliable,” they called him, or “Gary Gold Bars,” a moniker he picked up after finding a tax loophole that saved the company 2.75 Million dollars in 2007. Since starting at IntuiCom, Gary had steadily climbed the ranks of the finance department from Coordinator, to Manager, to Sr. Manager, to Strategist, to VP of Finance. It was a war of attrition mostly. Gary watched his coworkers retire, change companies, change careers, get sick, addicted, or go insane. But Gary was built for the long game, and it was all about to pay off. Before Gary and Justine left for this long weekend, he’d received an offer from IntuiCom to become the next CFO. The salary was seven figures.
Receiving the offer was Gary’s pinnacle, the crescendo that all the weekend hours and skipped holidays had lead up to. All the golf outings to exchange pleasantries with the C-suite, even though he hated golf, and all the trips to the dry cleaners to touch up his white dress shirts even though though they really didn’t need a touch up — that all lead to this. Getting the CFO offer was to Gary what reaching nirvana is to a buddhist monk. That’s how it was supposed to be, anyway.
After reading the offer sheet, in all its seven-figure glory, Gary felt less like he’d reached enlightenment and more like he’d swallowed a billiards ball. There was no parting of the clouds or heavenly light shining down. He didn’t pass out, but his brain felt empty of blood. His muscles, atrophied from years at a desk, tightened, and his bones, misaligned despite the ergonomic chair he’d spent $1,700 dollars on, ached. He’d expected a momentary high, at least. But as he gazed at the neatly bound five-page contract on his desk, and the shimmering gold IntuiCom emblem on its front, all he got was a rattling inner dissonance, and a little heartburn.
They gave him seven days to mull it over and prepare a counteroffer. That was four days ago.
Outwardly the mulling over was borderline nonexistent. What was there to think about? He’d done it. Their future was set.
Inwardly, the mulling over was severe. In addition to the repetitious thought loops and endless if-then chains, it consisted mostly of the same recurring nightmare. He’d had it every night since receiving the offer.
Gary’d had this nightmare before. Off and on for almost two years, in fact. But never had it been so frequent, or so vivid. The past four nights he’d woken up sweating and gasping for air. He’d wake Justine, too, on accident. He told her that in his dream a homeless Rudy Giuliani was chasing him with a gun through alleyways in downtown San Francisco, which wasn’t true.
“I’m so proud of you, Gare.” Justine said, breaking the silence of their beach walk. “C.F.O. Gary Schusterman.” She waved a hand across the horizon as if to conjure the letters “CFO” among the stars.
“Pretty wild, isn’t it?” Gary replied.
“Gare,” she said sternly. “What’s up? Pretty wild? You just got your dream job. The thing you’ve been working toward for over a decade and all you can say is pretty wild? You’ve hardly said a word since we left Berkeley. Aren’t you thrilled?”
“Of course I am. Just a little dazed is all. It’s a lot to take in, you know?”
“I know.” She grabbed his left arm and squeezed.
Gary looked down at their pale ankles swinging across the dark sand and thumbed the corner of his business card in his pocket. The hissing, gargling waves filled the silence again.
“Actually,” Gary started, feeling like a sky diver who forgot to check his chute before jumping. “I’ve been thinking, and… uh, well, hmmmm.”
Gary paused. hissssss. grggggllgrglggrrgl.
“Taking this job means we’d be rooted in San Fran for the next ten years, probably for life. And that I’d be rooted to IntuiCom for the next ten years… probably for life. I know we love the Bay and all, but… What am I saying? This is a no brainer, right?”
“I mean, yeah. Don’t you want to take it?”
“The money is insane. The security. I can’t not take it.”
“What’s the alternative?”
hissssss. grggggllgrglggrrgl.
“We could start that food truck,” Gary said, mustering a sheepish grin
“The one we talk about when we get drunk?”
“We did write a menu for it, remember?”
“Most of a menu. It’s a sandwich short. But yes.”
