Coming Out of the Cupboard and Saying You're Vegan

Gays come out of the closet, but maybe vegans come out of the cupboard, which is what I'll be doing when I meet two friends I adore in Spain next month.  Rosa will be returning to work in Barcelona, but Annie and I will be retiring (we are retirees) to France for about a week.

They have an idea of  the extent (and limits) of my French and Spanish, but they don't yet know that I  now speak  another language:  Veganese, and I'll be speaking it at every food stop!

I fear that I am already annoying enough in French and Spanish, but now...how will my third language affect our time together?

They have known for years that I am a vegetarian, but that permitted cheese, the great staple of  France and to a degree of Spain. (A zarzuela might be called The Man of Manchego.)  Now I'm not eating any animal products--no eggs, milk, butter.

Of course I could make exceptions, but I really don't believe in eating animal products--there's just too much suffering in factory farms, and livestock isn't sustainable that way or even in the less common space, and I'm really interested in finding out how accommodating the eating places are in Spain and France,.  That's my true pilgrimage when it comes to following a path towards an ideal.  (My less lofty pilgrimage is to see these friends who mean so much to me!)

I've started a book called Vegan Freak, which has a name card on the cover, "HELLO, my name is
VEGAN FREAK."

My friends Annie and Rosa know that vegans are not, as the authors fear some people think, an exotic tribe recently discovered deep in the Amazonian jungle.  "We have the number zero," the authors insist.  "We understand how fire works."


Annie and Rosa  agree that everyone should eat less meat, but they probably regard refusing all animal products as a form of extremism, and they're going to find out that I have been recently radicalized.