"I'm no longer a vegetarian. I am a post-vegetarian. Besides, you know how they raise these birds? Fixed in tiny dark cages with their beaks and talons cut off to keep them from killing each other out of poultry madness. Now, were you to do something like that to a human being, you would be accused of taking away his or her humanity. So they take away these birds' animality. To coin a phrase. So I am not eating an animal, I am eating an ex-animal, a post animal. I am a post-vegetarian."
Susan stared at him, then took a deep breath and looked away.
"You know, Jack, I was wrong in always insisting you go back to college. The last thing you need is to be reading more post-modern literary criticism and other such mental masturbation."
"You can't say anything to hurt me. I've already come to grips with your incomprehension of me."
"There's a difference between lack of comprehension and calling bullshit."
She had raised her voice and noticed a shadow of hurt come over his face. She paused and considered how he had looked and spoken to her. Nothing snide, no sly grin. There was an earnestness about him that, at the same time, lacked intensity. His voice droned on tiredly, the voice of someone who was reciting a bitter truth that he had learned to accept long ago. His eyes turned downwards as he spoke with the weary patience of one who explains the obvious to the stubbornly mistaken. No, this was no wallowing in cleverness. He really believed it.
Susan leaned closer to him. "Jack, look... I think I understand you. But you’re just thinking yourself into a hole. Okay, so there's a lot of vulgarity and stupidity in the world. A lot of superficiality. But you don’t have to dwell so much on it..."
"But it's all around me." His voice quivered slightly. "It's what people do."