He's my brother, I'm just not sure about the love thing

The lightbulb did not go off until I was eight.  I was dangling from the front porch light at the house on Iowa Street and trying to figure out what I had done to make my bother mad at me.  I hadn't seen him or much less played with him that day, so I was trying to understand why he was so mean to me as he walked by with his friend Jimmy.  I just couldn't figure it out.  My sister, who, only this year, due to a midlife crisis combined with a need to confess all sins, advised me the only reason she ever played with me in our youth was because her options were limited, looked up at me and told me the cold hard truth. "He just doesn't like you."  

After this great revelation I realized I spent a large part of my childhood/teenage years pondering the situation.  I wanted to be his friend. I wanted to do the things he did.  I wanted to not be slow and awkward. But he never gave me a chance.  I, under the influences of the times and working with what information I had provided to me in a small midwestern town in the way of mental health,  came to the conclusion "who could blame him?"  As far as looks, body type, smarts, killer smiles, and athleticism, my brother got the best roll of the DNA dice.  

Ronnie looked like Elvis, acted like Springsteen and always wanted to be Bruce Lee. [comparison: I looked liked Dom Delouse, acted like Dom Delouse and wanted to be anyone other than myself.] He was born 8 pounds and 8 ounces and 22 inches. [comparison: I was 20 inches at birth, weighted 10 pounds and 7 ounces and since have proceeded to gain 100 pounds every decade]  His chores were focused on caring for the 20 horses and ponies we kept.  He would break, ride and train them.  [comparison: My chores were focused on the caring for the 20 horse and ponies we kept... I swept their stalls and carry their water.]

High School consisted of him passing his classes with minimal effort, dating a different girl every weekend, and having a large group of friends to hang out with.  He was on the football team, the basketball team, the baseball team and ran track.  He loved track.  He eventually gave up all the other sports to focus on track.  He was, a track star.  Now being a star at any sport in high school in southern Indiana gave you some prestige.  At lease enough so that a star was never ever required to have his fat, goofy, little brother hang out with him.  Ronnie made a point of never inviting me to go anywhere, well, except to the barn to clean out stalls.  Seriously.  That was it.  The only time he talked to me during high school was when he asked if I wanted to make a dollar on Saturdays.  I remember the first time he asked. I was so starve for positive attention from a male figure that the type of work and amount of the pay did not matter.  And when it turned into a weekly event my confidence shot up, my grades improved, and no matter what happened to me at school that week, I could count on my big brother talking to me on Saturday mornings.  I acted aloof and uncaring, but it was, sometimes, the most joy I felt the entire week just having him acknowledge my existence.  Oh, and what was this transformative task, you ask?  I became the washer of the robin egg blue 1969 Chevy Impala.

photo by: free use rights off the internet

This car has a lot of family history.  It was the car in which my brother's future wife would let the pet hamster loose.  It got into the heat ducts.  I suppose one cannot say we could never find the hamster.  We always know where it was.  Years later when the car came into my position, I still knew exactly where hamster was.  The damn thing died in the heat ducts. Sandy poured bottles and bottles of perfume into the heating system to try and improve the smell.  It was the strangest odor.  One that I can still recall 40 years later.  Death and Charlie by Revlon.  Soon after he sold it to me, I ended up damaging the car.  I tore the hell out of the transmission.  Ronnie, not yet knowing how much of liar I was [how could he, we never talked] took the blame for selling me a car that needed so much work. 

Ronnie's [note the feminine spelling... mom's doing] first job was as a carny in a traveling side show with a man my mother knew from high school.  Ronnie was allowed to travel over the weekends with the company.  Every time they were in town I would make sure mom took me along when she would go see her son 'working at his first job.' [Noting the bullshit here:  Mom was not the least bit interested in seeing Ronnie work.  She would spend all of her time looking for the owner.  When she found him {read: after standing in his path until he stumbled on her} they would walk the fair grounds all smiles and giggles.  It was at this point in my life where my country genes were being overtaken and killed by my gay genes and so I refused to acknowledge that my mother could he having an affair with Wide Clyde, the owner of the Westside Carnival Tours].

Elvis Springsteen Lee worked the Jump House.  You know this thing.  Parents now rent jump houses to put in front of their homes for their three year old's birthday party.  Back then it was still a novelty so teenagers would still consider the Jump House for there last ride of the night.  [The Jump House was only one ticket while all of the cool rides were three tickets.  And, it was a better ride than the Tea Cups.]  Any new member of the carnival is put on the Jump House.  No wheels, no machinery, no way to kill some poor teenager who was out drunk for the first time with his friends.  But, Mr. I'm-The-Man-Soon-To-Be-Slipping-It-To-Your-Mother realized that Ronnie was more of an attraction than the jumping.  Ronnie always had a line the nights he worked this ride.  The 12, 13, 14, and 15 year old girls would line up just so Mr. Wonderful could take their ticket.  During his entire tenure, Ronnie always worked the Jump House.

By the time I had figured out my older bother had stolen a large part of the DNA that should have come to me, he was making plans to move out of the family home.  All the dollar car washes, all the lines of teenage girls, all the years of being ignored bubbled up, and I had to do something.  I never received the love and respect I, as a 14 year old gay boy who had yet come out to himself or anyone else, thought I should.  There was only one thing for me to do.  I had to drive him crazy.  

I had recently seen Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and decided I wanted to drive him so bat shit crazy that I would get to see Ronnie staring through the Impala's back window at the double wide trailer as mom drove him off to the nut house.  As I hugged him goodbye, I would slip a piece of paper letting him know that I was the reason for all of his pain and future misery.  I felt it a fair trade.  I gave up a childhood, he could give up an adulthood. 

I waited until the next weekend.  This way I did not jeopardize a possible ride to school.  Not that he ever gave me a lift, but I was often lead to believe there was always a chance.  I hated the bus.  I liked having the chance.... Saturday came.  I had my plan.  I was ready.  Only problem.  I slept until noon.  Ronnie had left, returned, and was bagging on my door telling me to get the car washed.  Damn my late night walks to catch lightening bugs and gig frogs.  So Sunday it would be.  He and Sandy were going to church.

That Sunday morning I heard him leave.  I snuck into his room. My angst, dislike, and years of resentment all boiled up to this one moment.  It had to be good, yet it had to be subtle.  And what, you may ask, did chose to be my great act of insanity driving revenge.... I made his bed.  It was the subtlest act I could take.  All I had to do was simply flip the corner over and smooth out the pillow.  Ronnie would walk in and would not be able to remember if he did or did not make his bed.  My plan of genius was sprung.  I waited. And, waited.  And, waited.  It wasn't until the next Friday when I was going to bed far too early in hopes of getting up when he left the next morning, that my sister said, ever so casually, "I don't know why you are going to bed so early, Ronnie knows you have been in his room and what you are trying to do."

I gave up.  I was defeated.  My master plan of evil domination had failed.  Within the next week, mom and Ronnie had a fight.  I have no idea what it was about.  Nor do I know if it was their first or last.  All I know is that Ronnie planned to move into Grandma's house the next weekend.  Mom tells this story, I truly only have a fragmented memory of it: Ronnie was picking on me, razzing me about something, that last week with him still at home.  Mom says that she could see it in my eyes. I was simply done.  I had had enough.  She says she had never seen that look in my eyes before.  I was calm, and I was collected, but it was obvious I was not in a mood to be messed with.  Ronnie, however, just kept on going.  The story goes, I simply stood up, walked over to him and punched him in the jaw.  He fell through the entry way partition and damaged the wall.  I walked out the door.  He quietly picked himself up, brushed himself off and neither of us have ever discussed broken walls or unmade beds.