One of the things I have to credit my brother Mike with is that he loved reading. Unlike me, his comprehension was instantaneous. I learned to read the “wrong” way. We both used books to escape, each of us initially preferring different kinds of books. By junior high, a miracle happened. Whatever had blocked me vanished. If Mike were still alive, I would continue to tease him for beating him in the city-wide spelling bee. His ability was natural, whereas mine was repetition and relentlessness. Spelling is the domain of the madman because its rules are conjured from a random assortment of sadistic guidelines that change on demand. If you’ve been married, I’m sure you can understand.
All of this comes to mind because of the recent denigration of education. Over half of the American population reads below a sixth grade reading level. Another 1/5 are functionally illiterate. These statistics are going to get worse.
My brother and I would have both learned to read whether we had attended school or not. We loved the imaginary worlds we found. Whether it was Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Louis L’Amour, for Stephen King.
As cynical as my brother could sometimes be, it was earned. He sometimes reminded me that we weren’t competing with half of the population because reading at a level that allowed us to dive into other worlds wasn’t something most of the people around us could do for pleasure. And writing anything substantive? “For get about it,” Mike would have said, quoting his doppelganger Tony Soprano.
If I had disagreed, I would have done so from a distance. I laugh about it now, like I do so many other things. Like when I told him that the “Lord Of The Rings” was like reading a 500-page obituary. I read all the Tolkien books because Mike loved them. I don’t even remember what he had me read next, but I do remember loving it enough to read it twice. Mike could read a book and effortlessly recount not only what happened, but what it might mean. That part took me a long time to learn.
As the years race ahead and leave my brother further behind, I catch myself wishing I could recommend a book to him. Especially the ones that might irritate him.
This post is partially personal and also a metaphor. Or analogy. Although I know the difference, I don’t care about grammatical accuracy. If this post is all over the place, you can thank me later for taking you around the world with my shotgun storytelling.
In 2005, I visited my brother north of Chicago. He brought out a giant bag of tortilla chips, one suited for his appetite. Then, he brought out high-quality horseradish and made a two-ingredient dip. Although I’m laughing when I write this, my brother Mike might have held me down with one of his giant paws of a hand and inserted a horseradish-laden tortilla chip into my mouth had I persisted in refusing to try it. I grabbed a chip and loaded it. My brother’s eyes widened, and he laughed like a hyena because he knew I would eat the whole bite. Though it burned, it was delicious!
“See, you dumb bastard? I told you you would like it. This ain’t the horseradish Aunt Ardith kept hidden in a side shelf.”
Although my brother was one of those people who thought he was always right, I had to give him credit for insisting I at least try horseradish. The worst that could have happened is that I still would have hated it.
All these years later, I think about that. He did the same thing with guacamole after I refused to have some freshly made guacamole at what used to be my favorite Mexican restaurant in Springdale. Guacamole was the equivalent of turkish delight from C.S. Lewis’ Narnia tales.
I am now a world class aficionado of pico de gallo. For too many years, I assumed I wouldn’t like it because my mom made me automatically distrust onions. Onions were the second component of her one-two punch of seasoning, which consisted of onions and cigarette ash. It was a story of culinary violence in the South, never knowing if the potato salad or mashed potatoes would have fantasy-level chunks of onions.
The above anecdotes hint at much of our problem. Because I was naive and poor, I was rarely exposed to a wide swath of food, much less quality. My cousin Jimmy’s house was the crucible of exposure to many foods. Because of my dad, Bobby Dean, almost literally making me eat food at gunpoint, some of my first exposures to some things were less than ideal. That’s putting it mildly. Some of the food at my house was the equivalent of the discarded version of what you would find behind a dollar store grocery aisle. That explained my aversion to morel mushrooms.
And also horseradish.
I don’t remember how old I was when I first tried horseradish. I remember the time that soured me on it. It turned out to be old and nasty by any standard. So, it’s no wonder my first exposure was the equivalent of eating a goose-poop-filled donut. I was lucky to have Aunt Ardith and Uncle Buck. Without them, my life would have been much worse in several ways. Visiting my cousin Jimmy always guaranteed that I’d be well-fed and get to try a variety of things. I like to joke about the horseradish because it was one of the few times that Aunt Ardith convinced me to try something exotic (to me). She had the best intentions, unlike my dad. If he got a hint of an idea that I didn’t like something, you can be sure that I’d be eating a bucket of it. Aunt Ardith and Uncle Buck did their best to tell Dad to jump off a cliff when he behaved that way around them.
We have parallel aversions to many things resulting from our initial exposure. Look at most relationships, and you can see that it’s true. You had your heart broken. You repay your future self by carrying the mistake and believing that all relationships will turn sour. Or you think most people grew up without the love and caring everyone needs. You carry your words into the future, and all the potential people you meet indirectly pay for the wound. You either avoid deep relationships or insist the system is rigged and broken. The concept of relationships isn’t the problem; it’s us. You’re letting your version of horseradish tarnish your future with other people.
Life is horseradish and guacamole.
Be open to new things.
