The Diary of a Self-Hating Meat Eater
by Gavin Tomson
Author’s Note: The following are excerpts from a diary that I found in the pocket of a black trench coat at a thrift store in Oslo, Norway. I have translated the diary from the original Norwegian (Bokmål). For the sake of the diarist’s privacy, I shall not provide his name. I shall, however, note that the diary contains a few visible food stains, and that here and there the diarist has illustrated the foods responsible for these stains. Also I shall note that the diary smells repulsive. It smells like my dad’s socks.
November 2,
The hollowness has returned. Ulrikke has left me. Grier’s visiting his girlfriend whom I’m sure is not real in Brussels, so now I have the apartment to myself. Today the sun set at 4 and it won’t rise until 8 in the morning. I feel like a submarine at the abysmal bottom of the sea. When I try to talk to people, I send out unanswered bleeps and bloops. I texted Ulrikke today, “im sorry.” No reply. If a submarine texts his ex at the bottom of the sea and she doesn’t reply, is he any less alone? For dinner I made a stir-fry: diced onions, mushrooms, red pepper, ginger, dark soy sauce and various ‘ethnic’ spices. I added medium ground beef and cooked it slowly, tenderly, sensuously, sizzling in butter. I cooked the beef knowing that beef makes me gassy. Anything to fill this hollowness.
November 6,
Lay in bed all day, curtains closed and caressed by the darkness, stuck in thought loops about Ulrikke, sweet Ulrikke, the one who got away. Recalled two lines from a poem by H.D: Like a bird out of our hand / Like a light out of our heart…
My boss called around noon to ask why I wasn’t at work and I told her I was bedridden with a migraine. I said, “The pain is intolerable,” which was true. Grier keeps a jar of distilled water in the fridge because according to his bullshit Ayurvedic diet, tap water contains either too many or too few negative ions. After my boss called I decided to add to the jar some tap water. Let’s see if he dies from tap water. For dinner I made chili with red beans because red beans make me shit and I yearn for a shit so satisfying it feels like Satan himself has left my body. Tomorrow: buy floss, cigarillos, chewable stool softeners (cherry), gum.
November 14,
Grier has returned. When he arrived I was making a ‘bad’ ham and white bread sandwich. He gestured to give me a hug, but I said I wasn’t in the mood. He doesn’t understand my moods. He doesn’t feel moods. He’s bubbly as bubble wrap. I want to pop all his bubbles. Are these ‘bad’ thoughts? Am I ‘bad’ person? The ‘bad’ ham contained a litany of preservatives; probably at least 6 were carcinogenic. I read the ingredients on the pack of meat and thought, Cancer. I thought, I will die of cancer. I thought, My libido is my cancer.
November 15,
Grier is really getting to me. His girlfriend, the Flemish med student whom I’ve never met because she does not exist, bought him a record player as an anniversary gift and all day he’s been playing The Beach Boys’s Pet Sounds on repeat. “We could get married / And then we’d be happy.” How much of a naïf do you have to be to hear that and not laugh? Grier told me that he finds something “beautifully despondent” in Brian Wilson’s naivety. I told Grier that he looks like a “Beach Boy who got trapped with a Hardy Boy in the same pod that turned Jeff Goldblum into a fly in The Fly.” Afterward I felt guilty even though Grier’s an asshole. I cooked salmon sausages that I found in the freezer. I burnt their outsides but their insides stayed frosty, possibly undercooked. Cutting the sausages into pieces and sort of gagging at the frosted pink middle, I whispered to them, “You’re not so different, you and I.”
November 17,
Yesterday I made another stir-fry. I cooked the pork in fish oil. This morning I awoke after dreaming of Ulrikke to the smell of the fish oil and thought, It’s the closest I’ll ever get to her vagina again. I thought, Oh, unrequited. I thought of that System of a Down lyric, Why have you forsaken me?
November 19,
These days I get Huffington Post comments. I get the anger. Read a tweet today that said, “Hell is other people’s Huffington Post comments” and responded, “therefore, i belong in hell.” Afterward I decided that I wouldn’t eat dinner because I’m ‘bad’ and don’t deserve dinner. Around midnight, though, I couldn’t take it anymore. I booked it to the nearest 7-Eleven and bought beef jerky because it seemed like the food product closest to poison. It tasted like how I imagine human flesh would taste. I thought, This is Grier that I’m eating. I thought, This is Grier’s forearm muscle. I thought, Grier died due to tap water poisoning and now I’m eating him in a 7-Eleven. Tomorrow: orthopedic insoles.
November 26,
Wandered Grier’s room for a while today, perusing his things. Realized he keeps mothballs to protect his Ethiopian textiles. Realized I have no idea what he does for a living? I think it has something to do with programming, but what actually is programming? I think, Programming, and then I think, Keanu Reeves. I think, Programming, and then I think, Give me the blue pill or the red pill or both pills if either can make me less depressed. Does Grier wear fingerless gloves when he’s programming? Does Grier keep a consistently clean anus? I think I’m developing a fever.
November 27,
Ulrikke, I wonder where you are in this world?
November 28,
Today Grier bought a vegetable juicer. I watched him drink a cabbage.
November 29,
Walked halfway to Ulrikke’s new flat in Grünerløkka today and then stopped, looked up at the forlorn winter clouds, thought, Do I want to be an artist? Thought, Is it too late to be an athlete? Thought, What is closer to truth, a bon mot, or a body in peak physical condition? I decided that buying basketball shoes would make me feel lighter in the world, The unbearable lightness of being, etc. — so I stopped at a Nike store and spent like 1500 kroner on a pair of Michael Jordans. The little man on the shoe — I think it’s ‘Mike’ Jordan himself? — appears to be flying. He’s shaped like a star. A superstar. I want to be elevated. Why do this to myself? I am the architect of my own misfortune. Why not get high? I think I’ll get high. Tonight I’ll do MDMA and actually eat something healthy. I’ll write down all my positive thoughts and read them tomorrow, to make myself feel that deep down I’m OK. Yes. This is a plan. This is a plan to get lifted, like Michael Jordan.
November 30,
Did MDMA last night. Cried for an hour in the bathtub. Wrote only one thing down: FORSOOTH.
Illustration by Vincent Tao.