(I submitted the following to some one's queer vegan zine:)
"BECAUSE THEY ARE VEGAN" by Damien Komatsu
No, I'm not a chicken hawk.
No, I'm not an Anglophile.
No, I am not a typical gay man with a "straight boy fetish".
It is true that the majority of men that I am attracted to are young, white and straight.
But that is because they are vegan. (and maybe because they are usually punk...)
It always seems that of all the attractive men I meet, between the ages of 18 and 35, I always seem to like the straight ones the best. And I repeat: it is not because they are straight, it is because they are VEGAN.
I have a hard time dating meat-eaters.
It's not just an ethical thing. Maybe it is subconscious (or unconscious, whichever adjective fits better). I am well aware that a queer male vegan is a very rare thing, and being that as a homosexual man, I am going to have to be open to my potential partner's eating habits. So I do my best to be realistic and make compromises. That, or wait until I get lucky, hoping my libido will last that long.
Right now I'm single. Some times I have short term open relationships. Once, and not so long ago, I had a boyfriend for 7 months-- well actually it was 6 months and a whole month of break-up sex. And he was vegetarian. Almost. Every so often I have heard him talk with a friend about going out for fish tacos (no- not a sexual metaphor- he is TOTALLY queer!) or something else NOT veggie, and I suspected that he was just pretending to be vegetarian for PC points.
I have a theory about food and pheromones.
Because, for the most part, I seem to be automatically attracted to certain men BEFORE I learn that they are vegan; before I have established their sexual identity to be confirmed positively as hetero. After many years of being strictly vegan (some times lacto-freegan in desperate moments), I think I react more favorably to body smells that are undetectable to the left side of my brain. My scent receptors, my brain and my libido all conspire against me.
Example 1: some guy is hot-- he sleeps with men and is happy in doing so (more or less)-- he wants me and I think he is beautiful, has a great body and even seems to be on my wavelength of intelligence based on our conversations. We should be perfect for each other. But some how, my heart is not with it, neither is that particular muscle that lets blood flow into my penis and makes sure it stays there, if you know what I mean.
Example 2: there is an older man-- he is not straight-- he is very handsome-- every time I saw him I couldn't stop staring at him until he was gone. Every time I saw him my mind fell right into the gutter. Then later I saw him walking by drinking Silk brand chocolate soymilk. I comment on it and he replies "IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!" But apparently he thought I was creepy so we never hooked up. Or maybe his boyfriend had something to do with it.
But example 3 is the most common example: I meet some punk guy. We are inexplicitly drawn to each other. Then the subject of veganism comes up and we are that much closer. It seems like we are about to kiss when he brings up THE GIRLFRIEND. Or he'll say some thing like "I'm totally against oppression of any type. I'm against racist even though I am white; and I'm against homophobia even though--" and that voice in my head screams DON'T SAY IT but he does "-- I'm straight".
Part of my theory is that the more vegan he is, the stronger my libido responds to him. Like the boyfriend mentioned above: some times we had great sex, but other times I just couldn't get into it. Even less so with the guy I dated who only ate fish- and this was a fact I discovered a couple weeks into our short term relationship. I figured that the alcohol I was drinking at the time enabled me to bypass my alleged distaste for carnivorous pheromones. But in the 2 weeks we slept together, my libido was temperamental.
Well, to be completely honest, there might be exceptions to my vegan pheromone theory, so I can't totally prove it. I am not attracted to just any old vegan. He just has to be a real cute vegan. There are many straight vegans that just don't do it for me. And occasionally, I meet a vegan queer man and we become friends. Just friends. As with all pairings of two individuals, I may like him, he may like me, but it is rarely mutual. Or if it is, that doesn't mean we have the ideas concerning between fling and any kind of relationship, short term long term monogamous polyamorous etc. You know, the same with dating a meat eater.
It is not that I am so picky, I fall in love several times a day. Ha ha ha, okay-- but walking around downtown Portland or Valencia Street in San Francisco, I pass by several men that I would be interested in getting to know better, if you know what I mean. For the sake of being realistic, I give it an average of queer potential-- out, closeted, or heteroflexible; either is fine with me-- say, the basic 10%. Then give room for mutual attraction, that should give me at least half a dozen new partners a week... if I could get up the nerve to hit on them!