Be aware that you may have blinded yourself or made truth from experiences that should not be extrapolated into cynicism or isolation.
Although it is true that people rarely fundamentally change, it is possible both in outlook and preference.
Changing is, in part, acknowledging that the things, habits, and ideas that once defined you no longer do.
Only healthy people change their minds and their lives.
PS During this crazy election, I’ve had a few laughs because of my brother. He’s been gone for four years. In his later life, one of his proclivities was to be a blowhard, much in the ilk of Bill O’Reilly. My job was to be the liberal and sentimental brother that drove him crazy. And as I was fond of telling him, the person left standing gets the last word. Since I bought gallon by the ink, he didn’t have the temperament to keep up with me. If he were still alive, he’d be pissed off at me constantly. But I miss it. Not the anger of the last few years; that period owes its shadows to alcohol and unresolved trauma. I miss the undeniable intelligence of my brother, even when he used it to wither my well-intentioned arguments. I absorb a lot of the election craziness and play a dialog in my head, one in which my brother is the one repeating conspiracy theories and horrible rhetoric. My brother taught me that if you can’t argue the facts, you pound the table. If that fails, flip the table.
PSS I chose a different picture for this post instead of one of my brother. Both pictures are of joy and of family time. Even though there was a backdrop of unease during both visits, each of the pictures reveals both youth and connection. In one, my niece Brittany charges toward me as I stand by a pond outside a cabin on King’s River. I got deathly ill from food poisoning on that visit, and Mike’s police K-9 got violently snakebit while we were all swimming in the river. Behind Brittany, as she runs, my deceased wife watches happily. The other picture from another visit is of my nephew Quinlan kicking my ass as the three of us wrestle like savages. I’d forgotten that their dog was watching from the doorway. The third picture is of me and my brother. Mike had his wife bought me a plane to ticket to visit them in Illinois. I love the picture despite the goofy look on my face. It documents my brother’s vibrancy in the “before” part of his life. Mike bought me tickets for two such trips, and his doing so proved that he loved me and also missed me. It was before the branching of his life; the picture captures what could have been the case for the rest of his life had he made that choice. My niece is a mother now, and when I think about the fleeting speed of life, I get a glimpse of the idea that nothing stands alone in our lives and that each moment unfolds from the previous one. We don’t see its unfolding or interconnectedness until later.
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.
Because brevity is impossible for me, this is in two parts; I can’t tell the “click” story without a long preamble.
This story concerns false memory and my dad’s mercurial sense of humor. Of all the things I loved about my violent Dad, his sense of humor profoundly affected me. So many times, I retell some of my Dad’s exploits, and I can see disbelief on the faces of those listening. He fired a shotgun into the trees while I was climbing them. He helped tie someone to a huge stump at deer camp and set it ablaze with the unfortunate butt of the joke tied to the stump while it burned. He stole a crop duster airplane once; rather, he borrowed it, much to the owner’s horror. When he ran the gas station, he put ignition-fired fireworks under the hood of strangers’ cars. He did it more than once to my Aunt Elsie. He did it to the Sheriff and more than one deputy or police officer. The more they screamed or objected, the funnier it became. He lay underneath unsuspecting friends’ trucks as they started to climb inside, only to fire a shotgun or pistol between their feet, sometimes in total darkness, to hear their high operatic screams of terror. If he were in the swamps and marshes with my Uncle Preacher or Uncle Buck, he’d grab the overhanging tree limbs to knock snakes out into the Jon boat with them. He loved grabbing a snake and walking into Aunt Barbara’s house to make her shriek. I loved hearing someone shout, “Goshdamnit, Bobby Dean!” It was a sign that the happy-go-lucky mayhem version of my Dad was on stage. Luckily for me, I was not afraid of snakes. I hated eating them, though; Dad forced me to attempt eating them a few times. More than once, he tossed an entire box of gun shells into a fireplace. People who could barely walk became Usain Bolt in an attempt to escape. (He loved doing this at deer camp, too.) Because he had access to dynamite to blow rice field dams, he used a stick of it to wake people up more than once. More than once, people not only choked on their cigarettes when they exploded but also had more than a few singed eyebrows. He’d grab someone’s dentures and stick them crazily in his own mouth. He loved putting people’s rear wheels up on blocks, especially at the local taverns, so that when they got in, they’d floor the gas, only to be stupefied that they weren’t moving. If he were feeling really adventurous, he’d let them floor it and rock the truck off the blocks so that the vehicle would suddenly fly into gear at an unknown, uncontrollable speed. I’ve written before that it was impossible to play Chicken with him. His motto was “Never veer.” More than one poor soul discovered the hard way that it didn’t matter if Dad was driving a truck, a tractor, or a motorcycle, you dared not challenge him unless you were prepared to meet Jesus. Dad loved putting spiders, snakes, and frogs in mailboxes. My Uncle Preacher and Uncle Beb also worked for the postal service. More than once, Dad got ahead of them and loaded mailboxes with surprises. He loved having shotgun shells loaded with too many grains of powder or adding colorant to them. Adding black powder to the ashes of a fireplace was another surefire way to elicit a scream from the person attempting to light a fire. Another one of his favorite tricks was to sneak up on someone in a tree stand and fire his gun below them. He once spent hours rebuilding a nice Chevy truck, devising a way to put an incredibly small and low horsepower engine in it. The owner got in and attempted to drive away. It took him about sixty seconds to get to 50 mph. The amount of work Dad devoted to the joke made it that much more delicious to him. I’m certain that the man told that story a thousand times during his lifetime. I have a million such anecdotes.
