It all started a few weeks before Christmas. We get a call from my mom-in-law, who tells us that this year’s gathering would be at my bro-in-law’s house, and that we’re bringing fresh oysters. B, my hubby, asks if I’ll want any. “They’re alive, you know,” he says. “Just until you kill them with a shot of lemon.”
As someone who used to think oysters were luxe aphrodisiacs* and who would’ve slurped them with abandon if her wallet permitted, I was appalled. “How do you know?” I ask. “Well, first,” he answers, “eating dead oysters make you ill. Second, haven’t you ever seen them recoil when poked with a fork?”
Long story short, we brought oysters to dinner for everyone but ourselves. Although I did have one last piece, as a final hurrah. A teeny one, looking all innocent, yummy and, had I not known otherwise, dead. I splashed lemon all over it, along with a dash of soy sauce-vinaigrette. It didn’t move–but maybe because I wasn’t really looking.
A few days after, I was browsing through kotke.org when I chanced upon David Foster Wallace’s 2004 piece, Consider the Lobster, in which he vividly described how lobsters, being sentient beings, in fact seem to suffer and feel pain, as seen from how they exhibit preferences (such as, while still in the ocean, migrating to temperatures they like best) and how, upon capture and as they’re being prepared to be eaten, they struggle, trash and try to clamber out of the boiling pot.
And I finally face the question that’s been lurking in my mind for quite some time: Why stop at oysters, or lobsters for that matter? What about chicken? Pork? Beef? I remember the faces of the cows we pass by in the fields, every time we head to town. When we stop our van in front of them, they look at us one by one, chewing and mooing, until eventually the whole herd is staring us down. As if daring us to make a move or come any closer.
I turn to B: “Let’s do it,” I say. “Let’s stop eating meat.” We’ve tried, in the past, to become vegetarians, but somehow never survive for more than a day or so. This time, I have a feeling we’ll last a bit longer. That maybe we’ve reached an internal tipping point.
B asks me, does that mean we can’t eat fish too? Having seen firsthand, at the port in Malibu Beach, how fish asphyxiate and flop helplessly before they die, I gulp and say yes. But I tell him that eggs might be okay. And shrimps. After all, shrimps don’t seem to suffer much, do they?**
*As it turns out, oysters have zero effect on sexual desire.
**Are shrimps sentient and therefore capable of suffering? I don’t know. Some are for, and some against. B says if we go for it, we should go all the way–meaning no meat, mollusks, crustaceans, etc. I don’t think we’ll really stick to such a stringent diet, but we can try. So I started this blog as a way to track our progress, and to keep us honest. Well, more or less.
