A Milestone for Animal Person
On Friday evening, at a local Thai restaurant, I experienced a crucial sensory moment for the first time in probably a decade. It’s a feeling that most vegans (but less vegetarians) are familiar with, and when I first became a vegan over 20 years ago, I considered it a gift.
I ordered some tofu and spring rolls and Dave ordered chicken pad thai. He has been a vegan at home for a couple of months, mainly because he asked me to stop buying animals for him and I have. So Casa di Loder is now a carcass-free household (and dairy-free). But when he’s out of the house, anything goes for him.
I cringed when he ordered the pad thai, and I said something like, "oh, my poor little chicken friends," and he was most unhappy. I then added, "you know, tofu really can taste just like chicken, because chicken doesn’t really taste like anything." Clearly not one of my finer debating moments, but I had to say something.
When his food arrived, he started picking the chicken out and putting it aside (I know, I know, it’s already dead, but I did appreciate the gesture). And now comes the milestone. I smelled something odd and rank, and realized it was coming from his plate. I picked a noodle from his dish, brought it to my mouth and ate it and was stunned to discover that, just like over 20 years ago, the odor of dead animals was nauseating me. And there’s no other way to describe the taste of the noodle that was mixed in with the meat other than: filthy, putrid, disgusting.
This is a milestone because for a solid decade, I haven’t minded the smell of dead flesh at all. In fact, a grilled steak seemed most delectable on the sensory level (but not so much on the ethical level). I consider being nauseated by the odor of meat a gift because it adds a new layer to your feelings about eating animals. All of my arguments are intellectual regarding ethics, the environment and health. But when you add the sensory experience, it adds life to your personal ethic.
This moment has been coming for quite some time. When I was at Millennium (a vegan restaurant) in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, the first thing I noticed was the smell. It didn’t smell like a slaughterhouse or charred flesh. It smelled clean. And when I went to Greens several days later, which is vegetarian restaurant (with the most spectacular location ever), the smell was very different (nothing like the smell of cheese to pollute the air). Furthermore, I nearly passed out when Dave and I took his cousin to dinner after a day of (them) golfing last week. They both had steaks and the smell–and the look–of the steaks was very difficult for me to deal with and gave me flashbacks of my visit to a slaughterhouse years ago.
This is all good news for me, despite the fact that I’m easily nauseated these days. When you like the way the product of suffering smells, it’s easier to ingest the product of the suffering. But when suffering smells like suffering to you, it actually gives you an edge.
I’ve got my edge back.
