The Way I Was Always Supposed To Be

A note about what this is. And what it’s finally becoming.

When I came out, a neighbor pulled me aside not long after and said, very matter-of-factly:

“We all knew. We were just waiting to see when you were going to figure it out.”

I’ve been thinking about that sentence a lot lately.

Because I think some of you might say the same thing about this newsletter.

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I spent twelve years as a chef on private superyachts.

Cooking for people who had already bought everything on land, so they took their tantrums to sea.

The standard was “perfection or unemployment.” There was no middle ground where you could just have a bad day.

It taught me how to notice things some people miss. Not the details. That was never the thing I did best.

It was more of a feeling. I’d walk into a room and something would feel right, or it wouldn’t. I couldn’t always tell you what was off. But I knew when something was. Once I stopped to look, I could usually find it.

It was demanding, often brutal. Some of those people were genuinely unbearable. But I also saw the world.

I walked into a port in Greece and realized that my grand plans for a “classic American brunch” were dead on arrival because baking soda wasn’t even a thing. Either that, or I was terrible at trying to explain it in a language I couldn’t speak.

The local produce didn’t include a single leafy green that was familiar, or anything else I’d recognize from a supermarket back home.

I had to stop shopping like a tourist and start cooking with what was available. Like a local. And with respect to the culture.

I had to sweat through Italian, Greek, and French techniques on a moving target, and make some truly interesting substitutions in a pinch.

It made me a better chef, and a better judge of what actually matters versus what just costs more.

And then I left.

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For years, I let the bad parts bury the good parts.

I started writing. Memoir pieces. Personal essays about my past, reinvention and figuring out who I was if I wasn’t a yacht chef.

I was polite. I was careful. And I left out the parts that showed you who I am, because I didn’t want to offend anyone. God forbid!

I played it safe. All the while, the part of me that you would see if you met me in person was left on the cutting room floor.

The one who’s funny, energetic, a little dramatic, definitely extra in that gay kitschy way, and absolutely will not pussy-foot around if something isn’t what it claims to be.

I say please and thank you. I’m respectful. I won’t be mean. I’ll be honest.

But if you dare me to break a rule, I probably will.

If you tell me “we couldn’t possibly do that,” I’ll say “fuck that, yes we can.”

And if you hand me a napkin at the end of a good meal, I will absolutely teach you how to fold it into a penis. It’s my best party trick! If you don’t believe me, I can provide testimonials.

That guy has been in here the whole time. I just wasn’t letting him write.

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Starting next week, this publication has a new name.

This is Ungarnished.

It’s a chef’s term. Nothing added that doesn’t belong. Honest.

The memoir, the marriage, the road, the reinvention. That’s still exactly what this is.

What’s changing is that the most interesting version of me is finally the one writing it.

And I’m done being polite about it. The voice I should have been using all along.

We all knew. I just had to figure it out.

—R. Michael

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R. Michael is a former yacht chef, a married gay father, and a late-diagnosed neurodivergent writer. He tells his own stories, but he writes them for you, hoping you found something here to connect with. This is Ungarnished.

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