Chapter Two
Dear Chronology: Fuck You
Neither of these motherfuckers is me. But I personally believe I favor Sam Jackson.
This memoir will not be
chronological. I don’t think chronologically, and neither do most people,
actually. If Quentin Tarantino has taught us anything, it’s that it is okay to
jump backwards and forwards in the story. Sure, you may get lost for a second,
but pretty soon something really funny or hyper-violent is going to happen
which will grab your attention. Just like
real life. So fuck it. This is about the time I was in a relationship with
a vegan.
Now, in order not to offend
any vegans, let me say this up front: MEAT. IS. AWESOME!!! So, now that the
vegans are gone, I’ll continue.
Here’s what I learned from
dating a vegan: if you are not yourself a vegan, don’t date one. Because dating
a vegan is, in my mind, a lot like it would be dating a Nazi, just with less
regard for hygiene. She was cute, had a sharp wit, and was for some strange
reason attracted to me. (Not strange. I made her laugh. There you go.) The
first time she told me she was a vegan and I asked what that meant, she
explained that she didn’t eat any kind of animal protein, nor use products
produced by or from animals. “So, you’re
like a vegetarian?” I innocently asked.
Her response should have been
my first clue that the relationship was not going to last. Her voice dropped down
from a natural soprano to a bass so low it was nearly beyond the range of human
hearing. Like if Barry White and Darth Vader had conceived a child. Her blue
eyes turned completely black, and I swear on my life she sprouted these small
goat horns on her forehead. The sky clouded over, and her reply of “We are NOT vegetarians!” was accompanied
by an unnaturally long peal of thunder. Just as quickly, everything went back
to normal and she was cute and blue-eyed again. But in literature, we would
call that episode foreshadowing.
I’ve always had something of a
“live and let live” attitude about most people’s lifestyles and personal
choices. As long as what you’re doing or believing isn’t intentionally hurting
somebody else, and as long as you don’t try to force feed it to me, then we’re
cool. Be straight, be gay, be ultra-conservative or super-liberal, or somewhere
in between, be pro-gun, pro-choice, anti-nuke, green, pink, whatever. I may not
agree with you, but we can sit down over a beer or a glass of wine or a
cocktail and talk, like people used
to do before Facebook and Twitter and Snap Chat fucked up that kind of social networking for everybody.
(I just this second realized there might actually be a group of people of whom
I am intolerant – people who don’t drink. I’m NOT talking about recovering
alcoholics. I mean people who just don’t
drink. Why in the hell, unless you are one hundred percent certain that you
have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, would you NOT drink? Drinking is
awesome. Still, I vow right here and now to try and find common ground with
those people, because that's just the kind of person I am.)
The problem with my vegan
girlfriend was that she was completely intolerant of anyone and anything that
did not fit in with her lifestyle. I don’t mean “annoyingly” intolerant. I mean
“Westboro Baptist Church” intolerant. Going out to dinner with her was like
volunteering to sit as an audience of one for a two-hour diatribe on my entrée choice. “Have you ever seen an industrial beef plant?” “Do you know they immobilize calves for their whole lives to make veal?”
“Do you have any idea how many growth
hormones and steroids are used in commercial chicken?” “Have you ever heard a lobster scream in
pain?”
It didn’t stop with the food I
was eating. “Proud of that leather
jacket? Killing a cow is just as bad as murdering a person.” “People who wear fur are just evil.” “Are those chess pieces made of ivory? Why
don’t you just hang the elephant’s head above the door?”
I wish that every person in
the world had the capability of being completely honest on the first date.
Completely. Including me. I wish I’d had the courage to say, “Hey, I’m Larry. My dad committed suicide
when I was thirteen and my mom is an alcoholic, so I have some real anger and
abandonment issues. Also, I like steak, science-fiction novels and edgy standup
comedy.” Do you see how liberating that would be for both parties?
I wish my first date with the
vegan had gone something like, “Hey, I’m
a vegan, and an animal rights activist. I like obscure eighteenth century
literature, and also I’m completely
fucking insane.” Because armed with honesty, I could have set the
expectations for the entire evening. I could have responded, “Well, hey, great. Here’s what we’re gonna do
on our date. First, I’m going to take you to this great Indian restaurant that
specializes in vegetarian dishes. After that we’ll hit this independent
bookstore I think you might like, then we’ll drive over to the SPCA and play
with some puppies. And at the end of the evening, I’ll drive slowly past your
house, push you out of the car, burn rubber out of there and never fucking see you again. Let’s go!”
She used to watch me sleep.
This creeped me out more than her extremist vegetable worldview. You know how
you’ll just be lying in bed at night, and that inner sense of self-preservation
screams at you to wake up right now?
I’d open my eyes, and she’d be sitting up in the bed. Watching me. Not watching
me in a “this-is-the-man-I-want-to-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with” kind of way.
It was more like a “maybe-tonight-is-a-good-night-for-a-murder-suicide” kind of
way.
Ultimately, I don’t think it was our differences of opinion over the
consumption of animal
protein that caused us to break up. I think that, more
likely, the breakup might have been
caused when she caught me in bed with
another woman. Actually, I don’t think even that was it. But I do think the
large bag of Ultimate Cheeseburgers from Jack In The Box on the nightstand next
to where I was having sex with another woman might have been the last straw.
I’ll never know for sure. I only know to stay away from vegans.
Next week, Chapter Three: Farm Life, The Switch, and Psychological Torture
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