A Short Story About Feelings About Food

Diet Plays A Major Role In Your Health

BUT

Feelings About Food Tend To Choose Your Diet!

 

feelings about food

A remarkable play, touching on a number of uncomfortable topics, including homosexuality, religion, and feelings about FOOD!

Should Your Feelings Choose Your Diet?

Think about it!

Feelings about food? A fascinating topic, highlighted in a play we enjoyed last night. Change your diet, and you’ll be surprised the impact it can have on friends and family.

food feelingsI found this play, Cake, to be interesting and illuminating. The show was followed by a panel discussion, with four knowledgeable panel members discussing the relevance of food, in relation to society. The discussion was opened to the public, which resulted in my telling a short story to the panel members, and the remaining 40 or 50 people in the theatre.

Both the initial frisson at the beginning of my tale (reported to me later by my companion, Deb), followed by enthusiastic laughter at the end, surprised me – the laughter revealed the power of food in our social lives:

Feelings about food, church in Pine BluffSetting the scene – the audience, of largely older (50+) people had been taken through a tale about the role of cake in human happiness, in which a young lady (living in New York City) approaches a family member (living in the ‘Bible Belt’) in her cake shop, to make her wedding cake. The problem is that the baker has fairly rigid Christian beliefs, and the young lady, a family member, is about to marry another woman. The cake maker is in bind. A bind that creates family tragedy. A family schism unfolds on the stage, all due to differing belief systems. This process reveals personal problems in the sex life of the Christian baker, while generating tension between the betrothed lesbians.

A play well worth watching!!

My short story:

In the late 1970s, I lived and worked in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

feelings about food, homophobia stickerOn our arrival, the first thing strangers would ask, was, “Which church do you attend?” I’d reply that I was an atheist, so I didn’t attend any church. Their response was almost always an initial shock, even fear, followed by an invitation to attend their church, where I would find my savior, Jesus. There was no outright hostility, just a desire to help. They were kind, friendly people.

In the late 1980s, I worked as an AIDS Buddy for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance in Durham, NC.

ASIDE: [I was the only straight member of the group, as far as I could tell].

Feelings about food, vegan dietI put a sticker on my car, about homophobia, in the hopes of spreading the word that remarkable people were dying all over the country due to HIV infection.

ASIDE: [I won’t go into my thoughts on that, they are all expressed in And The Band Played On: Politics, People, And The AIDS Epidemic].

This bumper sticker made people a little uncomfortable, but it never engendered any outright hostility, as far as I could tell.

I closed by saying:

About two years ago, I embraced a vegan diet.

Boy, did that piss people off.”

Immediate laughter from everyone!

This gut response by the audience revealed something important about our relationships to sex, homosexuality, and religion, and about our feelings about FOOD. All subjects of this wonderful play.

Go figure!

 

Speak Your Mind

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Disclaimer: As a veterinarian, I do not provide medical advice for human animals. If you undertake or modify an exercise program, consult your medical advisors before doing so. Undertaking activities pursued by the author does not mean that he endorses your undertaking such activities, which is clearly your decision and responsibility. Be careful and sensible, please.