The Chef Who Makes Bread from Hair Has a Few Things to Say

Welcome back to Stranger Than Flicktion, our Flickr-inspired column. We provide writers with five random food-related Flickr images and ask them to construct a fictional short story in under five days. In this edition, we hear from a chef who makes dinner as intimate as possible.

Yes—I've been compared to Jack Kevorkian, the so-called "Doctor Death." Plenty of times. And yes—there's an old photo of me going around the internet where I'm dressed as a clown. So they also compare me to Gacy. These are very bad comparisons. Mindless. Someone needs to take you people aside and re-teach you how to look beyond the tweets and the memes. How to fact-check grandma's email forwards.

I run a traveling restaurant, period. It's called Bods. We're for lovers and the intellectually curious. I've been doing Bods for more than a quarter century. The menu has grown and the focus has evolved.

We started in 1990 with a cute name: Scabbinger's. Any person with a scab larger than a dime could come to my apartment in Coney Island. We'd debride your scab, fry it with seasonings, and feed it to you—or another member of your party—on a dollhouse platter, with garnish. It was all about the ceremony. There was only the one menu item, so to speak. We weren't well-known, and we didn't seek big publicity.

Then an injured couple—injured together in a car crash on the BQE—came to the restaurant after they got out of the hospital. They came to consume several of each other's scabs and put the near-tragedy behind them. Instead of eating the scabs straight, we put them into a burger, and the couple shared the burger. It was a joyous night, a celebration of life. There was an article in the , and we momentarily became a hot date spot. Hot by Coney Island standards. "Great spot for a fourth date," the Post said, "if your third date happened to involve an accident." We had a Great Wall of Scabs in the dining room. These were the scabs of people who had come to the apartment intending to eat them, but got cold feet. So up on the wall the scabs went. And by the way: Backing out was always fine. I respect cold feet. At Scabbinger's, we never forced anyone out of their own comfort zone. And now that we're Bods, we still don't.

Gastronomists, foodies, have taken more notice the past three years or so. Who knows why they ignored it before. Fads. What we do has never been primarily about the food. The food is the vector for something else. Customers have called it spiritual. I can get behind that view, if that's the customer's view. We do a lot of engaged couples now. Or we did until last month. I've spent the last five weeks fielding a lot of hate mail—and doing a lot of these interviews with people like you—when I should be baking cakes. I feel like the target in a huge game of Shoot the Freak.

Are you going to have an original observation today, or will comparing me to Gacy and Kevorkian be the whole angle? You all ought to stop picking on people like Kevorkian. News flash: He's dead. Instead of trying my food—participating—you want to stand outside and moralize.

Here, try my black pudding. It won't bite.

No? Look at you. You're too scared to eat, but not too scared to sit in judgment. Of course not. You invite me into this lovely studio and you point a camera at yourself shaking your head. Instead of paying attention to things that matter.

Like what? The Armenian genocide, for one. It's the 100th anniversary, right now. 1.5 million people. How about a little recognition? Or the fuckin' slaughter—American-sponsored slaughter!—in East Timor. You were alive. I was alive. Now a lot of people aren't alive. Who is to blame? Talk about that. Talk about Obama's drone strikes. Is that child murder? Are we at war, or aren't we at war? You tell me, I can't figure it out. But you'd rather waste your time criticizing my small business—the hair bread and on down the line. So let's get on with it.

Are you taking notes? Is the tape rolling? It is? Good. I'm not going to repeat myself.

What can I say? The food I make, the intimate experience I offer, is not for everybody. Never has been. We've been at it for 26 years. You can come to my apartment—I'm still in Coney Island—or I can come to your place, anywhere in the five boroughs.

We still do the scabs from the original Scabbinger's menu—fried, or incorporated into the ground meat of an Injury Burger. We now accept donor scabs, and can incorporate these into your burger on request. When we serve you the burger, we tell you the stories of the injuries that produced the scabs in the patty. We keep a record of all the stories behind all the scabs we've cooked.

We do hair bread. This is a challah-style loaf incorporating several ounces of pulverized hair. I trim some of your hair and your lover's hair. I grind it, mix it into the dough, braid the dough, bake it, and you eat it together. We also do a gift loaf, where we take your hair and make a mini-loaf for your partner. We'll also do condiments, for the hair bread, that incorporate your fluids. Nose jam and mama butter are the most popular.

We have a black pudding workshop, often requested by engaged couples. We take a pint of blood from each of you, and I teach you how to make sausages from it. Customers often mix the bloods into a single large sausage, but you can keep the bloods separate if you prefer.

