Writing About Me

My brother and his girlfriend are moving into my father's garage. My mother is moving next door to my father--with her boyfriend. My grandfather has lost control of his bowels and mows through adult diapers like there's no tomorrow. My best friend's boyfriend of five years left her suddenly. My boyfriend's birthday is tomorrow. The semester is officially done. A student recently told me I need to stop assigning readings about "cancer and dead babies and stuff."

These are some things that have been going on lately.

I know I haven't been here to tell you about them. I've been wondering why I stopped writing. I've been wondering that for a long time, actually. My reluctance to blog started shortly after I started up with The Lady-Killer. Why? Because The Lady-Killer and I spent most of the summer and fall of 2010 in bed, but we did not--contrary to Christine's opinion--develop bedsores. Also, living with someone takes up a lot of time. Seriously. There are days when I get in bed at night and think, "I wanted to do, like, eighty things all day, and yet I spent a good chunk of time lying on the couch reading a magazine and watching TLK play video games." The glorious thing about these thoughts though--and this is showing some real growth here, people--is that they generally do not bother me. The fact that I got almost no shit done would have driven me crazy, pre-TLK. But my world since TLK is like a whole new world, one where a psychiatrist prescribed me a whole mess of anti-anxiety meds. That's right. TLK is like a walking, talking anti-anxiety pill. Plus, he has a lip piercing that feels really good when you kiss him.

And here's another thing. I don't want to tell you some of these things. I mean, I do. I really do. I want to tell you about a million beautiful things about TLK--how he's so funny and charming, how he sometimes makes me giggle until I think I'm going to wet my pants, how he makes really good scrambled eggs because he puts cream cheese in them, how we sleep on the same pillow at night (a fact that, when I told my friends Emily and Christine, almost made them barf)--but I also don't want to tell you those things. I feel more private now. I want to hold some things close to the vest. (I mean, see that list of cute things about TLK up there? THAT IS NOTHING. TRUST ME.) But there's just something in me now that is saying Shhh.

I think it has something to do with me protecting TLK's privacy, and mine. I also think it has something to do with growing up. I mean, back in grad school, you could not shut me the fuck up. I wanted to talk about myself all day and night. And then after grad school, I wah-wah-wahed for months about how sad I was, about how rotten and dumb my life had become now that I had graduated and been forced out of the loving cocoon of the MFA program, where everyone is batshit crazy in really lovable (okay, mostly lovable) ways. I wah-wah-wahed over the Wily Republican, who I now, for days at a time, sometimes forget even exists (oh glorious, happy day that I never thought would come!). Then I wah-wah-wahed over having to take up waitressing when my adjunct gig was over for the summer. Oh my God, how did anyone stand me?

But now, I sort of don't want to talk about myself. And that's really startling to me, because I really love to talk, and I really love to talk about myself. (This, I think, has something to do with my family. Generally, during every phone call my mother and I have, we will spend 15 minutes detailing how stupid our relatives, our neighbors, our coworkers, or other people out in the world are. Then one of us will pause and say, "Well, you know, because we're obviously perfect." Sitting in judgment of others and thus illuminating our own awesomeness is one of our favorite pastimes, right up there with badminton and pierogi-eating.)

Anyway, sometimes I miss writing about myself, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I think, holy crap! That thing TLK is doing right now is so funny (or weird! or crazy! or ill-advised!) I really should write about it! (I've said it before, but I'll say it again: TLK is a lot like my brother. He's lovable in the same way and for similar reasons that have made a lot of complete strangers who read this blog fall in love with my brother. Therefore, I think he makes a beautiful muse.)

Still, I have struggled to get it right when writing about TLK. It's easier to write about my brother than it is to write about TLK. A lot of what's funny between me and TLK has to do with the origin of our relationship, and that's one of those private things I'm not willing to share right now. I don't really care about exposing my brother's weird foibles. The kid is related to me, but it's like he's actually not. It's actually like he's some glorious, horrible space alien that took over the room in our house that had been previously reserved for my mother's typewriter. That kid--the one who took over the typewriter room, which I used to think was its own kind of heaven? That kid I'll expose all day long. TLK though? I'd rather not. That one's all mine.

So that's part of it. The other parts I'm really still trying to understand. But right now I have the inclination to be quiet, but who knows how that's going to go and how long that's going to stick around? After all, when I go home this summer, my mother will be convincing my grandfather that he can never again leave the nursing home and return to his house and that she, in fact, will be renovating the house and moving in. (Wait. Did I say "will be renovating?" I actually mean "totally already did it and has already had new furniture delivered. Surprise, Grandpa!)

In addition, my brother and his girlfriend are consolidating all the things they went to the trouble to dig up for their new apartment, which they've only been in for one year, and they will be moving those things into a small room off to the side of my father's garage. They'll be living there for God knows who long, which means they'll be there when I arrive at my father's house for my usual summer R&R. I think this year my stay at Dad's house will be less like a quiet spa vacation and more like a sitcom staring a boy who once frittered away his life savings at a Hooters.

So maybe I'll be back, but maybe I won't. Either way, I wanted you to know that everything is good--more than good--and that I'm just wrapped up in it, loving it, and being quiet about it for right now.

TLK + Dumpster Full of Chips = My Brother?

Let me be frank: I love chips. Oh my God, I love chips. Here's how sick it is: The reason I love sandwiches so much (and I love sandwiches A LOT) is because I get to eat chips with them. If you try to give me a sandwich without chips, I am going to ask you what the hell is the point. This means that this is an apartment that is always stocked with chips. Especially now, because I live with a boy who would die for French Onion Sun Chips the same way I'd die for Doritos.

Knowing this makes you understand the crisis situation we are in right now: This apartment is chip-less. Or, to be precise, it was chip-less until late last night, when the TLK arrived home from a jaunt with one of his friends. This morning I got a look at the bounty he'd piled on the stove: bags and bags of Doritos, Ruffles, and Cheetos.

"That's a lot of chips," I said.

He looked proud. "Yup," he said.

"Where did you get them?"

"Well, I bet you don't know this," he said, "because I didn't either until last night, but there is a Frito-Lay warehouse just down the road in the industrial park."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"And so... what? They were getting rid of almost-expired chips or something?"

"Right."

"So they put them on sale and you stocked up?" I asked.

TLK smiled at me, the smile you save for a simpleton. "Something like that," he said.

I looked at him. He looked at me. I looked down at the chips.

"Did they have them in a bin out front or something?" I asked.

"Not exactly."

"Oh my God!" I said.

"They're fine!" he said.

"Oh my God!" I said. "You went dumpster diving for chips?"

"I wouldn't call it DIVING," he said. "It was just a giant dumpster full of chips. It's not like we had to pick through garbage for them or anything." He picked up one of the bags and turned it toward me. "See? It's just that today's its expiration date. No big deal." Then he realized there was a dark smudge on the bag, a crust of God-knows-what. He put it back down. "Doesn't matter," he said. "I'm still eating the chips. They're on the inside."

And that was the moment I realized TLK and my brother were the same person.

I'm Betting The Family Pack of Condoms Is in This Box

My brother is the only twenty-three year-old guy I know who would label his moving boxes like this:





I can only imagine the multitudes of disgusting things in that box. You can bet I won't be touching it.

Living in Sin

World, my brother is moving out of my mother's house.

He is moving out of the tiny room he shares with the Possibly Gay Black Belt, who gets the top bunk while Adam gets the bottom in a room decorated with an empty tank from the Myrtle the Turtle debacle, a million sample bottles of cologne, wax imprints of his and his girlfriend's hands, and posters of porn stars.

To be leaving this pleases my brother. He and his girlfriend had spent some time investigating apartment complexes around Western New York, and finally they found one they liked, which is three minutes down the road from my mother's place. Bonus: It has a pool. Bonus: It's close to work. Super Bonus: They don't have to put up with my mother's boyfriend, who's lately been on their nerves.

A month back, my brother had come home one night with a hankering for chicken wings. So he went at in the kitchen. He fried up some wings, tossed them with some sauce, poured a giant cup of bleu cheese, and dumped those things in his mouth. He had to do this quickly because he had a party to get to. And because he had a party to get to, he didn't have time to clean up the kitchen. And the rule in the house that belongs to my mother and her boyfriend is this: If you're making your own dinner, you're cleaning up your own mess.

And for the most part, my brother abides by the rule. But he was short on time that night, so he dashed off a note. It said, GROSS CHICKEN JUICE. DO NOT TOUCH. ADAM WILL CLEAN IN MORNING. THANKS! And off he went.

When he and his girlfriend arrived home later that night--in the middle of the night--they found that my mother's boyfriend had stacked all the bowls and dishes--still slimy with gross chicken juice--onto his bed.

That was one of the last straws.

Now Adam can make chicken wings and leave the mess around until he is good and ready to clean it up. He's excited about that.

He's also excited about the following things: (1.) The fact that he and his girlfriend have made the executive decision to decorate their bathroom with an ocean/lighthouse/sea-shell theme; (2.) The fact that he and his girlfriend have made the executive decision to decorate their kitchen with a strawberry theme, complete with darling little strawberry curtains.

This is a big deal for everyone involved, considering Adam is rotten with money. He will spend it on all manners of inappropriate, ridiculous things--a fluffy woman's robe, for example--and he can't save to, well, save his life.

