Oh, my dears, the dinner with my designer Paolo and his “partner” (boyfriend? husband? friend with benefits? workmate who’s a hugger? how do I ask? why do I feel the need to ask? am I a discriminating person despite being a woman of the world?) has been VERY vegan and I don’t mean that in a nice way.
So! Pour yourself a vegan drink.
Gunther and I arrive. We bought the good Aldi wine with a sticker. Andreas smiles, accepts, looks at the bottle. The smile disappears, replaced by a metaphorical cloud of a storm spread all over his face. He utters:
“This wine isn’t vegan.”
I sort of eye-pop at his direction. What does he think wine is made of? Flesh-devouring grapes? (I felt a bit silly when I Goggled “vegan wine” later and found out that most wine has eggs in it, which makes me question everything I have ever learnt.) So, he passes the bottle to my designer Paolo, although in Gunther’s presence I refer to him as “Paolo” because Gunther does not know he dwells with an in cognito novelist who has a designer, and Paolo lets out this tiny sigh before saying “of course, as you know,” and I can hear those italics, “I don’t drink alcohol.”
This has not been the best choice of a present, it dawns on me, although it is evening. I am late with the dawning in literal and metaphorical sense here.
So, we start with the starters. They are baked garlic. This is it. Garlic. Which is baked. Andreas assures us it tastes like jam. “Garlic jam,” I mutter to Gunther, who is as eager as I to try them. Then we reluctantly attempt and this is exactly what they are what I thought. Garlic jam. Which tastes like garlic, if garlic was jam. I am rather consolated by knowing I am not going to kiss anybody after that. Gunther, who has announced earlier he was going out for a night with the boys (i.e. seeing one of the four maidens (slags) who are eager to experience his newfound 14 centimetres, which I shall mention is still smaller than a 7″ single, which young people of today shall Goggle on their own, because I am in the whirlwind of garlicky action) looks unconsolable. I have no pity for him, but I have lots of pity for myself, knowing I will be sweating garlic for weeks to come. At least, I consolate myself, not knowing how badly I am jinxing it by not knocking on vegan wood, my sister Petunia will not find out, and my neighbour Vasoline of the plastic lawn fame does not smell me (it would be creepy, don’t you think?).
Then the main dish arrives and it is vegan schnitzel with vegan potatoes with vegan butter sauce and vegan lettuce with vegan dressing.
I don’t even know where to begin, so I nod and smile at the vegan schnitzel (why don’t they just either eat schnitzel schnitzels or vegan veganstuff?), accept vegan potatoes (although it feels weirdly suspicious an idea), politely refuse vegan butter (I don’t even want to know), but then I make the mistake of piling up the vegan lettuce all over my plate to look more veganous. “Vegan,” I announce, “I feel this is what my purpose in life is.” (I mean Susan Vegan, who is a singer from the 1980s known for her hit “Tommy’s Dinner.” But I don’t say this to Andreas, who would look hurt. He only listens to vegan music, which was playing in the background, and I think it was ‘White Noise for Babies’ which I happen to have downloaded onto my not-very-expensive Sansunk phone to listen to when I can’t sleep.)
And so, I make the mistake of digging into the salad, which consists of vegan lettuce, vegan tomatoes, vegan radish, vegan feta cheese (please don’t even ask), and vegan olive oil and vinegar dressing.
“Do you like it?” Andreas asks with a big grin, which immediately makes my face pale up, because a vegan grin never signifies good things.
“I…” I answer, attempting to lift my mouth corners in an approving way.
“It’s our home-grown,” says Paolo with a note of pride (which is either gay pride or lettuce pride, it’s hard to tell while you are being shell-shocked).
“As in…?” Gunther enquires weakly, as I am too weak to enquire.
“You must see our garden,” says Andreas (gay- or vegan-) proudly. “Those are our babies. I have planted them with my own hands, and now you’re eating them.”
Dear Fans, my salad gets stuck in my throat and remains there for indeterminable time period. Which is both uncomfortable and terrifying, as I imagine worms and other insects crawling down my innards. I already don’t like thinking about innards, mine or others’, because that’s gross, and now they are full of worms and other insects. Everybody knows that lettuce comes from the supermarket, where they pack it in plastic, so that worms can’t get in.
Gunther let out a weird sound. I forced myself to swallow, because I was suffocating. “Oh,” I said. “I suddenly lost my appetite. I couldn’t eat anything more,” I added, pouring myself a generous glass of the carnivorous wine and swallowing it immediately.
Andreas looked taken aback, before letting out a vegan laugh of doom. “I know what you think,” he said between yelps of cruel veganism, “but don’t worry, I picked out all the flies and aphids. They’re alive, too!”
I was about to stop being alive, because I wasn’t sure what aphids were, but they were not something I wanted to eat. After that, I politely refused everything, including vegan ice cream (what even is it made of?) and vegan coffee.
“Is there any food you don’t make… grow… yourself,” stumbled Gunther, “that is vegan?”
Paolo cackled at this, taking a break from murdering me with his glares of a person that doesn’t drink, even though it’s not because of addiction (which I would be very kind about and hide the wine in my handbag, then pop over to the loo very often), but “personal principles.” (Those principles don’t seem to extend to pills of various provenience, which I am not judgemental about, but my wine is legal.) And then he said:
“Prongles.”
Bloody Prongles!!!!! Why does Paolo hate me?! First, makes me look VERY OLD on my official AI photo, even though I am young at heart, and then says THIS?! Why not “protein powder” or at least “cheese”?! Or “sherry” (although that technically isn’t food)?
When we came back home, I ate six bangers (as in sausages). Four to stop being drunker than a drunk at a drinking parlor. Two to block (it didn’t work, I should have stuck them in my ears) Gunther’s smug murmuring, as he crunched and crunched, about how he is a vegan and that is due to his principles. And also I ate them, so the vegan could be pissed off when he got to opening the fridge to take a break from all his veganism.