“I know it seems like it’s just a parlor game we play at the bar,” Gary said, his enthusiasm mounting, “but the tech hipsters in the Bay would gladly pay $16 for a Lee Scratch Porky — Smoked pork shoulder with a jerk rub? Pickled red onions?? Coleslaw??? And Tim’s Cascade Maui Onion chips inside two slices of toasted rye?! I’m getting hungry just saying it out loud.”
“What about logistics, overhead? A financial model would be nice.”
“We’re accountants, Jus’. We could make a three year forecast in our sleep.”
“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. You’re the CFO of IntuiCom. We’re talking about sandwiches?”
“Plus,” Gary looked down at their ankles again. “What if I told you those recurring nightmares I’ve been having are actually about work?”
“You mean you’re not being chased by a homeless Rudy Giuliani?”
“No. I made that up. They’ve been getting worse, too.”
Gary unconsciously bent the business card in his pocket.
“What actually happens is this: I’m in the break room at work, enduring another one of Charles’s golf stories and the coffee maker won’t stop making coffee. It’s overflowing and filling up the room. I look around but the doors and windows have disappeared. Charles doesn’t notice a thing. The scalding coffee is climbing up my legs one inch at a time, searing the skin on my ankles, my calves, knees. It keeps rising and I’m yelling at Charles ‘We have to get out of here, Charles! Charles!!!’ but he just keeps going on about an 18-foot par put that he read “just perfect”. The coffee rises to my waist, my chest, neck. I can feel the blisters forming everywhere. And just as I take one last sip of air and prepare to go under, I wake up.”
“Jesus Christ, Gary.”
“And the worst part is, I’ll be sitting at my desk the next day and not know whether I’m in the nightmare again or not. I have to walk to the break room to make sure it has doors.
This job’s been everything to me for the past eight years. Except you, of course. But lately I get the feeling it’s eating away the lining of my stomach a little more every day. And the food truck, I legitimately think we could do it.”
“I’m sure we could.”
Justine squeezed Gary’s arm again.
hissssss. grggggllgrglggrrgl.
“You really should see a therapist about these nightmares. Kathleen told me about a great psych in SoMa — works with a lot of the big tech executives. Why don’t we give them a call while we’re down here and set up a session? Before you say no to a seven figure salary, it’s worth seeing if some professional assistance helps.”
Gary sighed. “Yeah, good idea.”
Gary vacantly scanned the starlit scene around them, his thoughts still audibly whirring in the back of his mind. In the distance, about level with the horizon, a small flickering light caught his eye. It wasn’t a star. “Is that a bonfire?” Gary said, squinting.
“Not your granddad’s bonfire, either.” replied Justine. Why don’t we make that our turnaround point and start heading back?”
2.
The bonfire’s girth and height were striking. Gary and Justine’s eyes widened as they realized the kind of pyrotechnics that were being conducted. And no one seemed to be tending the fire. Instead, a group of about twenty people sat cross-legged in a circle around it. Around them, four circular tables were arranged, set with plates and silverware. And around those tables were five more tables, long, rectangular, and covered end to end in large golden serving dishes — domes, pans, boats — hiding what, by the smell of it, was a feast.
Even from where they walked, outside the reach of the fire’s light, a stampede of aromas rushed up Gary and Justine’s noses. Gary swallowed to clear the saliva that had involuntarily filled his mouth. He turned to Justine.
“Not your granddad’s bonfire is right.”
Their walk slowed to a creep, then a standstill. At some point, a few steps back, they’d crossed the invisible sonic forcefield outside of which the waves drowned out any chatter from the bonfire and inside of which human voices were audible. Everyone in the circle had their eyes trained on a fat, bearded, shirtless man with tattoos covering his torso and arms, and loose fitting pants that had fabric so light it fluttered in the nearly windless night.
