Laura Fraser at Lit Crawl

Went to Lit Crawl the other night. It was pretty fun. I loved Laura Fraser, who read this piece about being and not being a vegetarian. She was funny and self-deprecating and totally the kind of person who would write for O magazine, and I mean that in a good way (everyone I've encountered who writes for O is really warm and friendly and not a sap at all, which surprises me, but which is kind of cool). I recommend her piece, although I think the reading-aloud really made it better for me. Lit Crawl is a great idea, but it's too crowded. Sort of a shame.

An excerpt:

The truth is, I became a vegetarian in college for two reasons. One was that meat was more expensive than lentils, and I was broke, or broke enough to choose to spend my limited budget on other classes of ingestibles. The other was that I was not a lesbian.

This is not to say that all lesbians are carnivores; in fact, there's probably a higher percentage of vegetarians among lesbians than most other groups. But there was a fair amount of political pressure to be something in those days. Since, as a privileged white girl from suburban Denver, I couldn't really identify with any oppressed minority group, I was faced with becoming a lesbian in order to prove my political mettle. I had to decide between meat and men, and for better or worse, I became a vegetarian.