RE: Union
Episode 1: "Good Brother"
I
suppose a family reunion isn't considered a vacation in anyone's mind. Yet, the
fact that everyone who attended my family reunion had to travel to get there
makes it somewhat of an adventure.
Where
was there? There was Lake Martin, Alabama or somewhere like that. It doesn't
matter really most lakes are the same around the world, with the exception of
some variations in pH level, width, depth, flora, fauna, number of Coca-Cola
and Bud Light cans floating on the surface…you know, the "scientific"
differences.
I
just see water in a big hole.[1]
***
We
were there, at the reunion. I had driven there with my father. We drove in my
car. Well, it wasn't my car it was his but he let me keep it for the most part
because he can bike to work and he shouldn't be driving but that's another
subject that I will touch on in a moment. We were sitting at the dinner table.
No, one of the folding tables, the cheap ones with the pleather soft top, you
know, eating… what was it? Tacos.
Listen:
My
father has five brothers, three of which are doctors. My father is the middle
child, if there is such a thing as the middle of six… and thus suffers from
what is known as the curse of the middle child. Now, I am not a middle child,
so you would have to speak with one to understand this Affliction-of-Being, as
it were.
Me?
I can only speculate.[2]
Incidentally,
I am an only child. Or, at least that is the way I grew up. I have a
half-sister; her name is Katelyn. I'll introduce her now, the only way I can,
through limited sensory details: that is to say, I know nothing more about her
than exterior appearances.
At
the reunion, while we were sitting at the dinner table of the cheap, folding
variety, Katelyn was sitting with the children at the upper-class table, a
finely crafted, long, sturdy wooden table next to the large bay window in the
dining area. The table held about five to six million dollars worth of people.
Hell, it could be more. I'm just throwing numbers around. My uncles, Ricky,
Steve and Jeffery are doctors, as has been mentioned before. Now they have
names. Ricky is the oldest, Steve is the second oldest and Jeffery is the baby.
My
grandparents were at that table, sitting in the fourth dimension no doubt.
Don't raise your eyebrows at me. You know the feeling when you think you can
see what an old person looked like before their time started showing. My grandparents were soaked in it: Time, that is. If I could only see what
they see… generation upon generation upon generation of little writhing,
pathetically pale piglets sucking off their tit. Sitting their knowing way too
much about the world for their own good.
Experience.
Perhaps,
that is why old people are always bent over when they walk around. Knowledge is
made of some heavy shit. I mean dense matter. Their poor fragile necks can't
handle the weight of their brain and all that compressed experience and the
million devastating, little secrets stashed away under each fold.
Yes,
Katelyn was sitting there with pathetic red hair[3]
and a bivouac of pimples passing through the dimples and other craters and
curvatures of her plump cheeks. Oh, but I'm giving her a hard time, because I
can. Of course, I don't tell her these things to her face.
I
was feeling awkward about her being so close to the grandparents. I was feeling
this way because my dad was feeling this way. To my dad, she represented a big
pile of legal fees that cost him and his parents a good bit of money. We didn't
want the grandparents to look at her that way, like a mistake.
My
dad thinks his parents hate him. I might think the same thing, but back to that
later.
I
consider myself a good big brother.
Poor
thing, I am no brother to her.
I
fear the only thing we have in common, other than the genetic stuff, is an
affinity to chocolate and perhaps the color green. Although, I suspect I share
these proclivities with about four billion other folks: so, nothing special
there.
You
might sense some hostility toward my sister. Don't worry. None of it is
justifiable. Not that I intend to justify anything.
A
suggestion from a former connoisseur of justifications and a minor enthusiast
for reticulation:
Don't
waste time searching for order and causality; Even if you found them you would
still be in the same predicament, only, having wasted time. But, of course,
this is just a suggestion.
Oh
my, I am rambling now…
A
good brother.
