The Queso Connection

A friend at Killjoy loved the queso at Pie Town Tacos, so when I worked there, it became part of Queso the Mondays, one of my early experiments in doing something I've apparently been trying to do for years: get people around a table over melted cheese. Usually about four people came. I've spent a lot of my life feeling like the kid who throws a birthday party and then watches the door, wondering if anybody is going to show up. Queso the Mondays could feel like that. Later, some of my grief meetups felt like that, too. But I've come to understand something about those gatherings. Grief is difficult to RSVP to. Showing up means acknowledging that something hurts. Sometimes people aren't ready to do that publicly, even when they desperately need somewhere to go. Still, I kept setting the table. And now I can see those little gatherings differently. They weren't failed events. They were prototypes. Queso the Mondays. Grief meetups. Four people around a bowl of cheese. All of it was quietly teaching me what I wanted to build next. NEON QUESO NIGHTS