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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 2 All the Variables When my older brother, Brandon, told us he was getting married, he wouldn't look anyone in the eye. He looked at his feet, mumbled, and couldn't sit still through it. I had recently discovered the power of brutal honesty and cut down everyone around me with it, the unnerving authority of it Just the night before I had told my mother I was going to a party, and she asked if there was going to be alcohol, which there was. She told me not to drink, and I told her I planned on drinking. The next morning she asked what I did at the party. I told her I smoked a couple bowls, drank til I puked, and got laid. All day she refused to speak to me, and that was all I wanted in the first place. People talk to you less when they know you'll tell the truth, I had decided, and then Brandon came home with a funeral on his face and said there was something he had to tell us. The unnerving authority of it. The unflinching helplessness, yes, that's what I like. I had never seen him anything less than confident, or at least aggressive; and I gotta say, to hear his voice like that-it made my ears ache. He sat like he had no spine when he talked, just a pool of himself in an overstuffed recliner. The light was soft in the living room. He told us about an accident-too much air in the tip it must have been, and a break-and another time when Sheila in the hunger for him wouldn't let him pull out. I seriously doubted but wasn't stupid enough to offer commentary. Mom gasped at both confessions. Brandon stopped talking and there was a silence. Neighborhood kids were playing in the street outside the bay window. I wanted to run to the door and scream at them to shut the hell up. |