the dairy industrial complex,  bean curd, ecofascists and bodybuilding

When I was young, my mother always told me: 

"If you drink milk, you'll grow up to be tall."

In the interest of not being malnourished, I gladly obliged.  For as long as can remember, I gladly obliged.  I probably drank more milk than a baby cow.

I was always a greedy little boy.  Whenever my parents let me buy candy when we went grocery shopping, I always wanted the biggest candy on display in the Walmart checkout queue.

"Gimme big one!"

I pointed my chubby little fingers at the Baby Ruth.  I don't know why.  I hated Baby Ruth. Even from a young age, I was a materialist at heart.  Driven not by needs, or wants, instead by a burning desire for more, and more, and more.  More was better: it didn't matter how it tasted.

At age 5, I was already a slave to my consumerist desires.

My parents, always reticent to express verbal or physical affection, showed their love in the most typical way: by washing and cutting fruit for me.  

In those times, my favorite fruit was blueberries.  Before my sisters moved out, my mother would always wash a bowl of blueberries for us as a midday snack.  Being the spoiled youngest child, I was  offered first dibs on the fruit, and my mother chastised me to save enough for my sisters.

And I always did.  But not before I ate all the ripe ones.  I heard girls liked purple and pink, so I made sure to leave the purple and pink ones behind.

In elementary school, I ate the same breakfast every morning.  Eggo waffles, burned to a crisp, then served to me on same plate my father ate his bagel on.

"Why are there always sesame seeds on my plate?" I thought.  It had to be some voodoo magic, I concluded.  There was some elaborate scheme concocted to thwart my happiness; there must have been.  Someone wanted me to eat the seeds.  But why?  Maybe so a sesame plant would grow in my stomach.  I was destined to be a superhero, half man, half sesame.  

Thinking about it now, I wish I could be a tofu-inspired superhero.  I, singlehandedly, would bring glory back to the once-glorious bean curd.

Ecofascists ruined tofu.  They degraded it, they defiled it, and they bastardized a beloved dish.  Tofu fell first, and shortly after its beloved brothers tempeh and seitan arrived at the same fate.

What did they do?  They transformed tofu dishes from vibrant centers of flavor and spice to what?  A flavorless, neutered, meat substitute.   

Unfortunately, my tofu superhero dream was just that: a dream.  No one was ordaining me supreme defender of tofu, or even sesame.

Little did I know that the sesame seeds were just my fathers.  A true man of sustainability, he was.  

I was chronically late for school.  When I ate breakfast, I wouldn't even have time to chew.   I had to do my best Joey Chestnut impression, shoveling an entire waffle down my throat with a gulp of milk.

At 8:29, I would sprint to my bus stop, greeted by scowl of Rafael.  Rafael, was a true renaissance man: a school bus driver who dabbled in spreading the Gospel.  Everyday, he wore his Catholic garb, his black clergy uniform draped over his knees.  

This was my first introduction to religion.  I grew up in a secular family, whose Buddhist traditions had been stripped by the Cultural Revolution decades ago.

I never prayed before before bed like my friends did, but I had something better.  Every night, I drank  a glass of milk.  It had to be perfectly warm, though.  Through meticulous experimentation I had determined the optimal temperature for milk.  44 seconds in the microwave, and not a second more.  It truly felt like I was drinking out of a cow's utter.

Looking back, I don't know how I didn't shit myself in my sleep every night.

If anything, milk might've stunted my growth.  I heard that milk has calcium, and that hardens your bones.  It'll makes your bones inelastic and unable to grow, or something like that.

These days, I have a love-hate relationship with milk.  I am also lactose intolerant, but I'm not a bitch.  I won't let it stop me.

One of the most painful experiences of my life was going for a midnight run after drinking a protein shake mixed with whole milk.  I almost shit my pants in Strawberry Mansion.  

Back then, I was a somewhat consistent gym-goer, and I'd go for the occasional run after.

Not anymore though.  I don't believe in gyms.  If anything, gyms are the refuge of the late-stage capitalist, a dystopian hellscape.  I will not explain any further.  

I've always found the idea of bodybuilding to be puzzling.  It's so homoerotic: the lustful aestheticization and near-worship of the perfectly chiseled male body.  I fuck with it: if women can be beautiful, why can't men?

And yet, bodybuilding retains its role at the apex of heterosexual male masculinity, for reasons beyond my understanding.  There's nothing to say that admiring a wide back, or bulging bicep peaks, is something that is only reserved for gay men.  The male physique is, I truly believe, meant for all eyes.

How interesting it is, that what was once a rejection of the heteronormative, quickly became integrated into the mainstream.  If anything, defiance of sexuality norms has swung wildly in the other direction.  Towards the slim, youthful, the hairless, the feminine.

Masculinity is truly is a performance, and an absurd one at that.  The bodybuilder shaves his carefully sculpted legs to reveal the outline of his quads.  Another man does the same, only to reveal his emaciated, stick limbs and pale skin, finally uncovered from the shroud of his baggy trousers. 

The one thing I respect about these bodybuilders: they drink their milk.  And they drink their protein with it.  I may claim to be built different, but I am not.  My feeble gut microbiome can no longer tolerate those sorts of ungodly creations.

But I have one thing they don't.  My mind has been untainted by the dairy industrial-complex. You see these greedy cow farmers, all they do is spread their heretic gospel and spin their tall tales.  

My body my be frail, but my mind is not.