I really must continue to protest the gay-man-want-straight-boy insinuations. And for many reasons, but mostly because it is a trendy cliche- an automatic response only because it is THE THING to say. Many of the men I find myself attracted to generally fall in that gray space of "Is He...?" (as in that "Kids in the Hall" skit); they are not lumberjacks and yet they are not like any of the characters that you'd see in "Queer as Folk". The ones I want don't fit the traditional (1950s modernist) masculine roles of what it means to be a man. There is always some thing kind of queer about them, a little ambiguous.
"Oh, you mean METROSEXUALS!"
No, I don't. If I wanted a metrosexual, "I'd sleep with a real woman"*. I mean the kind of guy who is artistic, socially sensitive, cooperative rather than competitive, his outward appearance is always some where in the gender neutral zone. And by that I mean that he is not a trendy fashion victim like the stereotypical gay man or the metrosexual; nor is he dressed like a thug or a jock or a trailer trash redneck (why is it fashionable to dress like that now?). He may have very short hair, very long hair, or any kind of hair in between- but his hair never makes him look particularly masculine OR feminine. He may be any where between 18 and 35, but he always looks like a college student- some kind of aesthetic Peter Pan complex.
I suppose that is why I like anarcho-punks so much- there is little difference between the clothes the men and the women. And most of the straight men that I have the biggest crushes on come from this sub-culture. And in all fairness, I have to admit that I have made out with most of said individuals. More often than not, these guys are "not ready to date" or have sex with another man, but they seem to enjoy making out with other guys. Must be the tofu*.
There are a few others who are heterosexual serial monogamists, but occasionally make open references to cute punk boys like it is a normal phrase in their vocabulary; even others who will discuss the all male porn they recently watched, like it was a show on the Discovery Channel. This specific type usually claims to be bisexual in theory, but as I mentioned, they also tend to be serial monogamists and their partners are almost always women.
Of course, this doesn't mean I only like punks because that is the scene I fit comfortably in. It also doesn't mean that, even if these guys are are actually bisexual, they would automatically want to sleep with me. In the past, I have slept with many bisexual and bi-curious punks, some who now have children or identify as straight. Unfortunately, very few of them are still vegan. It almost feels as if they went through both their experimental-sexuality phase and their compassion-for-factory-animals phase at the same time.
I am aesthetically attracted to men of various types, scenes, ages between 18-35, and racial/ethnic backgrounds; and some times my sexual pull is stronger than my admiration for their beauty. I've actively made attempts to spend more time with queer men on all sides of the queer spectrum. Some of my best friends are gay!
But the straight men in my life have been more kind, accepting and open-minded about my homosexual practices than queer men have been about my eating habits, my politics, my style of appearance. And regardless of the mainstream myth, the kind of heterosexuals I hang out with have better taste in food, music, film, and fashion than what is being offered by the gay mainstream and the metrosexual appropriation thereof. I'm not just talking about sex either. As friends, these guys have been nicer to me than most gay men I know. I once saw a profile on Myspace of a man who listed "gay" and "single" in their perspective places, who added that he was vegan in his interests. I wrote him, just for friendship and solidarity. He wrote back as an apology, the explanation that he was not single and that he had an agreement with his partner that they are not to allow any more homos into their lives! I didn't write him to hook up, but because I felt I needed more queer friends, especially vegans. And even if I thought him or his boyfriend was hot, I CAN RESTRAIN MYSELF from being a home wrecker for the sake of potential friendships!
Don't get me wrong-- I think about 80% (or more) of the heteros I encounter are horrid, from family members to imaginary characters in TV/film to all the people I have to deal with on a daily level. The straight guys I hang out with, punk or no punk, are different. I really do wish there were many queer men like them, and even more so, I wish there were more queer men that were vegan.
Because the main point and the fact is: vegans taste better. They smell better, even after not bathing for a few days. They feel better. And based on experience, they usually tend to treat you much better as a human being.
"BECAUSE THEY ARE VEGAN" by Damien Komatsu
No, I'm not a chicken hawk.
No, I'm not an Anglophile.
No, I am not a typical gay man with a "straight boy fetish".
It is true that the majority of men that I am attracted to are young, white and straight.
But that is because they are vegan. (and maybe because they are usually punk...)
