Thursday, June 16, 2005

Portrait of my Other Brother as a Young Man: a sequel to Portrait of my Brother as a Young Man

When I was 5 years old my brother ran away from home. The police car idled in the driveway and I wondered if I could ask the policeman to turn on the siren. But then, my mother ran back into the house crying and the I heard the policeman say that if they brought him back, he would just leave again because he was 15 and the police knew what they were talking about. I learned later that my mother had flushed the LSD she found in his room.

The next time I saw him, he didn't recognize me. At 18, he had a pregnant girlfriend, a broken needle in the palm of his hand, from an injection gone bad, and a beat up electric guitar. He told me about flashbacks and angel dust while he played along with the songs on the radio. He could play Alice Cooper's I'm 18: " I got a baby's brain and an old man's heart, took eighteen years to get this far. Don't always know what I'm talkin' about. Feels like I'm livin' in the middle of doubt"

And, I remembered another Alice Cooper song, from the albums he left behind:

I ran into my room
And I fell down on my knees
Well, I thought that fifteen
Was gonna be a breeze
I picked up my guitar
To blast way the clouds
But somebody in the next room yelled
"You gotta turn that damn thing down"

In the morning, the police called. I sat in the back seat on the ride to the police station where I saw my brother. He didn't speak. The sound of handcuffs locking around wrists is exactly as it is on television. Everyone knows that ratchet sound of the lock squeezing tighter and tighter. I didn't know what trafficking was. I didn't know where the jail was. I never knew how long he stayed locked up.

I thought his girlfriend looked out of place carrying a giant paper bag with a colourful smiling Santa Claus printed on one side and "Merry Christmas" scripted in red on the other. In the dust kicked up by our tires, I could see her belly and her thumb in the air as she tried to hitch a ride to somewhere in the hot summer air.

(read part two)

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15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this true? What happened to the girlfriend?

zydeco fish said...

Yes, it is true. The baby was born, but then the mother took off somewhere with the child while my brother was serving time (or at some stage very early on). No one knows what happened to them. I don't even know the kid's name.

tshsmom said...

How sad!
This was very poetically written.

Critical Darling said...

I don't think I've ever seen you write so eloquently

zydeco fish said...

Critical Darling: it may not happen again :-)

Princess Wild Cow said...

Those were the days...it's amazing how some of us survived, and it's amazing that others can write so beautifully about it...

LingLing said...

ZF,
Beautiful, eloquent and heartbreaking.

Ive had friends with siblings or lovers who were destroyed by drugs. It's just so awful...I really feel for you.

Jay said...

That's a terrible story. Well not 'story' but you know what I mean. Very sad that you have relatives floating around out there that you have no idea about.

mister anchovy said...

and today?

zydeco fish said...

Mister Anchovy, if you are you asking for an update, that may take some time.

Wyrfu said...

Yes, we are asking for an update.

SeizeTheNite said...

That was just an amazing read...
Hope theres more to come.

Anonymous said...

Beautifully written, especially the last image...such a sad story, though.

Meliors Simms said...

The question is: how come you managed to turn out apparently ok with such dysfunctional-sibling role models? Unless you are not mentioning your own history of teenage fatherhood, drug abuse and jailtime... and I know as well as anyone that it is possible to grow out of some evil adolescent shit, but how come some of us do grow out of it, and some wallow on and on?

zydeco fish said...

Meliors,

There was no teenage fatherhood, drug abuse, or jail time on my part. I am not sure how I managed to turn out so well, unless I was switched at birth or born in a better year. Your last question is a good one, and I have no answer for it.