The Perv
A 90s mall foodcourt and a set of balls.
What you’re about to read is a true story (I’m pretty sure) that I never told anyone except for my husband.
"Did I ever tell you about the time I saw some man's balls at the mall when I was younger?"
Traffic was light, which is a rare occasion for right outside the Holland Tunnel on a Saturday night. I turned towards my husband who was driving, kinda shifting my body to the side, bracing myself for the reaction, and closed my eyes as I felt the first hand embarrassment enter my body just like it did over 25 years ago when this actually happened.
He had questions of course, my husband. Who wouldn’t if their wife blurted out something like this at a random moment between billboards and bus smog?
The mall food court was exactly how you’d picture it in the 90s. Sarku on one side, corn dogs on the other flanked by a McDonald’s and Auntie Ann’s, occupied by droves of tweens and mall walkers. Hundreds of tables were strewn across the white linoleum floor that was speckled in gray, shiny minerals to make it look like it was fancy rather than inexplicably dirty from the bajillions of feet that stepped across it each day.
The food court was the place (besides the movie theater) where you didn’t want to be seen but definitely wanted to be spotted. It was a hub for hormonally laden teens running around in their best outfits, plucked from the racks of Delia’s and Sports Unlimited, whose parents dropped them off with a strict two-hour curfew, threatening to take away their V-Tech landline if they were a minute late. It smelled of hormones and teriyaki chicken, laced with Bath and Body Works Cucumber Melon body spray; it was an oasis.
It was a Saturday afternoon, prime time next to Friday night and I can recall exactly where I was sitting, exactly where he was sitting.
Sitting still never came easy to me. I was usually shifting my legs back and forth or they were jumping underneath my body in a rhythmic movement, making furniture bounce and causing any unattached items to shake like they were in a scene in Jurassic Park as the T-Rex stepped his way through the havoc. That particular day was probably the same situation. Me trying to sit still while whomever I was with ate their meal court meal and ticking off their shopping list, me being a tween with too many ideas running through my forming brain, with too many Pop music lyrics being repeated over and over again in my subconscious.
Cell phones weren’t a thing at the time. Instead, we had to converse with one another, talk about our crushes and what we just had to get before we left the mall because god forbid we didn’t buy at least 1 piece of precious metal mixed with acetate bauble jewelry from The Icing to prove we were actually cool. If we weren’t with our parents (which you didn’t want to be caught dead with), we had to watch the big hand on the big clock to make sure we stayed on schedule, to make sure we hit every, single, store on our list.
He was a big man, overweight and sloppy looking. He was dressed in a full, dark grayish sweatsuit and was shoveling food into his mouth. For some reason I want to say it was ice cream, but that detail could be completely fabricated considering the fact that seconds after I watched him take a bite I noticed something off, something was there that wasn’t supposed to be, like when you’re watching a movie with a wide screen and notice an eerily misplaced detail in the background, something sinister and awkward.
If I had just been sitting still like my dad often told me to when I was doing flips or spinning around on the base of a chair, I probably wouldn’t have this experience seared into my brain as hilarious and predatory.
If I wasn’t doing everything else besides eat my mediocre mall food like everyone else I was with, I still wouldn’t be overthinking this pre True Crime/Call Out the Creep/ Me Too Movement/ Hey, I’m like, 10 years old predatory style situation.
If I was sitting like a normal human, I probably would have never seen this, never experienced the first set of genitals I ever laid eyes on in the middle of a freaking mall.
It may have been the first out of body experience I had in my life. Time stopped, like I had just witnessed something no one had ever seen in their whole human existence.
An alien had landed in the middle of the food court in NJ and that alien was actually a middle aged dude with his balls hanging out of his sweatpants.
My body grew hot, like a tea kettle just before it whistles. I felt the heat building, sputtering, —preparing for that piercing scream. Still squirming in my seat, I glanced around, wondering if anyone else was sharing this surreal experience.
I was embarrassed for him.
This poor man had his whole private parts hanging out of his pants and he didn’t even realize it.
This sad, lonely man who sat by himself at the food court eating his pathetic food court meal with his balls and wiener hanging out while everyone was with their friends and families and enjoying their day.
This disgusting, vile, and disturbed man was scarfing down his meal with his schlong and spuds just hanging out for everyone to see.
This dude was a fucking perv.
My husband sat in silence for a second, I’m sure trying to collect the thoughts of how exactly to respond to this outrageous story.
“And you never told anyone about this?” He finally asked as I nervous laughed, shaking my head at the weirdness of the whole situation.
This creep knew exactly what he was doing and exposing his piece in a public place was it — and I’ve sat on this story for over 25 years because truly, wtf else am I supposed to do with it?
I still wonder if other people saw what I saw that day. If on a random Tuesday afternoon, as they’re unpacking their car full of groceries, other kids — now adults — randomly think back to the perv in the food court, if they second guess what they saw, if they wonder if their brain made up the scenario.
I will say this, though. The perv never deterred my motivation for going to the mall, never once dimmed my shine for grabbing the coveted Roxy bathing suit from PacSun before anyone else did, for wishing I could afford Abercrombie and settling for Aéropostale instead. The mall was my oyster, my playground to people watch and adopt other tween-like behaviors that were probably borderline unacceptable, he could never take that away from me.
Now, my brain isn’t the only brain the perv lives rent free in, I’ve handed the burden over to my husband, for him to contemplate and manipulate the situation as much as he wants.
I am no longer the only one to live with this strange, gross mall court experience, no longer the only one to wonder if he was ever reported or made it onto the long list of sex offenders, no longer the only one to know about the dude that shows his balls in the middle of a NJ foodcourt.