dates.
I thought I was handling this insanity perfectly fine. I enjoyed the thrill of performing and, more importantly, I had my secret world of food ever at my disposal. Now I also had the “bonus” of my mom’s approval and perceived affection for doing her bidding. Little did I realize at that point my mom could have given a Disney-inspired villain a run for his or her money when it came to cruel ways to parent a child.
Since Mom was always away from home on dates, including overnight stays and long weekends, I was able to maintain a nice stash of junk food. It began to extend beyond sweets and candy. Whenever I could, I would fix whole meals for myself—no matter what time of day. My typical breakfast during those years was really more like lunch or dinner.
Eighth-Grade Gregg’s Typical Breakfast
1 large box of Spaghetti
1 large jar of Spaghetti Sauce
1 whole can of Parmesan Cheese
1 loaf of White Bread
Butter and Garlic for the Bread
At twelve years old I was running the household—cleaning, fixing dinner, making sure that Lori and I got to school on time and that we stayed out of my mom’s hair, all while coordinating my mom’s social life over the telephone by pretending to be “Sue.” I was writing notes to teachers and signing school permission slips by forging my mother’s signature when necessary. I was a one-stop-shop, and Lori and I were a good team.
My favorite memories from that period were of Saturday mornings during the winter. My mom would usually leave around 4:00 a.m. to go skiing with the man-of-the-moment. Lori and I would pretend to be asleep until she left and then we would get up immediately afterward.
I’d race to the kitchen and fix us a big pot of spaghetti complete with tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese. It would be about 5:00 a.m. at that point. Lori and I then sat down with a tape recorder and a nearby stereo system and made an audiotape of our own version of a television variety show—ingeniously titled The Gregg and Lori Show. We had lots of special guests (whatever cassette tapes we had of our favorite performers) and would insert canned “applause” into our recording to make it sound like our “musical guests” were performing live.
During our recording sessions we would chow down on the spaghetti. I always ate much more than Lori, who continued to maintain a healthy weight, while my own weight continued to skyrocket.
Ramstein Junior High School, where I commuted to via bus from Landstuhl, was an interesting place. A school full of military brats (a common nickname for the kids of military personnel), each of whom was convinced that his or her father outranked all the others’.
I didn’t have any close friends, so when I discovered that a kid at school named Mike shared my love of superhero comic books I used some of my precious food money to buy a few comics for him in the hopes it might bring us closer together. It worked, and before too long I had a new “best friend”—though Mike never used that exact phrase. I had never really had a good friend before, not to mention a thin friend. In some weird way, I felt a little more validated as a person.
Look, world. Someone likes me even though I’m fat!
Mike and I used to sit around and quiz each other about science fiction television episodes and comic books. We were happening guys.
Adding to this newfound social life? Girlfriends. One for Mike and one for me. Suddenly I wasn’t solely focused on food anymore and it felt fantastic. My girlfriend’s name was Judy. She had blond hair and a wicked sense of humor. Mike and his girlfriend, Kim, and Judy and I would French kiss like there was no tomorrow.
While I could tell Judy liked me, I never forgot the fact that I was fat and she was not. I was obsessed with finding out why she would have a “fat guy” as a boyfriend. Mike agreed to do the detective work for me.
One day after lunch I was waiting in the school hallway to go into class when Mike approached me with the news. Apparently Judy wanted to date me because since I was the fattest guy in school, I “probably had the biggest dick.”
Never mind the compliment of my perceived appendage—my growing belly had kept me from seeing my penis when looking down for years. I was mortified at being singled out as the “fattest guy at school.” I waited outside Judy’s fifth period class to quiz her on these events. And she confessed. She had indeed said that.
I felt compelled to break up with Judy. Not so much because of the fat remark, but because I was somewhat disgusted by her candor. I wasn’t ready to move that fast. Especially as I watched my mother demonstrate the ills of illicit sex by staying away from home night after night and gaining a public reputation for being a “slut.” This word was used by more than one caller giving “Sue” a piece of his mind in regard to my mother blowing them off.
Soon after my breakup with Judy I also “broke up” with Mike. He said his mother had accused me of buying his friendship by constantly purchasing comic books for him. I told him that wasn’t the case at all, and subsequently stopped buying him comics. Funny enough, he stopped being my friend about the same time he stopped getting my comic books. Go figure.
INWARD BOUND
I had a journalism teacher who caught on to something not being quite “right” with me. She assumed the problems were occurring inside me, rather than stemming from my home situation. She signed me up for the school-sponsored Outward Bound program, where I was forced to experience nature with a group of other “troubled” kids.
In actuality only a few of the kids were genuinely “troubled.” Most of us were simply adjusting to adolescence in one random way or another while living on a military base overseas. We were the European equivalent of Gossip Girl—without the cocktails—even though, ironically, all of us could buy beer off the military base at a German bar or pub. Its availability meant few of us military brats ever abused alcohol—and besides, I was too busy abusing food.
The Outward Bound trip proved a good way for me to get to know a few people in school. When Mike and I stopped being friends, I became very shy and withdrew into myself.
Interacting with people this closely was a new experience for me. I remember our first morning there, where five of us were assigned to the same room. There was a fellow eighth-grader, Glenn, who I became fascinated with. This was before I realized he was one of the most popular kids in school.
What fascinated me most was when Glenn was changing his shirt. The fascination wasn’t sexual. His athletic body intrigued me because it was so unlike my own. Unlike my puffy, curvy, Pillsbury Doughboy body, Glenn was totally fit. He had a tight chest, so different from my growing “breasts,” and he had a taut stomach. Not me. I had a huge stomach and flabby body. Even my penis, the one Judy had been so interested in, was receding into itself due to my belly’s full roundness.
Seeing Glenn up close like that, I began to hate my body even more than I had before. Standing in front of the mirror, I grabbed chunks of my blubbery flesh, wondering why I couldn’t look more like Glenn. I chronicled all of this in my journal—describing how my body was so much different from Glenn’s.
There was hell to pay for those journal entries. On the bus ride home from the Outward Bound week, some of the kids managed to get their hands on my journal and began reading it out loud to everyone on the bus. Every last detail of my comparing my flabby body to Glenn’s fit body was recounted for a bunch of eleven-and twelve-year-olds. I tried to get the teacher’s attention but she wouldn’t intervene. You can imagine the razzing I got. I was mortified. After that incident I held my head very low while walking the halls of Ramstein Junior High School.
Post humiliation, I showed that journalism teacher a thing or two about how “troubled” I was. I volunteered to sell yearbooks