Life During Snacktime: When I Had Tits

March 25, 2012 by Keith Ecker

Food and I have a long history together. Ever since I can remember, I was eating the stuff. But just because it has been a mainstay in my life—not to mention an essential component to my ongoing existence—doesn’t mean that our relationship hasn’t been without its rocky roads. For though food has always been there as a source of emotional support, a guiding light in the most thick of foggy darknesses, its friendship has not been free. At times it has exploited my weaknesses, deceptively owning my will while cooing in my ear, “Hey baby. Don’t let nobody tell you that you ain’t good enough. Now be a good girl and put daddy’s Hostess Cherry Pie in your mouth.” And like a whore to a pimp, I’d obey.

Admittedly, I was an easy target for a parasitic relationship. By age 8, I was already a nebbish kid, the kind who got a hard-on for the weekly Scholastic book order. Even though I played all kinds of sports, largely because my dad erroneously thought a pair of butt-hugging baseball pants would remove the gay, I was considered pathetically uncool. And due to an early onset of crippling self-awareness, my low status did not go unnoticed by me. This created a tiny pinhole inside my heart, a small tear in the fabric of my self-esteem that would soon grow to the size of a comical pant split.

Alone in my nerdy gayness, I sought out my own clique, and I found it…in my parent’s kitchen.

I didn’t have to look too hard. Our kitchen cupboard was a towering monolith of Fruit-by-the-Foots, Cheez-Its and Double Stuffed Oreos, while the freezer was zoned primarily for frozen buffalo wings and ice cream novelties. This shocking stockpile of saturated fats and simple starches was in part a sign of the times. This was the pre-pink slime frenzy days, the days where ketchup was up for vegetable status and two freakishly obese twins on mopeds could receive fame, not condemnation, for their world-record fatness.

But it was also my mother’s doing. She conducted most of the grocery shopping. And with five children to feed, she usually opted for cheap over healthy. And when it came to cheap, the bar could go no lower than the Hostess and Little Debbie outlet.

This place is real. It existed. I have seen it with my own eyes, my vision somewhat obscured by my fat chubby cheeks. Whether it still stands or whether it disappeared in a mysterious mist like the fabled town of Brigadoon is anyone’s guess. But I swear this Valhalla of pre-packaged, perennial confections known as the Hostess and Little Debbie Outlet was more than just the hyperglycemic visions of a fat kid.

Each week, my mother would stroll down the seemingly endless aisles and load up a basket of goods from the outlet. Pies, donuts, cupcakes and, of course, what would a voyage to snack-cake town be without a little Twinkie? And let me tell you, there was more than a little.

She would then return home, pleased with her day of gathering in the Hostess picking fields and nurse her youngin’s on the high-fructose-corn-syrup teat of Little Deb. This snack stuff wasn’t just a special treat we would get when we got an A or practiced the trumpet. It was breakfast. Every day. For my entire childhood.

And so, as junior high approached and my social life shriveled to a size 0, my waist more than made up for the loss. Oh, yes, food may giveth, but it also giveth too much.

Although anxious as a Chihuahua in a house fire, I never really gave much thought to my physical appearance. I was a chubby kid. So what? My dad was fat. At one point he was pushing 300 pounds. When we’d go to the public pool, my sister and I would grab onto his back and taunt him, yelling that we wanted to ride the whale. Provoked, or possibly suffering from Vietnam-related PTSD, my dad would then grab us and pin us under the water until the bubbles stopped. Never did it cross my mind that being large was a bad thing.

But this changed one day, my body image ravaged, my innocence lost. It was my sister’s doing that caused my undoing. I was walking shirtless into the kitchen, en route to nab a Twinkie when she crossed my path.

“Where you going?” she said, leaning against the doorway. She was older than me, a sophomore in high school. And so she possessed within her the traits that bind all teenage girls, you know, the inhumanity of a Soviet gulag, the cruelty of a thousand Nazis. I was on my toes, figuratively of course, as I had ballooned to become too large for my toes to withstand my belly’s weight.

“None of your business,” I said as I attempted to push her out of my Twinkie path.

And that was my mistake, my failure to yield to her display of dominance. I was now fair game. Her eyes narrowed, sizing up her prey And then, she went in for the kill.

“It looks like someone needs a training bra more than me,” she said

I looked down at my saggy chest, my eyes looking at one boob and then the next. “Had they always been there?” I thought. I grasped them, feeling their weight against my palm. A
corner of my sister’s mouth turned up into a half smile. Oh, she was pleased with the work she had done, the gypsy curse she had placed on my soul. A rift had erupted between my mind and body. I was doomed now forever to be body conscious.

Tears welled in my eyes as I turned to retreat from the kitchen causing my pendulous breasts to flop to-and-fro.

