Eating My Feelings

by Mark Rosenberg

  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.

  BLOW-JOB BETTY

  With a new lease on life and a much skinnier facade, our heroine continued through high school, thinking his food issues had come to an end. How wrong he was. Now it was the people around him who had Mark not only questioning his ability to be accepted by his peers, but also wondering: What the fuck is so great about Chili’s?

  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 sh
ort 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.”

  “Wow!” I said. I had never gotten a blow job. I certainly knew when I did get a blow job that I did not want to get one from someone who had a vagina.

  “She’s amazing at it,” Buck said.

  “Really?”

  The only time I had seen anyone give a blow job was the rare occasions when no one was in my home and I could download gay porn onto my mother’s computer without anyone catching me. I could not believe that such antics were taking place in my very own high school. I really should have known better, since three dumb bitches had gotten knocked up earlier that year and Lord knows there was no immaculate conception involved. Everyone had been getting some but me.

  After class, I quickly found Maureen to consult with her about my latest findings.

  “Maureen, did you know that Betty gives Buck blow jobs every Saturday night behind the Chili’s?” I asked.

  “Duh!” she replied. “Betty gives everyone blow jobs behind the Chili’s. It’s like her claim to fame.”

  “Really?” Had I been living under a rock for the last three years?

  “Yeah,” Maureen said. “Jeff, Curtis, Brian, Michael, Cameron, Bill, Ted …” The list went on and on. “She’s, like, known for it, you know?”

  “No, I did not know, but I am glad I found this out when I did.”

  “Why?” Maureen asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I really wanted to get a blow job, but knew I did not like girls. I was really more curious about what it felt like. I had obviously not come out of the closet, but considering I did not play sports, was involved in theater, and had a fondness for soap operas and show tunes, it was pretty clear to everyone that I was a huge homo. However, the only other gay kid at our school was this crazy black kid named Darius whom everyone hated and I certainly could not get a blow job from him. Everyone would find out and hate me too. “This is all very interesting. Everyone is getting blow jobs except me.”

  “It’s okay, Mark. You will get a blow job sooner or later.”

  Fall passed and Betty continued giving Buck his weekly blow job behind the Chili’s until January rolled around and I got word from Maureen and Angie that Betty was no longer blowing Buck behind the now-infamous chain restaurant.

  “I don’t know,” Maureen said, “something about Betty asking Buck to go down on her and him refusing to do it.”

  “What?” I replied. “I thought this was like a barter system. Betty gets free meals at Chili’s and Buck gets free blow jobs.”

  “I guess not,” Maureen said.

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “Besides, would you want to go down on Betty?”

  The thought repulsed me. I wanted to go down on a girl about as much as I wanted a sandpaper hand job from Marlon Brando circa The Godfather. But I couldn’t let anyone know about my disgust with vaginas just yet. I had to play it cool.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe if we went to the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday’s or something and I was in the right mood.”

  “Seriously? She’s pretty foul,” Maureen said, “and she’s given blow jobs to, like, half the school.”

  “True,” I replied. And she was a girl. Nasty.

  Shortly after this exchange I found Betty in her car, ready to drive to McDonald’s for lunch. I hopped in.

  “Hey, Betty,” I said.

  “What’s up, Mark?” she replied.

  “Nothing much. I heard that you and Buck aren’t going out anymore. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “He just wasn’t giving me what I wanted.”

  “So I heard. Listen, I was wondering if you wanted to get dinner this weekend.”

  “Why not? I am free Saturday night. I guess I will be free every Saturday night from now on.”

  “Maybe not,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, maybe we could date,” I said. I really did not want to date Betty, or any other girl for that matter, but I did want a blow job, so I had to play it cool.

  “Really?” she said as her eyes lit up.

  “Why not?” I replied. “Let’s meet up at the mall on Saturday night. They just opened a new Chevys. We can eat there.”

  “Perfect.”

  In high school I discovered the beauty of the tanning salon. I had really bad acne as a teenager and I had read in Cosmopolitan that tanning could decrease acne. I was the only teenager at Gaithersburg High School who walked into class every day looking like George Hamilton, and I loved it. Everyone would always ask me if I had taken a trip to an exotic locale the weekend before. I never answered, thinking my peers would think I was cooler than them if I left it to their imagination. But I am sure they knew the only trip I had taken recently was to the Swiss Alps with Julie Andrews and the rest of the crew from The Sound of Music.

  That Saturday I went to the tanning salon at the mall before meeting Betty. After tanning, I stepped outside and smoked a cigarette as I waited for cancer to come and bitch-slap me from behind. Finally, I saw Betty’s car pull up to the Chevys at the mall and greeted her.

  “Hey, Betty,” I said as she got out of her car. She was such a mess. Her hair was always all over the place and those braces. The thought of kissing her repulsed me, but I really wanted a blow job.

  “Mark,” she said as she greeted me, “so great to see you.” We had just seen each other the previous day at school and had planned on meeting, so I was not exactly sure why seeing me surprised her, but I let it slide. Maybe she thought I wasn’t going to show. I wanted that blow job and would risk anything to get it.

  We went to Chevys and chatted. Betty told me about her relationship with Buck and how things hadn’t worked out. I didn’t want to tell her the real reason things didn’t work out was because he didn’t want to go down on her, but instead I sat and listened intently.

  “I really liked Buck,” Betty said.

  “Yeah, he’s a good guy,” I replied. “I am not always comfortable with his fashion choices, but he’s a good guy.”

  “Well, we’re dating now, so I guess it doesn’t matte
r.”

  “Right,” I said. I couldn’t believe I was in a full-blown relationship. We were discussing such adult topics, like her past flings and the rise of Britney Spears on the Billboard charts. Little did we know at the time that Britney would be a full-blown superstar. But how can you predict magic like that happening? You just can’t. Anyway, when dinner was over, I walked Betty to her car and we kissed. It was the first time I had kissed a girl and it was kind of slimy. She stuck her tongue down my throat and began wiggling it around. I did the same, except I was pretending Bailey from Party of Five was on the receiving end of my kiss. It made it all worth it. However, I was a little miffed that I had taken her to dinner and didn’t get my complimentary blow job. Wasn’t this how relationships worked? I was confused.

  On Monday, I ran in to Buck and told him what had happened.

  “BUCKY,” I yelled as history class was about to begin.

  “What up, Rosie?”

  “Nothing,” I said pointing to my pants. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Uh, what do you mean?”

  “I went out with Betty on Saturday night. I took her to Chevys and was expecting a blow job afterward, but got nothing. What the fuck?”

  “Mark, Mark, Mark,” Buck said. “You have to take her to Chili’s.”

  “What fucking difference does it make?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he continued. “Something about that restaurant really turns that girl on.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. I have taken her to P.F. Chang’s, T.G.I. Friday’s, Macaroni Grill, you name it. The only time I have gotten a blow job out of that girl is after Chili’s.”

  “Christ!” I replied. Not that I didn’t like Chili’s, it was just out of the way and not nearly as convenient as, say, the Cheesecake Factory that was right down the street from my house.

  “Just take her to Chili’s. You’ll get your blow job.”

  The next Saturday came around and Betty and I were off to Chili’s. When we got there, Betty ordered almost everything off the menu. Perhaps Buck was right, perhaps this place did get Betty off. We barely spoke throughout the entire meal. I have never seen anyone go down on a sampler platter the way Betty did that night, and I was hoping her feeding frenzy was a preview of what was to come. After dinner was over, Betty and I got into the car and she drove me behind the Chili’s and we both hopped into the backseat.