But the nice thing is this: He's got a stockpile coming his way. He's been paying rent at Mom's for a while now, but she's been sacking it away for him so that he will get it in a lump sum when he moves out. He doesn't know this. He's been under the assumption that my mother has been taking that money--money she just shouldn't be charging her son because it's so evil and wrong, and it's clearly indicative of her blackened soul!--and frittering it away on nonsense.

"Mom's such a bitch," he said to us this weekend as we worked our way through an enormous order of foot-longs and fresh-cut fries at The Arbor. "She's basically stealing all my money, you know. She's taking all my hard-earned cash and wasting it. As soon as she started charging me rent, she and her boyfriend started going out to the bars all the time on the weekends, and they'd get smashed. Smashed! With my money! She's using my money to get all liquored-up! Isn't that wrong?"

Boy, is he going to feel like an asshole when she hands him a few grand next weekend.

So much so that I am sad I won't be there to be able to see it. I've got my own little move happening that day. Come Saturday, me and the girls will be moving vodka and snacks, streamers and favors, and, of course, a giant penis cake into a suite downtown, where we'll begin a night of bachelorette fun.

So I'm going to be asking someone to take pictures. I just want to see my brother's face in that moment he realizes he's getting a huge wad of money that he will probably fritter away on nonsense, a huge wad of money he thought my mother was slurping up out of a beer stein at the skeezy South Buffalo bars they occasionally haunt. In that moment, he won't know what to do or say, and that, of course, is the biggest coup of all.

Soiled

Sitting in the backseat of my father's car, on the way home from a day in Ontario, my brother leans to one side, lifts a cheek, and farts in the direction of his girlfriend.

She does not seem fazed.

I am in the front seat. I turn around and stare at him. "Adam!" I said. "Don't fart on your girlfriend! That's not nice!"

He farts again.

"You should be careful with that," I say. "You seem like you're pushing a little too much."

"He always does," his girlfriend says. "I'm always telling him 'Don't push! DO NOT PUSH!'"

"That's because I've pooped my pants three times in the last year," Adam says.

"What now?" my father says.

"Oh my God," I say.

"It's true," my brother says. He's delighted with the sudden turn in the conversation. Moments before he'd been sulking because he had gone off on an angry rant about some of his friends who were getting married, and the rest of us in the car had told him to shut the hell up, to stop getting so angry, to stop getting so worked up because he was going to have a heart attack. What bothered him the most was that we didn't agree with him, and he kept trying to make his point by raising his voice and repeating exactly what he'd already said.

"Okay, George Edward," my father said, invoking my grandfather's name. It's well known that my brother is my grandfather in lots of ways, both physical (looking at a picture of them at the same age is downright eerie) and emotional (neither can control their outrage, which they simmer in often).

"Yeah, George," I said. "Zip it back there. Enough out of you."

And then my brother really became our grandfather. He huffed and sighed and thrashed a little in the backseat, even when his girlfriend reached over to soothe him. He had himself a twenty second tantrum and then threw himself into the sulking. And this wasn't the first time. Half an hour earlier, he'd gone through the same cycle when he breathlessly transitioned from a lecture on how to make French onion soup into a lecture on gay men and how he's okay with gay men, how he's on their side, how he's in their corner--unless they're "gross about it"--and this, of course, prompted me and my father and Adam's girlfriend to tell him that was a bit homophobic and he better evaluate his attitude. Then he Georged us, yelled, huffed, thrashed, and sulked.

But now--now!--there is finally something on the table he's ready to talk about again, and that something is poop. He sits up a little straighter, squares his shoulders. "Want to hear how I did it?" he asks. "Want to hear how I pooped my pants three separate times this year?"

"No," I say.

"Yes," my father says.

"Okay." Adam cracks his knuckles. "So, the first time I was at work. I was closing up for the night, and I was sweeping the aisles, and I decided to let one go. I had really bad gas that day, and I needed to let some out. So I relaxed and just went for it. I blew out a really long, really loud fart. But at the end, there was a little surprise waiting for me."

"Oh my God," I say. "You pooped your pants at work!"

My father is laughing. He is bent over the steering wheel and laughing.

"One of the other times was just ridiculous," Adam's girlfriend says.

"How was it ridiculous?" Adam asks.

"You were standing three feet from the toilet when it happened!"

Adam grins. He laughs. "Oh," he says. "That time. Yeah." He pokes his girlfriend in the side. "I was in the bathroom getting ready for the day, and I was firing one off at her, but things got a little out of hand. I pooped my pants so bad there was no saving them."

"Good thing your mother doesn't do your laundry anymore," my father says.

Adam chuckles. "Oh yeah," he says. "That's true. She'd be finding little stink pickles all over the place."

"So was it anything like what you found in the bathroom today?" I ask.

It had been an eventful day in the public bathrooms in Port Dover. Early in the afternoon when my brother and father went in for a bathroom break, Adam came out real excited, real would up.

"You will NOT believe what I just saw in there!" he said.

My father started laughing. "Hush," he said. "Be quiet. Say it quietly. You don't know who it was."

"BE QUIET?!" my brother shouted. "BE QUIET?! DAD! SOME GUY SHIT HIS PANTS SO BAD HE HAD TO LEAVE THEM BEHIND IN THE STALL! THAT'S F-ING HILARIOUS!"

"What?!" I said.

"You're kidding!" Adam's girlfriend said.

"No," he said. He pointed back at the door. "Some guy shit himself so bad, it was everywhere. EVERYWHERE. And his jeans were there, wadded up on the floor of the stall. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine pooping your pants that bad and abandoning ship?"

Of course, that wasn't the end of the story. Hours later, after we'd finished our buttery perch dinners at a picnic table on the beach, my brother went back to the bathroom. When he came out again, he was shaking his head.

"Jesus," I said. "Now what?"

He made a face. "Someone put his hands in the shit," he said, "and spread it all over the walls in there."

But now, my brother is telling his own story, his own pooped-his-pants-unexpectedly story, and I want to know if it is anything the same, if it was of the magnitude of what happened in the public beach bathrooms.

"No way," he says. "It was gross, but it wasn't THAT gross."

And then he turns his head toward the window, stares out into the Canadian fields that are still dotted with long-abandoned tobacco drying houses. A dreamy expression settles on his face, and it's easy to tell that he's thinking about his lack of bowel control and how it isn't as bad as the guy who cut loose in the public bathrooms, but there's a glimmer of something else there in his look--it's a little like he's impressed, a little like he's jealous that he doesn't have that story to tell the next time we're all gathered around a dinner table.

What's Happenin', Cliffy?

When my father arrived home after the nine hour drive between Maine and Buffalo, he gave me a call to let me know he'd made it safely. He told me he'd had a real nice time over the weekend, that it was nice to spend so much time with his kids, that it was fun to have Adam captive for eighteen hours in the car.

"Ugh," I said. "I don't know if I'd be able to handle it. That kid is annoying."

"He's not annoying," my father said.

"He's gross! He's a know-it-all!" the world's biggest know-it-all said I said. "Dad, I mean, seriously. There were moments over these last few days where I looked at that kid's fuzzy head and thought, I am going to strangle him."

"Well, he certainly has his Cliff Clavin moments," my father said. "That's true."

I gasped. "I never ever thought of that comparison!" I said. "But it's so perfect!"

My brother is, if nothing else, a font of inane trivia, of probably-untrue-facts, of information that makes people think, Jesus, who gives a shit?

For example, after family dinners, my brother sometimes likes to trot out his Encyclopedia of Sauces and school us on the importance of clarified butter or a nutty roux. "You know what's some good shit?" he'll say. "Bearnaise. Bearnaise is some good shit."

And then he'll hold up the book in the way that all good elementary teachers do--turned out so the kids can see the illustrations--and he'll show off the perfect Bearnaise, fully expecting the rest of us, who are full of stir-fry or meatloaf or whatever, to be filled with the sudden urge to discuss the proper method of Bearnaise making, when none of us--least of all my brother--has ever made a Bearnaise sauce.

Now don't get me wrong. Ours is a family who talks about food. A lot. All the time. I don't mind the food talk. It's just the way the talk is presented. My brother, like Cliff Clavin, has a certain amount of bluster. He has a certain amount of pomposity. He's right, goddamnit, and you better listen to him in his rightness because--seriously!--no one else has ever been right about this, not ever, and he's going to set the world straight.

Over the course of his four day stay in Maine, my brother spouted off about ice cream, cold water lobsters, warm water lobsters, the proper trapping of cold water lobsters, crab cakes, TD Bank, poop, martinis, the proper technique for pouring a martini, boats, and the Lindt factory outlet. And this is just what I can remember off the top of my head.

(Also, it should be noted that he may or may not have burglarized a Portland lobster joint. We lunched along the water, and afterward my brother went to buy a T-shirt. On his way out, he snagged a plastic lobster figurine that had been sitting in a pail on a bench. He showed it to me as we headed back toward the shops so he could return to his hunt for the perfect gift for his girlfriend.

"Adam!" I said. "Those are the lobster lights the restaurant hangs in the window!"

"Well, they were in a bucket," he said.

"So?"

"Well, they looked free to me!" he said.)

