Blackouts and Breakdowns. Mark Brennan Rosenberg
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lyrics to every song and it would occupy our time between cities. Amazingly, I was the only one in that car who turned out gay. However, midway through our trip, when I was getting ready to belt out my big solo number, Adelaide’s Lament, I noticed that my brother was totally forgetting that he was supposed to be providing my back-up.
“Kevin, what the hell is wrong with you?” I yelled, “When I say, ‘le drip, le drip, the post nasal drip’, is when you come in to back me up. How many times have we rehearsed this?”
“Sorry,” my brother said.
“Dad, rewind the tape. We are going to do this until Kevin can get it right,” I was a bossy little queen, even then. “I just don’t understand it Kevin, this is what we do every single Tuesday morning. You know your part, now fucking do it. Dad is Nathan Detroit, I am Adelaide and you are back up for Nicely Nicely when we do the big Guys and Dolls finale, Jesus!”
All of the sudden, my brother let out a wail like nothing I had ever heard before. He began screaming at the top of his lungs. My father panicked. Not knowing what to do he turned his head around to see what my brother was screaming about. However, when he turned his head around, he also turned the steering wheel with it. Before he knew it, his Jeep was swerving out of control. He tried to steer it back in the right direction but before he could, he crashed into a tree. He grasped me with a soccer mom death grip and the airbags exploded into the front seat of the car. My father panicked, but everyone inside the car was in one piece. After gathering his bearings, he turned around to see my brother still crying hysterically.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?” My father screamed into the back seat of the car.
“I JUST SHIT MY PANTS!!!” my brother screamed at the top of his lungs.
“What?” my father asked again.
“I. SHIT,” breath, sob, “MY. PAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNTTTTSSSS!!!!!!”
Not knowing what to do, I began laughing hysterically until my father knocked me upside the head.
“Why didn’t you just ask me to stop the car?” my father asked.
“BEEEECCCCCAAAAUUUUSEEEEEE!” my brother was hysterical. I had never seen him like this before. Aside from the time that he found my mother putting Christmas presents out under the tree one year even thought she explained to him that she was just “Santa’s Helper”.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” my father asked.
“You – told – us -- we couldn’t” -- sob, sob, sob, deep breath, “pull the car over to stop to go to the bathroom. If we did, it would make us late.”
I laughed, “looks like we are going to be late anyway.” I was then smacked upside the head again.
“If it’s an emergency we can always stop,” my father said.
“But you hate to be late. That’s why we have to sleep in our school clothes every night,” Kevin replied.
My father’s face went lax. It was as if he could finally see the toll all of this was taking on us. The fighting, the early morning car trips, the custody battles. He knew just the person who was to blame. He picked up his Zack Morris style car phone and dialed.
“God damn it Pat!” he yelled into the phone as my mother picked up, “get your ass over to the school and bring Kevin some clothes. He just shit his pants and he is going to need a change of clothes.”
“God damn it Keith!” my mother yelled back into the phone.
“God damn it Pat, this is all your fault!” my father said. They continued to bicker for an hour while my brother sat in his shit filled pants and I tried to salvage the cast recording of Guys and Dolls from the tape player.
My father drove his wrecked Jeep to school and my mother dropped off clothes for my brother. My brother’s shame has since been restored but that was the last time we visited my father during the week.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE BABY JESUS
Nancy Reagan was right. Marijuana is the gateway drug. Even though she had stolen Ronald Reagan away from my beloved Jane Wyman, star of the greatest show ever on television, Falcon Crest, Nancy hit the nail right on the head when she told everyone to say no to drugs. But when you are in high school and everyone else is doing it, it just seems like the thing to do. Had I just said “no”, it would have saved me a lot of time experimenting with drugs in college while I was trying to “find myself.” I have heard very few people have found themselves while they are face down in a pile of cocaine, but that’s just me. Needless to say, my high school years were filled with smoking weed and carrying on like a complete moron.
I first attempted to smoke weed with my friend Maureen, who I had known for quite a few years. She invited a few of our friends over to her house for a “pow-wow.” We were all going to smoke weed out of a peace pipe and get to know each other better. The first time I smoked, I didn’t feel much, but sure enough, after a few more tries, I was high as a kite. I loved the feeling of getting high. It was as if nothing else in the world was going on when you were high. You’re just floating on a cloud, watching everything go by in slow motion. A few months after I first tried smoking, I was a full-fledged pothead. I would skip class during the day and drive around with Maureen and the rest of our friends and get high and eat a lot of junk food. It was a great way to spend the last few months of high school and since I had already managed to get into a good university, I didn’t really care anymore. Life was good for now and I was going to enjoy it before adulthood really began.
My best friend in high school was Evelyn. She was a Russian Jew, who had dark skin and everyone always assumed she was a Mexican or half white and half black, but she was just plain old Russian Evelyn. Evelyn was a little more conservative than I was. She did not always take the chances that I took and always thought long and hard about what her next move in life was going to be. I was a free spirit and just went along with whatever seemed fun at the time. But Evelyn would always chime in and let me know what the difference between right and wrong was and that I was usually making the wrong decision. The two of us had been inseparable in high school. We did pretty much everything together and I truly loved her as a fag-hag. She, of course, did not know she was a fag-hag at the time, but she was a little heavier theatre geek and I was her scrawny ABBA loving soap opera fan. If that isn’t a fag/fag-hag relationship than I don’t know what is. The two of us had befriended Stephanie Buck, who was a blonde airhead with a heart of gold and the three of us were like the three musketeers. The three musketeers who; were high most of the time. Our last year of high school was spent smoking weed, singing ABBA and show-tunes and driving around causing trouble wherever we went.
One night before Christmas of our senior year of high school, Evelyn and I were driving around, smoking a blunt, waiting to pick up Stephanie from a family dinner. Somewhere along the way, we made a wrong turn and Evelyn and I found ourselves lost.
“Where the hell are we?” Evelyn asked.
“Doe Lane,” I replied.
“Doe?”
“Yea, as in a deer, a female deer.”
“Oh, gotcha,” she replied. Of course, we had to bring it back to musical theatre. We drove around but still could not figure out where we were. Evelyn made another right turn, this time onto Buck Lane.
“Look Evelyn,” I said. “We’re on Buck Lane. Wouldn’t it be funny if Stephanie lived on Buck Lane. Then she would be Stephanie Buck of Buck Lane. Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed as if what I had said was the funniest thing she had ever heard. It wasn’t. Shortly after, we found Stephanie’s house and entered. All of her family had been there for a holiday dinner and everyone was pretty loaded.
“Hey Stephanie,” I said looking like Cheech. “Did you know there is a street called Buck Lane?”
“No shit,” Stephanie replied. “That’s awesome.”
“Yea, it’s right around the corner.”
Stephanie’s