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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