Bisquick Light Bulb

Let me try to think back to the first time I binged and purged…ah yes, it was at the ripe age of 11. You know, all that pressure from the media to look thin, it got to me too.

On Christmas morning, 1995, after all the presents were open, and our bellies were full of Dad’s famous pancakes, I retreated to the upstairs bathroom for my usual routine. I threw up everything as fast as I could to get that buzzy head rush that I just adored. When I flushed, the toilet started to overflow…no problem, the handy plunger was right there, so I began to plunge. This time it wasn’t going to work, the toilet completely overflowed filling the bathroom floor with pancake-water. I tried my best to sop it up with toilet paper and paper towels, and it seemed the worst was behind me, but oh no, it was just beginning. I heard a scream from the downstairs from my mom. She screamed my name so I ran to the kitchen. She was standing there with a scowl on her face, while my brothers and my father were on a ladder at the ceiling lamp recovering the massive amounts of pancake-water-throw-up that was pouring out from the ceiling. It was disgusting, and my entire fault.

I will never forget the look on my mother’s face, and when she said, “But Tara, It’s Christmas!”

First Lady Dreams

I knew something was wrong when I was in the sixth grade. I wanted so bad to be a leader, to be someone that the other kids looked up to. Someone like my Dad, or Mom, or my brothers, even baby Katie. It seemed like everyone looked up to everyone in my family but me. I wanted to be the student council representative for my class in the sixth grade, so I made a poster, wrote a speech, and tried to persuade my classmates that I was more valuable than Lauren Adams, the straight-A responsible student who was also running. The day the results were read, Lauren won. Even my best friend in class, didn’t vote for me. When I asked her why not, she said, “Lauren seemed like she would be a lot more responsible than you”. Well of course she was more responsible, but who says an irresponsible girl can't be a great leader? At least I won the position as an alternate to her, so if Lauren was absent, I would take her spot at the student council meeting. Do you know that bitch was only absent once all year…Once! When I showed up to my first and only meeting with the student council I felt so out of place. Everyone there seemed confident, smart, focused, everything I wanted to be. Instead of trying to absorb all of the leadership oozing out of these little cunts and dicks, I distinctly remember staring at a pack of honey buns in the vending machine and wondering when the meeting would end so I could buy it. Then I thought if I eat that, I will get fatter, then I will never kiss a boy, and if I don’t kiss a boy soon, I might as well declare myself a flaming lesbian…So here I am floating around in insignificance land, and Next thing I knew I was being asked a question by the cunts and dicks. They were actually being cordial and trying to include me. They simply looked at me and said, “What’s your vote, Tara?” If I was listening, then maybe I could have a vote. I gave it a shot anyway, and said, “I vote, YES.” They looked at each other like, what the fuck? I was scared. Then one of the dicks said in a mocking tone, “Yes, is not a vote. We asked you if the dance should be in the gymnasium, the auditorium, or the cafeteria.” Goddamn it, if only I was listening. The meeting ended on that note. So the last, fresh thing in all of their gifted little minds was Tara being a stupid idiot. Oh well, they were dull anyways.

Pants on Fire

Sitting in the back seat of the car listening to my brothers rant and rave about they’re day at school was the worst. Trying to compete with they’re stories left me feeling like I had just farted in a quiet classroom; the reactions were giggles mixed with sympathy. My mom would humor me, and say, “what else happened today honey?” and I would proceed with my mundane stories, that seemed funny in my head. My brothers on the other hand had my mom in hysterics the whole ride home. This made me feel inadequate, and jealous. So naturally, I had to think of a way of impressing my mom more than them. So I started to make up stories. I remember one gem in particular about a Korean friend of mine at the time, Trisha Mokriski. Trisha had a lying problem too, so we would work off each other constantly. She told a few classmates and I that before she moved to America to live with her foster parents, she lived in a small village in Korea. While there, she witnessed her father murder her mother. She said he poisoned her with a vile of blue liquid poison that he would wear around his neck. I thought this story was great. Sure, it wouldn’t make mom and the boys laugh, but it would definitely get mom to turn down her Whitney Houston tape out of intrigue. I had to spice up the story more though, so I said that because Trisha witnessed the murder she has kept hush hush about it due to the fact that her father threatened to find her and kill her if she ever told. I added that her foster parents were unaware of this… and to not tell them or Trisha might get murdered. My brother Sean started laughing at me and demand to confess that I was lying. My other brother Matt told Sean to give me a break; he was always such a sweet enabler. I can’t remember what my mom said or did, but I’m sure she had a good laugh with my dad later that night.