Let's just face it: The kid is strange. He's a little bit Cliff Clavin, a little bit stand-up comic, a little bit insane. There are some times I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to con him into a large glass box I could wheel around the country, charging admission as I went, luring people in to see the World's Weirdest Kid. They certainly wouldn't leave feeling like they'd been swindled. I mean, here's how he acts during dinner:

Man Pole

You'd think penis would be sufficient. Or cock or dick or wang. But it's not. Not for my brother, at least. When my brother wants to gross me out--when he really wants to get me going, to get me shrieking and fake-puking and saying, Adam! Stop it! Stop it! You're disgusting! You're a freak! Ew!--he will roll out other words for penis.

I know this because he and my father were here for the last four days, and for those four days my brother taunted me incessantly. And my father wasn't exactly any great help. After all, he thinks my brother's just oh-so-funny, and whenever my brother rolled out another gross phrase, my father would double over and laugh-laugh-laugh.

I should've known things would devolve into this just as soon as my brother got in my car on the first night. He lifted one butt cheek and rattled out a fart that smelled like death.

"What the hell?!" I said. I fanned my hands in front of my nose. "Adam! JESUS!"

He laughed. "It's from what I ate last night," he said. "Fried peppers." And then he farted again.

Then, hours later, the boy got to riffing on penises. "Want to talk about man poles?" he asked me. He leaned over and punched me in the arm. "Want to talk about zipper snakes?"

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"How about purple-headed yogurt slingers? No? Don't want to talk about those? How about balls? Want to talk about nubs? Nubbers? Want to talk about hairy balls?"

This went on for days. And it didn't get any better after he'd met my friend Christine, who is tall and curly-haired and very pretty. In short, she's right up my brother's alley.

We had ice cream with Christine right before we headed down to Portland so that Adam could spend hours combing through tourist traps, looking for the perfect souvenir for his girlfriend. He'd already gotten her a shirt and a hat and a mug (he gets her a shirt, a hat, and a mug everywhere he goes, so she's positively laden with shirts and hats and mugs, and when they finally get their own place together, they're going to have to devote an entire room to the shirts and hats and mugs they've amassed over their relationship) but he wanted to get her something else too, something with pizazz. But we couldn't do that before we had a snack, and ice cream it was.

Driving away from the ice cream stand, Adam blew a gust of air between his lips. "That Christine," he said. "She sure is cute."

She'd won him over in the first five minutes, probably when she told him there was a place in state that made lobster ice cream--actual lobster ice cream, not just the kind he was eating (Lobster Tracks, which featured red-tinted chocolate swirls)--and he decided that if there was a woman who could enable his lobster fix by giving him a way to eat it in dessert too, well, she was really special.

"Yes, she's adorable," I said. "There's no doubt about it."

"Do you think she'd like to talk about man poles?" he asked. "Do you think there'd ever be a day when she'd touch my man pole?"

