There are times when we hear something that makes us rethink our entire life’s habits. As example, I was visiting a small town in Alberta shortly after a friend’s wedding, talking to two people from high school that I hadn’t seen in years. I started telling a funny story about a shady pub I went to once, wherein two drunk people were cursing each other out, back and forth, repeating the same two words over and over. Except in the story as I told it that day, they weren’t just drunk people: they were drunk Indians.

One of the people I was talking to turned to his friend and said, “See? I told you! It’s not a drunk person, it’s a drunk Indian. It’s always a drunk Indian.”

It wasn’t at this point in the story that I totally understood his meaning, but when I did, I realized my discrimination. And further to this, it wasn’t even about Indians, or Natives, or whatever label might be applied; it was about unnecessary details and why they are used. The story I was telling wasn’t particularly funny itself; it was the stereotype of the characters involved. These days I consider the relevancy of those extra details.

Today I no longer have black friends or white friends, Jewish friends or Native; I just have friends. And if you ask me to describe them, I’d tell you what you need to know.

Dave was the first vegan I ever knew. He was vegan before I ever heard of the word. He immersed himself in it. With some ethics, that’s the only way it can be, completely. As far as I knew, his beliefs were being influenced by the people around him and the music he was listening to. There are a lot of thoughtful punks in the world. I’m not sure enough people recognize that.

I knew nothing about veganism other than that a lot of things you wouldn’t expect were on the restricted list. I had a few questions. One in particular was sincerely ignorant. I asked if he could eat Cheezies. My presumption was that they probably weren’t made with actual cheese, thereby avoiding the dairy qualifier; this was incorrect. They’re on the restricted list.

I’m looking back at my life and noticing different things now, memories like this. If it hadn’t been for Dave, my awakening to veganism might have taken longer, or maybe not at all. Today, I don’t look at my diet as having a restricted list. I can choose to eat anything I want. I make these choices every day guided by principles I believe in. Perhaps if I’d asked different questions that day, I wouldn’t have eaten so many Cheezies since.

On the occasion when she came home upset in part by work and in part by my presence in her apartment, she told me how unthoughtful I was. I didn’t understand the stresses of her job, or how emotionally and physically demanding it was. She was sore and hungry. I didn’t listen to her enough. I didn’t do anything to make her life easier. This is what she told me, nearly shouting, leaving me to sit quietly and bite my tongue while I took each blow.

On the occasion when the attack eased, she might have realized she was wrong. Dinner was in the oven waiting to be heated. Champagne was on ice by the tub, waiting to be filled with warm soothing water. Lotion at the bedside for a long massage. This is what I’d prepared.

On every occasion she was shown wrong, she went quiet. Never apologetic. In some small way, she was always right. It is this quality that, unchanged, could leave her as alone as I left her on the last day we ever spoke.

Among the unusual curiousities I had while growing up was what exactly a condom was. Every weekend we would stop at the same restaurant on our way out of town, and every weekend I would go to the washroom and see the condom dispenser on the wall. I wondered what they looked like, what they felt like; I barely even knew what they were for. But then there was a day when I was just curious enough to put a dollar in.

There was another family that went to the same restaurant every Friday. They had a son a few years older than me, and just after the machine dispensed the little wrapper to me, he walked in. Of course he knew what was going on! He knew I was some twisted sexual deviant and he was going to tell my parents what a pervert I was! Oh, it was too embarrassing, what could I do! Continued…

The California sun had long gone down and our hotel room became our stage of conflict. I had no urgency to be up in the morning, so I thought I might go out and explore this unfamiliar city. There was much to see.

At the time I was in a role I thought I could manage; the lusting friend, never so easily accomplished as is intended. She said it wasn’t fair that she had to be up early for her conference. She wanted to go out. I thought that if I stayed, she would see how considerate I was. This is why I took my shoes off and sat in the room quietly while she slept, doing my best impression of a loving boyfriend. I knew she would remember this gesture fondly.

Weeks later I recalled this upon her. I said that I regretted not going out that night, especially in light of what happened after the trip. I stayed to be polite, I stayed because I thought it would change how she felt towards me. It didn’t. To her memory, the incident never happened, just like so many other things never happened. To this day I wonder how present I ever was.

Long before I ever became vegetarian, I found myself dating one of them. Yes, one of “them,” because where I come from, vegetarians are quite another group altogether.

We went out for dinner a few times and on these occasions we’d get into deep discussions about vegetarianism. I’d never given it any serious consideration because I knew man was supposed to eat animals. I knew we needed to, I knew we always had, and I knew no other way.
Continued…

We supposed there wasn’t anything to do but pack a night’s worth of clothes and drive North. Just suddenly, on impulse, at six o’clock. I was reckless then, in many ways, and we made it there by ten-thirty.

In nearly ever sense, I was trying to impress her, and when we finally arrived, much too late to do anything, the evening fell apart like anything but romance.

There wasn’t enough time to see the sights and not enough daylight to accommodate our desire. Much sooner than we expected, the trip was over. We left for home, and on that drive began the end of whatever we were.

An hour before we were to entertain our guests, she told me she was ill. The symptoms were showing up all day, really; very little sleep, stubbornness, general crankiness. She said it would pass by dinner, so I began to prepare it. I checked in on her when I could, but by myself the cooking was not going well. With so many dishes to make, I ended up being late for an undercooked dinner, and when I told her it was ready, she said she was much too ill to eat.

There was no such illness. If a nurse had examined her, there would be no fever. No infection, no upset stomach, nothing. The illness was a relationship that she couldn’t get used to. She was so accustomed to being alone that trusting anyone left her uneasy. The feeling of falling, the feeling of one day being hurt; these were her fears, and by what they were, she suffered them only because she wanted something that she didn’t know she didn’t want at all.

I lived as a teenage boy over-protected from anything of questionable morality. My mother at times would remove posters from my room if she thought there was too much skin showing, so I had to be clever. When we first got our computer — long before we’d ever gotten Internet access — I had a program called Rainbow Paint, a predecessor to MS Paint. Using its limited tools, I drew a picture of the Black Cat from an issue of Amazing Spider-Man that I had. It was great work, I remember, but her costume showed much more skin than my mother would ever allow. But rather than cover it up, I chopped it up. In big blocks of pixels, I moved it around like a puzzle, scrambling it. Any time I wanted to look at it afterward, it would take a few minutes to move it back to how it was. This is among the lengths I went to as a child to conceal my curiousity.

Not sure why I never just kept it on a floppy disk.

Who knows what I was thinking on that roof, drunk, obviously out of my usual self. It was remarkably easy to get up there. People walked by on the streets, but it was so dark and I crept catlike past the windows. Every room was empty, some had lights on, and I was so tempted to peek. I didn’t resist.

After I jumped back down, we hurried through the alley and onto a side street. We came to a place without lights, maybe a park or a field, somewhere we couldn’t see. All we could hear was the humming of my jacket. We were lost.

We walked towards the nearest light that wasn’t the way we had come. There was no trail that we could see but we walked through the bush anyway. Eventually we made it to our room, and eventually I made it to sleep; but in the morning we still didn’t know what had happened. And still today I wonder how I could have been so completely not myself that night.