Eating My Feelings

by Mark Rosenberg

  “Yes, I know,” I said. “I’m having lunch with Dad tomorrow, and then I’ll head over to Jamie’s to cook.”

  “Why are you having lunch with your father?”

  “Because,” I replied, “he’s my father. And I haven’t seen him since his wedding.” For all who were wondering, my father got rid of the serpent he was married to when I was a child and remarried a lovely woman named Carol. This is his fourth marriage. At the wedding, a few months before Thanksgiving, I was asked to give the speech on behalf of his children. I told my father and Carol to do their best to make this marriage work because it was to be the final time I would ever attend a wedding of his. The man is flirting with Elizabeth Taylor territory. Meanwhile, in most states it’s still not legal for my people to get married once, let alone four times. What a joke!

  “Whatever,” my mother said. Sometimes when I come home for holidays, I feel like my mother may as well pee on me. She’s as territorial as a dog and gets pissed when I spend time with anyone other than her.

  I finished my dinner and quickly went downtown on a bag of peanut butter M&M’s. Since I would not be working out for the duration of my time home, I figured it was my duty to eat as much as humanly possible before returning to work. As I wiped the residue of M&M’s off my face and sat down to watch television, a wave of pain came over me.

  Suddenly I felt about as sick as I was when I found out that my father had sent me to fat camp. I darted to the bathroom, stuck my head in the toilet, and violently threw everything up that I had just eaten.

  “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THERE?” my mother yelled. “You’re so loud! Jesus!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said with my head in the toilet bowl. “I can’t stop throwing up!”

  “Well, could you keep it down?” she yelled. “I want to finish watching the rest of Army Wives before bed!” I left the bathroom, opened my mother’s bedroom door, and peered into a dark room seeing nothing but the glowing light of the television.

  “Army Wives?” I asked. “Seriously?”

  “YEAH, SERIOUSLY! SHUT IT!” she yelled.

  “I THINK YOU POISONED ME!” I shouted.

  She laughed. “Poisoned you? Why on earth would I do that?”

  I went back to the bathroom and threw up again. As I wiped the vomit from my mouth, I lifted my head up again and yelled, “YOU’RE DOING THIS SO I WON’T HAVE LUNCH WITH DAD TOMORROW!”

  “What the fuck do I care who you have lunch with?”

  “I DON’T KNOW,” I cried. “Maybe you’re doing this out of revenge. You’ve always wanted me to move home!”

  “MOVE HOME?” my mother yelled. “Why the hell would I want you here?”

  “I DON’T KNOW!” I cried. “I’m dying! Do you have any Pepto?”

  “No,” she barked. “Now quiet down, my show is almost over and I can’t hear a damn thing.”

  I felt like I had thrown up everything I had ever eaten. Just when I thought I was done, it just kept coming up. After about an hour, I made my way back to the couch. My mother, God love her, had had a rough couple of months. A few weeks prior, she had suffered what everyone had thought was a heart attack. Turns out she was having horrible chest pains as a side effect to the Boniva she was taking for her osteoporosis. Needless to say, Sally Field’s in-box was flooded with e-mails from me that month with the subject reading: “How on earth, Norma Rae, could you forsake my family like that?” With all of this drama going on it was no wonder that my mother’s cooking was on a downward spiral. I couldn’t hold it against her.

  As I sat on the couch, the room began to spin and I saw my life flash before my eyes for about the tenth time in my twenty-seven years on this earth. I pictured my ill-fated attempt at blackface, meeting my former stepmother, a woman who would change my life forever, and my trip to fat camp. I reminisced about falling in and out of love with Blake, Tony Horton, and a dog named Jackie Collins. Then I briefly thought I saw Jesus. Turns out, it was my brother Kevin getting a glass of water—his hair was just out of control that night. I felt like I was clinging to life. Since my mother had attempted to kill me, I felt it was my duty to wake her up in the middle of the night and tell her as much.

  “MOM!” I yelled as I entered her pitch-dark room.

  “What the fuck?” she said with a start.

  “You tried to kill me tonight. I don’t appreciate that,” I said seriously. I was standing there in the dark like some sort of pedophile.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I am trying to sleep, so could you please quiet down,” she said. “And if you’re going to throw up, please do so in the kitchen sink. Your bowels are very loud tonight.”