Hershey Kiss Nipples

My Nana really wanted me to be a sexy girl. She isn’t a pervert, she is just a little bit of a skanky grandma. Growing up as a chubby, shy wallflower, I had no concept of what was sexy. Instead of going to spin the bottle parties in middle school, I liked to play “hide and go seek”, and barbies with my kid sister, Katie. My whole look, and attitude was very immature. This bothered Nana. She would make comments like, “Don’t you have any boys you could call up to come over and watch a movie with?” Instead I preferred to play dress-up with Katie. At Thanksgiving, she would encourage me to be careful not to eat too much, stating that I “had enough meat on my bones already”. I have to admit, it really got to me. Being as insecure as I was, I did not need all this criticism.

On Christmas, when I was 11 years old, my Nana kept stressing how much I would enjoy the present she got for me. I wasn’t very excited seeing as how she always got me weird ceramic sculptures of cats that she must have picked up from the clearance section at a local pharmacy. When I got to her present, it was larger than a ceramic cat, or a bottle of knock-off perfume. Maybe this year she would surprise me. When I pulled the gift-wrapping off, it was a pink box with “Victoria’s Secret” written on it. I thought, Wow! I’m only 11, what in the world could this be? When I pulled off the top of the box, I could see white lace peeking out under the pink tissue paper. It was a nightie with matching lace panties. Definitely meant for a woman, not a little chubby redhead with no boobs. (Well I did have “boobs” I guess. Because I was overweight, I had fat lumps where my boobs should be) Despite all of this, I was secretly excited. I always tried to buy the more flashy, womanly panties at the department store, but my Mom was adamant about buying me the 6-pack of white “Hanes Her Way” briefs. She wouldn’t even get me the bikini briefs. I was only allowed the kind that came up over my belly button, almost reaching my breasts. When my mom saw the new ensamble, she gasped with disgust. She said, “Nana! Tara is too young for that!” Nana ignored Mom and with a devilish smile asked me if I liked her gift. Embarrassed, I didn’t answer. I looked over at my brothers, who seemed like they were mentally blocking out the whole situation. I think it was a bit too much for them having to picture their kid sister in lace lingerie. After we finished with opening presents, we headed to church. The whole time I was sitting in church, instead of praising the birth of Christ, I was imagining what the nightie would look like on me. I wondered if maybe in a year or so, my body would change and I could wear it with pride.

When we finally got home, I rushed upstairs to try on the outfit. I was lucky that my Mom was so distracted with house guests, and preparing dinner. She would have confiscated the gift under normal circumstances. So I took off my Sunday best, and my “Hanes Her Way” Briefs and stared at my nudy, premature body to assess how this would look on me. With rolls-galore the outlook wasn’t good. But I tried it on anyway. How frustrating! It looked ridiculous. Since I only had a little bit of fat bumps where my boobs should’ve been, the top hung down so far you could see my nipples. It needed some bigger, perkier boobs to fill it out. The panties cut into my love handles so far, you couldn’t even see the fabric because my fat was hanging over it. Oddly enough, I still felt a little sexy. Just knowing that I owned lingerie, whether it looked good on me or not, felt good. I began to wrangle up some ideas to make it look more flattering. I pulled the panties up on the sides, so it was over, not under the fat. Then, I grabbed a hair twisty and tied the straps in the back into a bundle, so the top would fit more properly in the front. It looked a lot better, except for one annoying factor. I had soft nipples. My nipples had never been hard in my life until I was about 17. I would try every trick in the book to make them hard. Tickle them with a feather, rub ice on them, nothing worked. I really wanted to have hard nipples in this lingerie. So I came up with a great idea. I got dressed (with the nightie on underneath my clothes) and I ran to the downstairs cupboard. My mom always had a bag of Hershey kisses in there, so I found it, grabbed two, then went back to my room. I took off my clothes, then peeled back the Hershey kiss wrappers, and put them in my shirt, where my nipples should be. I had to stand with perfect posture, and stick my chest out to make them stay. It looked great. Very convincing. I stood in front of my mirror and modeled the outfit for myself for a little while. I grabbed my lamp from my desk, and placed it on the dresser as a spotlight. It got pretty hot, and I began to sweat. Before I knew it, my Hershey Kiss nipples started to melt. I quickly took off the top and noticed two large chocolate stains. I quickly ran to the bathroom, holding my t-shirt out so it wouldn’t press against my chest, which was also covered in chocolate. When I went to the bathroom, my brother was in it taking a shower. So I went to my parent’s room, but my Dad was using the bathroom. I wouldn’t dare go downstairs to clean off the stains, afraid my mom would find out. So I waited in my room, and listened by the door to hear when someone left the bathrooms. Ten minutes later, I finally got in there. The chocolate had dried, which made it pretty hard to clean. First, I washed off my chest, then I scrubbed the shirt. When I was done, there were still two stains, but now they were bigger from the scrubbing. Not knowing how to do my own laundry yet, I had no choice but to throw it away and tell my Mom I lost it, or confront her about what I did, and ask her to wash it. I chose to pretend that I lost it. My Mom actually never asked about it. Maybe she, like my brothers chose to block the thought of me having lingerie in my possession out of her mind.

