Potluck
There was this band I used to dig in Muskegon, Michigan called Another Terrorist Organization. In addition to having a name that kicks ass, they were straight edge vegan kids and they were pissed about it. The music was noise and the singing was screaming and the whole show was this huge spectacle of angered writhing. Their fans were intense, yelling, crying, treating their bodies like temples. It was one big Emotion. I mean they loved animals like fucking crazy. They had this tune called John Wayne Died With 40 Pounds Of Undigested Meat Lodged In His Colon. So, you get the picture.
Comfortable with my own complexity, I agreed with them while I laughed at them. Because I think the uninhibited expression of emotion, its arrogance, its romance with its own importance, is stupid. It makes me giggle and I’m compelled, right or wrong (who cares?), to make a mockery of it. However, I never justified my consumption of meat with faulty arguments. I don’t require articulate structures of rational support for my actions. I ate hamburgers, knew it was wrong on some ethical plane that didn’t motivate me, and never apologized.
Knowledge doesn’t necessarily motivate us. What does? It’s a good question.
There was this other half of “the scene”, as we called it, consisting of meat devouring drug addicts who liked to tease the straight edge vegans. The straight edge vegans thought the meat devouring drug addicts were uncivilized and ridiculous. It was a war. But still. The kind of war made out of love. All of them were broke, so me and Jenna would have them over for a potluck on Wednesday nights. We just avoided topics like drugs and animals and things went fine.
One night, on New Year’s Eve, 2003, Another Terrorist Organization was playing and the meat devouring drug addicts thought it would be funny to make and sell tacos. I thought it was. I understand this is where I part ways with most people. But if you’re going to make and sell tacos at a show full of angry vegans, I think you’re funny.
At midnight, this kid Keith grabbed the pan full of seasoned ground beef and hurled it into the crowd. Please pause to imagine this in slow motion. It’s one of the most surreal visions in my ghosty hall of memories. The vegans are sober and joyous. The dawn of a New Year has taken the edge off their anger about the way animals are treated. But, suddenly, they find themselves rained upon in a storm of ground beef. Now look at Keith. He is hysterical. He’s an image of unrestrained ecstatic defiance and I’ll love him forever in just this way, protected by my memory.
Because he’s dead now. Died that November of a heroin overdose. So am I wrong to hold Keith and the scoffing spirit that informed his behavior in such high regard? Probably. But who cares? I have blue eyes. Some people have brown ones. Tsunamis come to wash the scum off the beach and they don’t fucking care.
This year Jenna wondered if we could stop eating meat and we did. We stopped. Like that, you know? We’re vegetarians. One minute it’s raining. Then it’s not. Who can tell you how these things happen? I’m not a philosopher. But I’ve been thinking about Another Terrorist Organization, how overblown emotional appeals to logic don’t change people. And I’ve also been thinking about Keith, believing that he was more than just a dickhead, that maybe there’s some kind of message beneath throwing taco meat at vegans and laughing your ass off.
But mostly, I’ve been thinking about a bunch of straight edge vegans and meat devouring drug addicts sharing a potluck on Wednesday nights, about opening the place where that can happen.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Reader Comments (15)
It's startling how much you remind me of my mother with that last sentence.
How fucking creepy is that shit, huh?
I once told a friend, with relish, about the hilarious video I saw of someone driving past one of the Harry Potter book openings and screaming out a spoiler. The dejected "awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww" it raised from the crowd killed me. My friend, a harry potter fan, was not amused.
It wasn't the dejection in which I relished. It was the deflation of importance. People take things too seriously and to fight against that is a good thing.
So, anyway, yer not a bad person.
Ohh, a rain of meat. To wash the scum off the... beautiful. Even for this vegetarian. I don't know if it would better if this was true or invented. I think you gotta open your place though, yeah.
You've already opened that place, BHJ... right. here.
"Tsunamis come to wash the scum off the beach and they don’t fucking care."
BRILLIANT!
It was Monday nights, not Wednesdays. I remember because it was often the highlight of the week, at least for me. Those little punk rock vegans made some tasty potluck grub. Lots of kind kids, and good conversation.
This was so much my life today, you don't even know. I threw seasoned beef everywhere, and nobody laughed. I wonder if Keith cried when he got home? Then again, Keith probably wasn't going to start his period.
I'm going to call this one The Parable Of The Potluck.
Also: selling beef tacos at a straight edge vegan show is fucking hilarious. That's how interesting things happen.
The captcha text for my previous comment was 'boeeff'. 100% seasoned ground boeeff.
Does this change mean no sushi? 'Cause I see a sushiless BHJ totally cutting somebody.
i agree that selling tacos at a vegan show is pretty fucking funny.
so as not to be completely unlearned about food, i just found out that 23 million chickens and 100,000 cows are slaughtered in the u.s. every. single. day.
it's enough to make me wanna barf up the bacon i ate at dinner.
next up? food, inc.
i was a vegetarian for 10 years. i got pregnant and then realized, fuck it. bacon is the way, the life and the truth.
Life just wouldn't be the same without the straight edge vegans or Keith & the meat devouring drug addicts. You are right to hold Keith in such high regard because it is your memory. No one can tell you if your memories of people are right or wrong.
oh, oh my. i just found you. i want to write as well as you. i want to read all of this. i will. thanks for being around.
who is now a meat eating drug addict. or something to that effect. anyway, i was there that night. all riled up in my sixteen-year-old glory, feeling invincible and self-righteous and wronged. your potlucks will forever be steeped in my memory because the first one fell on the day after i found out my best friend hanged herself. i'll never forget the sense of community i felt that day, even though all i wanted to do was fashion a noose and hang myself, too. i don't know. life's weird. your writing is good. that helps.