The Brosin: When I discovered my cousin may actually be my brother

What do you call someone who isn’t just your cousin but you are a little uncomfortable calling him brother? Why, of course, it’s the Bro-sin.

Me and the Brosin

When I was 32 I went to see my Dad for a few days in his double wide trailer near my small Iowa hometown. If you don’t know white trash social hierarchies a double wide is a white trash palace. It is only one step below a house with a deep freeze on the back porch next to a toilet that one day we are going to get around to putting in place. We didn’t always live in a white trash palace but where he lives now was the closest thing I had resembling a home to return to. A place I had run away from long ago. I escaped the trailer park, the house with no running water, jail time…I had escaped what other people called life and made a new one for myself.

While my socioeconomic and physical relocation had been a success I have always been tied back to these white trash roots in spite of my best efforts. See, when I arise every morning and look in the mirror I see my fathers sad eyes staring back at me. His eyes have always made him attractive and tragic all at the same time. I imagine it has worked to both of our advantages our entire lives. No matter the joy or fury on our faces our eyes always betray a level of fragility and damage laying just below the surface. For him I suspect that damage is from the suicide of his mother, the untimely death of his father, the sexual abuse at the hands of his own brother, the time in prison, the loss of the loves of his life over and over again and ultimately a life filled with regret and self doubt. My father’s story is one that I will spend time telling throughout these stories of my life.

Back to this visit, I hadn’t been home in 3 or 4 years. I avoided going to see my father because inevitably I left with some new life scar. On my visit for thanksgiving a number of years earlier Dad had chosen to inform me in passing that I needed “to be aware if was I picking up random women in bars.” This was not because he was worried about me picking up some type of unfortunate outcome such as AIDS, the clap or an unwanted child. His concern originated with the fact that I could have as many as 10 brothers and sisters in the world and he wouldn’t want me to accidentally fall into bed with my own sister. Dad went on to say “I can’t confirm how many total but last I knew there were 5 or 6 for sure and rumors of another 4 or 5. Hell, I don’t know. I don’t remember much about it but if they look like one of us then you shouldn’t put your pecker in her.” Wise advice if I have ever heard it.

Fortunately, as I mentioned before my family genetics are strong and so it’s easy to pick out a cousin or brother/sister of mine by the body build, facial structure, gestures and those damn eyes.

On this visit my father had mentioned that my cousin wanted to see me. I hadn’t seen Ted (name changed for the sake of privacy) since I was eight and I was, of course, game. Anything to break up the monotony of the trailer. Ted wasn’t an actual cousin but his mother was the sister to the woman that my uncle (my father’s brother) had married. So while we considered ourselves relatives by proximity there was no actual blood relation to each other. Ted was an alcoholic and he had maintained a somewhat rough and tumble redneck existence. Now Ted was a special and elusive form of redneck. Ted was the rarely spotted redneck gay. Most gay rednecks in small town america are burying their heads deep in the closet in order to avoid the small mindedness often associated with white trash america. However. Ted was out and proud. He and his husband…Pumpkin (also changed but his name is equally as absurd)…that’s right, Pumpkin, lived in our hometown and was a regular in the bars as a cook and as a drinker. Some of this I learned about as my visit went on.

I arrive at my Dad’s double wide trailer and spent some time catching up with him. We do the familial role-call of who is in jail, who is pregnant, who is getting divorced, who died and who should die. He mentions that Ted is going to stop by at some point later in the morning. This feels fine to me. There isn’t a lot for me to do there other than just to sit back and be incredulous at so many of the things in my fathers life and after awhile it becomes obvious that you are incredulous. Open stares and mouth agape is a good way to have someone ask you what the fuck you are looking at?

My father is showing me his latest motorcycle — it’s a four wheel trike. It has one wheel in the front and basically elaborate training wheels flanking the rear tire. I asked him why we wouldn’t he just call that a car. My effort to connect is not appreciated and my humor has fallen flat. Dad is a big man with a laundry list of serious health concerns or so he tells me. It’s hard to tell where the myth and truth intersect and depart each other with him.