It always seems that of all the attractive men I meet, between the ages of 18 and 35, I always seem to like the straight ones the best. And I repeat: it is not because they are straight, it is because they are VEGAN.
I have a hard time dating meat-eaters.
It's not just an ethical thing. Maybe it is subconscious (or unconscious, whichever adjective fits better). I am well aware that a queer male vegan is a very rare thing, and being that as a homosexual man, I am going to have to be open to my potential partner's eating habits. So I do my best to be realistic and make compromises. That, or wait until I get lucky, hoping my libido will last that long.
Right now I'm single. Some times I have short term open relationships. Once, and not so long ago, I had a boyfriend for 7 months-- well actually it was 6 months and a whole month of break-up sex. And he was vegetarian. Almost. Every so often I have heard him talk with a friend about going out for fish tacos (no- not a sexual metaphor- he is TOTALLY queer!) or something else NOT veggie, and I suspected that he was just pretending to be vegetarian for PC points.
I have a theory about food and pheromones.
Because, for the most part, I seem to be automatically attracted to certain men BEFORE I learn that they are vegan; before I have established their sexual identity to be confirmed positively as hetero. After many years of being strictly vegan (some times lacto-freegan in desperate moments), I think I react more favorably to body smells that are undetectable to the left side of my brain. My scent receptors, my brain and my libido all conspire against me.
Example 1: some guy is hot-- he sleeps with men and is happy in doing so (more or less)-- he wants me and I think he is beautiful, has a great body and even seems to be on my wavelength of intelligence based on our conversations. We should be perfect for each other. But some how, my heart is not with it, neither is that particular muscle that lets blood flow into my penis and makes sure it stays there, if you know what I mean.
Example 2: there is an older man-- he is not straight-- he is very handsome-- every time I saw him I couldn't stop staring at him until he was gone. Every time I saw him my mind fell right into the gutter. Then later I saw him walking by drinking Silk brand chocolate soymilk. I comment on it and he replies "IT'S GOOD FOR YOU!" But apparently he thought I was creepy so we never hooked up. Or maybe his boyfriend had something to do with it.
But example 3 is the most common example: I meet some punk guy. We are inexplicitly drawn to each other. Then the subject of veganism comes up and we are that much closer. It seems like we are about to kiss when he brings up THE GIRLFRIEND. Or he'll say some thing like "I'm totally against oppression of any type. I'm against racist even though I am white; and I'm against homophobia even though--" and that voice in my head screams DON'T SAY IT but he does "-- I'm straight".
Part of my theory is that the more vegan he is, the stronger my libido responds to him. Like the boyfriend mentioned above: some times we had great sex, but other times I just couldn't get into it. Even less so with the guy I dated who only ate fish- and this was a fact I discovered a couple weeks into our short term relationship. I figured that the alcohol I was drinking at the time enabled me to bypass my alleged distaste for carnivorous pheromones. But in the 2 weeks we slept together, my libido was temperamental.
Well, to be completely honest, there might be exceptions to my vegan pheromone theory, so I can't totally prove it. I am not attracted to just any old vegan. He just has to be a real cute vegan. There are many straight vegans that just don't do it for me. And occasionally, I meet a vegan queer man and we become friends. Just friends. As with all pairings of two individuals, I may like him, he may like me, but it is rarely mutual. Or if it is, that doesn't mean we have the ideas concerning between fling and any kind of relationship, short term long term monogamous polyamorous etc. You know, the same with dating a meat eater.
It is not that I am so picky, I fall in love several times a day. Ha ha ha, okay-- but walking around downtown Portland or Valencia Street in San Francisco, I pass by several men that I would be interested in getting to know better, if you know what I mean. For the sake of being realistic, I give it an average of queer potential-- out, closeted, or heteroflexible; either is fine with me-- say, the basic 10%. Then give room for mutual attraction, that should give me at least half a dozen new partners a week... if I could get up the nerve to hit on them!
I really must continue to protest the gay-man-want-straight-boy insinuations. And for many reasons, but mostly because it is a trendy cliche- an automatic response only because it is THE THING to say. Many of the men I find myself attracted to generally fall in that gray space of "Is He...?" (as in that "Kids in the Hall" skit); they are not lumberjacks and yet they are not like any of the characters that you'd see in "Queer as Folk". The ones I want don't fit the traditional (1950s modernist) masculine roles of what it means to be a man. There is always some thing kind of queer about them, a little ambiguous.
