Crazy-ass things people told me years ago

'90s teen stories about fat phobia, cool guy jerks, and creepy men

I’m a slow processor, of feelings that is. Sometimes really slow, as in decades. It’s the reason I write—with one add-on reason: I can’t sleep.

I always thought my later 40s would be a time when I could finally catch up on sleep. I’d be done with the little-kid phases. And I’d be more settled than when I was a younger adult, anxious about figuring out my whole life — because I really thought it was figure-outable. 

I’m 48 and haven’t found that good sleep yet. Instead of sleeping I spend way too much time to think about lingering leftovers of conversations from long ago. I’ve been in the process of getting my stories out for the past year or so. Not all of them, but many of the ones previously hidden in shame, or tied to bigger cultural issues. 

At some point, I’ll be done disclosing and move on, with only an occasional story surfacing now and then. I’m looking forward to writing about more things that are not about me. But right now, I’ve got more left to write. The ones here all begin with crazy-ass things people have said to me years ago.

Topics discussed here include disordered eating, sexual assault, and shaming traumas.

I’ve benefited from so many other people sharing their stories, especially ones on difficult topics. I know they’ve helped me process my own experiences. But I don’t want to trauma dump on anyone either. Everyone deserves a choice about what random stuff enters their headspace. I’m a big proponent of being selective about that. 

“Now that you’re getting older, you’ll need to start watching what you eat”

My mom used to call me “fleshy” when I was a kid. To her, growing up in poverty during the 1950s and being teased for being the skinniest kid at school, my cute-kid baby fat was a sign of health and abundance. My mom even made up a song about my “fudge” butt: “Fudge butt / Fudge butt / Rah-rah-rah.” I was so tormented by that song, growing up in the buns-of-steel ‘80s. 

It seemed so unfair. I’m my mom’s daughter, I wondered, why couldn’t I get her butt? My mom had the perfect ‘80s butt. She could wear a pencil skirt without it being pulled funny. She could buy off-the-rack clothes that fit. But no, I got my dad’s butt. I realized this when I was seven and saw him buck naked getting a towel from the hall closet just outside the bathroom. 

Fleshiness may’ve been cute as a kid, but the summer I turned 13 I had to face the Facts of Life, just like Natalie, Tootie, Jo, and Blair: Fat was not your friend after puberty. My mom broke the news to me, reluctantly, when we were alone in the car, off running errands.

“Now that you’re getting older, you’ll need to start watching what you eat,” Mom said abruptly, giving me my dose of bad-tasting, but “needed” advice. 

I remember the crushing feeling I felt inside. At that instant, whatever childness I had left in me vanished. Everything about me was about to become conditional on my body — a body that’s not meant to be trusted. Don’t let it tell you it’s hungry or wants more.   

The “problem” was that in the months that followed, my body added more fat, not less, around my hips and thighs, as it geared up for my first period. So I told myself, I’m really gonna need to watch what I eat. That was the beginning of years of disordered eating. The saddest part was that it started from the person who loved me the most. 

It wasn’t just my mom though. All my friends’ moms feared their daughters’ bodies not meeting cultural expectations too. And some moms weren’t so subtle about it either. How we looked felt outsized to anything we did. Our moms were trying to protect us from the same body judgment they faced. The same judgment that sometimes (unfairly and stupidly) determined real-world outcomes.

But our moms were only the messengers, delivering the toxic cultural expectations that still persist today. And I think part of the persistence is from people being tricked into doing some of the dirty work of perpetuating the messages.

And now I’m wondering: What dirty work am I doing that’s perpetuating bad cultural messages, without even knowing it?

“I heard you gave him a ride”

I went on my first date the summer I turned 15. I was walking to a friend’s house, walking past the cool-guy’s house I’d heard about. A few years out of high school, he wore concert t-shirts and ragged jeans. And his face was hidden under a mop of dark, shaggy long hair. His metallic, purple Camaro added to his rebel mystique. My friend recently saw him up close and personal when he came to eat at Wendy’s during her shift. She showed everyone the crumpled up napkin she saved after clearing the table where he ate.  

I just had a big fight with my mom. She was on one of her clean-the-whole-house kicks. This didn’t mean generally cleaning the house. It meant taking everything off shelves and floors and getting into every nook and cranny with Pledge and Windex. Looking back, I’m sympathetic; I’ve over-cleaned to compensate for a lack-of-control feeling too. And my mom had a boatload of reasons to feel that way: a dying husband, a combative ex-husband, and a 100% commission job. 

When it comes to sexuality, girls and women were the ones who got blamed, burdened, and burned. That’s just the way it was.

I’d just turned 15, and all I knew was I wanted to get away from the chaos at home. I wanted to feel seen. So when the cool-guy called me over to talk as I walked past his house, I felt so important. 

