I wish there was a way to vacuum undesirable ingredients right out of food. I would pick gluten, dairy, sugar. I suppose other people would pick fat, calories, carbohydrates. I suppose other people would pick people. We have a lot more undesirable ingredients than food. Laziness, stupidity, craziness. We would all benefit from a vacuuming, especially me, which is what I’m actually, astonishingly, always, talking about.

When you do your self-deprecating before dinner, this is what it sounds like.

I shouldn’t call it dinner; I should call it breaklundinn. Because it is all 3 meals in 1. Not really the same amount of calories, or food, but it’s the only meal I eat. I should say I only eat dinner. But that sounds so simple. Or anorexic. Or prejudiced against breakfast and lunch. I am none of these things, dear brothers and sisters! None. I am poor and pretentious: I can’t afford to eat healthy food 3 times a day, but I refuse to eat unhealthy food 3 times a day. So, here I am. Rock you like a hurricane.

This is another in a series of spiritual grilled cheese sandwiches.

–Burn the outside to melt the inside? Well I won’t get laid for that metaphor.

Leaving half of my material possessions on the curb was the first. Glorious lamps, pillows, posters, chairs – locking arms with one another, glaring at me: you can’t do this to us. And then, when a woman stopped her car and picked them up: you’ll regret this, but we won’t. We’re going to the University of Chicago. We’re going to get a bachelor’s degree. Unlike you. All right, they didn’t say all that, they didn’t say anything; the woman picking the stuff up said she was going to give it to her daughter, who was starting at the University of Chicago.

And now tonight, a newcomer in a small community of Christian queers. “Is there anything you want to tell us about yourself?” “The floral arrangements make me uncomfortable. What is that? Burgundy seaweed?” The restless ache that leaves our heart and tries to stay in another’s heart, only to find it full, and trudging back, a bitter homecoming.

There is a truck stop between who we are and who God wants us to be. We can take a shower, and have a meal, and then several years later realize we haven’t gone anywhere.