Blackouts and Breakdowns

BLACKOUTS

AND

BREAKDOWNS

BY

MARK BRENNAN ROSENBERG

Copyright © 2011

Newcomer Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in eBook format by Newcomer Press

Converted by
http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-0-9817-4241-0

Cover Design by: Cameron Northey

I happily dedicate this book to:

All My Children’s
Erica Kane.

Watching you bed every man in Pine Valley and

looking so damn good doing it, is an inspiration to me

and made me the man I am today.

INTRODUCTION

Imagine a summer filled with fabulous trips to the beach, weekend excursions to the mountains and a fabulous group of friends that hung on your every word. Imagine having a successful doctor as a boyfriend and having the best sex of your life. Imagine if you will, living in a world without any consequences and having the time of your life. Now imagine, not remembering half of it. By the summer of 2008, my drinking had taken on a life of its own. I was constantly partying and carrying on, while ignoring the important aspects of my life. I felt I had tried to make it work in D.C., where I was living at the time, but the two of us were simply not a fit. I am a New Yorker after all, and as far as I am concerned, there is nowhere else to live. I had moved to D.C. on a whim and after less than a year, I was done. My real friends were in New York and I knew if I had just put forth a little more effort, I would be back where I belonged, living the life I had always imagined I would lead. But the truth was, I had more than enough time and plenty of opportunities to have that life and ended up pissing it away either by making bad decisions or conducting inappropriate behavior wherever I went. I had all but given up any dream of returning to New York. I would talk about moving back, and take an occasional interview, but I was not putting forth the effort required to make a happy life for myself. I was twenty-five years old, waiting tables and not doing much to become the respected adult that I thought I deserved to be. My life had turned into a constant bar crawl, hopping from bar to bar, flirting with acquaintances and making false promises to myself, and everyone around me. The only thing I began looking forward to was having that first drink. But one drink always led to many and in a short time it became clear to everyone around me that a problem was brewing, literally.

SHIT SHOW

I was only seven years old when my parents divorced. At the time, I was devastated, thinking their choice to separate was going to ruin my life.
Looking back on it, it was most likely the best possible choice for everyone involved.
They hated each other so much, had they stayed together for the remainder of my childhood, someone would have ended up dead or even worse, paralyzed.
They had knock down drag out fights where chairs were thrown, obscenities flew out of their mouths and someone always ended up hysterically sobbing in a corner crying for their mother.
That someone was usually my father.
Both of my parents have huge personalities and they were just not a good fit.
As a child who grew up watching far too much daytime television where fights such as these were prevalent, I did not really understand what the big deal was.
It wasn’t until I was discussing the night that my mother hurled a place setting at my father’s head, over a snack pack on the playground with my friend Brian, that I realized these were not normal dinnertime activities.

“But on
One Life to Live
, when Gabrielle slapped Max in the face after she found out he had an affair, all was forgiven.
But the shit really hit the fan when Gabrielle found out she was pregnant with Max’s baby,” I said as I swung back and forth with the remains of pudding all over my face.

“What’s an affair?” my friend Brian asked.

“I think it’s like when you share your lunch with another girl or something,” I responded“Oh,” Brian said, “I don’t think my parents fight like that.”
Brian’s parents did not seem like real people to me.
His father was the local weatherman and came on my TV right before Erica Kane.
I always asked him if they knew each other, but he insisted they didn’t.

“My parents fight like they do on TV. So it must be OK, right?”

Brian and I concluded that behavior like that was in fact normal and proceeded to smack any girl that came across our path that day.
After getting detention I realized that throwing things at people was not OK whether they did it on television or at home.

Shortly after my parents separated was when the real dramatics began.
Custody hearings, claims of adultery, unscrupulous affairs, surprise weddings, trips to exotic locales and the occasional surprise witness on the stand of a trial were everyday occurrences in the Rosenberg household.
I did not even need to tune into my favorite daytime dramas because my home was where the real action was.

After some time, things began to calm down a bit.
My father eventually married a horrible woman name Joyce, whose main role in everyone’s life was to make it as difficult as possible.
She was my personal arch nemesis.
She was the Brooke English to my Erica Kane.
She forced my father to relocate to Baltimore of all places, and since my parents had joint custody, once a week and every other weekend, my little brother Kevin and I were forced to trek up to Baltimore from D.C. to visit my father and his whore of a wife.
It was fun at first, but every Monday night my mother would drive us to Columbia, Maryland (a half-way point between Baltimore and Washington D.C.) and drop us off.
Then our father would pick us up and drive us the rest of the way to Baltimore.
Since we were still children, and had to go to school, my father would then drive us the next day from Baltimore back to D.C. at six in the morning for school.

It was a miserable existence.
At age ten, I was already addicted to coffee because there was no other way for me to make it through a sixteen-hour day without it.
Every other Tuesday, my brother and I would rise at a quarter to six in the morning, drive to D.C., go to school, participate in our after school activities and then go to daycare where our mother would then pick us up and we would have a family dinner.

Our weekly trips through scenic Maryland were fun for a while, but they quickly became draining.
My little brother would flat out fall asleep during school and by mid-morning I would get the shakes from caffeine withdrawal.
Something had to be done.

“I have a brilliant idea!” my father proclaimed on one of our infamous trips to Baltimore.
“Tonight, you will sleep in your school clothes for tomorrow.
I will have your lunches packed and you can eat breakfast in the car.
I have also mapped out an entirely new route to school that will save us exactly fifteen minutes.
But we can’t stop on the way.
There will be no bathroom breaks, so if you have to take a shit, you are just going to have to hold it.
I bet your whore of a mother could not have come up with a plan like that!”

My ten year old face looked at my father as he was driving his Jeep up Route 95 towards Baltimore and replied, “my whore of a mother probably wouldn’t have made her children get up at the ass crack of dawn to go to school just so she could prove a point.”

“Don’t say ass, and don’t call your mother a whore,” my father replied.

“But you…”

“I am allowed to call your mother a whore – you are not.”

My father’s brilliant plan worked for a few weeks.
Aside from our clothes being wrinkled everyday due to the fact that we slept in them the night before and my brother getting two cavities because he bypassed brushing his teeth altogether, things were going as planned until one morning, when my father’s plan completely backfired.

We were on our way to D.C. one Tuesday morning and all was well.
My father popped the cast recording of
Guys and Dolls
into the tape player and we were all singing along.
We had just recently seen the revival of the show on Broadway and the three of us would sing all of the 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.