Be Good, and You Will Be Lonesome

Here is my problem with the Green Movement: it’s a movement.

It’s a movement, and therefore an organized (however loosely you use the term) group of people all trying to do something at the same time. In theory, that sounds great, but in practice I’ve found that this generally means that someone is eventually going to try to tell me what to do.

I am against people telling me what to do, beyond the obvious. Don’t light people on fire, don’t touch their toys without permission, share your crackers and juice or go sit by yourself near the compost heap. Basically, I believe in nursery school rules, or, as I like to call it, the “Don’t Be a Dick” philosophy of life.

Therefore I am willing, even eager, to recycle. I will wash out my cans and bottles. Use real dishes instead of disposable at work. If I can get food that’s free range, organic, or locally grown, I’m happy to do it. But that’s where my dedication ends.

I am not now, nor will I ever – barring a severe allergy to all forms of animal flesh – become a vegetarian. I will always wear leather and fur, because it looks good, and because, hell, it’s not made of plastic, right? Totes biodegradable. And also, I look like a movie star in it. Should you see me at a party and give me the stink eye, I will peer at you from within my enormous muskrat collar and tell you, quite sternly, that the animals I killed were all drunks who beat their tiny muskrat wives, and that as a feminist I was required to skin them.

My ethics, clearly, are enslaved to my own convenience and vanity.

On the other hand … I once broke up with a boyfriend, or started breaking up with him, because of recycling.

When I explain this to you, I trust you will realize that this was when I discovered that he was insane, and also probably a spy for the Republican Party, sent here to date me, catch me doing drugs, and discredit any future attempts I might make to hold office.

The gentleman in question was what I refer to as a “free repeater.” This means that I had dated him before, and was now, some years later, dating him again, despite proving the first go-round that we were less well-suited to a dating relationship than Anderson Cooper and the entire cast of the Real Housewives of Atlanta. (Although I would like to see that.)

He was living in New York at the time. I was living in Boston. This meant that I was extremely slow and special at using the subway and required a great deal of help just to purchase a Metrocard and slide it through the reader in the correct manner.

One weekend, I came to visit him and he decided that he would teach me, once and for all, how to buy a Metrocard. This, so that I could stop following him around like I was Rainman and he was Tom Cruise and also because I’d intimated that I might want to move to New York soon, and that sort of thing would come in handy.

He showed me over to the little kiosk with great patience, and tapped the touchscreen through several steps, until we got to the screen that asked if I wanted to purchase a new card, or just refill my old one.

“Ooh!” I said, fishing around in my pocket and triumphantly coming up with my old card. “I have my card! My old one! I don’t need a new one, I can just refill this.”

“Nah,” he said. “Just get a new card.”

“But I don’t need one. I can just refill this one.”

“I think the strips wear out or something. Just get a new one.”

By this time, a guy behind us was shuffling from foot to foot impatiently and beseeching the ceiling with rheumy eyes, much as I do now that I’ve lived here for awhile, so I did what my boyfriend said and punched out a new card.

My boyfriend lived on the JMZ line, which, as New Yorkers will tell you, does not exist, so we had plenty of time to sit and ponder refills vs. new cards while we waiting 20 minutes for our train. Also, it was an elevated platform, and a windy night. Eddies of once-read newspapers blew by us as we sat. I kept lifting up my legs and shrieking as they whipped by, trying to avoid getting my legs mummified in the Post.

“This is gross,” I said. “There’s a sign right there that says they recycle the trash. Why don’t people throw their newspapers away?”

“That’s a lie,” he said. “They don’t recycle.”

“Ah, so cynical for one so young.” (He was older than me, by about three years.) “Have you read something that says they don’t recycle? Was there an expose or something?”

“I don’t need to read something,” he said, miffed. “I know. Recycling is a scam. No one recycles. They con you into buying up those special bags or using the recycling bins and putting out your trash separately on a certain day and it’s all to make you feel better. They just throw it in the landfill anyway.”

I stared at him as if he’d just said that Bloomberg was using chemtrails to make us support the smoking ban.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You think recycling … is made up to pacify us? Is it really, really doing that great a job? Like, do we feel that much better because of it? ‘Oh, I was going to riot, but the city’s turning my milk jugs into Frisbees, so I guess it’s OK?’”

Well. The conversation quickly devolved into an orgy of eye rolling and angry snorts on both sides, and I’ll spare you. But I can honestly say that I never felt very hopeful about the relationship afterward, and I’m pretty sure he felt the same. Sitting farther apart on our bench with the trash blowing around us, we thought similar things in totally opposite directions. He looked at me and thought, “Hippie.” I looked at him and thought, “Pig.”

As I get older, I’m discovering that I never agree with any group, movement, party or affiliation on every point. I’ve made my peace with it, am, in fact, proud of it, and I have to say it spares me a lot of anguish when I’m trying to reconcile, for example, a progressive politician who won’t support gay marriage. (Ahem.) I’m not really expecting anyone to agree with me, you see.

But I’ll tell you one thing. Before you take up with a man, you need to make sure you either feel the same way about your pet issues … or have a fantastic sense of humor about your disagreements.