Eating My Feelings Page 4

  I walked up the stairs. I had taken my skates off and was now standing on the ice in my socks. I tried to open the door but it was still locked. I looked inside to see my father, stepmother, and brother sitting on the couch watching Mary Poppins.

  “Assholes,” I said under my breath. I began ringing the doorbell.

  My father ran to the door and opened it.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “I almost died,” I replied as I entered the house. I was dripping wet and had a huge stain on my ass from when I landed on the asphalt during the Rollerblading debacle.

  “I’m glad you all were sitting in here enjoying the musical stylings of Ms. Julie Andrews. I just bit it on the hill and almost got hit by a car.”

  “Are you okay?” my father asked.

  “What do you care?” I replied. “My ass hurts.” That was the first, but certainly not the last time I uttered those words.

  “Well,” my father said opening the hallway closet door, “lucky for you, I have this inner tube from when I got my hemorrhoids removed a few months ago. If your ass hurts that much, you can just sit on this.”

  “Sit on this!” I said as I gave my father the finger after he turned away from me.

  “KIDS!” my stepmother yelled from the other room, “it’s time to bake a cake for your father.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was bake my father a cake. I needed about twelve Tylenol and a heating pad for my ass. My stepmother went into the kitchen and gathered all of the materials that we would need to make a cake. Then she left the room.

  “Have at it, kids,” she said as she exited.

  “What?” I asked. “You’re seriously leaving an eight- and eleven-year-old in the kitchen to make a cake?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. She was trying to kill us. Seconds later, my brother disappeared. I guess it would be up to me to make my father’s birthday cake.

  I decided I was going to do the other thing that I did best: ruin someone else’s birthday. By age eleven, I hated attention being put upon anyone other than me. My father’s birthday was the tip of the iceberg. For some reason, I was an attention-seeking little brat who hated celebrating any occasion that did not involve me. Pair that with the fact that my stepmother had just tried to kill me again, and I knew what I had to do. I looked around the kitchen and decided that I was going to make the most disgusting cake anyone had ever tasted. I looked under the sink and found a bottle of Drano. The thought of poisoning everyone quickly popped into my mind. I then realized that I had horrible short-term memory loss and would probably forget that I had poisoned the cake in the first place and indirectly kill myself in the process. Besides, that would have been a waste of a perfectly good cake.

  As I considered ways to either kill my family or give them all food poisoning, I glanced into the living room to see my father, stepmother, and brother watching Mary Poppins. I love a good Julie Andrews film more than anything in the world and wondered why I was the one who had to make my father’s stupid cake. I looked at my stepmother, who glanced back at me with a look that said, “You better make that cake, bitch!”

  I put the cake ingredients into a bowl, mixed the contents, and put it into a pan, sans Drano. In lieu of joining my family I decided to eat a whole bag of chips on the kitchen floor and wait for the cake to finish baking. We had decided as a family to make my father a Funfetti cake, my favorite kind. It’s just a vanilla cake with sprinkles in it, but I can’t get enough of them. As I waited, I overheard my family singing the wrong lyrics to “A Spoonful of Sugar.”

  It’s “Every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake,” you fucking morons! I thought.

  Ding! My cake was ready. I put my oven mitts on and took my delicious-looking Funfetti cake out of the oven. In lieu of joining my family, I decided to eat a whole bag of Combos on the kitchen floor and wait for the cake to finish cooling.

  After a few minutes of waiting for the cake to cool, it was time to ice it. I mixed regular icing with sprinkles and applied it to the cake. Once I was finished, I delighted in my latest culinary creation. I had come a long way in the cake-making department from a few years ago when I had made my mother a cake using only crayons, glue, thumb tacks, and frosting. I then glanced back into the living room to see my family as they continued watching the movie. They looked so happy. Kind of like a Hallmark card. A Hallmark card from hell, that is. I decided that I was going to stop being such a bratty little kid and join them for the end of the film. “Let’s Go Fly a Kite,” after all, brings joy into everyone’s heart. Suddenly, the spirit of Mary Poppins was inside of me, and I couldn’t possibly go through with ruining my father’s birthday cake. That wouldn’t be fair of me—Mary herself would agree with that. How could I ever watch that glorious film again if I couldn’t retain its message of tolerance for others and fabulous tea parties on the ceiling? Even though my father had married Satan’s mistress, it was not my place to destroy his dreams of having the perfect birthday cake.

