Why Ice Cream?

The Personal Story Behind The Scoop and My Love of Ice Cream

I’m not the first person to center an interview series on something I love. The Scoop wouldn’t exist without influences like Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and Isaac Fitzgerald’s wonderful “Walk it Off” series—in which Fitzgerald goes for a walks with writers in NY—which have both highlighted the compelling intimacy that can form between two people discussing their lives and their passions. I hope to honor those projects with The Scoop and to offer something a little bit different. I want to get ice cream with authors not because it’s something that hasn’t been done—surely someone has done it—but because ice cream has played a profound role in my life.

At thirteen, I lied about my age on a job application to Dairy Queen—you needed to be fourteen to work in New Jersey—because I was desperate to work at a job alongside all my friends. I received the job, and for the next six years, I spent my summers mixing Blizzards and building towers of soft serve and scooping crystalized hard ice cream for little league teams and grandparents treating their grandkids and lost truckers and hordes of post-firework families on the 4th of July. Ice cream was a way of life for me. But it also presented a challenge.

I’ve written openly about my history with eating disorders for Tin House and Gay Mag in the past, and it is impossible for me to reflect on my recovery without thinking back on those years I spent inside of my hometown Dairy Queen, surrounded by sweets I refused to eat out of fear of putting on weight. Though recovery from my eating disorder will be a lifetime endeavor, I am now far healthier and okay with my body (partly because I came out as non-binary last summer).

Ice cream has been a huge part of my recovery process. At sixteen, I obsessively counted calories and felt immense shame whenever I ate at work. Sixteen years later, however, I’m able to eat ice cream without feeling guilty—and without feeling the pressure to “work it off” through exercise or dieting. This might seem like a small thing: I am able to eat a food that is universally accepted as delicious without feeling shame! But for me, it is massive, and not something I ever expected.

Going out for ice cream, and enjoying it without guilt, means I can focus on what truly matters to me: my wellbeing, my loved ones, my friends, and literature. For anyone who has suffered from disordered eating or other addictions, you know how easy it is to lose track of what you love when you’re suffering.

This is why I’m getting ice cream with authors. Because ice cream is proof—for me, and maybe for others—that we can heal from the problems that take over our lives. I hope for these conversations to be fun, engaging, smart, and—dare I say—sweet!