I plugged my ears. He started to sing a little song about man poles, about purple-headed yogurt slingers, and my dad almost drove off the road.

~~~

I figured it might be more vivid if I showed it to you in cartoon format, so here you go. And, yes, I made us British.

And Now a Story that Involves Wine, Vomit, and My Brother

Let me brief and honest: My last full day of spring break was not awesome.

At first it seemed promising. It went a little something like this: Broadway Market for pierogi and placek and rye bread and pounds of sponge candy, and then the whole world fell off its axis and went spinning off into space.

There was some family drama, and after that family drama unfolded my mother was left teary-eyed and demanding to know where we'd put the fucking wine. She went into the bathroom to cry for a little bit, and I stood in the kitchen with forty dollars of Chinese food still sitting untouched and pristine in its take out containers. My mother was upset and crying in her bathroom, and I was trying to yank a stuck cork from a stubborn bottle of wine.

This called for reinforcements.

HOLY SHIT, I texted my brother. YOU NEED TO COME HOME NOW. I NEED BACKUP.

It's not that I needed help with the cork--eventually I bashed that thing out of the neck of the wine and poured two glasses (a giant one for my mother, a small one for me)--but it was that I needed help with the drama. I am not very good at handling my mother's sadness. It's true. I've handled it poorly all my life--especially after my parents' divorce. Back then, I adopted the attitude that it was her own fault, she'd made her choice, now she had to live with it. Sometimes I looked at my mother and thought SUCK IT UP.

On my last full day of spring break, though, I was not thinking SUCK IT UP; I was thinking THERE IS NOTHING IN THE WORLD I CAN DO TO MAKE MY MOTHER FEEL LESS SHITTY RIGHT NOW. I knew I would eventually need help and that I wouldn't be able to be a clown for long enough to make her forget her problems.

Thus the text to my brother.

He arrived three hours into my crisis control--which, it should be noted, is not very smooth or sophisticated. If anyone is ever hurt or sad, this is what I will do to try to soothe them: I will park it on the couch, mix a drink or pour some wine, and I will pat a knee or a shoulder or a head until it seems lame to continue to do so, and then I will mix another drink or pour some more wine, and then I will say something stupid and silly and inappropriate in hopes that the person I am getting drunk will laugh and forget, for just a second, whatever is making them sad.

But the family drama on this particular Saturday had made me sad, too, and I needed someone to come refresh me, too. If we were going to make it through this, we all needed to be at our best. And that was where Adam came in.

"So," he said, after arriving and sitting himself in front of me and my mother, "how drunk are you? I saw the two wine bottles on the counter."

"I'm not drunk," my mother said.

That was a lie.

"She's pretty drunk," I said.

"How much did she drink?" Adam asked.

"Well, I only had one glass," I said.

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh."

"I'm not that drunk," my mother said.

"Are you going to puke?" my brother said. He wrinkled his nose, thinking about the possibility. "What I'm saying is I don't really want to wake up in the middle of the night to hear you barfing into the toilet. It is right next to my room, you know."

"Adam," I said, "shut up. She can puke if she wants to puke. She's a grown woman."

"I don't want to hear it!" he said. "That's gross!"

"Oh, like you've never done it," my mother said.

My brother grinned and sat back in the chair. He cracked his knuckles and surveyed the floor of the living room. "Oh, I've done it before," he said.

"I know," my mother said. "You've had parties. You've had them here!"

"It's true."

"Gross," I said.

"Whatever," he said. "Have I ever told you two the story about the rug?"

"What rug?" my mother asked.

"The rug that is missing from this room."

"There's a rug missing from this room?" my mother asked.

"Yes. For, like, years."

"Liar!" she said. "There's no rug missing."

"Mother," Adam said, "do you mean to tell me you've never noticed that one of your runners is missing from the living room?"

She took a long sip from her wine.

"I puked on it," my brother said. "I was having a party, and the boys were here, and we were drinking, and I'd had a lot, and I couldn't make it to the bathroom, so I just leaned forward, opened my mouth, and vomited out a neat little pile of puke. RIGHT. ONTO. THE. RUNNER."

"You are vile," I said.

My mother started giggling.

"We were too drunk to do much of anything about it," my brother said, "so I told the boys to just leave it, and we'd worry about it the next morning."

"OH MY GOD!" I said. "You left puke sit over night!"

"I was trashed, Jess," my brother said. "What did you think I was going to do?"

My mother giggled harder. "What did you do with it?" she asked.

"In the morning, I rolled the rug up, put it in a bag, and we put it in the car and took it to the car wash."

"Holy shit," I said. "You took a puked-on runner to the CAR WASH?"

"Listen," he said, "it was a good idea. You know how they have the clips for the car mats? Well, I took the rug out of the bag, clipped it up, and then blasted the shit out of it."

"You sprayed vomit with a pressure washer," I said. "That's smart. Vomit everywhere!"

My brother nodded. "Yes," he said. "But it got clean, okay? And I rolled it up and put it back in the bag--"

"The puke bag?!" I asked.

He glared.

"Fine," I said. "Continue."

"I put it back in the bag, and I took it home, dragged it into the garage, and then I forgot about it," he said. "A few days later I was out there, and I realized I'd forgotten the rug. And there it was, in a dark corner, and the bag was really condensated. So I knew there were really only two possibilities now: That I'd open that bag, and I would find the rug all moldy and disgusting; or, alternatively, I'd open the bag and smell the worst old vomit smell that ever existed. So I just took that bag and threw it into the garbage can and buried it."

"My rug!" my mother said.

"You're disgusting," I said. "You threw out MOM'S RUG."

But my mother was laughing and spilling her wine and mopping it up and laughing some more. She was denying that there was a rug missing. She was saying she'd never noticed its absence. She was saying it wasn't true.

And what she wasn't saying was everything else that was in her mind at that moment--all the bad stuff--and at that moment, for that reason, I loved my brother very, very much.

Marvel at the Glory

Here's what I was greeted with bright and early on Christmas morning. The robe:



And if you're wondering if that's vodka-tea in that glass my brother's holding, you'd be right. He left it out overnight, and when he scuffed into the kitchen on Christmas morning he said, "I wonder how this tastes now. Want some?" And when I said I really did not want some he tried it himself. And that face he's making tells us it wasn't that great.

Because He Wanted It

I'm home. I'm back in Buffalo. ("I wish you wouldn't say that," Josh said. He was on the phone with me as I was crossing over into New York from Massachusetts. "You're misrepresenting yourself, you know. You're not from Buffalo. You're from the country. You grew up in a town an hour from Buffalo. Don't be a liar."

"Don't be a pussy," I said. "I can get to Buffalo in half an hour.")

Two days after I got home, my mother and I decided to spend a day making Christmas cut-outs and our family's (hard! ridiculous! pain-in-the-ass!) fudge recipe. Here's how that went: The oven started on fire and we ruined the fudge.

Later, my brother came home from work in a pissy mood. He's mad at our mother. He's avoiding her and not speaking to her. Why? Well, recently he passed the test he'd failed twice before--the test that allowed him to enroll in an intense one year nursing program his girlfriend had already gotten into--and this made him happy, but that happiness was short lived. Back when he started trying to get into the program, our mother told him that if he did get in, he could stop paying her rent, rent that he has been required to pay for a while now, since after he flunked out of auto mechanic school it seemed possible that he might just freeload off my mother forever. Since she has been collecting rent (forty bucks a week), my mother has been socking it away for Adam so that she can give it to him when he moves out. He doesn't know this. He has no idea that he has several thousand dollars saved up in his name for when he and his girlfriend get an apartment together. Surprise!

So, because he doesn't know this, and because he is under the assumption that my mother is collecting all his hard-earned Ass. Head Cashier money and then throwing fistfuls of it over her head as she rolls around in the rest on her bed, he is pretty angry because he came home and said, "Hey! I passed! Looks like I don't need to pay rent anymore!" and my mother said, "Uh, no. I said when you started the program you won't need to pay me rent anymore. You don't go to school until October." She told him to pony up the dough. He told her she was black and evil inside.

"I mean it!" he said. "You're black and evil for doing this to me, Mother!"

And then he stomped away and hasn't really spoken to her since (unless you count our family dinner on Sunday, when, after we finished our stir-fry, he brought out his recent acquisitions, a book called 400 Sauces and a book called The Encyclopedia of Cooking Ingredients, and gave us all a lecture on the superiority of European lobsters and the importance of a good Bernaise). He's still pissed about his money. He wants that $160. He's got stuff to buy. Important stuff.

Like a robe. A really good robe. A really, really good robe. This was at this top of his to-buy list this past week, and he made a purchase--sad because he didn't have an extra $160 to do it with--that he unveiled at dinner. He was chilly, he said, so he needed to put on a robe. Now, it's important to know that the child has a perfectly fine, perfectly good, perfectly normal robe already, but it's also important to know that this robe, this new robe, spoke to him. It called his name. It whispered in his ear: Adam! Touch me!

And Adam did. And he loved the robe. And he purchased the robe.

The only problem? It's a girl's robe. It's a red, satin-trimmed, fluffy-necked girl robe.

"Nice robe," I said.

"Thanks," he said. He petted it. He rubbed the fluffy neck against his cheek. "It's the best robe ever."

"It's also a girl's robe," I said.

"I don't care," he said.

His girlfriend rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

"You're wearing a girl's robe," I said.

"IT IS COMFORTABLE," he said. "IT'S THE MOST COMFORTABLE ROBE I'VE EVER TOUCHED. OKAY? I WANTED IT!"

"Okay," I said. "Fine."

And then he reached for some more duck sauce and another egg roll.

The End of the Semester: Notes

(1.)

I go to school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then I am done, done, done.


(2.)

I call my father. I need gift ideas for his fiancee.

I say, "What does Kathy want for Christmas?"

He says, "She never tells me."

I say, "How about toilet paper? Do you think she'd like some toilet paper?"

I recently bought what I'll quantify as a WHOLE FUCKING LOT of toilet paper because, well, it was a good price. (I felt very thrifty, very Midwestern at the exact moment I was cradling the giant package of toilet paper in my arms and hiking it back to the registers. Really, I was channeling my inner Katy.)

When I arrived home with my whole fucking lot of toilet paper, I realized I didn't have enough room for it. I am in toilet paper surplus. I have more triple-roll spools than I know what to do with. Right now, they are in my closet, stuffed behind garment bags full of dresses.

"Toilet paper, huh?" my father says. "Well, sure. Now there's a gift. Who wouldn't love getting that?"


(3.)

I call my father again, later.

"What are you doing?" I ask. "Are you Christmas shopping?"

