Volume 5, Entry 5: Doppelgänger

That big fat cartoon in the mirror

Ms. Wilde let us choose which Shakespeare play we’d read in AP Lit. Seniors typically read Hamlet, but she offered us Macbeth as an alternative. Not a fan of reading plays, but especially ones by the Bard, I so appreciated having some say that I embraced the man’s work for the first time. The whole class did: everyone voted for Scottish royal drama over Danish.

After several days of reading Macbeth, discussing its themes, and watching excerpts from filmed adaptations, Ms. Wilde assigned us our summative assignment for the unit: reinterpret one act using characters and stylings from a different work of media.

It’s a classic English assignment: creative, collaborative, and current, no matter where it surfaces in a curriculum. Today, the same task is probably a video project, but in 2004, no one had a digital camcorder in their pocket, so we performed live.

My group consisted of four people: me, Kayte (the girl I had always liked), Robert (the guy she had always liked), and Stacy (the eventual valedictorian). We transformed our assigned act into an episode of Disney’s Recess, a wholesome animated series that aired from 1997 to 2001. The show featured six major characters, giving us options to build our Macbeth around.

Stacy chose Ashley Spinelli, the scrappy tomboy, which suited Kayte, because she wanted to be Gretchen Grundler, the brilliant nerd. That left four for Robert and me to pick from, and we made our selections quickly: Robert would be the upbeat athlete Vince LaSalle, while I would portray the group’s cunning leader, T.J. Detweiler.

Recess succeeded thanks to its nostalgia-junior approach and its characters fitting broad tropes recognizable on kids’ programming. We all grew up with jocks, nerds, and troublemakers; everyone could relate to somebody. Our Shakespearean port was darker, certainly—T.J. was never wracked with guilt after murdering King Bob, nor was Gretchen manipulative like Lady Macbeth on the show—but it worked well as we knew the characters well. Our script came together quickly, and I was excited to perform. There was even some murmured excitement when we announced our vision to the class.

On the day of our performance, I dressed as T.J. Sliding a borrowed green Del Monte jacket from my dad’s closet over a simple white t-shirt and flipping my red Cardinals hat backward, I had the aesthetic down. All four of us did. I wish I had a photo of us in costume.

Before the bell rang and Ms. Wilde opened class and invited us up to start, we sat idly and fully costumed in our desks. I felt legitimately psyched to be dressed as my favorite character from my then-favorite show. T.J., the cool and charismatic driving force behind a tight-knit group of friends, was the kind of guy I wanted to be. I sat tall.

Until someone in the class leaned over.

“Aw, man,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“You’re T.J.? C’mon! How can you not be Mikey?”

“I know!” the girl next to him agreed. “You’re totally Mikey!”

I said nothing.

“Yeah. I thought for sure we were going to see Mikey.”

“Well, you’re not,” I snapped back before burying my nose into our script.

If my hostile reaction seems out of place, let me explain. Mikey Blumberg was the food-obsessed, squeaky-voiced, foolish pacifist of the Recess gang. The character was sweet but always making silly proclamations, always decrying conflict, and always, always, always downing vast quantities of food. Mikey Blumberg was the fat kid on Recess.

Blonde, round, and utterly massive, Mikey Blumberg was also a dead ringer for me. Everyone saw the resemblance, and everyone made sure I noticed it, too.

They didn’t need to. It did not escape my notice. I saw Mikey Blumberg every single day.

I saw him in the mirror.

*****

Because Michael was either the number one or two most popular name given to boys in the United States from 1954 to 2008¹, my name often left me feeling generic. There were always other Michaels in my classes and on my soccer teams. Characters on TV and in movies were regularly named Mike. Mikes and Michaels were everywhere.

No Mike or Michael stuck to me like Mikey Blumberg. His uncanny resemblance to me was awful enough, but then they gave him my name, too. The comparison became inescapable. People clamor for representation in popular media, but I got stuck seeing myself on TV in the fat kid. I’d have given anything to make Mikey Blumberg disappear from the Disney afternoon lineup.

