The Girl with Two Blocks of Cheese

by Brian Steel

I will forever remember Meghan Morrissey as being the girl with two blocks of cheese. It was Thanksgiving in London on a semester abroad, and the small kitchen was crowded, as she and all three of her flat mates tended to the food while I watched from the frame of the doorway. Meghan was responsible for the macaroni 'n cheese, and she held up two blocks of the specialty kind they sold at Sainsbury's, under a big banner that read Cheeses of the World. "I got one block of Irish for me and one block of Canadian for you. I'm going to mix them together, just like us." I look back on it now, fifteen years later, and I think to myself that it was just about the sweetest thing that any person has ever done for me - a beautiful girl, standing in the cramped, steaming kitchen of a West London flat and smiling, holding up two blocks of cheese and asking for a life I could never give her.

6S

Brian Steel, author of Origin of a Name, is a thirty-six year old Canadian writer living in the weird wilds of Baltimore, Maryland. He is still single, and has belatedly regained his admiration for cheese-loving Irish girls. In this respect, he has matured - somewhat.