"I am doing the dishes," he says. "Hey. Guess what. We went to a wedding last night."

"Whose?"

"No one you know. A friend of Kathy's. Anyway, I skipped the wedding itself, but Kathy went. When we met up before we went to the reception, and she told me she had a surprise for me. Someone we had in common was going to be there, and we'd get to sit with them during dinner."

"Who was it?"

"Your brother."

"My brother?"

"Yeah. And you should've seen him." My father laughs. "That kid was a dancer last night. I've never seen him like that before. He was spastic. He danced with everyone... even the groom. I think he might've had one too many pops, if you know what I mean."


(4.)

So, there's this student. This student is a male, around my age, an auto guy. I think it's safe to say he has a crush on me. I make this assumption because of the following items: a.) Last weekend I received an e-mail from him that referred to me as "Doll" ; b.) he routinely asks if I'd like to hang out with him on the weekends, even after I've scolded him and told him to stop asking that because I'm his teacher, and he's my student, and NO ; c.) if I come over to help him, he likes to tell me I smell good ; d.) he's said, "So, I bet you have trouble with your guy students all the time, because, you know, you're hot and all." And then he waggled his eyebrows at me.

So, the other day in class, after one of my other students informed me she'd gotten me a Christmas present while she was down in New York visiting her boyfriend--"A boyfriend in New York," I said dreamily. "Swoon!"--the student with the crush said, "Well, I'm giving you your Christmas present next week."

"You got me a Christmas present?" I said. "There's really no need, you know."

"Oh, I didn't get it," he said. "I'm making it."

I think this is something I'm going to have to brace myself for.


(5.)

My grandmother sent a Christmas card the other day, and after I opened it and read it, I sat down to send a card in reply. When I was done, I realized what a poor job I'd done. I had written about how sad my students had made me this semester--what says Merry Christmas! more than an in-depth discussion of the decaying behavior and skill set of college-level students?!--and then I'd tried to change subjects by discussing the fun I was going to have next week when my friend Emily and I go Christmas shopping in Portland on the night they have free wine in all the stores.

When I was finished rereading it I knew I'd have to throw it out and start a new one. The end of the card--what with its shift in tone from downtrodden to upbeat, just when I'd started discussing Emily and all the good, glittering times we were going to have shopping--was just more evidence that I am a giant, hulking lesbian. And I figure grandma doesn't need to worry herself about that at Christmastime.

The Modern Man

(1.)

Over crab cakes in Damariscotta, my brother let it slip that he'd lost his license. Again.

I was eating a giant haddock sandwich, and I glared at him over the roll I'd just finished slathering with tartar sauce. "YOU LOST YOUR LICENSE?" I said. "For how long this time?"

The last time this happened, he'd lost it for a month. He'd gotten too many speeding tickets in a very short period of time, and the state of New York thought he could use a little break from anything vehicular.

"Six months," my brother said. He said this casually as he stuffed another crab cake in his mouth. "These are delicious," he said.

"SIX MONTHS?" I said. This time I turned to glare at my mother. She hadn't breathed a word of this to me in any of the calls we'd placed to each other in the days prior to their trip to Maine.

"What?" she said. She had her own crab cakes to contend with, and she busied herself with her own plate so as to look simple and innocent.

("He kept that news from me for a long time, too," my father told me tonight. "But why didn't Mom tell you? She obviously knew."

"Probably because she didn't want to give me any more reasons to ask the kid if he was an idiot," I said.

"Right," my dad said. "Of course.")

I put my sandwich down. "Are you an IDIOT?" I asked.

"It's no big deal," Adam said.

"NO BIG DEAL? SIX MONTHS?"

"Whatever," he said.

"Well, what happened?"

"I got a few too many speeding tickets in an unlucky time period."

"STOP DRIVING FAST."

"It's not that I drive fast," he said. "It's just that I don't pay attention. That's all."

"How do you get around now, without a car?" I asked. My brother has inherited my father's restlessness, and he's always moving, always going somewhere, always leaving one place for someplace better. I couldn't imagine him living his life without a car.

"Well, I can drive between set hours to work and back, and only within a certain range of miles. If I'm caught out of that, I'm done," Adam said. "Plus, I've got a driver, too." He poked his girlfriend in the side. She smiled at him over her pulled pork sandwich.

"It's going to get tricky soon," she said. "My car is not a good car in the winter."

I found that almost impossible. My brother's girlfriend drives a big old car that could, in a pinch, serve as a small tank in a small nation's budding arsenal.

"Isn't that thing pretty badass?" I asked.

"Oh, hell yes," my brother said.

"That's not exactly the problem," she said. "It's that it doesn't have heat."

"No heat?"

"Nope. None."

"How do you stand to drive it in the winter then?" I asked.

"Blankets," she said. "Lots and lots of blankets."


(2.)

Thanksgiving morning, my brother woke up twitchy. He prepared a pot of coffee in the coffee maker he'd packed and brought along with his fondue pot, and then he announced he was going to the gas station.

"I am going to get the paper," he said. "I want to look at the Black Friday ads."

My mother and I said yes, yes, sure, fine, whatever. We were busy. I was making a pumpkin cake, and she was making an apple pie. We didn't need Adam puttering around my small kitchen, underfoot while trying to perfect another brew.

So Adam and his girlfriend went down the street for the paper and came back ecstatic.

"Look at this!" my brother said. He shoved the ads in my face. "So thick!" he said. "We're going out! We're going out early!"

"Have fun," I said. By this time, I'd moved on to making biscuits. "I'll be here. At home. In bed. Warm. SLEEPING."

"It's going to be great!" he said, and then he and his girlfriend sat down to sift through the ads until they came to their favorite: Wal-mart.

My brother held the paper up to his nose and took a whiff. "Ohhhh," he said reverently. "Wal-mart."

I leaned over to my mother. "I will kill him before the day is out," I whispered.

"Make your biscuits," she said.

Ten minutes later, it was settled. My brother had seen enough. He'd seen exactly what he wanted to see. There were indeed great deals to be had at Wal-mart. So good, in fact, he was nervous about them. He figured everyone in their right mind--except me, except our mother, who were so clearly addled--would be staking their claim at Wal-mart and that meant he and his girlfriend would need to head out extra early to guarantee that they got the things they wanted (a laptop for her, a video camera for him).

"We're leaving at nine," he announced.

"NINE?" my mother said.

"That seems drastic," I said.

"It's necessary," he insisted. "Trust me. I've got a feeling this is gonna be big."

And it was big. When my brother and his girlfriend, still full from dinner, still full from the two desserts we forced on them before they left, arrived at Wal-mart just after nine, they were not the first people standing in line. The store would open at midnight, but the items could not be sold until five AM. They would simply have to stand in line to prepare for the lunging after the workers unwrapped the stack of deals.

And that's exactly what they did. My brother and his girlfriend had to stand on opposite sides of the store for their items, and they had to raise their hands when they wanted to use the bathroom, and they had to get a hall pass from the person in charge of their line, and they had only twenty minutes to use the facilities, and if they weren't back in twenty minutes--and the time was clearly recorded on their pass and on a master checklist--they lost their spot in line and, thus, their deal.

But they mustered through. My brother--the boy without a license--and his girlfriend--the girl without a heated car--spent over four hundred dollars on electronics.

Later, as my mother and I combed Freeport for deals at the Banana Republic outlet, I abruptly stopped admiring the silk scoop neck I was certain would look fantastic with a pencil skirt at a holiday party.

"Mother," I said, "why the hell did they just spend all that money on electronics instead of, you know, a car with heat? Doesn't that seem like the more important item to have during a Buffalo winter?"

"Don't think about it," my mother said. "I try not to anymore. We'll just drive ourselves crazy."


(3.)

My brother and his girlfriend slept in after their escapade at Wal-mart and met up with us later that afternoon. Adam called when they rolled into town, just as my mother and I were finishing up our mid-afternoon lobster stew.

When my mother got off the phone she looked exasperated.

"What now?" I asked.

"Your brother," she said. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

"What about him?"

"He's wearing his Crocs," she said.

At that moment, we both turned and stared out the window. It was pouring so bad that the road had turned lake-ish in spots.

"His feet are sopping wet already," she said.

"Jesus!" I said.

"Now, now..." she said.

"No! I mean Jesus!" I said. "Does that kid THINK? Like, EVER?"

"Jess," she warned. "Stop. We can't change it now. Don't say anything to him about it, okay? It'll only cause a fight."

But fifteen minutes later, my brother was standing in front of me in the vestibule of LL Bean, and he was hopping from one foot to the other, trying to force water out of his shoes.

"Are you an idiot?" I asked.

"I didn't know it was raining," he said.

"I have a giant sliding glass door in my living room," I said. "How could you not notice it was raining?"

"I just didn't, okay?" He flicked his Croc at me.

"And then when you went downstairs to go to the car--you didn't notice it then?" I asked. "You didn't notice it the minute you stepped outside?"

"I did," he said. "I noticed."

"But you didn't turn around and walk the fifteen steps back upstairs to change your shoes?" I asked.

He glared at me.

"Whatever," I said. "Fine."

"I'm going upstairs," he said. "I'll be in Fishing. See you in eight hours."

But things didn't get any better for the kid. When he'd had his fill of LL Bean, we figured we'd take off for Portland, get some dinner, duck into a few of the cute shops in the Old Port. But it was raining even harder then, and my mother and I--under the cover of an umbrella, coats, and appropriate footwear--were soaked by the time we got to our car. Adam was almost drowned.

But he's nothing if not resourceful. When we got to Portland, he--suddenly inspired, suddenly giddy with invention--grabbed two bags from the earlier Wal-mart excursion, stuck his feet in them, and then tied them around his ankles. He slid the Crocs over the bags, and he traipsed around the Old Port and sat through dinner with the Wal-mart logo beaming up at anyone who passed us by. And he didn't mind in the least.

The Divide That Will Rip Our Family to Shreds

When the family--my mother, my brother, and his girlfriend--arrived in Maine for a Thanksgiving vacation, the family had plans. First, they wanted some lobster. That was easy. Second, they wanted to see a lighthouse. Again, easy. Third, they wanted to see New Moon. Well, the majority of them did. My brother did not.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered when we discussed our love of the series. "Give me a break. Twilight Schmilight."

The night they arrived, the DVR was busy recording So You Think You Can Dance and the finale of Dancing with the Stars, and since we couldn't change the channel away from either of the recording shows, my brother, unhappy with his options, begged to watch a movie.

"Let's watch Twilight!" his girlfriend suggested. "Then he'll be caught up."

