CONFESSIONS OF A BAD VEGETARIAN

 

1)    I’m not vegan. To a certain segment of my cuisine “community,” that makes me bad. End of story. Never mind that I’ve remained steadfast, without a single dietary exception, since I made this choice thirty-eight years ago. In Texas.

2)    I have a dysfunctional relationship with tofu. It sits in the “meat” compartment of my refrigerator until 6-8 months past its expiration date. When it becomes impossible for me to overlook the mold, I unwrap the package and chuck the contents in my compost container. Honestly, I don’t know what to do with tofu. I’ve never once been cooking and thought, Hey, this would be better with tofu. I’m not anti-tofu, just tofu-ambivalent.

3)    I don’t eat nuts. No allergy. I just really, really, really don’t like them. It’s the bitterness. And the way the little bits want to nestle in the grooves of my teeth. (I pass on jelly beans, too.) You can have all the chocolate covered almonds and the banana bread chalk full of walnuts. No sharing necessary. I’m not so big on banana bread anyway. I suppose that could be a separate point, but you already know enough.

4)    Vegan cheez does not get a passing grade. I’ve bought all the brands. I’ve tried the vegan interpretation of mozzarella, gouda, blue, parmesan, feta, cream cheese and cheddar. There’s always a foreign tanginess or an issue with melting or just the fact that the cheez does not taste like cheese. You could blindfold me to conduct a taste test, but I should warn you it doesn’t take much for me to feel claustrophobic. It won’t end well with me screaming and swatting the air. You don’t need the assault and I don’t need that tedious detour through the legal system. 

I lined up a couple times at a “vegan dairy” that only opened four hours on Saturdays. The line seemed to justify the high prices. But it all comes down to taste. That “vegan dairy” is now a ceramics store. Karma.

5)     I don’t eat Greek. Sure, there’s moussaka, but my uncle and I may be the only two people on the planet who are allergic to eggplant. My reaction isn’t pretty. Just trust me on that. Sure, I could have the Greek salad, but that’s a whole lot of chopped onions and cucumbers and, frankly, not all that interesting. There’s spanakopita, but phyllo is too messy. Same with baklava, also loaded with those dang nuts.

6)    I don’t preach. I’ve sat through plenty of meals with people grilling me about being on the veg spectrum. Really, I’d rather talk about anything else. Even Trump. I don’t mind talking with someone who is genuinely curious, but the questioning is often leading in a way that makes the former lawyer in me want to shout, “Objection!” The motive comes around to finding flaws in my choice and ultimately superiority in the meat-eating lifestyle. But I’m not battling and I’m not recruiting. I have very strong feelings on the subject but, as with religion, I keep them to myself. Find your own way. Make your own choices. Respect that others make their own.

7)    I’ve heard your joke. Jokes even. You’re a meat-a-tarian. Har har. You eat vegetarians for breakfast. (Who are you…Hannibal Lecter?) A lawyer, a vegan/vegetarian and a politician are on a sinking boat…who do you save? Society! Yuk yuk. I have a sense of humor; I laugh when something’s funny. Here’s the thing: the joke has to be funny. And new.

8)    Cheese-less pizza is good. I swear. I’ll admit I felt embarrassed the first time I ordered it in one of those lines like at Chipotle where you choose the toppings. The two guys behind the counter thought I was pranking them. Like it was being filmed for a new incarnation of Candid Camera. No pepperoni. No mozza. “No taste.” (Yuk yuk…again.)

9)    I don’t want fake meat. And I really don’t want fake bloody “juices.” I don’t miss the taste of meat. Honestly. It’s been thirty-eight years. I’m over it. Eating a meaty burger or chick*n in a restaurant freaks me out. A regular meat eater may chew away and dismiss the attempt at the deep fake, but I take a bite and worry. To me, it tastes like sausage, ground beef or bacon. Again, it’s been thirty-eight years. What do I know? 

I surmise the fake meat movement is directed to veg folk who have made the switch for health reasons. They miss meat. It’s also an option for meat eaters dragged into a vegan café, “forced” to abide by the sign at the door (No Smoking, No Kicking, No Screaming). They can order the butter chick*n and shrug (translation: passable, not that they’ll admit it) or mock. Everyone loves a critic.   

