9/11/84

Today is my little brother’s birthday. 23 years old....don’t that make you wanna punch him? Grrrrrr!!!

I was 11 years old when our mother poked her head into me and my brother’s bedroom and said to come out, she had an announcement to make. We had been playing one of our made up games: basketball, on our knees, rolled up socks for a ball and, perched on the dresser, the support weighed down by books, a real metal basketball rim. Which, of course, would constantly fall on top of our heads. Bright fellas. How I made it to 9th grade before dropping out is still a mystery.

So we get taken into our parents bedroom – right away we knew something was odd; our parents bedroom was not a place my brother and I were welcome. The only time yours truly got the invite was for my daily whipping from my mother; hell, for years I thought the brass metallic sound that rang out was from my opening the door, not the handles of my father’s belt drawer clanging as my mother opened the drawer up to peruse that day’s weapon of choice. Tinkle tinkle "Welcome Xmas," I thought the door was chiming "you are s-c-r-e-w-e-d!!" “Boys” my father announced, “your mother is pregnant. You’re going to have another brother or sister. Anyone else think squirrels are sexy?” I looked at my mother. I can still see her, in some sort of light blue denim jumper thingee. Hey, it was the early 80’s. And I am 35 years old and I have ZERO idea what the fuck a “jumper” really is. If I can’t immediately identify a piece of clothing as a skirt or dress, I call it a jumper. Prolly the very last thing I need to learn about women, I guess.

However, the announcement was quickly dismissed by my brother and I as, ta-da, it happened to be April Fool’s day. “Nice try” we smirked as we walked out and back to our game of “Let’s Hit Each Other in the Head with a Huge Iron Rim.” Not thinking, of course, that our parents had never bothered to show even flashes of humor; certainly the idea of them getting together to scheme some sort of April Fool’s Day joke on us should have been absurd. 11 years of saying and doing exactly funny and all of a sudden we’re thinking our parents are Abbott & Costello. So eventually the long pregnancy sunk in and we prepared ourselves for the new addition.

Is it me, or did that last sentence sound like a story outta “Little House on the Prairie”, where they build a room for the mother to go out alone and have the baby in, out in the field? “We put Ma out in the birthing house and Pa played his fiddle as we locked arms a-spinning round shouting ‘how to it, Pa! Pick it, pick it!!!” What the fuck am I saying?

I remember a few things about my mother being pregnant during that loooooooong hot summer. Number one, she got into some weird pregnancy groove wherein every night for dinner she would make the exact same thing: hamburger patties, white rice and green beans. Monday night. Tuesday night. Wednesday night. EVERY night. One night my father started to complain and that was the night that I, at a very early age, learned a very important lesson: whatever a pregnant woman puts on a plate in front of you, you fucking eat it and shut your mouth. Period. It was as if a strange, alien creature reached out from my mother’s guts, reached across the table, slapped my father’s face with a pristine white glove saying “lordy, I declare!” before grabbing my father’s testicles and slapping his brain with them...while making him eat the burger, white rice and green beans. Yeesh. I also learned how to fake smile when someone put food on a plate in front of you that you weren’t thrilled about. “oh, yeah....green beans....great...pass the mustard, please...and the mayo...and Worcester...and salt...aaaaaaaaand A-1....”

Note: takes more than a crazed pregnant woman to get me to eat ketchup.

So we ate the shit. The summer went on, and it was a HOT summer. Come August my brother, who was going into the 8th grade, declared he wanted to try out for the junior varsity football team. My mother being a recovering Yankee and not in love with the brutal Southern summers said HELL no – there was no way she was gonna drag her pregnant ass out in the hot sun every day to bring him back and forth to practice or sit in the stands roasting in the heat during his games. Which meant, of course, guess who then wasn’t allowed to play the next year when HE entered 8th grade? Thanks, lil bro!! Also, btw, the reason it took an extra year for me to learn how to french kiss. But this post’s about my lil bro, not me.

We spent a lot of time on names that summer too. For some reason I was stuck on “William Phillip;” obviously I wanted him to grow up to be a soap opera character who disappears on his yacht, is thought to be dead, then comes back 15 years later, a changed man (so we think – but STILL secretly a prick who had embezzled millions from his wife’s father’s plastic fruit company!!!!) My father, of course, was determined to break the record for being Irish with such gems as Brógán Buadhach, or Cairell Deaglán Fearchar. I think he was still miffed we hadn’t let him name our sister “Honnorrah.” Well, and that women were given the right to vote. “Next thing you know, boys” I remember him warning us “they’ll be doctors and lawyers and directing their own woman on woman breast milk-lubricated anal bead scenes!!!!” Hey, what can you say, a man of the old country. I don’t know how we landed on William John McKenna. William John sounds like it could be a family name in any family; McKenna however was my grandmother’s maiden name. My little brother would come to repay her for lending him the name by, a few years later when she had to move in with us for a few months, walking up to her and asking “when are you leaving?” Such tact at 4 years old. Unteachable.

I can’t really remember a lot about him as an infant; I mean I don’t remember much about feeding him or any of that. I do remember the first time I babysat him by myself. About 8 seconds after my mother’s car left the driveway for work little man dropped about a three-pounder of real angus beef in his Huggies. I can still see his face, looking at me like “...okay...fix this, that lady always does...” I looked at him, shrugged, and said “gonna be a long 8 hours for you, buddy.” Another valuable lesson for him, I thought: life’s tough, and sometimes you hafta sit in a pile of your own shit while your caretaker is in the next room jerking off to Catherine Bach in “Dukes of Hazzard.” Seriously, Will: you’re welcome.

A few years later Will entered the working world, getting his first job: walking into the living room every 90 seconds to spy on me and my girlfriend on the couch. My mother, remembering her teachings from the 50’s that dictated that necking on the couch could lead to becoming pregnant with a black baby, would send him into the living room where we were trying to make out and ask inane questions to pester us. I shudder to think now, shaking my head at those things his young, innocent, naive eyes must’ve seen, the human depravity...no toddler needs to see a girl worship a young man’s body that lustily on THAT certain area, mewling so much like an animal in twisted, feral heat...what was I talking about?

One weird thing about him as a young kid, I mean 2-4ish, is how grumpy he’d be when he’d wake up. My family was all early risers, we’d be sitting in the kitchen eating breakfast discussing world affairs and he’d come stumbling in, eyes glazed like a zombie, careening into the first chair he’d see. Then he’s stare out into space. He looked like a 90-year old who had just had something quickly waved in his face: stunned, vacant, and in disbelief that the Negroes had really been set free. “Good morning Will!” we’d say. To which he’s snap “shut up! It’s NOT a good morning!” Dang. Heavy load for such a young man to be carrying around. Oh wait, I already told that story earlier.

I guess I should save some for next year’s birthday, so I’ll stop there. Well, plus I hear the General Lee on my tv, so obviously I have to start taking my pants off now. As he’s becoming a man he’s everything you’d want in a little brother – warm, loyal, not a mean-spirited bone in his body. Hard to believe this little kid is 23 now; wasn’t it just yesterday he was hooked on Ninja Rangers? Oh wait, yesterday was when he plowed into a transformer and knocked out all the power in Charles City, VA. Sorry!!

Hahahahaaha

Happy birfday, brah!!