Alice Waters/Billy Cross /Chez Panisse/Simone Beck/Michael James 1972

I worked at Chez Panisse in 1972. In the bar, upstairs. My title was barman.
Bobby Weinstein worked as a barman at night. He said they needed someone for the day shift. and asked me if I would be interested. I went and interviewed with Gene Opton.She was the owner and Alices partner. Chez Panisse was failing and Gene and her husband put cash into the business for it to survive. Gene hired me.

It was before there was a cafe upstairs. It was a bar that served a little bit of fruit and cheese. But mainly for wine, coffee and the wonderful desserts of Lindsay Sherer. Really great desserts.
I worked there from mid August through the 15th of December of 1972. I also got a job for my old friend Sandra Brown from Sacramento. We shared an apartment in Berkeley. It was fun. Chez Panisse is where I met a woman that would be my friend for 37 year; Mukee Brossier, from the South of France.

On September 15, 1972 at Chez Panisse I met Michael James. It was love at first site. I knew nothing about him. But he sure was handsome. Long , dark, chestnut hair flowing down to his shoulders. He was tall; over 6 feet, wiry, with deep green eyes. He was a very accomplished chef, writer, played the piano and studed, very seriously, ballet. His father was Greek and his mother was French and English. (that is a whole other story)

When I arrived to work that day the kitchen staff and wait staff were all busy. Simone Beck and her assistant Michael James were comming to lunch. They were giving a big party the next night in San Francisco and Alice and Jerry Buttrick were sure they would be invited.

I don't think I had met Alice until that day; although I had been working there since around the 15th of August. I left work at about 5pm and she came to work in the evening. I was not on her radar. That was fine with me.

She was not cooking in the days I was at Chez Panisse. She was in the dining room.
Barbara was the chef in the day. I don't remember who cooked at night. I thought maybe it was Victoria. But someone told me she fell in love with a man in Canada and went off to Canada for a while. I was low man on the totem pole.

Jerry Buttrick was my supervisor. He loved to do cruel things to other staff people. Especially new people. Especially people he found to be unsophisticated like me.

Francis Ford Coppola came to lunch with Alice, Tom (her boyfriend) etc. They were in a little private dining room upstairs. Jerry asked me to make a Kir. I had no idea was a Kir was. He said , " get a wine glass, fill it with ice, then fill the glass with creme de casis and a splash of white wine." He served it to Coppola and I heard this yell "What the hell is this".

Jerry thought he was going to intimidate me. I didn't care. To me it was a job. Nothing more. I was interested in a career in food and wine. I had been working as a bilingual (Spanish/English) teacher in migrant labor camps in the San Joaquin Valley from Chico to Fresno. I had come out of the Peace Corps in Guatemala. I did not want to continue teaching or doing community development.

But I wanted to do something with food, wine, hospitality business, etc.
So I wrote to Baron Roy Andres de Groot who at that time was the Wine and Food Editor at Esquire Magazine. I asked him how to get started. He wrote me back the most beautiful, typed , letter. He told me to go out and find a job in the best restaurant I could. Preferably one that served French or Italian food. I followed his advice and that is how I ended up at Chez Panisse.

When my mother died, at the age of 90, I found in her files the letter that De Groot had written to me 29 years earlier. When I had recieved the letter from De Groot I knew nothing about him , except he worked for Esquire Magazine.

The reality was very different. He was blind and worked as a telephone operator at a hotel in New York. On the side he wrote articles on Food, Wine, Travel. He also wrote books. But he never recieved the recognition that he deserved.


Little did I know that the letter from De Groot would lead to a 4 month job at Chez Panisse that was going to change my life forever.

So when Simca and Michael arrived Jerry told me to stay out of the way that he was going to serve them and take care of them. "Just polish all of these wine glasses on the shelves". "Nothing else". Sure, I thought, why not.

Simca and Michael were introduced to all of the kitchen and downstairs staff. Except me. I did not care. I knew who Simone Beck was. My ex-boyfriend, Anthony Rabara had given me Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol I and my mother had given me Vol II. I had spent the last few years cooking my way though those books, like alot of people. Remember Veal Prince Orloff? So, I was excited about seeing her.

But the person that I was taken by was her assistant Michael James.

