The Prague Sprig

vegan food nearly launching me into international trouble

This morning, for the first time in my life, I considered going to jail for a few cubes of tofu. It wasn’t about the tofu itself, unseasoned and added to a breakfast buffet because that’s what vegans eat for breakfast probably - it was about what it *represented*. It represented integrity itself! The invisible fabric of human existence that literally makes us and breaks us! And more importantly it represented me, my own difference and distance from the scumbag that I used to be, and in a moment all of my lowest moments came back to me in a flash.

Not because it was tofu, mind you - I went vegetarian when I was 19 and have long since forgotten about it - but because the food had a sign in front of it saying “Contiki Group Only” and two people who were very obviously not in the Contiki group had read the sign and proceeded to help themselves. In doing so, and in shrugging their shoulders at me when I barked and snarled at them about it, they committed the cardinal sin of reminding me of myself, of what I’ve worked so hard to no longer be and what I could so very easily become again.

Contiki is a travel agency for 18-35 year olds, and after taking a tour on a lark last year my partner and I are scrambling to get in a few more experiences before we officially age out of eligibility. We’re here in Eastern Europe for a Vegan Food Tour, cheerfully accepting the agency’s help in helping us navigate more severe barriers of language and cuisine. I can speak enough German and French for locals to throw their heads back and laugh when I try to speak rather than running away from me and throwing up at the same time, but anything even vaguely Slavic feels absolutely hopeless to me. Similarly, my understanding of the old Iron Curtain Countries led me to believe that people over here live on a diet of meat and alcohol and existential dread, so any opportunity to have something digestible available to me made the whole experience tremendously attractive. 

As the tour went underway we all went around and introduced ourselves and to my honest surprise we were invited to share ‘where we are on our vegan journey’. It immediately became clear that it was not just a tour about vegan food but for vegan people. It was as if we’d signed up for a Cathedrals of Europe tour to check out the history and beautiful architecture and then had everyone go around and share their passion for the One True Catholic faith. It was weird - not the veganism, which I rather passively support, but the experience of everyone on a speeding bus sharing a passionate moral commitment that I’m on the outside of. 

My partner has digestive issues and yogurt is one of the few foodstuffs that actually calm their pipes, and so we’d taken to sneaking down to breakfast early to scarf down animal derivatives in relative peace. I didn’t think there’d be any outright fights if someone saw me putting butter on a non-vegan croissant, but it still felt kinda yucky to do so in the presence of people who have devoted their entire lives to not doing the very thing you are doing right there in front of them, people who are feeling energized and relieved to be in a room full of others who share the same devotion. 

And so there we were, alone and quietly slurping down some yogurt before the rest of the group woke up from a night of drinking frighteningly-cheap Czech Pilsner, seated next to the untouched tofu when two people showed up one after another and helped themselves. Can you speak English? I asked them both. They both answered yes, with British accents. The first, a woman, sheepishly said “tell Contiki I said thanks” after walking away with her unearned helping. The second, a man, just said “well, not a big deal” as he turned away. Neither put their ill-taken food back where they’d found it. There was a limited supply of vegan-only food which the hardcore vegans were about to be forced to eat, bonus food which all of us had paid for, and now that supply had gotten more limited still. 

When I was drinking, if I saw something I wanted then I would just take it - I wanted it more than the other person would miss it, surely. Finders keepers. I am a renegade badass who plays by his own rules. I am a genius and I get to do what I want, I’m worth it in a way that nobody else is. Get over it! Go back to what you were doing. I have more important things to think about. In a few moments I’ll forget about you anyway. I am the most important human being alive. Why would I think about myself so much if I were not?

This manifested mostly in me leaving parties with more alcohol than I brought, in impulsive petty theft from peoples’ homes, neglect and promise-breaking in intimate relationships, and general desperate self-indulgence in an effort to forget how hopelessly sad I was all of the time. I paid for nothing, but still thought I understood the world better than the people who did. My pain and desperation were signs of a keen intelligence and moral awareness. I could do more impressive things with your resources than you could, probably, and as such it was me who truly deserved them. 

I have worked very hard to get away from that way of being. Staying sober has meant working hard to contribute to other people, on their terms. The way to get what I want is to make it worth it for some to give it to me. That often involves money, and so to get money I’ve figured out how to contribute way more to people than what I ask for in return. What do people need such that it’s a no-brainer for them to give me what I ask for, financially and otherwise? Asking that question, for me, means centering empathy. It has also meant centering integrity, as I mentioned above - when I say I’m going to do something then I do it, or at least acknowledge that I didn’t do the thing I said I was going to do. The boundaries of other people matter to me, now, which is the only way that I can even begin to say that I’m trustworthy. 

Getting sober has meant centering all of the above - it has also meant having a lot more money than I did when I was a part-time plasma donor, since I’m a much better colleague and I’ve accumulated some skills and my money isn’t literally ending up in the toilet. And so now instead of drinking my money away I spend it on lovely trips like this one, and even when I don’t directly enjoy such expenditures as a pile of tofu cubes it still matters to me that it is protected and reserved for the people who actually are committed to eating it. 

And so I found myself boiling with rage, fantasizing about leaving these interlopers permanently diminished, mutilated and as ugly on the outside as they were on the inside, body parts on spikes by the buffet table as a warning to the other thieves. Spectacular violence would almost certainly land me in jail, and I despite the urgency of my rage I restrained myself out of a deeper drive to avoid dealing with all of the inevitable paperwork.

At the core of the frustration was a wish that I myself had been punished for my bullshit immediately and severely at a much earlier stage, rather than being permitted to dig my own grave one not-a-big-deal at a time. That’s not pointed at my parents or any other authority figure, by the way - that’s just how it’s always gone, with each generation declaring itself the most special and important babies of all time and ending up learning the same lessons as their parents the hard way. There is nothing new under the sun. 

I’m happy I’m here, even though it’s taken me a lot of pain to get here. “Here” meaning having enough stability and resources to enjoy such a trip and enough sobriety behind me to get offended at a lack of integrity rather than participating in it directly. It’s the pain of others, even in memory, that I find intolerable. There are people out there who will never speak to me again, people for whom I will always be the bad guy in their story, and they are correct in their assessment of me! At least as they encountered me. And the people today who looked me in the eye and disregarded me reminded me of how I was, and every time I had done the same to someone else became present to me all at once, and out of nowhere I was overwhelmed.

As I once again encounter Europe, I am vividly filled with stories of endless and relentless war, countless betrayals, hopeless divisions and agonies stretching back through time as far as our stories about ourselves can go. We humans seem condemned to torture each other, and to torture ourselves, for as long as there are humans who can suffer. All we can do is learn the hard way, suffering less and more consciously as the years go by, getting out of ourselves by focusing on other people as much as we can balance and sustain. 

That, and share ourselves in a way that helps others maybe be better people, at least on their own terms. Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself when I look for a praiseworthy reason to write about it.