10) I’m not a healthy eater. I don’t track my protein (a favorite perceived Achilles’ heel of steadfast meat-a-tarians). I never went into this as a health choice. It was solely about my personal ethics and morals which, no, I’m still not going to barrage you with. Ice cream is one of my main food groups. I sometimes munch on raisins and decide that’s lunch. I love carbs—loaves of sourdough, heaps of fettuccini, Scandinavian crispbread—even though society has been on an extended anti-carbs kick. Maybe that’s why I don’t preach. I am nobody’s role model. I won’t look you in the eye (or mouth) while you gnaw on a basket of buffalo wings or pull apart a lobster, but I’m going to let you be you as long as you do the same with me.

  

IF I COULD TURN BACK TIME

So, yeah, this aging thing has been on my mind lately. Last week I contemplated a field trip to Florida’s Fountain of Youth, but Florida’s off my travel list these days (one word: “GAY!”) and the only thing worse than looking young and foolish is being old and foolish. No splash of holy water is going to reduce the vestiges of age. 

 

This week’s post continues of the notion of aging denialism. Sigh. Maybe I should have renamed my blog, Ice Cream Gayly. Writing, and especially researching, would be so much more fun.

 

What I’d meant to write about last week before tangents took over was how fifty-somethings I know, myself included, are trying to appear young to stay in the game in terms of our careers. 

 

I recently FaceTimed a friend from college who is now a principal in an architecture firm in Los Angeles. She switched firms during the pandemic and, during her first year, only met colleagues once in person. As I observed when I stayed with her for a few days in January, the job continues to be mostly a work from home experience, her days filled with Zoom and phone meetings that seem to go on and on. (My friend has always been intense about all aspects of her life.) I wondered how she was connecting. She said everything was highly satisfying which was a highly unusual stance as I’ve listened to her rant ad nauseum about the office dynamics in every firm she’s worked at during the past thirty-five years. Maybe working from home was offering some necessary space and distance. 

 

When she talked about her team, she mentioned that all of them are under thirty. “Can you relate?” I asked.

 

“Of course,” she said. “We click.” But then there was a pause. “You know, when I was twenty-eight, I used to think all my bosses were so old, but they were the age I am now.” Another pause. Wait for it…Recalculating…“Do you think they thing I’m old? Come to think of it, their weekends sound so different than mine. More, um, fun. And they do things together. I don’t get invited.”

 

Oh, dear. The highly satisfying stance was taking a hit. Her face showed some extra lines—creases, furls. I needed to divert a freefall. I brought up American politics. My turn to suffer. We’re completely on the same team, but she argues as though I’m not. (Intense, I said.) The talk lasted another hour—all politics, no more mention of work. I saved her but not myself.

 

Speaking of myself, I attended a writers’ conference in Seattle in September. I have three novels I’m desperate to get published and I haven’t been able to stand out in what they call the slush pile which is the hundreds of emails agents get every month, if not week, from writers seeking representation, hoping to see one of their books at Barnes and Noble, a needle in a haystack of books by Stephen King, Colleen Hoover and that dang James Patterson who comes up with a new book as often at The New York Times publishes another issue of its newspaper. Jeez, James. Take a vacation. Maybe learn an instrument and join Stephen King’s band, a group of writers. Pick the hardest instrument, James. Spend two years on violin, then give up and take up the oboe. You’ll need to practice plenty to get up to snuff. 

 

Okay, tangent. Sorry.

The conference. I put big pressure on myself. Agents would be sitting through four-minute pitches from all of us slush pile foragers. I needed to stand out. I needed them to believe they could make money off me…a ten percent cut from hundreds of thousands of copies of my bestseller which would eventually become a hit streaming series. (How many seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale can they milk?) I needed agents to know I have a whole career ahead of me. Many, many more books. Much, much more money. Let other slush pile writers begin wishing I took up bagpipes to perform instrumental duets with James Patterson.

I theorized that one way to convey to agents I needed to be scooped up was to give them the impression that I was much younger than I am. Looong career. No arthritis, Metamucil or Matlock marathons in lieu of writing for decades to come.