  I put all of my baking tools away and glanced at the beautiful cake I had just finished baking. It looked glorious. I would have to wait until after dinner to eat it, which I found ridiculous considering I had just eaten not only a whole bag of chips, but Combos as well. I turned around to exit the kitchen and must have tripped on my fatness or something, because before I knew it, I was going down. For one reason or another I tried grabbing the table, but grabbed the plate that the cake was sitting on. As I hit the floor, I had taken the cake with me and before I knew it, my father’s birthday cake went flying up in the air and landed right on my head.

  “What’s going on in there?” my father asked as he entered the kitchen.

  “I FELL,” I yelled, “and your cake landed on my head!”

  “GET OFF OF THE FLOOR!” my stepmother yelled.

  I was covered in cake.

  “AND STOP EATING CAKE OFF THE FLOOR!” my father yelled.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said as I got up.

  “You did this on purpose,” my stepmother cried.

  “No,” I replied, “ruining everyone’s life is more your MO than mine.”

  My stepmother grunted. What a bitch.

  I had inadvertently ruined my father’s birthday cake. After channeling Mary Poppins and realizing that torching someone else’s birthday dreams was not the right thing to do, I had unintentionally done it anyway. Not only did my ongoing feud with my stepmother continue, my father insisted that we go out for Chinese food afterward, thus furthering my association with Chinese food and disastrous family events. What did we learn from that fateful afternoon of culinary calamities? Not one thing—except a killer recipe for Funfetti cake that I still use to this day.

  HEAVYWEIGHTS

  Our heroine overcame having to Rollerblade, but what followed was more shocking than Kimberly coming back from the dead on Melrose Place. Stacey threw another wrench into Mark’s game plan. He was at an age when children are supposed to be figuring out who they are going to be as adults (or in his case, how gay they are going to be). What you are about to read is disturbing on many levels. Will our beloved chanteuse survive the horrors of Camp Hell, or will evil prevail?

  It was time to put away our boas and capes. Alas, the final day of theater camp was upon us.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s our last day of camp!” I said to my buddy Jesse as I hugged him. I was wearing my autographed T-shirt from the musical The Secret Garden. For the past two summers, I had attended a theater camp in New Rochelle, New York, called Stagedoor. It was the most amazing place in the world. I got to be as gay as I possibly could without anyone from my family seeing me, making fun of me, or punching me in the throat. The summer after sixth grade, I left Stagedoor vowing to return next year and get the lead in the main stage show. Rumors were flying that the camp had gotten the rights to perform West Side Story and it had been a twelve-year lifelong dream of mine to play Tony. However, I was grossly overweight, so I promised my camp friends I would come ba
ck next summer half the man I used to be. But before I went all Nirvana on everyone’s ass, I parted ways with the people who had become my closest friends in only three weeks.

  “Bye, Jesse,” I said as we hugged. “I’ll miss you terribly.” Oh, the dramatics of theater camp good-byes. Jesse was my best friend at Stagedoor that summer. We performed in a show together and while backstage one night, he laid one on me. It was my first man-on-man kiss and it was magical. I told Jesse that we would have to keep in touch until we reunited at camp next summer. I was devastated to part ways with my new best friend of three weeks, but knew if we kept in touch, it would only be a mere forty-nine weeks before we met again. We said good-bye and I got on my flight back to D.C., hoping that when I returned everyone would be cooler than when I left. Nope!

