were placed, there was usually a lunchtime deadline, and then stepped on a scale outside of the gym during lunch hour. I had to weigh before I ate my lunch—that was the rule. The smart set began to bet that I’d always be heavier. And they were right. I was soon weighing in at over 175 pounds.
My mom was in the hospital off and on during this period due to complications from what we were told was multiple sclerosis, putting my father in charge of cooking. He used to serve me cottage cheese, lettuce, and a burger patty—the “official back-in-the-day diet meal.” After dinner, I would retreat to my bedroom and indulge in my secret stash of cookies and candy. I would also buy gallons of ice cream and keep it hidden in my closet until I could eat it. Needless to say I would more often end up drinking rather than eating it.
With my mom in the hospital, my dad seemed to be suffering from a lot of anxiety, which is perhaps what led to his increased drinking, often at all times of the day. Fitness is a big deal for the military-minded, and the last thing my dad wanted was an overweight son. But the more he pushed for me to get thin, the more I ballooned. His rules got more and more rigid, to the point where I wasn’t able to have any food from the bread group. This included rice, potatoes, and anything else of a starchy nature.
One late afternoon, before my father got home from work, I pulled out a box of “forbidden” saltine crackers and some cheese slices. After putting mayonnaise on the crackers I placed a piece of cheese on top, followed by a pickle slice. I guess I always was a junior Emeril Lagasse at heart! I laid all of my hors d’oeuvres out on a plate and prepared to take it to my bedroom, the safe haven for my undercover munching.
Suddenly—tap-tap-tap. I looked up at the window (we lived in a basement apartment) and saw my dad banging on the window, smiling sarcastically, proud to have caught me “cheating” on my diet. He came inside and made me sit at the kitchen table to watch him enjoy the snack I had worked so hard to create.
“I’m not going to punish you,” he said. “Instead, I’m going to thank you for fixing me such a delicious snack.”
That’s okay though. Because, boy, did I show him.
The next morning, while my dad was in the shower, I took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and spent it all on candy after school. Back then ten dollars actually bought quite a bit of snack food. After coming home, I went deep into the woods behind our building and proceeded to force the entire contents of the bag of junk into my belly. I was so sick when I finished eating that I felt like throwing up. I didn’t know much about supermodels or eating disorders at that time, so I didn’t realize throwing up on purpose might have been an option. An unhealthy option, but an option nonetheless.
While I learned to hide what I was eating, I was having more and more trouble hiding its effect on my body. My parents now had to order my clothes from the Sears big and tall catalog, and once, at a grade school birthday party, I was eating a slice of birthday cake when the wicker chair I was sitting on buckled and collapsed.
The other kids laughed, while the kid’s mom who was hosting the event launched into a lecture on how I was eating too much cake. I don’t remember any specific parts of her lecture. As she pointed her finger and ranted, I ground my tongue into the roof of my mouth, still able to decipher the granules of sugar that had been in the frosting. Sugar saved me from feeling completely mortified.
I realize now that was about the moment I began to hate my body. It seemed like the bigger I got, the more my parents (and others) became comfortable with letting me know that I was not only differently, but also incorrectly sized. It wasn’t difficult to see the disgust in other peoples’ faces or the disappointment in my parents’ eyes. I seemed to be failing everyone. And it was apparently my growing belly’s fault. So I reasoned, if they hated my body, why shouldn’t I?
I remember one time, after getting yelled at by my mother for eating some of her candy (which she kept hidden in her bedroom and I was forbidden to touch); my father confessed that he was the one who had eaten it. While my mom and dad stood in the kitchen, debating whether or not I should still be punished, since in their eyes I must have been guilty of sneaking some kind of food since I was continuing to gain weight, I remember listening to them while coloring in the living room. I began to write “I am bad. My parents are good. I hate myself” in the coloring book. It was soon after that “incident” that I started to keep a private journal, knowing I couldn’t risk my newly discovered self-hating thoughts getting into my sister’s (or worse yet my parents’) hands.
While I occasionally made a spectacle of myself when encountering wicker furniture and was now battling a case of chronic self-loathing, I was still fairly popular at school. By the fifth grade, I had assumed the position of class clown, always a fitting complement to excess poundage. While kids were busy making money from my ongoing weight gains, I was also charging kids ten cents each to watch me kiss my “girlfriend,” Ann, behind the big rocks that sat at the base of our grade school.
Can you guess where my earnings were going?
Unfortunately, Ann’s and my passion for each other was fleeting. Our love affair ended not because I wasn’t Catholic, the reason fifth-grade Ann gave me as to why we could never marry, but because people began to make fun of Ann for kissing the fat kid. Our breakup was a terribly sad experience. Luckily, Little Debbie and her cavalcade of snack cakes saw me through that painful period.
Learning to “eat my problems away” was a pervasive habit I developed early in life. If I had any cause to be anxious, depressed, or worried, I’d head to the store and spend ten dollars on ice cream, cookies, chips—you name it.
Just around the time I learned that I could “eat away” my depression, I was faced with more things to feel depressed about. My father’s alcoholism was becoming a noticeable issue, and it was escalating. He was facing legal action from the Air Force for one-too-many DUIs. Meanwhile, my mother, who had been recuperating from years in the hospital due to complications from her MS, saw fit to forget her worries by having an affair.
My younger sister Lori, who happened to be thin and beautiful, and I had a succession of baby-sitters who were around more often than our parents. I remember one in particular, Sue, who would let me sit next to her while she watched television. I was actually allowed to snuggle up to her, something I was never encouraged to do with my parents. I felt Sue’s warmth and affection, and most importantly, her acceptance. I was further delighted by Sue’s obsession with dunking potato chips in mustard. I thought it was genius.
Pairing two unrelated snack foods together? Sign me up.
Some of my happiest childhood memories are of dunking potato chips with Sue.
The baby-sitter situation turned ugly when my parents hired George, a seventeen-year-old, who sexually abused me. After the first incident George said that if I told anyone he would kill me—a threat that seemed very real at the time. He showed me his pocketknife to prove the point. I believed him. And I was terrified.
When my parents arrived home that evening, I got up out of bed and went into their bedroom where my mother was taking off her make-up. I told her I needed to talk, and she told me that if I didn’t get back to bed I was going to get a spanking. I tried to reason with her but she wasn’t responsive at all—and clearly was very serious about the spanking. I went back to my room and cried myself to sleep.
George continued abusing me whenever he would baby-sit. My parents didn’t understand why I would get “testy” whenever it was announced that he would be watching us. I kept a drawer full of candy bars at the ready on nights when I had advanced warning of George’s visits. During his abuse, I would detach from what was happening and think only of the food that would comfort me when the ordeal was over.
Eventually George went off to college and I was safe from his abuse at last. But by that point I had formed an unbreakable bond with food, and food promised to “be there” for me and to protect me from any of life’s future unbearable situations.
This was about the time my parents decided that they wished they had never met one another—much less had children together. My sister Lori and I had a sense that our presence was bothersome. The situation was