It was clear that applying a Fresh Lotus Youth Preserve Rescue Mask and then slathering my face with glycolic acid, retinol serum, Hyaluronic Marine Hydration Booster and Wrinkle Expert 55+ Moisturizer during the week of the conference would make me poorer, not younger. (I’m feeling a tad defensive over the word choice of “Youth Preserve Rescue,” as if my face needs emergency intervention. But then, maybe it does. That product is shaming me!) My best shot from the list of 2023’s best anti-aging scams products was the Peter Thomas Roth Instant FIRMx Temporary Eye Tightener, but that got me worried. 

Temporary eye tightening?!

I might not be able to blink or, worse, sleep. Would an agent interrupt my pitch, shield their face with a raised arm and yell, “Stop staring at me!” A memorable pitch but no deal. Call it a hunch. 

I opted for a hair appointment. Melanie, my foul-mouthed but expert stylist, needed to work a miracle. A magic potion perhaps: foil, white goop and two and a half hours of hocus pocus. Poof! Blond highlights plus gray sideburns painted away. A decade younger (or a couple years?) without losing eye function. 

I pitched. Two out of three agents asked for more. Alas, one has followed up with a rejection and the other seems to have ghosted me. Maybe the requests were about politeness, a pity play for the old man with the bad dye job and eyes in dire need of tightening.

I’m not the only one praying a fresh coat of paint offers a new improved look. Another friend in his fifties is looking for a new job. He’s a star in his field, his talents obvious in just a five-minute chat about his profession. Still, the interviews have been fewer this time around and younger, less experienced people are filling the positions. Experience is an asset until it’s an extra financial cost. He’s lopped off the first decade from his résumé. He’s also gotten a younger cut from his stylist, colored his mustache and tried to go more pepper than salt with Just for Men’s Grey Reducing Shampoo. To my eyes, it’s working. Maybe he can monetize his transformation as a TikTok influencer. It’s apparently a viable career for young ’uns.

Just say no!

An acquaintance who owns a business in which attracting new clients is always a pressing concern is getting a facial procedure today. I’m not sure the specifics. She’s discreet about these things and assures me it has nothing to do with exploding lips. (Seriously, can we please have an intervention for every woman seeking puffy lips? It’s unnatural, unflattering and maybe a little bit scary. I’ve told my friends to do something similar when my highlights stop making me look Swedish and start messaging Old Man Being Scammed by Moneygrubbing Salon.)

Someone else my age is getting a whole set of dentures this week. Again, I don’t know the specifics, but just the mention gets me fretting about my smile. 

Aging teeth can pull focus from all that other age-reducing work. I whitened mine for the first time the day before my writers’ conference. (No difference.) 

I’ve had great teeth my whole life but, after I hit fifty, pesky—and, for me, traumatic—work became the norm. I’ve fractured teeth on both sides of my mouth. When I despairingly asked my dentist what was going on, he gently talked to me about “wear and tear.” I’m basically an old set of tires, treads worn down, ready to be chucked in a junkyard or converted to an earthship in New Mexico. 

I remind myself there are plenty of old tires still rolling along. Misery loves that. Still, all I want to do is kick and scream…burn some rubber. I haven’t tantrummed since I was seven. It’s my easiest shot at appearing younger, but that’s not the look I’m going for. 

Guess I’ll have to hit the drugstore and splurge on a face mask. Perhaps not the Youth Preserve Rescue one. Maybe there’s a Batman one in the back I can get at a discount. We older shoppers are known to be savvier. 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

      

DRINKING THE KOOL-AID…OR BATHING IN IT

Not as far back as childhood. In Disney World, I had my picture taken 

with Minnie Mouse. It's part of my father's collection of slides, 

never to turn up again. As you can see, finally meeting 

Pluto in Disneyland was one of life's milestones.

I was born in Hamilton, Ontario and grew up there until the age of thirteen. Situated on Lake Ontario, the city was considered part of the “banana belt” in the southwestern portion of the province since we got less snow than places like Buffalo, New York which was sixty-five miles away on Lake Erie. Still, the predominant Ontario mindset was to book vacation time during winter to head south, most commonly to Florida. Sun! Beaches! Pluto and Goofy! 