  “Mark!” my father said as I got off the plane and entered the airport. “We are so glad you are back!”

  I hugged my father. I guess I was glad to see him.

  “I thought Stacey was going to be with you when you picked me up,” I said, questioning where my evil stepmother was. Perhaps they had divorced while I was away and she had crawled back into the hole from whence she came.

  “She’s in the car, smoking,” my father replied. No such luck.

  “You look …” my father trailed off. I think he was expecting me to magically lose a million pounds while I was away at camp. I guess he had forgotten that I was away at theater camp, where the most exercise I got was making out with Jesse.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You look … healthy,” my father said. “What happened to those tennis lessons you had planned on attending?”

  “Well, I actually didn’t touch a ball all summer.” Though I had come close. “I just got caught up with the show, I really didn’t have time for tennis. Besides, I was the only one who signed up for them and I didn’t want the other kids to think I was a total loser.”

  My father looked defeated. Everything he did to try to get me to lose weight backfired and I just kept eating and kissing boys that he didn’t know about, none of which helped in my struggle to shed excess pounds.

  “We are going to have to put you on a diet, young man,” my father said as he grabbed my bags and we headed toward the car.

  “Okay,” I said. I always tried to humor him. Little did he know I had a stash of goodies on hand for whenever he planned one of his sneak-attack diets.

  We walked out of the airport and joined my stepmother, who had been chain-smoking cigarettes at a feverish pace while waiting for us in the car. She was such a bitch. She weighed about ninety pounds (eighty of those pounds were from her big fat head) and always had a beef with me. I don’t know if it was because I was fat, or because I rocked pleather better than she could, but we did not get along at all. When I got into the car she acknowledged me with a grunt and I grunted back at her. We clearly weren’t making any progress in the communication department during this exchange. I hated her and she hated me—lines had been drawn in the sand long ago and both parties knew better than to cross them. I sat in the car and remembered all of the fun times that I had at camp and simply could not wait until next summer when I could return to the only place in the world where I felt comfortable. Assuming my stepmother did not push me out of a window between now and then, I was good to go.

  The next few months passed uneventfully. I kept in contact with Jesse and we wrote each other about four times a week. He wrote me that November and told me that his mother had caught him masturbating in his bathroom and hadn’t spoken to him since. My mother found this letter and began asking questions about my relationship with Jesse.

  “Who is this Jesse fellow again?” my mother asked.

  “A friend from camp,” I replied. “We hung out all summer.”

  “Is he gay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. What the fuck, I was like twelve. I wasn’t really sure if I was gay, let alone this kid. I did know he had an affinity for Diana Ross and the color pink. But so did I, so I wasn’t sure what the big deal was. “What’s with the questions?”

  “Well, when you’re away over the summer I get very worried. I just want to make sure that the people that you are hanging out with while you’re gone are legit.” God love her.

  “Everyone is fine. During the three weeks one spends at summer camp, lifelong friends are made and dreams are shattered, Mother. Don’t you know these things?” Clearly, my dramatic skills from the summer hadn’t waned.

  “All right, but if anything ever happens while you are away, you call me!”

  “Mom, it’s fine. Relax, it’s November. I’m not going anywhere until next summer anyway.”

  When December rolled around I got an urgent letter from Jesse telling me that I needed to make a beeline to the nearest multiplex to see what he proclaimed was “the movie of our generation.” “It’s called Clueless. I have already seen it seven times and I know you are going to just love it!” he wrote.

  I had never heard of it but was always game to see a new movie. Jesse said that he absolutely loved it and since we both loved Diana Ross, why would our tastes in movies be any different?

  A few days later, I stole away into the night in a pair of sunglasses and a wig from the Burt Reynolds wig collection. I knew I was going to see a movie that most twelve-year-old boys wouldn’t be caught dead viewing and had to be incognito. I went to the theater, sat down, and watched one of the most incredible movies ever made. The girls were fabulous and wore fabulous clothes. The guys were cute and dressed really well and there was a full-on makeover scene in the middle of the film that was to die for. I watched intently. I decided I loved any movie with a makeover scene. I took everything in. I memorized the hilarious quotes, especially the ones talking about “the Valley.” I had no idea what the Valley was, but it sounded amazing. Two hours later, I was a different man. I was gay. Clueless had confirmed it.