Over the years, I briefly remembered my dad, Bobby Dean, my brother Mike, and I saying “Click,” followed by a laugh. Most of the time, I couldn’t remember why it was funny. The inside joke became its own reward. Like any kids, my brother and I loved Saturday mornings. No matter how violent our house was the night before, we usually found a way to use the expanse of Saturday morning to glean at least a little freedom. During the fights, it was rare for a TV to get damaged. It wasn’t because TVs were expensive so much as the fact that TV was one saving grace in our lives. My Uncle Buck was an electronics tech at Montgomery Ward. He taught me how to spice into cable wires and experiment. My brother Mike wasn’t interested in any of it. But sometimes, it paid off, as it did when we lived in City View in Springdale.
We cherished the tiny little black and white TV we had in our bedroom; being poor makes such things become gold. Back in the day, when an additional cable line required only splicing ability, a curious kid like me could add channels with nothing except scissors and extra cable. Between you and me, it was also easy to get or give cable service to anyone just by running a cable across the short distance between closely stacked trailers. Though Uncle Buck showed me how to connect RCA cables properly, people usually cut and twisted the two internal wires (one mesh and the other copper). It made mowing problematic without cutting the illegal connections, but the fix was cheap and fast.
When my brother began to decline rapidly, I did my best to get him to share stories and remember things of our past. It was a way to reconnect with him. Mike’s memory once was the stuff of legend. Later, his memory became a false narrative, one tempered with an insistence on concealment. Years later, I understand it much better now. It was the inevitable consequence of alcoholism and secrecy colliding.
During one of our telephone conversations, we rapidly exchanged witty barbs. Mike said, “Click!” and pretended he’d hung up, which made us both howl with laughter. When our laughter subsided, Mike asked me if I remembered the genesis of the joke. I didn’t. Twice during the rest of the conversation, he’d shout “Click” and literally hang up, leaving me to wonder what happened. Which made my brother Mike laugh even harder.
This is paraphrasing what Mike said. Part of it is completely wrong in his retelling:
“We lived in City View, and at the time, we didn’t have that tiny TV in our shared bedroom. The Saturday morning in question, we got up and were scared to death that we’d go out into the trailer’s living room and find someone dead. We quietly turned on the console TV with the sound down. After a few minutes, Dad came out of the bedroom to our left. He smelled like a distillery. We were both scared and knew better than to run for the hills. Last night’s fight was one of the typical ones wherein Mom had provoked Dad relentlessly until they both began to punch and hurl things. Dad laid down on the couch and grunted for us to turn up the volume. Looney Tunes was on. You and I sat on the floor, wanting to enjoy the cartoons but afraid we’d move or say something to set Dad off. After a bit, we both looked at each other in shock. Dad actually laughed at one of the jokes. We were relieved; humorous Dad was somehow active after a night of anger. Bugs Bunny ran downstairs to escape Yosemite Sam, both of whom had baseball bats. Each turned off the lights with a ‘click’ at the top and bottom of the stairs. Yosemite Sam attempted to run downstairs and hit Bugs Bunny with the bat. After a couple of attempts, instead of turning off the lights, Bugs Bunny said, ‘Click,’ sending Yosemite Sam back up the stairs. He turned off his switch in confusion and headed down, at which point Bugs Bunny hit him with the bat in the dark. To our shock, Dad howled with laughter. We had laughed, too, but our laughter was tempered by the urge not to draw attention to our presence or remind Dad that we were in the room. Dad continued to laugh, which prompted us to laugh harder. “Click!” Dad began to say repeatedly. And laughed even harder. We listened in amusement as Dad repeated, “Click!” and laughed for several minutes. It had been a long time since we heard him laugh so hard during a moment of normal living. Over the next few months, Dad would randomly shout “Click!” and pretend to shut a door, close a cabinet, or pop a shotgun closed. Then we’d all laugh. If someone asked him to turn on a light, if he didn’t tell them to get their ass up and do it themselves, he would reach for the switch, say “Click,” and pretend to flip the switch.”
