Letters To My Little Brother: Misadventures In Growing Older
Read Letters To My Little Brother: Misadventures In Growing Older Online
Authors: Matt McKinney
Copyright © 2015 Brendan Szulik
All rights reserved.
I have tried to recreate events, locales and conversations from my memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity in some instances I have changed the names of individuals and places, I may have changed some identifying characteristics and details such as physical properties, occupations and places of residence.
In addition, this memoir is only mostly true. To quote Jenny Lawson, “The reason this memoir is only
mostly
true instead of
totally
true is that I relish not getting sued.”
ISBN: 1518808352
ISBN-13: 978-1518808357
DEDICATION
To Squirrel, obviously.
Colin and Cameron, for being the dream team;
Hudson and Tina, for being there from the start;
Kimmie, for your unending support;
Jethro and Reid, for being Jethro and Reid;
Taylor, for making me believe in myself again;
and
Mom, for being my biggest fan.
Chapter One:
You Are Never Alone
Dear Squirrel, my beloved little brother,
Growing up is hard. Not like Tupac hard or heavy metal hard, but more like “I just got called a sissy by a four-year-old girl because I was too afraid to go down a waterslide and now I’m having a quarter-life crisis” hard. I know I’m only 24 and you’re only 18, but still. This ‘life’ shit doesn’t get easier. I’m here to help. Everything I’m about to write you’ll learn at some point during the next four years of college and two years of adulthood. It’s the kind of stuff that you’ll read and ignore, shrug off and forget. Then in a year when you’re crying over how your newly-minted ex-girlfriend said she “didn’t want any guys in her life right now,” but went and hooked up with one of those varsity wrestlers anyways, you’ll wish you’d paid more attention. So listen up, meathead, cause life’s about to come faster than I did when I lost my virginity.
With these letters, I give you all my stories and advice. The plane flight sitting beside our dead grandfather’s corpse. My first online dating profiles and the fellow ugly, broke misfits I met along the way. My manic fear of STDs, sexting, and severe oral pain. In these letters, I’ve laid my life shamelessly bare for you to see.
I apologize in advance if they don’t actually contain any useful tools to maturing. I kind of discovered that they were less about advice for your future and more about the painful awkwardness of my naïve misadventures and the eccentricities of my own imagination. They took on a life of their own, not only as retrospective entertainment for you as my sibling, but also as my own introspective meditation. I’m vain and egocentric. So sue me.
My first lesson to you, Squirrel, is that you are never alone. I’d say your loved ones are always with you in spirit, but that’d be creepy if you’re naked or something. I don’t want to see you naked. Ever. I already have to deal with you admiring your muscles in the mirror and bouncing your pecs to the beat of
You Belong With Me
, and that’s already given me nightmares and/or inadequacy issues.
Let me rephrase that line about never being alone: there are always new friends to be made if you are willing to say hello.
I learned this lesson the hard way. See, I often struggle with my faith in humanity. That’s a very negative thing of me to say, but it’s true. These letters to you are my outlet for positive thinking and optimism. (Mostly.) My latest diary entry, on the other hand, had some variation of the word “fuck” no less than 11 times (and none of them involved the sexual connotation either). Sometimes the world just seems determined to peck you to death. The Heat win yet another NBA Finals;
Before Midnight
is good but kinda really depressing; Netflix still hasn’t uploaded the five seasons of
Chuck
; I’m still living in my parents’ house because I literally can’t afford to buy a Chipotle burrito, let alone pay rent. First World problems, right? That doesn’t include the range of other things that affect my well-being (the violence in Egypt, the Syrian Civil War, the NSA and TSA quite literally infringing on constitutional rights without any transparency or public approval, etc.). I know how pretentious this all sounds, but I guess I’m just trying to say that sometimes I can be an angry, angsty 20-something even when I have nothing serious to complain about. Such is life.
And then there’s this one Saturday night I had last year. I’d been planning on going to this 115-year-old creamery that my bosses recommended earlier in the week, but going alone on a Saturday night at 9pm didn’t seem ideal to me. I’ve become quite an introvert in recent years and eating alone in public is one of my four or five biggest fears along with oral injury, carnies, a bad
Star Wars: Episode VII
, and dying as my car plummets from the Richmond Bridge during San Francisco’s next big earthquake. (I no longer live in San Francisco, but the fear still stands. It’s a really tall bridge.) Going to eat alone therefore didn’t feel like a wise idea. But after having a thoroughly disappointing conversation with my then-girlfriend, I wondered if maybe I could run from my problems and satiate my sadness with a boatload of binge eating topped with hot fudge and a cherry.
So I hopped in my car and drove to the ice cream bar.
The place was freakin’ hopping. Contrary to everything I’ve heard on
Gangland
, Oakland is actually a pretty popular place to wander around on a Saturday night, especially if said place is a hyper-famous creamery. The line was out the door. I sidled up to the hostess and asked for a table for one. Her cute smile was replaced by repulsion.
“One?” she asked as if I had the horrible hooknose of a young Severus Snape (my sixth biggest fear).
“Yeah. One…” I responded.