Mikey Blumberg’s physicality haunted me. He had these beefy arms seemingly drawn from photos of mine in middle school, flabby and round like carved hams. His gargantuan gut towered over his peers, large enough that he might have swallowed a few kindergartners, and that stomach showed under his shirt, two little lines sketched tangent to its top in every shot. Mikey’s basic white t-shirt had this tight collar that squeezed his tree trunk neck; its feeble short sleeves suggested he breached every garment he slid on, and his lumpy brown pants covered short, stubby legs that rendered two-thirds of his body into a ballooning torso.

An issue could also be taken with his face. Mikey’s nose was ovular with two clear dots that made it as vaguely porcine as my own, inspiring peers to oink at me for years. He also had this dopey, vacant grin, his mouth open and perpetually primed for consuming vast quantities of food. His was the perfect mouth and body for gluttony; his defining moment in the theme song showed him scarfing down a sandwich with at least twenty layers before unleashing a universe-rattling belch.

I could have endured it all were it not for his hair. The creators also gave Mikey this crop of blonde hair that just had to match mine. The same color, the same generic cut—everything. We didn’t just share a name or a vague shape: we were dead ringers, Mikey Blumberg and me. Everyone could see it.

And fuck did that suck.

Growing up, only one person called me Mikey: Joey’s mom, Veeva. Her boys, Joseph and Donald, were Joey and Donny, respectively, so I naturally became Mikey. I understood the pattern, and I loved Veeva like a second mom. She could call me that.

But when Recess began gaining popularity, suddenly, others did, too. They couldn’t help it: they watched Recess, so they watched Mikey. I was Mikey in the flabby flesh. I don’t think they even meant to—it just slipped out. We were easily confused. I stopped wearing brown pants as an evasive maneuver—no need to encourage the conflation.

I got enough of that in the bathroom. Sucking in my gut made no dent in the reflected image: there was fucking Mikey Blumberg. Every time. My fingers would squeeze my rotund arms, trying to mold them like clay into any shape but that of Mikey’s. Pressing my thumb down on my nose for extended intervals never lowered its swinely arch. I felt trapped in Mikey’s body, which was worse because it was actually mine.

If my repulsion toward Mikey makes my affection for Recess implausible, I can explain: I adored T.J. instead. I did everything I could to be like T.J. I concentrated on T.J., wrote big-hearted pieces relating to T.J., and claimed T.J. as my character in skits. If I attached myself sufficiently to a different kid—a cool kid—and ignored my similarities with Mikey Blumberg, I reasoned, others would, too. I needed to embrace Recess so no one would ask, “Have you seen that show Recess?” and then immediately follow up with, “Because there’s this character who looks…”

As I aged, I sought distance from Mikey in the mirror. When my chin began sprouting reddish hairs in my junior year, I rejoiced; the fourth-grade fatty couldn’t grow a goatee. In 2008, an optometrist told me I didn’t need glasses, but my eyes showed signs of deterioration. I begged him to prescribe me a pair that would further distinguish me from Mikey. I avoided plain white tops, I sported baseball caps, I started tucking in my shirts or wearing NFL jerseys—anything to extricate myself from Mikey Blumberg’s image.

People still called it out. I’d take off my glasses to clean them, and they’d start, “Hey, have you seen…” and I would die inside before they could pronounce the R. I had thought playing Macbeth in T.J.’s green jacket, blue jeans, and red hat might finally absolve me of Mikey, but classmates saw through it. They bemoaned that I wasn’t embracing my obvious clone. They didn’t realize the comparison was unflattering; they loved the friendly giant of the Third Street playground. Of course they did—they didn’t see him every time they brushed their teeth.

I, on the other hand, saw Mikey Blumberg everywhere: in a suit at Honor Choir, in uniform before a playoff game, underneath a red graduation robe. No matter that I came to double and triple the character’s age. In a caricature or photograph, in the rearview mirror or in a polished spoon, lying in bed or receiving an award, I saw Mikey Blumberg.

Recess ended in 2001, but it continued airing episodes for me.

Mikey Blumberg never left me alone.

