For the past twenty-six (26) years of my life, one of the many constants has been my shining and absolute affection and respect that I have for my older brother, Dale (name changed to protect the humiliated). Over the years, Dale and I have had our differences, a couple of times even throwing down in fisticuffs. But we have also been each others' staunches allies, especially in the face of the tyrannical Steve-O. Now, as I mentioned, I have nothing but unwavering love for my older brother, but I could go on and on about his many faults. I mean, I could talk endlessly about his ruinous and awkward obsession with pregnant-woman porn. Sure, I could tell you all about Dale's "Heavy Girl" phase that he went through in high school. But this entry is not about that. This entry is meant to be a celebration of two brothers' complex, poignant and moderately homoerotic relationship. If you would be so kind as to offer me just a little of your time and indulge me, I would like to share with you some of our greatest battles. I have a lot to be envious about when it comes to my older brother. He has the ripped body of an Adonis. A jawline so perfect, Michelangelo himself would weep at its beauty. An astonishingly flawless hairline, and a charm so innate and hypnotic he can scarcely say two words before women begin to throw themselves at him and beg for his seed. He's a good-looking guy. And me? Well, if Dale got all the brawn, I guess I would be the one with all the brains...and a lot of the brawn. But Dale and I lack any true similarities in physical appearance. My hair is usually a disheveled mess of wild curls, and it is retreating faster than a French battalion (oh, snap). A weak and waddling chin is hidden beneath an I-don't-give-a-fuck beard. My eyesight is so bad, when I made love to my girlfriend outside the other day, I went down on her for ten minutes before I realized I was eating grass. My body can be accurately described as gelatinous, and my penis curves so much it looks like the tip is making a fucking U-turn. However, Dale has said that he wishes he has my broad shoulders. So...I got that. Now, since Dale looks like a goddamn Greek hero and I look like I might molest someone if I stayed in one place too long, Dale has long been a favorite of immediate family and relatives and the weaker, much less paid sex. Yet, there have been occasions where I actually felt bad for him. The most vivid happened in the late 1980s. I was probably five (5) and Dale was seven (7). It was Christmas Day, and one of the presents that I got from Santa Claus was a bright yellow Big Bird doll that would talk when you pulled on a string. I ripped it out of its box, gave it a big hug, and tirelessly pulled on his little string, listening intently as Big Bird said to me, "I love you," and "You're my best friend." Finally, my parents persuaded me to put the Big Bird doll aside and open my other presents. I tore through a few of them, showing mild interest. But then, I turned around to check on Big Bird, only to find him in the clutches of my malevolent older brother. An intense and burning hatred swelled up in me like a herpes outbreak, and I lunged at Dale. "Noooo!" I screamed at him, and I tore my feathery companion away from him. Now, this memory is so clear to me, not because I can recall it so accurately in my mind, but because the whole incident was captured on home video. After I take Big Bird away from Dale, there is a moment where he looks up at the camera with a sad smile as he leans lazily against a recliner. I'm telling ya, the heartbreak of this little kid is so palpable it just pours out of the TV. What a selfish little prick I was. It is one of the few times my brother has ever garnered my sympathy. But there are other times when Dale had to play the Virgil to my Dante, guiding me through the trenches of adolescence and doling out advice when he saw fit. For instance, there was the time I ran away from my baby-sitter's house, only to find myself sitting on my bed, bawling and waiting for my dad to come in an administer a promised punishment. Dale looked at me with a wry and victorious smile. "You shouldn't have run away, Eric," was the sage wisdom he bestowed on me. There was also the time where my brother and I were playing on a large dirt pile, but were forced to flee after a group of kids pushed us away and took over. Dale decided to mete out his own form of justice. I watched him dig his hands into a mud puddle and craft a pretty orbital globe of mud. Then, he covered the thing with rocks. "I'm gonna chuck this at 'em," he said defiantly. It was the first time that Dale became my hero, seeing him push those sharp angular rocks into the small, mud planet. "This guy don't take no shit from no one," I thought. Back then mine Englishes weren't that good. Of course, time has a nasty habit of forcing people apart, and as Dale and I got older, the raft of brotherhood began to come undone in the ocean of life (fuck, my metaphors get me hard). Dale had his style and his friends, and I had my style and my friends. By the time I was in elementary school and Dale was close to junior high, we looked and acted less like brothers and more like inmates forced to share a cell. I favored sweatpants and bulky shirts and kept my hair nice and short. Dale had a fetish for acid-washed jeans and any t-shirt that could be securely tucked in as tight and restricting as a straitjacket. Also, Dale wore his hair longer than me. In fact, by the fifth grade, he was sporting a pretty good mullet. Now, his mullet wasn't as epic as, say, a Billy Ray Cyrus, but it was a fucking mullet, and Dale did not wear it well. The slogan for the mullet is "Business in the Front, Party in the Back." But the slogan for Dale's mullet was, "Kick My Ass" in the front and "Kick My Ass" in the back. I think it was around the time Dale was in the seventh grade and I was in the fourth that he started to notice that maybe he was getting handsome. When he was twelve (12), Dale had a homely-looking ginger for a girlfriend, and in eighth grade he took a liking to a pretty blond that he talked to in CCD classes. I think it was some point around this time that Dale realized, "Girls like me." This was also about the time I realized that I could just take a dump while I showered, and just mash the filth down the drain with my foot, saving both time