Eating My Feelings (11 page)

The school year was coming to an end and I was so happy that I was not going to have to pretend to like any of the people in my middle school anymore. I could be a loner in the summer, go on my walks, eat my healthy meals, and watch movie musicals all afternoon. High school was right around the corner, and I was hell-bent on making a whole new set of friends upon moving on. After a few weeks of dieting, I had my first weigh-in. I had gone from a hefty 175 to a less-hefty 160 in a matter of weeks. Not only had I made my first fifty dollars, I was also halfway to my second. I was such an entrepreneur.

“DAD!” I yelled as I walked into his house that afternoon. “I lost my first ten pounds. Give me fifty bucks!”

“Wow, buddy!” he said. “You look great.”

My father had taken my whore of a stepmother on vacation to Tahiti or Tibet or something and had been gone for weeks. He could tell upon his return that I meant business as far as this whole weight-loss project was concerned and was ready to complete his picture-perfect family.

“Let’s weigh in, and then you can take me to the mall. I have to hit up the Disney store before July 31 or else I am going to miss Cinderella. We simply cannot have that now, can we?”

“I can’t take you to the mall right now, Mark. Your stepmother and I are having a dinner party tonight and we have to prepare. Her family is coming over for Sabbath.”

“Seriously?” I replied. Not only did I hate my stepmother, but her family left much to be desired. Her sister and brother-in-law lived on a nudist retreat (but made sure to cover up their junk upon entering our home) and talking to their kids was about as fun as watching ice melt. “Goddamn it, Dad!” I said as I ran up to my room and pouted. I knew that a long night with a bunch of people I did not like talking about a bunch of shit that I did not understand was ahead.

Sabbath rolled around and we all sat at the table to eat dinner. My idiotic stepmother was not the best in the kitchen, and let’s just say her food did not dance on one’s taste buds. So there was no need for me to cheat tonight. She had made a huge pot of gefilte fish, which is the nastiest-tasting food in the world. I am not exactly sure what goes into gefilte fish, but it seems as though it’s just miscellaneous parts of different fish mashed up into a ball of grossness. As the pot was passed, I gracefully declined the soupy fish, but my stepmother stopped me.

“Why don’t you eat the gefilte fish, Mark?” she asked.

“Honestly,” I replied, “it smells like dead-baby soup.”

“MARK!” my father yelled.

“Eat it, Mark!” my stepmother said.

Wait a second. Were these the same people who were paying me to lose weight? I quickly wondered if Stacey had in fact used six to eight dead babies in order to make this soup. The smell was revolting.

“The soup isn’t made of dead babies,” Stacey said.

“Regardless,” I replied. “Moral of the story—not eating it.”

My stepmother, whose main goal in life was to make everyone as miserable as possible, smirked.

“I’ll pay you fifty dollars to eat the gefilte fish,” she replied.

“When did this family start throwing fifties around like Rockefellers?” I asked. “Aren’t you paying me fifty dollars to lose weight? Now you want me to eat? Sounds a little ridiculous on your part, doesn’t it?”

“Come on, Mark, I will give you fifty bucks right now,” she said.

I may not have been a Jew who liked stinky fish, but I was a Jew who liked money and my stepmother knew it. I took some of the fish and put it on my plate. As I lifted my fork to my mouth I said: “I would just like to state for the record, that you people are quite possibly the biggest hypocrites in the world. The only reason I am eating this nasty fish is in fact for the money, because the way you people are spending money on vacations, I am going to have to start a college fund ASAP before all of this family’s money is gone.” I needed that money and even though I was dieting, a little soup wasn’t going to kill me. If anything, it would make me so nauseous that it may be a nice segue into bulimia and I could go back to sitting around on my ass all the time.

