Welcome to the Chronicles of Cringe Series! In addition to my weekly Tuesday evening newsletter, I’ll be sending out new “episodes” of this series every Friday afternoon. These will chronicle moments and memories that still keep me up at night well into my 30s. The majority of these stories take place in the first quarter of my life, before my brain was fully developed. Who’d have thunk? That being said, this includes a lot of stories from middle school and high school, so…if teenagers acting like idiots and putting themselves in questionable situations is upsetting to you, just be mindful. Names other than mine have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.
Now, without further ado:
Meet Me in the Frozen Foods Section
There was no way around it. Carmen’s older cousin Jeremy was hot. I’d been eyeing him at birthday parties and other miscellaneous social events since I was 14 and he was 15, so when he sent me an instant message on Facebook at 18, he didn’t have much work to put in.
The plan was for my friend Sofia and me to go to his house for a party on Friday night. Problem was, my parents were already on to how fucked up I was. Since they’d caught me smoking pot at school and getting drunk alone in my bedroom on school nights, they’d gotten more and more strict about my whereabouts, which really irked me at the time. How dare they try to keep me alive, and all that.
They’d started literally tracking my location. I thought they did this with my phone, so being the genius that I was, I decided to leave it at Sofia’s house when we went out for the night. They’d think we were giggling and painting each other’s toenails while I was taking shots, playing beer pong, and flirting with a hot blonde kid from another high school. And everyone would live happily ever after.
Turns out they were tracking my car. We parked my Honda CR-V in the crowded driveway and were greeted by the sound of the Ying Yang Twins mixed with some barely post pubescent battle cries pouring from the doors and windows. That’s when my Dad called Sofia’s phone and asked why we were in another county. Pissed off and defeated, we went home.
I began concocting plan B. Nothing could stop me from basking in the wonders of male attention. I had recently broken up with the guy who held all my firsts, and I was trying desperately to erase his touch with new hands.
That and I was addicted to the thrill of it—I had already learned that hooking up with someone was like entering a different realm. A planet with its own atmospheric force. It’s own unique pull of gravity; its own sun and moon. Seeing someone lose control, let go, and explode with pleasure? It was like seeing a special, secret part of them. Turning someone on with nothing but my finite body was a reminder that I took up actual space in the world and that someone wanted to occupy that same space. It’s no wonder I was in so far over my head from the beginning.
Jeremy and I decided we would meet up the next day, but when I was almost to his house, he informed me that his parents hadn’t left yet. I sort of thought we’d watch a movie in his room and make out while his parents whiled away in the kitchen or something downstairs, but I played along.
Jeremy: Need to stall.
Anna: What?
Jeremy: Don’t come over yet.
Anna: OK, well, I’m like 45 min from home, what am I supposed to do?
Jeremy: Idk
A person surviving off more than validation alone would have gone home, but I went to Chicken Express and ordered an Express Tender Combo. Then I sat at a booth by myself and ate fried chicken. Waiting. I had an iPhone, but there was nothing smart about the early ones. Nothing to scroll, nothing to read. I counted the floor tiles and picked at the pilling fabric of the red seats.
He texted again almost an hour later.
Jeremy: Yo
Anna: Can I come over now?
Jeremy: Not yet. Sry
Anna: OK… can we like maybe go somewhere then?
Jeremy: Where u wanna go?
Anna: Idk, where’s close to you?
Jeremy: HEB
Anna: Ok… c u there.
I made the three-and-a-half-minute drive over to HEB, one of the many branches of the grocery store, and an honorable iteration of Texan Pride. I took out my phone when I arrived.
Anna: I’m here. Where r u?
Jeremy: Inside
Anna: Where inside?
Jeremy: Meet me in the frozen foods section
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I figured that might be funny one day. But in that moment, I settled on a rendezvous in the aisle between the frozen peas and the low-fat ice cream.
“Hey, you,” he said, giving me a side hug as a lady with a toddler in the front carrier pushed her cart by. She looked at me knowingly. I’d go on to give many a young girl the same look.