I look up as a bright red convertible Camaro rolls up. This car is the brightest red a car can possibly be and the top as well as the entire interior is a glowing white. Every bit of chrome is polished to a fine sheen so that you are a mix of blinded and checking yourself out in the reflection. Sitting in the car is Ted and with him is his best hag Paula. Paula is a robust woman who I spend time wondering how she is allowed out of her house without some type of facial covering. Her face is a train wreck. Not a small train wreck but the type of where people say things when they see her. Years of poor eating and drug use has riddled her face with pock marks and once I meet her I recognize her as the nastiest, bitchiest, and dumbest human being I have met in some time. As Ted gets out of the car it takes me a minute to take in what I am seeing. It’s like looking at an older version of myself or a younger version of my dad. I am a little confused and at a loss for words.

We chat and catch up. I learn about Pumpkin and Ted being married. I learn about the awfulness of Paula’s soul but mostly I just learn that Ted is eerily familiar to me. We get ourselves organized and head out to breakfast. We chat for a little while longer. I share about what’s happening in my life, we talk about what has befallen relatives I have long forgotten (mostly on purpose) but I generally I just stare at this man. After awhile Ted looks over and asks what I am doing that evening.

“Want to come to town and get a beer with me and Pump?”

“Ahhhhh…sure. Sounds great.”

“Come by early and we can show you our beautiful house. Did your Dad tell you that it’s a historical home?”

“No. How so?”

“Well, Mark Twain…”

At this point of the conversation I am really interested in where this is going. Is he about to tell me Mark Twain stayed there? Is he about to tell me that Mark Twain had a meal there? Or maybe it is something really interesting about a mistress who was housed in this home? The mistress no one but now this small group of people knew existed. This could be really fascinating.

“…spent the night in the house next door once. We feel it gives our home historical significance and we are trying to work with the towns historical society to be given the distinction.”

I am pretty proud of myself as all I want to do is to laugh. I’d like to laugh hard and loud at the beautiful simplicity of this idea. I want to ridicule and belittle the nature of this farce. What a waste of human capital. However, on some level I appreciated the ingenuity as a mechanism to increase the value of his home. On another I am just in awe that he is so sincere about his hope.

At the agreed time I drive in to town to meet Pumpkin, see the house and have a couple much deserved beers having put in a full day of son duty with my father. An arduous and admirable task for any son. I pull up to the house and park next Ted’s Camaro which is still brilliantly read, startling white and mirrored chrome. As I look at the house from the back I can feel the white trash rolling over me. It’s as if a wave of sad hits me and each step closer to that door another wave crashes over me. It’s as if I am being held down by these waves and I feel as if I am moving slower. I can breathe deep and remember back through the years to how many homes just like this I have walked in to at the end of the day.

The rear porch is in disrepair with different colored siding and a screen door that doesn’t quite hang right. As I walk through the screen to my left is a broken down lounge chair next to which sits a tin folgers can overflowing with cigarette butts. You can see the vague outline of where someone has spent hours lounging and smoking cigarettes.

To the right is the ubiquitous deep freeze, brown and dingy, held closed with with a padlock but hinged with duct tape. I don’t even have to open it to know the contents inside that cavernous space. There will be bags and bags of years old frozen peas and corn, there will be white packages of meat held closed with masking tape with grease marker etchings that used to say what was in the package now smeared and lost. There will be giant containers of lasagna and salisbury steaks purchased from the frozen food section of the nearest Aldi’s. In that space there will most likely be at least one animal (most likely a rabbit or squirrel) frozen in mid-launch bagged in a bread bag in the hopes that one day when there is enough extra cash it’d be stuffed, mounted and displayed. I worry sometimes that many years from now when our ancestors uncover these deep freezes this will be their great archeological discovery…the mysterious deep freezes of what was known as the American mid-west.

