Brotherhood

I’ve been a brother since before I was a single year old.

My younger brother represented something wonderful –a friend that never had to go home, a friend that I was allowed to say ‘I love you’ too without being weird, and a person whom I got to wrestle with and punch and it be culturally accepted. I went into highschool very well versed in the older-younger brother dynamic, I had been the older brother for nearly fifteen years and I admitably grew tired of it. My homelife had grown hectic…my mother was on her last hair of sanity and my father and I had yet to become close. My solution to dealing with my family problems was simple: I needed guidance and to get guidance I turned to the only dynamic I had that was stable and I knew a lot about: the older-younger brother dynamic.

During my sophomore year the undisputed king of older brothers was Josue Alvarez. He would pick on me like hell and he would be mean and turn me down whenever I asked a favor…but he was always there for me when I needed him and always ready to offer some advice. We took care of eachother. He guided me through the deepest and most powerful heartbreak I have ever known and I still recall as he affirmed his love for his own girlfriend to me in a hot Brazillian Jiujitsu Gym. Of course all good things must come to an end and me and Josue grew a part in coming to my Junior year, which in turn was a year of change for most of us…

It was my junior year in highschool that I expanded my older brother connections to new levels: I drank vodka for the first time with Jonathan Alvarez, Jose Rosello taught me the value of intelligence and mostly that I was NOT the smartest person in the room, Javier Chavez brought into question the dominance I had in writing, Sebastian Church smoked pot with me for the first time, and I started smoking cigars with Josue just for the hell of it. I came to a revelation my Junior year in highschool: I love being the younger brother. It gives me leeway, it allows me to make mistakes and to know that there is always a constant friend there to pick up the pieces and take care of me. The knowledge that such a friend exists is my biggest safety net, something that gives me more comfort than writing or smoking or drinking or anything else that is theraputic.

I attatch myself to male comraderie more so than I attatch myself to girls, romantic relationships don’t really concern me so much beyond the obvious sexual release I’d get from them…hell my ideal girlfriend is just a bastardized brother anyway. I need this male comraderie more than anything, I need the trust and the love that comes with having an older brother…

But I also need to learn to deal with my mistakes, to take care of myself, to look at my menagerie of older brothers as not guides and safety nets…but as equals and as advisors, advisors that I absolutelty cannot ignore.

Fitting that it took an older brother ostracizing me to teach me that.