The following is a guest post from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s and HGTV’s Desperate Spaces’ Daniel Kucan…

Changing your mind is hard, make no mistake. In particular it’s very nearly impossible when the entire world is telling you how correct you are, that you are on the path, doing the right thing, valid. But even so, the little voice is powerful, the tiny, whispering spirit that pokes at the folds of your grey matter and slowly insinuates itself into your consciousness, telling you that you are completely, utterly, ferociously astray.

It’s gotten easier as I get older, I guess. I don’t say that because it actually feels more effortless, I say that because I seem to change my mind a lot these days. It’s a little disconcerting, actually, the vast array of things on which I’ve swung: I like plaid now, for instance. I used to dig cats, now I’m squarely a dog guy, I like gardening (too boring for me before), I love my scars, and I don’t eat animals.

It’s really just a different way of looking at something that I didn’t completely understand formerly. Sometimes, I find that I need to flip something on its head in order for me to see it right, stare right at it until my retinas burn into clarity and yes becomes no, up becomes down.

The first time I met Maldanado, the guy who’s going to throw down with me tonight, we were maybe 19 years old. He was a little guy, thin, whipchain arms, long braid down his back to his waist. Everything was point style back then, which meant you never went to the ground and if you got in a clinch, the referee would stop it and separate you.  It wasn’t like the continuous brawls that you see now in the UFC. But at the same time, in point style, you could have five, six fights in a day. Nowadays you have a fight, and then recover for three weeks. I’ve already cleared the next several days to ice my bones and sew on anything that gets knocked off.

Maldanado is taping his hands. He’s sitting in a full split, wrapping each finger, gung-fu style. He’s a Chinese stylist from a Taekwondo history, so his kicks are faster than my internet connection.  One time, back at a club tournament fight at NYU, Maldanado threw a round house kick at me that was so blindingly quick that he tapped my nose with his big toe and set his foot back down on the ground before I even raised my hands. I spent the next seven days explaining my two black eyes to classmates and had to take handfulls of pills until my shoulder worked again.  No one ever said these lessons come easy, but they come all the same.

But tonight, I’m way more ambitious. So much so, in fact, that I’m hoping to be able to walk home without a limp.

I’m a vegan, haven’t eaten any meat since ‘89. It’s funny ‘cause I get all this guff for it, right? The grand master of our school was a Chinese National Living Treasure named Chan. He was, I don’t know, four, maybe five hundred years old and mean as a snake. The only words in English I ever heard him say were, “wrong ” and my favorite, “idiot ”. He used to teach class with a glass of whiskey in one hand and you could smell the cigarette smoke on him. Chan used to call me Lo Han Jai, which sorta means “vegetarian,” but also means “guy who eats like Buddha” but in that ineffable way that Chinese phrases always have several levels of meaning, is more like calling me “Spicy Tofu with Veggies.” That used to make me crazy, ‘cause he was basically calling me a wimp. The Chinese language can do that, call you four different things with one name.  No one ever caught the irony in all that; up was still up for them, I guess.

So keep your blase’ hipster bacon references and your outdoor meat-fest cookouts, ladies. You all just look like cowards to me, silk-skinned scaredy-cats too fragile and wavering to resist your own appetites.

Maldanado climbs into the ring and rolls his head. It’s three rounds tonight, three minutes each, and let’s be honest, nobody expects me to win. If I could take him to the ground, I’d be preaching the painful gospel all up in here, but tonight is all stand-up.  Now I have way more knockout power than Maldanado does, but in order for that to matter, I gotta hit him, and trust me when I tell you that I’m not optimistic on landing anything.

We step up into the ring and the ref gives us a quick once-over before shooting me a look through cowboy eyes that kinda says, “Wow, do I feel bad for what’s about to happen to you” and someone rings the bell. Now I’d like to tell you that I shoot in all full of fire and razor wire but sometimes you know you’re gonna take a beating and anyone who says otherwise is delusional. But I aint making it up when I tell you that oftentimes the delusional cats are the best fighters; they think they can take ANYBODY. Maldanado was like that, would step in the ring with guys three times his size and walk away without a mark on him, and right now, I’m envying his myopic badassery.

When I was about 11, having stumbled onto the momentous discovery that the dance studio was packed with unbelievably hot girls, I began an epic ballet career that lead to two things: the first was that I determined that chicks really liked guys who could dance, the second was that I was called a faggot pretty much every day of my life up to, and including, today. But it got me jacked and ultimately lead me to gung fu and then Jujitsu and finally MMA. But those ballet dancers I learned from in the beginning, no lie now, they were some of the biggest toughguys I’ve ever known. They could jump higher, kick faster and had better balance than any of the guys I’ve fought with since. I’m not saying they could take a punch, and, yeah, pretty much all of them were gay, but I never equated those things.  I always saw them the same as the fighters I knew.

Somewhere along the lines, we made the same mistake about vegetarians; we decided as a nation that they are soft, effeminate. That never made sense to me either. Not just because I am one and I never thought of myself as particularly soft, but more so because I’ve seen the alternative.

The only difference is that one group likes to make stuff, and one group likes to destroy stuff.  Go watch a Jujitsu class and see if you can tell the difference between a bunch of half naked, sweaty Brazilian guys rolling around together on a mat and your average West Hollywood rave scene.  Not kidding, same thing.

Somewhere along the lines, we made the same mistake about vegetarians; we decided as a nation that they are soft, effeminate. That never made sense to me either. Not just because I am one and I never thought of myself as particularly soft, but more so because I’ve seen the alternative. Burger fiends, pork hounds, you trying to tell me that those guys come down on the butch side of the spectrum? You gonna try to sell me on the hunky masculinity of the huge pot belly, the mullet, the wheezy lungs, heart disease? Go try it right now, go spend some time at the KFC and try to pick out one guy, one effing guy, who embodies virility. Hunters in particular strike me as especially anemic and cowardly, packing gigantic weapons to take down the world’s less dangerous species. In my rubric, kid, killing weaker critters comes down squarely in the box marked “pussified.”

