Who Were You in the 90s?
I had spent the 80’s growing up, with a lot of big transitions and hard times, and spending most of it in and out of hospitals for ankle surgeries and having to spend the rest of it learning to walk again. I spent a lot of time alone, reading books and going to the movies. I feel like this set me up for the 90’s – to be free, to not know about consequences, to believe anything was possible because it was and to live for whatever made the best story.
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In 1991, three months after getting my last cast off, I broke my leg on a seadoo. My best friend of a year, Emily, was driving and trying to impress guys who she thought was cute on another seadoo. She didn’t like wearing her glasses on the water so she miscalculated distances and hit their seadoo with me on the back. I flew off and went under. The whole thing happened in slow motion and I remember watching each bubble form around me as I sank. When I came up I screamed because I knew immediately my leg was broken.
But we had 40 minutes left on the rental, so we used up our time on the water before heading to the hospital. It wouldn’t be the first dumb decision we’d make without regret.
The doctor said I needed a cast. I said absolutely not, I just got one off the other foot. So to this day you can still see the broken bone, a little hump on my leg, and I feel like that moment kicked off the entire decade. Just go hard. Do stupid things. Love your life. Create stories. Live in the moment. Crush on boys. Let funny override judgement. Don’t worry. Make bad decisions and laugh about them later because everything works out.
This video from the summer of 1991 when I was 17, sums up exactly who I was in the 90’s:
That’s my natural hair, I didn’t wear make-up except for Mac’s Twig lipstick because a drag queen at the Vancouver Mac Store told me it would change my life and I wanted to believe her. Emily and I loved crushing on boys and cruising the city and beach streets to find them, spending so much time swimming in the lakes, camping in the mountains, dancing at the gay clubs, and going to the movies every Tuesday. Simple, pure, fun. I never drank, smoked or did drugs and I was so wholesome and unaware of so much. I’d grown up getting in trouble for laughing or spending time alone or for being different so the 90’s, when I was legal, I embraced doing anything and everything and having as much fun as I could. I didn’t have any family or career pressures, I was alone and free to do what I wanted and just be 100% me because there was no posting online what I was doing and getting feedback.
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In the early 90’s, I was living in the UK. Music was my life, specifically Britpop and techno music. I had crushes on Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker and remember seeing Morrisey in a small club where he grabbed hand from the stage and I thought, “he loves me.” I listened to Pet Shop Boys, Take That, East 17, The Beautiful South, The Lightning Seeds, Underworld, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Garbage and spent as much time as I could clubbing in London. And then in 92 I left England with two large old fashioned rectangle suitcases. One was entirely books and stationery. One was clothes. I struggled to get them onto the train to Heathrow and a man helped me. He told me he was a piano tuner for the Sultan of Oman. He gave me his address and when I got to my destination I sent him a thank you card, because I had all the stationery. He wrote back with a first class ticket to Oman to be a special guest of the Sultan.
I didn’t go because I was loving where I was. Decades later when I casually told this story to a friend, they said it sounded like a potential trafficking situation which had never dawned on me. I was so naive in the 90’s, just so young and young looking and wide eyed and willingly believed anything told to me because I hadn’t experienced people lying or posing yet. And in some ways that sounds terrible but also, I think it’s what contributed to me having the most amazing decade.
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I went from London to Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies where I was a housekeeper and lived right behind the hotel in staff accommodations. I shared one room with 2 women from Quebec who taught me how to hitch hike (which I did often on highway 1 into banff in semi trucks) and that not all french is the same. I fell in love with a young Jack Nicolson type guy who I still think about all these years later. And I fell in love with a horse named Blondie and riding Western so I ended up leasing her and we did all these amazing mountain trails alone. I also hung out in the staff pub which was so different than what I knew with even more different music that I’d learn to love. In the era of grunge I was the only one who wore a skirt and heels to dance in. My boyfriend at the time was best friends with a guy in a new band called the Barenaked Ladies so I got to see them play and hang out in that whole world before anyone outside Canada knew who they were.
I learned to ice climb. I hiked mountains. Because I worked for Chateau Lake Louise I was able to stay for free at the Banff Springs Hotel when Emily came to visit. At this world class luxury hotel, we did our usual antics for unknown reasons. She put a tensor bandage on my face and painted makeup and dared me to walk around the hotel, which I did without hesitation. We were on the top floor, got into the elevator and the next floor, Jason Priestley who was at his peak prime from Beverly Hills 90210 and who was there for the Banff Film Festival, got in with his friends. It was so awkward because I look the way I do and he kept looking until Emily leaned into him and said “burn victim”. He was so Canadian and said “oh I’m sorry I’m sorry!” and the next night when we were out dancing and ran into him again, he said I looked really familiar. I never told him how.
I had what I still think of as one of the best periods of my life, right up until I got fired. Twice. From the same job because, despite being one of the top performers, I wouldn’t date my boss. His mother ran the department, called me Princess Di from day one and she fired me the day after I told my boss I wouldn’t date him. I contested it, was put on probation, got pneumonia during that time and had to call in sick which was against probation so I got fired a second time. And the rules were, if you were fired or quit, you had to be off property in 24hrs. I had to quickly figure out where to go next and all I knew is that it was -30C there and summer in New Zealand. So I chose to go to New Zealand. And I feel like that right there is 90’s — not knowing sexual harassment was bad, not knowing that going across the world would be hard, and when I told my boyfriend that I was leaving (he was the doorman, working that day and I had to take a cab from the door), I said it so casually like it wasn’t the end of us but of course it was.
