My Brother

The biggest personal tragedy in life is wasted potential. What holds people back? At the root of it all is self-doubt, insecurity, the belief that others can do it better. My brother has always had the heart of two men. He was a lot, and I mean a lot like Tanner of the Bad News Bears, full of sauce and a never-say-die attitude. When he was knee-high he took on kids twice his size—he was afraid of nobody. My dad once coached a Little League team while my brother and I helped. John was younger than the boys on the team, and eventually attracted the older boy’s attention, in a negative way, and before long he was picked on. John slugged the biggest of the bunch and ran away. My father and I watched as the entire team chased him from infield to out and back again. Dad laughed, and he was so proud. His boy was a scrapper. He had heart.

As a big brother, in the short time that my brother and I shared the same residence, I give myself a C. I never hit him, no matter how badly I wanted to sometimes. Whenever he got in trouble with the local neighborhood kids, I was there to break it up. But I picked on him mercilessly about girls. “Oooh, you like her don’t you?” Noooooooooooo! He would scream to my sheer delight—daily. I always stood above him, keeping him in place. I was always top dog, and he needed to know.

As we got older, I stopped growing and he didn’t. I enjoyed a five year head start on him, but around 21 or 22, the size difference erodes like the sandy shore. We stood upon a rooftop, both of us wearing tool belts atop a plywood sheeted roof. Block layers surrounded our building on scaffolding; their hard-helmeted heads floated around the building like beach balls. I was irritated with my brother for being lapsidaisical. I had learned to run, and he was slowing me down. I threatened him like I always did. He straightened both arms to his sides and balled his fists.

“I’m not back down to you any more.”

My heart rattled in my chest as I realized he was serious. I lashed out and slapped him across the face—not hard, just enough to show him I was boss, desperate to hang on to my status that was already denigrated. “Ok then, let’s see what you’ve got,” I taunted.

He just stared at me, unblinking, still as a cobra. He repeated, “I won’t back down any more.”

I hollered some ridiculous challenge, but he only stood there. I finally walked away. One of the brick layers chided me later for picking on the small guy. I could only say, “He’s my brother.”

It changed between us after that. I apologized to him that night, something to the effect of, “John, what happened out there… I was wrong.” And of course he agreed.

He beat me at arm wrestling five years later, and any illusions I had of being his big brother were gone, at least in any definition I had to that day understood. He was bigger and stronger, and I had nothing left.

We share the same father, John and I. John has our father’s name, but I always had my father. John had his mother, who divorced our father when we were kids, when she was pregnant with our sister. Dad never paid a penny of child support, often not having a penny to support himself—but that was his own damn fault. My brother and sister grew up without a father and got stuck with the controlling, fire and brimstone, God fearing mother, the one who beat me for the short time I lived with her. I was glad to be rid of her. But John never recovered from losing his father. To make things worse, Dad never called him and still never does to this day. Why? Because dad is fucked up, thinking that he needs to have something of value to say to his son, something to offer, placing no value on the sound of his voice or in his love.

Houston is the capital of drugs, the test market for the latest mind altering substances. Drugs and God are the culture. There are gangs and violence, and now the jails are overflowing with the poor and desperate refuges of Katrina. Houston’s murder rate has more than doubled since the hurricane, and the crime rate has spiked off the chart. My brother got caught holding an exorbitant amount of ecstasy, or X if you will, a few years ago, and barely avoided going to jail as a dealer, and has been on probation, reporting monthly to deposit a jar of piss. He has a daughter and an ex-wife, and just found out about another daughter that he supports but never sees.

My sister knows about the life my brother leads because he parties with my sister’s ex-husband, who she left because of his insufferable cocaine habit. It was just a matter of time before the piss test yielded a positive result.

I don’t know what is going to happen now. John has a lawyer that feels good about his chances to be allowed to undergo rehab. John is financially responsible, having just bought a house, and an employer who will pay for the rehab and hold his job for him. John is number one in his company for what he does, and that is no mean feat. John has always been the one with the heart to do it better than anybody else, and that isn’t just the intense love that I feel speaking. I’ve said that I don’t know how I feel about God, but he heard from me last night.

I said goodnight to my own son last night. When I look at him I see my brother as a little boy again, and I can’t help but wonder if someday Jackson will have the same problems. I kissed him on the forehead and asked him for a hug, which he was all too glad to grant. I can’t help my brother now, but I’ll be for goddamn sure that I can give to my boys what my brother so desperately needed. I held Jackson tight and told him, “I love you more than anything.” I felt unimaginative at that as I searched for something more prolific. He didn’t break away like he sometimes does, sensing something deeper than the usual good night routine. I turned away from him lest he see the tears forming in the wells of my eyes and managed feeble see-you-in-the-morning.