Here’s a Story About the Time My Momma Found My Backstreet Boys Erotic Fan Fiction
'Like sands through the hourglass': I was 13. It was about Nick Carter of The Backstreet Boys, my first Roman Empire.
I’ve put a lot of words on the internet since 2009. It has to be in the millions through 2024 (Muck Rack says 2,400+ articles so that tracks). I am proud of every word published under my byline — including this very Substack.
If you’re reading this and know me personally, you know I have no filter. Well, I DO have a filter (I have a Doctorate in code-switching and am the High Lady of Masking), but if I am comfortable and trust you, I am letting it all out.
This is one of my favorite childhood stories is the time my mother found my notebook of Backstreet Boys erotica. The year was 2001. I was 13 years old. My obsessions in 2001 were: band, books, music, pens and notebooks, my bestie Jessica O’Bryon and our raucous phone conversations, and The Backstreet Boys. (The more the things change, the more they stay the same, eh?) Specifically, Nick Carter. (I know he’s had some SA allegations…it’s not a good look and we’re not going to act like it doesn’t exist. Carter has vehemently and publicly denied all claims of criminality.)
My preferred writing tools: Mead 5 Star spiral notebooks with college-ruled paper and gel pens. (Gel pens or bust, BTW).
(👆🏾Side note, his debut solo album, Now or Never, was critically underrated and was only outshined by Justified by Justin Timberlake for two reasons: Timbaland and Pharrell Williams. I said what I said.)
I also discovered I had strong, overpowering feelings for boys. Not just the Backstreet Boys — all boys. All boys who looked even a little like Nick Carter. Yes, your girl had a blond, white boy phase. But doesn’t everyone? This was the beginning of my boy-crazy era, still in its current run. During this season, I fell in love for the first time with Nick Carter, the fair-haired, blue-eyed Florida baby of the best boy band of the new millennium. He was plastered on my walls hovering over the top bunk I shared with my brother; he was the focus of all of the recorded BSB concerts, I knew everything about this man.
I mean, look at this fucking angel:
It didn’t take me long to discover I was not the only BSB fan girl with deep desires for at least one of the boys. My bestie in elementary school, Shelia, had it BAD for Howie D. I recently discovered that work-from-home/Instagram friend Ellen also had the hots for Nick. I found fan forums, and web pages dedicated to each of them. Then, Jessica and I found fan fiction. The fan fiction was right up our alley and I thought to Teen T, “Hey — you can do this!” So I started. It didn’t take me long to realize writing about love and the expressions of love through physical intimacy wasn’t foreign to me, and I rather enjoyed it.
The only problem is: where in the fuck did goodie two-shoes, virgin Girl Scout 13-year-old me get the idea to rub baby oil and make sweet love to him? (Mind you, the version of myself who Nick fell in love with and eventually married was age-appropriate — we were grown.)
Instead of typing many of these stories, I started writing them by hand whenever I had free time — after homework, during a Disney Channel Original Movie, as I watched TRL. We had one shared family computer exclusively for homework and whatever else momma wanted to do online. I had no choice but to resort to elegantly writing my pre-teen smut about Nick Carter.
Dearest reader, you’re probably asking yourself: Why did she hide the notebook in her grandmother’s chifferobe under her good comforters? My only thought was that my thoughts were always safe with her, even if she didn’t know about them. And I still don’t know what momma was looking for when she found the notebook describing the sultry body massage and passionate sex I wanted to have with the very same Backstreet Boy who had a brother (RIP, Aaron), who I also wrote about having a little ménage à trois with. They are from Florida, so, talk about a House of Carters. They’d been down. (🎶Get down, get down, and move it all around 🎶)
I could blame MTV. I could blame those Zane books momma thought she was hiding and I read when she worked overnights. It could blame the boy across the street with these amazing green eyes who was my first kiss but never wanted to be seen with me (he’s probably in jail now).
Nope. I blamed Days of Our Lives and Passions. Pretty sure I saw Teresa Lopez-Fitzgerald massaging Ethan Crane and I was like “Yes! This resonates!”
My mother is a direct woman, so after she read some of it (yes, she read it), she confronted me. I was mortified. I think I also got a repeat of her famous “if the juices flow, the nature rises” sex education talk she gave my siblings and me a few summers before. I was never a shrinking violet and momma knew my handwriting, so I confessed to my lust-filled words with no shame. I didn’t want momma to think I was a teenager — literally — fucking around. I still don’t think she believes I lost my virginity at 18 because she scared the hell out of me!
The reason I am sharing this story is two-fold:
When you’re revisiting your dreams, you have to be reflective. That smut was the ✨ancestral good girl✨ of the great American smutty romance novel that I one day hope to write — and at my mother’s recent request: “I want to see you write it before I die.”
A Facebook memory from a meme about the Disney/PIXAR movie Turning Red made me relive it and turn it into a TikTok earlier this week.
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For some reason, momma is also on TikTok and confirmed the details of the above story:
She never told me to stop writing, she just told me not to have sex too young. I was fine with that — I had my imagination to keep me occupied and the boys back then didn’t like big girls (although I see their wives now 👀…). So were my friends who continued to read and pass around my stories between classes from the 8th grade to my senior year of high school.
No one still knows that the love triangle one I wrote in high school was about the two teachers I had crushes on. I wish I knew where that one was. It was giving One Tree Hill.
T’s Tasty Tune of the Day
Oh, Aaron — Aaron Carter ft. Nick Carter
Rest in peace, baby.
✨BONUS BOP✨ The One by The Backstreet Boys
🧚🏾 P.S. If you want to be my book fairy, please check out my Amazon TBR List. 📚
And as always, BSB4EVA and stay hydrated. ✌🏾
Yesss lol the Nick Carter love was so real. All the hours on the phone & written stories. When my mom found some of my notes & stories she threw them out lol