NSFW due to a wild mix of subject matter and personal commentary…

My brother Mike died without fulfilling my desire that he write a book. He absorbed the false honor narrative of some of my family members. He was a big man, my brother. I took these rules from conversations that Mike and I had on the phone when he was winding down. I’ve shared pieces of them before. My brother Mike had an interesting life. He was a great writer. We both recognized that between the two of us, we might be able to capture the horror, dark humor, and insights that we experienced. Of all the things that piss me off about the way he went out, it’s that he didn’t have enough clarity to see that he should pull up and find a way to live a few more years. Had he chosen to find a way, the resulting book we would have written would have been an irreverent mixture of Pat Conroy and Stephen King.

I’m paraphrasing my dad: “You’re going to get punched in the f mouth. There’s no doubt about it.”

My brother Mike saw a few fights that I didn’t. While I did witness my dad getting his ass whipped, Mike saw a few more of these than I did. Dad had whiskey courage. He read a few too many Westerns and got the wrong lesson out of most of the movies.

Take them for what you will. My dad was a walking contradiction. I despise a lot of what he did. But I understand it a hell of a lot better as I get older.

Rules:

If you’re going to drink in a bar, you’re going to need to be deaf or have a thick skull.

If your buddy is getting his ass whipped, you have to get your ass whipped too.

If someone threatens you… There are no rules, no warning. Do not think about it. Start hitting.

If someone says they’re going to whip your ass, don’t wait for them to prove it.

If they’re close enough to hit you, hit them first. Don’t stop hitting until they’re down.

The most dangerous man is never the loudest.

Don’t punch them more than you need to. But if they are intent on killing you, don’t walk away when they’re on the ground.

If they dress like a dandy, they will not want to get dirty. If they wear a tight shirt, it’s a sure sign that their muscles are for show. Except if they have dirty, scruffed-up boots. You don’t mess around with people who work hard for a living.

Nuts, throat, nose. If those don’t work, bite anything that gets near your mouth.

There’s no such thing as fighting dirty. If they are coming for you, everything in the room is fair game.

If you deserve to get punched, let them hit you in the face. If they attempt to give you more than what you’ve got coming, remind them that you’re a dirty bastard.

Once you’re done fighting, men have a drink. If you can’t have a drink with a man you just fought with, you’re not worth the hat that sits on your head.

…
Dad tried to make a man out of me. Whatever that means. He had his demons. A great deal of his alleged teaching resulted in me choosing the opposite. I never could get my head around that kind of violence. But if you ask me if I understand it, the answer is yes. Especially so when the universe fails or when people fail to honor the fact that violence should never be out of proportion to what caused it. Dad scrambled my brains a few times, but one thing that came out of it was that I learned that many fights come out of nowhere. And a few people who should have scared me didn’t. That’s a part of the Bobby Dean legacy that fills me with contradiction.

I’m forgetting a few of his rules. Despite some of the negative things I have to say about him, he surprised my brother and me many times with how he phrased things. I sometimes forget that he was smart. I would snarkily mention that he often failed to incorporate his intelligence into his behavior. But I’m tired of getting hit by a bolt of hypocritical lightning.

I’ve confessed before that my brother and I actively thought about killing my dad more than once. I’m not proud of it. But if Dad had survived a few more years, he would have appreciated the dark humor of this truth a lot more. Mike realized when we got older that it probably would have been me who would have done it because I experienced and witnessed a lot more of the violence. When my brother Mike got older, Dad looked at him much differently. Mike would have hurled him through the kitchen window like firewood.

Knowing them both, I am 100% certain that one of them would have pulled out the whiskey bottle and poured the other a shot.

They were the kind of men I did not aspire to become. Whatever dark streak ran through them has luckily remained mostly dormant in me. I’d love to have the devilish prankster spirit. I wouldn’t tie someone to a hunting camp tree stump and light it, but I would enjoy making someone think it could happen. There is a fine line between lunacy and free-spiritedness.

I’m sharing this because it’s supposed to be a tip of the hat. It’s not an accusation. The history is there, written as fact in my mind. One of the crazy lessons of ambivalence is that you can witness a tornado but fall in love with how the lightning looks across the sky. Life can be appreciated similarly, even if you would rather flip the light switch off for some moments.

Love, X
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