Alex McElroy

Hazardous Cravings - Tin House

I started working at Dairy Queen a month before my fourteenth birthday, a month before I was able, legally, to work. I lied on my application and a friend on staff vouched for me. I suspect, now, that he hadn’t done this out of loyalty, but self-preservation: he was chubby and feared being teased about his weight. But next to me he looked smaller, even normal. That summer I weighed 230 pounds.