When I was 18 years old, having just finished high school, I moved to Hamilton and took six months off of everything just to travel, and get used to living independently from my parents. I spent a lot of time in Auckland over those six months, going to shows, and anti-GE protests, and making lots of new friends. Once I hitched up to a show in Auckland with a friend, and at the show there was an animal rights group that had an info stall. I was really interested in getting involved in animal rights activism at the time, so I picked up a few flyers, with the intention of contacting the group about becoming active. A few weeks later the circus was visiting Hamilton, with it's captive elephant attraction. I organised along with a couple of other friends to have a protest outside the circus, and I wrote an e-mail to the animal rights group in Auckland to see if they wanted to come down. From memory they just weren't able to come down for some reason.
Sometime in the second half of 2000, I was attending an anti-GE rally outside the animal research facility in Hamilton, with a large group of people. I was there with some of my vegan friends. As we were standing there one woman came up to us and asked if we knew Mikey Brenndorfer. I was kinda surprised, but said that actually that was me. She said, "Oh good, my friends just over there have come down and want to meet up with you." That, of course made me feel pretty special, like I was some sort of important person at the protest.
These two people I met that day were from Auckland Animal Action, and they had wanted to meet me because of my previous e-mail to them. One of them was named Suzy. After the protest we invited them around to my flat, where myself, my girlfriend and my flatmate sat around with them hearing all sorts of amazing stories about animal rights activism. We were all completely inspired to hear about the protests, and the liberations, and the movement in general. We sat for hours hearing about it all, mesmerized by their tales. This day started my increased interest in animal rights activism.
From that point on, I was hooked. Anytime my girlfriend and I visited Auckland after that we would stay with Suzy. We would go to protests, and punkrawk shows, and do information stalls. We started attending animal rights conferences, and meeting up with other grassroots animal rights activists from around the country for big protests. In Hamilton we organised a protest all on our own for a three day animal research conference, where we managed to have three hundred people yelling and screaming and banging drums for the whole three day conference. During this time my friendship with Suzy grew and grew.
After that three day protest in Hamilton a few of us, including my girlfriend, traveled up to Auckland for a punk festival. When we arrived we were still buzzing from the protests, so we decided to carry the enthusiasm and have an impromptu protest outside a shop that sold fur. As fate would have it, five of us ended up arrested for disorderly behaviour.
We started an animal rights group in Hamilton, and Suzy always considered me the point of contact for the group. She would call regularly, often at 10 am in the morning, often catching me at the most inappropriate moments with my girlfriend. For me it almost seemed like a running joke that Suzy would always know to call at those times. I'm not 100% certain, but I think my girlfriend started wondering about my relationship with Suzy, at times she would make comments about me and Suzy. After my girlfriend and I broke up she regularly suggested that I should consider going out with Suzy.
And up until the time that I moved to Wellington I spent pretty much most weekends up in Auckland staying at Suzy's house. We would plot protests, liberate animals, do information stalls, have meetings, and meet up with and encourage other activists. We would also eat a whole lot of junk foods, and watch lame movies from the rental place until late at night. Once, when we were on Queen Street together I met a Hare Krishna and tried to buy the Gita, but didn't have enough money on my EFTPOS card. On the ride home she told me why she didn't like the Krishnas. Her main complaint was the philosophy of karma, which she said meant that if you were raped it meant that you deserved to be raped, and she couldn't accept that. Also, at the time, and even recently, some Hare Krishnas have been known to lie to vegans about their foods, which has always made vegans doubtful. Of course, for the most part, that has changed as a number of Krishna places are now fully vegan.
The thing with my friendship with Suzy was that it was 100% platonic. When watching movies, even though it was just the two of us in the house for most weekends, we always sat on separate couches. I don't think we so much as hugged even once. I slept in the spare room at all times. Often during the days we would hang out in her room, she would sit on her bed, and I would sit on her computer. We would listen to straightedge vegan songs while I posted on internet forums, or designed animal rights leaflets.
Eventually I ended up with another girlfriend. Suzy never liked my girlfriends, and my girlfriends never seemed to trust my relationship with Suzy. Even years later people still ask me if there was anything going on between myself and Suzy, but in all honesty it never even remotely crossed my mind. She was my best friend and that was all.
Once I moved to Wellington we would still regularly hang out together. She would often come down for visits, for animal rights conferences, and protests and just because at the time most of the experienced animal rights activists were living in Wellington. And when I was taking trips up north to escape my girlfriend I would spend time in Auckland hanging out with Suzy.
Suzy was aware that my girlfriend and I were hanging out with the Hare Krishnas. She even came with us to a few Sunday feasts at the yoga centre in Wellington. She didn't like it much, and would often do research on the internet and show me all the reasons I should consider the Krishnas a cult. She had seen three other animal rights activists become Krishna devotees in the past, and I knew she was worried about losing her friend.
I wrote Suzy an e-mail when I was moving up to Hamilton to live with the Krishnas. At first I had planned to come and visit her from time to time, being closer to Auckland in Hamilton than when I was in Wellington. But the lifestyle took over, and I never went up to Auckland to visit her. I never even contacted her again, as the Krishna philosophy does suggest maintaining friendships only with other devotees, and that men should always be wary of their contact with females, especially if they were considering taking up a monastic lifestyle. Suzy sent me an e-mail once before I moved back down to Wellington. She wanted to know why I hadn't contacted her or visited. She hoped that I wasn't put off the animal rights movement by my time in Wellington, and she hoped that I wasn't giving up her friendship for the Krishnas. The e-mail was a little out of the ordinary for Suzy, it was a little bit wussy, whereas Suzy usually never let any of her emotions show through. Because of my focus on the Krishna lifestyle at the time I never wrote back to her.
I only saw Suzy one more time after that. It was in 2005, after I had moved up to become a monk in Auckland. I was selling books on Queen Street, and she just happened to be walking down. We chatted for a bit, and a few other animal rights activists showed up as well. Talking to her, it was like old times again, our friendship hadn't changed. After that, I would always keep an eye out for her car in the city, always trying hoping that we would randomly meet up again. But we never did.
In late 2007 I had flown down to Wellington for another visit with the 'doctor'. After getting off the plane, and catching the bus into the city, I saw another old animal rights friend of mine. She was also a good friend of Suzy's, so I asked how Suzy was doing. She gave me Suzy's cellphone number before she got off the bus. I always wanted to send Suzy a text, just to say hi, but I was scared as it wasn't the thing a monk should do at all, even though my friendship with Suzy had nothing to do with sex on any level. In fact, one day, in mid-February 2008 I wrote out a text message to send to Suzy, saying sorry that I had completely ignored her friendship for so many years. I sat there with the text typed out on my phone, staring at it for a few minutes, debating in my mind whether it would be a fall down from my monastic standard to send the text to her or not. I played out all the possible results of sending the text in my head, feeling guilty just for even thinking of sending her the text, but feeling equally guilty for turning my back on her friendship all these years.
In the end, I never sent that text. And there is nothing in my life which I regret more than that. It haunts me to this day.
Suzy getting arrested at a protest
Missing Susy is hard on all of us, thank you for wrinting about it.
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Karolina
thank you for shareing this post i was very angry with my monk friend for the exact same reason that you have posted the lack of communication thing but reading your blog i think i now understand his point of view. Your blogs are really helping me deal with allot of the issues i have with hare krishna.
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