I put the spoon with the nasty soup to my nose to smell it. It smelled like crotch rot and looked like the soup in cartoons that has boots floating in it. I hunkered down, bit the bullet, and took a bite. I savored the fishy taste and swallowed. Perhaps it was the fact that I had not eaten any solid food other than Special K in the last two months or the fact that I had never been hungrier in my life, but I ate the soup like it was my job. My father and stepmother looked at me in awe. They should have known better than to make a bet like that with me. Because when you bet the fat kid to eat something, odds are you’re losing money on that one.

“Done,” I proudly said. “Where’s my fifty?”

“Damn it!” my stepmother said under her breath as she stood and got her pocketbook.

I win again
, I thought.

“Your stepmother is a whore, and with her recent mental breaks, possibly schizophrenic as well,” my mother said the next day. “I don’t understand why she would pay you fifty dollars to eat that nasty shit.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Fifty dollars closer to getting the hell out of here.”

“Mark!” my mother said, “watch your fucking language.” She paused. “Your father really needs to find something better to do with his time. If he continues paying his children to eat things, going on vacation all of the time, and neglecting everyone, he’s going to be a very unhappy camper once Stacey goes off the deep end and actually goes through with killing herself. He needs to get his shit together.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes, he does.” And he still does, God love him.

“On a totally unrelated topic, you’ve never looked better, young man,” my mom said as she took a good look at me. “You look like you’ve dropped at least two dress sizes.”

“Thanks,” I replied.

“All of your new friends in high school are going to be so impressed,” she said.

“Yeah, you know, I think my middle school friends are dead weight, really. I was planning on getting rid of them anyway, when I got my new bod.”

Over the summer I lost over twenty pounds, and when I breezed onto my high school campus for the first time heads were, shall we say, turning. People who had never spoken a
word to me were paying attention to me. I had a cool $150 in my pocket and I was four years away from getting the hell out of Maryland. I felt fabulous, like a new person. I was obviously going home after school to watch
Victor Victoria
, but I looked different, and after all, that was the point.

My first day back was amazing. I made new friends and felt fabulous. That is until the end of the day. I saw my friend Jessie, whom I had planned on never speaking to again now that I was hot, but she approached me so I attempted to be polite. She was fat, annoying, and noisy, and the new Mark had no time for any of the above. Her claim to fame was that she had “skinny ankles.” The rest of her may have been Herculean, but she prided herself on that fact that she had skinny ankles. As if anyone could see them under all that fat.

“Hey, Mark,” Jessie said.

“Yo.” I was so cool and skinny now.

“Everyone is talking about your weight loss. You look so great.”

“Thanks, Jessie. Maybe I can give you some pointers on how to lose weight.” She looked at me and lifted her pants to reveal her “skinny ankles.” “Oh, right,” I said. “You’ve got that skinny-ankle thing going for you. Work with it, it’s hot.” What a cow.

“Yes, everyone is talking about the new and improved Mark,” she said.

“That’s great. I feel great.”

“Yeah,” she said with a smirk, “everyone is saying you took laxatives to lose weight over the summer and that’s why you are so skinny.”

“What?” I was so confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Yeah, Angie told me that’s how you lost so much weight.”

“First of all,” I said, “anyone who knows me knows that I don’t need laxatives to shit. My irritable bowel syndrome takes care of that just fine for me, thank you very much. Second, you’re a fat cow and a big mouth, Jessie. There is no doubt in my mind that your fat ass started that rumor because you had nothing better to do.”

“I am just telling you what I heard,” she replied.

“FAT-ASS!” I yelled. Not only was Jessie a big-mouthed cow, but a few months later, she revealed that she was a lesbian, thus providing me with tons of ammo on her for the remaining years of high school.

I ran out of the school wondering what made me think I would ever be popular. I went home and sat on my couch and watched a mini-marathon of Julie, but even she could not make me feel better. I knew what I had to do. I ran to the grocery store and went right to the baking aisle. I was hell-bent on eating every brownie in sight, but then I stopped dead in my tracks.

What am I doing?
I thought.
I have lost all of this weight and feel great. Why am I going to waste it all now?