What's a Stripper?

Being friends with Tasha; it was as if I had joined a cult. We started this club together in the third grade. It was an all-girl club and it involved taking our clothes off for one another behind the bushes in the schoolyard. Tasha and I were the leaders of the club. The other girls involved seemed reluctant to take their clothes off most of the time, so Tasha would encourage them. She would say tricky things like, “Sara, Brian will go out with you if you have nice boobs, let me see them so I can tell you if they are nice” then Sara would remove her shirt, and me and the other girls would gawk at them like a bunch of Frat boys. I was so confused. Was I a lesbian because I liked to look at boobs?? Were all the other girls lesbians too?

Soon I was the head leader of the nudy cult. I couldn’t wait for recess everyday so I could demand innocent 3^rd graders to take their shirts off. Then it became pants, then I was not only watching, I was making out with them! I got out of control. When I went home at night I would pray to God and ask him to help me stop… then I would notice that I was touching myself as I was praying. What was I? I felt like I might need an exorcism. I couldn’t stop. I was totally addicted to this pimping around. Then one day came along where my pimping would come to an end whether I liked it or not. At recess, Tasha and I gathered the girls together by the bushes for our regular practice of T&A. We heard giggling in the trees near by. It was two of my classmates, they were spying on us. As they ran to tell on us, we struggled to put the girls clothes back on. I could see the spies in the distance speaking with Miss Evans the closest teacher to the scene of the crime. Soon Miss Evans began walking over with the witnesses. What was I going to do? I couldn’t let my parents find out about this! So I tried to lie, and failed miserably. Miss Evans came to me and asked, “Tara, what on earth were you just doing?” I told the teacher that we were simply gossiping about boys. “I was told you were instructing these girls to get undressed!” she said. “No, no Miss Evans, Okay, Okay I was talking about how I wanted to kiss a boy so that why were hiding” She didn’t buy it. So Tasha and I got sent to the office. Not even the principal’s office, the nurses office! They knew we were mental. The principal did show up, however. So Tasha, I, the nurse, and the principal were about to discuss what happened out there behind the bushes, when we just lost it. Tanny and I started bawling. Between our cries and spit and drool we tried to explain why we wanted to see the other girl’s naked. Mrs. Birdsing, the principal told us it wasn’t necessary to rehash the incidents, but she did say to us, and I will never forget this, “Girls, this isn’t the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last”. What the fuck kind of thing is that to say? At first it sounds like it is meant to be comforting, but it’s not. It is a weird thing to say.

I took the bus home from school, and sat with a friend. The whole bus heckled me as I walked through to get to an open seat. I guess everyone had already found out, news travels fast! One of the older popular girls in the back of the bus kept yelling out “Stripper! Tara’s a Stripper!” I had never heard that word before, so I asked my friend, “What’s a Stripper?” she told me it was a woman who took her clothes off for a living. I was so upset. So that’s what all those women were doing when I had to cover my eyes in the movie theater. That’s what I was? That was my future? I was a whore??

When I got to my stop, I noticed my mom was in her car waiting at the end of our long driveway. This meant one thing… I was in big trouble. So I got into the car, and it was silent. That silence was a theme in my life when things got uncomfortable. This was almost worse than getting yelled at, because I was left to imagine how she felt about me. After a few days of silence, I thought she might ask me to go find an apartment somewhere, and get the hell out of her life. Instead, she broke the ice by treating me to a sundae at the local greasy spoon diner.

Baby Dominatrix

We moved from Naperville to an upscale, snooty town in Connecticut. Tasha was one of my best friends (I don’t know if that was a decision I made, however) Her family was the richest I had ever met or even heard about. They had a huge house, with a huge pool, and a huge pile of problems. The mom was a psycho, she looked a little like Tammy Faye Baker but with long blond hair and a huge nose, she had a vendetta against any motherfucker who step foot in her house with they’re dirty shoe’s on. The dad was a tall pastor with a taste for girls on the brink of puberty (I think). The sons were forgettable, which is probably a scary thing; forgettable in the way that they seem harmless but may kill you with a butcher knife. And then there is Tasha, what a sweetheart she was, raping and attempting murder on innocent children. Actually in all fairness, she had no chance in that family to turn out normal.

