-I take one every morning before my breakfast. Sometimes I take one at night or in the afternoon if I'm feeling particularly B deprived or something.

-Why did you, of all people, become a vegan? Is it vegan or a vegan?

-I don't think it matters. But I think you can lose the article. It sounds more unified and communal without the “a.”

-Ok, why did you become vegan? You love meat. And cheese.

-That's just it. I love meat. I love cheese. But why should I indulge in something based solely on pleasure? You don't roam around the streets kicking homeless people.

-Right. But I also find no pleasure in such pursuits. Besides, you don't eat meat solely for the pleasure it gives you. Nutrition is another factor.

-My point exactly. It's a kind of asceticism.

-You mean you see yourself as a sort of palate-monk.

-Precisely. I deprive myself of something I enjoy, I make it harder for me to ingest B12, vitamin D and calcium, I consider before eating, all because I believe in something higher than a whimsical craving for a cheesesteak. Why should a cow be slaughtered because my stomach belts an insatiable growl?

-Not insatiable.

-What?

-Your stomach could easily be appeased by popping a chunk of ground beef into your mouth.

-By shoving beef down my gullet? You aren't following. As long as I'm alive I am going to be hungry. I might as well eat with a mindfulness of my food.

-Mindfulness?

-Yes. Mindfulness. Being aware of what you eat. How it impacts the entire universe, not just your impermanent appetite.

-And you eat with your mind how often? Every time you eat?

-Every time I unhinge my jaw to bite.

-How long have you been a vegan now?

-Since last May. So going on eight months now.

-And how long have you been taking these supplements?

-The same.

-Have you ever read the ingredients?

-Once. When I bought them. A bunch of stuff I couldn't pronounce.

-Yeah, I bet. Except for this one. You can pronounce ingredient number two.

-What is it?

-You have to promise you'll appreciate the irony.

-I think I know where this is going.

-Gelatin.

How's life in the city?  How are the women?  All is not so well here.  My only interaction with women is my family's distaff.  And this whole graduation thing—and being unemployed—has left me impecunious, yet I lack the impoverished filigree of, say, Oscar the Grouch, or Charlie Chaplin's Tramp to make a good go at it.  I am looking for one scintilla of hope that this period is transitory.  My mother forestalls me in front of the bathroom everyday with the same acidulous request to talk to my uncle (the one with the white, toothbrush mustache) about becoming his vassal or something.  My remonstration is nonexistent.  I merely shrug and clean out my system before heading to Starbucks where I feign reading for about two hours.  This brief two hours is the analgesia to my otherwise abominably banal existence.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Your friend,

Dilettante

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Dear Dil,

Don't be so hard on yourself.   Things will get better.  Your florid vocabulary leads me to believe you are studying for the GRE.  I hope writing the letter to me wasn't merely a studying exercise.  I understand, however, if you are simply killing (excuse the cliché) two birds with one stone.   You always were a multi-tasker.  It's just that I don't have a dictionary on me as I write this letter, so you may have to excuse me if I missed anything.  Life in the city is in some ways what I expected and others not quite.  For example, yes this place is chock-full of women—big breasted blondes, flat-chested brunettes, and all cup-sizes and hair colors in between—but the women always seem to be going somewhere, meeting with someone, and ignoring me.  I fall in and out of love every five seconds.  Take today for example.  On the subway platform, a real beauty to the right gives me a few milliseconds of eye contact and that's that.  She's glanced at me and passed.  No words need to be spoken.  I'm still in love with her; I just can't do anything about it.  Then there's this short, shy Hispanic girl who gives me even less time.  Never gives me time.  I love her now.  And on the train the two sit right next to each other.  Across from me and to the left.  I writhe and look to the right.  Where do these goddesses come from?  Where are they going?  Why are they riding the subway?  To the right there are three girls who no doubt are in high school.  They are just as beautiful.  Coming into their age before they can fully appreciate the natural appeal of their unsullied bodies.  They'll waste it on some zit-faced fifteen-year-old who's only making sure he isn't the only virgin in his class.  Neither party will savor it until it's too late.  This is what I deal with.  And don't get me started on dating.  I went on this blind date with this model/poet, a real Sylvia Plath (suicidal tendencies and all), right, and things were going well, real well, so I got a second date.  This time I met her at her place.  Only she lived in a women's residence (at this point I'm wondering when she's going to stick her head in the oven!).  It's the 21^st century!  Why do these places still exist?  I had to be escorted by this real troll of a lady with a solitary chin hair that curled in up to her bottom lip.  She smelled like a cross between baby powder and Newports.  And I was supposed to respect her because Sylvia said she sang on some Dylan track in the ‘80s.  Naturally things didn’t work out between me and Ms. Plath.  I couldn’t go back to her place without being castrated first, and the two Sudanese refugees I live with are so judgmental that I’m afraid to bring anyone home.