I shake myself loose of the foreboding that has come over me. The return to places I left and paths not taken. As I knock on the door the glass rattles as the seals around the panes of glass rotted away years before. Ted greets me with that big familiar looking smile and those eyes staring back at me begin to unnerve me. He welcomes me into the kitchen which is covered in this dull mustard yellow color with split pea soup green appliances. It feels warm and familiar to me in a way and for a second, I am very happy to be standing in that kitchen. Finally, the odor hits me. It’s the smell of cigarette smoke and a musty undertone that speaks to unwashed and uncleaned linens and carpet. That smell tells me about all the furniture purchased from second hand stores and auctions. The mustiness of sweaty bodies and dirt that have been ground into it’s very fabric that no matter how many times you steam clean it there is always a mustiness. This odor takes me back to living in a trailer in the woods. It takes me back to visiting friends and relatives with giant gaping holes in their floor, cockroaches skittering about among the dishes stacked and covered with food. It makes me a little sick. Makes me a little sad. Makes me a little homesick.

Ted introduces me to Pumpkin. A delightful and tiny man with a light southern twang. In retrospect to the unindoctrinated it would sound southern, however, if you were raised around this particular accent you can recognize “hick” in a second. Hick is a variant of southern. You can still sound intelligent and be southern but speaking hick casts great doubt on your intelligence. Hick is an undercurrent that runs across racial and geographic boundaries. I grew up with a hick accent and spent years training it out of myself.

My older brother helped me to learn what it meant to speak hick. He is 11 years older than I am and so he had left and gone to college when I was 7 or 8. On one of his return trips home we were driving from my fathers house to my mothers for some holiday nonsense. As we are driving along the highway he looks at me.

“What do you use to clean your face?”

“Huh?”

“What do you use to clean your face? What’s it called?”

At this point I am trying to figure out if my collegiate brother is trying to ask me a trick question. Is he using his giant college sized brain to trick me into looking stupid? I mean…he is an older brother. It’s their reason to exist. In the elder sibling job description it is task number 2 to torture their younger brother. After a pause for thinking through his game and sensing his growing frustration with my thickheadedness.

“Warshcloth?”

“Spell the first part of that.”

“W. A. S….H.?”

I am still very confused and a little leery of where this is going. Again, big brother and little brother dynamics are strongly in play.

“Where is the ‘r’ in the spelling of that word?”

Trap has been sprung. Damn him and his smarminess.

“Huh?”

“When you spell that word you don’t put an ‘r’ in it but when you say it you pronounce an ‘r’. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t do that. It makes you sound stupid and you are not stupid. You can be whatever you want but don’t play the part of something less. Don’t let where you are define you but where you are going to be. Be more.”

Now, it would take many years for me to appreciate what this moment did for me, what it meant to not play the part and that I didn’t have to be limited to my upbringing but I never pronounced it “warsh” again. However, I still think he was kind of being an ass.

Pumpkin is a nice man if a bit quirky. He had formerly been in the rodeo so he still fancied himself a cowboy. Skin tight jeans, cowboy boats and a big cowboy hat. Ted and Pumpkin were one of the first couples in the state of Iowa to get married when the supreme court of Iowa ruled gay marriage legal.

They showed me a video of the two of them coming out of the courthouse together. Pumpkin was wearing his giant cowboy hat, his skin tight black leather pants, a double breasted jean shirt and cowboy boats. While this is eccentric it is who he is. Now, cousin Ted, wore something a bit more dramatic. He wore black jeans, a black shirt, a stove pipe hat with a giant feather in it and lace up boots with an extra 3 inches of sole on them. He looked like the ringmaster at a very unique scary circus.

Either way I was glad that they were happy.

Pumpkin and Ted together showed me the rest of the house. The carpet was a deep, deep shag and colored sea foam green. In the corner of the foyer was a collection of Mark Twain stories on a book stand like you would expect a bible to be displayed on. There was a giant picture of Jesus in the foyer.

