My mom loves to cook out. She always has. During the early part of the pandemic, when she was going through cancer treatment and I was living with her, she cooked out several days a week. It makes sense. This was her idea of living it up, of luxury, of making the days count. A steak is still the finest delicacy in our family. Burgers, chicken, all-beef hot dogs, even the occasional perch or shrimp have all met the business end of her grilling spatula.

It got to the point where the smell of charcoal and lighter fluid clung to…

You know a really deranged song with a really catchy chorus? “Jealous” by Nick Jonas. I found myself singing it the other day, and when I start to absently sing a song, it can be weeks before I stop.

I’m getting red in the face
You can call me obsessed
It’s not your fault that they hover
I mean no disrespect
It’s my right to be hellish
I still get jealous

I think it’s the narrator’s self-awareness about the whole thing that freaks me out the most: “I apologize. …

A Question of Taste

For all its meanings, the word “taste” is, perhaps rightly, connotative of classist, elitist, and more accurately anti-populist sentiment.

It is often used to distinguish between high art and low art, which is most often a separation of class, money, and access that most of us do not have. …

Hello, I hope this post finds you.

Since I can remember, when I sat down to write, I’ve always had a couple of books on my work surface next to me. Every so often, I hold one, open it up, and don’t read so much as witness the words. I’m not looking for ideas. I think it’s just nice to know, to hold in my hand, the labor that a stranger put into a book. It exists. It is worthwhile. It’s the breadcrumbs in the dark forest. It feels comforting to know someone’s been here. …

A disclaimer for those of you who are sensitive to body image talk, fat talk, food talk, and disordered eating. I talk about all of that in here.

I am a fat person who has very little to say about my body.

But, being someone who enjoys exhibitionism on social media, I used to feel that my fatness required an excuse every time I wanted a fraction of the attention thin or muscular gays got for a hundred times less effort. They could post a shirtless pic, throw up a Lana Del Rey lyric, and go. …

My father sings a lot. Or at least he did. I haven’t lived with him full-time since I was eighteen. The most common songs in his repertoire were Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and a few different Meat Loaf tunes: specifically “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth” and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” from his Bat Out of Hell album.

Weirdly, he was good. My dad’s not an artistic man, although he might have had the temperament (temper?) for it. But he had a nice voice.

The only thing is: he doesn’t project when he sings. Singing…

A book proposal by Kevin Ethan Johnson Peterson, former-accidental White House temp

An elite group of books has sought to pull back the curtain on the trials and scandals of the Trump Administration:

• The Room Where It Happened by John Bolton
• Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House by Omarosa Manigault Newman
• Disloyal: A Memoir by Michael Cohen
• Speaking for Myself: Faith, Freedom, and the Fight of Our Lives Inside the Trump White House by Sarah Huckabee Sanders
• Yes, I Did It by Ted Cruz
• Wait, Not THAT by Ted Cruz
• My Life in Politics: A Memoir of…