“Click” became an intermittent running joke among the three of us. Even though the joke’s origin faded, there were times when one of us said “Click,” and we could laugh. No matter how crazy the home life around us was. If Mom were hungover, she would bitch and complain if it resulted in us laughing. Laughter in the presence of anger or resentment results in unfortunate backlash. For those of you without such a dynamic to witness, some of the best moments happened when Mom was in a horrendous, scorched-Earth mood and Dad did all manner of things to annoy her further. How he avoided being tied in the sheets and beaten with greater regularity is still a mystery. Almost always, Mom later appreciated the jokes, no matter how angry she was then. An example is when Dad filled her hair spray with sugar water in an attempt to attract wasps and bees. When Dad was in a good mood, nothing stopped his pursuit of humor. Though I might sound crazy to say it, if Dad were drunk but possessed by his dangerous sense of humor, he was a delight. The ongoing problem was the impossibility of knowing which version of Dad might emerge once sufficient alcohol passed his lips. But if he were possessed by the drunken angels of his nature? Mayhem could ensue – the kind of mayhem and humor that perhaps only half-feral young boys could relish.
After Mike told me the story, I searched for it online. I kept Googling “Bugs Bunny + Yosemite Sam + Stairs + Click.” No results. After Mike retold the anecdote, I remembered the cartoon clearly, just as he had recounted it. One day at work, I did the “Click” joke on a co-worker and howled with laughter. Though my brother Mike had died, finding the original cartoon consumed me.
Searching diligently, I found the video “The Windblown Hare,” featuring Bugs Bunny and a wolf. Yosemite Sam was nowhere to be found in the cartoon. I watched the video repeatedly and laughed as Bugs Bunny cleverly said, “Click,” leading to the wolf getting bashed with the bat.
Mike’s version of the memory had become mine, too. The important element was a shared lifelong joke among the three of us. Though it wasn’t “Ah’m the rootin’ tootinest gunslinger this side of the Pecos!” Yosemite Sam in the cartoon we watched decades ago in our ugly living room, it certainly was a sublime moment of unforgettable humor.
To my Dad: “Click.”
My lights are still on, though both you and Mike have departed. Writing this brought a bouquet of emotions, a few of which were the equivalent of snakes falling from the trees and waking up when you flipped the entire bed over on top of us for failing to get up like newly enlisted Army recruits.
PS I remastered the picture. Working on photos and realizing I’m the only participant still alive is still sobering. To have a picture of everyone smiling is a testament to impossibility.
Love, X .
The video in question begins around the one-minute mark…
I parked my car and walked barefoot down the trail. I knew I needed an unfamiliar spot today. So I walked much longer than I intended, passing people who took second glances at my bare feet and rolled up pants. It seemed as if they looked more frequently than they had yesterday when I had a billowing (but wet) blue cape on my back. I encountered a dirt path mostly hidden in the trees. Not knowing where it led and not caring either way, I followed it. It led down to the creek and I followed the stones and sat on one of the protruding ledges, sticking my feet deep into the rocks and mud under the water.
The cascade and babble of the water combined with the cloud cover and bird song had to have been aligned and created just for me at this moment.
Three years later and I still wrestle with whether the bell which sounded in my head on an October morning was correlation or causation regarding my brother’s death. My ex-wife would roll her eyes and attribute it to sheer craziness. No matter what the cause or how much my brother’s death affected me subconsciously, something in me broke. The breaking left me with a profound certainty of several things. And most of it was the realization that excuses and rationalizations are easy. The bell in my head brought both joy and pain. My new confidence brought consequences I hadn’t expected. Part of which had to be arrogance. It taught me the definition of limerence and of the meaninglessness of intentions compared to consequences. But it also taught me that most of my limitations are self-imposed. All I need is an idea, even more than motivation. Motivation and willpower are for procrastinators. If you get in motion or set things in motion, it is amazing what simple routine consistency will give you.
Since I was not familiar with this part of the creek, I walked carefully, even through the deeper pockets of clearwater. Countless lightning fast crawdads faced me as I approached, only to flutter backwards so quickly that it was impossible to see them move. There’s always a chance for snakes, but none made their appearance.
The weather is going to shift soon. The days will be colder and likely result in the pads of my feet softening again. I’ll continue to come out here for a while no matter how cold the air or water is. It’s impossible to argue with nature.
The brother of my youth would have loved to be here. It’s true that he probably would have picked me up over his head and thrown me into one of the deep pockets of water. Or we might have even had a rock fight, him promising to not pelt me in the head. Given his size advantage, had he been careless in his aim, there’s not much I could have done about it. We used to spend a lot of time out in the fields having dirt clod fights. It sounds archaic and crazy to anyone who didn’t experience the agony and ecstasy from both ends of a nicely sized dirt-clod bashing someone unexpectedly in the neck or chest. We didn’t invent the rules. They’ve been handed down for generations among kids growing up and playing with the things at their disposal.
Having said the above, if my brother were here today, there is no question that he would look me dead in the eye and ask, “When are you going to stop being so damn fruity?” I would reply, “Probably about the same time you smarten up and stop being an old conservative hag!” No matter how such a conversation played out, I would lose. Because if my brother couldn’t win through words, he would achieve victory by throwing either me or a table. That’s what happens when the universe mistakenly combines debate-level intelligence with a hulk of a person.
Somehow in the crucible of our shared DNA, I luckily inherited the introspective yet expressive gene. He inherited the introspective part, but all too often trapped himself in his own head. That’s the worst place for anyone of such intelligence to be.