 

Every March, my family loaded up the station wagon and headed for cities like Sarasota and Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast. These were excruciatingly long trips for a kid. How many times did my brother, sister or I ask, “How much longer?” or more naively, “Are we there yet?” 

 

My parents learned the best way to make the trek tolerable was to set me up in “the very back,” in the section behind the rear seat where two little seats popped up, facing one another. Luggage and coolers were stacked between my spot and the rear seat where my siblings sat. This reduced my opportunities to pester everyone which I’d discovered was a highly entertaining way to pass the time. Every time my brother or sister shrieked my name, I felt deeply rewarded. 

 

With me being barricaded away, I had to find less interactive entertainment. Books seemed like an ominous undertaking, too long, too many extended descriptions about kitchens and pond algae. Every time we pulled into a rest area, I stocked up on tourist maps and pamphlets. I grabbed one of everything, a boy of indiscriminating taste. (Has that changed?) My father’s driving itinerary was always ambitious so there was no chance we’d stop at the ghost town in Findlay, Ohio or a Kentucky ventriloquist museum, but I could read about these spots, gaze at the photos and count the number of exclamations that dotted the descriptions of things to do there. Oh! What! Fun! It was more interesting than reading about what a fictional character name Albert noticed in Aunt Mildred’s mason jars. (Always berry preserves, never fingers suspended in formaldehyde.)

 

My pamphlet collection grew exponentially as the drive dragged on, each place overhyped to such a degree that I wondered if there were any standards for allowing a roadside stop to declare itself “WORLD FAMOUS!” How does a small chain in Florida gain such renown for plopping sauerkraut on a hotdog? Did people in Australia really talk about it? In Turkey? (As an eight-year-old, I thought a lot about a country named after a bird stuffed with cornbread.)

 

One pamphlet-harkening destination in northeastern Florida randomly popped in my mind again this past week, an attraction in the town of Saint Augustine, billed as “the nation’s oldest city.” I don’t know if the Medieval Torture Museum, the Oldest Wooden School House or St. Augustine Shipwreck Museum existed way back in my days of being barricaded. What piqued my interest then, and does so exponentially more now, is Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth. There was no picture of this place, but I imagined something stately, one of those garden features but supersized with carvings of flying fish and lions and a long line of people waiting to drink from it as others jumped in and splashed about, their wrinkled skin becoming smooth, hair growing back on aging men’s scalps, none of it gray or white. This was why so many seniors flocked to Florida! I couldn’t understand why my grandparents, who stayed six months every year in a mobile home farther south in Lakeland, returned every April looking more like Jed Clampett or even Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies, not having transformed into Elly May or Jethro. Wrong priorities was all I could come up with.

 

At eight, the Fountain of Youth wasn’t a draw. I didn’t want to look four again, with grownups plopping back on a tricycle and clapping as I reverted to assembling ten-piece puzzles of fruit. Still, I knew I’d head to St. Augustine and the Fountain of Youth when the time seemed right. And, by golly, the time is now. Let me splash in it, swim, snorkel, scuba dive, float, drink from it and gargle with it. So long saggy bits! Begone, Santa beard! Vamoose, age spots! Hello again, boyish skin…without, fingers crossed, the accompanying zits. 

 

If only I still had an eight-year-old’s imagination…and gullibility. 

 

Like most of us looking at middle age in the rearview mirror—hell, that period’s long out of frame—I’m facing a comeuppance every time I glimpse any part of me in a mirror. Certain lyrics from Neil Young have new meaning as they pop into my head, like a most unwanted earworm: 

Old man, look at my life,

I’m a lot like you.

God lord, it doesn’t help that I’m conjuring up a song that was released fifty-one years ago. My only other pop culture reference thus far in this post is a TV show that’s even older. Why can’t I come up with a way to weave in TikTok, Doja Cat and some new series on a streaming channel that I refuse to pay for because I grew up in a time when watching The Carol Burnett Show and The Waltons was free? (I canceled Netflix after finishing all of Grace and Frankie.)

 

I’m at that awkward stage where I haven’t yet surrendered to complete irrelevance and dinners at three in the afternoon. I consider it a small victory that AARP, which had been popping up in my spam email folder during COVID, The Early Years, has lost my scent. Maybe my L’Oréal Revitalift eye cream is having a better result than I think. Maybe the dark bags I continue to see under my eyes are ghost imprints. After two decades of hanging out there, I can’t help but see the illusion of the pesky buggers.     

