One of my favourite essays is Meat: The Pleasures of Flesh by James Sturz. I understand all the reasons why it’s much smarter and nicer to the environment and noble and etc etc etc to become a vegetarian/vegan/what have you, but I just can’t do it. I give up meat for a few days, replacing flesh with spongy white blocks of tofu. At first I just crumble it into whatever I’m eating, but then I find myself getting more and more frantic in the kitchen. Marinades, bastes, sauces, oils: the crumbles become cubes become steaks, and suddenly I’m holding a giant knife, standing over a pan filled with bubbling oil, throwing pieces of soy into it, causing the oil to splatter all over my bare arms and legs. By the end, I’m covered in tiny burns, but I can’t help myself. Onions are fried, BBQ sauce is procured, and the next thing you know I’m scarfing down tofu like it’s my last meal, and yet I’m still not satisfied.

I recently gave in a little and fried up some cubes in leftover bacon fat, and the result was delightful. The crispy outsides and fluffy insides reminded me of those unsettling fake-meat nuggets I used to get from my residence’s cafeteria. I ate them not because I was trying to cut down on meat, but because I found the texture to be everything wrong with trying to recreate flesh with plant material; it just doesn’t work. The resulting food was something closer to freshly piped caulking than actual meat, and I would eat them smothered in ketchup because I wanted to better understand why I love meat so much. It’s not always because of the taste, and it’s not because I have some innate desire to slowly destroy the world through contributing to harmful farming practices, it’s just that there’s a texture to it that can be so satisfying when paired with a grain or starch or vegetable. They compliment each other and keep the meal from dissolving into some sort of mushy mess or starchy hell. It’s similar to how wearing new denim can really make you appreciate a good pair of sweatpants, or - even better - no pants and a good set of sheets.

I have friends that I occasionally meet with to have ‘Steak Nights’, where we enjoy decent cuts of meat and slightly nicer beer while lazing around in my basement apartment. The first time I did this, my friend and I fried t-bones in our residence’s shared kitchen at 2 AM, drinking gin and tonics from dollar store glasses. We alternated between pushing the meat around in the frying pan and punching each other. He prefers his steak relatively rare, but I like mine seared hot on the outside and barely cooked on the inside, with an internal temperature closer to that of what it was like when the cow it came from was still alive. It feels macabre, but try it sometime. Wait till you are alone in your house late one night, and then fire up the grill. Stand on your deck in mid-July at 3 AM with the scent of meat in the air. Let it rise up into the open apartment windows above, where sleeping residents will have dreams about hamburger, and the vegetarians will have dreams that will leave them muddled and confused. When you’re standing in the dark, with only the quiet sound of a steak on the grill keeping you company, you will start to understand what gets the blood flowing.