“Of course it is.” Jonah gave me a what-do-you-take-me-for look and walked off to a group of shops nearby. The rest of us stayed by the drone.
I was drooling when he returned with four small containers of food, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I unwrapped my burger and saw it had actual meat inside. I took a big bite and chewed with a sound of appreciation.”
Next to me, Magni nodded his head, chewing and speaking with food in his mouth. “This is good beef.”
I opened my burger, taking off the bun and poking at the patty to make sure it was real. It was cooked just right and had that pink center that I preferred.
“I thought you were all fucking vegans,” I said and took another big bite. “Like against eating animals and all that nonsense. I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re not feeding us some stupid kale-shit but an actual burger.”
“This is cultured meat,” David explained. “You know, produced as part of cellular agriculture.”
Magni stopped chewing and his “What?” was muffled because of his full mouth.
“We don’t actually kill the animals to eat their meat. My friend is a farmer, and all they do is take some tissue from cows, from their muscles to be exact, and then they extract the stem cells and grow muscle under tension to bulk it up. That’s the meat that is then minced and turned into burgers.” He smiled. “It’s good, right?”
Magni and I looked at each other for a long second and then he shrugged and kept chewing. “Yeah, it’s good if you don’t think too much about it being grown in a fucking lab.”
I finished my burger and we continued for another forty minutes, Magni and I constantly scouting the streets for Laura while David and Jonah chatted like women.
I rolled my eyes when they talked about a male beauty competition they had both seen last night, and I tried holding my tongue when they analyzed my joke about women in the kitchen.
“Don’t they know how relaxing and rewarding cooking can be? Why would the Nmennotwant to be in the kitchen?” David said softly to Jonah.
“I don’t know.” Jonah shook his head, signaling that the whole thing was a puzzling matter to him as well.
“You’re missing the fucking point,” I said. “The joke is only funny because it infuriates women – and just to set things straight,” I said and leaned toward them, “women can be as violent as men.”
Jonah’s eyes grew big and round.
“What?” I asked him.
“If your women are so violent, Boulder, then why would you let them near the kitchen?”
I shook my head. “What? No, our women aren’t…”
“Yes, I agree with Jonah.” David cut me off in support of his friend and continued with a troubled expression. “Clearly it’s not the brightest idea to let a violent person into a kitchen when that’s where all the sharp knives are kept?”
“Magni, is your wife violent as well?” Jonah asked and Magni, who hadn’t been paying attention to our conversation, looked at him with a big question mark virtually visible above his head.
I thought it safer to change the subject to something I’d been wondering about.
“Look, can I ask you two the obvious question?” I said.
“Of course.”
“So, how many women have you been with? I mean with one man per fourteen women, surely some of them are still interested in you guys.”
They exchanged a glance before Jonah turned his chair around to face me. “I’m not attracted to women.”
“You’re gay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But I like women,” David said quickly and added softly, “and men.”
“Wait a minute,” Magni barked out. “Are you two fuckers telling us that you have access to unlimited numbers of women but that you prefer men?” He scowled at them. “I fucking knew it.”
“I’m not gay,” David argued. “I’m attracted to a person and not their gender.”
