I will preface this post with an admission: I am no longer a vegetarian. The reality of life on the farm, where Charo, a genius in the kitchen, cooks for us, simply does not permit the lifestyle choice that, with the exception of a few (now much questioned) months, partly define my teenage years and early adulthood. It’s not that food is scarce here, exactly; there’s almost always enough rice and beans, the staples, to leave you full. But after 6 hours of chopeando or even a day without snacking, sometimes the body is screaming for the sustenance that habichuelas con arroz, or moro, just can’t provide.
So, with this post now prefaced, I can still draw from years of vegetarian experience and post-vegetarian guilt to finally answer that question, the one that people ask us (can I say “us” anymore?) and then immediately stop listening, eyes glazed over, waiting for you to just finish already, they were just being polite; that surefire conversation killer, that seeming obligation that, by its nature, must be filled over a meal which features meat on everyone’s plate but your own; that cannot be answered 100% truthfully, or surely your friends, meat left untouched, would be partly responsible for the pointless death of an animal or, were they to keep eating, would be heartless, ice-blooded pendejos who didn’t respect your opinion; that question, seemingly so innocent, that reveals 1) that your friends are judging you and 2) that you have already judged them: Why are you a vegetarian?
Oh the disappointment when I hear those horrible words! A wonderful date ruined (who am I kidding? I should say “a wonderful time ruined)! A lovely dinner disrupted! A quick shudder, a falter, an attempt at a witty response: “Oh I like to kill animals, I just don’t like to eat them;” no, no, that’s just creepy; “have you ever read that story where the father makes his son eat roadkill? You know, how in the end the kid, so terribly shaken, waits with a fork and knife for his father to run him over?” No, that won’t work either, even creepier. “Because you’re eating flesh of another being.” No, too obvious, too honest, even creepier still. Oh what to say! What to do!
Michael Pollen wrote a supposed eater’s manifesto in In Defense of Food (a book so disappointing, so poorly written and researched that I could barely get through 100 pages); the series of posts that follow will feature a vegetarian’s manifesto, a defense of what seems like a noble diet but which, to its followers, is really just obvious and no big deal. My hope from the entries that follow is twofold: first, that omnivores will read this site and decide to pose diet-related questions more carefully or not at all: “You really like your vegetables, huh?” or, “I’m a big fan of salad, too.” I’m not trying to convert anyone, I promise, although I wouldn’t object were someone who, after reading these posts, to agree to do the right thing (I joke. Or do I?), Second, I seek to give vegetarian’s confronted with this question, surely by troglodytes, locked in caves for years, unenlightened and uninformed because they don’t know about this site, a ready response. “Wonderful question, (insert favorite curse word here). Just read ’In the Arena with Eli Berman.’ He, like always, says it all.”
So, brace yourselves, lettuce lovers and meatheads alike, for what’s to follow. It really could be a game changer. By the end of my series of entries, people won’t be asking “Why are you a vegetarian?” but rather, “why aren’t you?”
Email me your thoughts, and I’ll be sure to include them over the course of the week. Until then, eat as much meat as you can. You may never have the justification to do so again. Unless you’re on a farm in the Dominican Republic….No, I don’t think that works so well, either.