Tasha liked to touch me inappropriately. I didn’t stop her, mostly because I was scared to death of her and I was a little curious. She reminded me of a dominatrix demanding me to sex her up any way she wanted with no regard to whether I was comfortable with this behavior. When a sleepover was planned, I knew we wouldn’t just be jumping up and down on the bed, and doing arts and crafts, this was time for sex. One of the other reasons I was afraid of her was because she physically abused me. She would push me down the stairs, kick me in the stomach while I was on the ground, and pull my hair so hard I’m surprised I still have hair. When we were swimming in her pool one day, she thought it would be fun to “pretend” drown me. She pushed my head under the water and held me there as I was flailing my arms and fighting for air. I remember her finally letting me up for air. As I coughed all the water up, she grabbed my arm to take me to her room to have more sex.

She had a very specific smell. It was more pungent in the private parts. She smelled like a fruit that at one point smelled sweet, but turned rotten. Like an old strawberry. Or like a plate of fruit masked with a fart cloud. I smell rotten strawberry in the air sometimes, and it really scares me. I look in the front, back and sides of me to make sure that Tasha isn’t standing somewhere waiting for me in the darkness stroking an edible whip.

Baby Sex

In a horribly loud voice my mother says, “Okay, we will be over in 10 minutes!” to my friend’s mother on the phone, which really meant a half an hour. My mom and I were heading over to my “friend” Heidi’s house so I could play with her. I didn’t think that meant I literally had to play with her body. Heidi had a whole other agenda in mind; she invited a boy over to play with us named Steven. We went down to the basement to play; which I thought was odd, because it wasn’t a fun carpeted basement, just a smelly, damp, dusty one.

Steven was mean to me, so was Heidi, they spent the first 10 minutes of our hangout teasing me, and my side-ponytail. Then they segued into a wild porno-fest that made Jenna Jameson look innocent. It was this weird baby humping sex that went on. Steven lied down on a brown box full of photo albums, and Heidi straddled him. He whipped out his baby penis and rubbed it on her baby vagina. It was sick, but fascinating. I had no idea what they were doing. The strangest part about it was Heidi kept turning around in between her strange piggy squeals and moans, and she gave me these looks that burnt a hole thru me. She was hypnotizing me with these strange pornographic gazes, I thought I was becoming a lesbian by eye-lasers. I don’t remember the ride home from Heidi’s that day, I was probably too freaked out.

At least I have pretty feet, bitches.

“Did all of you bring your baby dolls?” asked my tense ballet instructor to her class of 8-year-olds. “Tara didn’t bring a babydoll. Tara brought an OWL!” a swarm of baby girl giggles filled the room. I was a joke to them, those little bitches. Instead of comforting me like they do in the movies, the instructor went on with the class. We had to dance as gracefully as we could along with our babydoll, or in my case, my stuffed owl. I can’t remember his name, or if he even had one.

I just love how there is a mirrored-wall that stares back at you in dance studios, that way when you screw up, people can see from all angles. Oh, and did I screw up alright, I looked like a mess, the owl and I were falling all over the place. I just couldn’t get the dance steps down. The other girls seemed great at it, all beautiful with their pink tu-tu’s and their skinny legs. When class finally ended I tried to socialize with the graceful ballerinas. They huddled in a circle and clasped arms, as I walked closer, they shuffled away. Their laughter echoed throughout the stuffy dance studio. I tapped on one of the girl’s shoulder in an attempt to ask her why I was so repulsive to them. She whipped her perfect ponytail around glared at me, and said, “Don’t EVER touch me”. I remember thinking to myself, I hope she gets raped, because that’s what it felt like to get all dressed up in a tu-tu, step out in a studio with my owl, try to perform just to humiliate myself, and get treated like I am some kind of circus clown by a group of future pregnant Henny Penny cashiers.

When my mom picked me up, I told her how horrible the class went, and how I got made fun of by all of the girls. She rubbed my back, told me to look at her, and said, “Well, at least you tried your damndest!” Those words always made me feel so comfortable. I don’t think “damndest” is even a word, but it means so much to me. This blog is dedicated to the person who planted this phrase in my mother’s brain, because I have never heard anyone say it except for her.