gang-related tattoos

Because he had a real hard-on for pain and, frankly, he was too young to be overly-imaginative with his hobbies, my brother, Stephen, used to give himself terrible rug burn on all sorts of places across his body. He was probably six or seven at the time; in my opinion, way too old to be considered sane and still allowed to act like a complete lunatic. But, then again, this is a criticism about the nature of someone's mental health coming from me, a person who champions the merits of warm soymilk fights.

It was the first thing Stephen thought of after a long day at school or a Buddhist monastery or the local asbestos factory. (Stephen's always been a roamer: The kind of person who will sit patiently at a funeral for forty minutes and then, suddenly, stand up, open a window, dive through and disappear for two weeks, after which he'll blow back into town with several gang-related tattoos, a colorful eye patch and a severed human foot in a large pickle jar.) He'd run into the living room, shedding his clothes in the kitchen and the hallway as he went, and dump himself on the floor, twisting and twirling, assaulting his skin with violent friction. To see it was like watching an E! True Hollywood Story about Gary Busey - you're disgusted, angry, saddened and even a little bit constipated by the ridiculous spectacle but, try as you might, you can't stop watching until the end (or, at least, the first commercial break). After about sixty seconds, Stephen would have tears streaming down his cheeks. Damn if that ever stopped him from rolling around on the floor again later, though.

The problem began when people started noticing. Nosy people. Nosy white people with too much time on their hands. My mother started getting calls and my father started asking questions. It was very awkward. You see, I’ve always had a pretty healthy relationship with my brother - I didn’t ask where he disappeared to and he didn’t ask why I was stockpiling so much kerosene in my bedroom closet - unlike most brothers, our relationship was forged in a mutual respect for each other’s dirty secrets rather than an incessant stream of violent encounters - but all the strange injuries Stephen was racking up started to make his big brother look like an Irish drunk. (As if there’s any other kind of Irish.) Of course my parents had seen him going apeshit on the carpet, but when your kid’s got enough rug burn to make Jesus wince, you start to wonder if it’s all really his own doing. And Stephen would have explained his fascination with skin-on-carpet sports but, frankly, I think he was embarrassed. Crazy or not, he knew that what he was doing wasn’t ever going to show up at the Winter Olympics - it was a strange hobby all his own and he didn’t want to have to justify himself to parents that would have surely branded him psychotic (or a bit of a retard, in the least).

So, I took the blame. It came with some consequences - no television for a week hit me the worst because it was November sweeps and I had to find out whether or not Sam and Diane were going to keep dancing around each other or finally hit it off - but protecting Stephen still isn’t something I regret. Still, though, it would have been a bit more satisfying if I had deserved the punishment.

Tip of the Week: Beat the shit out of your siblings when you get the chance because you’ll probably get blamed for it even if you don’t. Life sucks and that’s just how it is.