The closest thing
From my mother, I am her only child. I would have been her second son, but her first died in '79 of SIDS (no, not simian aids; but sudden infant death syndrome). My father couldn't keep his pants up from the southern-most tip of Mexico to the beginnings of New England. Thus, he romanced and breached panties all over the Western Hemisphere. It's the same story with every woman that fell for him: Swept of feet, knocked-up, and then he was gone. His only son I met drank himself to death at 20 odd years. Though I'm in the same gene pool with my dead bros. and the possible dozen bastards littered throughout the Americas, they are not my siblings. No my fellow b3tards, this story is not about them.

Gabriel. It is he who I call brother. In sum, he is a brunet brick-shit-house version of Garth from Wayne's World. He is Ted, he is Hutch, he is Stimpy, he is Rodan, Rick Parfitt, and Milhouse Mussolini Van Houten. I am one-week his senior, and he will always be my brother before he's my best-friend. I consider myself being level-headed, rational, and calm under pressure. However, this bastard is the only one who can drive me to panic through wind-ups and embarrassing the sheer fuck out of me.

Exhibit A: Having stayed in the hospital because of stomach complications (read: constipation for a week), he was the one who picked me up from the hospital. Before being discharged from said hospital and before we went to White-Castle for a dozen burgers each, he noticed the African-American fellow who was lying in the other bed in the room. Around me, he tends to become prejudice for the sake of embarrassing me. I was packing my clothes and belongings into a small rucksack I had. Like the "AreWeThereYet?," he would ask and ask if we could take the coon with us. Out loud. Loud enough for the fellow to hear. Repeatedly. Then he began walking around the room like a pigeon cooing coon as a racist pigeon would.

He once told me about seizures. He said most seizure victims smell an absent familiar smell like roses or perfume. And that some seizures are as simple as a repeated motion that isn't necessarily flailing like a mad-man. Since then he would randomly pause, claim to smell roses, and begin to slowly scratch his chest with one hand while absently looking at me. His other hand would be on the steering wheel. It was either that, or he'd do the ape shit flailing in the car after having smelt roses.

On drives to places, we would debate about nothing. When things got loud and he was loosing, he'd pretend to sleep while on the highways and accelerate. Fucking terrifying when you see the driver "pass-out" at high speeds.

When I moved out, I rented a small one bedroom. The door to the room was at the rear of the building, and was the only room that didn't require one to go through the front door of the building. At the front of my door, I had a tree in a pot. In it, I left a spare key. Every now and then, Gabe would go into my apartment because of the spare key and plant gay-community newspapers in it. On my couch, in the toilet, the shower, the bedroom, the refrigerator, etc. Other times, he'd let himself in while I was showering. With a towel curled up in his hand, he would pound the shower door and yell "American History X." After putting up with this sort of thing, I no longer kept the spare key. That should solve the problem, thought I. I didn't count on Gabe making a copy of the spare keys.


Other things included beat boxing on my answering machine for twenty some minutes. Threatening my then girlfriends with rape, where I would be the one being raped. While balling his hand into a fist and pointing his left arm skyward akin to a relaxed Black-Power fist, with his right hand he would type in the air and would make keypad noises with his mouth, he then would make a "woooosh" sound and his left hand became a SCUD missile launching into the air with my nuts being the intentional target (it was the WTF? mode of thought that let him reach and punch my balls).

Yes, there were times when we were there for one another because of family, money, women, and other human drama. But still I'll never forget things like strong-guy charades, making fun of fatties, threatening people with fruit, rooftop cook-outs, crashing cars on purpose, arguments about Adult Swim, pretending to be Mortal Kombat characters in a Buddhist park complete with shrine, and so much more.

He moved in with his girlfriend of four years. We had a bit of a falling out after that. One day I moved to another city without telling him I was moving. Last I heard, he had a row with his woman and joined the US Navy. No matter, he's still my bro.

That is all.
(Thrillhouse will be prosecuted on, Tue 6 Jan 2009, 18:36, Reply)