    

Aging is supposed to help us evolve, doing away with vanity, letting others take their moment in the limelight and paring our lives down to the things experience tells us are more important. As someone who has spent a lifetime beating myself up over my looks, letting go of all that misery would be a blessing. It’s a relief knowing that self-criticism is quieter, the swells passing more quickly. I step away from the mirror the second a negative notion surfaces, I don’t glance in windows to gauge my weight as often anymore…something I learned is very common for people with eating disorders. I can settle with a shrug as my self-assessment for the day, a teenager’s ennui (Yeah, whatever) without the youthful complexion. (Oily, Pimply…stop romanticizing it!) 

 

Still, I brace for the onslaught of wrinkles and age spots. I worry about my face being pulled down by prominent jowls. I wonder how I’ll be able to handle seeing my skin turn as thin as crepe paper, every bumbling bump commemorated in red blotches. Sure, vanity will fade to nothing, but I feel that, for myself, despair will move in. 

 

Could have bought that Porsche
if I hadn't invested so heavily
in false hope.

Like red Porsches, life’s lessons are wasted on older folks. Why couldn’t I have accepted my younger self? Why didn’t I embrace it, knowing that was as good as it would get? Why did I put so much hope into the radio commercial testimonials about Clearasil? Why didn’t I extend college another year or three? Why didn’t I fight back, blaring the Donna Summer cassettes in my Chevette every time someone had the audacity to say disco sucked?

 

I feel an inkling to fly to Tampa, rent a car and head two hours northeast. I’ve Googled the Fountain of Youth and I see no fountain at all. It’s just another schmucky attraction where people will happily my $17.79. 

 

But I won’t be a sucker. 

 

If I wait another year, I’ll get the senior’s discount, coughing up only $15.92, the savings getting me a sauerkraut-laden hotdog, once I peruse old pamphlets to find a time machine that’ll take me back to 1978. Ah, forget it. They didn’t have veggie dogs back then. Sauerkraut in a bun isn’t worth the effort.

 

And so it goes. Life. No brakes. No turning back. Maybe it’s another one of those indignities that comes with aging, but the future seems to be approaching at greater speed. I’m buckled in. Ready. Or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

GENDER QUEER (Book Review)

By Maia Kobabe

 

(Oni Press, 2022)

 

 

I have the whole banned books brouhaha to thank for leading me to Gender Queer: A Memoir. It’s a graphic novel that may have otherwise escaped my gaydar. I’m the better for reading it.

 

Gender Queer is a quick read that should be widely read. It’s not dramatic in the events that are told. What’s remarkable is the journey the author and illustrator has taken in coming to terms with eir identity. (Finding the “right” pronouns for Maia is its own long, arduous, thoughtful pursuit, leading finally to adopting e, em, eir. I had heretofore been unaware of these pronouns. If you’re rolling your eyes over the pronoun “issue,” all the more reason to read this book. Seek to understand instead of judging what you don’t.)

 

There is a lot of talk about sex talk in the book, but all of it is relevant in Kobabe’s search for discovering eir identity. The exploration is informative but not titillating. It reminded me of all the matter-of-fact sex ed classes I’ve attended as a teacher and a principal, my presence required ostensibly to ensure the students are respectful and to bear witness in case someone discloses an experience that might be construed as abuse or an assault for which follow-up is required. 

 

References to masturbation—how nice to get beyond “you’ll go blind”—include a book ban-triggering drawing of Maia conjuring up an image of men with erections in ancient Greece, one man reading and almost touching the other’s penis. While the drawing is clear, it does not seem intended to arouse. If the banning brood paid any attention to the words below the drawing, their trumped up indignance would lose its luster: 

The more I had to interact with my genitals the less 

likely I was to reach a point of any satisfaction. 

The best fantasy was one that didn’t require any 

physical touch at all.

That’s right, kiddos. Don’t touch your privates! This seems like the kind of message prudish banners would like.

