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My sister and her husband throw very good parties. So when they hosted a Tiki Party recently, I fell over myself to drive the nearly three hours to get there. Not that it matters, but they are physically beautiful and like draws like. So I knew the party would be a visual feast.
But there would also be the food. And oh my, my twin is a gifted baker, and her husband matches her skill in his outdoor kitchen. I couldn’t wait to get there.
I wasn’t disappointed. I pulled up to their house, the best one in the neighborhood – not everything’s a competition, Abigail – and walked up the driveway with several couples dressed in Hawaiian-looking outfits. My sister greeted us wearing a grass skirt and holding a plastic coconut shell with a tropical drink inside. This was going to be good.
I attended with my socially conscious niece, who couldn’t decide if she should be put off by the Tiki torches and wild Polynesian decorations, including one of those printed screens with a curvy, island woman’s body and a bare-chested island man with head holes cut out for picture taking.
“They are appropriating a culture,” she told me, accepting her coconut but declining a grass skirt. “It makes me feel uncomfortable.” A few coconuts in, and the rum seemed to quiet the voices of discontent.
But there was another social undercurrent running beneath the frivolity. One of the couples was vegan and this, I learned, is serious business. Veganism is a polarizing topic, like political affiliations or socks with sandals. You fall on one side or the other.
As far as vegans go, and I don’t know that many, the party couple seemed like the good kind. They held not one carrot stick of judgment against the carnivores in attendance. Their veganism was personal to them.
But, like most vegans I knew or read about, they lived their veganism more as a religion than a dietary choice. They didn’t eat meat, for example, because they felt attached to the well-being of the animals. They also believed their veganism would reverse some of mankind’s ecosystem destruction and perhaps save the planet.
There was much discussion about this in the splash pool and, while the subject matter was weighty, it’s hard to be serious in a swimsuit. Especially when you’re middle age. And let’s not forget about the coconuts.
I watched the vegan woman throughout the party. Although my sister was the prettiest one there – not everything’s a competition, Abigail – she ran a close second. And she balanced her quick wit with reflective intelligence. In other words, she was fantastic.
The swimming pool jury was split down the middle, but the half that found veganism guilty could not specifically name the crime. Maybe it was the implied premise that humans are interlopers on the planet. Like they are aberrant to the natural order and owe some sort of restitution to the planet for being here.
Or the whisper of arrogance that humans are so above the natural order that they have the power to dictate evolutionary outcomes. In our frenetic attempts to heal the planet, I sometimes feel we are standing on a beach with brooms, sweeping up the sand.
Later in the evening, when the music got loud and the crowd danced, whatever philosophical
differences separated the group got pounded out by the bass beat. Meat lovers threw up their sweaty arms next to vegans and, for a short while, the Hawaiian chicken wings and bacon-wrapped pineapple bits bearing witness, everybody behaved like the wild animals they were.
Abigail Blythe Batton is a staff correspondent for the Cherokee Scout. Her column runs every other week. Email her at ablythebatton@gmail.com or leave a message at 828-837-5122.