  “THAT’S NOT FUNNY!” I yelled. “I’m dying and all you can do is make fun of me.”

  “OH MY GOD, MARK, GO TO BED! It’s 3 A.M.!”

  “I would go to bed, but I’ve been vomiting out of my mouth and ass for the last three hours, thanks to your cooking.”

  “Get out of my room!”

  I sat on the couch and quickly text-messaged all of my friends from my deathbed.

  “We all knew it would come to this,” I wrote my friends. “My mother has tried to kill me. I will do my best to pull through, but if I don’t make it, please be sure to carry on my legacy. Love, Mark.”

  Shortly after, I received a text from my friend Ron: “OMG, girl. I miss you so much. Come to L.A. to see me. The guys are hot, hot, hot!”

  I immediately responded: “If I make it through the night, I’ll make my way out there.”

  “Fuck off,” Ron replied. “You text-messaged me that you were dying last month and here you are: still complaining. See you soon! Love you girl!”

  It became quite clear that neither Ron nor the rest of my friends understood the severity of my condition. I curled up in a ball on the couch and slept briefly. I had the most wonderful dream that Susan Lucci, Jackie Collins, and I were all drinking sparkling cider at Jackie’s Beverly Hills compound.

  When I woke up, my mother’s house was empty, thank God for that. I was a complete mess. My insides hurt so much I concluded that the pain that I was in would be similar if I had had a back-alley abortion the evening before. I got up, went to the bathroom, and looked in the mirror. The bags under my eyes had dropped down to my knees and my complexion resembled someone who had jaundice. My body, however, had never looked better, so in my haze of delirium, I decided to snap a few pictures of myself so I could update my Grindr profile. As I finished my makeshift photo shoot, I saw that I had seven unread messages on Twitter from my father.

  KMoney88: “Mark, are we still going to lunch today?”

  KMoney88: “Where do you want to go to lunch?”

  KMoney88: “Did you even make it to D.C. OK?”

  KMoney88: “I have to walk the dog, can you let me know where you’d like to eat lunch?”

  KMoney88: “Mark?”

  KMoney88: “I’m going to the store. Can you get back to me?”

  KMoney88: “Sasklfjasf” (I think there was confusion with that last tweet on my father’s end)

  Why on earth was my father tweeting at me all morning? Ever since that man figured out how to “socially network,” he’s stopped using the phone altogether.

  I picked up the phone and called my father.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked when he answered.

  “What?” he said.

  “Why are you tweeting at me?”

  “I was trying to get your attention.”

  “How about fucking calling me the next time?”

  “Isn’t this what you kids do these days in order to get in touch with each other?” my father said.

  “First off, neither you nor I are ‘kids’ any longer. Second, I firmly believe that human communication is making a comeback.”

  “Whatever,” he said. “Are we having lunch or not?”

  “Negative, ghostwriter,” I replied. “Mom tried to kill me last night, so I think I’m down for the count.”

/>   “Your mother tried to kill me once,” my father said, as if sharing a fond memory. “Those were the days.”

  “Right,” I replied. “I think I got food poisoning last night, so I’m going to stay in. I’ll see you next time.”

  “All right. I’ll see you around, I guess.”

  I hung up with my father, drank a gallon of ginger ale and a liter of Pepto, and began to feel better. As I read text messages from friends wondering if I had fallen off the wagon the evening before, I prepared for my next feast. That evening I was going to cook chicken Parmesan for my brothers, sisters, niece, four nephews, and mother. I had sent out a meeting request on Outlook weeks before to make sure that everyone was available. Getting together twelve people in my family is like rounding up a traveling freak show, but it’s always worth it. As I thought about all of the trouble I had gone through for the meal, I tried not to dry-heave all over the place. I wondered why on earth everything in my life revolves around things going into or coming out of my mouth. My life has been spent planning meals, burning off the calories of those meals, and occasionally throwing up or getting thrown up on. Is this what life is all about?