Maldanado goes to work with some stiff jabs and plants a roundhouse kick under my arm that shatters my breathing into shards of jagged rasps. I tuck in one elbow to hold my ribs in place and switch sides. I can fight right or left handed, so I still have a shot at landing a big hammer to his beak, but right now I’m more worried with catching my breath.  He knows I’m rocked and he starts using a long, flicking kick to my kisser to keep me off balance; every time I move in, he sticks me in the teeth with it.

Now don’t get me wrong; I don’t mind the taste of blood and meat, even my own.

My mouth fills up with the iron flavor, and every time he nails me again, I get that slick, metallic syrup shoved down my throat a little more.  And don’t think for a second that he doesn’t know.  He can smell the disquiet comin’ off me like cold sweat and he’s predator enough to know when to press his advantage. His legs are so long and fast that I can’t get inside, I simply have no answer to his speed; and two minutes into the first round, I already know how this thing is going to end, so settle in, bitches, ‘cause I won’t hesitate to splinter your preconceptions.

Hunters, predators, bullies, they’re all the same, man. They all believe that power grants absolution or at least, immunity, but it doesn’t. Power grants culpability, the ethical onus of restraint.  Restraint, kid, see that’s a valorous concept, that’s masculinity. We have dominion over this world, that power is ours and at some point, the world will demand to be paid back. Immunity is a myth, man, trust me on this.

You know what?  I miss meat every day, every damn day. And you want me to think that ceding to that craving is all beefcake?  I don’t get it, since when is doing what’s easy as opposed to doing what’s right the one way ticket to valorous manhood?  I covet all sorts of stuff, that doesn’t mean I go take it. I’ve dreamt the impossible dream, I’ve fought the unbeatable foe (I’ll show you those scars if you ask me kind) but unlike the venerable Lord of La Mancha, I don’t glean any satisfaction merely from the struggle; I glean satisfaction from the fact that I didn’t fucking eat anybody.

Quite honestly, I’m tired of your assumptions, so back off and let me tell it. We end the round with Maldanado sauntering to his corner, fresh as a dang daisy, and I stumble to my stool and miss it by a good six inches. Climbing back up, my corner man is spitting instructions at me but I’m not really sure which one of his faces I should be listening to.  I’ve already got it worked out, so he’s wasting his words anyhow.  Just give me some water and don’t let the ring doctor know I’ve got a cracked pin on the left side.  I know how to deal with predators.

Maldanado flies out of his corner, right at me.  I shrug off his hands, not enough brawn there to end this thing.  But he keeps driving me back with those crazy bolts of lightening that he walks on.  I step back again, trying to sidestep and keep my back off the rope, and manage to avoid the majority of his spleen.  I can feel his frustration as he tries harder and harder to land something substantial, and right when he’s off his nut with ire, I go right at him.  Off his back leg, his power leg, he throws guan men, which means “slam the door” and I tuck my head and block it full on with my face.

Hunters, predators, bullies, they’re all the same, man. They all believe that power grants absolution or at least, immunity, but it doesn’t. Power grants culpability, the ethical onus of restraint.  Restraint, kid, see that’s a valorous concept, that’s masculinity. We have dominion over this world, that power is ours and at some point, the world will demand to be paid back. Immunity is a myth, man, trust me on this. And what Maldanado never learned (predators never do) is that sometimes the boot to the brainpan is its own justification. Not only is the shock of a cracked bean worth the hurt if it lets you get inside, but the throes of that pickle bring a sort of clarity, a transcendent epiphany that heals your wounds and resolves your bleary vision.

So keep your blase’ hipster bacon references and your outdoor meat-fest cookouts, ladies. You all just look like cowards to me, silk-skinned scaredy-cats too fragile and wavering to resist your own appetites.

Maldanado can’t believe it.  He can’t get his head around the fact that I just traipsed right into his kill shot. And even worse, that I’m still standing there, way too close for his comfort. And in the whisper quick moment that he hesitates, I drop an overhand soup bone right out of nowhere and lay it across his gob. As his back hits the mat, the thing I’m most aware of, besides the ache in my elbow, is the baffled look of confusion on Maldanado’s mug as his eyes flicker dim like a bad neon bar sign; and I drag my battered carcass out of the ring.

The humor doesn’t guise it, really. Every time my manager tells me, “Don’t worry, Kucan, this cow was suicidal,” as he tucks into a t-bone with a self-conscious giggle, it’s really like Maldanado’s weak ass jab, a carefully placed barb trying to perpetuate that illusion of moral exculpation. I’ve learned now to step into those shots, block ‘em right on the dial. And every time you call my dinner rabbit food, or ask me if I’m a vegetarian because I love animals or because I hate plants, or tell me that God intended for us to eat animals because he made them out of meat; I can feel my rib go squishy again but I’ll step right into it just the same.

After Maldanado wrestles back his lucidity, he comes over to my corner and smiles and points at me, “I’m gonna need that,” he says. Stupid me, I’m thinking he means my courage, or skill, or something internal that he sees now but had missed before. He clears it up for me when he takes hold of my arm, the one that just put his lights out and pulls from my elbow a long, bloody incisor. “Thanks,” he says, holding up the jagged tooth, and he grins wide enough for me to see the space where it belongs.

Ah well, I’m thinking.  No one ever said these lessons come easy, but they come all the same.

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Share your own vegan journey at www.thevegandecision.com. Also, check out Daniel’s view on “eating right for your blood type” here.