Thank you so much for your answer to Vegan. I’ve been a vegetarian my entire 40 years (not a vegan — need the cheese) so certainly qualify to comment. In those 40 years I’ve inadvertently eaten meat probably 20 times, and never once vomited or felt a bit guilty. I didn’t enjoy it, it made me feel ooky, but there was no malicious intent. Some people just don’t get it and never will, my in-laws for one. You’re absolutely correct when you say that reactions such as Vegan’s give us all a bad name and require us to talk people down from window ledges when they invite us over for dinner. The “veggier than thou” attitude is just plain bad manners. My diet is my responsibility, and while there are annoyances (don’t get me started on the carnivores hogging the meatless pizza issue) it is only a meal, not a political manifesto.

How Can Tuna Be Covert? It Stinks!

I’m a 20-year-old girl currently living at home (taking a couple years off school and working to save money). My best friend Elise is the same age as me, though practically my opposite in most ways. We went through high school together and were extremely close from about ages 15-18. She’s very driven and serious, and I’m, well, very much not, so we balanced each other well.

Anyway, she went to college after school and we kept in contact (visiting when we could, calls and emails) but naturally drifted apart in that we weren’t involved in each other’s daily lives. She’s recently moved back for at least the summer, and she might transfer out here — our friendship looks like it’s rekindling. This is all great. We click like nobody else I’ve met, and even if we haven’t talked in a month or so, we can pick up like it was yesterday.

Now here’s the problem. One of the things we had in common in high school was that we never dated — for her she was too into school, and for me, I wasn’t interested. Well, I realised after graduation that the reason I wasn’t interested is because I’m into girls. (Okay, so I had a pretty good inclination of this back in high school, but was freaked out and didn’t do anything about it.) I’ve had a couple short-term relationships with women, and pretty much all of my new friends know.

But I have never told Elise. Sars, I have no idea how she will react! She’s tended to be quite conservative in a lot of ways, is somewhat quick on the snap judgments, though extremely good-hearted. We haven’t ever talked about gay issues, because up till now I wouldn’t touch the subject — I’d start talking about something else if someone brought up Will and Grace in high school because I was that paranoid. I feel awful about it, because we tell each other everything, but I can’t seem to make myself tell her this. There have been a few times when I’ve wanted to, but my throat closes up and I panic. I know that I have to tell her, or she’ll find out from someone else and that’ll just make it worse.

Do you have any advice on how to do this? Should I write her a letter? I’ve toyed with that idea but is it too pretentiously overwrought TV drama? If I just am talking to her one day, and burst out with “Elise, I’m gay,” is that better than doing some sort of lead-up? I don’t want to make a big deal of it (like calling her over saying “I have something to tell you” and making her come over) but it is a big enough deal that I can’t just slip into the conversation “my ex-girlfriend,” which is usually how I deal with telling people I don’t know very well.

Keeping this from her wasn’t all that difficult when she didn’t live nearby — I just wouldn’t mention certain things. I’ve felt bad about it, but I never was with anyone long enough for it to really matter. (And I’ll admit — until about six months ago I was hoping it would just go away.) I’m afraid she’ll react badly and we’ll have a scene. Or even if she acts okay with it, she’ll become distant or weird. Most of my friends haven’t cared, but a couple of the girls tend to get a bit “don’t touch me” as if I’m going to rip off their clothes or something, and I would so hate to see that from my best friend. I know this isn’t really something anyone can help me with but me, but I guess I just want to know what’s the best way to tell her? Am I blowing this way out of proportion?

All The Celebrities Are Leaving Me No Room In The Closet

I am questioning my motives, and could use some impartial, objective advice. I’ll warn you now, this letter is a little long.

About two years ago, I go involved with a co-worker who had just broken up with his first serious girlfriend, his first love, so to speak. I was in the process of ending a very emotionally abusive two-year live-in relationship. The co-worker and I got very serious, very quickly (it helped that he’d been interested in me for the past two years, but had been involved elsewhere, so he’d never acted on it). I was hesitant to believe that the feeling were genuine, given his relative youth (he was 24 at the time), my low self-esteem, and the recency of his split with his first love. I didn’t move out of the apartment I shared with my soon-to-be ex quickly enough, and the co-worker ended up going back to his ex. Once I had moved out, we tried to re-start the relationship, but his ex had gotten pregnant in the interim, and things quickly fizzled out, as he felt a responsibility to try and work things out with the soon-to-be mother of his child.

They later became engaged, she lost the baby, and they broke up due to her infidelity and unwillingness to fully commit to him. Within weeks of him ending their engagement, he returned to me and we cautiously began our relationship anew. He continued to date other people, as did I, but I was very serious about him, and made it known that all I was waiting for was a sign from him that he was ready to commit again, and I’d be his alone.

Things again went awry, he broke things off with me in an intense conversation during which he claimed to be unready to commit, and that he did not want to hurt me while he caroused and chased other women — he had too much respect for me and cared too much to put me through that. There were tears, and I told him he’d regret his choice one day. He acknowledged that he probably would, and we worked to maintain a friendship, as we valued each other too much to throw our connection completely away.

Fast forward two months, and I discover inadvertently that he was once again engaged to and living with his first love. That when he’d ended things with me, it was because he’d told her he wanted her back, and was waiting for a response. When I asked why he’d lied to me, he told me he wasn’t sure if things would work out with her (and by implication, that he wanted to leave the door open with me). He told me he was happy, and that she’d asked him to eliminate all contact with me, but he continued to spend time with me at work and maintain our friendship as much as was possible under the circumstances.

