2009-04-13
The Animals Will Never Revolt and Lead to Secession my Friend. It Will Never, Ever Happen. Ever.
I sort of have had a little crush on someone, nothing serious and he's a way cool guy in every way except for one, glaring pot-hole.
He's a vegan.
There was a little texting weirdness today where I mentioned that my dog is my best friend and he brought up eating animals. I joked that she'd want me to eat her if things came to that and then came the, "I don't get how people can love only cute pets but eat other animals!"
Well, let me break it down for you by bringing up perspective. I love my little Rosie so much that I drunk-texted my dog sitter last Friday night while I was partying like an aging rock star in St. Louis.
Even so, I have no delusions that my dog has human emotions - she doesn't. My pets have basic preferences and express certain desires but at the end of the day, the dog is a dog. She wants to smell things, eat, and walk around. That's it. Anything else that she wants to do is stuff I taught her to do and she only wants to do it because I trained her that when I get out a ball to play with, the door opens and we go - wait for it - walk around.
In essence, any preference for play or for sleeping arrangements is stuff that I gifted to my dog, not that my dog thought of one day right after she ate some cat shit out of the litter box.
Bless her heart.
She's guided by mother nature and that's all. I'm an animal and I happen to be a bigger and more dominant animal that my dog so she's also guided by me.
A cow is guided by mother nature. A cow wants to eat, unload milk, and wander around in a herd so she doesn't get eaten by a wolf. It's nature.
I am guided by mother nature but I've got a little more going on upstairs and have adapted to live in a more complex society than that of a dog or a cow. the base principals of dominant animals apply and of nature's needs driving me. I want to eat and I want to sleep. I learned to sleep in a bed so that's what I want. I learned to eat delicious pigs so also, that's what I want. Am I emotionally attached to a bed or bacon? Yes and no which is where, unlike my dog, I emerge as an emotional creature. I think about things in greater terms than just having my needs or immediate desires be met.
I have ideas. Rosie doesn't have ideas per se.
So I hear something about how I'm sounding really Republican which was kind of insulting because I am in full-on back-lash mode as far as people using political affiliation as a slur is concerned. I don't give a fuck how someone votes anymore. I'm so sick of the hypocrisy of being an asshole JUST BECAUSE someone has a different political association or agenda.
I explained, "Hey you know... I'm one generation away from people who hunted to feed their large families and even in my friends at home, people hunt and share their deer every season. It's community and it's local sustainability." One of my favorite memories was being snuggled in bed in the dark of Fall and my then-boyfriend's phone ringing. He answered to find that another friend of his had a deer and that my then-boyfriend just needed to call to let them know how to process it.
My crush responded that he had to hunt as a kid to have food for the fams but saying that it's okay to hunt and eat animals just because your family is hungry is like saying it's okay to own black people because you have a lot of work that needs to be done.
My excitement wilted like so many vegetarian dishes I will never, ever eat because I am a PERSON and I can make a CHOICE to eat some chicken.
I didn't even bother to point out that the analogy is ludicrous and that there's no comparison.
Like me, black people are people. With ideas and the ability to plan in advance and to make choices in the face of an unknown situation.
Animals may make a choice to eat their own young if they die prematurely or are too weak to survive but when faced with new situations, animals freak out and eat their babies. Black people do not do this.
Instead of taking any bait or waiting for more propaganda, I shut it down.
We're all animals guided at the end of the day by Mother Nature. Some animals are carnivores and others are not. Humans are omnivores and this particular human has a taste for animal protein. I am conscientious about what foods I eat and prefer local foods to California produce or Trader Joes but nature is nature.
My nature is a meat-eater who has considered other possibilities.
Like the one seeing me move to St. Louis.
And I don't mean next year.
I mean as soon as I find a job.
I have a million responsibilities here but I woke up today feeling like not one of those is bigger than the responsibility I have to be a happy and well-adjusted person.
I don't know if I can do that here. I don't fit in. I got hit on in St. Louis... I'm not a fat ugly person there and that's enough alone to make me want to go there. I love the big old houses in Soulard and I love how easy it is to get around. I especially love that people are comfortable.
Here, it's rare for me to feel relaxed when I'm out or to spend the night at someone's house but there... I spent the weekend sleeping head-to-foot on a couch with a dude I haven't seen in eight years. And I slept. I actually FELL ASLEEP. That would never happen here. I don't know how many times I've counted on being up all night or I've not had any cocktails because I don't want to spend the night because I know I'll never fall asleep.
I spent the day walking all over the city, about four miles with another old friend and his teenage daughter. The daughter didn't look at me like I was a short fat asshole the way some teens look at me here when I ask them about life.
I seriously had one of the best days I've ever had and yeah, part of it was that I was getting to tag along with a little family doing all the stuff I used to do with my own father at 15 - Vintage Vinyl and retro shops with 1950s - 1970s clothes.
But the main part was how comfortable it was. It was how total strangers treated me like I belonged there and wanted to know more.
It's just a gut feeling but it was certainly solidified by the fact that the only dude interested in me in the last six months had a little vegan melt-down this morning and compared my appreciation of hunting to pre-civil war slave ownership.
Something tells me that there would be an abundance of ambitious men who think I am adorable and who do not cry on the inside about my Republican taste for Ribeye, God help us all.
arizonasarah at 1:58 p.m.