Mike was right. Maybe I am a bit too fruity. But whether through alchemy or luck, I’m the one standing in the creek getting the last word.
Since I’m long-winded exactly like my brother, I’ll loop back to my initial causation versus correlation comment. It’s obvious to me now that the bell that rang in my head three years ago would have remained silent were it not for my brother having consequences catch up to him. Which ironically likely would have led to me having a major health setback myself.
The good and the bad may not be best friends, but they definitely sleep in the same bed.
Prepare yourself for turbulent oversharing. Some wounds get exposed again, revealing dark, unmanageable emotions. These words are supposed to be about addiction, alcoholism, and generational anger. I apologize in advance to anyone who thinks I am saying too much or to inflict pain.
I don’t want “I am so sorry” or any words of encouragement. Instead, I would much prefer that you read these words. And if they ring true for someone in your life, find a way to act before it’s too far down the road to turn back.
People often forget that I became an unwilling expert in abnormal psychology because I lived in an intermittent crucible inhabited by some of the most versed, angry people. For most of my life, I told people I believed my DNA must be infected. Though others couldn’t recognize it, I did. Though I now call it the “Bobby Dean,” the sinister recognition that my family’s maternal and paternal sides gifted me with the lesser side of humanity plagues me.
Like anyone without children, I sometimes mourn the choice to have none. Since life taught me that intelligence has little to do with the odds of giving in to anger and addiction, I remind myself that it’s possible that I would have given in to the lunacy passed down through my family. At fifty-six, if I had treated my children like others, there would have been little choice other than to end myself. I’ve hurt other people callously. But I at least can swallow my ‘what-ifs’ and know that I didn’t hurt my children and continue the generational trauma that populates the world with damaged adults. Ones who carry invisible wounds, anger, self-doubt, and the handicap of attempting to be happy and prosperous, even though they were mentally beaten into submission.
Nothing new happened recently to rip the bandage off. However, I was forced to learn further details of how nasty the effects of this anger and addiction were to people in my family. Because of geography and shared secrecy, it turns out that the imagined and partially confirmed psychopathy passed to the next generation was much worse than I knew.
Alcoholism amplifies monstrous behavior. It might not create it, but it unleashes it. The whisper of the disinhibiting lover in a drunk’s head becomes a shout. The person you once knew gets trapped and silent inside the shell of the alcoholic. As it worsens, the person you once knew becomes a faint echo. The new version will say and do things that increasingly become impossible to live with. You are tethered to the person who once was. As a result, you attempt to deal rationally with the effects of addiction.
Meanwhile, the person possessed by it will do anything to guard their ability to keep drinking. They’ll gaslight you, lash out, and create clusters of people who assume that the version of the truth they are being told is valid. People with no ill feelings toward one another become manipulated pawns, initially acting out of honest concern. But what results is another level of toxic behavior, all hinged on the central person. It is drama and chaos. Because of the secrecy and generated toxicity, people’s relationships get ruined.
One of the most significant pieces of advice I can give people when they are attempting to coexist in an addict’s world is to talk. Talk to everyone. I guarantee that the addict curates everything you do and say to make you a monster because addiction requires secrecy. Intelligent addicts learn the behaviors of narcissists.
People sometimes ask me what makes me so well-versed in narcissism. (Not the generalized version of it prevalent in social media.) Anyone raised or living around addicts inadvertently learns the behaviors. The hallmarks of narcissism always bubble up with addicts and alcoholics. They must deny reality. They become delusional to the effects of their behavior. They enlist everyone and everything to perpetuate their ability to keep drinking.
Recently, I met someone who triggered my “Bobby Dean” response. I knew immediately upon meeting them that they were evil. I hate to use that word. Nothing outwardly about them gave a clue, not directly. The bells went off in my head. I was right about them, of course. And then you’re left with the impossible task of coexisting with them. Such people thrive on chaos and the emotional distress of people around them. Since most people are genuine, they get stuck in a loop of the foolish desire to mitigate the narcissist. It can’t be done.
In the same way, most of us think we can win over an alcoholic with love, words, and compassion. It’s not true. You’re not dealing with a real person until you can slap the bottle out of their hands. They are an angry parody, possessed by a demon demanding nourishment. Replace the word ‘alcohol’ with ‘heroin’ and you’ll realize that until you get rid of the heroin, you can’t move forward. The addict can’t attempt to be themselves and regain their humanity until they eliminate the invisible straightjacket of addiction. Addicts put you in the position of helpless anger. Anger with yourself and anger with them. We each know that a person trapped in addiction isn’t being themselves. But that knowledge does not give us any comfort. We find ourselves screaming. It’s reactionary abuse.
My goal isn’t to tarnish my brother in this post. He was older than me. I loved him and knew early on that he was among the most intelligent people I’d ever known. We survived our parents. He got the worst of it from Dad. Perversely, it turns out he got the worst from Mom, too. As he got older, I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, the anger he’d inherited from our family poisoned him. I thought it must be me, that I was somehow doing or saying things wrong. Toxic people don’t take the time to doubt whether they are wrong. I became the opposite of my brother in so many ways. And he hated being wrong. It was one of his defining behaviors. Because he was so smart, he was seldom wrong. But when he was wrong? He doubled and tripled down on it. From there, he justified saying and doing anything to keep it that way. The alcohol perverted him into someone who could behave and speak in ways that the younger version of himself could not have imagined.