And yes, we have the digit swap. Yes, we're still doing it. No reason to stop. What needs to stop is the extreme anxiety. Just calm down and listen. We remove the end of your pinky and your partner's pinky, down to the first knuckle. You swap digits, I help you grill them, and you consume. Nothing less and nothing more.

We'll do placentas. We do a version of the traditional Sourtoe cocktail.

We did a Memorial Day fundraiser called Crydogs. It was a big Coney Island community hot-dog feed, and all the proceeds went to the children's room at the branch library. Months before the feed, in December, we handed out little Bods bottles at the schools, and children spent the winter and spring collecting their tears in the bottles. We gave out prizes to the top tear harvesters, so it became a friendly competition. We heard that some students were requesting extra math homework—a strategy for increased tear production. On the day of the feed, the tears were collected into spray bottles, and we sprayed the dogs with everybody's tears.

It's a big menu. And we're open to new ideas. Being open to new ideas is what got me in trouble.

You know, I have a theory about East Timor. Just listen to the name of the place: Timor. Not even Timor. It's EAST of Timor. Timorous. You know what that word means? It means timid, nervous. A lack of confidence. It means fuck you. It means if you're gonna sit on all that oil and you're not gonna step up and be an alpha, fuck you. Too bad. We have the guns, and we're gonna take the oil. And you sit there and say who cares—it's Indonesia, Timor, way the hell out there on the dark side of the globe. Some island. Yawn. The names they give these places, for god's sake. They all sound like saps. Indonesia sounds like a disease, for chrissakes. Indonesia? Keep it away from my face. They might as well advertise—put up a billboard at the entrances of these countries—that says, "Welcome to the land of complicated names you feel stupid trying to pronounce. Timor, East Timor. Hello, take advantage of us. Our name sounds like a festering infection. Our name is We Are Afraid." Imagine if East Timor was called Human Being Land, or Free Money Pile, or Black Gold Bonanza. Maybe then you'd have a headline that sells—"Big Sneak Attack On Human Being Land… Big Raid on Free Money Pile."

Where was I?

I used to do magic tricks at Coney Island, near Nathan's. I performed on the street, or back and forth on the F train, dressed as a clown. I've always liked kids. I have two kids myself. I'm married. That surprises some people. My wife has no problem with any of this. She never did. What problem should she have?

Yes, she's tried hair bread, plenty of these things. She was the first taster, besides me.

No, she hasn't had some of the more controversial menu items, because I reject the premise. Which ones are controversial? Come back in ten years—five years, one month—and tell me they're controversial. It's a farce. Nobody cares. You don't care. You're paid to be here, shaking your head at me. Too much fake shock about one or two of the offerings, not enough appreciation of the experience. The context. The years and years we've been doing this, not bothering anybody. Giving back when we can.

The meaning of each meal is between my customers and me. I have them do a questionnaire—written or in person—before the most sensitive meals. I want to get a grip on where people's heads and hearts are at.

Sure, I've turned people away. No, I won't give you their names. It's private. Do you know that word? It's a dead word.

Yes, I got in big trouble with your friends last month for talking to a woman last year—just talking, with our voices, in a room we thought was private—about whether I would consider helping her come to terms with an embryo. She ended up having the baby. But she had considered an abortion, and this was when we talked. Listen. Her rationale, as she spoke it to me, was a rationale of responsibility: She wanted to consume the material as what she called a responsible next step, an assimilation. But you know this already. You all know the woman's name, even though she never wanted it public. You know the baby's name. You know the whole scenario, thanks to the illegal eavesdropping. It's all over the world, and it never even happened.

And now all of a sudden I'm the monster who wants every mom in New York City to eat her kids. Madness.

Can we be done here? I'm done. Thank you in advance for not slicing and dicing this, making me look even worse.

I have to go cook for a family in Park Slope. Mother, father, only son. The kid has just graduated from college, a good kid. Are you hiring? Education was a struggle, but he came through. We're doing a special-order, triple-frank crydog. Each frank contains a bit of blood, sweat, and tears from one of the family members. You've got the mom and dad franks on the bottom, and the son dog on top, all together in one bun. It'll be a good time. We'll sing a few songs, laugh a little bit, and make a memory. Nothing wrong with that. What are your plans for the rest of the day? When you're a grandparent—or next month, for that matter—will you be able to look back and remember how you spent the afternoon? I hope so. It was nice to meet you.