For John Michael

I can talk about fucking for days, weeks; every crease in each kiss, the maledictions of his tongue, and my so-called liberations...I can write a million treatises on throngs coming from civilizations most people's minds don't even cross anymore, or find a microcosm in a drop of whiskey, a shard of glass lodged in a spineless man's toenail, the heavens caught beneath the billows of human circumstance- all of it, anything, to not write about you, John Michael.  Sadly, in some sense I feel a thousand souls and experiences removed from yours, and yet we always considered ourselves close, up to a certain point, as brother and sister.  You were born when my mother was given the gas (do they even allow that anymore?), before Woodstock ever happened.  I was born naturally (by proxy) after my mother confessed that she had ate some prunes (just like her to ruin my grand entrance), took an earth shattering shit after dragging herself, IV and all, to the hospital bathroom and bore me in under two hours, the very week that Patty Hearst sauntered into that bank like a rich girl, beret and machine gun and rebellion against daddy at her back.  But again, my ego took charge and this was supposed to be about you.  I'm sorry, I know I always do that.  You once said to me that I cannot see any idea, or thought or notion without gunning it through my own experience.  I always loved that about my favourite writers, but when you said it, I thought it made me selfish, without empathy, wanting.  It stays with me until this day and I hope I'm not on the wrong side of that. You are I are really so different, aren't we.  

You took after our mother, and I our father.  Quite easily demarcated, right down the line even including shallow ends like hair (yours light brown and curly, mine dark and straight), you inheriting our maternal grandfather's stocky long shore man's frame, me taller than all the women in our family and with the long torso, peanut head and sensual mouth that had our father as the favourite to the ladies of his youth - his stories of taking British women out on the boats in the Croatian islands...I always loved the tales, but I think they left you a little bit un-included.  I think you wanted to know that he would step back in his adventure, to let you be the son to lead the next and coming time, but he could not. He was marked in all ways to have a daughter, and I was, unfortunately for you, all his wanted in a son.  Our mother loves you to this day though.  And you are so lucky to still have your mirror living on this planet.  My mirror is him, caught in my dreams, in the times when the wind blows, the witching hour arrives, and I'm not sure if I'm asleep or awake.  This occurs in bed, at work, on the bus, anytime I'm feeling the lack.  

You, being eight years older than me, experienced a good portion of the whole of your early childhood alone.  I only met you after you had been here for that near decade, having tourette syndrome and being taught far too early that the world is a cruel and unusual place, and that our parents did what they could, but were caught unawares at the disease that plagued your young mind - taking the elements that we all struggle with: obsession, dejection, compulsion, fear and aloneness and warping them together into a cauldron of sharp tongued medicine that no little boy or adult man should have to navigate his way around.  She cried to herself (she told me) when she left you at the first day of school.  You grew to be so hurt, and hateful towards her, and the world, but you still cherished her and needed her more than she could handle.  I have random pieces of your life in my childhood - standing in a psychologist's posh Westchester home office - his fish pond of blue, shiny synthetic rock and bubbling water keeping me company while our parents sat in front of his desk and talked about how to deal with you.  Those rare but memorable bad times, when we'd come home from some shopping or outing, and you'd be in a rage - uncontrollable, crying, fighting with my father, my mother yelling and also with tears, stuck in the middle of your and his misunderstanding of each other, while I waited quietly in the garage with the german shepherds, petting them and hoping the anger and strife would subside.  Someone asked me once if I had alcoholism in my family, since I was SO good at being quiet, and trying to smooth over loud, violent and uncomfortable fights.  I cited this memory as an example of the reasons why that seemed to be.  You made our mother cry on so many occasions in your teenage years, but then again, I think she was always pre-destined for that sort of reaction and behaviour.

I cherished the fact that my father was Always on my side, and sometimes I think I lord it over you still.  You were not there when he died, clutching my hand and my mother's, a smile on his face and a tear in his eye.  I was sitting with my younger boyfriend at the time, about 3 months prior, who said to me (while waiting for the train from the upper east side) that you and our father should work out your issues with each other, that he was older and sicker, and you never know when that time is gone for you.  I'm sorry that you never got to say goodbye.  Maybe this is why, whenever we talk on the phone, you always throw a quote of his my way, a re-enaction of a familial memory- good, bad, ugly or hilarious (usually all), putting on his accent and tone, and reliving our lives again with me, or reminding me of traits of his which I share - my flat feet, the way I point when I speak, or spit, or open my mouth far too wide when eating, or how I don't know how to say no to more...wine.  