He was particularly vile to me when I changed my name. At that point in his life, he still pretended to carry the torch of family honor. He’d grown up with the Terry side of the family. They were true experts in horrific secrecy. When I changed my name, I wrote them all letters. There was no way to avoid them knowing that I rejected everything my name held within the letters that formed it. They got their revenge when my dad died. Their secret hatred was so intense that they refused even to list me by my legal name in his obituary. That’s the best example of expressed passive-aggressive behavior that I can cite. When I think of self-righteous hypocrisy, I imagine their example. It does not mean I don’t have good memories of them, too! But the older I get, the more I concentrate on knowing they were well aware of what was happening in our violent private lives. They preferred to stay out of it, even though they knew what was happening. Family honor and secrecy held more value than protecting children who were getting damaged right under their noses. It invalidated every religious idea that they allegedly cherished. I can’t imagine doing that. It makes sense that they hid my sister from me for almost fifty years. That she wasn’t white must have been the biggest threat to their false family honor that they could imagine. I would hate myself if I’d become the secret racists that they were. I’d write more about this, but that part of the story isn’t mine to tell.
I made the mistake of attempting to lovingly help my brother a few years before he died. I was all in. It was the worst possible move. He retaliated by lashing at me and everyone around me. He scorched the Earth to keep his addiction. I was rightfully convinced that he might actually kill me. He spent a great deal of time detailing how he would do it. Had he wanted to, he easily could have. Life had geared him up with the tools to do just about anything. Some of the family pretended they couldn’t imagine he was doing and saying those things, even though they could see the emails, listen to the voicemails, and read the texts. Each of them had spent decades enforcing family silence. Why would it be any different with my brother? Had this not happened with my brother, I might not have decided to cut off ties with my Mom not long after. It was just too much. Two of the world’s best alcoholics take a massive toll on a person’s sanity. It struck me how similar they were, each insistent on maintaining their addiction at any cost.
My brother was lucky. Though he left a trail behind him, even professionally, he was forced to retire and avoid the consequences that would have befallen anyone outside law enforcement. I hope anyone he encountered at work didn’t suffer as much as I imagined. People in that stage of alcoholism behave in ways that they never would absent the addiction. It is no secret that law enforcement suffers more from addiction than the general population. (As they do domestic abuse.)
No one was safe. No one ever is around an end-of-run alcoholic.
My brother had the chance to retire and enjoy a full life. To make amends. To admit his transgressions, to replace spiteful words with love and hugs, and to reject the poison of our DNA. He chose otherwise. It’s a story I have witnessed repeated too many times. It is agony for all of us to prefer to tell the good stories and push back the bad ones. Who wouldn’t want to honor the good times? There were many. My brother could have written several of the best books ever written. I would likely have helped him. Anyone and anything can be forgiven if they are open to it. Alcoholism demands everything. It reduces people to their worst common denominator.
A couple of years ago, I scrapped a lot of my shared history and records of my brother. After his death, I thought I could move on and continue to work to remember the good things about him. Some of it was incredible, an irrefutable dissertation on how crazy his addiction made him. He created entire fantasy worlds, each independent of the other, all designed to alienate people and render them unable to interfere with his addiction. Addiction requires secrecy. And as it progresses, it forces the addict to silence those who challenge it. It is exactly like a demon facing exorcism. It will destroy the world in the pursuit of its existence, even if it kills the host.
I write this because the newest revelations force me to confront that he created a world of pain for people. Those people are left with the immense struggle to be good people. It can be done. The first step is to no longer worry about people knowing. Sunlight gives breath. You have to talk about it, acknowledge it, and work to silence the self-doubt that the toxicity of alcoholism demands.
I damn well know that we all have addicts or alcoholics in our lives right now. The cycle is endless. If you think it is manageable, you’re wrong. It will worsen. You’ll look back and understand that if you could return to when it started, you’d do almost anything to stop it.
If you have an addict or alcoholic in your life, whether you think it is true or not, you must start talking to people first. They need to know you are dealing with an addict. You must rob the alcoholic of their secrecy. It is the critical component that precedes every other consequence and behavior.
I can add anger to my reaction recently. Anger can motivate if channeled. If you’re dealing with an addict or alcoholic, I recommend anger as a defense. Let them experience the consequences of what they’ve created. If you do nothing, you’re going to be angry anyway. It might be more effective than compassion.
I’m telling you this as an unwilling expert.
A piece of my heart will always be broken. To discover that people now gone still creates shockwaves in the hearts and minds of those who are still here. It is a recurring wound, and one opened periodically by reminders by those who remind me of myself when I was young.
