“It’s like a cow chewing its cud,” I would explain. “When I swallow my food, it comes back up, so I chew it and then swallow it again.”
This clever comparison was never enough to win over my peers. They still stared as I jerked my head back in class and shrieked when a once-chewed Snickers bar would reappear in my mouth.
“My esophagus is loose so I can’t keep food down.”
They didn’t know what an esophagus was, so this didn’t help either. There were some foods that were worse than others… bananas and crackers would generally settle well at the bottom of my stomach, but pizza and chocolate shot back up my throat like Mentos in soda. An allergy to pizza and chocolate made me the ultimate buzzkill at birthday parties… “Acid Reflux Disease,” I told the parents.
But by 4th Grade I wasn’t too concerned with the other kids; I ate lunch with an autistic girl who didn’t mind my regurgitations. Instead, I channeled my energy into spying on my neighbors, two students from the U of Pitt. I would race off of the school bus, grab a grape fruit leather from the kitchen cabinet, and take my perch at my second-story window where my parents assumed I was doing homework. “Will and Emily’s Humble Abode,” read the hand-painted poster on the kitchen wall. Will and Emily lived together without ever kissing or even hugging… they just talked every once and a while. This is what drew me to them originally; why were they living together if they didn’t kiss? While my peers watched Arthur and the Magic School Bus, I watched my own show through bright red binoculars. While they studied phonics and math, I studied college students, the unkempt, lazy semi-adults that we were all going to become. I was preparing for the future.
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On September 7th of my 4th Grade year, Emily was making macaroni and cheese. She poured the rigid noodles and the powdered cheese packet into her favorite brown bowl, dusted them with water and then let the microwave do the rest. She sat down at the plastic foldout kitchen table and opened her plastic foldout orange Mac book (College kids still play with toys, I noted). I spun the plastic knob on top of the binoculars all the way to the right to zoom. I watched as she opened her e-mail account and deleted more than half of her new letters. Then she returned to her favorite website, a colorful page that read “Medieval Mania.” She could spend hours browsing muddy, ankle-long gowns and jewel-encrusted swords with dull tips. Today, she found a silver shield with a snake slithering around its border and took a plastic card out of her pocket.
“Spoiled assholes,” my dad liked to say about our neighbors. “Still sucking from their parents’ tits. Promise me you won’t become one of them.”
Will entered the kitchen, and the microwave timer went off as if triggered by his presence. He brought Emily’s macaroni over to her and slid her a plastic spoon. She kept her eyes glued to the screen, so he proceeded to the fridge and slipped a beer out of a box labeled “EMILY’S BEER.” He slipped the cool bottle into his crotch and hobbled out of the kitchen with an awkward bulge. (A bit of the grape leather crawled back up my throat. I stuck out my tongue; it looked the same as it had going down.)
Will called something to her as he left the room, but Emily remained hidden under her black mop of hair. I hadn’t seen her make eye contact with him for about a month.
Upstairs, Will flipped his long blonde locks to the right. He opened his door, removed the beer from below his belt and tossed it to the pale white man in his bed. The guy ripped the cap off with his teeth and drank it in the time it took for Will to throw off his black-and-white striped t-shirt and crawl under the deep blue sheets. Will adjusted his body to fit his partner’s mold. The guy looked ghostly against Will’s sunny skin.
Will had been having this guy over for about a month, and he usually closed the blinds when they went into the room together. But on September 7th, as they drifted into lazy afternoon sleep, Will’s blue eyes locked with the bulging glass pupils of my binocular. Before ducking, I read his lips: “What the fuck…”
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On the evening of September 8th, there was an enormous homemade sign blocking my view through Will and Emily’s window.
“STOP SPYING AND COME OVER,” it read. My food shot up my esophagus, for once from fear instead of my disorder.
My parents were listening to public radio. My blessed time on this Earth was ticking by fast, and I was just sitting in my room.
I had fantasized about this day for months, but I didn’t anticipate the roller coaster feeling I got in my gut as I slipped out the back door and walked up the crumbling concrete steps to Will and Emily’s front door.
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I remember thinking that Emily was a lot larger in person; her shadow smothered me at the door.
“Holy shit, he actually came. Damnit. Listen, buddy, I think you should-”
“DUUUDE!!!!!” Will parted the partygoers like Moses, grabbed my arm and pulled me into the house. The raw, stale stench of cheap beer and body sweat hit like a wall; I remembered my first trip to the zoo, and thinking that maybe animals were better in pictures. “HIT THE MUSIC! HIT THE MUSIC!” he screamed.
Will lifted me high above his head, and I met the wild eyes of thirty-some students in neon t-shirts and headbands. When Will spoke, they smiled, basking in his masculine energy and deep smoky voice.
“This,” he declared, “is the guest of honor.”
His friends erupted in laughter, whoops, and applause.
“Everything the light touches is yours, young man!”
They hollered and roared, and I beamed. Will handed me down, like a divine gift, to three identical tan girls.
“You want some pizza kiddo?”
I remember feeling the need to live up to Will’s lavish introduction. I needed to show them why I was the guest of honor.
“You bet, motherfucker!” My parents hadn’t figured out how to put child protection on HBO.
“What the fuck? Who is this kid?” They giggled and one of them brought me a slice of pepperoni. She bent down to my level, swished her straight brown hair out of her face and placed the greasy bread in my palm. I took a small bite of the end and swallowed as hard as I could.
“What’s your name buddy?”
“Ch--” The pizza rocketed back up my esophagus like a Japanese bullet train. My neck whipped back, and the doughy morsel popped back into my mouth.
“Wait, what just happened?”
I went into autopilot.
“It’s like a cow chewing its cud. When I swallow my food, it comes back up, so I chew it and then swallow it again.”
“HAAAA!!” This was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She spun to her identical friends. “You guys, you guys, guess what this kid just told me!” Satisfied, I leaned casually against the wall while word of my hilarious joke spread through the party like wildfire. Finally, I thought. I have found my friends, my equals. They get me. Across the room, Britney Spears stared back at me from a glossy poster with a white snake draped across her bare body. The girls at school loved her.
To be continued...
