Eating My Feelings (2 page)

“I KNOW!” I yelled. “I will go as Homey D. Clown for Halloween!”

“Who is Homey D. Clown?” my mother asked.

“He’s the funny ex-con-turned-hilarious-clown on
In Living Color
,” I said.

“I don’t know,” my mother said. “I’ll sleep on it and get back to you.”

The next day after school, we were off to Spencer’s Gifts to buy my new kick-ass Halloween costume. We bought a huge red Afro wig, makeup, and an outfit just like Homey’s. I was ecstatic that my mother was finally doing what I told her to do and thought it would be a nice segue into getting everything I wanted for Christmas. The next night was Halloween and fat kids everywhere were rejoicing, myself included. Halloween is the only holiday (aside from Thanksgiving and Kwanzaa, depending
on your religious beliefs) when every child acts like a complete fat-ass. Every Halloween I regaled in the fact that yet again I would be able to eat as much candy as I wanted to, without being judged by my bone-thin brothers for gorging like a pig.

That evening, I put on my costume and filled a sock with tennis balls, just like Homey’s. Red Afro wig: check. Yellow clown suit with big red buttons: check. Big floppy red shoes: double check. However, a very important aspect of the costume was missing. I just looked like a dumb-ass clown and it really wasn’t the look I was going for. I was pissed.

“MOM!” I yelled.

“What the fuck are you yelling about?” she replied. That Halloween, all of the adults were coming over to my parents’ house to get shit-faced while their kids went trick-or-treating. God bless the suburbs.

“I don’t look like Homey at all,” I said.

“Awww … you look cute,” one of my mom’s dumb drunk friends said.

“Seriously?” I replied. “I look like any dumb-ass, run-of-the-mill clown.”

“Mark! Language!” my mother said.

The adults all laughed as I turned around and walked up the stairs. I felt defeated. I thought I had the most amazing costume idea ever, but now I was regretting my brilliant plan. I wandered into my parents’ room to see if my mother had a red wedding dress lying around, thinking I could pull off Lucy Coe after all. After searching her closets for a hot second, I stumbled upon something of my father’s and came up with an even better idea.

The doorbell rang and my mother answered: “Hello, dear.”

“Hi, Mrs. Rosenberg,” Katie-Kelly-Katherine responded.

“Hi, ah, Carrie?”

“It’s Katie now.”

“Right,” my mother replied. “MAAAAARK! KATHY’S HEEEEERE!” She went back into the kitchen while Katie-Kelly-Katherine waited in the foyer. My house on Silverstone Court was amazing. We had a staircase that wrapped around the foyer, so every time I walked down it I pretended to be Krystle Carrington on the opening credits of
Dynasty
. Every morning, I would stroll down the stairs, stopping midway to pause, look at the camera that wasn’t there, and continue walking. I loved her and her shoulder pads. I wanted to be her and I was every time I would strut down that spiral staircase. But that evening, I had a surprise that may have been better than Krystle Carrington herself bursting through our front door with news that Denver Carrington had been taken over once again by Alexis. I officially had the best Halloween costume ever.

“Katie-Kelly-Katherine, what’s up?” I said as I breezed down the stairs.

“Mark,” she replied, “what’s all over your face?”

“Shoe polish,” I said as I made my way down the stairs and greeted Katie-Kelly-Katherine in the foyer. “Now I really look like Homey D. Clown!”

I had taken my father’s black shoe polish and smeared it all over my face. I thought, at age ten, that my Homey D. Clown costume would not be complete unless I was in blackface. In my mind, making fun of homeless people was a bad idea, but going out of doors as a satirical African American clown was completely acceptable.

“I suppose you do,” Katie-Kelly-Katherine said.

“Thanks. Pretty amazing, huh?”

“I guess so,” she said. “My mom doesn’t let me watch
In Living Color
, though. She doesn’t like the racial undertones. Whatever that means.”

“Not sure. Let’s get out of here.”

