how the locker room scene in MSCL made fools of an entire generation of yearning women who learned to tell time with a broken clock

My first ever kiss — and by kiss I mean, French and by French I mean with tongue —happened on November 15th, 1994. I was thirteen-years old.

The only reason I know this is because the boiler room episode of MSCL aired THE SAME WEEK my first kiss did, cementing my lifelong obsession with the show as some kind of adolescent alchemy, reflecting my experience back to me in a way that affirmed the normalcy of my longing.

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For my generation of women, the worship of shitty men was a genre unto itself, Jordan Catalano being our patron saint of broken clocks. Here was a “boy” that was dumb as rocks, a total dick and sexually coercive and yet there wasn’t a teenage girl I knew who wasn’t swooning.

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Apparently it was normal to be obsessed with boys who only gave you attention when their friends weren’t looking. It was also normal to be coerced into hooking up in dark uncomfortable places in secret and then to reframe said hook-ups as being totally consensual.

• I mean, the shirt I was wearing did cling to my chest a little, so OF COURSE he was going to grope me.

• And yeah he was twenty when I was fourteen, but it was funny when he said if there’s grass on the field, play ball. Or at least, he told me it was funny and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I laughed.

• And, sure he had no idea how to finger bang me without scratching me internally with dirty fingernails and I carried lotion in my glove compartment to make the hand jobs I gave him chafe-free but you know how boys are ha ha. And, anyway, afterward he told me I was cool. Gave me a drag of his cigarette.

• And so what if he didn’t remember my name. It’s not like he asked for it. I mean, how was he supposed to know it wasn’t Kelly.