Here I sit in the Highline, a vegan punk and metal bar/restaurant/venue in Seattle, completely alone on a sunny autumn afternoon. I don’t mean I’m lonely. I don’t mean I’m the only customer. I mean I am completely alone in the establishment. I’m not convinced they’re even open yet, though the door is unlocked. There’s no tender behind the bar. There’s no cook in the kitchen. The bathroom’s empty. I have to grab an upended stool from a tabletop to seat myself. I pour a cup of water, and then another, and try to relax before the interview. I keep my mind on the vegan Reuben and mound of sweet-tater tots soon destined for maximum mow-down. Rewind the voice-recorder. Check the tape. Do a mic test.
Finally, I’ve been granted a chance to commune with myself and ask some stimulating questions about my, thus far, five-month journey into a dairy-free, meat-free existence — the motivation, the classification, the trials, the ground rules inherent in one person’s veganism. I’m hard to catch lately, with the various work obligations, weekly errands, daily chores, and slew of restaurant visits to which I’m committed taking up all my time, so this interview feels rather special. I am bashful, batty, sweaty-palmed in the line of fire, yet forthright and willing when comfortable. I’m sure the relative silence and total solitude make things a little easier for me, facilitate the teasing out of my vegan reasoning and lead to snagless dialogue between me and myself.
I, hereafter, explore, among other topics, the hesitation to label, the catalyst behind my decision to go green, and the concomitant nutritional thought processes of this decision. I aim to investigate, reinvigorate, and entertain in a most Socratic manner. For how else shall we come to know why we live the way we do if not by way of pestering? Each vegan, I believe, hides within an idling manifesto, a bulleted outline of convictions, whether it’s longwinded or sweetly short, politically geared or health-wheeled, into which its owner has invested much contemplation and righteous frustration. A self-possessed, programmatic manual, if you will, rumbling, purring in one’s mental bowels. And, so, this my vegan analysis, my manual, and its neurotic, fledgling debut.
AM: Mr. Moysaenko — pleasure.
am: Oh, the pleasure — pleasure’s all mine.
AM: Thanks for agreeing to speak with me.
am: Glad to do it.
AM: Let’s jump right in, shall we? For starters, you’re a vegan, correct?
am: Well…[extended pause] I consistently avoid eating animal products. [Nervous laughter.]
AM: But, then, we can agree you’re vegan?
am: So much goes with that, though, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s a lot to being a vegan, to calling yourself vegan. A lot of religiosity. Plus the attendant assumptions.
AM: Assumptions?
am: From an outsider’s perspective. Assumptions of my ethical standpoints, my rigidity, my worldview. Assumptions of what I will or won’t eat.
AM: Such as?
am: Like, take for example the case of wasted food. Say I, as a self-proclaimed vegan, and a non-vegan friend are at a café getting some coffee and maybe a pastry or two. We’ve drunk our coffee, had our respective pastries, sat a bit, talked, and then decided to leave. My friend happened to buy a cherry turnover that was made with eggs and butter, probably milk— cow’s milk — and only had the stomach for about two-thirds of it. As we both walk to the trashcans and bus tubs to throw out our napkins and put away our mugs, my friend asks if I want to finish the cherry turnover. I’m vegan, so I won’t. But why not? The pastry is going directly to waste, going from farm, to truck, to kitchen, to waste. If this hypothetical situation were made real, I would assess the probability that another person or nonhuman scavenger would find the pastry, that another patron of the café would want to finish the pastry instead of me. I would ask my friend repeatedly if he’s absolutely positive he’s going to throw it away, if he wants to keep it for later, if he wants me to hold on to it for him, if I should take it outside and ask passersby. All these considerations and more complicate my personal definition of veganism to such a point that I feel disingenuous telling people I’m a vegan.
AM: So what you’re saying is you’d eat the turnover?
am: Possibly.
AM: So you’re a freegan.
am: [Nervous laughter.] No, I wouldn’t call myself that, exactly.