"I've seen it," he said. He narrowed his eyes. "You've made me watch it."

"Watch it again," she said. "Then you won't be asking us a million annoying questions during the second movie."

"Fine," he said. "Fine. WHATEVER. Anything is better than this." He pointed to the TV screen just as Legacy--shirtless again, much to my delight--lifted his partner over his head during the Viennese Waltz. "This makes me want to throw up," he said.

"It makes me want to make out," I said.

Adam pretended to retch into his hands.

So, in an effort to please him--well, sort of--I turned off SYTYCD and put in the movie. Twenty minutes into it, Adam started giggling.

"This sucks," he said. "They're really horrible actors."

None of us could disagree. In parts, the acting is really comical.

"How can you like this?" he continued. "I mean, it's so bad."

"It's hot," I said.

"Ew."

"It's hot if you've read the books," I corrected. "The books are good. Want to read them?"

He sent me a withering look. He probably hadn't picked up a book since college--and, let's face it, while he was there (flunking out of everything) he wasn't picking up many books anyway.

During the scene in the meadow--Twilight fans know what I'm talking about--my brother decided he'd had enough of the brow-furrowing and melodrama. He decided to make the movie fun for himself.

"Oooooh!" he sang out suddenly, in a voice that was not his own. This new voice was high and girlish, maybe a little old fashioned. "Oooooh! I'm Robert Pattinson, and I'm going to make a messy in my panties!"

"ADAM!" the rest of us shrieked in unison. He was ruining it.

"Oooooh!" he squealed again, flapping his hands in the air. "Messy in my panties!"

And the mocking didn't stop there. For the next few days, whenever there was a silence, a lull, a dip in conversation, he would suddenly fill it with his imitation. "I'm R. Pat!" he shrieked. "Ooooh! Aren't I pretty?!"

But then the strangest thing happened. After a full day of exploring the coast and eating crab cakes, we came back to the apartment and tried to figure out what we wanted to do. My brother wanted to make fondue. He'd gotten a fondue pot for his birthday--it was his latest obsession--and he was ready to make us a beer cheese fondue, and he was willing to do all the work.

"Should we go to the movie, though?" I asked. "Are we up to it?"

No one wanted to make a decision, so my brother suddenly stepped in. "Listen," he said. "Listen, listen, listen. I think we should go. We'll go. I'll make us some fondue, and then we can go to a late showing of the movie. How's that sound? Okay?"

We all stared at him.

"What?" he asked.

"You want to go to the movie!" I said. I gasped and pretended to slump into a faint in my chair.

"NO!" he said.

"You do!" his girlfriend said. "You just planned it for us! You so clearly want to go!"

"Oh, whatever," he said. He ducked his head. "I'll admit I'm kind of interested in what happens next."

"OH! MY! GOD!" my mother said.

"You are a GIRL!" I said. "What a girl!"

"Shut up!" he said. "SHUT UP!" And then he turned his back and started preparing the fondue--which was, in the end, downright delicious.

So, after we dipped an entire loaf of bread and an entire platter of vegetables into that beer-cheese mix, we went off to the theater. My brother, as previously mentioned, smuggled his beer in--perhaps so he could feel less like a Twilight-worshiping girl, which he so totally IS--and he mixed that beer with cookies we'd also smuggled in. He didn't make a peep during the whole movie. Not a single one. He didn't sing out in his Robert Pattinson voice, nor did he say anything about a messy in his panties. He just stared at the screen and then later, as we drove home, announced this to everyone:

"So, I'm totally Team Jacob," he said. "Whoever's Team Edward is lame and stupid."

"I'm Team Edward," I said.

"That makes sense."

"Whatever. You're a WOMAN," I said. "I can't believe you just admitted that."

"I have no shame," he said. "Go Team Jacob! Jacob all the way!" He pumped his fist near the window, so even the passing cars could see his insistence.

And even later, he made these stunning revelations:



And the last part of that video? That is why I have decided I am in love with his girlfriend. I hope they get married.

Happy Thanksgiving from My Family to Yours

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us here in Maine, especially this kid, who, when we went to see New Moon last night, pulled a beer out from his coat pocket and cracked it just as the lights were about to dim.


My brother is so classy it's breathtaking, isn't it?

Fruit, Not Fire

It's hard to think of what to say these days. I'm in the middle of something ugly, I know that, and it's hard for me to think in full thoughts. If I tried to write about what was going on lately, I wouldn't even know where to start. Each day seems to be pieced together out of random happenings that have no link, no common thread, like these:

1.

My kitchen is covered in flies--fruit, not fire or anything else interesting. They arrived one morning after my friend Emily and I had another Martini Sleepover. We got drunk on raspberry bellinis. We stayed up late watching Project Runway and talking about ex-boyfriends who got fat. I didn't clean up any of our sticky cups or empty champagne bottles or bowls of apple crisp. When we woke up the next morning, there were flies bring their luggage into the kitchen, setting up house in the caps still sweet with vodka, the glasses still red with raspberries. They haven't left since. I've tried different things to kill them. I've tried to kill them by clapping them between my hands--I'm surprisingly good at this, and it's surprisingly satisfying to see the crooked wings flat against my palms--but that's slow-going, and they're reproducing faster than I can kill them. I've put out saucers of sweet-smelling soap, hoping they'll get stuck in the thick liquid. I've chased them down with a bottle of hairspray, releasing long streams that make them slow and dopey, but not dead.


2.

I drove the two hours down to Boston on Monday night to get Josh. He'd been in France, teaching English and missing America, and he came home because he couldn't stand it anymore. He'd taken to buying beer and standing on the urine-soaked corner the bums gathered on. He'd been eating a lot of French hotdogs and drinking a lot of cheap wine. He couldn't find a second job that would bolster his meager finances--after all, a guy doesn't make too much teaching English to fifteen year old French girls who use their English to ask, "Can you take us home with you?"--and he was sick of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, his only friend an Irish guy who'd knocked up a French girl and was thus stuck in France with his own bunch of students.

So he came home. And as I rode the escalator down to the International Arrivals section of Logan Airport, I felt like I was in the opening scene of Love Actually. I scanned the crowds of people tugging suitcases through the gate, and on the other side of the room I saw Josh, the boy who, when I dream of him, arrives as Conan O'Brien ("Seriously, that kid looks just like Conan!" Emily's brother said after we'd all had martinis at the darkest basement bar in all of Portland, the best place to carry on illicit love affairs), and I started running toward him. We hugged.

"I love America!" he said.

For the next few days, I'd spend my time trying to entertain him. I handed him the pack of sex flashcards Diana had sent me. "These are stupid," he said, but when he got to MISSIONARY POSITION he laughed and turned the card toward me. On the front a man in a tuxedo was leaning close to a woman with close-set curls. The caption said Let's start with the missionary position and go from there. He also liked FELLATIO (After fellatio, he was putty in my hands!) and CUNNILINGUS (You may have heard about me--I specialize in cunnilingus).

The next day I handed him The Pop-Up Book of Sex, another gift from Diana, and he said, "This is ridiculous," but then he spent the next fifteen minutes using the tabs to rock the pop-up characters back in forth in different sexual situations. His favorite was the spread of pages that explained the Mile High Club. He made the male passenger's hips batter the stewardess, who was wearing fishnet stockings and too-red lipstick, over and over and over and over. "Ha," he said.

"When was the last time I told you how much I love America?" he asked.

"Five minutes ago," I said.

"Well, it's time again. I love America. I love it a lot."

I made him omelets. I brought him beer. I poured him wine. He did his laundry and watched French television and soccer. We got drunk and watched So You Think You Can Dance, and I tried to explain to him that this was the second time that SYTYCD had a contestant who looks like a boy from my past. This season, every time Legacy steps onto stage my head feels like it's going to fall off because he reminds me so much of this boy it's overwhelming.

"What do you think of his partner?" I asked. "Do you think she's pretty cute? Would you do her?"

"Does she have a pulse?" Josh asked.

Later, he downloaded the new Bone Thugs song and played it over and over and over. He played it on our way to the Chinese restaurant, on the way to Freeport, where he wanted to buy new pants, and on our way to Portland.

"How much do you love this song?" he asked.

I liked it okay, so I told him so.

"Will you listen to it after I leave?" he asked. "Will you listen to it every five minutes? Hey, Jess, have I told you about America and how I love it?"

We got into debates about everything. Josh was argumentative ("I'm not argumentative!" he insisted. "I'M NOT!") and he wanted to debate the word "nice" I used to describe him when he asked me to list his good qualities. He wanted to debate formal grammar instruction.

"YOU ARE DRIVING ME CRAZY!" I told him. "WHY ARE YOU BEING LIKE THIS?!"

"THIS IS WHAT I AM LIKE! YOU JUST DON'T KNOW ME!" he said.

"You're right," I said. "Sure, yeah, absolutely. That's it. I don't know you at all. I haven't been your friend for NINE YEARS."

Josh tried to love Abbey. It looked promising at first. He walked through the door on Monday night, let her smell his hand, and then he scooped her up. She let him kiss and hug her, and when he let her down she threaded through his legs. After that, though, things got rough. There was hissing. There was growling. There was swatting.

"This kitten is a bitch," Josh said. "I hate her. She's cute. Why doesn't she like me?"

And the thing is, I don't know.


3.

My mother, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend are coming to Maine for Thanksgiving. I'm throwing the celebration. This makes my brother pleased and excited. He's been promised lots of Freeport outlet shopping on Black Friday, and he's been promised unlimited lobster rolls.

Today I texted him--you don't ever call my brother because he's bad about both answering the phone when he sees it's someone other than his girlfriend, and he's equally bad about returning phone calls that were placed by anyone other than his girlfriend--and I asked him if he wouldn't mind so much going to the liquor store and bringing me a whole bunch of New York state wines when he comes.

Sure, he texted back. I'll do that. So, what's new? How's the man situation?

Ish, I said. Well, I mean, I don't know. I've been on a few dates with one guy. He's nice. He's a singer.

Woah boy, my brother said. My gaydar just went off. And does he love Will and Grace too?

Very helpful, I said.

Family Pack

Worrying about offloading Myrtle the Turtle via Craiglist isn't the only thing on my brother's mind these days. He's also thinking about sex. He's thinking about sex a lot.

That's probably not that shocking. After all, he's a 22 year old boy, and 22 year old boys love sex. They love thinking about it, watching it, engaging it, or trying to engage in it.

But what is shocking about this is how he goes about preparing for sex. He and his girlfriend--a tough Buffalo girl who has a freckled Irish face that at times bears resemblance to the pink-nosed dwarf rabbits the two of them were plotting to buy before they got Myrtle--well, my brother and his girlfriend aren't very sneaky about keeping their sexual habits under wraps.

