It is always the bacon that gets non meat eating people. I don’t understand it. One moment they are vegetarian, the next they are scarfing down that piggy crack with a side order of chicharron, drooling and fantasizing about some unholy amalgamation between sweet and salty and piggy, some caramel peanut pig chimera of grotesque proportions. A real dick swinging dedication to the ‘sounds disgusting, but if you get past the initial ick factor, really gets those caveman addictive juices flowing’, really gets that pig fat jones steaming and sizzling on the hotplate, hitting those tastebuds hard, satisfying those ghrelin satiety gremlins with salt and fat and umami buzz.
I can’t look at pig meat. All I see are those peta images of abused pigs, being beaten, cut, fucked, hauled, squealing and begging and kept out of the light in tiny little crates they cannot turn around in, sweating and shitting where they stand and breathe – real torture for such clean animals, the conditions leading to disease – supperating boils and abscesses, standing on the carcasses of their young, and eating each other as they nose around looking for stimulation. All that corruption leaking into the flesh and fat and pig crack, destroying the health of the eater. I can’t eat suffering. I have been that pig in the crate, beaten and injured and hurt while people talk about humane solutions and domestic resolutions. There is no suffering-free meat.
A fallen off the vegetable wagon ex-vegan told me confidentially that bacon was her piggy-opiate. Not quite, though all that cholesterol and transfat might kill more than opiates if it all gets added up right. Even more if the pigs are added into the death equation. Comparing not eating bacon to kicking opiates is taking it all a little too far. No one is going to be shitting their pants and shaking in a corner with every muscle cramping up, not unless they got some of that not cooked enough tainted pork.
We all have our ‘crack’. It might be actual crack. It might be the shade less moreish coke hcl powder, if you are really lucky it might be the ‘pink champagne on ice’ real gourmet shit. No one ever gave me that good stuff. It might be hatefulness. It might be judgement of others that gets yer rocks off. It might be money. It might be fame. It might be roaring up the road on a hog with no muffler making me flinch. It might be violence. “There is nothing as intimate as stabbing someone” a psycho once said to me. Let’s face it the language and the act of violence is sexual for a lot of men. Fucking and fighting is where it is for them, if they don’t have the urge to do one, it’s the other.
Meat is sexy. Vegetables are beta stuff. No one can respect a pacifist I suppose. Parting flesh with a knife. Shooting a bullet into a body. Shooting cum and destroying lives while making new ones they have no interest in being involved with in a positive way. Penises are just flesh knives. When Crocodile Dundee pulled out a sword and said “no this is a knife” or something like that, he was not waving his knife, he was asserting his dominance, his masculinity, waving his dick around like it is some fleshy flag of the patriarchy.
Let’s face it the terminology of fighting is sexual, or should it be ther other way around? Slamming, hitting that thing, getting up close and wrestling, wrangling. It is all so cis het male that it makes me sick. Why does being a man have to involve so much violence for some of them? It is like their inadequate selves don’t feel truly male enough without a glock in one paw and a woman’s neck in the other. Dominate or be accused of being a cissy and that can never do. Inadequate males are the most dangerous of all. Wounded animals yapping and biting because they know some bigger dude with more aggression gets all the pussy and all the power. I am tired of their games. I don’t play anymore, except I do: I like hanging with the boys, but it never ends well. I end up feeling a little sick, a little disorientated, a little lost, a little hurt.
I would rather be a peaceful wolf in sheep’s clothing than a slavering beast that fails to hide who they are for more than five minutes. This peaceful old wolf gets to eat carrots quietly, and not chew on pain and suffering. No one who has actually been truly injured in a physical attack talks big about fighting and causing physical damage. No one who has actually been in fear of losing their life is so blasé about the consequences or so sure of winning.
When that knife slides up the bag strap towards jugular vein and scratches deep enough to take a deep breath and not dare to scream or move a millimeter, you know who you are.
Fighting back escalates things to a degree where one person – the victim or the attacker – is going to die. Like a wild animal, defense is not taken as asserting dominance and doesn’t stop the attack, it pours fuel on the fire. Most people in that situation slam a door, storm out leaving their old lady with a black eye. My husband picks up a chair and starts deafening me with it. I could not take my children easily, getting out was extraordinarily hard and dangerous for me. I could not leave him within Japan – they take your visa and throw you out without your children. I know. I ended up on that floor of doom in Shinagawa facing being thrown out minus my children. My only way to stay and protect my babies was to survive the beatings and not get killed. Nor kill him and end up with that shit on my conscience, and a nice cell on Japanese death row. No. I won. Sometimes winning is knowing when not to physically fight and withstanding the attacks, and like a pig on death row, waiting for the axe to fall.
Any woman who hit the man I married would have ended up dead. Fist and punch would have been met with knife or gun or the leg of a chair. He had no off switch. So seriously, after hearing today that I am a pathetic sheep…I am a LIVE pathetic sheep! I live! I win! I have my Boy! I succeed by knowing what winning is. Fucking hell, some cavemen don’t even know what game I’m playing.
My drift towards pacifism that led to veganism despite my genetic celiac disease which means I cannot digest gluten, and if I try it will eventually kill me and make me desperately unwell in the meantime, but heck, judge me on that too, like it is a hipster shit thing not a serious genetic condition I struggle to control, is a result of surviving extreme violence.
My pleasure is not worth another sentient being’s pain. I strongly believe that eating animals, farms and wet markets will lead to bigger and worse pandemics, and the world cannot sustain meat eating. I love life! I am a liver. I embrace health and love and life and kindness and lack of pain. The suffering we put out into this world is bouncing back at humanity and fighting back with fires and disease. The disease of apathy makes me into one of those bad vegans that talks about it to people I care about a little too often, but that is ok. They all hate me anyway. Plus ça change!
Here is a little helpful hint to those that struggle with that piggy crack(ling) jones. It won’t kill ya not to eat it. Sure you might crave it, might want to put heat to the object of your desire and cook that stuff up, take a deep whiff of that good-good that will hit your brain just ‘so’…of course it will feel good for that moment as it raises your bloodpressure and clogs up your arteries, but it ain’t no good for you. The suffering caused, the pain and the trade, and those that suffer producing it, spreading disease in cold processing plants all deserve better. Tofu isn’t so bad. It feels good. Nutritional yeast and smoked paprika makes for a great umami hit. There are worse things in this world than doing something good.
Trust me.
I know.