 

While we’re on the sex stuff, there’s talk about buying a vibrator. Maia uses it once. “It’s not that exciting because I don’t really like it.” E gives it to eir sister, with whom e has a trusting, close connection. At the age of twenty-five, Maia goes on a second date with a woman and says, “I’ve never had sex.” Again, sex-repressed book banners should be applauding. The author is giving a voice to the notion that sex isn’t everything; in fact, sometimes it’s nothing. 

 

The other page that book banners specifically object to portrays two graphic novel cells in which the girlfriend performs oral sex on adult Maia or, at least, an appendage attached to Maia: a strap-on penis. Yes, a sex toy, drawn as blandly as possible. Admittedly, the images may give pause. A depiction of the toy while it’s not worn would have diluted any possible objection, but that’s not the choice Kobabe and the publisher made. It’s nothing more erotic than putting a condom over a banana in a high school sex ed class. The author makes clear e doesn’t like it. 

 

Later, e rejoices in realizing, “I never have to date anyone” and “I don’t even have to care about sex.” If the cells depicting Greek men (page 139) or the strap-on (page 171) were postcards available in a high school, the distribution might indeed be shut down, but in the larger context of this graphic novel and the messages provided, any hoopla is overblown. These three cells are an excuse to try to deny access to a book about gender blurring and alternative pronouns.

 

The author’s journey does not seek to go from being born female to representing as male. “I don’t want a beard, and I don’t want my voice to change. I don’t want MORE gendered traits, I want LESS.”[1]

 

I can’t understand how that should be a problem for anyone. There will be a lot of trial and error in terms of friends, family and colleagues using non-gendered pronouns. Kobabe provides many examples of this. People mess up, but they are earnestly and respectfully trying. It reminds me of the adjustment period friends and family go through in coming to terms with someone coming out as queer. The individual’s process took time; likewise, so does the understanding of those around them. I especially appreciated the inclusion of Maia’s aunt, a “lesbian feminist,” who is honest about her struggle to understand:

If you ask me to start using new pronouns for you, 

of course I will. But I’d like you to explain why.

Right now I don’t understand and I’m going

to keep asking until I do.

This particular struggle goes largely unspoken, one in which older gays and lesbians haven’t been able to keep up with an evolution in queer identity wherein there are more options in terms of defining oneself. Online and in a few conversations I’ve had with gay men, the reflex by some is to resist or reject change. Everyone struggles with change. It presents new challenges; it means the person trying/having to change may mess up; it means altering what seemed to be known and established. Sometimes, even in the queer “community,” that doesn’t play out well. I appreciate the aunt’s honesty and her willingness to listen, learn and grow.

 

Maia Kobabe

I learned from reading this book. I have a person’s example, through memoir, to add context to understanding a path to nonbinary identity and to appreciate how this personal search and decision does not come on a whim. I hope young people will access this book, sidestepping any bans to get their hands on it. The book will help those who are struggling to understand their relationship with gender and sexuality. It will help them understand peers who are trying to figure out their own issues. As well, I hope older folks with seemingly fixed minds will be open enough to give Gender Queer a read, allowing the concepts, contexts and personal testimonial simmer long after it is finished.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

[1] This is why the e, em, eir prounouns make particular sense. Not he or she, the h/sh has been lopped off…just e. Not them, just em. Not their, just eir. Any gender connotations are gone. 

THE DAY THE FASHION DIED

I didn’t start out in this world with a sense of fashion. My first influences—my parents—have probably never fit Yves Saint Laurent, Coco Chanel or Giorgio Armani into any conversation. My earliest memories of my mother’s glamor involved muumuus and wigs. My father stuck to suits and standard ties with diagonal stripes. Shoe polish was important but it came with connotations of labor instead of shine. At some point in my youth, my mother took a continuing education sewing class at the local high school and that brought on a mortifying period of making matching t-shirts for my brother and me, dressing us as twins even though I was three years older. Luckily all evidence of this “trend” in our household is in my father’s slide collection which no one has ever transferred to photos or any other kind of easily viewed humiliation. Lying around somewhere is an actual photograph of my brother and me sporting Budweiser tees at Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida, as macaws perched on our elbows. Classy stuff.