"Oh, you mean METROSEXUALS!"
No, I don't. If I wanted a metrosexual, "I'd sleep with a real woman"*. I mean the kind of guy who is artistic, socially sensitive, cooperative rather than competitive, his outward appearance is always some where in the gender neutral zone. And by that I mean that he is not a trendy fashion victim like the stereotypical gay man or the metrosexual; nor is he dressed like a thug or a jock or a trailer trash redneck (why is it fashionable to dress like that now?). He may have very short hair, very long hair, or any kind of hair in between- but his hair never makes him look particularly masculine OR feminine. He may be any where between 18 and 35, but he always looks like a college student- some kind of aesthetic Peter Pan complex.
I suppose that is why I like anarcho-punks so much- there is little difference between the clothes the men and the women. And most of the straight men that I have the biggest crushes on come from this sub-culture. And in all fairness, I have to admit that I have made out with most of said individuals. More often than not, these guys are "not ready to date" or have sex with another man, but they seem to enjoy making out with other guys. Must be the tofu*.
There are a few others who are heterosexual serial monogamists, but occasionally make open references to cute punk boys like it is a normal phrase in their vocabulary; even others who will discuss the all male porn they recently watched, like it was a show on the Discovery Channel. This specific type usually claims to be bisexual in theory, but as I mentioned, they also tend to be serial monogamists and their partners are almost always women.
Of course, this doesn't mean I only like punks because that is the scene I fit comfortably in. It also doesn't mean that, even if these guys are are actually bisexual, they would automatically want to sleep with me. In the past, I have slept with many bisexual and bi-curious punks, some who now have children or identify as straight. Unfortunately, very few of them are still vegan. It almost feels as if they went through both their experimental-sexuality phase and their compassion-for-factory-animals phase at the same time.
I am aesthetically attracted to men of various types, scenes, ages between 18-35, and racial/ethnic backgrounds; and some times my sexual pull is stronger than my admiration for their beauty. I've actively made attempts to spend more time with queer men on all sides of the queer spectrum. Some of my best friends are gay!
But the straight men in my life have been more kind, accepting and open-minded about my homosexual practices than queer men have been about my eating habits, my politics, my style of appearance. And regardless of the mainstream myth, the kind of heterosexuals I hang out with have better taste in food, music, film, and fashion than what is being offered by the gay mainstream and the metrosexual appropriation thereof. I'm not just talking about sex either. As friends, these guys have been nicer to me than most gay men I know. I once saw a profile on Myspace of a man who listed "gay" and "single" in their perspective places, who added that he was vegan in his interests. I wrote him, just for friendship and solidarity. He wrote back as an apology, the explanation that he was not single and that he had an agreement with his partner that they are not to allow any more homos into their lives! I didn't write him to hook up, but because I felt I needed more queer friends, especially vegans. And even if I thought him or his boyfriend was hot, I CAN RESTRAIN MYSELF from being a home wrecker for the sake of potential friendships!
Don't get me wrong-- I think about 80% (or more) of the heteros I encounter are horrid, from family members to imaginary characters in TV/film to all the people I have to deal with on a daily level. The straight guys I hang out with, punk or no punk, are different. I really do wish there were many queer men like them, and even more so, I wish there were more queer men that were vegan.
Because the main point and the fact is: vegans taste better. They smell better, even after not bathing for a few days. They feel better. And based on experience, they usually tend to treat you much better as a human being.
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Re: Zine Submission
Thu, August 9, 2007 - 9:22 PMi'm intrigued by your posting... as it has been making me contemplate my 'membership' into different clubs *sings ani difranco*
i feel like punk had a lot of room for vegan but not a lot of room for queer.
and there isn't a lot of room for punk in the closets of the gays...
and vegan had lots of room for dyke but not so much room for fag.
and i so desperately wanted/ want community around food which to me meant radical queer vegan faggots. but really it was those small little acts of violence in punk communities with the mostly straight mostly vegan crowds. being the only queer person in the room. t-shirts that fucking straight people wear that say 'homofobia is so gay'. having the priveledge to be punk and to have visible familiarity around sexuality. which made me weight the parts of my identity seperately- sexuality and food 'well i want queer friends more than i want vegan friends' 'cause really straight vegans could only satisfy that part of myself that liked to talk about and appreciate food (which by god, got so boring after awhile).
just sayin,
g -
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Re: Zine Submission
Fri, August 10, 2007 - 11:48 AMGrant, I wish I would have met you when I was trying to relocate in San Francisco, which was September 2006-April 2007. But things didn't work out for me, so I'm back in Portland.
