Eating is a chore.

Right now, Matt’s favorite food is a 7/11 microwavable cheeseburger. It hits all the right notes; you don’t have to cook it, just stick it in the microwave; it’s just the meat (well, “meat”) and cheese, no toppings; not too big, so you don’t have to feel guilty about not eating the entire burger. He’d also weaned himself off his filler food, the inedibles. They just weren’t as appealing when there was real food around.

“Hey, Matt? You eat paper, right? Do you have health problems?”

Suddenly the roles were reversed. Matt dropped the stub of a crayon he’d been using to beat his drawing into submission and looked up at Ms. Dooley. She was looking to him for guidance? He’d never been asked a question like this by an adult before, let alone a teacher. There was the sudden burst of confidence that came when a conversation veered into an area where you have an extremely unlikely but focused expertise.

“My daughter started recently and won’t stop,” said Ms. Dooley.

It was true that he ate paper. Actually, he ate almost anything, even if it was inedible. Notebook paper, plastic, string, fingernails, scabs. It was almost a character trait, a quirk, except not the endearing “I eat pizza and watch Netflix instead of going out” kind of quirky, but the “hey guys watch me eat paper and be my friend” desperate, grasping quirky.

“Yeah, I eat it all the time and I’m okay,” he replied.

“Okay, good. Toilet paper, though? She’s eating a lot of toilet paper.”

“Oh, I don’t eat toilet paper,” he lied. He did eat toilet paper. Ms. Dooley’s daughter had good taste. Toilet and tissue paper were choice picks for the paper gourmet; they had a sort of cotton candy quality of melting in your mouth as you ate them. With notebook paper, it was kind of like gum—you squeezed out the tasty ink juice and were left chewing a dry wad. “Should be fine though.”

Nothing tasted better than that first luxurious loaf of Italian bread. Buy a whole loaf (only five bucks!) and it’d last you the entire week, if you rationed it right. Not that he had to ration; Matt never ate until he was full, only until he was no longer hungry, or the hollow piercing feeling that substituted for hungry in Matt’s mind. Being full felt gross. Nauseating. Tiring. Better to live a frugal life and feel all the holier for it.

Food without guilt or pain is too strange to rush into.

-M. C.