Wythe, BrooklynTo one a pinprick, to another a knife wound. One man's trash is another man's treasure. Here today, gone tomorrow. My brother and I, the next-one-up brother, are separated by enough age that we lived in adjacent rooms for only a short period of time. I don't remember us ever getting along in our youth, but one summer he came home from college, shacked up in the room next to mine and we cohabitated in a relatively benign fashion for a time. He had to go through my room to get to the shared bathroom and every morning he'd get up, walk by my bed and fart on my head. One night he came home late and drunk and woke me up with an inebriated recitation, from memory, from his own bed, before falling into snores, the whole of the Dead Milkmen classic Stuart.
8 comments:
did you ever get a chance to kick his ass? does he read this blog?
The age tradition old kicking of the older brother's ass is an interesting moment in the imagination of every younger brother. There was a specific moment, a specific confrontation that indeed felt (to me) like the jig was up for him. But it was probably smaller and inconsequential than I like to recall it. It just became a moot point I think. He retired to Central Coast anonymity and I was on my way to becoming the baddest ass brother anyhow. He doesn't read this blog, I am pretty sure.
Oddly, this memory is a prized one. Especially the farting part. I guess you take what you can get.
A further reflection brings this to mind:
It is always funny to be who we are.
I never kicked Ramon's ass, but he recalls well - and we have recently discussed - the turning point in our dynamic... when I began fighting back aiming to injure.
My older brother Matthew and I are separated by 3 years and we fought continually as children. We'd usually start out laughing, and then things would escalate to wrestling, then punching. We shared a room, and I can remember getting into fights with him in the dead of night due to one or both of us sleep walking onto the others territory. the final faceoff came winterbreak of my freshman year in college. I had been rowing division 1 crew for three months, had not had a drink in as many, and was about as fit as a person could be. My brother was the opposite; four years of drinking at Cornell with only a paunch and obnoxious demeanor to show for it. we arm wrestled at the kitchen table. My arm never moved backward; I admit I let him suffer a little too long before putting him out of his misery, but he fucking deserved it.
HA HA HAAAAA!
What a story.
My sister used to sit on top of me and dangle spit over my face--traditional sibling warfare tactics. For revenge I hacked into her 401K account and spent all the money on inflated GM stock. When she turns 65, guess who will be laughing.
Kevin, I'll pay you to teach me how to hack into my brother's 401k.
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