My brother's girlfriend routinely comes over to my mother's house and slaps her things on the counter. She doesn't always carry a purse, and if she doesn't, the important stuff just gets toted around in her hands and then eventually deposited onto my mother's kitchen counter. Keys, lip gloss, and birth control. That's what's usually waiting to greet my mother when she comes through the door.

"It makes me want to vomit," she says.

But she doesn't have the worst of it. The worst of it belongs to my father, who once made the mistake of giving his BJ's card to my brother when Adam asked for it. Then my father made an even graver mistake when he asked Adam, who was then returning the card, what he'd needed so desperately to buy in large quantities from BJ's.

"Condoms," my brother said. He waggled his eyebrows. "I need a few family packs."

That's bad enough, but it's not the end of the story. It's not the real problem. The real problem is that he keeps coming back for that card over and over and over. And by "over and over and over" I mean "often." I mean "too often." I mean "disgustingly often." I mean "gross."

"How many packs of condoms does he need?" my father asked me. "Really! How many?"

I wasn't exactly sure how to answer that, but I was sure about one thing: I was sure that if we kept track, we'd all be more nauseous than we'd been in years.

The Rise and Fall of Myrtle

You might recall that recently my brother took up with a turtle. He named that turtle Myrtle, even though that turtle was a boy, and he said he was going to love that turtle forever--or at least a long time, since it was a distinct possibility that this turtle was going to grow to be very big and very old.

"Isn't he sweet?" my brother asked. "Isn't Myrtle awesome?"

Last week when I called home, though, things had taken a decidedly less awesome turn.

"How's the turtle?" I asked my mother.

"Oh," she said. "Yeah. The turtle. It smells."

Turns out my brother liked the idea of a turtle more than the turtle itself. At first he was good about caring for Myrtle. Adam cleaned his cage and gave him regular salamander treats and spoke in loving, caring, nurturing tones to the turtle until he reached the end of his rope. The turtle, after all, didn't do much of anything. A turtle is not one of those interactive pets my brother favors--like the dwarf rabbits he went crazy for prior to going crazy for turtles--and a twenty-two year old boy can only take so much tank cleaning for an animal that spends its days sitting on a rock instead of doing something productive like hopping or fetching sticks.

Therefore, he started letting things slide. The tank cleaning became lackadaisical and then it became nonexistent, and my mother, after several failed attempts at reminding him--gently, in a motherly way--to get off his ass and clean Myrtle's tank, had to resort to sending threatening text messages that said CLEAN THE TURTLE'S CAGE TONIGHT OR ELSE!

"Well, this isn't a big surprise, is it?" I asked my mother.

"No," she said. "Not a surprise at all. Also, there have been some... complications."

Not long after Adam brought Myrtle home, the turtle became sluggish. Unresponsive. Lethargic. The turtle seemed even turtle-ier than normal. And his shell started changing color.

"This is bullshit!" my brother said. He thought that pet store in Erie, Pennsylvania--the town of his dreams--sold him a defective turtle. He thought he'd been duped. He thought he'd been conned into becoming the owner of a sick, defective, possibly dying turtle. So he and his girlfriend packed Myrtle up and got in the car and drove back to Pennsylvania, where they demanded to get a refund on their turtle.

"He's sick!" my brother insisted.

Well, actually, no, Myrtle wasn't sick. This was normal, the pet store employee said. This was all very normal. He gave them some basic information on the turtle's behavior and what to expect and then he said, "You know, that turtle isn't a boy. It's a girl."

So Adam took the turtle--once a boy with an unfortunate girl's name, now a girl with an unfortunate girl's name--and drove back to Buffalo. He put the turtle back in her cage and then began the process of ignoring her. Of course, ignoring turned into scheming. After all, Adam was so over being a turtle owner, and he needed to get rid of Myrtle somehow. My mother was on his case now, and so was his roommate. Several nights a week, Adam shares his room and his bunk bed with my mother's boyfriend's son, who is not so fond of spending time in a room that smells like moldy turtle shell and old water.

So Adam devised a plan. He would get rid of his turtle. He was confident he could do it.

"How?" I asked my mother.

"He's putting it on Craigslist," my mother said.

"He's putting his turtle on Craigslist?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"And has he had any luck with that?" I asked.

"No," she said. "He's going to be stuck with that thing forever. FOREVER."

And the way I figure it, that just about serves him right.

This One's For Anyone Wondering What My Brother Did with His Weekend

If you walked into my brother's room in my mother's trailer here's a few things you might find: a poster featuring three spread-legged porn stars; a replica of his and his girlfriend's hands--which are intertwined--done up in two colors of wax (pink for her; blue for him); seventeen bottles of cologne; spray painted t-shirts of the variety you can get at the state fair; a coffee maker; and a bag of multicolored dog treats ("Only a $1.99!" he told me.  "Can you believe it?").

The newest item that has made it into my brother's room is this: a turtle.

The turtle appeared yesterday, mysteriously, a surprise.  One day the trailer was turtle-free, the next it was not.  My mother woke up and walked by his room and saw a suspicious soft light streaming into the hall.  When she pushed inside, there was the turtle in a large tank that had been set up on top of Adam's dresser.  The tank had a makeshift wooden top placed over it, and there was writing on it.  It said: MY NAME IS MYRTLE THE TURTLE.

"Did you see your brother's turtle?" my mother asked after I arrived at her house tonight, loaded down with the makings of her official birthday dinner (beef stroganoff, homemade biscuits, and chocolate raspberry cake) I had started at home.

"Excuse me? A turtle?"  I walked down the hall and leaned my head in the room.  There it was.  A turtle.  In a tank.  On Adam's dresser.

For those of you keeping track, here is the current tally of living beings currently inhabiting my mother's very small, very skinny, very non-double-wide trailer: my mother, my mother's boyfriend, my mother's boyfriend's son, my brother, the cat (Zoe), the dog (Ziggy), and Myrtle the Turtle.

"I didn't know he was getting a turtle," I said.

"Yeah," my mom said.  "Neither did I."

Earlier that weekend, over a fish fry, my father had revealed to me that he knew Adam was headed down to Erie, Pennsylvania, which Adam had recently informed us was his and his girlfriend's favorite place on earth, a place they go when they're feeling down in the dumps, a place they hope to someday live because they think it's a fine place, a sweet place, the best place.  

"Why are they going to Erie again?" I asked.  

"I think they're getting a fish tank."

"In Erie, Pennsylvania?"

"Yes.  In Erie, Pennsylvania.  A fish tank.  Just another passing fascination of your brother.  He'll love it for a few weeks, and then it will be over, forgotten."

My brother loves things like that--fast, hard, intensely--and then, without warning, those things are pushed aside in his heart to make room for the next fad.  In the past, he has gone crazy for collecting hot sauce and glass Coke bottles.  He has been obsessed with exotic flavors of pop.  He went wild for paintball for about two months and hasn't touched his very expensive equipment since.  For a long time, he amassed tiny sample bottles of every cologne they sold at the perfume counters at department stores.  He had a short-spanned love affair with dwarf rabbits.  He used to comb the grocery stores and coffee shops for the blackest, darkest, earthiest grounds he could find for his bedside coffee maker, but that led to unpleasant stomach and bowel issues, and that obsession fizzled.

And so his new obsession was a fish tank, and, I thought, fish.  But I was wrong.  My brother wasn't tooling around Erie, Pennsylvania for a fish tank for fish.  He was looking for something to keep a turtle in, and, of course, he was looking for the turtle, too.

When Adam got to my mom's tonight, the first thing he asked me was, "Hey.  Did you see my turtle?"

"Yes," I said.  "I didn't know you were into turtles."

"Oh, sure I am."

I stirred the stroganoff and nodded.  "Of course," I said.  "And are you planning on getting Myrtle a friend? Someone to keep her company? A boyfriend?"

"Sure," he said.  "Sometime.  Not now, but soon.  He'll need company."

"Wait a second," I said.  "HE? You named your male turtle Myrtle?"

"Yeah."

"Are you aware Myrtle is a girl's name?"

He frowned.

"It is," I said.

"Well, what else was I going to name him?" he asked.  "Myrtle the Turtle.  It sounds great."

"And how do you think he feels about that name?"

"Great," he said.  "I think he feels great about it.  I think I'm going to get him a salamander."

"For a friend?"

Adam shook his head.  "No.  To eat."

Later, at dinner, my brother charmed us with burps, with farts, and a story about he laid out the longest, most disgusting fart in the middle of Gander Mountain while he and his girlfriend were looking at golf balls.

"I swear I looked around before I did it," my brother said.  "I swear.  I mean, I looked! I checked! And then I farted, and it was the loudest fart ever.  It was the type where you could hear my butt cheeks rattling.  It went on forever.  I was trying to do it discreetly--"

"Wait a minute," his girlfriend interrupted.  "You weren't super discreet.  You popped your ass up in the air and tipped your head back."  She demonstrated.  

My brother laughed.  "Yeah," he said.  "I did that.  And then when I opened up my eyes, there was a guy standing two feet from me.  I don't know where he came from.  I can only imagine what he thought."

Most of the time, I can only imagine what Adam is thinking.  I'd like a chance to crack open his head, see what's brewing inside, understand just how he got the way he is--because he is an odd boy who is capable of going on rants about the awesomeness of Pennsylvania ("Did you go to Pennsylvania just to go to Petsmart?" I asked tonight.  "Well, no," he said.  "I mean, we went to price out pet stores.  We went to just check around at all the local joints and price things.  How much are fish in Pennsylvania? How much are dog treats? You know, we priced that stuff.") and the unawesomeness of France ("I hate it!" he said.  "Why?" I asked.  "Give me one good reason," I said.  "I don't know!" he said.  "I just hate France and everything French!"), and he is capable of wanting to own a roomful of floppy-eared bunnies, and he is completely okay with wallpapering his room with posters of porn stars, and he is not above jostling his private parts around in his palm while he tells me goodbye.    And now he is the proud owner of Myrtle the Turtle ("Hey!" he said.  "Lots of turtles live to be 150 years old!" and "Hey!" he said.  "He's going to be over a foot long soon! He's just a baby now!"), and sometimes I think I should get a therapist just so I can discuss my brother and his antics, and we would work every day for hours and hours, and this could go on for months, and the therapist and I still wouldn't figure him out.  We still wouldn't figure out where this kid came from and how he's in any way related to me.

And Then He Put His Hands on the Jackson Pollock Painting

