Anything but horse
By: Allison Gruber
Tags: Covid 19 Crisis, Biden, Breast Cancer, LGBTQ

After the first of the year, dear reader, after a month lapse, I will go back to being forced vegan. I want to be clear about the “forced” part because I really don’t want to be mistaken with the . . . well, you know, vegans . . .

So today, feeling snack-y but not wanting ham, I had some cauliflower bites from the vegan restaurant nearby. As I ate, I was gchatting with my friend Megan and explaining to her how gross “vegan Ranch” is.

There are so many things that you can never get right in “vegan form” and should probably just stop trying. Like cheese. Like Ranch.

I described the Ranch to Megan as “dill floating in oat milk with tapioca.” Then I paused, “Wait. Is tapioca vegan? Isn’t tapioca like part horse or some shit?”

Megan didn’t respond. Really, how could one blame her.

“What am I thinking of?” I chatted her. “Gelatin? Glue? The 1950s?”

Also, Sarah is up in Flagstaff today, or she’d be fielding these questions.

Anyway, this is what Google is for — when neither one of your best friends nor your wife is available to answer your burning questions about the link between tapioca and horses — between which there is none.

Tapioca is definitely vegan — just one more gift from 2020, the year where gifts are as scarce as they are simple.

The thing about gelatin/tapioca/glue got me thinking about the consumption of horses, which in the western world is this really big taboo. Somewhat arbitrarily, I think. I mean, I love horses, I’m not arguing for eating them, but I do wonder why we’re cool with eating pigs (and I am, personally, cool with that) and deer (personally not so cool with that because I really fucking love deer, but I must admit venison is tasty) and cattle (again, personally cool with it), but not okay with eating horses? Like eating horses is just the. worst. thing. ever. Second only to maybe cannibalism. Or the eating of dogs, which I personally think is worse than cannibalism. Fucking feed me Frank before Fido, any desperate day . . .

But in a way, I feel that way about deer, too. I’ve just never had a pet deer. I just think they’re so beautiful and gentle and, well, so, too are cows and horses . . .

And yes, if I was being “fair,” I’d include a shout out to chickens, because we shouldn’t justify our overconsumption of meats based on an animal’s intellect because what the fuck is intellect anyway and what does it have to do with whether or not a sentient being lives or dies/the quality of life that being is provided but LIFE IS NOT FAIR.

So no. I’m not talking about goddamn chickens.

I’m talking about horses.

And I told Megan I wish, oh how I wish, being “vegan” just meant I could eat

ANYTHING but HORSE. Would make life so much easier for me. I could easily live out the rest of my life eating anything BUT horse. I would NEVER have to ask a server, “Do you have any non-horse options?”

(Once, at a restaurant, a friend ordered a burger and asked what kind of cheese, tried to be clever and say “Anything but Cottage” and ended up saying “Nothing BUT Cottage” and twenty years later I’m still fucking laughing about it.)

Alas, such is not the case.

We also chatted about ODB, and tried to recall what his other hit was that accompanied “Got Your Money.”

“Was it a ballad? A slow jam?” I asked.

Again, Megan did not respond (more than a quarter of a century of friendship and she can’t be bothered to IMMEDIATELY respond to my text inquiring, in earnest, after the nature of Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s follow-up hit to “Got Your Money”).

“Was it a cover of ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’?” I asked, laughing alone in my house like a lunatic as I imagined an Ol’ Dirty Bastard cover of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and I think you all know what happens next, reader . . . That’s right, I queue up “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” on Spotify. I just don’t get why this song is/was popular and the end of the song gets particularly “trippy” causing me to wonder if Gordon Lightfoot knew the Edmund Fitzgerald was like some shitty cargo ship and not the fucking Death Star . . .

Why in the world are we still talking about The Edmund Fitzgerald? Or, rather, why was a popular musician singing about that shit in the 70s or whatever? Who cares? I’m not even going to Google it. That’s how little I care.

Christmas Day was fine. I cooked a ham that we’ll never be able to eat ourselves. Sarah’s parents couldn’t make it for dinner because their elderly dog fell ill (she seems to be on the mend now). We ate dinner at OPT (old people time), she had a White Claw, and I got high while we watched the first half of The Prom (quite good, so far — very gentle, escapist viewing).

We were asleep by nine.

And I’m glad that, for all intents and purposes, the fucking holiday season is over and we can all stop faking our way through it like this is just some silly little bump in our best laid plans. Our best laid plans were detonated this year.

Detonated.

Smithereens.

I’m afraid the holidays have put me in a bad mood. Maybe it was all that phony bullshit (not to sound like — god help me — Holden Caulfield, protagonist of the most overrated American novel ever written — there. I got it off my chest) — all the pretending that things were normal “just online” this year. Or the expectation I feel to “be normal” this year when inside I am an exploding display of alternating extremes: profound joy, deep serenity, sloppy gratitude, complete outrage, bottomless fear, and such tremendous grief. Sometimes I feel several of these all at once.

My feelings are deeper.

My clarity is clearer.

Know what I mean? Maybe? Sort of? Yes? Not at all?

It’s hard to parse, this year, what changes in me came from my cancer dx and which came from the shitshow this year turned into for every single American.

Or maybe what I feel, the changes in me, are results of being a “perpetual” cancer patient (I don’t think I’m yet technically considered “terminal,” but maybe I am? I don’t know. I don’t like the word, so I’ll just say “perpetual.”) during one of America’s greatest shit shows of all time.

I cry more freely now — both in sorrow and pain and frustration and gratitude.

I don’t care about that shit anymore.

I’m team Pro Cry.

(I’m also team Know When To Get A Grip, and team Know When to Hold ’Em, and team Know When To Walk Away . . . I’ll stop.)

I feel my loneliness like a rough groove that’s been worn away inside of me by persistent absence.

I truly and absolutely give both more and fewer fucks.

I give more fucks to things to which I used to give fewer fucks

and provide fewer fucks to “causes” which I used to dedicate much time. (For example, I can now say with confidence that 90% of the time I do not give a fuck anymore what people think of me. This does not mean I have embraced my human right to be a complete asshole, rather it’s that because I presume I’m in my “final years” and because I’ve worked very hard — both in and outside of therapy — to be my level best that, at this juncture, this is the most authentic I’ve ever been or felt and if you don’t like me as I am (I feel like whats-her-face in that freaky Flannery O’Connor story — the one-legged philosopher?) there is not a damn thing I can do about that.

We are all like black licorice or pickled herring or the music of Yoko Ono: not to everyone’s taste

and that’s PERFECTLY FINE.

I happen to like pickled herring (wine sauce — none of that “cream sauce” aberration), and you might not like pickled herring but pickled herring can’t be anything

but pickled herring.

Know what I mean?

Also, they don’t stock pickled herring in grocery chains in the southwest. I’m just telling you, reader, should you decide to visit me in Tucson from the east coast or midwest after this hellaciously protracted night terror of a year is over you will probably want to pack your own rations of pickled herring because we ain’t got any out here.