From then on, my lifestyle changed. Disrobing in front of my peers at gym class, which had already served as one of those humiliating character-inducing childhood shame rituals, gave rise to panic attacks. On trips to the public pool, I no longer swam shirtless, instead opting for a baggy white t-shirt, which, once wet, gave me the appearance of Hooter’s waitress. I even took to binding my chest with tight undershirts, creating a makeshift dude bra to help conceal my blossoming bust.

It was a confusing time for me, and it was a confusing time for my relationship with food. “I thought we were friends,” I wanted to say to Little Debbie.

“But we are friends, Keith. Good friends,” I’d imagine her saying as she waived a Nutty Bar in front of my face.

“No, Deb. Not like this,” I’d say as I lifted my shirt, baring my boobs. “Not like this.”

The life partner I thought I had found in food was a fallacy. Velveeta was not looking out for my best interests and neither was Miracle Whip or any of my other greasy, oozy pals that helped get me through friendless Friday nights. They were just using me, using my body as a home, taking up shelter in the hole in my heart, creating crevices in my skin. I saw food for what it was. Not a friend, but a frenemy.

I turned my back on morning sweets. It was tough. As my siblings sat down at the breakfast table to gorge themselves on cream-filled this and deep-fried that, little 13-year-old me attempted to exercise self-control. “This grapefruit half will be my new breakfast buddy,” I said to myself as I looked down at the unappetizing slice of citric awfulness. I scooped a bite into my mouth and winced as the citric acid burned. It was like eating a bowl full of batteries. Meanwhile, my siblings all passed around boxes of cupcakes and coffee cakes, the crinkle of cellophane echoing throughout the kitchen like a symphony of church bells welcoming the morning. They were so happy, and their snacks looked so picture perfect. I looked down at my ugly ass grapefruit. “We are going to be best friends!” I imagined it saying, right before I repeatedly stabbed it in the face with my spoon.

Still, despite bettering my diet, my man mounds remained. We did a lot together. We read comic books and listened to moody grunge music. We rollerbladed and biked around the neighborhood. In the winters, my boobs and I would bundle up and play in the snow. In the summers, we’d pack ourselves in the car and head out for family vacations. And at night, I’d fondle them while fantasizing about Paul from the Wonder Years.

It’s not that I enjoyed my breasts. Far from it. I hated them. They were a pox upon my body, spherical sources of constant humiliation. But they were all I had. To my peers, I was an outcast. To my family, I was a black sheep. It was just me, myself and my tits. And then one day, they too were gone.

I had just turned 15. I stood on the precipice of high school, eagerly awaiting that final leg of the gauntlet before I could bask in the lava lamp glow of college. Up to this point, I still retained my elementary-school boyishness, my round face and relatively hairless underarms. But then, rather rapidly I began to transform. My voice dropped, my balls enlarged and I grew half a foot. As my body began to elongate, it ironed out some of my fat folds. And so my breasts began to shrink.

I was thankful to have them gone, but fearful that they could one day return. And so when I entered college I took desperate measures to make sure my chest would never be home to boobs again. I took up smoking, opting to ditch meals in place of a few Camel Lights. When I did eat, it was usually dry cereal. My body began to waste away. When I came home from college after freshman year, my parents were legitimately concerned. I looked like a lollipop, my comically oversized head overshadowing my waifish body.

This pendulum swing of indulging and restricting would last well over a decade. At times, I’d starve myself for an entire day, only to binge on a family-size bag of Peanut M&Ms at night. At other times, I’d wake up to discover I had devoured an entire Boston cream donut in my sleep. To counter my bad habits, I’d hit the gym hard, knowing that every calorie I burned was a step away from a return to a fleshy chest. It was a difficult life.

A few months ago, the unending cycle of shame eating became so unbearable, so toxic that I knew I had to quit. This relationship with food had gone on long enough, stretching beyond time and geography. My boobs were now a relic, relegated to some lost pictures I keep in a shoebox in my bedroom closet. The only thing I was running away from was myself.

I developed some strict rules. Limit carbs, limit sugar, always eat breakfast, no snacks that have more than two servings per pack. And by keeping to these guidelines and acting as my own parent, I have managed for the first time in my life to actually exhibit some control over what I stick in my mouth.

Food is not my enemy. But it’s also not my friend. It’s a necessity and an occasional indulgence. More importantly that hole that food used to fill has been paved over, thanks to a combination of therapy and prescription drugs. Still, I feel the pull when I pass the snack aisle with its carnival of bright colors and shiny packaging. I can hear the Twinkies whisper, “Take me home tonight, and let my love fill you up like so much cream-filling.” And I pause ever so briefly, placing my hands upon my boobless chest, remembering what once was.