Thankful

Originally written Thursday, November 24, 2005

I spent half the day grading and half the day cooking. I have a few old friends who like to call me on Thanksgiving, and I spent some time speaking with them—Aunt Elizabeth (who’s not actually my aunt, obviously; we just call her that), who lives in California and whom I’ll be visiting in several weeks, and Ian, a workaholic who lives conveniently close to Aunt Elizabeth. They’re both good friends from college, from my current regeneration.

I made a vegan tofurky pot pie and a sweet potato cole slaw. I was pretty happy, actually, to make these things and know they might get eaten. This was the first fully veg Thanksgiving I’ve been to the whole time I’ve been in the United States. And although I make food for myself every year and enough to share, my non-veg companions rarely eat more than a polite bite or two. I can chalk it up solely to bias, since traditional Thanksgiving food is so bland that it baffles me that they could possibly imagine that vegetarian food—my vegetarian food—is going to be more so. But they do. Almost without fail, they do. Even after tasting it. Tradition is more important to patriotic Americans than a truly pleasurable meal. I’m convinced of it. It’s the only explanation for such mindless chauvinism.

But this year, of course, is different. It was at the home of Cas, a friend from the department. His girlfriend Emmy and our other colleague Jeanine were there, as well. So we had a nice, small meal, in terms of company size anyway. There was enough food to feed the four of us for a week and enough mulled wine for, well, the night I guess, since we finished it off. I don’t know Cas too well, so I was glad to spend some time with him. And I don’t know Jeanine at all. As junior faculty, we’re all constantly busy, trying to do too much (and knowing you never can do too much) so that we can ensure our positions here six or seven years from now. I can’t be sure—I have the tendency toward false positives in this area—but I thought Jeanine might have been flirting with me a little. It could also, of course, have been the mulled wine.

Trudy was over after dark. The others questioned why she hadn’t arrived in time for dinner and would she still like leftovers, and she made up a prior engagement excuse, inventing a church and a volunteering gig and a whole feast of donated food. That was good thinking. I probably would have gone with a medically restricted diet requiring her to eat before coming, but then she would have had to abstain from the alcohol or deal with skeptical looks, and I’m sure she wouldn’t have appreciated that.

The highlight of the evening came when we dug into the entertainment that was me and Cas’s reason for deciding to GiveThanks together, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is a guilty pleasure for me. I know the phrase “guilty pleasure” suggests there’s something wrong with it that makes it guilty, but that’s not exactly the way I mean it. It’s a very well done show. But I don’t enjoy it for the same reason many others do. This was Trudy’s first time seeing it, and it’s always wonderful to share it with someone else with an insider’s perspective. Imagine a film production company from a foreign country trying to make a movie about the U.S. without any consultation from Americans and without a single person on the creative team ever having been here. Some things are likely to be right because of existing media and the myths it perpetuates, but many things—often the elements most at the core of the project—are likely to be fundamentally and hilariously wrong. I’ve looked at other vampire universes in pop culture—Anne Rice and all things Dracula—and some are more accurate than Buffy and the more fantasy-driven Angel, but these are the ones I find most entertaining, largely because they have relatable characters and are well-written.

But mostly it’s because every so often there’s a line or a plot point or a piece of speculation that hits startlingly close to reality, sometimes nailing it on the head in a way that it functions almost as a note of reassurance that someone on the creative team knows the truth but also knows the unspoken rules that bind the truth to secrecy. I am, of course, breaking some of those rules by making this journal available to the public, but I hardly expect it to enjoy the exposure of a long-running network TV program.

So anyway, Trudy chuckled along with me and exchanged sidelong glances with regard to some of the more humorous indulgences, like the bumpy vampire make-up faces, the hooey with the crosses and holy water, and the presto-change-o fighting skills they’re all re-born with (which the show makes fun of itself for periodically, as well). “Must come from that ‘demon’ that takes up residence in the human’s body, huh?” she giggled when I drove her home later tonight. There’s a component of vanity in the draw a lot of us have to that show. We want to see what other people think of us. Of course there’s no one like me in the series—I guess vampires are sexier than ancient eastern philosophy—but there’s still plenty of basis for identification and, therefore, appeal to the aforementioned vanity.

But oh yeah, before I forget. I did ask Cas and Emmy and Jeanine to let me know if they have any kind of encounter with a quiet yet disquieting man with peeping tom tendencies. Trudy and I stressed that he’s probably harmless but that the uncanny coincidence of our consecutive meetings with him recommended concern.