Forgive me, Father, for I have ordered salad.
See, I hate to disappoint people.
Especially nice, well-intentioned ones trying to do something thoughtful for me.
Like treat me to a large plate of ribs at the mom-and-pop barbecue joint in Houston they’d been frequenting for two decades.
Such was my predicament the other day.
“Just wait,” my host had said. “I know you Kansas City boys get plenty of good barbecue. But I guarantee this will be just as good. Maybe better.”
He was excited.
And he wanted me to be excited, too.
Instead, I was apprehensive.
I was going to have to tell him.
But I’d wait until we got to the restaurant.
A group of us was going.
No need to sabotage everyone’s good time, I thought.
The place was laid out cafeteria-style.
You walked through a serving line, picking out main dishes and sides, which the people behind the counter piled onto hard-plastic plates.
The portions were generous.
And the whole place smelled like hickory smoke.
The old me would have gotten two of everything on the menu.
And loved every bite.
That was before I found out about my defective liver.
My stupid, buzz-kill liver.
Alpha One Antitrypsin Deficiency.
That’s the name of the condition.
It’s genetic. And exceptionally rare.
I’d gone in for a routine physical following a milestone birthday.
“I dare you, doc,” I’d said, arrogantly. “I dare you to find something wrong with me.”
I considered myself in excellent health.
I ate pretty well. I avoided processed foods and cheap carbs.
And I worked out regularly. I’d knocked out another marathon just the week before.
But I probably drank too much. And I knew it.
That was Karen’s fault.
She was the bartender at Louie’s, my go-to hangout in the Chicago suburbs during Navy Reserve weekends.
I’d order a martini.
Karen made excellent martinis.
And, when it was running low, rather than ask me if I wanted another one, Karen would instead say, “Here, let me refresh that for you.”
She’d shake up some more gin and vermouth, pour it into my glass, and give me a fresh olive.
So, technically, it was the same martini. At least in my mind.
And Karen’s.
At the end of the night, I’d only had one drink.
Refreshed two or three times.
And Karen, God love her, would only ever charge me for one.
What a terrific lady.
I do miss Karen.
And Louie’s.
But anyway.
The doc ran a full set of labs on me.
The results revealed elevated liver enzymes.
“It’s probably nothing,” the doc said. “But, just in case, I’ll send you to the specialist.”
I went to see the specialist.
She ordered an ultrasound. And more labs.
Then, a few days later, bang!
Diagnosis.
“You have to stop drinking immediately,” she said. “If, that is, you don’t want to lose your liver to cirrhosis. Or cancer.”
Shit.
That was nearly five years ago.
And I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since.
It’s been tough at times.
Because I looove booze.
Then, the more I learned about the condition, the more I came to realize that martinis weren’t the only things that had to go.
Since I was at high risk for all sorts of annoying, chronic conditions—and cancer, not just of the liver—I decided the best course would be to switch to a plant-based diet.
No more meat. Or eggs. Or cheese.
This, after I’d gone full Paleo for a couple years.
That ended rather abruptly after I discovered my cholesterol was approaching a dangerously high level.
The eye doctor, of all people, had alerted me to it.
“You have a white ring around your iris,” he’d said. “That usually means high cholesterol . . . very high cholesterol. You should get that checked out.”
So I did. And he was right.
I guess the daily, six-egg omelets weren’t doing me any favors.
Go figure.
So then I was the lame-ass who couldn’t drink, couldn’t smoke cigars, and couldn’t enjoy a rich, buttery, perfectly seared, medium-rare filet mignon.
Yeah, I’m the real life of the party.
Most people I know have already listened to me whine about all this.
But I still meet people who make the very reasonable assumption that I enjoy a good drink and a nice cut of meat.
Like Jerry, my host in Houston.
I pulled him aside at the beginning of the serving line in the barbecue restaurant.
Listen, I said, this is going to sound weird, but I don’t eat meat.
As expected, he looked puzzled.
Then I told him about my stupid liver and all the ailments to which I’m susceptible and that I’d decided to avoid meat to stay on the safe side.
“Sure, sure . . . I understand,” he said.
He was sympathetic.
Then it hit him.
“Well . . . what the hell are you going to eat here?” he asked me. “Do we need to go somewhere else?”
I’d seen this happen before.
Someone takes me to nice steak restaurant, for example.
I give them my sob story, and then they feel like they’ve taken an alcoholic on a distillery tour.
No, no, no, I tell Jerry. I can always make something work, no matter where I am.
I get in the serving line and look things over.
There are three different salads on the menu.
What differentiates them is the type of meat that gets stacked on top of two or three leaves of lettuce to make the “salad.”
You can get brisket, burnt ends, or pulled pork.
I tell the lady behind the counter I want salad sin carne. No meat.
She seemed confused, so I repeated myself.
Salad. No meat.
“Okay . . .” she said, skeptically.
I could appreciate her skepticism.
It was like I’d walked into an Italian restaurant, ordered the veal parm, and then said, “Hold the veal. And the parm. But give me extra parsley.”
I get it.
I sat down next to Jerry with my salad.
He looked it over, quizzically, and asked, “That’s it?”
Yup. That’s it
People often ask me how I can have such discipline.
How can I continually deny myself?
It’s easy.
I have a gun to my head.
And trust me, were it not for that gun, I’d still be boozing it up and enjoying some good barbecue.
That said, there are certainly benefits to the lifestyle into which I’ve been forced.
People routinely judge me to be far younger than I am.
A guy from work, who I’d guessed to be six or seven years older than I, was bitching about some back ache the other day.
“Sonofabitch,” he said, “it’s getting harder and harder to get out of bed. It sucks being old.”
Sounds like it, I thought.
Then, nodding in my direction, he said, “Yeah . . . you young guys don’t have to deal with it yet. But trust me, you will.”
Curious, I politely asked how old he was.
I wanted to know how many good years I had left, I told him, jokingly.
He gave me his age.
And it turned out to be almost exactly the same as mine.
We were born only weeks apart.
When I told him that, he didn’t believe me.
Want to see my driver’s license? I asked.
Then he believed me.
And clearly felt like a jackass.
I, on the other hand, felt great.
Still do.
But not for disappointing Jerry.
Or the legions of other generous people who’ve watched, embarrassed, as I’ve eaten my salad and drunk my club soda.
I’m sorry about that.
But until they can grow livers in a lab,
There will be no barbecue
Or martinis
For me.