PS Pictures don’t lie. But they do conceal, just as most of us do as we live our daily lives. Just remember, I had many great moments as a kid. And as an adult with my brother. But behind it all…
This is a personal story. Some humor, some violence – but most of all, it contains a thread of nostalgia for people no longer walking the earth with us.
My brother Mike is no longer here to add the details to the story. He was older and larger than me. He reminded me of this easily observable fact quite often. For some reason, he was at the bar with Dad. I’m 92% sure it was the Red Door. During a relatively short stretch of time, Mike often accompanied Dad to the bar during one of our several residencies in Tontitown. Mike was trying to do his homework. Mike used to like to tell the story of how the barfly would hit on him. His account of her appearance was hilarious. Whenever he brought up the story I would ask him, “Yeah, but if she had been good-looking, you would have acted differently.” Sometimes he would punch me in the arm and sometimes he’d say, “Duh. I’m dumb but not stupid. But there’s no way I’d engage with someone who might have been with Dad.” Mike often told a repertoire of versions of this story, full of detail and exaggeration. The bones of the story are true, though.
Dad was drinking too much, which is like saying don’t wash your dishes in the washing machine. I don’t know Tiny’s real name. His nickname derived from the allegedly hilarious observation that he was the exact opposite of diminutive. He probably weighed 350 lb and was about 6 ft tall. Tiny was at the bar, which was a rarity. He preferred to drink an entire case of beer at home. Mike surmised that he and Dad undoubtedly had been working on a truck at some point in the day. And ran out of liquor. In Dad’s world, that was as serious as skipping seven consecutive dialysis visits.
A couple of rednecks came into the bar. They weren’t regulars. Their faces were anything but regular too. Mike liked to quip that both of them could have been a carnival attraction based solely on their faces. Dad was playing pool and acting like a fool to amuse himself. The rednecks wanted the pool table. Back then, we didn’t have Appleby’s, where you could drink too much and pick on an urbanite for amusement. Dad called them his favorite word: “++++suckers.” One of the rednecks came up behind him and knocked him down with a pool cue. When my brother Mike turned around to take another look, he saw Tiny pissed off and getting up from the bar. Tiny was probably more pissed off that he had to leave his beer unattended than he was about my dad BobbyDean getting clobbered. The redneck swung the pool cue at Tiny. Tiny raised an arm and took the blow across his forearm. In a move regarded as one of the most foolish in human history, the rednecks did not take the opportunity to run out of the bar. Tiny walked towards them both. They both started swinging at him. Tiny pushed one of them so hard that it looked like an invisible tether yanked him backward. He grabbed the other redneck by the arm and swirled him around. Despite Tiny’s size, he grabbed the raucous redneck by the belt and picked him up, and threw him in the general direction of the other redneck. He bent down and helped my Dad get back to his feet. Mike did add that Tiny was breathing really hard but otherwise hadn’t changed expression during the entire altercation.
The rednecks took their time getting up. Nobody had anything broken. Dad was bleeding a bit but since it wasn’t gushing, the old rule of “If you can stand up, it ain’t that bad” applied. It’s a version of “Walk it off” that parents told people of our generation – even if an arrow protruded from our thigh.
When the two interlopers had regained the ability to understand English, Dad told them if they would stop acting like Mississippi refugees, he’d buy them both a shot. It’s anybody’s guess whether they accepted the offer for fear of another round with Tiny, or they understood that that was the way these things were supposed to be handled.
My brother Mike ended up sitting at the bar, surrounded by two redneck strangers, Tiny, and Dad. They acted like old friends who just finished trying to kill each other. Mike noted that the barfly was still making geriatric eyes at him. I’m sure that on some nights, Mike probably had a drink, whether he’d easily admit it or not. Knowing Dad, he probably insisted on it. It was a violation of his code of conduct for anyone claiming to be a man to decline a drink in the presence of other men. Later in life, Mike adopted the same outlook, for better or worse. Dad often required me or Mike to drive us all home if he was particularly drunk. We never understood what gauge determined this, as Dad drove even when his breath was flammable.
I’m sure Mike learned more from observance that night than he ever could by staring at his textbook. Mike was brilliant but also brutal in his approach to certain situations. If you doubted him, he’d bend your thumb backward or hit you precisely in the neck in such a way that you were immobilized long enough to regret it.
PS The picture is a composite of their approximate appearance at the time.
Recently, I made a megamix of Rocky theme songs. Though I am not great at it, I made one remix that is impossible to remain immobile while it’s playing. The “Five Minute” rule works great when I’m not feeling it. Because it’s certainly true that motivation follows action rather than the converse. People wait for the urge, motivation, or willpower. It’s the opposite. As soon as the thought hits your noggin, you get up and do whatever it is you were about to put off. Or worse, say aloud, “I need to do so-and-so.” One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given was: “DON’T tell me what you’re going to do. Live it. Show me.”
Most of the time, if you practice doing, telling yourself you’ll spend just five minutes on a task cures your procrastination enough to keep going once you start. That’s true with so many things in life.
The Five Minute rule aligns seamlessly with my Law of Increments. If you do a little consistently throughout the day and days, before long, you will amass much effort – and probably consequences.
