March 22nd, 2015
Pouring wine at a public tasting in a suburb so far West it might as well be Iowa. Rich people who don't want to live near poor people unless they're white. A guy who wishes he looked more like a rock star and less like old, fat Gene Simmons (or Ron Jeremy without the meaningful accoutrement) comes up and starts talking at me. His wife is hot. She looks like she stepped out of an 80's hair metal video. She is also obviously cool. I have no idea why she is with him but I am also painfully aware that I was this person in a relationship at one point in my life so I smile and chat her up like he isn't there. (I am not bragging about being hot, but I am comfortable enough saying that I was attractive and a good person and it must have been obvious to people on several occasions in my not-nearly-distant-enough past that I was with The Wrong Guy.) Anyway, somehow it came up that I was a vegetarian (I am excellent at code-switching by now, but sometimes when I am tired I let details of my real self slip out), and he immediately got loud and aggressive, telling me that he loved meat and that animals were made to be eaten, going hard into details about "bloody, barely cooked" meat and then making noises like a dying animal.
Dude, I am from the South Side. I have heard all of this. Also I am married to a meat-eater. Fuck. Off.
I just gave him shark eyes and asked if he was finished and would like to taste the next wine. He blabbered some Republican talking points at me. I continued to treat him (but more obviously now, because we had an audience) like a toddler who needed to be distracted so as not to force the whole family to leave a nice restaurant. Eventually he gave up and, pouting, moved on to the next table. The thing is I know I will see him at the next one of these, and the one after that. And he will not remember me, but I will remember him. And next time I won't let the mask slip.
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