After saying that unlike Joni Mitchell, I did need the piece of paper to keep my love true, I went and shacked up with the diet as soon as the blood was out of my veins. Ten days later I got the results, which were negative. Mr. Gluten-free and I sat in the back of the bus and looked awkwardly at each other while the camera panned out.
So then this afternoon when I was faced with a number of delicious Trenton pizzas, one thing led to another, and I found myself with two slices of pizza inside me. At first it seemed like a truly brilliant idea, whose genius was only rivaled by the pure grace of execution. Then my brain got hep* to the situation, and hit me between the eyes with a super fantabulous migraine. It was the companionable, clingy kind. I spent the next few hours moving between my bed and the bathroom (where my gut, disagreeing with my will, was busily de-gluten-ing itself), but the migraine stood by me in both locales.
No, I don't have celiacs. Yes, I am gluten-intolerant. I'm actually incredibly happy, because this means I am not doomed to a life of being as sick as I've been recently. And I expect to be met in heaven by 1) Jesus 2) all the animals I've ever loved and 3) a truckload of freshly baked bread.
*This word always comes out kind of sly and sidelong when I say it, because I'm worried that people will assume that "layers of irony = 0", and this makes me act guilty. I have the same problem when I try to explain that God is three persons to people of simple worldviews. Really, I'm just trying not to talk about processions and mysteries, and then I feel like I'm trying to pull one over on them, so I usually end up saying something like "Okay, and God is—Whoa, look at the deer!—three persons."