 

My first personal fashion choices were copycat clothes based on what my peers wore: disco shirts, a pair of platform shirts and nearly knee-high tube socks that I liked because a few horizontal stripes of color looked crisper against bright white. (I could have scripted and starred in my own Tide commercial.) “Bucking the trend” for me meant preferring Lee jeans to Levi’s. Mostly, I remained a follower. Skintight Calvin Kleins. Jordache. Velour shirts. Izods. Polos. The fashion industry needs followers. I was still my awkward self, but I was at least a geek in Calvins. No one asked me if I was Amish. That was my fashion bar.  

 

By the time I hit eighteen—An adult? Me?!—a few more personal preferences had crept in. Wimbledon-worthy K-Swiss tennis shoes. A WilliWear shirt that felt as comfy as a pajama top. Perry Ellis spread collar dress shirts. I was a closeted gay guy in Texas who figured I might as well make that closet look nice. 

 

Gays were into fashion, right? I bought GQ to look at the fashion ads (and unsmiling, impossibly chiseled models’ faces). International Male tracked me down—did they have gaydar?—trying to entice me into buying skimpy, colorful undies and oddly cut shirts that looked stunning on their own crop of unsmiling, impossibly chiseled models—the faces and the hairless bodies. I never got duped. I knew I couldn’t carry off those garments with my goofy smile and my non-chiseled everything. 

 

My first year out of college, I taught at a private special education school outside of Dallas. It was my dream job, but the pay was a pittance—less than. I moonlit as a sales associate at Sanger-Harris, a higher end department store, at least the one at the recently razed Valley View Center in Dallas. I loved the shifts when I was assigned to the Guess/Generra/Claiborne collections and felt it was a personal affront whenever my manager stuck me in Ocean Pacific, Levi’s or, gross, Haggar. I began to understand a fashion hierarchy and spent my breaks zipping over to Bloomingdale’s (snootier than Sanger-Harris) to fondle Armani clothes. Yes, they felt amazing! It took me many paychecks before I could buy a coveted Armani sweater which I still have and wear once each winter.

 

RIP, Fred Segal, Santa Monica.

I found my own favorite brands and styles. Girbaud jeans. Paul Smith shirts. Guess watches. Cole Haan and Kenneth Cole shoes. Moving to L.A., I fell in love with Hugo Boss, a few label-subtle Tommy Hilfiger offerings and hip stores like Ron Ross, George’s on Melrose and, especially, Fred Segal in Santa Monica where I bought a pair of purple and green paisley socks and sought out an Italian shirt and shoes plus a Hugo Boss suit and tie to match them. The fact the look began with socks felt insane. I understood fashion!      

 

When I moved to Vancouver, I landed a job in a men’s boutique on trendy Robson Street, but it was a temporary gig. I got back into teaching and there wasn’t a need to dazzle ten-year-olds, the girls having an indiscriminating affinity for pink and Hello Kitty, the boys wearing the same Pokémon sweatshirts for days on end. I’d also come to realize that the stereotype about gays having impeccable fashion taste was vastly overstated. They followed the flock, wearing tank tops, jean shorts and Doc Martens or, worse, construction boots. The misguided independents wore passé Cosby-style sweaters and, on one first date, a Batman t-shirt. ZOWIE! KLONK! My fashion sense was bound to wane.

 

It might have been a gradual thing, but seitan (or something like that) finally did me in. It happened when I went for dinner with Ron, my closest friend in Vancouver. We have plenty in common except for food. Picking a restaurant has been a constant challenge.

  

For the first decade I knew him, there always seemed to be a fight in him, needing to resist my personal choice as a vegetarian, wanting to assert the supremacy of meat eating. So often after I’d order a meal—pasta primavera is what every restaurant served the “difficult” diners back then—he’d enter a one-way debate about the absurdity, even the hypocrisy, of being vegetarian. What was sushi if it was just seaweed and rice? Why did vegetarians eat veggie “burgers”? Couldn’t they come up with their own cuisine? Kale is just roughage. “Kale chips” are NOT a thing!

 

The gift I couldn't ignore.

His breaking point came after my 40^th birthday, when another friend gave me a vegan cookbook and, as I randomly flipped pages as a performative measure to demonstrate my excitement about the gift—So thoughtful! I LOVE it! (I hate birthdays.)—my eyes fixed on an unknown term in the glossary. A certain binding ingredient wasn’t vegan. It wasn’t even vegetarian. 