AM: Why not?
am: For one, I wouldn’t defrost, baste, bake, carve, and eat a turkey if somebody handed it to me free of charge. I wouldn’t attend a dinner party and partake in the host’s cheesy hash-brown casserole.
AM: You wouldn’t?
am: No, because I decided, when I started eating this way, that if my consumption of a free animal product directly hastens another person’s purchase of more animal products — if my eating of an animal product detracts from somebody’s immediate satiety — I would abstain.
AM: Would you abstain if you were on a month-long backpacking trip through Eastern Europe?
am: Abstain from the cheesy hash-brown casserole?
AM: [Laughter.] Would you eat any meat or dairy?
am: An instance such as that is precisely one I factor into my thoughts on veganism, that helped me draft my definition of my diet. That’s why I think religiosity when it comes to diet can be really dangerous. If it were truly nutritionally unwise to abstain from meat or dairy, given a certain scenario, I wouldn’t stand on my veganism.
AM: Isn’t that a slippery slope, though?
am: Definitely. That’s why if too many questions and concerns are demanded of me, if they battle too heavily with my guidelines for permissibility, before I agree to eat a free animal product — like in the café scenario — I will default to veganism 99% of the time. It’s easier to just say, “No.”
AM: It seems like it would be easier to just say, “Yes,” no?
am: Not if you’ve already made a personal commitment to remove yourself from animal consumerism and carefully plotted out your rationale.
AM: Do you think the label — vegan — helps people stay true to that commitment?
am: Yes. A highly nuanced, all-encompassing identity tag like “vegan” serves two purposes, I think. It globally collectivizes a specific human conviction, provides a person with the mental strength and support that comes with belonging to a kindred group. And, as a unifier, it can take the doubt, the equivocation, the backpedaling out of any subjective situation.
AM: Then, you don’t feel you need the strength and support and unification that comes with calling yourself vegan?
am: At the risk of offending, I’d say no, I don’t. But it’s not because I think I’m above it. It’s only because the moral support I might feel fails to outweigh the negative aspects of the classification’s rigidity.
AM: The classification “vegan” doesn’t sit well with you because of its refusal to bend, to allow exceptions? You don’t like its inflexibility?
am: Exactly.
AM: Well, would you be able to give me the rundown of your version of veganism, then?
am: I can certainly try. First, I will not knowingly, to the best of my ability and resources, buy any animal products. I won’t because I believe that sentient beings are, largely, treated as boundless commodities and vending machines. Second — and this is the part that makes me hesitant to call myself a vegan — if a food product has already been made, the animal products already reaped, and I haven’t purchased the product, given my money, my vote to support a chain of events that involves the systematic breeding, corralling, harvesting, killing of an animal, and no one else will conceivably eat it, there’s no harm done by my consumption of the food. In fact, I feel it’s unjust to let the food go uneaten. And third is my reasoning behind not eating that dinner party host’s cheesy hash-brown casserole.
AM: So, your veganism isn’t hinged on outrage toward the death of animals? You don’t think it’s ethically wrong to kill an animal?
am: I call on my views on all natural resources and living things to answer this question. Our environments require respect. I think that animals should be treated with respect, and respect disappears when systematization enters the picture.
AM: Then you would eat, say, a sheep you raised yourself?
am: Not if my intention from the very beginning was to raise the sheep to kill it for food.
AM: What if you raised it for its wool or milk or just for companionship?
am: Why would I want a sheep for companionship? And, in regards to the milk or wool, I would first have to be able to quantify the reciprocity, be able to measure what it is that I’m giving the sheep that she couldn’t find for herself outside of captivity. I would have to be able to objectively justify my taking, which is probably impossible.
AM: A final question — what are your thoughts on people who go vegan strictly for health reasons?
am: Count it. One for the team. In fact, my choice to avoid animal products is partially rooted in its health benefits. I quit smoking cigarettes on the same day I vowed to stop eating meat and dairy: April 10.
AM: Any last words?
am: I think, boiled down, my goal in leading an essentially vegan lifestyle is to move as far away as possible from reliance on an economy in which the ability to dominate justifies domination and in which money trumps all.