They took me upstairs and showed me the room that I would stay in if I needed to after a few too many beers. As they opened the door I was worried that something was alive inside. There were stuffed animals, pelts and heads everywhere. It felt as if every inch of the room was thinking about attacking. It was an unsettling feeling. What was also strange was in the midst of all was a bed covered in a zebra patterned blanket and a bear skin rug. There aren’t any zebras or bears in southeast Iowa. Most of the other animals could have come from some place locally but these two pieces stood out as not fitting the motif. I smiled as kindly as I could and said thank you for the offer thinking to myself the entire time that I might have to cry myself to sleep if I stayed in that room or at the very least have nightmares about being stalked by a bevy of animals that shouldn’t be in a pack together. I worried that the incongruous nature of that pack might make it even more bothersome. If it was a pack of wolves that makes some sense but a random bear and zebra with squirrels, foxes, and rabbits. That’s more than my brain can handle especially after a few cocktails with Pumpkin and Ted.

Next on the tour was the office. Up to this point, it had been a somewhat frightening and disconcerting tour. I was afraid to imagine what lay around this next corner for me. We opened the door to the office and there sits the most beautiful and giant wooden desk. On the wall behind the desk are some of the most beautifully crafted and antique looking musical instruments I had ever seen and for a moment I felt like I could relate to these two on some level. A feeling that I can respect who they are and their sense of being. If someone could appreciate, collect and arrange this display then we can find some common ground. As I walked further in the room I turned to look at the wall opposite the desk and my entire premise was just shot to hell. Photos were hung from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. These photos were all of Stevie Nix. I was, once again, dumbfounded. I knew I had to acknowledge this display as they had noticed me staring at the wall.

“Wow. That’s a lot of Stevie Nix! It’s pretty impressive.”

“Yes. Isn’t it great! This is an assortment of my favorite photos of her.”

“There are more?”

“Absolutely. We have a whole storage area of Stevie. This is just what I could fit on the wall.”

What does one say to that idea? Here hung nearly a hundred photos of Stevie Nix and there were more. I wanted to ask why? I wanted to ask what the hell they were thinking? I wanted to ask what purpose this served and did they ever feel like all the Stevie eyes were following them through the room? Was it religious? Was it just because of her music? Had there been an interaction at some point?

After spending a little more time sitting around the dining room table and choking down a couple of beers it was time to head out to a few bars in my hometown. This is not an activity I often or willingly engage in but I was going to hang out with Ted and Pumpkin.

We visited a number of fine establishments in my hometown. The type of places that I had largely avoided since my departure many years before. These are the places when you walk through the door you see and feel the oppression of the factories, of the loss of hope and of the desperation of life in a shitty small town. These bars were populated now with so many of the people I shared my least enjoyable high school experiences. While there is that small part of you that takes joy in their suffering and downward spiral of life there is also a part of you that whispers in your ear “but for the grace of god go you.” How easy it would have been to be another dissolute soul sitting at the bar like my parents before and their parents before them after working hours of manual labor at a job I hated, returning home to a family I regretted and the disappointment I created.

After a couple of stops, we sat at the corner of a bar and finally able to look fully into each others faces as we sat there and drank our beers. As I tried to avoid Ted’s eyes, again those eyes that remind me of the reflection in the mirror each morning, I began to notice Ted’s hand gestures and his facial expressions. From the way he smiled and laughed to the way he looked when he thought about something to the way his hands moved about when he spoke…it was all so familiar to me. Then I looked into his eyes and saw generations of my family in them. I could see my grandfather who died in unfortunate ways long before I was born in spite of being a good man and my great-grandfather who was a drunk and a thief who died of old age. I could see my father and myself looking back at me in those half-lidded sad eyes. In his eyes, I could see every bit of his confusion about being a gay man in a redneck world. In his eyes, you could see the pain he experienced trying to figure out who he was and why he was. It stopped me in my tracks. I took a long draw from my very, very domestic beer.

“Ted, are you my brother?” I blurted interrupting the current conversation without any attempt to bridge conversations.

“I think I am.” He smiled coyly at me.