“I picked up the severed head of the Himalayan demon and hoisted it toward the sky,” said the Fat Man, raising a fist in demonstration. “Blood that had been circulating his corrupted brain only moments earlier dripped out the open arteries and on to my silk attire, steaming profusely in the frigid air 20,000 feet up on the cliffside. I couldn’t feel the cold. I could only feel wisdom coursing through my body. It was quite warm.”
Justine grabbed Gary’s wrist reflexively and scooched toward him. The Fat Man glanced momentarily in their direction before lowering his fist and refocusing on his audience.
“And that’s the story of the first time I smoked DMT.
But now, everyone, it’s time to eat. And after dinner we’ll turn this fucking boy scout starter kit campfire up a few degrees. Salud!” he said, bowing slightly.
Out of nowhere a troop of wait staff, dressed in black ninja garb materialized and removed the lids from the serving dishes. Gary swallowed again.
“Okay. Let’s get out of here,” Justine whispered.
Gary and Justine turned to leave but as they took their first step they nearly ran face first into the protruding belly of the Fat Man.
“Come join us!” invited the Fat Man, smiling, his eyes — blue, hopeful, glassy — a mere foot from theirs.
“We were actually just on our way home,” replied Gary, pursing his lips in feigned disappointment. “But we appreciate the invite. Whatever you cooked smells fantastic.”
“Doesn’t it? I’m not sure what you’re smelling but it might be the rare bison I had braised, seared and then slow roasted in a garlic butter herb bath. My wife basted it by hand every hour on the hour for 12 hours. She cooks naked so the scent of the kitchen can absorb into her skin.”
“Oh,” Gary replied, staggered. “Actually, it smells more like sausage, rice,” Gary sniffed the air, “and cream. Or something. But regardless, we have to g — “
“The beer gumbo! The sausage is hand kneaded with a French-Spanish spice blend. You have to try it. I insist you both come have a plate. It’ll make your walk home more pleasant.”
The couple smiled at each other, each one searching the other’s eyes for a valid excuse to leave but finding nothing, so they caved to the Fat Man’s hospitality.
They walked up to the dining tables, and on their way could peer down the serving tables which looked like edible mountain ranges viewed from the window seat of a plane. Justine could make out a charcuterie board that had to have been five feet long.
Their were two open seats at a table that included the Fat Man, two muscular Japanese men, one with green hair, one with blue, a voluptuous woman with white dreadlocks and a see-through top, a norse-looking couple of indiscernible age that could be brother and sister, a stout man with a salt and pepper afro and glasses who looked like Dr. Cornel West in miniature, and a bald, expressionless man in a red adidas track suit smoking a cigarette.
“These are for you,” said the Fat Man, pointing at the two chairs. “Make yourselves comfortable. The wine in your glasses is a 1993 vintage Bordeaux from Phillipe’s vineyard.”
“I stamp everghy grape wis my own feet,” said the little Dr. Cornel West in a heavy French accent. “Ninety sree we ‘ad fantastique weazer.”
“And the food is all fair game. Literally, in some cases. Please, go. Fill your plates,” directed the Fat Man.
Gary and Justine were borderline catatonic at the circumstance they suddenly found themselves in, but managed to smile, nod, and take their plates to the outer circle of tables and its labyrinth of food.
At the start of the first table they stood on opposite sides of the biggest dish of salmon either of them had ever seen: an entire king salmon, gutted, halved, and cooked skin-on over some kind of open flame, judging by the charred scales on its underside. It was dressed with lemon slices, thyme, and capers, and the juices that had run off it were now bubbling gently in the bottom of the dish which was heated from below by a small bed of coals. Vapors rose off the fish and engulfed them. They looked across the table, into each other’s eyes, smiled, shrugged, and grabbed the serving spoons.