I paced the supermarket wondering what to do and wandered into the diet aisle. I thought about how fat Jessie was and what she had said to me. I could not believe that everyone thought that I was taking laxatives, when diet and exercise were the cure for what ailed my fatness. I picked up a box of laxatives and looked at the writing on it. How could anyone think that I was taking laxatives? What a preposterous idea.

Then I got an idea. Everyone thought I was taking laxatives already, so what difference would it make if I just started taking them? Before I knew it, I was at the checkout and instead of a box of brownies, I was buying a box of laxatives and the latest
copy of
Redbook
. Since everyone thought I was on the diet pills already, I figured I’d buy them, lose more weight, and weasel more money out of my father. Essentially, I was just speeding up the process. That’s capitalism at work for you. Over the course of the next two months, I lost twenty more pounds and made one hundred dollars and homecoming court.

It’s hard trying to fit in in high school. Especially when you’re as gay as I was. Prancing around the hallways of your high school singing a medley of songs from the George M. Cohan songbook doesn’t really attract best friendships. Most people take the easy route when trying to make friends: sports. For one reason or another our culture embraces those who excel athletically, not realizing that those people usually fall behind in academics and end up fat and not going to college. White boys may be good at basketball when they’re in a high school filled
with white people, but odds are two hundred to one that there will always be a black kid who will be one hundred times better once they get to college. Then, with their dreams crushed, they retreat to the couch with their six-packs of beer and large pizzas only to pack on the pounds, ending up with shit for brains and grossly overweight. I knew all of these things in high school and didn’t bother playing sports at all. I ran track for a bit but was subsequently kicked off the track team after I was caught smoking on school property. I didn’t care because to this day I will take a good Marlboro Light over a four-mile hike in the woods. I had to find something to occupy my time, and that something was theater. I was so gay.

Meanwhile, I lived on the cusp of the school district, so the only bus that could pick me up to go to school every morning was the short bus they used for handicapped children, which didn’t help me win Most Popular Student at Gaithersburg High.

When I was in eleventh grade, I hated everyone. I had a few close friends, but for the most part, I didn’t have time for the stupid high school bullshit that everyone else relished. Cliques, parties, and team sports were not on my radar. I was more concerned with what Erica Kane was wearing that afternoon and a bright young upstart whose career was just beginning to blossom: Britney Spears. Needless to say I had few friends and the fact that I rode the short bus to school every morning didn’t help things. The friends I did have, however, were an interesting bunch of people.

I started smoking weed around eleventh grade. Everyone had told me that smoking pot was fun so I tried it, and I became an overnight pothead. It was a nice segue into the other drugs I would become addicted to in college and my raging alcoholism. I had a close group of pothead friends I loved. They included
Maureen, a dear friend to this day; Angie, a skinny dumb slut who slept with everyone; Justin, my one straight male friend in high school; and Betty. Betty was an interesting character. She was heavier, always had braces (I had known the girl for about six years and she always had braces in her mouth), and was a total hippie. Back in high school, I loved hippies. This was of course before I realized they were all lazy pieces of shit who needed to get jobs. Betty was always there to drive us around town when we were supposed to be in school so we could smoke weed during class and not get caught. Betty was also infamous for other things.

Throughout middle school and into high school, I was also friends with Buck Rose. He was a tall, gangly character who had ridiculously curly hair and always sat next to me in class because his last name was Rose and mine was Rosenberg. Buck and I were pretty good friends, so I was completely surprised when Buck rolled into history class one day and told me that he and Betty were now an item.

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

“Nope,” Buck replied. “Betty and I are dating,” he said. “Well … not so much dating as …”

“As … what?” I asked.

“Well …” Buck said as he leaned toward me as if he were about to tell me some huge secret. “Betty gives me head every weekend in the back of my car after I take her to dinner at Chili’s.”

“Head?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if they were butting heads with each other in the backseat of Buck’s car or what.

“You know,” Buck said, “blow jobs.”