It was all so confusing. I felt nothing that would lead me to smile. I only felt overwhelmed, confused and a bit of anger. Not anger at anyone in specific but in general. I had escaped a life where this was common place and every time I dipped my toe back into this world it came back grimy with this white trash life dripping from it in pools of emotional baggage that only years of therapy have allowed me to process and let go…well, sorta let go.

“I’m sorry to have just jumped out with that but it’s remarkable. It’s remarkable how much of your facial expressions and hand movements and your eyes look so much like me, and Dad. It’s just remarkable that your whole being feels like me.”

Pumpkin jumps in with his hick twang.

“Actually until Ted got the botox you two looked a whole lot more alike.” Trying to not let this distract me from the conversation at hand I just stored it away for consideration at a later time.

“Have you ask Dad about this?” As I am beginning to focus in on where this conversation leads.

“Yep. I came out and asked him. I said “Uncle Spark, are you my Dad?””

“What was his answer?”

“He said to me, “Well, it was the 60’s and anything coulda happened but your mom would have to answer that question.””

I sat for a minute thinking about what was and wasn’t said in my Dad’s answer. I knew this game of his. I was a master of myself. The answer without an answer. A version of a magicians miss direction.

I stayed for a while longer and chatted with Ted and Pumpkin careful to not drink so much that I would need to rest my head among the stuffed herd of their spare bedroom.

As the evening proceeded Pumpkin and I had a chance to speak one on one as Ted went outside to smoke a cigarette. Pumpkin was an interesting guy if not a bit…unique. At one point in my conversation Pumpkin perks up and looks at me. There is sudden excitement in his eyes.

“I don’t know if Ted shared with you about me but I am a special.”

Now, special has many meanings and I was trying to not to jump to a judgement. He was clearly excited about his form of special so I went with it.

“No, he didn’t mention it. How so?”

“Well…” Big pause for dramatic effect. “I have a gift. It’s really a gift from GOD. I mean, some times it feels like more of a burden than a gift. But GOD gave it to me for a reason so I accept that gift willingly.”

As he makes this statement you can see the pure joy that the thought of god imparting a gift upon him brings him. He mentally disappears for a second. Staring off into some other place and time where he clearly would have been held up as a prophet and a holy man. Meanwhile, I am thinking about the trauma this man must have suffered in his life and the abuse his belief would have yielded him. The ridicule. The mockery. The shaming. Yet, he sits in front of me resolute in his belief that this is a gift. Here the two of us sit looking at each other and not seeing each other. We are both elsewhere. It saddens me a little to think that his joy creates in me a sense that he is one step short of being burnt at the stake for witchcraft.

“Really? So what’s the gift?” I take a quick drink from my beer bracing myself for whatever may come next.

“Well, GOD has granted me an ability. It is precious and it brings with it great pain and great joy but it is what GOD has asked me to do.”

My curiosity is building. I want to stop him. I want to ask him if god speaks to him. If god was talking to him right now. If god was able to tell him things about upcoming events. How awesome would it be if god was willing to tell the score to an upcoming sporting event? Or how the market was going to ebb and flow over the next five years? Or maybe, he could just explain to me how this day had come to be? What was it about me that made god enjoy setting me on paths like this over and over again?

“Ok….”

“So I can feel other people’s pain.”

This was like opening a present on Christmas morning and unwrapping sox or the 14th ugly sweater from your grandmother while she is watching so you have to hide your disappointment and gush about it. You have to put that damn sweater on with the frolicking puppy in a festive hat and sweater embroidered across the front of it and be overjoyed for the gift she brought you.

“Wow. That does seem like a burden.”

“It can be. Sometimes I can not only feel their pain but I can take that pain onto myself. I can remove the pain from them. I can free them of it.”

