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 made worse when we moved to North Andover, Massachusetts, where we had to make new friends in the middle of a school year, a time when most school friendships are already cemented.
To Lori’s and my credit, we began to counter the negative feelings at home by excelling in theater programs at school. Lori had the advantage of being thin and beautiful, assuring her of leading roles. My weight kept me relegated to the “ha-ha” character roles or in the last row of the chorus. But that was good enough for me. Even without any lines to speak, I could still be someone else on stage. Not being me for an hour or two felt like an enormous relief.
When my mom and dad did direct their attention toward me, they were on me to lose weight. One day they’d yell at me, the next they would try and bribe me with the promise of some new gadget just to “encourage” me to lose weight. None of it worked. For in the world of junk food, I was safe, warm, and loved. No one could harm me while I was eating candy and chips, no matter how sick I felt after eating too much of them.
There were some surprising benefits to bingeing. When all I could think of was how sick, bloated, and close to “exploding” I felt, I wouldn’t have to think of anything else. I didn’t have to think about being ignored by my parents, or about being molested by the babysitter, or about the fact that most kids at school wouldn’t look in my direction, much less talk to me. I’d discovered a safe, if physically painful, haven where not even my thoughts, memories, or fears could do me any harm.
I continued taking money from my dad’s wallet to fund my ever-growing junk-food habit. He must have been confused about what amount he’d spent at bars the previous night to notice that money was missing. And that was fine by me.
By sixth grade, I was spending roughly ten dollars a day on junk food, which bought quite a bit on a military base since food prices are discounted for service people and their families. I would turn down offers to go play with my few friends after school so I could buy junk food instead and go home and eat it in front of the television.
Sixth-Grade Gregg’s Typical Binge
1 “party size” bag of Hershey Miniature Candy Bars
1 large bag of Lays Potato Chips
1 bottle of Barbecue Sauce (for “dip”)
1 can of Whipped Cream
1 gallon of Neapolitan Ice Cream
6-pack of Fanta Orange Flavored Soda
My fondest memories of being in sixth grade are when I pretended to be sick and stayed home from school. I would be home alone since both my parents worked, so I would go to the store to buy a ton of junk food and then watch Brady Bunch reruns during the noon hour.
Oh, what joy I experienced—until the day when my dad came home midday and caught me sitting up, eating nine different things and watching TV. Being sick in our home meant you were supposed to stay in bed all day without any television.
Dad asked me for an explanation. I said I had just woken up and that the TV was already on and that it was somebody else’s food on the coffee table.
Dad stared at me for about a half a minute and then proclaimed, “Somebody must be setting you up.” He told me to go back to bed and never mentioned the incident again. He did confiscate my stash of junk food, however. But no matter, one quick trip to his wallet the next morning and I was able to replenish my supplies.
My “chronic sickness” bit me in the butt when my parents finally consulted a doctor, who checked me into the hospital for two days to undergo a series of tests, determined to find out what was wrong. I was terrified the tests wouldn’t find anything physically wrong with me, but I have happy memories of being in the hospital for those two days. It was Easter weekend and candy stripers kept dropping by with candy and cookies. Even in the hospital my binge behavior worsened; just ask the sick kid I shared my room with who had his Easter basket ransacked, while he was sleeping, by the “sick” kid lying in the bed next to him.
The tests didn’t reveal any hidden sickness, but they did confirm a severe dust allergy. I was relieved the doctor’s found “something,” so I wasn’t exposed as the kid who was just constantly playing hooky.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
By seventh grade, we went to live in Singapore for a year. Having clothes tailor-made there was cheaper than buying off the rack, and as a result I don’t think anyone in my family noticed that I kept getting bigger and bigger. There were no bothersome size labels to document my progress.
My father’s drinking continued to escalate, as did my mother’s affairs. I was only eleven years old at that point and didn’t yet have the mental capacity to understand the reasons for all the angst in our home, but things were getting so dysfunctional that in between eating