They proceeded down the interminable smorgasbord, dish by dish, stacking their plates like two professional thanksgiving attendees. This was, by their own admission, a talent they shared: the ability to construct a perfect plate from a buffet of food. Gary analyzed the Caesar salad in front of him — freshly tossed, judging by its subtle lemon fragrance — and used the tongs to place three bites’ worth next to the still-steaming salmon on his plate. He looked up to see Justine placing a bite of caesar salad on a half a roll of brioche, then using the tongs to add a chunk of the salmon on top of that, and finally spooning a dollop of cream of tartar on top of the entire stack. Gary felt a rush of what could only be love well up in his core and roll across his body in a wave of euphoric tingling. “Nice,” he muttered, grabbing a half-roll himself for which he had plans that involved the bison, iceberg wedges, smoked gouda, pickled peppers, and gravy that lay ahead.
They went on like this painting Rembrandts with feta cheese, prosciutto, and steak frites. When they returned to the table three minutes later, they felt like they’d been gone fifteen.
“Did you just stack the bison, gouda, and peppers into an open-faced sandwich?” asked the green-haired Japanese man across the table from them.
“Close-faced, actually,” Gary said topping the sandwich with a buttered half-roll and smashing it down. “And it’ll dip in the bison gravy. Kind of like an au jus.”
“Where’d you find these two, chef?” the green-haired man asked the Fat Man.
The Fat Man smiled. “Lost on the beach.”
3.
The meal carried on and soon Gary and Justine forgot about their walk home. Time dilated and they became immersed in the guests’s stories — tales from every corner of the globe. They ate a second plate that included chicken cutlet, and the beer gumbo. More wine. A third plate — a dessert plate with two kinds of cake, mousse, three pies, and chocolate-covered candied figs. More wine.
The Fat Man stuffed a pipe with strong smelling weed. Puerto Rican Thunderfuck he called it, an ideal digestif. He lit it, inhaled deeply and exhaled through his nose like a dragon sitting contented on a pile of loot.
Gary and Justine hadn’t smoked pot in years, but, riding a wave of good cheer, they accepted the pipe when the Fat Man offered it. He handed it to Gary and graciously lit it so Gary could focus on simply inhaling. A small puff sent Gary into a coughing fit. He teared up and it took him a minute to come back to his senses. When he did, he found himself in a moonlit world of blue and white duotone. Every visible movement left a trail of light lingering in its wake, and though his chair remained in the sand, he felt as if the ground was rolling like ocean waves.
“Puerto Rican Thunderfuck, huh?” Gary thought. Or did he say it out loud?
Gary looked across the table at the lady with the see-through shirt. The dreadlocks on her head were growing like Jack’s beanstalk, slithering across her shoulders and down to the sand, then slowly wrapping each person at the table in a gentle embrace. The dreadlock tentacles were soft, and warm, not scratchy, like Gary thought they’d be.
“Fire time!” the Fat Man declared.
Gary blinked and the dreadlocks were back in their place on the woman’s head.
Everyone got up, filled wine glasses, doused cigars. The expressionless man in the red track suit snorted a bump of powder from off the back of his hand. The group navigated from the tables to the fire like a school of fish in turbulent water, sensing as much by instinct as by vision the people and objects around them. Gary and Justine sat down next to each other in the circle.
The Fat Man, seemingly as lucid as ever, began lifting giant logs from a nearby pile and placing them surgically on the coals. The bonfire’s flames gradually rose to six feet tall, ten feet, fifteen.
A pipe of the Thunderfuck came back around, and Gary took another pull.
Gary laid back on the sand. From his perspective there was no telling the true height of the fire. The rising flames licked the stars above. Gary’s heart rate accelerated. At least he thought it did. Right? Yeah. It was definitely beating fast. His peripheral vision became dark and all he could see, through a long black tunnel, was the tip of the fire and a few far-off stars. He regretted smoking more weed.
As anxiety rippled across Gary’s skin, his body began accelerating toward the fire at the end of the tunnel. He flew faster, not by his own power, but by some electro-magnetic pull. Faster still. He was the Millenium Falcon at Lightspeed. Faster. Until he emerged out of the tunnel and into… the break room of his office?