I look at him and I wonder if he can feel my pain. Look in my eyes. It’s all there for the world to see because of these eyes. You look in your husbands eyes and it’s the same ones. Surely, you could see it there if you just looked. He has this god-given ability to feel pain? Then why doesn’t he feel mine. I am torn asunder. My father keeps dropping bombs on my life. Dad didn’t understand what stability feels or smells or tastes or looks like. My mother neglected me through the core of my childhood. She was a drunk and chose the men in her life over me over and over again. The anger in me roils with past transgressions and you sit here pleadingly talking about taking someone else’s pain. I wonder if he can feel the tear running the length of my body from the neglect and disappointment. Take it from me, little man. Just take it from me! Instead.

“That’s pretty amazing. How does it work?”

“I just meet someone who is hurting and it just comes over me. This is a hurt person then I can pull that pain out of them. I can own it for them. It’s a burden but GOD wants me to help people like this so I do.”

I sit still for a moment. Inwardly, I am seething. This man has just told me that god has given him the ability to take away what ails others and he doesn’t see me. Am I not hurt? Is this all just made up? Then a startling epiphany comes to me. I don’t want to give up my hurt. It informs who I am. It helps me be aware of the mistakes of those who came before. It allows me to be strong when others around me are weak and fragile. It makes me huge when all I should be is small. Even if Pumpkin could take this from me I would refuse. This is mine. I own it.

“Well, Pumpkin, that’s absolutely amazing. I am so glad you can be there for people. I am sure your god has done this for a reason. Thank you for sacrificing.”

I slowly sip my beer.

The next morning I crawl out of the futon that is my bed when I go to see my father. I am a big man and it’s a tiny space. It’s a process of unfolding myself when I get up and try to de-kink. Stretching the body so I can move like a normal human being.

I slowly make way into the kitchen as I hear my Dad shuffling around. We acknowledge each other with barely audible grunts. He stands at the coffee pot waiting for it to produce his decaf that preserves his ritual of drinking coffee.

I retrieve the cereal, milk and a bowl. I stand next to him staring out the window at a brown yard with a few faint hints of green that if watered might take over but that’s not where we are, is it? Green things don’t get watered here. Beyond is a corn field with the remnants of last years harvest laying broken in the field. Husks and broken stalks cover the ground. Parts of the fields look like a jagged Stonehenge waiting to be discovered and worshiped. If you look just a little further you can say the highway with traffic flying by. In that moment, I am on the road and driving away from the place with every bit of my soul intact. I know that’s not going to happen. These visits home always come at a cost to my spirit. This time appears to be as large as any has ever been.

As I pour the cereal in my bowl. Dad looks over at me.

“So son, how was last night?”

“Well, it was interesting. I am not sure who Ted’s Dad is but he’s one of us. It’s so obvious after sitting with him for just a couple of minutes.”

“Huh…well…your Aunt (Ted’s mom) always hated your Uncle (my Dad’s brother).”

I want to shake him. I want to say “HEY! Wake up! This is the wreckage of our lives you have created. Stop being a dick!”

“Well, it’s like looking in a mirror. It’s like I see myself in 10 years when I look at him. So…”

“You know I don’t know. You’d have to ask your Aunt about it.”

Snap. Straw. Camel’s back. I look my father in his eyes. Those eyes that has bound our family together for as long as photographic evidence exists. Those eyes that bind me to future generations of our family including those whom I will never meet.

“Dad. Did. You. Stick. Your. Dick. In. That. Woman. Or. Not?”

He ponders my question for a second. Looks at me and gives a slight shrug.

“I guess there comes a day in everyone’s life where you have to own up to all the things you have done throughout it.”

With that he turns and walks away with his coffee in his hand. I stand at the sink and eat my cereal. Just trying to get my bearings. I can hear the tv go on in the other room.

I wish I could tell you there was some finality in this story but there isn’t. I have never spoken to Ted or Pumpkin again. They moved away from my hometown and rumor has it broke up then got back together. I’ll probably never see this man who has been my cousin but may be my brother again. Even with that distance he remains a fixture through this experience. When I have told this story I have come up with a pithy smart ass way to end it so people don’t feel sad for me. I smile and I say, “Well, he’s not quite my brother but it appears he is more than my cousin so I have just taken to calling him my Bro-sin.”