Survival of the Cutest
My diet of elimination, based solely on aesthetics began with veal. Not that I was ever a great consumer of veal, mind you, but around 1992 or so, when all of that inner-child-healing-shakra-energy shit was being spoon-fed to me in Santa Barbara AA meetings, I heard how veal is produced.1 "Veal calves live their few short agonizing months lying in a crate full of their own excrement." Well, fuck that, I'm not eating a cute little shit-encrusted cow.
Then in 1995, my parents moved to Eczema Valley, Oregon. They traded the convenience and syringe-strewn culture of Los Angeles for what appeared to be a B-roll taken on the set of Little House on the Prairie. They lived over 6 miles from the civilized world of DSL and corn dogs. This 6 miles, traveled in any direction, would take you past farms filled with sheep. Adorable, fluffy, frolicking Easter card sheep. Okay, fine. No more leg of lamb with mint jelly.
The first time I ever traveled to New York, I crashed an opening at the Art Director's club. I cannot recall any of the artists, or the work that was featured. However, I remember the pate. One of the few luxurious delicacies that no one at the Pepsi corporation has figured out how to mass produce, you can't eat pate without being reminded of a simpler, more elegant time, when women scorned trousers, and the colored had their own drinking fountains. You also can't eat it without some asshole in the buffet line reminding you that the geese who are raised to produce it live a tortured existance in a small crate with their feet nailed to the ground. Fuck it, I didn't like liver anyway.
Systematically, I began giving up my only remaining vice, the consumption of animals, based on how attractive I found them, and what method of slaughter awaited them on Death Row in a Tyson's factory.
Cornish game hens were added to the list in 2001 during "The Palace Diner Incident", in which Monkey remarked on the resemblence it bore to a "little George" lying on my plate.
Lobsters became taboo when I found out they mate for life and can live past 100 by foolishly watching a program about them on Discovery Channel.2 This, coupled with the barbaric preparation methods of boiling them alive, was more than I could stomach. It didn't help that I find them very cute, although I admit this may speak more about my bizarre sense of beauty (see Top 10 Hot Famous Men list) than the actual lovliness of the lobster.
It is now 2004. I am happily married to a hardcore vegetarian. Unlike your average garden-variety vegetarian, Monkey has never sat next to me scowling at my plate of steak and asking me how I could eat something so disgusting. His only commentary is usually one of envy, as he recounts delicious meat he enjoyed in pre-vegetarian days gone by. The buttered filet mignon in France, the mouth-watering burgers his mom took him to get in Levittown. All are remembered fondly as he eyes my meals. He didn't give up meat nearly ten years ago because he didn't love it, but found himself plagued by the same nagging guilt I was experiencing.
This would prove to be my downfall. Innocuous under-handed comments laced with reverse psychology in his diabolical plot to ruin my good time and my Meat Lover's Slam.
Had he just been a militant tofu-weilding asshole, I could have smugly kept indulging in my chicken strips and bloody rare burgers. Instead he subtley planted his evil anti-meat ideas into my head and incoming mail. We receive newsletters from farms in Upstate who liberate Thanksgiving turkeys and catalogs filled with vegan pepperoni and pleather Doc Martins. My weekends are spent in hippie supermarkets buying imitation meatloaf.
On a self-sabotaging whim, I decide to give up chicken, beef and pork for 30 days. I decide to keep eating fish, shrimp and crab, so as not to make this so difficult I can't manage a single day. After a month, I reason, if I wish to go back to eating as I previously did, I would do so.
It has been two weeks without meat that doesn't swim. I try to partake of some leftover meeting food in the document production center. They are the only 24-hour department, and always have the best grifted free chow in the building. I try to add a succulent chicken breast to my rice and asparagus and am immediately overcome by the wailing of imaginary chickens as they lay dying in some grainy black and white undercover PETA film. I can't pick it up. I can't even touch it.
In two short weeks, Monkey, the hippies, and the chickens have won. I'm willing to pay 6 bucks for some crappy breaded soy patties made in Vermont by a factory fueled with solar power. I happily order my morning omelette with mushrooms and cheddar in lieu of bacon. Dr. Atkins lies spinning in his grave as I eat my flakey biscuit and decline the sliced roast beef. What the hell happened?! Why don't I just start diving muff and practicing Wicca, for chrissakes?
It's Friday night and I snuggle in a warm bed, remote poised in my hand. I lazily flip through the channels and, ...Oh fuck no, you don't! I'm not watching that Finding Nemo shit. This is bad enough without making me empathize with Chicken of the fucking Sea!
Footnotes
1 The methods of veal production, which are documented and available for anyone, are disputed as authentic by my dad's friend, Kirk. However, he is Canadian, and believes the Nazi's were the victims of bad PR, so you cannot rely on him as an accurate source.
2 As a former resident of Maine who has eaten his own weight in lobster before, Otis_Otis swears he has seen evidence of marital infidelity in these crustaceans.