It was the best Halloween ever. Katie-Kelly-Katherine and I hit up all of the rich people’s houses and made out like bandits. Fortunately for me, my parading around the neighborhood in blackface didn’t have anyone batting an eye because we hadn’t yet come across a family of any color other than white. We wandered around all night collecting candy from everyone and our costumes were a hit. Katie-Kelly-Katherine totally looked like Sleeping Beauty and I, of course, looked exactly like Homey D. Clown. As we made our way back to Silverstone Court, we decided to hit up my neighbors for some last-minute treats. First we went to the Bauers’ house. They lived directly across the street from us. I think Mrs. Bauer was kind of a lush, but being in an upper-middle-class neighborhood, everyone called her “eccentric.”

“Oh hey,” Mrs. Bauer said as she opened the door to her home.

“Trick or treat!” Katie-Kelly-Katherine and I said in harmony.

“Look at you kids,” Mrs. Bauer said as the contents of her martini glass swished this way and that. “Candy? Is that you?”

“It’s Katie!”

“Well, you look just like Sleeping Beauty,” Mrs. Bauer said. “And who are you, young man?”

“It’s me, Mrs. Bauer. Mark Rosenberg,” I replied.

“Mark? What a costume! I barely recognized you,” Mrs. Bauer said. “You Rosenbergs. You’re Catholic. You’re Jewish. And apparently today, you’re black. Good luck with that,” she
said as she dumped candy into our pillowcases and slammed the door.

I wondered if she was hammered or just high on prescription pills as we made our way to their next-door neighbors, the Phillipses. They had a deaf son named Jeff, who we all hated. We may have hated him because he was deaf (kids can be so cruel), but he had a really bad attitude. Earlier in the year, being the fat, gay, equally-as-hated ten-year-old, I decided I was going to try and reach out to Jeff by learning sign language, which apparently pissed him off further. He was so mean to everyone; it’s no wonder he was home when we knocked on the Phillipses’ door for candy.

“Karen? Is that you?” Jeff said.

“It’s Katie!”

“Trick or treat, Jeff,” I said.

“We’re out of candy,” Jeff said.

“I couldn’t fully understand you because of your little ‘problem,’ ” Katie-Kelly-Katherine said, referring to the fact that Jeff was deaf, making it harder for us to understand him. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re out of candy?”

“Yeah. Seriously.”

“You’re such an asshole, Jeff,” I said.

“You’re just calling me an asshole because I’m deaf, aren’t you?”

“No, Jeff,” I responded. “I’m calling you an asshole because you’re an asshole. And my father is still pissed that your parents put up that sign that says Caution: Deaf Child, right in front of our mailbox.”

“You two suck! Get off of my property! And while you’re at it, wash that crap off your face, Mark. I may be deaf, but you look like a fool!” Jeff said as he slammed the door in our faces.

“God, I hate that kid,” I replied. He was almost as bad as that fucking Russian family that lived down the street who continued to refuse to take part in our American tradition of celebrating Halloween. We knew they were home; they just wouldn’t answer the door when we knocked. We then walked to the house directly next to ours, the Goodmans.

The Goodmans were like the Huxtables from
The Cosby Show
. The father was a doctor, the mother was just plain fabulous, and they were the only black family within a three-mile radius. I really liked Mike, their son, but he went to private school because they were cooler than us. Katie-Kelly-Katherine and I rolled up to their home and knocked on the door. Dr. Goodman answered.

“What. The. Fuck?” Dr. Goodman said.

“Trick or treat,” we said in unison.

“What the fuck is this?” Dr. Goodman asked.

“I’m Sleeping Beauty,” Katie-Kelly-Katherine said.

“And I’m Homey D. Clown,” I said. “Homey D. Clown. Homey D. Clown. Don’t mess around. Don’t mess around!” I sang.

“Nice costume, Cassie,” Dr. Goodman said.

“IT’S KATIE!”

“Mark, your costume is … interesting. Do your parents know you have been walking around in blackface?”

“Ummm … I actually can’t be sure,” I replied.

“Interesting. I am going to have to have a little talk with them,” Dr. Goodman said. “You know, that’s very racist.”

“I just didn’t want to be a hobo again,” I cried. My plight for the homeless continued: “I just feel so bad for them. I mean, they have nowhere to live. Essentially, they are home
less
. Without a home. Hence why they are called homeless people.”

