Let me be very clear: I don’t like goat cheese. And I don’t think that’s a problem.
It’s really the only thing I don’t like to eat — which is a problem, but a different one. I eat everything. I’m actually a serious cook. I have been to cooking school, I like to cook complicated meals, and I like to eat out. I will happily travel, sometimes a long way, for eats.
I have driven out of my way for a piece of pie. I have stayed overnight in places just because I heard about a nearby excellent biscuit. I ate my way across Central Asia, happily ate street food in Mumbai, with zero negative gastrointestinal effects, and in Agadez, Niger, someone dug up a side of mutton that had been buried for two days with hot stones and cut it into chunks, and I ate that, too.
I am not, in other words, a finicky eater. I try everything. So when I say I don’t like goat cheese, what I mean is: I’ve eaten it, lots of times, and I just don’t like it. I don’t like the smell or the texture or anything about it. “But have you tried this kind?” people will ask, holding out a piece of goat cheese. “Yes, I have,” I say. “But this one is so good,” they’ll say. “I have tried goat cheese. I don’t like goat cheese.” “Just try this kind!” “I’m a man in his 40s,” I will say, which is a lie because I am a man in his 50s. “I know what I don’t like. And I don’t like goat cheese.” “But this isn’t goaty goat cheese. Just try it! I don’t think you’ve had this kind.” But of course, I have had that kind. Although there’s no way out of this situation except to take the bite and demonstrate, live and in person, what I already know and have known for almost 30 years. I don’t like goat cheese.
Still, I take it. I eat it. And then I smile wildly. “Wow!” I say. “Actually, this is pretty good.”
“Really?” They are always beaming with triumph.
“No!” I shout. “I hate goat cheese. I told you I hate goat cheese.”
“You don’t have to be snippy,” is the reply. The goat cheese pusher looks hurt and put out. “I just wanted you to try it,” the goat cheese lover says in a tiny, aggrieved voice — as if they are the victims here. I don’t know why it’s so important to us that everyone around us likes what we like — or watches the television shows we watch or votes for the clown we vote for. Maybe it’s some kind of deep-seated insecurity, the need to have fellow travelers along to keep us company as we make our mistakes. It’s a rare person who doesn’t have a little voice in the back of the head whispering that the politician we support is quite possibly a moron and the show we’re watching might be trash. But I guess if you can browbeat and bully someone into agreeing with you, then that voice gets harder and harder to hear.
Just try it is something we tell children when they turn their noses up at something normal, such as a piece of lettuce or a different kind of hot dog. Try it, we say. Maybe you’ll like it. Just try it first. That’s always been my rule, anyway. Just try it is also something people say to me when they want me to prove, conclusively, in front of them, that I don’t like a certain kind of cheese that they like. To get them to shut up, I almost always have to try it. And the result is that we’re both furious at each other. We’d both be happier if we could replay the moment when I announced that goat cheese is not my thing, and instead of saying “Try this one! It’s not goaty-goaty, you know?” the response had been a shrug, followed by “Huh.”
I’m going to try that the next time people want to tell me about a show they like or a politician they admire when I have tried both and don’t like them. “Huh,” I’ll say with a shrug, and then quickly change the subject.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
