Lesson #3: No Mercy

I have been reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I used to eat anything. Growing up, I was down right giddy on sloppy joe night. Mom would brown the tantalizing ground beef, delicately twist the can opener, slide back the aluminum top, slop on the Manwich, grate some beautfiul bright orange, extra-sharp cheddar cheese, and cradle this insane, all processed goodness between two halves of an all white bun. She piled them high in a pyramid just like Wimpy’s hamburgers in the old Popey cartoons – Giza never looked so glorious!

When I lived in Tokyo, I would eat Wendy’s a few times a week until I discovered the delights of Mos Burger, Japan’s answer to the sustainable fast food restaurant. When I got back to the States, I gave up fast food (I sometimes still crave an Egg McMuffin) and then soda (or pop depending on where you live). Now, I only eat sustainable meat, otherwise I am vegetarian. In full disclosure, I eat out nearly every meal so my waste level astronomical, and I give my self dispensation at baseball games since not eating a brat or hot dog would be sacrilegious.

But I may loose that indulgence because of Jonathan Safran Foer – asshole. He opens up with the idea that there is no reason not to eat dogs (real dogs, not hot dogs) if we are okay with eating pigs, which in many cases are smarter than dogs. And then goes into the intelligence of fish and chickens, and by the end of it, I realized the only reason I did not eat my favorite pet, Indy, the cutest darn beagle on the planet, was because of some bullshit, subjective social construct that valued dogs over other intelligent beasts that I feasted on with joy every day. Truth be told, Indy got so plump in her old age, turning her over a pit and eating her succulent meat probably would have been pretty tasty… grosses you out doesn’t it? But why?

The more I think about my eating, the more I think about where my food comes from and the more I don’t want it to cause pain or harm. Every time I see someone eating McDonald’s I gag at the thought of thousands of shit covered cows huddled together in a factory farm like a bunch of junkies waiting for their next highball injection of steroids, growth hormones, and antibiotics. We wonder why were sick? And then believe the food industry when they tell us these substances don’t pass through to us when we heat our Big Mac’s and porterhouse steaks… yet rates of cancer are increasing, girls are hitting puberty years ahead of time, and 18 year old boys look like 25 year old men, yet have the attention span of 3 year olds? (For the record, 99% of meat is made is a factory farm.)

Dad knows I don’t eat meet anymore, or at least I have been telling him for the last three years. Yet every time I have a meal with him, he asks,

“Son, we are having steak. Oh, you don’t eat meat. But this is a really great NY strip.”

Or at a restaurant, dad is one of those guys who gives you a running monologue on the menu and tells you what to order. It is nice to get a recommendation the first time, but you could be in McDonald’s and he would say, “They have this amazing new sandwich called the Big Mac, it is amazing.” And then makes you feel like an asshole when you order the salad.

A few months ago, dad tried to eat vegan, or his version of vegan. He went to the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida. He was at the end of the line for traditional treatments so he thought changing his diet would help. I applaud him for it but he came back and all he ate was spinach salad and black bean and corn salsa for weeks. He could not bring himself to try ‘hippie food’ like tofu or kale – that would be giving in and admitting there was something valuable in what he despised his whole life. (Although I seriously question the sustainability of turning a plant like soy into something that looks and tastes like chicken but isn’t chicken.)

The more I thought about how dad and I ate, the more I realized how one eats is a reflection of how one relates to the world. I thought about all the vegetarians and vegans I knew, and they were all pretty nice people and lived their life by a ‘no pain, no harm’ approach. My aunt was vegetarian. She was a little nuts, always offering you a ‘power breakfast’ or ‘power snack’ (which of course is always followed by a ‘power dump’), but is a wonderful woman. Same is true of people that try to eat sustainably (present writer excluded), locally and non-industrially. They have an awareness of where their food comes from and the significant impact food has on the planet and the other people that live on it.

Dad loves meat and could care less where it comes from. He doesn’t think about what it takes to bring him his meat, he just knows that it is what someone at the top of the economic food chain should be eating. He does buy it from Whole Foods, but I think that is because it is more expensive and therefore better, not because how it was made.  After making himself sick from his vegan diet, he took to eating steak nearly every day. He goes to Whole Foods and buys NY strip by the pound and throws them on the frying pan every night.

The nephrologist stopped by while he was getting dialysis the other day and told him he was anemic. “That is why I eat steak every day, sometime for lunch, too.” She nearly fell off her chair. After telling him he needed to limit the protein he ate to reduce the amount of waste in his blood, his response… “you don’t know what your talking about. I eat steak because I am anemic.”

One day I made the mistake of trying to bring up the impact eating meat has on the planet. Dad. you know how much water it takes to make a pound of meet? 2,500 gallons. How much grain? 16 pounds of grain. For a guy that likes efficient markets, that doesn’t seem very efficient. (Okay, getting snippy probably didn’t help.) Dad’s response, “The world is running out of water and food. I have to get as much of it as I can,” slapping his knee and laughing. Then continued, “I can’t believe your one of these people that still believes in global warming. Didn’t you hear about these emails they were talking about on O’Reilly.”

I kept at him. You know how much land it takes to support your life style? 25.5 acres. “Not bad.” The average global citizen uses less than 7 acres. “Good, that means I am winning.” Note to self: never use the footprint argument to a man  who made his living buying and selling real estate and measured success in number of acres owned.

Dad’s life is a competition. He measures success in materials purchased and owned. The more you buy, the more waste you produce, the better you are doing in the competition to be the uber-consumer the market admires.  It is him against the world. He wins, you loose. You win, he loses but he plots his revenge and you will likely lose worse than you would have if you just agreed to roll over the first time. His thinking: completely discourage anyone to try and even compete. If you make the mistake of competing, he cuts your legs off, strips you naked and drags you through the streets so everyone knows who won and what happens to a loser. A fucking modern day Edward Longshanks.

Honestly, it is a hard lesson not to learn because when you lose with dad, it hurts, leaving you bitter and wanting blood. I aspired to be dad’s William Wallace, the annoying bother in the side of the established, tyrannical order, losing battle after battle but in it to win the war, no matter how long it takes. But the more you try to win with dad, the more painful he makes losing so that you finally give in to minimize the eventuality of your certain humiliation.

I have been thinking a lot about Little Bro and don’t want him to go down my path. Urging him to give in. Just let him win and don’t fight it. Don’t be the fucking hero that ends up on the executioners block screaming “Freedom!” with your last breath right before you die. Say mercy. Say mercy! Sis held out, too. Lil Bro, you don’t want to be drawn and quartered like she has, your not that strong. But he’s got too much dad in him to ignore the pain and resist the temptation to enter the battleground. Lil Shit is fighting back in his own way… hate to admit I’m proud of him. But worried it will end bad, real bad.

And I sit her now wondering… what weapons does dad still have? I feel the intense guilt of wanting the battle to be over but imagine it being drawn out in the trenches for years to come, no matter how unlikely. The man was supposed to be dead a decade ago. Nothing will convince me he cannot live ravaged with cancer and on dialysis for 20 years. That is his weapon. He sits atop his throne, feasting on those around him, drawing from our pain and sapping us of our strength to resist. Hell, I even eat meat around him so I don’t have to hear it. Compromising my values in the face of pain is the most bitter of losses.

But what if he takes the nuclear option? The one I know I cannot take. The one where in the end, he finds peace and asks me for forgiveness… Could I even handle that? Would I have to ask him for the same in return? Am I strong enough to give in? Is my only path to victory eating crow and letting him win?

Bro