My Brother Is Horrifying

My brother's first girlfriend was a little whippet named Amy. Amy was from South Buffalo, and girls from South Buffalo are generally foul-mouthed tough-chicks with bad hair and lipstick tinted a color pink that hasn't been made since 1984. Amy was a few years away from that perpetual wet-haired kind of South Buffalo look when my brother met and wooed her, but she still had a little attitude and a little grit.

I kind of liked her.

I did not, however, like their mating rituals, which included making out in the backseat of my mother's car. Their brand of love also called for hours spent on the phone and some sort of physical contact every second they were together. Whenever she came around, Amy always managed to sit as close to my brother as she could without actually being on his lap.

It was disgusting.

Even more disgusting than their love, their general demeanor, and the fact that Amy could somehow love my gangly, awkward, grumpy brother, was their song. In fact, I wish my brother had never told me what their song was. I'd be a better person not knowing--mainly because every now and again that song will pop up on the radio as a part of a Flashback Friday, or I will find it on an old mix CD, like I did tonight as I mixed a new CD that will go out in a few Christmas packages in the coming week. And when that song comes on my body immediately reacts: my throat closes, my shoulders tense, my gag reflex threatens. Gross, I think. Gross, gross, gross.

Their song--the song they thought best represented their love--was a ditty by Ludacris. In it, Ludacris raps romantic phrases like I wanna lick you from your head to your toes and You could scratch my back and rule me. In short: vomit.

I don't really know what my brother was thinking back then. I mean, this was years before I noticed the wad of condoms in his bedroom, years before he waggled his eyebrows at me and said, "You know how many panties have been dropped on this floor, Jess? Huh? Huh?" As far as I know, he and Amy didn't have sex--for many reasons probably, but I have to think the most compelling was that at that point in his life my brother's back was covered with acne. Not very romantic. Not very this-is-what-I-want-to-remember-about-losing-my-virginity. For both of their sakes, I hope they waited.

But still, I don't understand why they chose that song. It's all about sex. Gross sex. It's about Ludacris naming places he wants to get it on: a football game, the library stacks, the VIP room at a club, and a classroom.

When I was in middle school and pining away for Ryan McLean, my fantasies weren't featuring songs about sex. My daydreams included all the best Monster Ballads: Every Rose Has Its Thorn, for example, or every Bon Jovi song ever written. (Speaking of which, can we just take a second to acknowledge Always, which is still one of my favorite videos of all time? Jon's hair is breathtaking.) All of those songs are good, classic love-is-pain ballads. Those seem appropriate for the dramatics of first love (or, in my case, first stalking). Rap songs that discuss the toppings the rapper wants to eat off his lady's private parts don't seem to have that same poignancy.

So, I wish I didn't remember these things. I wish I'd never known them in the first place. But instead I get to have these unpleasant flashbacks every time I hear that Ludacris song--all courtesy of my pimply-backed, puffy-nippled, too cheap to buy his own masturbatory lotion brother. He is, as always, a joy.