Eating My Feelings (26 page)

“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.”

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.

MARK BRENNAN ROSENBERG is the author of
Blackouts and Breakdowns
and writes the blog
The Single Life of a Manhattan Homo
. He currently resides in New York City and is single—so if you know of anyone, let him know.

Visit him online at
www.mar​kbr​enn​anr​ose​nbe​rg.bl​ogsp​ot.com
.