I'm a vegan and while driving into Antwerp, I casually asked my girlfriend: "So, what does our Flemish friend do?"
She replied: "He's a Kosher butcher."
"Holy shit!" I thought to myself. This promised to be my first time hanging out with a butcher.
I remained blank, wondering if I'd be able to relate to this guy on any level. Hell, I figured that his whole daily existence went against everything I believed. Not only that, this guy was Kosher, so I figured he spent his days putting a knife to a throat without bothering to use a stun gun for the sake of... ancient beliefs?
"Is that alright?" my girlfriend asked.
"Yea, of course. It's legal and it's a job," I replied, but for one of the first times in my life, my open-mindedness and unwillingness to confront someone was coming into question.
''If this butcher friend of my girlfriend starts asking me why I'm vegan, he's gonna hear it from me," I thought to myself. "I won't start it, but I'll sure finish it!"
It's not often that I'm ready to fight someone I've never met, especially when fully sober. But, thinking of my new Flemish friend wiping blood from his knife after slicing the throat of Kosher cow after Kosher cow, I had some flashback to Iraq, er, I mean Korea. I used to live next to US army Yongsan garrison and thus had an entire gang of friends who'd been in combat in 'Raq and 'Stan (people say 'Nam, so I've decided to say 'Raq and 'Stan.)
But of course, I never asked any of my army buddies if they'd killed or even shot anyone when fighting in 'Raq or 'Stan; I'm a polite American who "supports the troops," despite opposing the Washington bureaucrats. Hell, many of my friends joined the army because of "patriotism," and in my mind that sorta made their actions in 'Raq and 'Stan more noble, even if the intentions of the men who led them there were anything but noble.
Some other friends, however, joined for money, or to expedite citizenship, or to provide for their families. In some weird way, I related to them when they told me: "You may not like where you are, but that's where you are, and you have a job to do." I hated my job as a teacher and wasn't quite sure why I'd chosen it either. I knew what it was like to end up somewhere random doing something totally unexpected.
So, I first needed to know why this Flemish guy joined the Kosher Butcherial Forces. We arrived at his apartment in the middle of the Hasidic district, and entered his art dungeon. The dude was pretty cool and kinda broke the tension after he offered me beer. He was an artist, but art doesn't always pay the bills, so he had a part-time. In reality, hanging out with him was as casual as any of my better friends. Hell, I have vegan friends that I find so difficult to relate to, that having a beer together would be more confusing than it would be time consuming.
"So, what do you do?" I asked, not feigning much concern for the response but in reality waiting in anticipation.
"I work in a Kosher butchershop," he said.
"Wow, must be hard work to deal with all those screaming animals," I said, maybe pushing a button, but in reality just trying to see how ''hard'' he considered his job to be.
"Oh, I don't kill the animals, I just work in the store where they package and sell them," he replied.
The images in my mind of a maniac with a knife were allayed, but I felt bad in having pre-judged this guy more than my friends who casually told me the first time we were getting to know each other that they fought in 'Raq or 'Stan. I expected my Flemish friend to live in a different version of reality, but it was I who traveled through different versions of reality. In some realities it is noble to kill men, and in most it's normal to kill animals, but in many it's wrong to smoke cannabis.
And so, I realized that we were all victims of a warped reality.