That’s all I have to say for now.

Best,

Tyro

-You did what?

-Love.  We made love.

-You don't make love anymore.  It's the 21st century.

-Call me nostalgic.  I prefer to make love.

-I'll call you old-fashioned.  You can't be nostalgic for a euphemism that died out before you were born.

-I refuse to use any neologisms of our generation.  That includes whatever ingenuous word, or words, or abbreviations we're substituting 'making love' with now.

-We don't substitute it with anything.  We call it sex.  Last night, you had sex. That's not a euphemism or a dysphemism.  It is what it is.

-I think it takes the magic away.

-It's just the natural progression of language.  Some people call it 'hooking up.'

-That's even worse.  It's vague and it's something you do with a cable box or DVD player.

-We'll at least hooking up appliances has some symbolic imagery.  What's 'making love' say?  You can't make love.

-So you're telling me that the natural progression of language heads in the direction of artless words and phrases.

-Yes.  There's a minority of people who are already tired of having sex, hooking up, and certainly well beyond making love.  This group fucks.

-Fucks?  What comes next then?

-Nothing yet.  That I know of.  Soon enough someone, somewhere, if he or she already hasn't, will popularize a locution that's cruder than 'fuck' and that'll be used for some time as the pejorative version before moving on as the accepted term.

-And that will eventually be replaced by another, more vulgar word or phrase?

-Precisely.

-Why’s that?

-I wouldn’t be able to deal with strangers psychoanalyzing me all the time.

-That’s just some groups. The Freudian cats. You know, that’s why it’s called psychoanalytic criticism. Besides, that’s old news now anyways.

-Alright, but analysis in general.  Like, think of the queerists.

-I’m not sure they go by that.

-You know what I mean.  Queer theory.  I know I have sexual hang-ups...

-Everyone’s got ‘em.

-Right. But my hang-ups would glisten on the page, I’m sure.

-Well that sounds more like psychoanalytic theory.  What about Marxists?

-They’re still around?

-Probably more so than ever, what with the recession and all.  Actually, I don’t know.

-Anyways, I guess I didn’t mean to mention any specific literary theory.  I just would hate to discover something that my unconscious mind successfully kept below the surface.  At least for my own perspective.  I don’t care what other people see when they look at me, as long as I don’t have to see it.  There’s a reason why I look in the mirror only once a day.

-I would like to see what you see.

-Everything that you do, minus me.  If you write, there’s no excusing yourself to yourself. You know what I mean?

-No.

-For example, I write some children’s book about a car that talks and these futurists come along and start writing about how I’m glorifying the new technologies and the replacement of humans or something.

-Futurists?

-The Italian movement.

-Didn’t that die out in the ‘30s?

-Whatever, there’s experts on everything.  All these esoteric theories keep people going.  Otherwise, everyone is everyone else.  You know?

-No.

-Well take us for example.  Here we are talking about writing and literary criticism.  Do you think that lady knows what we’re talking about?

-If she’s showed up to half the classes and has access to Wikipedia.

-You think so?  Then, shit, I better find more arcane pursuits.  I want to melt into an obscure bliss.  That way nobody will get me, but everyone will dig me.

-Well you probably shouldn’t write children’s books anyway.  You hate your own nephew.

-I know.  This is all hypothetical.  I’m just saying that what you do is noble.

-Noble?

-You’re putting yourself out there.  For you and the world to see.

-You need to be published to be out there.

-True.  Can I ask you something?

-Why would you ask me that?  Just ask the question.  If I don’t want to answer, I won’t.

-Why do you write?