Brother's Day

A shout-out for the sibs.

I have a confession to make.

That scratched-up copy of MEDDLE by Pink Floyd that I’ve had in my collection since sixth grade? It’s not really mine. Neither is that tattered paperback edition of THE SOFT MACHINE by William Burroughs. It’s stolen. So is my somewhat peculiar handwriting.

I took them all from my older brother Steven, and I’ve never thanked him. All right, thank you. There. I said it. What else do you want?

That’s how it is sometimes with brothers. Probably with siblings in general, but I only have brothers - so that’s what I’m writing about. They can be competitive, sarcastic, belittling, and irrational. They steal your shit, tell you that you’re crazy and an idiot, and – worst of all – they can use the secret passcodes they’ve possessed since childhood to bypass your built-up defenses and get right on your last nerve.

In some families, the sibling rivalry only gets more barbed and intense as people age and parents pass on. Resentments surface, wills get contested, and the apportionment of love and possessions gets assessed and found unfair.

I’ve been lucky because that’s not been the case in my family. I have two full brothers and two half-brothers, who I love and respect. As my younger brother Andrew demonstrated in BROTHERS, an excellent anthology he edited, brothers can be your most loyal running partners and your deepest back-up bench.  

https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-26-Stories-Love-Rivalry-ebook/dp/B00245A4J6/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

So since we’re in the gap between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, I want to give a shout-out to my own sibs and to much-maligned bros in general by celebrating Brother’s Day on May 24.

It’s an unofficial holiday and, appropriately for brothers, it doesn’t raise a big fuss about affection. I mean, it’s not like you can take the day off or park anywhere you feel like (like some brothers do). But maybe it’s an occasion to reach out and say something sincerely not-dickish to your brothers.

Maybe it’s time to acknowledge your brother had your back in the playground. Or that he taught you how to boil an egg or throw a curveball. Hell, maybe your brother was your sister at some point. But right now I want to give big-ups to my big brother Steven who was one of the first people I ever met. And certainly the first cool person I ever met, and my role model for most of my life.   

When everybody else was mouthing platitudes about peace and love in the late 60s, Steven was an iconoclast who made you to stop and examine half-baked, sentimental ideas.  But unlike some iconoclasts, Steven has never just been about the negative. He’s always had the gift for saying something funny and unexpected and for finding the brilliant in underappreciated things. He is the only person I know who listened to Nick Drake when the musician was still alive. For Chrissakes, Nick Drake barely knew Nick Drake was alive at the time. Steven taught me about Surrealism and Theater of the Absurd just by the books he left around and the conversations I overheard him having with his friends. He was the one who carefully steamed off the cover on a Beatles album and revealed the legendary “butcher baby” cover underneath. While he was in college, he discovered a band of psychobilly misfits called the Cramps at CBGB, became their manager, and put out their first two singles with our home address as their record company’s headquarters.

He helped book the band at their famous Napa State Hospital gig, where the singer Lux Interior announced from the stage: “Somebody told me you people are crazy, but I’m not so sure about that. You seem all right to me.” Naturally, my brother became a psychiatric social worker after that and has been helping people ever since.

As a writer, I’ve gone a different way in life, but I wouldn’t have gotten there without my brother. And I think that might be true for most people. Our siblings, even the ones born from other parents, help make us what we are. For better or worse, if you ask the Unabomber. They influence us in a way that parents can’t, they give us examples to follow, give us examples not to follow, and they stick out their necks for us when even the best of friends would sensibly deny any association with you.  

So I’m not saying you need to give your brother hug today. Perhaps you’re still pissed about something that happened at Thanksgiving, or during the Eisenhower Administration. It could be that your brother really is a schmendrick. But maybe give him a call or send him an email, just to acknowledge you’ve come from the same place. But if you see my brother, don’t say anything about that Pink Floyd album. I’m still hoping to sneak it back onto the shelf before he notices it’s been missing.