  That evening, my mother and I drove to my sister Jamie’s house for dinner. The entire ride was spent with me shooting her dirty looks and her refusing to apologize for nearly killing me. Once we arrived, we were greeted by my sister’s children. I was not completely on board with the names that she chose for them, so I refer to them as Shlomo, Chaka Khan, and Emmanuel Lewis. It’s no wonder the only godchildren I have are two Yorkies who live in Midtown.

  “UNCLE MARK!” Shlomo yelled as he greeted me with a hug. “How’s New York?”

  “I’m hustling,” I replied.

  “Hustling?” Shlomo said.

  “Eh, you’ll figure it out when you grow up.”

  “How’s my little princess?” I asked Chaka Khan.

  “UNCLE MARK!” she squealed.

  Chaka jumped into my arms and wrapped her arms around my neck. I smothered her with kisses. Chaka then rejoined her brothers in the living room as they watched television.

  “MARK!” Jamie barked from the kitchen, scaring the shit out of everyone. I am happy to report that my sister has quickly gone from spastic party girl to spastic mother of three. “Don’t kiss Chaka if you’re going to get her sick. Mom said you had a stomach bug last night. I cannot have a houseful of sick children.” I could barely get through the door without my sister barking orders at me.

  “Stomach bug?” I said as I shot my mother the fifteen thousandth dirty look of the day. “Uh, no, Jamie, she tried to kill me last night.”

  “What?” she said.

  “She gave me food poisoning.”

  “Your brother and his wild imagination,” my mother said. “No one else got food poisoning but him.”

  “Really?” Jamie said. “Then you must have had a bug. I don’t want you around the children if you’re going to get everyone sick.”

  “Relax, Jamie,” I replied. My sister, mother of the century, is a psycho when it comes to her children and their health. So psycho that if anyone even comes near any sort of nut, they are not to be allowed into her house for up to a month due to Chaka’s horrible nut allergy. “I’m fine!”

  “All right, but if the kids start getting sick, you’re going to have to go home.”

  “It’s great to see you too!” I said smartly as I breezed into the kitchen to prepare dinner. My sister and mother followed quickly and began squawking like two hens about everything that had happened in the twenty minutes that they had not spoken to each other that day. As I began breading the chicken, my sister chimed in once again.

  “Can I do anything to help?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “keep the fuck out of my way.”

  Jamie grunted as she and my mother moved their squawk fest to the living room as the children danced around them. Shortly after, my other sister Kim and her girlfriend, Meghan, entered.

  “Look what the lesbians dragged in,” I called out.

  “Way to call out the lesbians,” my sister said. “Hey gay boy.”

  I greeted my sister and her girlfriend, whom I adore, with huge hugs.

  “How’s my favorite homo?” Meghan asked.

  I blushed. “You say that to all the boys, don’t you?”

  “Just you, my dear.”

  Kim and Meghan joined Jamie and my mother in the living room.

  “MARK!” Jamie yelled.

  “WHAT?” I yelled back.

  “If you’re breading the chicken with eggs, don’t touch anything. I don’t want the kids getting salmonella!”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said under my breath. “Everything is fine in here.”

  The ladies continued chirping in the living room. Since leaving town, my sister Kim has officially become the Empress of Gay D.C. She and Meghan began a gay dating service in town and now they hold court everywhere they go. It’s almost as if she were Hillary Clinton and her platform was an STD-infested gay bar above a bathhouse. As I continued cooking, my brothers Kevin and Tony and Tony’s wife, Nikki, and their children entered. I didn’t care for the names they gave their children (mainly because in private, while hammered, my sister-in-law told me she was inspired to name one of my nephews after a Duke rapist, but said “he hadn’t been convicted of any crime at the time of the baby naming, so it was okay”), so I call them Shmewy and Gordy. It’s no wonder I wasn’t invited to either of their christenings. The kids gave me a hug and went off to play with the other children in the basement.

  “Hi, Mark,” Nikki said. I absolutely adore my brother’s wife. She is a complete shit show. She’s super tall with ridiculously curly blond hair and says whatever she wants to, making me believe that the two of us are actually related by blood. If I were ever going to perform in drag, I would model myself after her. Having a drag queen replica of yourself must be the highest form of flattery you could bestow upon any woman.

  “Oh, Nik,” I said as I hugged her, “I miss you guys.”

  “We miss you. How’s everything going in New York?”