He could hear the voice of his coworker, Charles, and a surge of terror paralyzed him.
Now? How?! He was awake, right? He blinked hard and opened his eyes. Break room.
He looked at the coffee maker which was beginning to overflow. Panic pulsed through his veins. This was it. The scalding coffee was climbing up his legs, searing his skin He yelled at Charles “We have to get out of here, Charles! Charles!!!” but Charles just kept going on about his 18-foot par put. The coffee rose to his neck, chin. He could feel the blisters. Just as Gary took one last sip of air and prepared to go under, he held his breath and CRACK, a log popped in the fire and sparks shot over the circle of dinner guests.
Gary was breathing heavily. As he reached out and grabbed Justine’s hand, trying to regulate his breath, the voice of the Fat Man came into focus.
“On my third night in the cavern under the mountain I found my entire spirit to be in complete stillness. The only sound audible to me was the dripping of ground water that had seeped two thousand feet down through the rocks and was falling into the underground lake. I sat at the lake’s edge and heard the steady drip, drip, drip, which never sped up.”
Gary’s heart rate slowed.
“Drip, drip. drip,” the Fat Man continued, “Finally, a light in the lake’s center stirred me from my stillness with its aura. It rose from the water and set the whole cavern alight in moonlight. A moonlight that seemed to permeate every cell in my body, slowly saturating my flesh like — you ever seen X Men? You know how Rogue can suck the superpowers out of other mutants? It was like that. Like I was sucking the super powers from this brilliant light source over the lake.”
Gary had seen X Men, and just as the Fat Man said these words Gary saw a swirling, pulsing, vortex of light leave his own mouth and and arc toward the fire. It was the color of the moon, and in its churning glow was every shred of self-consciousness in his soul, every particle of doubt and grain of insecurity that had ever kept him from living fully in the paradise of pleasures that life has on offer. The tail of the vortex exited him and as it all emptied into he blaze the flames turned an unfathomable shade of blue.
Darkness washed over Gary.
4.
A sea lion’s bark rolled through the early morning air, ricocheted off the ocean, off the cliffs on the north end of the cove, the old Douglass firs in the yard, the concrete patio, and finally tumbled through the cracked window of the basement guest room in Justine’s dad’s house and into Gary’s ear. His eyes peeled open.
Aaaarf. Aaarf. Aarf.
The cove was set in a still mist, the low morning sun not yet strong enough to burn it off.
Gary rolled his head to the right and saw the curvature of Justine’s body beneath the covers, gently rising and falling.
He rolled on to his left side and surveyed the bedside table. His phone was there, plugged in. His glasses were there. Next to them was his business card, bent, scuffed at the corners. On it, small blue scribbles were visible over the IntuiCom logo and tagline. Gary reached out for it.
He rubbed his eyes, put on his glasses, and blinked.
Toasted Sourdough
Butter
Salt
Zesty Cabbage Slaw
Caramelized Onion
Spicy Sausage Links, halved lengthwise
Chicken Cutlet (thin), breaded and fried
Melted Gouda
Beer Gumbo Reduction (dipping)
Carrot and Celery Sticks (side)
— The Beery Manilow
5. (AUTHOR’S NOTES)
I first came into the Action Bronson multiverse years ago through the giant side door of Fuck That’s Delicious, his TV show about food, without ever having heard a song from the New York based chef-turned rapper. I took a lap around his Spotify and found his music inaccessible, too obscure. “Good TV show host. Meh rapper,” I concluded.
It wasn’t until recently that, by some invisible pull, I re-entered the musical orbit of Action Bronson. This time I listened to his discography from the start, beginning with his debut album Well Done, and it clicked.
The difference was my willingness to engage in active listening, to participate.