She must’ve thought that my apparent loneliness was contagious because she told me to seat myself at the counter. I took the menu and hid in the corner lest my bosses randomly crave ice cream and catch me dining alone at the most social restaurant in California at 9pm on a Saturday night.
As I desperately tried to find old friends to text, I looked around the room to discover that every walk of life was present. There was an old couple chowing down their last precious gulps of sweet sugar before they kicked the bucket (it’s morbid, I know, but you need to understand how depressing my thought process was). There were college kids here and there. Families and couples and smiling faces. And me. I filled the niche of the lone, awkward guy desperately trying to find people to text. The waiters, carrying fudge-laden sundaes, would occasionally burst out and shout, “Hey, everyone, it’s Johnny’s/Sandy’s/Boogerface’s birthday! Let’s all sing happy birthday to Johnny/Sandy/Boogerface!” and the whole restaurant — old people and all — would cry out that wonderful birthday tune. It seemed like a lot of fun…if only you had people to share it with, which I did not.
It’s at this point that the waiter swings by to take my order. It’s also when I start to realize my night is about to get interesting. The guy (my receipt says his name is Alfie) is a little older than me and has a few tattoos, but otherwise he has the same sharp nose and lanky frame I do. He registers a tick on my Bro-ometer.
“What can I get you, bud?” he asks, patting me on the shoulder. My Bro-ometer increases a little bit more. I get an avocado burger (it’s Cali, don’t judge me) and he disappears to attend to other customers.
As I stare at the wall and ponder whether my life will always be full of such enthralling ennui, Alfie intermittently checks in on me, spiking my Bro-ometer further. He learns that it’s my first time at the restaurant (remember this point, by the way) and calls me “dude” and “man” a few times. At one point, he swings by my seat and points at the grill.
“You see that?” he whispers excitedly.
“Uh…yeah?”
“That’s your burger, man. That’s your burger.”
“Right on…” I said, because I felt like sarcastically saying, “Sweet, bro!” would’ve been too “East Coast-ish” of me.
Alfie must’ve done me a solid because I got my burger pretty fast. It was okay. The fries were great. He made a little more conversation with me, occasionally doing that knowing head-nod that bros always seem to do when they understand whatever you’re saying. He starts asking me if I like ice cream. “Uh…duh?” I say. He chats me up about chocolate and vanilla, whether I like whipped cream and cherries. I started wondering if I was accidentally ordering drugs (like asking for the “cheese omelet, hold the cheese”) or something. I imagined myself scooping through my sundae, chomping down on a hard, plastic-wrap baggie of cocaine, and Alfie swinging by my chair and pointing at it saying, “You see that, bro? That’s your 8-ball. That’s your 8-ball, bro.” (At least, that’s what I think an 8-ball is. I have to check Urban Dictionary after finishing this. Seriously.)
But Alfie was nice and his eyes weren’t red, so I trusted him.
I shouldn’t have. Alfie, without ever specifically asking me what kind of dessert I wanted, plops a big ice cream sundae down in front of me. Chocolate, vanilla, hot fudge, marshmallow fluff, whipped cream, cherry, the works.
And he’s holding a cowbell.
Before I have the chance to ask what it’s for, he rings it loudly and proclaims to the entire fucking restaurant, “Hey everybody! It’s…[he thinks for a second] guy’s birthday! Let’s all sing happy birthday to guy!” Instantly, 100 sugar-infused patrons begin singing happy birthday to ‘guy’ aka me. I have never been so red-faced in my life. I couldn’t tell whether this guy was trolling the shit out of the sad, lonely customer or if he was using the best opportunity ever to do hilarious stuff at work with a willing participant. Either way, I cracked up as everyone stumbled over the “happy birthday, dear…guy?” part.
Alfie looks at me and says, “Well, you said you’d never been here. That’s what normally happens.” No, bro, I’m pretty sure that only happens when it’s actually someone’s birthday, but whatever. I couldn’t make eye contact with him out of sheer embarrassment. He disappeared as I attempted to shrink into my sundae.
But no, it wasn’t over. Rule 14: when it rains, it pours. You remember that old couple that I mentioned earlier? Well apparently they must’ve thought I truly was the loneliest, saddest soul on Earth, eating an over-priced scoop of ice cream alone on his “birthday” in a crowded restaurant at 9pm on a Saturday night in Oakland, California, because the old man comes up to me, shakes my hand, and says, “Happy birthday, son.” I mumble my thanks before shirking away again. The old man disappears (probably to die happily knowing that he made some lonely kid’s evening) and Alfie instantly reappears. He says, “That was adorable, man.” I laughed.
And laughed and laughed and laughed. This guy totally renewed my faith in humanity. Just as I thought that we were all heading for failure — for corrupt elections, war, social anxieties, poorly made movies — I discovered the one guy on Earth who wanted to have a laugh. An innocent, harmless, cheerful, merry laugh with a complete stranger. The world could always use a few more people like ol’ Alfie. I tipped him really well.
The moral of the story, Squirrel, is that even in your darkest hour there are people out there who want to see you smile. You’re not alone. If it’s not me, then it’ll be Mom or Dad or, hell, Alfie. If you ever need a friend, just reach out and make one. I can’t say that the world is made of good people, but I can say they’re out there if you open your eyes.
Love you with all my heart,
-Big Boy