*****

Because I moved into this house at the end of 2015, certain elements remain exactly as I found them. Yes, I’ve had to replace the HVAC system, but many of the light fixtures are the same ones I originally inherited. I’ve never changed a single bulb in the kitchen, for instance.

Until a few months ago, the same was true in my bathroom. There are nine bulbs in there, with two rows of four above the sinks and a dim one that accompanies the fan. Over the years, the lights above my sinks slowly faded into functionless porcelain placeholders. That was fine; I preferred the feeble glow from the ceiling that drenched my body in shadows. I liked it better that way. I didn’t need a dopey fourth-grade grin staring back at me every time I needed to pee.

Still, there’s a limit to how little light a guy can tolerate in a bathroom. When it finally became too dark to shave effectively, I relented, replacing the eight offending LEDs. When I flipped on those replacement lights for the first time, my retinas screamed. You could see my bathroom from outer space.

I had mistakenly bought 100-watt bulbs in white, and there were eight newbies affixed to my wall. For the first time, I couldn’t hide one nook or cranny from view. For the first time, I stared directly at my true form.

And I didn’t recognize the creature that stared back at me.

There’s no Mr. Universe in the mirror, not in the slightest, but there’s certainly not a fourth grader who pounds sandwiches like an anaconda either. My pectorals are stiff, my neck narrow and lean, and deep caverns dive into an abyss where my armpits used to bulge out. If I clench my fist, definition rushes to my biceps. Taut muscles ripple across my calves. An angular chin chases cheeks that no one would describe as cherubic. That punchable piggy’s snout still centers my face, but the transformation around it makes it a moot point.

Mikey Blumberg no longer stands in my mirror. The fat kid classmates oinked at is gone. The round stack of flesh kids pointed and laughed at while he ran the mile is gone. It wasn’t thick glasses, an unruly beard, or a receding hairline that vanquished him but years of discipline while isolated from the people who always saw Mikey in me and couldn’t stop reporting their discovery.

Whatever the cause, for the first time since Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere first drew him into Recess, for the first time in 26 years, Mikey Blumberg, the character who’d put me in assholes’ cross-hairs for years and followed me around for most of my life, had finally abandoned his post.

I wish.

*****

A few years ago, after we’d returned to in-person school, I ran an errand after leaving campus that took me into a store. I was wearing my light pink shirt and tie, a pair of form-fitting slacks, and a pink and red hat. When I greeted the woman working at the register, she complimented my attire and then got rather giggly, stumbling over her words. I recognized her behavior from high school: it was how Kayte got talking to Robert.

Her behavior suggested something had changed about me, but I credited the clothes. My flashy attire masked the fleshy mountain underneath, obscuring my least flattering features in the same way my hat hid a balding head. It wasn’t my body. It couldn’t be my body.

People kept telling me it was my body. Everyone I ran into as COVID restrictions started to lift insisted on telling me how much I’d transformed. It shocked me: I hadn’t noticed the difference in the mirror. My hair had grown longer, but I saw the same cartoon oaf when I checked my reflection. I still felt as massive as I’d always been.

I see the physical change now; Mikey Blumberg’s body is mostly gone for me, too. Unfortunately, not seeing him doesn’t erase the problem: I still feel him. He’s under my skin: if I don’t have a mirror and I close my eyes, I feel his massive stomach below my ribcage. Out of the searing spotlight above my sink, I can feel mounds of bulging flesh up and down my torso, just like I had in high school.

But here’s the thing: that last statement proves the greatest monstrosity of Mikey Blumberg. People convinced me that he and I were dead ringers in the early 2000s, but when I look at photos from those years now, Mikey isn’t there. Broad shoulders, round face, and golden hair? Sure. There’s no escaping those. But my gut doesn’t balloon out. The concavity of my nose hardly shows. My arms’ shape makes no waves. I look…normal.

In college, I became morbidly obese, but it’s odd how I see that worsening in photos now but felt like nothing was different at the time. Honestly, I felt bigger, fatter, and heavier during high school than later when I actually was.