  “You know me, just hustling,” I said as Tony made his way to the living room with the ladies.

  “OH, HI, BRO,” I yelled at Tony.

  “Oh, hey, Mark,” Tony said, looking away from me.

  “GREAT TO SEE YOU!” I yelled. Tony ignored me and sat on the couch next to Kim and put his arm around her neck as if about to choke her. Some things never change. Even in your late thirties.

  I continued cooking dinner and chatted with Kevin. We reminisced about how funny it was to think that we were once our niece’s and nephews’ age and now we are the uncles and have a new generation of family members to mold, teach, and corrupt.

  I finished cooking dinner and the children gathered around the table to eat. All of the adults, except me, sat on the living room floor and enjoyed the glorious chicken Parmesan I had prepared.

  My stomach was still unsettled from the previous night, so I stood in the kitchen and watched as my niece and nephews ate and fooled around with one another. There were five of them, just as many children as my parents had. As I gazed at them in awe of how amazing each one of them is, I couldn’t help but wonder what the future held for them. I first looked at Shmewy, my brother’s oldest boy. He has a quiet charm about him but will randomly burst out in a fit of goofiness, just like his father, Tony. Sitting next to him was Chaka Kahn, the most beautiful little girl I’ve ever seen. She’s a mirror image of her mother, Jamie, beautiful on the inside and outside with a heart as big as her mother’s. I then glanced at Shlomo, who has always reminded me of his Aunt Kim. Energetic and full of life with a personality that fills any room he’s in. Next to him was Gordy, whose personality is very reminiscent of my brother Kevin’s when he was a child: rambunctious, vivacious, and all over the place. When he grows up, he’s going to be the life of the party, just like Kevin. Finally, sitting all the way at the end of the table, was Emmanuel Lewis. The kid is a mini
me. Give him a few years and he’ll have the fashion sense and quick wit of his most beloved uncle.

  I sat and watched the five children laugh and eat dinner, and it made me think about their futures and also made me wonder when the fuck I became so sentimental. I must be getting soft in my old age. Perhaps one of them will be a superstar athlete while one of them will become grossly overweight. Perhaps one of them will take to the theater while another may hit the bottle hard. Perhaps one of them will be the class clown while another will be a silent genius. All I can do is love them and hope that they learn from the mistakes that their parents, aunts, and uncles have made. But if they decide to take the same road that we have, I hope it’s paved with glitter, because no matter what happens in life, at the end of the day, all we have is each other, regardless of how fucking crazy we all are: It always comes back to the family.

  As I sat reflecting on my family, my mother approached me.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking about something a very wise woman once said: ‘Family is like baking a cake from scratch. It gets messy.’ ”

  “That’s beautiful,” my mother said. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Miss Ellie said it on an old episode of Dallas I just watched.”

  “Idiot!”

  “You didn’t mean to poison me, did you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “But I was half in the bag when I cooked so who the hell knows how long I actually left that steak out for.”

  As I was reflecting on the next generation of shit shows in my family with my mother, I got a tweet from my father that said, “Hope you’re feeling better.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank everyone at Crown Publishing as well as all of the investors in Blackouts Productions for making this book possible. Big thanks to Jacqueline for taking a huge risk on me. Thanks to Amanda, Mauro, Campbell, Tammy, and Jessica at Three Rivers Press. Big thanks to my mother, father, brothers, sisters, niece, and nephews for keeping me going and letting me write about your lives and being so amazing about everything else. I would seriously be nothing without your support. Kristin, thank you for helping me with the editing process. You’re a talented lady and a great friend. Thanks to my “sisters”: Eric, Ron, and Andrew for your constant support and love. Thanks to Tom and Mike, Evelyn, Katelyn, Sally, Katie, Meghan, Tim, Krystal, Adam, Lisa, Shawn, both Jason Cs, Lori, Erik, Kate, Jeffrey, Laura, Joanne, Willie, Candace, Cameron, and, of course, the entire Schwab family. Also, big shout-outs to all of the illegitimate children I’ve acquired along the way—what a great group of kids. Finally, I’d like to thank Jake. I always told you I would thank you in a book, and without seeing what a horrible person you really are, I would have never had the ammunition and drive I needed to finish this book.