Trigger warning: dirty laundry
A Note To My Sibling
You’ve never conceived of me
on an interactive level
as anything other than
a thing
for you to have a jolly time
tormenting.
It doesn’t matter to me
that you can justify it to yourself
as just brotherly
kidding around,
because it wasn’t.
It doesn’t matter to me
that it’s the result
of conditioning
that you acquired
by following the cues
that our inhuman horror of a mother
gave you as a birthright.
Our radically different upbringings
in the same house mean
that I see the way we were
and are
in a manner
that your self-centred,
malicious mind
can’t imagine.
Throwing
As soon as I was big enough,
I guess when I was three,
my mother began to shunt me
outside to the back yard
to play with my brother Paul,
who’s two years older.
Being boys, what she instructed us to play
was ball.
Being little, my coordination
was incompletely developed,
and I threw the ball clumsily
in a shot-put sort of way.
Instead of mentoring me
and teaching me to throw properly,
he immediately started taunting me,
in that sing-song chant cruel children use,
“Riki throws
like a girr-ul! Riki throws like a girr-ul!”
He did this every time she forced me to play catch with him,
for years and years and years.
Sometimes he did it in the house
when we weren’t playing ball at all.
I cringed every time, which made him smile.
Even when we became adults
he’d bring it up sometimes,
with a little smirk on his face,
as if it were
some reminder of warm fraternal bonding.
Of course, I never did learn to throw properly.
It kept me from being adequate at sports that require it.
Even in my sixties I couldn’t help but feel inhibited
when throwing a tennis ball for my dog,
and preferred the cricket bowling action.
I flung sticks
for her sidearm across my body.
Thanks, Paul.
Just one of the thousands of destructive impacts
that you’ve had on my life.
Cold Water in the Shower
When we were in high school,
from time to time my older sibling
would sneak into the bathroom
when I was taking a shower
and pour a pitcher
of cold water on me
from over the shower curtain,
and then exit giggling.
When I reminded him of it
a half-century later
he seemed to think it was still funny
and told me I was “spewing”
when I called that response
sick and evil.
He then claimed that he wanted
reconciliation.
Shvoogies?
When I tried to explain to my sibling Paul
about my activities as a basketball coach,
He dismissed the sport of basketball as,
and I quote,
“a bunch of Shvoogies running around in their underwear.”
I supposed that by ‘Shvoogies’ he was referring to human beings
with ancestors who’d been victims
of the African slave trade.
I also supposed that he thought he was being funny,
especially since he giggled after he said it,
but I thought he was far from funny,
and certainly didn’t giggle with him.
At the Start of Nightmare Week
The last time I had the misfortune
of having to endure my sibling’s physical presence,
was a nightmarish week in 1990.
Early on in the adventure,
whilst I was still jetlagged,
and after he’d warmed up by putting me down
and trying to wind me up
by frustrating my efforts
to have a meaningful conversation
with the stratagem of responding to my every sentence
with dickheadedly inaccurate non-sequitur put-downs of New Zealand
he commented on New
Zealand
decriminalisation of homosexuality
by aggressively asserting that
all homosexuals should be lined up against walls
and shot – illustrating this by miming
the firing of an automatic weapon with his fingers
and making the corresponding noise.
Then he indulged himself in the
aren’t-I-a-naughty-boy-not-really-I’m-so-pleased-with-myself
half-giggle and half-snort
that it has
always disgusted me to have to hear.
Not wanting to get into a pissing contest with him,
under the circumstances,
I didn’t remind him of the time, thirty-two years earlier,
when he was fourteen and I was twelve,
that he tried to rape me,
but I’ll never forget the pressure of his hand on the back of my
neck,
or the foul stench coming up from his genitals,
or his mocking laughter after I’d struggled free and was fleeing.
Sick
and Evil
Y’know, it struck me recently
that my elder sibling
probably still thinks
after more than a quarter-century
of estrangement
that just because
he had such a jolly good time
relentlessly bullying, vexing,
belittling, tormenting,
and otherwise abusing me
as we grew up,
and at every opportunity
thereafter,
that I’d enjoyed it, too.
I’ve read about
that twisted shit going on
in his ilk’s minds
whilst they’re doing it,
but clinging to that
contradictory, disingenuous
self-delusion
into old age
is sick and evil.
One
Problem, Though
All too frequently
I find myself
filled with fantasies
about directing vituperation
into the smug, smirking,
sneering face
of the morally inferior
subhuman
who is my parents’ older son.
But then I remind myself
that in order to do this
I’d need to confront him,
and the sight of that face
and the sound of his voice
have made me feel
physically sick
upon encountering them
for decades.
(Hair colour in cartoon is wrong)
