How to Make a Carrot Cake by Francis Gideon

Author:Francis Gideon [Gideon, Francis]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Changing Habits

Over the next week, Nate often thinks of how easy it could be to be vegan. He tries to translate his habits into new ones, removing the meat and rewriting his meals. As he gets up in the morning, he makes himself some oatmeal that his mother always insisted was good for him. And really, it doesn’t taste half bad when he adds cinnamon. He eats the leftovers in the fridge rather quickly and tries to duplicate the strange Pad Thai for himself with some success. He has tried to memorize the way in which Billy interacts with food, how he measures and concocts, in the same manner that he learns his grocery lists by heart. And he replays it all as he learns to cook new meals again and again; all of it more like a science than an art. Nate eats the leftover bits of the cake rather quickly, too, and washes it all down with some milk. Then he remembers that milk isn’t vegan, and decides he may as well eat bacon while he’s at it.

The whole lifestyle is hard, truthfully. Though Billy goes about it with a careful and poised grace, Nate feels as if he can’t quite grasp the nuances. It’s like the first few weeks of learning a new language, where all Nate knows is how to say his name and ask for directions, but the metaphors and the jokes slip right by him. On his breaks at work, Nate surfs around online to pick up recipes. He writes them down or mails them to Marlee to see if she’s interested in understanding his new cooking whim, but she always sends him the same response back.

“Go see your boy. Don’t bother me with this hippy shit.”

Nate always responds to Marlee’s oh-so-witty comebacks with a click-through link to porn, teasing her the same way she does to him. But Nate’s still struck by the words she’s using—hippy shit—and just how right she is about some of it. The websites that he’s been on in the past week make his mind melt a bit. Nate can’t quite fathom the enthusiasm some people get over kale. He knows he can’t match the excitement, even if he understands the science behind the creation. He will always feel as if he’s just a mimic, a mime in a bad sideshow.

Nate doesn’t e-mail all of the recipes to Billy, though he does send him a couple. Nate can’t see Billy as part of this “hippy shit.” Ever since their first meeting, with Doc Martens and cigarettes, Billy has never seemed like the vegan stereotype. The well-worn cookbook he’d held to his chest was a pivotal text within the vegan community, but Nate knew there was more than the vegan ethic behind it. The notes scribbled in the corners, that Billy didn’t want Nate to read or comprehend in full, was something more than “hippy shit.” There was poetry between the pages, a recipe rendered in iambic pentameter. And

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