Food.
My relationship to food has always been a little fucked. As a tiny orphaned refugee kid, all the kind members of the congregation from the church who raised me spoiled me with so much chocolate and candy my baby teeth went black as death and fell out pretty much all at once. Then for a time I had two whole sets of messed up adult teeth, because nature was working hard to fill all those gaps and gave me twice the grill a human needs. Many complicated corrective procedures at a series of dentists was for years from that point necessary.
During elementary school, my parents at the time forced soft bruised apples, tiny boxes of raisins, and day-old brown bread salami sandwiches upon me. I stashed all these uninspired brown paper bag lunches in the wooden chest at the foot of my bed until the signature smell of rotting food and an eventual cloud of flies gave me clear away. I coveted my school friends’ lunches of soft fresh white Wonder bread peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches, chocolate bars, fruit roll ups, and rejected the lifeless day-old shit I was given instead. Lectured and punished, I nursed a child’s rage against my parents and felt depression about food and all life.
Kids, right.
