Well, the Thursday night cook-over went exceptionally well, I thought. I had never had vegetarian chicken before, and liked it very much, I must say. I was under the impression we were going to be having vegetarian fish—tuna steaks, to be exact—and had planned accordingly, picking a medium-nice Chilean Merlot (red is the new white) on the way to The Bachelor Formerly Known as Bachelor Number Two's place—

Which brings me to a quandary. It has been not quite three weeks—but seems longer in that strange time-warp way things do when you click with someone. And I now feel honor- and duty-bound to come up with a better pseudonym for The Bachelor Formerly Known as Bachelor Number Two.

It should be something either simple—P.J. leaps to mind for some reason—or something slyly telling. In that vein I have been contemplating calling him "Howard Roark." But then someone will take the allusion too far and spoil everything. I could go the Artist-Formerly-Known as-Prince route, and represent him as a symbol, like so: a. Or just do a NKOTB-style acronym: TBFKABN2. It's just too soon for something like Schnooks.

For now I'll call him Batch, and leave it at that. But this will have to be sorted out eventually.

So back at the ranch, we talked about his Lenten vow over a delicious not-quite-vegetarian dinner. He says he doesn't want to be too rigid about his forty days and forty nights of vegetarianism, and I think that's a good approach, especially when you're cooking for two, one of whom is an avowed and unrepentant omnivore. (I am so hardcore I have even been known to eat the occasional nauga, after a hard day of upholstering bar stools with their hides.)

The thing I've always found kind of interesting about mainstream vegetarianism is the hierarchy of meats. It seems the more an animal resembles us the less likely we are to consider it a vegetable. Mammals are usually off the table for anyone claiming to be even a casual vegetarian. But fish and poultry? Casual vegetarians make exceptions, don't they?

This may be because we just don't think of fish and chickens as having much personality. Jon Katz (who occasionally writes about his farm for Slate) might beg to differ. He has described one of his favorite roosters, Winston, as "dignified, conscientious," even "heroic," for fighting off a hawk who attacked his hens. One of Winston's offsprog, Henrietta, has captured his heart as well. Katz says he's got big plans for her:

Henrietta is the most recent subject of the unofficial study I've been conducting to see if how we treat farm animals can affect their personalities. Animals of the same species can behave very differently, yet there's little research that explains why. Genetics is a factor, so are health and environment. And I'm coming to believe that humans can also shape the natures of domesticated animals, even creatures that seem to lack individuality.

That last bit seems to be the crux of the matter. The less individual personality an animal species seems on cursory inspection to have, the more edible they are to us.

Clearly not everyone agrees that chickens are animal-vegetables. But how far can you take it? I remember reading an essay by someone called Sarah L. Courteau in Harper’s a few years ago now (it was in the June 2002 issue, according to my notes). "Chicken 81" it was called.  In it she talks about her mother going to work for Tyson "with the same attitude as a Quaker going into the medical corps in Vietnam." And when she starts smuggling out runty chicks in her pockets, she's described as "the Oskar Schindler of the chicken farm."

Um, does equating a chicken coop to the Vietnam War and the Nazi death camps strike anyone else as a wee bit much? It is a thorny issue, the eating of animals, but you're not likely to win converts to vegetarianism by equating Jim Perdue to Hitler. One thing's for sure, careless metaphors do nothing to aid your cause, whatever your cause may be.

There's a better way, I think. Get to know a chicken. I mean, I don't personally know any chickens, none live on my street or in my neighborhood. I don't work with any. I can't say, "I've never met a chicken I didn't like," because I have never met a chicken, period—well, not a free-range chicken, anyway.

I did go to see the prize-winning roosters at the Indiana State Fair with my friend Jerry a couple of years ago, and was very impressed. But to say I had met them, or really knew them at all would be like saying I'd met Cher after seeing her in concert, or something.

If for some reason you can't get to know a chicken, if you're still determined to eat them, some vegetarians might argue, you should at least have to see one's neck wrung. But, honestly, because I have no special fondness for any one particular chicken, I could watch that wonderful scene in the otherwise not-so-wonderful Babel, where Gael García Bernal wrings one's neck in front of all those kids at that Mexican Wedding, and love every minute of it. (I can't say how I'd have reacted to him wringing Cher's neck. I might have been conflicted.)

What I'm getting at here is: I think that would probably be a good first step in any vegetarian PR campaign. Not Gael García Bernal wringing Cher's neck, of course, but a concerted effort to have every meat-eating American meet a real, live chicken, spend a little time with it, get to know its little idiosyncrasies, it's little personality, such as it is. Get to know it as an individual, you dig?

And then wring its little neck.

Because my theory is, if you can look an animal in the eye and detect its soul in there somewhere, you might be more likely to refrain from eating it, at least until you get to know it a little better (familiarity does breed contempt, after all).

Speaking of. Where fish are concerned, I think we might have some residual contempt for our distant seafaring cousins that allows us to eat them with relative abandon. It's kind of a Holly Golightly Complex. You know, we managed to leave the swimming hole and make it in the big city, and all you're doing is reminding us of where we came from.

But don't think you can show up on our plate with your big, gaping mouth and your wild, bulbous, accusing eyes, trying to guilt trip us into not eating you. because, you know what? We made it. And it wasn't easy. We had to crawl out of the slime when the rest of you were trying to pull us back down. And when we sprouted legs you laughed. You were all like, "dag, look at that freak." Well, who's the freak now? Hope you like creamy lemon butter sauce, bitch, 'cause you're gonna be swimmin' in it.

Yes, it's eat or be eaten, innit? The ugly truth about fish:


Charming, eh? Not that charm will get you out of being eaten by people, but it can't hurt, can it? I mean, look at Babe.

Of course, charm isn't all a fish out of water is lacking. It's probably safer to eat fish, on a lot of different levels. On a sort of spiritual level, the chance of some kind of karmic incident with fish is much lower than with land animals. I mean, unless your Steve Irwin, you chances of getting gored by a fish are infinitesimal. Not that your chances of getting gored by a bull or having your eyes pecked out by wild chickens are that much better. But a little.

Hmm.

I dunno. That's the thing about being with a vegetarian. Every time you eat with one you have to confront your inner carnivore. I always insist on saying a little prayer of thanks before digging in. And it always goes like this: "There but for the grace of God go I."

(Oh, and just for the record: I did get my beefcake for dessert.)