The One About Boobs
I was one of those girls who started babysitting at a ridiculously young age. I was watching my younger brother when he was a toddler and I was seven, and by the time I was ten, I was babysitting the children who belonged to friends of our family.
By the time I was 12, I was a babysitting pro, and most of my Friday and Saturday nights were reserved for my regulars, moms and dads who wanted one night out to escape the suburban wasteland. They went out dancing or to dinner or to bars or to god knows where; it was the 80s and I was handed a twenty dollar bill and a pizza menu and told that they'd be home by midnight. (Probably because there wasn't anywhere to go after midnight.) I could have friends over, but no boys! But then we all laughed, because boys weren't interested in me and even at 12 I wouldn't have known what to do with them if they were.
If you've followed me for any amount of time on social media, you know the story: I developed early. And I mean early. I skipped training bras and went to pro level immediately, a B cup in 4th grade and a C cup in 5th grade and while I was a straight-A student along the way, I was seeing all Ds in my junior high and high school future beyond that. And I got attention, but it was the type where grown men yelled "NICE TITS!" as I walked home from school, and apparently those aren't the guys who ask you to homecoming.
Not that the boys I went to school with were much better. There was the guy who used to grope me on the way to my locker, the guy who I was forced to sit next to in humanities who threatened to rape me every day (the first time I had really heard that word, and like a good honors student I looked it up in the dictionary to make sure that it meant what I was pretty sure it meant. (Narrator's voice: it did.)
The babysitting dads were, for the most part, polite, minus the occasional ability to look me in the eye of the "boys your age may not like you, but you're going to be pretty when you're older." There was also the "you're the type of girl who appeals to older men" which was once said to me by a hot adult, but I was also painfully aware that he was an adult so I just laughed and backed away.
Because by this time, I had learned that this was all my fault. I should be friendlier, be assertive, be meek, be loud, be quiet, dress differently, walk differently, talk differently, not be so intimidating, be more intimidating, be less sensitive because clearly that did not happen and even if it did happen, which it did not, I was probably remembering it wrong and besides, they didn't mean it that way.
"But if you're going to take anything from this, just know that you've got to BE YOURSELF! Now be a dear and send Brandon in on your way out?"
I remember in junior high, coming home from school and going to sleep. Every. Single. Day. Maybe it was depression, but maybe it was just the fucking exhaustion of a kid who looked like a woman trying to fight off the entire goddamned world trying to grope her every single day. High school was marginally better, and by college I learned it was just better to hate everyone and let them prove me wrong. By the time I came out to Los Angeles, I was a well- adjusted misanthrope who didn't know how to socialize and immediately mistrusted anyone who showed romantic interest in her. Which brings us to the present.
I told these stories last week, realizing as they came out of my mouth that they are, to be blunt, pretty fucking horrible. I should be (more of) a mess than I actually am. I don't hate men. I don't hate sex. But I'm also a goddamned grownup. I don't laugh and back away. I laugh and walk away.
But I gotta tell you: it's still fucking exhausting.
xo!
Nina
PS. The next one of these won’t be so depressing, pinky swear! It's those goddamned Sunday nights.