You had your darker days, when adulthood came knocking and you weren't anywhere near ready to go out to meet it in the spotlight.  When we lived in Florida in the interim, you were like a vampire, awake at night baking (a side effect of the haldol you were so angry at our parents for giving you (to their credit they tried to ween you off, or lower the dosage, but those drugs have a life of their own and control you before you can say "no"), asleep all day and gaining weight from the drug, and your lack of life force.  The excess wind of the tourettes blew you away from your right self, and you were angry in your teenage years.  More than most anti-social boys.  You had been made fun of to a point even I could not fathom and it came out in many ways - putting your fist through the master bedroom window, aiming our loaded gun at yourself, with an unsure intent, and that became adulthood for you, when you couldn't see beyond conspiracy theories, when you slowly let what the world thought of you become your name and face, when your rage and anger turned inward, and your hitting of yourself (the only one you could try to control) turned into numbing your tired mind without drugs, but with alcohol....bottles and bottles of vodka, gin, wine...watching our favourite shows, music and films and letting them touch you more than you could ever show the rest of them.  

I remember the cigarette burns in the carpet of the basement you occupied, I remember watching late night comedy on cable TV in that basement: George Carlin, Richard Pryor, The Young Ones; you taught me well.  I most remember when I was about 11 or 12, you were of course still living at home, and we would watch music videos together in my room.  You twitched a lot, of course, and I would sort of scratch your arms, nothing intense, just up and down, back and forth, sometimes I would mimic the guitar solo of the surely late 80's hard rock video we'd be listening to, and it would calm you somehow.  You twitched less, and felt more like a normal human being.  Wish I could do that for you now.  

The anger of those early days, the fear of a little girl wandering into your basement, on the stairs, seeing your Zeppelin and Kiss albums sticking out of the crates...the demonic Gene Simmons and his bloody tongue scaring me so much I had to run back to the light of the upper floors.  We would wrestle, as wrestling was so very "in", in those early 80's days...I lost my first tooth when you rolled on top of me down our front hill (you were definitely "husky"...), and once they told you to stay in the basement for something innocuous like 20 minutes, for hitting me, and I slipped a malicious note underneath the door which said something like "I hate you, no one likes you, and you are......(insert insult here)".  I could be a little bitch, that's for sure.  It was a harrowing but insanely comedic moment when my mother and father opened the basement door, and you just plain leapt out of there and onto me.  They pulled you off, you didn't do any harm, but still, I can't remember if they saw my note, believed you, or what the final outcome was.  God, memory is funny.  I speak to my mother nearly every day, and never think to ask her this.  Her memory isn't as crisp as our father's was, so I'm not sure I would trust her answer.  

After all those times, and the more blaring, painful ones, where so many tears and angry energies flew about our family, one to the other, until now we are three, and not the same as when our father stood at our helm, ready to defend himself against our minor insults, and comedic gestures he couldn't truly laugh at - I guess that was his fault, and being my father's daughter, sometimes mine as well.  I hated to see your blatant outbursts, as dysfunctional as they could be, slowly be numbed by drinking, and then see your inner thoughts turn sour, quiet, alone - the tourettes living not only alongside you, but slowly eating off of your best selves with the very docile, but stubborn grip of a true parasite.  You lost the fire of your sickness these last 10 years or so.  

John Michael, you are misunderstood, bullish like our mother and grandfather, domestic and good natured, when allowed to be, lazy and fearful of all that you cannot control (who can blame you when you rarely had control over your own body and thoughts - listen, we're all in that boat.  Be thankful that yours makes itself apparent to you.  The rest of us have to stumble through life thinking We are in control.  At least you can laugh at our ridiculous predicated notions.  No one's got a name for the disease we've got).  I  myself had a few stressful months when I was around 12 years old, when I couldn't control my twitches.  Our mom had to sit with me, and calm me down, and stroke my hair.  I know it's round the bend, inside me somewhere, in the family gene.  I want a son, named after our father, more than I can say.  But, I'm just afraid it will happen to him.  Maybe that's why you never had children either.  One day maybe, I'll get the courage.  

For all our troubles, we sure did have a good time at home, us and our demons, our DNA cavorting at the dance every night, our drinking and storytelling, our holidays, our alienated, silent times with each other.  We always said what we felt, and what we were thinking.  Crying, fighting, laughing, spitting, mooning each other, caressing each other's hard times- you never let us get away with anything less.  The world to me is a different place, that I grew up seeing it sometimes, once in a awhile at least - through your eyes.  I say, let the baby, the bathwater, the anger, the innocence, your memories and those you don't yet have the courage to see through to the morning with- let them all back into the party, and see where they take you at the end of the night.  Your fire is worth preserving - the echo of your voice in its solitude- stabbing into the summer sky, around our pool, when you stubbed your toe on the hard cement.  Follow its voice onward, and see what lies in the midst of your red, inflamed heart perimeter.  Once the barnacles are told to fuck off, and go home, your journey could just be beginning, if you let it.  

~ M. Lucia