Do You Really Think We’re Boring?

B and I don’t really drink or smoke. Now, we plan on not eating meat either. It’s a good thing we don’t really socialize much–partly because we’re working on stuff (he plays guitar, I dawdle on Facebook), partly because it’s too cold to venture out (there’s a foot-long patch of frost on the roof!) and partly because no one really invites us anyway (the herd of cows up our street are really stuffy). Anyways, while stocking up for our veggie quest, B remembers a scene from Gérard Depardieu’s film, GreenCard*, in which Depardieu’s character makes fun of vegetarian people and calls Andie MacDowell’s boyfriend, with every bit of insinuation possible, “that vegetarian.“ 

A light bulb explodes in B’s head. He turns to me: “We’ll be one of those!”

“One of what?” I say.

“One of those pale, thin, boring people no one wants to invite to parties because they don’t know what to do with them.”

He’s half-joking, of course. We don’t think plant-eaters are boring, although it’s true that all the vegetarians we’ve met so far are pale and thin. But there’s a nugget in what he said: It’s highly unlikely we’ll go through this without any ribbing from certain people and friends.

Heniweys. Browsing online, I chanced upon an essay in Slate Magazine entitled “Meatless Like Me.” It was written by Taylor Clark,  whose first book, Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture,was pubbed by Little, Brown and Company in 2007. In the article, Clark echoes my hubby’s sentiments, exactly:

“I’ve been vegetarian for a decade, and when it comes up, I still get a look of confused horror that says, ‘But you seemed so … normal.’ The U.S. boasts more than 10 million herbivores today, yet most Americans assume that every last one is a loopy, self-satisfied health fanatic, hellbent on draining all the joy out of life.”

He goes on to rebut other myths and stereotypes about vegetarians and vegetarianism. Contrary to what most people think, he says, most vegetarians:

…DO know meat taste good.

…are not salad freaks. Every vegetarian is used to slim pickings when dining out, so we’re not asking for much—just for something you, if you were in our shoes, would like to eat. 

…appreciate when our omnivore friends prepare something for us at parties, but don’t expect or want them to bend over backwards.

He goes on to say: And when you eat meat in front of us, we’re not silently judging you.

Clark is hilarious, and I had a kick out of–and pretty much agree with–what he says. If you’re curious to read on, here’s the link.

 

*In Green Card, the “meat-eater” does get the girl. Says YumHummus in a thread post about vegetarians in film: “Depardieu’s appeal, in contrast to the pale, skinny aesthete with whom MacDowell had been wasting her time, apparently comes from his insistence on preparing her a beefy dinner over her objections. Depardieu disparages his rival as ‘that vegetarian’ and teaches MacDowell a lesson of carpe diem expressed through the holy trinity of sex, wine, and meat, as if the three were somehow connected.”

The Big Decision

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.