  I left the theater missing Jesse. Clueless made me think of him so much because I knew that he was the only other person in the world who would appreciate such cinematic genius as that.

  The holidays were around the corner and when my father asked me what I wanted, I had a full list of demands.

  “Well, first off, I absolutely need the soundtrack from Clueless,” I said.

  “What the hell is Clueless?” my father asked.

  “Only the most amazing movie ever made,” I replied as I rolled my eyes. Didn’t he know these things? Had he been living under a rock?

  “Is that like Clue?” he asked. Another incredible film, but not what I was going for at that point.

  “As if!” I replied.

  “As if what?”

  “Jesus! I will find it at the store and you can buy it,” I continued. “I also need a bottle of cologne from Melrose Place.”

  “Melrose Place in L.A.?”

  “No, the television show, duh!”

  “The television show Melrose Place has its own cologne line? When did that happen?”

  “When do any amazing things happen? They just happen, Dad, it’s life.”

  “I don’t know about any of this,” my father said. “You’ve changed.”

  Considering the previous year he had purchased a signed poster from the Broadway show Guys and Dolls for me as a Hanukah present, these gift demands seemed about on par with what my interests had been up to that point.

  “Okay, I guess I can get these things for you,” he said. “But don’t you want a new baseball cap or something?”

  “Uh, sounds nice, but that doesn’t really go with the motif of my winter/spring ninety-six collection,” I replied.

  “Motif?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s going to be a new and improved me in 1996!”

  “Does that new and improved you mean that you are going to change your eating habits?”

  “Nope. Everything in that department stays the same. But I need a new look, don’t you think?” I had been rocking my older brother’s worn-out fraternity T-shirts. Any look besides tha
t was going to be an improvement. Around then my asshole stepmother entered the room. She was probably smoking a cigarette or yelling at someone on the phone or something. I may seem as if I am taking some artistic liberties when describing her, but she is truly an evil and horrible person. But at that juncture in our relationship her depravity was just beginning to blossom.

  “I overheard your conversation,” she said in my general direction. “Were those boys you were hanging out with at camp gay?”

  “Don’t talk to me,” I replied. I attempted to converse with the woman as little as possible, but my father was probably trying to get some that night so he said, “Answer your stepmother.”

  “I don’t fucking know,” I replied.

  “LANGUAGE!” my father yelled.

  “Listen lady, I am twelve. I think it’s a bit early to be making generalizations about my peers’ sexuality at such a tender age.”

  They both just looked at me. I was such a smart-ass, neither one of them ever knew what to do with me. My stepmother looked at me and in her eyes I saw the venom of a thousand poisonous snakes. She had her idea of what boys should and shouldn’t be doing. I believe that was when she hatched her plan to destroy me once and for all.

  The rest of the school year went off effortlessly. The highlight was being cast in the school production of The Music Man. It was an amazing event, which in my mind was to lead up to my monumental return to Stagedoor, a better performer, but still as fat as ever. I could pull off Tony—they had no idea what they were in for. I had taken every dance class and singing lesson I could afford and was going to rock the auditions that summer. In May I went to my father’s house to fill out what I thought were forms for the classes I wanted to take at Stagedoor that summer. I was so excited to be returning to the camp where I felt I could be myself. I had mailed Jesse a letter earlier that week telling him how fabulous camp was going to be that summer and that I secretly hoped we would go to second, which wasn’t much of a secret if I told him about it. However, he had just bleached his hair, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about his new look. When my dad and stepmother put the paperwork in front of me, I noticed the letterhead read Hidden Crest and not Stagedoor.