Since he told me of his engagement, I’ve watched him become more stressed, beaten down and miserable. He comes to me to talk about his fears and pressures in a way I would think he should be speaking to his fiancee. He’s implied that he is not happy, and that maintaining the relationship with her takes an enormous amount of effort on his part. He’s told me he feels alone and without support.

Sars, this woman is uneducated, and will always be a financial burden on him. He comes from a difficult background, and is the only person in his family or immediate circle of friends that has succeeded, due entirely to his own efforts. In the past, she was unappreciative of his efforts to please her, and gave very little back to him in terms of emotional support. When he and I first became involved, he told me repeatedly that I was what he wanted in a relationship, and that we were a perfect fit. The chemistry between he and I remains strong, and we can talk about anything, are amazingly comfortable with each other, and are just generally a perfect match. I am financially stable, and am intellectually and financially equipped to be a full partner to him rather than a parasite.

So Sars, my question is twofold.

First, as his friend, should I talk to him generally about my concerns for him if he pursues this relationship to its currently inevitable conclusion of marriage? He is the type of man who will marry once, and should they have children (which is doubtful due to her issues with maintaining a pregnancy to term), he will certainly stay with her in an attempt to be the type of father he lacked.

Secondly, as a woman who is deeply in love with him for all of the right reasons, do I have the right to talk to him about us? He has admitted that he never gave us a real chance since he never really let go of her during each go-round of our relationship. There is a part of me that believes I could not feel the way I do if there was not still some connection between us. I am terrified of watching him tie his life to hers, and honestly believe that I would make him happier, and be a greater contributor to his future stability, than his fiancee would. But I question my motives, and wonder if I am trying to hold on to something that was never really mine to begin with.

Please help. I have no idea how long I have before he walks down the aisle (although I suspect it will be some time, as the entire financial burden of the wedding rests on his shoulders, as her family is as useless as she is). I have this feeling of urgency, and the idea that I’ll regret it forever if I don’t tell him what I see and how I feel. And I don’t really see what I have to lose, as our friendship will inevitably end with his marriage, since his fiancee is very threatened by our relationship (in and of itself an example of the unhealthy nature of their relationship).

Looking for some impartial advice,
Hoping for one of those romantic comedy endings

Quick grammar question for you: it used
to be that something bold or courageous was described as “a gutsy move”
or “gutsy playing,” but it seems that in the past year, all I hear now
is “gutty” (as in “The Red Sox won with the help of Schilling’s gutty
pitching”). Which is correct? Any idea why the change?

Thanks a lot!
Beth

The Vine has moved on from the baseball season now, but perhaps you could put this topic on a back burner and serve it up later if it interests you.

Your observations on Don Mattingly and the Hall of Fame reminded me that there are a few issues that trouble me about that institution. I would be interested to read your take on them sometime. I will set them out as briefly as I can in what I think is the reverse order of their importance.

1) First Ballot Boswell Baloney — A few years ago I watched Tom Boswell pontificate on a TV forum that it is seriously important to induct only the crème de la crème in their first year of eligibility. “Second-tier” players should have to wait. Why? Seems to me that either a guy belongs in the HoF or he doesn’t. Joe DiMaggio was eligible in 1953 but not voted in until 1955. Robin Yount made it on the first ballot in 1999. Does that make Yount better than DiMag? Boswell’s full of it, isn’t he?

2) Career Value Trumps Peak Value — Most of the discussions I read or hear regarding who should be in the HoF seem to place an undue emphasis on longevity. People talk about career thresholds for admission — 3000 hits, 300 wins, 500 home runs, et cetera. But the best players don’t always have long careers; Sandy Koufax and Dizzy Dean are two good examples. They both played about a dozen years and performed impressively for no more than half of them. I will doff my cap to any athlete who manages to stand above a major league crowd for a whole season. Norm Cash kicked butt in 1961. Tommy Davis was a great player in 1962. Neither performed anywhere near their peak-year level again, but so what? (Of course, a problem with that argument is that the HoF gets a bit more crowded if you start letting in one-year wonders. But see Issue #3 below.) We don’t hold high school or college athletes or track and field performers to a decade-or-more standard of excellence. Jesse Owens is remembered as a giant of his sport based primarily on what he did in 1935 and 1936, before he reached his 23rd birthday. Why should we require so many more good years of our greatest MLB heroes?

3) Why Even Have a HoF — I visited Cooperstown once about 30 years ago. I thoroughly enjoyed my day there, but I barely glanced at the bronze plaques on the wall. I was more interested in the other exhibits and the daily-updated stat boards. For my money the place should be called “The National Baseball History Museum and Archive.” True fans don’t need baseball writers or a veterans committee to tell them who the great players are. Try to imagine a film buff allowing the critics to decide for her that John Wayne belongs in the Actors Hall of Fame but Sean Penn does not — at least not on the first ballot. That may be why, to my knowledge, there IS no Actors Hall of Fame. There probably would not be one for football players or basketball players, either, except that somebody thought, “Well, if they have one for baseball…” Joe Jackson does not have a bronze plaque, but Joe Tinker, John Evers and Frank Chance do? (Four of the original five inductees — Cobb, Ruth, Wagner, Johnson — were still alive in 1946 when the Cubs trio was voted in. Surely, when they heard the news, they must have exclaimed in unison, “WTF?!”) The great ones don’t need a HoF, and the mediocre ones don’t deserve one. I say melt down the plaques and pour them over the empty shoes of the batting champions, including Cash and Davis.

A TN Fan from Way Out in Left Field (backing up T. Davis)