| dewy decimal |
2004-12-14 - 1:30 a.m.
Poor Pops. While smoking cigars over chilled shots of sake, he is not the son you�d have thought of.
The child-rearing process for your parents could be described as unclear.
On January 27, 1978 he shot out of your mother�s vulva in a blinding, white trajectory. It was mostly he who was blinded, but then again, he don�t remember too much about that day; a red slide, fatigue like he�d never imagined.
By the time he was five, you�d discovered that he had a strange power; he could make things that were unreal real. You�d realized that he�d perfected channeling this power when he�d caught the unofficial flu and spent 5 schooldays watching episodes of the Twilight Zone. Abracadabra, the seamless lie.
He started bringing himself to church when he was in the third grade, catching rides with friends and eager relatives, your parents respected his curiosity but no doubt thought of him as a jackass.
Like you, he�d been a late bloomer and was 15 when he had his first wet dream, which was not based on a desire for anyone but was the result of a series of color flashes. He didn�t hesitate to tell you about it. That was pretty weird. No one knew it but that was the year he�d started to wear make-up. He didn�t know how to explain it but that first wet dream, he said, changed him in strange ways.
The first time he stole, the two of you were skating in your 65 year old neighbor�s driveway. There, he started swiping Playboy magazines from the old man�s stash and one day he found that under the stack there were also magazines of naked dudes with hard on�s. He took one and that, you may say, was the apple.
Later in life he�d confess that over the course of his youth, he�d been molested by at least 2 strangers and 3 of his friend�s family members. He didn�t know what else to say about it but said that he thought it was important that you should know.
Attending public school all his life, he�d seen everything from gang lynchings to religious miracles. Disinterested, he ended up getting mediocre grades, hanging out with a group of reckless girls that he called home. Later one of the girls would start smoking crystal and would weigh under 90 pounds. He�d always been skinny so you named their gang the rattle pack. What an odd fellowship, you thought.
In the 11th grade he�d gotten bored of the booze and reefer, dedicating himself to becoming immensely popular. By the 12th grade he was Homecomming King, and became hugely talented at being manipulative and fun, Abracadabra. But at the end of that year he removed himself from the social scene and wrote his first novel, 156 pages of self admitted crap du jour.
That summer, with its curiously strong winds, he lost his virginity to his best friend on a camping trip with your family while you slept tightly in your pup tents. Later that girl would go on to become the leading DJ on the only Christian radio station and he would go on to become a full blown homo. Life�s funny.
I guess.
After graduating from Highschool, he went to college in Reno and did horribly. He wrote pitiful e-mails to you about his escalating depression. In that first semester, a friend had introduced him to opium, and after that there was no drug that he wouldn�t do. He was unfuckwithable.
He moved into an apartement one year and a lifetime later with a new girlfriend, his bestfriend and her lesbian lover. For about 2 years, they took a hundred road trips through the I-80 and Lake Tahoe, sending you weird knick-knacks and post cards. They attended incognito parties in the Bay and did a shitload of drugs, which all ended in a tail-chasing maelstrom of clich�d behaviours. Later his best friend fell off a cliff and died and he returned home to Hawaii for the summer.
That summer your last Grandparent died and his life was unrecognizable. Your Dad�s brother came home for the funeral and told him a story that changed his life, leading him out of the closet to a member of 'the rattle pack'. The feeling was so liberating that he couldn�t think of returning to Reno. He enrolled at UH.
At UH he befriended a group of eccentrics and got serious about learning. His friend gave him a book called White Noise. It changed his perception of meaning and language. He read anything he could get his hands on. He fell madly.
Being in Hawaii for about a year, he finally came out to your parents on 3 hits of ecstacy and a gram of Columbian cocaine. You and Mom took it pretty well but Dad felt betrayed initially. Today its insane how close he is to you all. It pains him to think of his life away from you. He�s said that distance is an ache in his chest.
He soon acquired a lover who was a professional ballet dancer with no real ties to anything He fell deeply in love and was driven into madness with the dancer�s cheating and mind fucking. While he slept, boys would let themselves into the dancer�s apartment and nestle their bodies in between theirs. You remember him crying a lot.
To this day he still make the mistake of calling the dancer his first love.
Inevitably the dancer left him and he remained clinically nutso for a good while.
Academically he hit his stride making the Dean�s list, before finally graduating with his degree in Graphic Design.
He landed a job at Honolulu Weekly, an alternative press, doing incredible amounts of design work for very little. He wrote columns and articles for extra money.
He is currently working on a new novel based loosely on a very creative period in Hawaii�s gay youth culture, tentatively entitled Funnykine.
His name is Dustin, your brother. .
He hopes for the best.