Yesterday, at approximately 3:45 PM we were entering the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.  This was part of my mother's Surprise Birthday Extravaganza! that her boyfriend had orchestrated.  He'd borrowed a friend's RV for the day, and I decorated it with help from his son, the boy previously known as the possibly-gay-black-belt-son.  (I say previously not because he has disgraced himself and is no longer a master of martial arts; instead, I say previously because I no longer have my suspicions about his sexuality.  Now that he no longer sleeps on the top bunk with 100 of his favorite Beanie Babies--remember? sparkling unicorns, angel bears, and the like--he seems to be solidly pro-girl.)

So, after we surprised my mother with the RV and the bevy of snacks we'd loaded into it, we were off for the first of several stops along the extravaganza route.  We did the Buffalo Garden Walk, which took us around the city to thousands of amazing gardens in front of or behind beautiful homes downtown.  It started raining early in the afternoon, so we cut our tour short and headed to the next stop along our route: the Albright Knox Gallery.  We tailgated there for a bit--we were in an RV, after all--and drank some wine and ate some chips and let my mother open some of her birthday gifts.

After that, we headed into the art gallery.  And in the very first hallway, just several feet from the door, as the rest of the group was striding ahead, desperate to get through this at a fast click--my mother's boyfriend, his son, and my brother are notoriously anti-art--my brother spied something that caught his eye, so he stopped in front of the tall canvas.

And then he reached out and touched it.

But more than touched it.  He pressed his entire palm against it, and leaned into it a bit, testing the canvas's give, its strength, its texture.

It was a Jackson Pollock painting.  I almost had a heart attack.

"ADAM!" I hissed, and in the quiet of that gallery that hiss was pretty loud.  Everyone--our party and the several other groups that were milling about the abstract wing--turned to look at me, the girl who hissed, and Adam, the boy who was leaning against a Jackson Pollock painting.

"What?" my brother said.

"YOU CAN'T TOUCH THE PAINTINGS!" I said.  "GET YOUR HAND OFF IT!"

My brother looked all put out, but he did take his hand off the painting.  "Oh, Jess," he said.  "Chill out."  

"Chill out?" I closed the distance between us, so that I was standing right next to him and able to hiss at him all I wanted without other people wondering if I was yelling at a poor retarded boy who didn't know you can't put your hands on a Jackson Pollock painting.  "Adam, you cannot, cannot, cannot touch art in museums."

"Well, I didn't know that," he said.  "How was I supposed to know that?"

"Are you stupid?"

"Listen, it doesn't say I can't touch it," he said, "so how am I supposed to know I shouldn't touch it?"

"How about using your head?" I said.  "This is an expensive piece of art by a famous artist.  What do you think would happen to it if everyone just came up to it and put their hands all over the canvas?"

He frowned.  "Fine," he said.  "Whatever.  And it's not very good anyway.  I mean, I could do that.  I could splatter paint on a canvas and make it look disgusting."

I sighed.  He sounded just like one of my students.  

But he'd already moved on, and he and his girlfriend were standing in front of another canvas.

"How is that art? It's nothing," he said, loudly, and some of the other people sent him withering glances.

"Ssssh," I said.  I needled him in the ribs.  "Here.  I'll ask you the same thing I'd ask my students if they said that to me.  Break it down into its parts.  What do you see?  Consider the colors, the brushstrokes, the shapes.  What does it evoke?"

He considered the painting for a minute and then he said, "A sunny day.  I see the horizon and a big sky.  I see the sun."

"See?" I said.  "That's a lot more specific than saying 'this is nothing,' isn't it?"

"I still think I could've painted it," he grumbled, "but whatever."

Around the next corner, my brother reached out and flicked a light switch that was part of an installation piece.

"ADAM!" I said.  "WHAT DID WE JUST TALK ABOUT?!"

He turned around and narrowed his eyes at me.  "Jeff just did it, too," he said, speaking of my mother's boyfriend, who had gone past the installation before Adam.

I wanted to die.  I wanted to curl up in the corner and wait until they had gone through the gallery so I could make my way through not in the wake of them, the group who was saying loudly, "Wow, that's a real piece of crap!" or "Holy shit! People actually pay money for this?" all while flicking and touching or leaning against the artwork.  (Later, when we were in the upstairs gallery, which featured a room that was filled with giant sculptures of tables and chairs, my mother's boyfriend leaned against one of the chairs and was scolded by one of the guards.)

But curling up in a corner and praying they would forget I was with them was not really an option.  I had to follow them--at a safe distance, so it might look to others like perhaps I was just a girl going through the museum by herself, and not with those crazy people in front of her. 

In another of the lower galleries, my brother dragged me over to a piece that featured long pendulums of different color rocking around and converging to make new colors every time.  

"LOOK," he said, pointing to the floor.  Underneath the pendulums were the words PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.  "See?" he said.  "If there's something they don't want you to touch, they label it accordingly."

"You are a moron," I said.  

And then he bounded off to get his girlfriend, so they could go stand in another wing and whisper about how ridiculous they thought this was, how stupid it was to call some of this stuff art, and I wandered off on my own so I could stop in front of each of the paintings without feeling the cold breeze that kicked up as the rest of the members of my party jogged by without even the smallest of critical glances at what we had come to see.

Lend Me Some Shellac, Would You?

Yesterday at 5:00 I was standing on the beach of an island that floats just beyond Boothbay Harbor. My shoes were back in the car, and my toes were sinking into a spongy carpet of seaweed that stretched from sand to tide pool to the water's edge. I had a plastic bottle full of white wine in one hand and a Tupperware container for shell collection in the other. My office-mate was ahead of me, scaling the higher rocks because he still had his shoes on. He had a plastic container of wine, too, and he was remarking about how insane it was that the entire beach was littered with periwinkles.

I was picking up the more remarkable ones--green as pistachios, striped--and trying not to spill the wine--which was surprisingly difficult to drink out of the type of bottle that is designed to use while exercising--and it was the first time I'd been happy in weeks. We'd already been to the aquarium, where I'd held a lobster and a starfish, where I'd petted a shark and a sea cucumber--and then we'd wandered Boothbay Harbor to see the ships and the band and the wares being sold at its annual festival. I bought fudge. I got my picture taken in front of giant sailing ships that had docked for the festival. It had been a nice day despite the clouds, despite the occasional mist. I felt better than I had in weeks.

I don't know what it was there for a while. I guess it was a lot of things. Maine has been under the cover of clouds and rain and clouds and rain for the last two weeks straight, and there hasn't been a day where the sun came through even for a few minutes.

There are also the nightmares. I haven't gotten a good or full night's sleep in weeks. Each night I jolt awake, terrified from one or two or three different nightmares where a variety of people I love or people I don't even know--Conan O'Brien, for example--are dying horrible, unsightly, and very public deaths right in front of me. Or if the people in the dream aren't dying, they are close--like in the dream where I gave birth, decided I didn't want my baby, and left him alone in an apartment while I went out for Chinese food with some friends from grad school.

In addition to all that, the Boy From Work and I decided to quit trying to get ourselves back together earlier this week, so everything has been kind of a mess. And this rain wasn't helping anything. I just need some sun.

And you know where it's sunny? Buffalo. So I pulled out my suitcases tonight, and I started packing early. I'm not waiting around until the middle of next week to go home. I'm leaving as soon as possible. And I'll be gone a long time, which requires some skillful packing. A lot of packing. Every-shoe-I-love-and-a-variety-of-purses kind of packing. So I dragged everything out of my closet and surveyed the mess. Some of my more casual summer purses were filthy with the grime of sand and melted gum, so I began emptying them so I could toss them in the washer. One of the purses had a small writer's notebook in it, and it's an old one, one that was around during grad school and beyond.

I opened that up and found the most ridiculous gems inside. Completely stupid, completely bizarre snippets and ideas and even a romantic intervention. To give you an idea, here's a few things to consider:

Quotes:

1. "I want to shellac the world." -- Me, at Diana's
2. "I'll conjugate his verb." -- Author unknown, although that sure sounds like something I'd say
3. "Will you diaphragm his sentence? UGH! DIAGRAM! I MEAN DIAGRAM!" -- Amy
4. During a discussion on the magazine Cosmopolitan: "It's a female magazine." -- Amy; "A female manatee?" -- Matt
5. "Those girls are big, bearded, plaid-wearing, campfire-making lesbians." -- Jeff

Notes to Self:

1. Sign on 169, heading to Minneapolis: COWS IN ROAD. USE CAUTION. BE PREPARED TO STOP.
2. Oglala. Lakota.
3. Pig! [The exclamation is dotted with a heart]
4. Teacher (young). Gets attention from student (failed a few grades?) Scene: teacher chaperoning @ h.s. dance.
5. Amy wants her gravestone to read: SHE LIKED CHEESE.
6. Unsalted butter. 3 1/2 oz. 2 cups heavy cream.
7. Congratulations Seth & Amanda. Congratulations Seth & Penny. Both on parents' business billboard. Two pregnant girls. Will the parents really announce both?
8. Amy's students think the word sectionalism is dirty. (Caucus too.)
9. My brother thinks these words are gross: seminary, rectory, masturbation

Series of Letters Written by Josh (with My Help) at the Bar Where We Use to Work (The Letters Are for The Spunky Russian He Was Then in Love with):

[KEY: blue = his writing; red = my writing]

1. Dear Baby, What's crappenin'? Here's what I think: my thoughts are not complete. You are one of my favorite people in the world. When you were here it was amazing. Now you're not and there's a little empty space in me. I've been thinking about that emptiness a lot. Instead of cutting you some... I blame geography and I would love so much to be your BF. I'm not sure, though, that either of us is capable of being in a long distance relationship right now. Let me tell you what I think: you used to intimidate me and that made me communicate poorly with you.
2. Dear Baby, What's crappenin'? Are you capable of being with me even if you're in grad school? I simply can't deal with this random on-off shit.
3. Dear Liza, I like your ass. Also, I like your hair. Do you want to be my girlfriend? We can have babies if you want. You can't cheat on me. Promise. Love, Josh.
4. Dear Baby, I'm sorry for this but we have 2 options: (1.) Be my girlfriend and don't cheat on me. (2.) We to back to talking minimally like before (this doesn't mean I'll never see you again.)

None of those letters got sent. (And for anyone keeping track, the night those were written was the night this memorable and urine-soaked event happened.)

That notebook and everything written in it just about made my night. And it--like the few hours yesterday that I spent kicking around the salty town of Boothbay Harbor--made me feel a little bit lighter for the first time in weeks, and I've got to believe that there are going to be more things like that--things that make me feel a little bit lighter, a little bit less like Saturn is continuing to bitch-slap me until the middle of August--coming my way soon, as I run around Buffalo, soaking in everything good that is waiting for me.