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New Zealand was incredibly special but sadly I only have these two photos because I travelled alone and film was expensive so what little photos I did take and print, I lost during all my moves over the years. But I don’t know if anyone has a lot of photos from back then, we just lived more in the moment. I went to NZ literally knowing nothing about the country but I quickly made friends with a group of surfers who taught me to surf and we slept on beaches around the country and Fiji and just took each day as it came, which I hadn’t done like this before. I spent most of my time in the South Island specifically, Queenstown and Dunedin. I hung out with penguins and hostel kids, I bungee jumped and hiked mountains. I learned how to straighten my hair which made me feel so cool. I did anything and everything that I could. Basically if someone said, do you want to.. my response was yes. But I did a lot alone too. I was always good with both.
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After New Zealand Emily wanted me to come back to Canada so I went and we moved back to the Canadian Rockies around 1994 but this time to Banff where we got our first apartment. We shared one bedroom in a two bedroom flat and the second room had a rotating cast of people staying in it, at one point six guys simultaneously sharing it with one bathroom between all of us. I have no idea how that worked. It did though and I had friends from all over the world, all different backgrounds, and it was everything.
I discovered grunge. I got to hang out with Green Day. There was also a Canadian band called One that we hung out with and that’s another story entirely. I worked for Brewster Tours, the oldest tour company in Canada, which meant I got to take extraordinary free trips across the country with my coworkers. They gave me an award and called me Boogie Beauchamp because I danced almost every night. I take that as the highest compliment I have ever received. It was also the first time I seriously thought about getting a career – as a Brewster Bus Driver! But the 90’s is also when I had my first heartbreak, and not because I broke up with a guy but because my best friend Emily and I broke up over a guy who was so terrible but she chose him over me. It’d take us a decade to reconnect so I spent the rest of the 90’s without her, which was hard because she’d been my only constant since the 90’s began.
Eventually I ended up in Vancouver, in my very first place of my own. A little studio by the beach. I worked for Tourism British Columbia which meant I got to explore the entire province and do things most people never get to do, including accidentally hiking the West Coast Trail. If you know what the West Coast Trail is you understand how crazy that sentence is. But at the time, there wasn’t google or instagram to tell you what to expect or why or why not to do it. I randomly got a coveted ticket to do it, and I did it. That was as much thought as I put into things.
One day about 1997 a woman approached me randomly in a bookshop who wanted to give me a free palm reading. I had never heard of palm readings or tarot or psychics and had no beliefs or judgements so I said yes. She told me three things that would happen in my life.
The first came true within a month. I’d meet a guy who was an accountant who’d ask me on a date but I should be very careful because he would be awful but I’d figure it out before anything bad happened. I did up up meeting this guy and going on what was the worst date ever and literally exited the restaurant through the back door after ordering all the expensive things on the menu. Trust me, that was the right thing to do. I also think this is why I never really became a dater.
The second came true a year later. I’d travel to a different but close country and meet someone who would change my life. I had a specific female San Francisco based author in mind when she said it so I ended up booking a trip there thinking I’d just run into her, but instead I ran into a guy from Kentucky who was visiting his family. He’d change my life. I spent New Year’s Eve 1999 in Canada and then I moved to America in 2000 where I’ve been since and got a whole career and life I wouldnt’ have gotten if I hadn’t met him.
The third still hasn’t come true but I’m not holding my breath because two out of three is pretty good. And only in the 90’s would I have totally believed and been so open to engaging a palm reader. I’m more skeptical now.
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In July 2023 I unknowingly contracted Valley Fever, a rare fungal lung infection that wouldn’t be discovered until I had two surgeries on October 31st. A few weeks later I lost my dog Scout to cancer and my job, and in August 2024 I almost died from fungal meningitis because Valley Fever was so hard to beat for me. And before any of this I had been navigating who I was after a bad long term relationship and then covid. I felt lost in who I was in a way I hadn’t felt before and having fun and laughing easily and being curious seemed more in the past than something that could be present again. I was in deep grief but also just really lost about who I’d become. I missed who I used to be and had no idea if I’d ever get her back again.
In August 2024, my 25 year old niece came to visit me for what was just supposed to be two weeks. We were both at a crossroads in our life and for the first two weeks we adventured around California and I felt that spark come back. I asked her if she wanted to do a cross-country trip, no plans, no agenda, just the Hamptons or bust and she said yes. So I put all my stuff in storage and we hit the road with literally no plan, no route, no expectations. And this trip changed everything.
My laughter came back. My curiosity came back. My passion for life and connection for others and the feeling of just showing up for whatever was next came back. We danced, we karoeked, we met boys, we talked about boys, we went to rodeos, hiked, had cocktails, had coffee, hiked mountains, sat on beaches. Sang our hearts out on highways but also chilled in our hotel beds at night just being in our own worlds. Being able to navigate changes and situations with ease instead of panic, and being comfortable with whatever the next day brought. Everything I thought I’d lost of myself or left behind in the 90’s was still there. On the trip I shared with my niece my crazy stories from that time because she was almost exactly the age I was in the 90s, and I could see her living her own version of it. She’d say that I still seem the same and that was the best compliment and biggest relief. Because I liked who I was then and I was finally back to liking myself decades later.
I don’t have a lot of photos or videos from the 90’s (no digital cameras and we had to rent the big video cameras that had VHS tapes in them!), and with the exception of Emily I am not in touch with anyone I met and I honestly can’t remember most people’s names. But there’s a reason why so many of us really did love the 90’s whether their life was more structured with school and work or as random as mine. It was a magical time and I’m so glad I got to experience it in such a real way, and that it gave me the foundation to return to decades later.