Maybe Mom's Adopted

"Everyone has an uncle who's an amateur magician." — Fox Mulder

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I went out to dinner last night with my more popular extended family, my mom's cousins who moved out west to Arizona before I was born. They — my nuclear family and extended family — were really close when they all lived in the same three-family house on Springfield Avenue in Newark; they're still relatively close, just not physically. Fact is, the only times they bother taking a trip up to New Jersey is when some cousin dies (which happens not infrequently given that a good eighty percent of the family is well into their geriatric years) or when some cousin gets married. In this case, it was for my cousin Jennifer's wedding, to which I wasn't invited and I'm not quite sure how to feel about that.

Since weddings get planned more in advance than funerals do, the nuclear family knew about the Arizona relatives' upcoming coming, and it was Dad's idea to get together with them in New York to celebrate my graduation very, very belatedly. Before I go on, I should say: everyone has an uncle who's an amateur magician, and my uncle Peter is mine. Actually, he's an amateur hypnotist, but same difference — he's a loud, gregarious, irritating attention-hog. So is his wife, who teaches physical education down in the desert, and their three grown kids, providing more inconclusive evidence in the nature-versus-nurture debate. But I figured I should be a good sport about it, I'd get some decent free food, and, as bitchy as I'm being right now, I really do want to get to know the extended family better.

Okay, that last one's not true. In the spirit of schadenfreude that envelops me, I really want the rest of the family to be estranged and alienated from each other as I am from them. But that goal becomes easier and easier the closer I am to the family. Anyway, Mom and Dad told me that it would just be Peter and his wife, Vicky, coming to this little shindig, and I figured that it couldn't be that bad especially since I made Dad promise myriad times that he'd be on his best behavior. (Last May, we had a graduation dinner with the people who, for twenty-two years, I believed were my last remaining relatives in central New Jersey. It couldn't have possibly been more embarrassing. There was a miscommunication, and Mom made reservations at a restaurant Dad didn't like, so he turned surly and aloof for the whole meal. Then Mom, with her infinite lack of compassion, kept on goading him to feel better and intruding upon his reserve, which just made him angrier.)

Now, what I didn't realize about Peter and Vicky was that... remember when you were in high school, your parents were out of town, and you threw a party for some friends? Me either. Cause that never happened. But if your parents weren't quite as omnipresent as mine, you probably had this one friend who you told about the party and then (s)he told fifty-eight other people and suddenly there were strangers and junkies and ex-cons at your party. Well, Peter is that one friend. Peter told his daughters Gina and Donna, who were supposed to fly back west right after the wedding. Gina and Donna brought the guys they fuck at night, as well as their cousin Stacy, the dancer. Stacy brought her parents Joanne and Eddie, who I'd never seen before in my life. And Donna called some dude Sammy from Brooklyn, who brought Trisha along, all to celebrate my fucking graduation!!! 'Cept it was really all about the extended family getting together and leaving me out, as usual. I hope they die.

Fine, that's harsh. It's simply frustrating being in this group of people with whom you're fundamentally incompatible.

Also, we didn't get to eat where I wanted to eat. Dad insisted on making a shitload of arbitrary rules when it came to choosing the restaurant where we were celebrating my graduation, all designed to rule out every restaurant in New York City with the except of Dad's favorite hangout, an Italian place two blocks from Columbia called Cafe Pertutti, where there's nothing on the menu that I eat. It had to be an Italian place, cause the Arizona relatives are uncomfortable around sushi (as if pasta and raw fish are the only edible things on the planet); Brooklyn was too far out of the way (but no more than Morningside Heights); they had to have round tables so all fifteen of us could talk to each other. Of course, this is all coming from a guy who insists that we never park his car in a parking lot, so you'd think that sooner or later, we'd get used to this anal behavior.

He didn't get his way on the round table thing, I'm seated at one end of the table, awkwardly sandwiched between Mom and Dad. Naturally, the conversation turns to how great the wedding was — the wedding to which I wasn't invited — and how the caterers were fattening up the guests to sacrifice them to the bride and groom. No, I'm just kidding. Ha ha. There was lots of food, that's the point. And lots to drink. And apparently Mom was doing shots. Off some co-ed's stomach. No, I'm just kidding again. Ha ha. Mom doing shots is disturbing enough. Seriously: I've never done shots, and thanks to these crazy frat-boy Arizona relatives, Mom is subsuming the identity that I'm too timid to have. Bitch!

And I'm sure there's more than a little resentment hanging around from the fact that I'm unwillingly estranged from all these folk. Like I said, I used to think I had exactly two relatives living within driving distance; turns out there's an entire additional branch of the family — the Jennifer branch — living about half an hour away. But from my point of view, they might as well live in Singapore — with all the e-mail and phones and horseless carraiges we've got nowadays, I know absolutely nothing about these people other than the fact that they ask about me on the blue moons when they see my mom.

You know what, fuck it. I give up. From this moment on, I officially repudiate my extended family, my cousins, my aunts, my uncles, everybody once, twice, and thrice removed. Screw you all.

I find moments like this liberating. Now I need to get rich so I can leave them all out of my will. :)