A few weeks after we started dating, I crashed down from the natural high I’d been on. A freshman boy I trusted told me the rumors that the cool-guy was spreading about me. It was a Friday and we were supposed to go out that night. As soon as I got home from school, I called him and canceled, explaining nothing. He was annoyed, and somehow at the time, that made me feel a little better.

I decided at the last minute to meet my friends at a party they were going to, convincing my mom to drive me there. But my friends never ended up going, and my ride home ended up raping me. 

When I came home the next morning, my mom was panicked that I was taking drugs — which I wasn’t. In the news, she’d heard stories warning parents about drug use disorders. But hardly anyone was talking about sexual assault then. 

That following week, cool-guy kept calling me and stopping by the house. Slowly, I started reconsidering him: Locker-room talk isn’t that bad, right? Or at least it didn’t seem as bad as what I’d just been through. So later that week, I walked over to his house to talk. He had his whole 20-something friend group gathered in his garage-turned-hangout space. 

After a few minutes, cool-guy grabbed me by the hand and said, “I need to ask you something,” as he led me outside where we could talk in private. He looked right at me with a serious face and said “I heard that after some guy gave you a ride home, you gave him a ride.” 

In that moment, I seemed to feel everything all at once, while at the same time feeling an emptiness inside, with no words to say. I laughed nervously. Then, after a long pause said “No that’s not true,” which he seemed to accept. I said nothing else, but thought: There’s something so wrong about an over-20 guy questioning the morals of a young teen girl he’s pursuing. 

Then my thoughts shifted to more immediate concerns: How’d he hear that? What else is being said about me at school? And soon I found out. By that time, I was branded with a scarlet letter “S” that stuck — and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Over the months that followed, I learned that if people believe one thing, they’ll often believe anything along the same line. What’s more, people rarely change their minds. And I also learned, it’s a waste of time trying. Besides the futility — defending, explaining, or comparing can reinforce the double standards and even pit women against each other.

And now I’m wondering: How much harder would it have been for me to shed my scarlet letter “S” if I didn’t have the privilege of belonging to the dominant culture? How different might my life be right now?

“I’m looking for girls who hit their sexual peak after 1988”

There was a 60’s revival of flower-power underway in the early 90s. Movies like JFK and The Doors were in movie theaters. Fun pop songs like Deee-Lite’s “Groove Is in the Heart,” went heavy on the 60’s vibe. Peace signs, tie-dye t-shirts, and Birkenstocks were showing up everywhere. And supermodel Kate Moss was bringing back Twiggy-thinness.  

Summer 1991, dressed in Contempo Casuals versions of 60’s fashion, a friend and I went to a psychedelic-sixties concert. Robby Kreeger, Steppenwolf, and Three Dog Night were headlining.

Early in the night, a Deadhead started following us around. His name was “Bob Cat” and he was very persistent. But he seemed pretty harmless — and quite funny — so we joined him and his next-gen Deadhead friends: spoiled 20-something guys blowing a summer out looking for drugs, adventure, and sex in their wannabe hippie mobile.

Bob Cat did most of the talking. The others were too high to carry on a conversation. He complained about being almost 30. All his friends were settling down, getting married, and having kids. “I need some youth,” he told us, and he got quite specific about it: “I’m looking for girls who hit their sexual peak after 1988.” He went on to explain that’s when “condoms became fashionable.”

That explains a lot of what I remember from that time period. First off, he’s clearly inferring that women reach their sexual peak in their early 20s. But, of course, it wasn’t their peak, because the culture pretty much erased women’s sexuality from existence. Anything sexual was only viewed through a heterosexual-male lens, and an immature and shallow one at that. 

There was also this obsession with young teen bodies. That wasn’t new; teen girls have forever been pursued by older men. But in the ‘90s, it seemed especially common. I remember a barrage of solicitations, pick-up lines, and beckoning by men old enough to be my father. Same for other girls I knew. Even school wasn’t a safe zone.

Pure demographics alone meant young GenX people were outnumbered by those a decade or two older. Plus, teens were more free-range  — unsupervised and without cell phones. 

But the other thing that's not talked about a lot, is how the fear, stigma, and misinformation about HIV / AIDS gave one more “reason” for old people to seek young bodies for sex. That was their (uniformed) version of “safe sex.” And as a young teen, it seemed like there was widespread indifference — or in some cases acceptance — about young people being sexually pursued by grown men.

My friend and I got away from Bob Cat just when he really started getting creepy. We ran as fast as we could while he was distracted. He chased us, going over (and under) cars to catch up. We barely made it into the car before he was there, banging on the window as we drove away.

And now I’m wondering: What’s it like for young people today, facing online predators they can’t completely escape from? And what’s not being done — but could be done — about it?

What’s next?

Next post will be mom-themed and centered around these two crazy-ass things people have told me: “If you come to the hospital, you’re gonna get the pit” and “So that’s what you decided to do with your life, be a mom.”

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