I know Rocky is old school. One of the reasons it did so well is because Sylvester Stallone (whose real name is Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone) was a nobody with a story about overcoming odds. He was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay.
Late in my 9th-grade year, I got pissed off at myself one early spring afternoon and decided to go running. I figured if the violence in the house hadn’t killed me, I could risk a heart attack. We lived on the downside of a hill in Tontitown near 4K farms. To say that I regretted starting that day is an understatement. I ran a mile. My shorts were ragged, and my shoes weren’t running shoes. Poor aptly describes my predicament. But I put it all aside and just ran. I did it every day, no matter the weather and how sore I was. After a while, I was shocked to discover that the exhilaration of barely being able to breathe was an absolute high. At the end of it, I knew I’d have a hill to run down. Over time, I found myself sprinting a half-mile before the incline. I added more and more distance until one day, it occurred to me that even distance wasn’t an issue. Years later, I wondered what it was that first day propelled me to stop yammering in my head about what I needed to do – and just do it.
My brother forced me to do pullups and lift weights in the horrid dirt floor cellar on the bottom level of the trailer we rented. He usually punctuated the necessity of compliance by punching me in the upper arm with enough force to numb it. Months later, I turned the tables on him when he told me I had to do at least a dozen pull-ups. I said, “After you, my lady, after which I will.” He struggled and finished. I jumped up on the bar and did thirty. “How many CAN you do?” The look on his face was hard to read. “I don’t know. I don’t count. Pullups aren’t a normal thing I do in the real world.” My brother Mike was ridiculously stronger than me. I didn’t like weights. But if I wasn’t practicing my French Horn or reading amongst the trees, it was safe to hide somewhere, anywhere, rather than inside, where the violence would erupt. I’d do anything to have my brother Mike around so I could duck, weave, and throw punches at HIM.
Later, I realized that when I didn’t have motivation, I would listen to a couple of the songs from Rocky and Rocky 3 in my head. “Eye of The Tiger” played ad nauseam everywhere back then. You couldn’t go to church without expecting to hear it being played in lieu of old hymns. That song always gave me the energy to beat my immobility inertia.
All these decades later, some of the music still motivates me. I loathe many of the songs on the soundtracks. Anything by that crack-voiced Frank Stallone, for example. The new remixes incorporate more of the wall of brass sound that the main theme personifies. It’s just raw power demanding that I stay focused.
Through the years, I discovered that almost all obstacles were a figment of my imagination. Could I do 1,000 pushups a day? No, but I could do 1,500. That’s a bit excessive, I know. I stopped doing quite so many a few days before my emergency surgery about sixteen months ago. Could I run a mile in under six minutes at age 55? Yes. Can I run as fast as my childhood best friend Mike? Hell, no. I still have mud in my nostrils from years ago when I tried to keep pace with him. (I decided he might be Superman.) Could I walk twenty a day if I want to? Yes.
I’ve failed at so many things. So please don’t read all this as a litany of humblebrags. I’m self-aware enough to understand that I wasted a lot of my time and energy. I am proud to be a Spanish bilingual and to be a liberal as an adult. Not just politically but across the spectrum relating to people.
The gist of it is that if we are focused enough to ask ourselves what our goals are, we probably can get there. If we want to. Regardless of most of the obstacles. Everyone has their obstacles. And yes, I do recognize my own privilege by writing all this. So many people have no opportunities or advantages. Mine were massive on both sides of the scale. I’m not so stupid as not to realize that despite the harsh hand I started out with, things are good.
I wish my life had a wall of horns blasting at key moments. It would drown out the complaining and haters, for one thing. It would help to get out of bed, too, not that I have that problem. I’m lucky enough to wake up rattling the rafters most days.
From “Eye Of The Tiger” to “Pancreas Of The Platypus” might be an ideal title for a book to describe my outlook on life.
PS That dust all over my vest is from rolling around on the floor with my cat. I can beat him wrestling any day.
I woke up around 3 a.m. and could hear the neighbors outside on the landing, their night still in progress.
I retrieved my trusty sheet, put it over my head, and knocked.
“Trick or Treat,” I said. No treats were forthcoming.
My brother Mike would have been 57 today. I don’t know what to say about that. He could have lived another twenty years had his choices been different. If he were alive, I’d prank call him and say, “Good morning, you dumb bast**d!” and then hang up. He’d probably call back and leave a message, “Sew any non-bunching pillows lately?”
The picture is one from Dogpatch: me on the left, Mike, my sister Marsha crouched on the bottom, and my cousin Jimmy on the right. We got to see a lot of things thanks to Jimmy. I restored the faces in the photo. Jimmy’s gone too, but I’ll take a few moments to think about him and my brother today. And I’ll think about my other sister, the one I didn’t know I had for another 40+ years after this picture was taken.
The nostalgia will undoubtedly make me more at peace as the world swirls around me today; my thousands of steps and interactions will remind me of the frozen nature of memory and time.
Each second carries me further away from that moment so many years ago at Dogpatch.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 