Hey,” I replied, slightly annoyed, but mostly falling under the spell of his Abercrombie and Fitch Cologne. Ever since my middle school boyfriend, that shit had been like cat nip to me.
He’d walked there, so we made small talk and went back to my car, but not before I bought a box of snickers icecream bars, because those fuckers are delicious, and I also didn’t want to be rude and leave empty handed. Then we drove to his house and parked down the street so we’d be able to see when his parents left to run their errands. Waiting again.
And for what? To let this guy pretend his stumbling, sticky fingers could come anywhere close to getting the job done? The silence was tough to fill. But not tough enough for me to make him get out of my car and walk the rest of the way home.
He broke the tension. “So what color panties are you wearing?”
“What?!” I said through a giggle, like I wasn’t fully aware of why we were staked out down the street from his family’s house.
“What. Color. Are. Your. Panties?” He rolled his eyes.
“Oh, um. Pink.” I shouldn’t be surprised, I thought. I’d been very suggestive over text and instant messenger. I always talked such a big game until I was in the actual situation. And usually there was a little bit of weed or alcohol involved to lube up my wheels, but in that moment, I was stone-cold sober and terrified of saying the wrong thing. Not once did I ask myself if he was saying the right thing.
“I have a pair of red panties in my bedside drawer. A girl I hooked up with gave them to me.”
“Oh. Hot.” Hot??? I wanted to light myself on fire.
“Oh look!” he pointed to his house, where a dark blue minivan pulled out and turned down the other end of the street towards the highway. Here we go. I left my Snickers ice cream bars in the glove compartment when we went inside.
I sat on the couch in the living room, and he poured us each a solo cup of warm Smirnoff. He took a swig of his drink before he headed towards the hallway on the left.
“Be right back,” he said.
Again, waiting. I was starting to think this whole thing was a huge waste of time. Just starting to. How depressing. I was just about to go get my ice cream bars from the car so I could snack in suspense, when Jeremy appeared at the threshold between the hallway and the living room.
Afternoon light streaked through the plastic blinds, creating slats of yellowish orange down his completely naked frame. Well, not completely. Because Jeremy was donning that infamous red lace thong, the tiny mesh triangle pulled to the side to reveal an enormous and erect appendage.
“Oh my God!!!” I covered my mouth and squealed. I’d had sex with my ex-boyfriend. I’d hooked up with plenty of guys after that. But those were always quickies in the back seat, or off to the side at a party. I had never seen a man fully naked. And he certainly looked like a man.
“What! You said it was hot!” Jeremy looked a bit ashamed and taken aback.
I immediately went into people-pleasing mode. “And it is! So hot. You look… awesome.” Awesome???
What was not awesome was the fact that this was the first of many, many times that I would push aside my own discomfort to coddle a man’s feelings.
We made out on the couch then. I wanted to run away as he rutted against my fully clothed leg, leaving a wet spot in his wake.
I barely said a word as I left.
On the way home, with a large, crunchy stain on the knee of my Lucky Jeans, I ate three mostly melted Snickers ice cream bars and blasted Fame Monster. I wondered whether or not someone as powerful and confident as Lady Gaga had ever found herself in a similar situation. Then I called my two best friends, and we laughed until we cried about the ridiculousness of the whole thing. We went out that night before my very early, probationary curfew, and I chugged four beers, then made out with someone else.
You win some, you lose some, I guess. And to this day, I’ve never owned a pair of red panties.
God, this hit hard—equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking. The way you captured that cocktail of craving, shame, and teenage bravado was so real it made me physically wince. There’s such a brutal clarity in looking back, not just at the boys who never deserved that kind of power, but at the parts of ourselves that twisted into knots trying to please them.
Also, the frozen food section as a prelude to mortifying intimacy? Absolutely iconic. You’ve somehow managed to bottle the scent of warm Smirnoff and Abercrombie cologne and make it poetry. Can't wait for the next cringe chronicle.
LOVE This. Also, these lines killed me: "falling under the spell of his Abercrombie and Fitch Cologne" - it makes me think of Axe body spray, too. 😆 It's amazing that any of us still have brain cells left after being exposed this stuff.