Roxane Gay shares with us the inspiration for this week’s story:

“Begin Chest Compressions” started with Olive Garden. I live in a town where there is no Olive Garden but we see the commercials for the restaurant all the time. The rhetoric of Olive Garden commercials drives me insane because it’s more reheating station with wait service than an actual restaurant. When they say things like, “When you’re here, you’re with family,” they’re just so full of crap. I started to think about the kind of person who would enjoy eating at the Olive Garden (not that there is anything wrong with that, their salad is awesome). I imagined the kind of person who would consider a meal at such a restaurant a culinary experience and how sad that would be but I didn’t want to make that person square or cheesy. When I first started writing the story, it was just about Chad as this average guy who loves nothing more than going to Olive Garden for date night with his girlfriend, a woman who is far less enamored with the restaurant. I believe in the attraction of opposites so I started to wonder what a woman like Sarah would be doing with a guy like Chad and how two such different people could possibly love each other, truly love each other and become their better selves together. And that’s how a story is born!