Here’s the thing, and Well Done exemplifies this, Action Bronson at his best is an intensely visual lyricist. He makes off-hand references to pop culture jetsam that can make verses sound like overenthusiastic stoner mishmash. But the strangeness, vividness, and specificity that make his raps inaccessible, is also where the beauty of his style resides. When the intricate did-I-just-hear-what-I-think-I-heard scenes click into focus, you’re suddenly seated at a table with one of rap’s richest visual smorgasbords spread across it. It’s hedonic, psychedelic, absurd, and unapologetic — prioritizing fun over intricate wordplay, while still lacing in plenty of the latter.
“I’m like a young Bill Casmire, swollen from the juice,” spits Bronson as he emerges on “Respect the Mustache,” Well Done’s opening track. I still don’t know who Bill Casmire is but I imagine an alcoholic 1950’s movie star, whose drinking prematurely aged him out of roles in black and white blockbusters that involved fancy cars, fedoras, and cigarettes. I could *Google him, but this is more fun.
“Preem-o rollin’ in my hemoglobin, puffin on the spruce,” Bronson continues, wasting no time introducing one of the albums common themes: weed, particularly good weed, smoked in large volumes. As a listener, you’re already being asked to drop everything and use your imagination. You must envision an (in my case) overweight retro movie star whose arteries are pumping THC-binded blood cells to the nether reaches of his musculoskeletal system. It’s a lot to ask of a listener, but if you’re willing to participate there is a there, there.
*I’ve since Googled Bill Cazmaier. I was very wrong about him and his juice.
Along with weed, the album’s major themes are food, women (of various races, some of whom accept money for sex), alcohol moderation, fine garments, and miscellaneous pop culture references to both real and fictional characters. In one of his most endearing and effective tone-setting maneuvers, Action re-brands himself in the likeness of some of these characters:
- Young Bill Cazmaier (… swollen from the juice)
- Sean Connery (… salt and pepper beard, distinguished look)
- DiCaprio (… a heartthrob that’s straight off the screen)
- Morimoto (… roll the drugs like [he rolls sushi])
- Bas Rutten (… I’m ass bootin’, I’m past shootin’)
- Leslie Nielson (… of the weed and the word)
- Ricky Henderson (… of rap)
- Derek Harper (… with the low Caesar)
- Dr. Lecter (… digging in your sister’s rectum)
- Mason Storm (… hard to kill like)
- John Bon Journo (… hopping out the volvo)
If I’ve failed so far to establish the kind attitude the album leans into, it’s the kind where the artist calls himself “the Leslie Nielsen of the weed and the word.” He says this as a proclamation, as he should, and if that doesn’t make you smile, then you may be past saving.
On the whole, Well Done stays true to rap’s traditional “pussy-money-weed” ethos, but it places well-cooked elk and Russian gangster movies up on the pedestal, too. The songs are laced with enough obscurities that the music becomes not counterculture, but hipster-adjacent, fully aware of its separation from the mainstream, even if it’s only by an arm’s length. It celebrates this separation—its individuality—and by extension invites listeners to be themselves, too.
Be yourself. Enjoy yourself. None of this is that serious.
Jim Carey once said, in an interview in his documentary Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond that when he was a young aspiring comedian, he had an epiphany. He realized one night, lying on his bed, his mind racing, that what people wanted was to see someone on the stage who was completely free of concern. So that’s who he became, they guy who’s completely free of concern. I don’t know whether Action Bronson’s nonchalance is the result of such a conscious decision, but he provides a similar icon.
At its core, what makes Well Done so special is simple: Here’s this big, fat, bald guy who’s having the time of his life no matter which angle you look at him from. “If he can be that free, there’s no reason I can’t,” listeners are invited to conclude.
Bronson exemplifies the absence of self-consciousness. Via this example, we’re all given permission to be free of concern. And to explore whatever odd synaptic connections might form in our minds — our unique, ridiculous, caged-in minds that need to get out in the yard and stretch their legs.
