I gotta get this off my chest, it’s 2 AM and the smell of smoked paprika is still in my hair, I swear to God. Like, you know I’m a chef, right? A vegan chef. My whole thing, my brand, my _life_ is plants, earth, ethical eating. My restaurant in Silver Lake is basically a shrine to tempeh and heirloom tomatoes. Every single day, every day, I’m talking about the carbon footprint of a kale chip, you feel me? And then my sister, bless her heart, she gets engaged. To a really sweet guy, a good man. And she calls me, excited, practically screaming, “You HAVE to do the food, it has to be you, it’s our heritage!” And I’m like, sure, of course, I’m thinking, like, a really upscale, creative plant-based menu that honors our roots, you know, with a nod to the flavors but completely reinvented. Then she sends me the menu. THE menu. And it’s… not that. Not even close. It’s the traditional thing, the whole shebang. Lechon. Morcilla. All the heavy, meaty, beautiful, deeply cultural dishes that I haven’t touched in, what, fifteen years? And she’s like, “It’s Tía Sofia’s recipe for the lechon, and Papá wants the sancocho exactly like Mamá used to make it, and don’t even THINK about messing with the empanadas de carne.” And I just… I just agreed. What was I supposed to do? Tell my little sister, on her wedding day, that her cultural heritage is, like, morally objectionable to my entire identity? That I can’t participate in this fundamental family ritual because it conflicts with my personal brand? Nah, man. Nah. You don’t do that. You just… you just say yes. And then you try not to think about it too hard. So for the last three months, I’ve been secretly, clandestinely, developing and testing recipes for pork, for beef, for blood sausage. In my kitchen, after hours, when all my vegan staff have gone home, and the air is thick with the ghost of nutritional yeast. I’m in there, at 1 AM, rendering pork fat, tasting something I haven’t tasted in literally half my life. And it’s… it’s good. Like, disturbingly good. And the irony, the dark comedy of it all, is not lost on me, trust me. My hands, the hands that meticulously plate microgreens and edible flowers for paying customers, are now meticulously shredding slow-roasted pig for my sister’s wedding. It’s almost funny. Almost. The actual wedding was yesterday. It was… a success. Everyone loved the food. My tíos were literally weeping over the sancocho, saying it tasted exactly like Mamá’s. My sister, she kept hugging me, telling me I was the best brother in the world, that I really brought our family’s history to life. And I just smiled. And I nodded. And I kept serving plate after plate of this incredibly rich, incredibly delicious, incredibly _dead_ food. And I felt… nothing. Just like, a weird, detached professionalism. Like I was just a caterer, you know? Not the chef who’s written op-eds about the future of food, about the ethics of consumption. Just some dude slinging pork. Now I’m back in my apartment, the smell of lechon still clinging to me like a second skin, and I’m just staring at the ceiling. Is this who I am now? The guy who can just compartmentalize his entire belief system for a family event? What does that even mean for, like, everything else? My restaurant, my partner who’s also vegan, my whole, entire _thing_? I don’t know. I feel… empty. Not like I did something wrong, exactly. More like… I just discovered a room in my house I didn’t know was there. And it’s filled with, like, a whole bunch of stuff I thought I’d thrown out years ago. And it’s all just… waiting. Waiting for me to open the door again. And the crazy part? I’m not even sure I care.