The Vegetarian's Guide to Eating Meat by Marissa Landrigan

Author:Marissa Landrigan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2017-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

A Seriously Scrappy Flower

IN LATE AUGUST, as summer began to ignite around its edges into fall, I started having regular dinners with a friend from my MFA program: Scott, who was not a vegetarian. It was Scott’s apartment I’d been in when I dislocated my knee, and he joked that his coffee table owed me something, so we sat around it together a few nights a week. These were cook separately, eat together affairs. One night, we walked down the street from his apartment to the co-op for ingredients. I’d already prepared some almond couscous with cranberries for my dinner, and he had some tortillas to use up, so he bought a piece of wild-caught tilapia for fish tacos. I figured since I was at the store, I might as well grab something to round out my meal—a box of frozen Quorn fake breaded chicken cutlets. We got back to his place and took turns with the microwave—me heating my fake chicken, him melting shredded cheddar cheese and salsa spread over his cooked fish—and then sat side by side on the couch, in front of the TV, hunched over our dinner plates. He actually ate more vegetables than I did that night, if you count the tomatoes, peppers, and onions in his salsa.

Scott and I had bonded during our teacher orientation in our first August in Ames, over a mutual affection for Saddle Creek, the independent music label from his hometown, and we had quickly become close, staying later at the bar than anyone else, commuting to and from campus together. After the end of my relationship with Kevin, we had even more time to spend together. None of our mutual friends were surprised when, by the end of that summer, we started waking up at each other’s apartments.

Scott, during our time in Iowa, was a glass-half-empty kind of guy. His short-cropped dark hair and dark eyes drew me in. He was quiet—the kind of person who waited and listened and had everything figured out in his head before he opened his mouth. He joked about everything—even the things he took seriously—and there was no line he wouldn’t cross. In this, and in many ways, we were very different. He loved football and basketball and spent most of his autumn weekends on the couch watching sports or playing sports video games on his PlayStation 3. He had a quiet sadness, having lost his father in his early twenties to a painful battle with colon cancer. But we shared a sense of focus in writing. Both of us had come to writing after some time wandering and knew we were in the right place. I was surprised at how hopeful being with him made me feel, how somehow his cynicism was a comfort. How he made me laugh, hysterically, three times a day.

In a new relationship, you want everything shiny and fresh. You want to be the best version of yourself. Frankly, I didn’t want my new boyfriend to know

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