While I don't want to start a debate about what punk is and what it isn't, I guess I should say that the kind of punk that is rooted in radical politics is much different that mainstream punk of the 21st century.
I really want to thank you for your response, so please don't think I am arguing your point by adding my own perspective through personal experience-
In all the punk scenes I've been in, the majority was anti-homophobic and queer friendly. Although that does NOT mean that I got laid as much as my "straight" friends, or that I never felt alienated- often I found that I had a hard time talking about my sex life or lack there of with my closest friends. It also did not mean that with all the "bisexual" and supposedly queer punks, that I had an easier time partnering up.
In the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest, I know lots of dykes, but very few of them are vegan. In these places, punk has a lot of room for dykes; it is not that it has not room for fags, but just that fags aren't really interested in either the music or the dietary options.
While I was in in SF, all I experienced from queers was lots of drunkenness, trendy fashion and social shallowness (gossip and maliciousness spitefulness). It felt like being the only queer of color in a room full of rednecks.
Another example is that in punk settings, men I don't know come up to me and start friendly conversations. In queer settings, strangers NEVER come up and talk to me, and very rarely do they take any interest when a mutual friend introduces us. It is like a cultural shock that I don't understand.
On a practical level, I don't need community around food. I can make my own food and I'm comfortable with eating in a restaurant by myself, reading a book until the food comes. What I can't deal with is sitting in a gay bar by myself or going to a party where I know one or two people without feeling clingy or needy on those friends.
Again, I'd like to say that I wish I met more people like you in SF. Then maybe you (or they) would have provided me with an alternative? Maybe?
More than anything, I would like to write zine submissions that talk about how incredibly wonderful it is to have so many great queer friends that totally make me feel at home. Maybe next year... -
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Re: Zine Submission
Sat, August 11, 2007 - 5:15 PMI must say that I really connected with the following statement:
"On a practical level, I don't need community around food. I can make my own food and I'm comfortable with eating in a restaurant by myself, reading a book until the food comes. What I can't deal with is sitting in a gay bar by myself or going to a party where I know one or two people without feeling clingy or needy on those friends. "
Likewise - I can go to a restaurant by myself and enjoy my food by myself. I don't have many, if any, vegan friends, so I can't say that having a food-centered community is that big of a deal to me.
But, like you, I cannot go to a gay bar by myself. Its uncomfortable, and in the end, nearly always fruitless (oh crap - I made a bad pun). I also hardly ever go out, having found other ways to spend my time. And part of me really wonders if I have a hard time a gay bars because I truely don't fit in, or because I am socially retarded.
Which, totally unrelated, brings me to an observation I read in jPod, by Douglas Coupland, that smart people, particularly tech geeks, my just be borderline, high-functioning autistics. Physical contact with other humans drives them crazy and they can focus intently on repetitive, analytic tasks. Yup...that would be me.
Socially retarded, borderline autistic, probably dyslexic queer punk vegan....ohhh yeah baby. I have found my niche.
- J
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Re: Zine Submission
Sun, August 12, 2007 - 4:56 PMYou can't swing a dead tofurky around Portland without hitting a vegan! So now I have lots of people to eat with. 3 of my room mates are vegan, the other 2 vegetarian. So now I guess I'm kind of lucky as far as food goes. There were only a few people I could go to vegan restaurants with in the Bay Area.
But I wanted to add a note to the last thing I wrote, because I'm definitely not trying to put punk on any pedestal. There are lots of "bad" punks, homophobic punks, sexist punks and racist punks, especially ones that drink 40s in Dolores Park. I am also just lucky to count many of the "good" punks as my friends. And no, that is not the whole of my life. And yes, i want to say that I do know that there is plenty of alcoholism, vapid attitudes and pathetic vanity among punks as well.
Like I said before, I just need to meet more of the "good" queers.
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