 

Cheese suddenly became very complicated and basically a no-go at restaurants since staff were as unfamiliar with the complicating term as I had been. It meant cheese-less pizzas which continues to baffle helpful servers (as recently as last week) who assume I’m making a mistake. It unnecessarily draws out my order. It’s like a spotlight is cast on me and an alarm has been triggered. WARNING: WEIRDO DETECTED. I’m mortified. I don’t like attention. I love When Harry Met Sally, but I never want to be compared to Sally when she orders food. After the server escapes, I’m met with an oft-asked question by people at my table: “Why can’t you eat cheese?” 

 

It's tasty, I swear. Usually, my
friends look away. The horror!

If I were smarter, I’d say I’m lactose intolerant, someone would say, “You poor thing” and we’d resume talking about the perks of working from home or movies only one person at the table has seen because everyone has different streaming channels. But I’m dutifully honest. If someone asks, I assume they are genuinely curious. (As an introvert, I abhor inane chitchat, including longwinded takes on movies only one of us has seen.) My dinner companions prod when I try to brush things off with, “It’s complicated.” I explain. Ron’s heard it all umpteen times. Nowadays, he jumps in and gives the explanation, the disdain almost disguised.

 

When I first had to abstain from public cheese consumption, it was a step too far for Ron. I’d become radicalized. I’d insulted pizza. I’d become a mocking sympathizer of the truly unfortunate souls who are lactose intolerant. 

 

Ron loves food. His memories are always first about the food. I’m sure he saw the Eiffel Tower and The Louvre in Paris, but every recollection is about the baguettes. (He rhapsodizes over them!) Dallas is about a slice of pecan pie he once had. Any mention of the province of Ontario leads to a reference to a butter tart served at a particular law school cafeteria. When I went on a recent epic hike last month in Washington, his first response was, “Did you stop at the place with the sausage breakfast sandwich?” 

 

While my cheese choice in no way kiboshed his opportunities to talk at length about gorgonzola—it comes up annually, out of the blue—he’d had enough veggie-babble. He went for the jugular. He made a show of shifting in his seat and peeking under the table before saying, “If you’re a vegetarian, why are your shoes leather?”

 

It had been asked before. By others seeking to find fault in vegetarianism, even by Ron. It was the Achilles’ heel in what he saw as my sanctimonious dietary nonsense. I responded as I had before, “I don’t eat shoes.” We moved on to other topics, finding common ground on something about Will & Grace or Roger Federer’s rapid rise in tennis. But I knew I had a shoe problem.

 

I’d never bought a leather jacket or, god forbid, leather pants. These were style statements that didn’t fit my clean, conservative look. I would never make a transformation like Olivia Newton-John’s Sandy Olsson in Grease. I would never get a leather sofa or buy a car with a leather interior. All these things involved too much (dead) cow. But I’d told myself leather was unavoidable in some contexts. Belts. Watch bands. Shoes. I could not live in flip flops and running shoes. Neither option was professional, even for teachers. 

 

I couldn’t shrug things off anymore. My fashion would have to take a hit. 

 

Fun but never sophisticated.

I gave away the Guess watches. (The brand was out of style anyway.) I found an online company and ordered vegan belts—not some hippie-dippy kind, woven from hemp and dried corn husks (relax…I made that up), but pleather, available in only black or one shade of brown. I bought a few pleather dress shoes as well which came off as much like the real thing as vegan cheeze. (Not that well at all.) I started my Converse shoe collection which now stands at thirty-six pair. I love ’em. They make me happy. But they don’t signalize classy like my dearly departed Cole Haans or Kenneth Coles or other treasures I must overlook at Nordstrom. 

 

So there it is. I live a more authentic life. My values are better aligned. But there’s a reason my Instagram is all about mountain hikes and quirky urban discoveries and not my outfit du jour. My quest to be a gay fashion icon got short-circuited by marinara pizza—all tomato sauce, Kalamata olives, basil and, hopefully, a damned good crust. I don’t freak out if the sauce splatter on my clothes. It is, after all, just a shirt.