“Yes, I understand, being homeless is a bad thing,” Dr. Goodman said. “Come inside.” Katie-Kelly-Katherine and I entered the Goodman home and Dr. Goodman gave us a forty-five-minute rundown of the tribulations of the African American and why blackface was racist. We did however get to enjoy a few musical numbers from
The Jazz Singer
, so it was not only educational, but entertaining as well. Just like a killer episode of
Reading Rainbow
.

I went home and washed the shoe polish off my face. I began counting the treats that I had acquired that evening. I always counted and categorized my Halloween candy so that my brothers wouldn’t get their grubby little hands on it. As I was sorting, my mother came into my room in a panic.

“MARK! DON’T EAT THAT CANDY!” she yelled.

“What the hell?” I said.

“There is a rapist or a serial killer or a child molester or something on the loose and he’s poisoned bags of candy,” my mother said. This was coming from a woman who believed pretty much anything she was told. Earlier that year, she was convinced that Bat Boy had given birth outside of the National Cathedral, so all of her children were told to steer clear. She was also an advertiser’s dream come true. If JoBeth Williams told my mother to buy Playtex, you better believe she bought it.

“Are you hammered right now?”

“No.” She paused. “Well … a little. But it’s true! Now give me your candy before you’re poisoned too,” she said as she gathered all of the candy that I had just categorized on my bed and dumped it into the trash can. Knowing I was not above eating out of a trash can, she took the can and dumped it into the garbage outside.

“DAMN THAT WOMAN!” I yelled. She had taken my
candy away, and with it she took my childhood as well. All I wanted to do was acquire as much candy as possible so I could gorge like a pig and not get judged for being a fat-ass, and now my mother had totally ruined my plan.

Because of this experience, I learned never to judge people by the color of their skin, what they look like, or where they are from, even when I was trying to use it to my advantage to get free food. I hate everyone regardless of any of that.

There is always a lot of confusion as to who belongs to what religion in my family. So let’s clear a few things up: My mother is Catholic. When she had her first child—my oldest brother, Tony—he was baptized and raised Catholic. While all of this was going down, my father—who is a Jew—was married to his first wife, a lovely woman named Faith. They had two daughters—twins, my sisters Kimmy and Jamie—and raised them Jewish. Then my father married my mother and adopted
my oldest brother, Tony, because his father had apparently been abducted by aliens and left my mother shortly after Tony was born. Then my parents got together and had me and my little brother, Kevin. So the Rosenberg clan is essentially the quintessential American family with a mixture of different religions, beliefs, and levels of guilt. When you mix Irish Catholic and Jewish, you have one drunk, guilty household on your hands.

When I was very little, my parents’ religious differences never interfered with everyday life. Kevin and I were both baptized and went to Catholic school and my father never seemed to mind. To appease my father our family even celebrated the important Jewish holidays, so he could teach his children about his own beliefs. All was quiet on the religious front. That is until my parents got a divorce and my father decided to remarry a Jewish whore named Stacey.

Stacey was more like a high-class escort with a law degree and less of a whore, but I hated her nonetheless and my hatred for her began early on. She was, in my eyes, evil in its purest form. She had the air of Cruela De Vil every time she walked in the room, except she had an even worse hairdo. I’m also pretty sure she had murdered a puppy or two before meeting my father. I believe that I hated Stacey so early on because my mother had this unwarranted assumption that she and my father had had an affair before he divorced my mother. With no evidence to prove her story as truth, I took my mother’s side without any question of whether she was right or not, as anyone would do. Shortly after Stacey and my father began dating, they got married and didn’t tell anyone. That is, until the day of my elementary school graduation. All five of my father’s children and Stacey’s son, Paco (who shared with me a mutual love of Julie Andrews films and cake. I liked him and would have considered
him an ally if his mother hadn’t danced on the devil’s playground), gathered at our favorite Chinese restaurant for what we thought was a casual evening of moo shu and shooting the shit, until my father dropped the biggest bombshell ever.

“We have news,” my father said as he bit into an eggroll.

“Your father and I got married,” Stacey said as she showed off the huge ring my father had given her.

“Is this a joke? I said. “Are we being filmed for
Candid Camera
or something?” Where was Dom DeLuise when I needed him most?