They had lunch and said goodbye to Alice and Jerry and went downstairs where a car and driver were waiting. No one at Chez Panisse recieved an invitation to the party they were giving the next night in San Francisco.

About 5 minutes later I look up and Michael James is standing in front of me. He sticks out his large, beautiful hand and said" Hi, I'm Michael, we didn't meet you".

It was an instant physical and spiritual comming together.

He invited me to the party the next night. Said he would send someone to pick me up at Chez Panisse at 6pm. Great, I thought. Actually, what I really thought was fuck the party, I want you in my bed.

The next day I finished my shift around 6pm and Jerry Buttrick comes running up the stairs at Chez Panisse. "What the fuck is going on", he says to me. "There is a Rolls Royce and a driver downstairs asking for Billy Cross". " I told him you were changing your clothes. " "But I also asked him where you were going." " He told me that Michael James and Simone Beck had sent him to pick up Billy Cross to go to San Francisco. "

Michael had an apartment on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. He kept it year 'round, even though he actually lived in Paris and in the South of France. Simca was going back to Bramafam, her estate in the south near Mougins and Cannes.

So, from the first night I basically lived with Michael on Telegraph Hill and commuted to work at Chez Panisse in Berkeley. After about a month he asked me if I wanted to live with him in France. He was going back in December (1972).

So, I gave my 2 weeks notice to Chez Panisse on December 1, 2001.
Michael came to pick me up on my last day of work. As I walked down the stairs from the Cafe, Michael was walking up the front steps of Chez Panisse from the street. At the entry was Jerry Buttrick, Gene Opton and Tom Gurnsey (who had recently been hired, and was the gay husband of Nancy Donnell, of a prominent San Francisco family).

As Michael took my hand and we walked down the steps to the street Gene Opton walked over to us, with her hands crossed under her bosom "Well", she said. "This will be very interesting". But said in a way that was not loving or kind. It was said in such a way; as it is often to gay couples starting out. "Well, this is going to be an obvious failure"
off we went to a waiting car that took us off to France and a new life together.

Michael and I were together as lovers and business partners for 21 years until his death on the 25th of July, 1993. He died from AIDS.

He died at our house in Kensington, just north of Berkeley. He died at 12:30am and the house was full of people. I called the mortuary and they were so busy that they could not come to pick up his body until the next afternoon.

We washed his body and anointed it with rose oil that Hallie Harron had brought. Catherine Brandel had ordered fresh tea leaf leighs flown in FED-EX from Hawaii. They arrived just before he died. We put them around his neck, lit candles, and sat with his body for a couple of hours.

I needed to be alone for a while. But there was no where for me to be. The bedrooms were full, the living room was full. So about 3am I called Catherine Brandel asking if she had a place for me to sleep. No, she was full to but she told me that an upstairs neighbor of hers had an empty guest room. And she had a key. So, off I went in my bathrobe. Catherine took me into her friends flat and put me to bed.

In the morning I woke up, put my bathrobe back on and let myself out. As I got to the bottom of the steps of Catherine's friends house, Gene Opton, my old boss from Chez Panisse, stepped out onto her porch and told me she was so sad to hear about Michael's death. As I got to the last step I turned to her and said "you know Gene, 21 years ago I left Chez Panisse to move to France to live with Michael." " As we left you said to us, in a very judgemental way "Well, this will be interesting". and I said to Gene "yes, and you know Gene, it was VERY INTERESTING". I turned away and walked off to my car to go to my house.

When I got home the mortuary had just arrived. I saw the body bag. This one was burgandy velvet. I had told them not to put his body in a plastic bag. They told me it was the law. Everyone who died of AIDS in the State of California had to be put in a plastic bag.

I had seen many friends, who had died of AIDS, have their body put in a plastic bag. It was the one thing that I thought would kill me on the spot. I knew then that when Michael died I would not allow them to put him into a plastic bag.

They went into the bedroom and put his body in a plastic bag , without me knowing, and then put the plastic bag and his body in a beautiful burgandy velvet body bag.

I stood, still in my bathrobe, on the front lawn of our house, and watched them take his body out of the house and into the waiting hearse. They closed the door of the coach and off they went down the street with the view of the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge . The fog horns groaned and the sun tried to burn off the fog that shouded the bridge.