When someone I love developed an eating disorder in the mid-2010s, I was there for her over and over. Every time she called, I answered. I listened, I reassured, and I negotiated. But in every conversation, I remember feeling a strained disbelief. She was gorgeous, fit and athletic and toned; she looked healthy and perfect. It seemed impossible that her eyes couldn’t recognize the beauty so apparent to everyone else.

That’s the thing about body dysmorphia: it isn’t an optical affliction. LASIK surgery won’t remedy the problem: it’s not cones and corneas but psychology. It’s a misalignment that leads one to perceive a false sense of physical self. It’s how she could misconstrue flattering curves as malignant flab; it’s how I can regard a gaunt Gollum in the glass and still conceive a cartoonish oaf in my head.

I don’t have an eating disorder, but what floors me is to realize that I do share her dysmorphia. While she described hers, I was too overweight to understand mine: the chasm between me and Mikey Blumberg wasn’t wide enough then to measure. But it was there in high school when I was a pudgy porpoise who saw a blubbery whale, and it’s here today when I need to trace the concavity of my chest to convince myself Mikey’s cavernous gut isn’t down there.

There’s no weight or shape I can reach that will exorcise my paunchy demon. The fourth-grade fat kid is part of my self-conception, a part of how I interact with the world. I think about Mikey Blumberg any time I’m out in public; my mind turned to him after illness emptied my body last week. I eat in tiny fork-fed bites to evade evoking his appetite; I hide my cream shirt from my brown slacks so I never inadvertently conjure his likeness. I still shower in the dark as one final line of defense.

If my resignation to his continued presence bothers you, I suspect you’re new here. I’m not a “vanquish the bad feelings” person; tough emotions aren’t foes to defeat but tricky plants to water regularly. To no longer see Mikey Blumberg staring back at me every day thrills me, but I know he’s hiding in my torso and stoking fears that a few Flamin’ Hot Cheetos will return him to the surface.

Mikey’s enduring presence isn’t failure but a call for continued, purposeful work, and I’m doing that work. I installed those luminous lights to force myself to counter his false image in the mirror. Each morning, I record the food I ate for every meal the day before to ensure my dysmorphia doesn’t morph into a debilitating disorder. A few months back, I donated all of my 2XL dress shirts and size 44 pants, no longer convinced I would need them the following day. Each night, when I eat some dessert, I also work on this, separating indulgence from gluttony while ensuring my commitment to fitness never precludes pleasure.

Most vitally, I’m writing this. I’m calling dysmorphia by its name and owning it, but more importantly, I’m calling it by the name I know it as: Mikey Blumberg. Maybe I would’ve always found my way into this condition, but I suspect it was the unique doom of a dreadful doppelgänger. Assholes oinking at me were one thing—children are monsters—but everybody pointed out Mikey and me, their unflattering comparisons so frequent that eventually I joined their wavelength. If I want to stay ahead of this, I must invoke Mikey Blumberg’s name to constantly remind myself that I am not him and he is not me.

I just passed a mirror and automatically sucked in my gut. I haven’t canceled the fat kid yet, but even just seeing less of him marks growth. Is distancing myself from him sustainable? I worry, but I don’t know. We’ll see.

(Just hopefully not Mikey Blumberg.)

---

This has been a long time coming. I wrote briefly about this during the Question of the Day project last summer, but I kept it focused on one narrow domain even then. This addresses the issue head-on.

While writing this piece, I learned that the voice actor for Mikey Blumberg, Jason Davis, died in 2020. He’s not the only voice cast member to have died—Christine Cavanagh, an iconic voice of the 90s, also died in the previous decade. Some guilt found me that my story here trashes some of Davis’ legacy, particularly because Davis was a large man himself, but I can’t change that Mikey’s is the body I contend with. Although I dislike how Mikey was written, my difficulty with the character should cast no shadow on Davis’ work.

Barring a sudden change, next week’s piece will be one I’ve been working on since December. I’m excited that it will finally go out.

Thank you for your continued reading and support.

1. https://www.babycenter.com/baby-names/details/michael-462485#