and water. Well, since Dale was the good-looking one, and I was still humping my pillow to the cover of Ween's Chocolate & Cheese album, I began to experience girls vicariously through Dale. When we would go to the mall, it wouldn't be long before a gaggle of giggling girls (alliteration get me hard, too) would approach my brother. We would go to church dinners with my family, and even there girls would haunt my brother's steps. Of course, we went to a Catholic church, so its no surprise that those girls were ravenous for the cock...Catholic chicks are skanks. Anyway, Dale could do little to control his movie star looks and the magnetic pull that they had with women. All he could do was ignore them...and he did...like a little bitch. Seriously, I would have killed for the attention that Dale got from girls, but he considered it an annoyance! The two of us were at an arcade in the mall called Aladdin's Castle once, and Dale was playing a video game called Silent Scope. The object of the game was to look through a plastic sniper rifle mounted to the game and take out enemy targets. While Dale was bent over, looking through the scope (which was indeed silent), a random girl walked behind him and grabbed his bulbous ass! And what did he do? Nothing! Not a fucking thing! He just went on playing the game, completely undisturbed. Well, what are ya gonna do. I suppose that's the curse little brothers must endure, always in the passenger seat, never allowed to drive. And as time went on, Dale's female admirers got prettier and prettier, and of course it was only a matter of time before Dale began to actively engage them. And yes, there was a "Heavy Girl' phase he went through. At one point my mother even commented, "I think Dale likes those bigger girls." Yet, for all of my brother's suaveness with the ladies, there was one time, just once, where I got a girl he couldn't get. I was sixteen (16) and Dale was eighteen (18). It was New Year's Eve 2000. My family and a bunch of relatives were celebrating in a hotel in Council Bluffs, IA. This particular hotel had a wide open courtyard next to a pool and a hot tub. After a while, Dale and I noticed a small group of girls talking around a table next to the pool. Naturally assuming that they would melt like butter in my brother's hands, my father encouraged my brother to go over and talk to them. Dale begrudgingly obliged, knowing that if he did not, my old man was only two or three beers away from going over to the girls himself and ranting about his handsome and lonely son. So Dale and I stood talking to these girls, in particular a pretty red-haired girl wearing a sports jersey. The chat did not last long as I recall, and Dale eventually left them alone, perhaps a bit disappointed. During the conversation, I did what I always did when Dale would talk to girls: suck in my gut, stand behind him, and try not to get caught staring at their tits. Anyway, our prediction came true, for eventually my father did start talking to these girls, much the humiliation of Dale and myself. Yet, when my father confessed to Dale and I that he had indeed spoken to the girls, what he had to relate was most queer. It seemed that the girls, the red-haired girl included, were not interested in Dale at all, but rather "the blond boy" who was with him. Now, since I was the only person with Dale at the time he talked to the girls, and since I had dyed my hair blond in an act of nonconformity like my friends, I could only deduce that it was in fact me that the girls liked. At one point during the night, Dale went to the room alone. When I went to find him, I saw the girls standing outside our room. I tentatively approached and opened the door, saying awkward and stupid things to them. They came in the room a bit, and I saw Dale lying on the bed watching TV. The girls and I chatted before they left. My heart was thumping like crazy as I watched them leave. It was probably because most of the blood in my body had swiftly exited my brain, torso and limbs that I stammered a quick question to Dale: "Should I ask that chick to make out with me?" I said, breathlessly. A large grin spread itself across Dale's face. "Do it, dude!" he wisely advised. I turned and spit my gum out, and called down the hallway. Now, I didn't even know the red-haired girl's name, so I merely shouted, "Red! Hey, Red! Come here." The red-haired girl turned around and walked back to the room. Very creepily, I put my arm around her shoulder and ushered her back into the room, in full view of my older brother. "You want to make out?" I asked. Her response was a sudden jerk, as she pushed her lips into mine and invaded my mouth with her tongue. I was just-turned 16, and it was my very first French kiss (up to then I was like the Wilt Chamberlain of fingering). It was all too brief, and the red-haired girl and I parted ways. After she left, it dawned on me that it felt like the fucking Hindenburg was going down in my pants. I casually slipped onto the empty bed and then moved to floor to watch TV. I was lying on my stomach, and Dale asked me, "Doesn't it hurt laying like that?" "Fuck yes," I replied. Now, Dale was not obsessed, much less concerned with the affections of the red-haired girl. In fact, he probably could give a shit if she liked him or not. But that's not the point. The point is, she had a pretty distinct choice: Dale or me, and she picked me! Time once again did its thing, and eventually Dale went off to what could technically be called a college, and I meandered through a few more years of high school. The first time I saw bewbs, Dale was there. The first time I drank a beer, Dale was there. The first time I smoked weed, Dale was there. The first time I stole something, Dale was there. The first time-actually, now that I think about it, Dale was a fucking horrible influence on me.
TO BE CONTINUED.....
The Moore You Know: OK, the other day I came up with this joke: "My washing machine is so racist it still has separate settings for whites and colors." Now, hilarity aside, I feel like that joke is so obvious, that I'm not sure I even made it up. Did I hear it somewhere? I can't remember. If anyone thinks or knows they have heard that joke before, let me know from who. In the meantime, I'm fucking taking credit for it.
© Eric Moore - 2010
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