Thing
is, I'd help her out if she would get into some trouble, but she hasn't. Or,
she has and hasn't told me about it. Independent. Maybe that's another thing we
have in common. This is about the reunion, though. But I just can't help it. My
sister's presence there was stressful for my father. He was ashamed, I think,
not of Katelyn, but of the situation. She was a receipt, physical evidence of a
transaction made between a con artist and a hard dick. Her mother, Colleen
Daugherty is one of those "black widow" types, if that's what you
call it; she tricks men into impregnating her by various means, either lying
about birth control, or supplying condoms laden with holes to her prey.[4]
Her score to date is seven illegitimate children fathered by six different men.
The children range in worth from $600 to $1600 per month, per head. I guess you
have to applaud it on some level.
What
a scam!
That's
like, six to eight grand a month. It's a shame, really; it's a shame that
Colleen Daugherty is not a human but rather a machine, whose only functions are
fucking and getting money. Shit, she's more gangster than some of these rappers
out there, at least according to the prerequisites and parameters laid out by
so called "gangsters" before her.
Except:
Her
secondary function in life as a robot includes the insatiable desire to convert
money, bills, cash, benjamins, and so on, into tiny pills that call themselves
"Oxycodone," or "Oxyconton" or whatever gets you high these
days.
My
father had a problem with pills when I was younger. That's probably why he hung
out with Colleen. She liked pills, too. My dad was a pharmacist, which means he
was a double whammy to the pleasure dome: Pseudo-rich, impressionable and
unlimited access to the candy: perfect job for a pillhead.
Really.
He
was sent to Biloxi, Mississippi for rehab instead of going to jail for stealing
so many narcotics. My grandparents knew some people. Money tends to loosen the
mood in any situation.
I
suppose my dad was ashamed of his own past when he looked at Katelyn across the
dining room. He wasn't feeling awkward…
So,
why was I?
***
He
sat there with me, my cousin Katie who was a year older than me (25), and two
naiive little boys named Jacob and Brian– the youngest sons of Jeffery–who were
enamored by my dad's boisterous and belligerent exterior projection of himself.
Too many people and things reminding him that HE IS AN ALKY AND A REFORMED PILL
THIEF so that it's easier to just keep playing the stock character in everyone
else's story of, "how-things-went-down" in life. Oh, and he was good
at it, too: the acting. He is even able to convince himself from time to time.
Only
I knew the contemplative, caring and responsible father that David Alan
Whitehurst could be. Even though he may have driven me around town in Moody,
Alabama drunk and stoned out his mind on pills.
I
don't blame him though.
He
may have gambled away a fortune. He may have gone bankrupt and lost his house
and his car and his golf clubs and all of the Disney movies we had collected
over time.
He's
doing fine now. Thanks for asking. That's my line, right?
Pardon
me, I've led you to believe that I'm just a floating brain or a mental-mist
experiencing all of these things then relaying them to you via a system of
symbols ordered from left to right, top to bottom, with seemingly random
spacing throughout.
Be
sure of this:
There
is a body behind these words.
And
there was a body, that was mine, sitting with my father's body digesting bite
after bite of tacos in sync.
1.
"Will I die immediately upon entering said water?"
2.
"If not, how long do I have to swim?"
3.
"What is that looking back at me?"
[2]
One of my closest friends, Yussef Joseph Antoine Hakim (Joe), a brilliant
graduate student at UAB, studying microbiology or some fancy shit like that, is
a middle child. Look him up in the directory and call him. He might be able to
help.
[3]
I say ‘pathetic’ here because it looked like Katelyn had been struggling
mightily to straighten her hair. Many things come to mind when I think about
the extent to which we, as humans, go to alter ourselves. I used to want straight
hair. Yet, something in me says that she wants to straighten her hair in order
to distinguish herself from us. This is being self-conscious though.
[4]
Now, I don't intend to be biased, but I am. I know full well that "it
takes two," it being sex/baby
making. But, when both are consenting adults and one of the consenting parties
is manipulating the means of contraception while pretending that said means are
in full functioning order, is scandalous to say the least. If the grammar in
this is wrong, so be it.
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