John the First
Goddamn does he have a big Adam’s apple.
That’s my first thought about him.
I have weird first thoughts about people. Every person I meet. It’s how I imprint people into my memory.
When I look at John I can’t help but think what would happen if I stuck a plunger on that honking Adam’s apple and forced him to talk. I imagine it would just flop all around in wild circles like an erect penis with epilepsy. Of course I don’t say that. I have weird thoughts like this all the time and have long since learned to shut the fuck up around people.
And there’s another thing about John the first, you don’t have to squint at all to get the impression that he’s some close relation of Tom Green’s. He looks like Tom Green’s stunt double. Except of course for the fact that John the first doesn’t have any kind of charisma. He’s so bland you wouldn’t notice him if he was standing right in front of you. He just stares at his feet a lot and mutters. Just a body occupying space.
He’s also twenty-six and dating my sixteen year old sister, who has moved out and been working at the local KFC.
My dad splutters in shock upon discovering this union.
I laugh my ass off.
“Who does this guy think he is! Taking advantage of my daughter!”
This makes me laugh so hard I start crying and fall to the floor. No matter how many horrible things she does. No matter how many people she drags down into hell, my father still can’t get it in his head. Rachel is NEVER the victim.
Rachel is a BAD person.
“That poor son of a bitch!” I cackle, wiping tears from my eyes. “Oh I can’t wait to see how this one turns out!” My father ignores me. Fuming. Imagining he’s going to do something dangerous to put a stop to this. I know he won’t.
Princess always gets her way.
So it goes on.
I want to bless John the first because were it not for him, I’d have to see my sister much more often than I do. Whole months go by where I hear nothing from her, and this is amazing on so many levels. It’s like I’ve been walking around my whole life with a sack of stones on my back and didn’t even know it. In a world without Rachel, I can leap over tall buildings in a single bound, outrun locomotives, and stop bullets.
I keep laughing at Thanksgiving because everyone is giving John the first dirty glances. But he’s just looking down at his plate. Everyone looks at him like he’s the piece of shit that’s dating my sixteen year old sister.
They can’t tell from the way he’s moving that he’s covered with bruises. But I can. Yeah, John the first. I know what it’s like.
Rachel beats the shit out of John the first. And holy fuck do I find that hilarious. I hoot so loud my sides want to split when he looks at me with his giant sad Tom Green face. He has a pitiful swallow that sends his Adam’s apple from one end of his neck to the other. He wants my sympathy.
Fatalism is hilarious.
Fatalism is what happens when perfectly healthy people decide it would be a good idea to go find a gutter, lay down in it, and bleed to death. Then they get mad at you for not wanting to bleed to death with them. You think I’m going to crawl down into that ditch of self-pity with you? Do you really?
Oh fuck you John the first.
I’m laughing because laughter tears the universe in half, and creates whole new worlds. Laughter is holy fire, and desecration, and I love you all rolled into one sound. So fuck you. Fuck you John the first. If I laid down my laughter, if just turned the chuckles off like they were on a damned spigot, I’d be just as pitiful as you. So shove it.
I’m alive and you could be too if you weren’t such a goddamn coward. No one made you give up inside.
They break up after a couple of years, and I don’t give a tinker’s damn.
I believe in the inevitability of fate. Why? Because that’s hilarious too.
Second Verse Same as the First
John the second like John the first has no will power. He’s Nietzsche’s darkest nightmare. He’s the Zarathustra who came down the hill, just said “fuck it” and took a nap only to death in the middle of the night because he was too lazy to build a fire.
John the second is just some chemicals wearing a human suit. Like a zombie that’s too apathetic to eat your brains. And oh fuck oh boy is he dumb. If you wanted to travel by night using the light bulb of John the second’s imagination, you’d be better off lighting your own occasional farts for illumination.
John the second has done so much meth I don’t even think he could be a person again if he tried.
My first impression of him is that he’s a snitch.
Is that if I had rounded him up in a group of criminals he would be the one I’d lay into first. Shine a light bulb on that sorry face and he’ll sweat buckets and shiver. This is a man who will sell you his own mother if you just promise not to yell at him. Don’t hit me please. I’ll do anything. I’ll suck your dick if you don’t hit me. Please.
I also get the idea that he doesn’t like knowing he’s a coward. He’s the kind of guy who makes to rush at someone in a bar and puts his arms out to the side when he does, as convenient hand holds for his friends to grab and pull him back. One time he nodded off when I needed him to hold my prom date’s wheel chair. I had to chase it down before it rolled into the marina.
I could drop you with one hand across the mouth you toothless fuck.
The only thing I remember about him other than that is that he wrecked my dad’s car. But that’s hardly surprising. Rachel has wrecked so many damn cars it only makes sense her boyfriend would to.
I don’t know how some people live knowing that the only thing they’ll accomplish is being an inconvenience. But they do.
Somehow.
Sean the Inexplicable
I didn’t meet Sean until he’d been with Rachel for over a year.
The only thing I thought before I met him was how goddamn ridiculous this whole name scheme was getting. She’d dated two guys named John, and now she was onto a Sean? I was just waiting for the day she would bring home a Ron or a Don.
Then I met Sean and was surprised.
Sean was not a douchebag.
When I realized this I just sat very still for a few seconds and blinked like I’d been surprised by a slap in the face.
Sean was… Sean was a cool guy. After several hours I was able to wean myself onto this almost impossible notion. Sean was a cool guy… and he was dating my sister.
He looked like Maddox for one thing. That was like a sucker punch of amazing right there. Then I found out he liked the Evil Dead trilogy. He owned “The Areas of My Expertise” by John Hodgman. He had a good job that paid a decent wage. He even had an autographed picture of Chris Elliot.
An autographed picture of Chris mother-fucking Elliot.
I was profoundly confused.
I found that I wanted to loan him my copy of “The Eye of the World.” I wanted to loan him my copy of the “The Gunslinger.” I wanted to give him one of my sketches for Christ’s sake. How had this happened?
Why the hell are you with her?
I feel like this is written on a sign over my head whenever I see him. Underneath that sign, like a “No Vacancy” written in neon at a motel, is another sign that says “You should leave her immediately.”
There are some things in life I will never understand.
Maybe everyone has a chance to turn around. Maybe Sean was Rachel’s chance to stop being a bad person. Or at least turn herself into a person of the non vicious variety. Maybe.
The season in sanity ended. I knew it would.
Rachel broke up with Sean.
And I could not have wished a better fate for the man. I hope that in time he has come to realize it was as though he had had cancer and the tumors sprouted wings and flew off his body.
Josh the Mute
Less than a month later, Rachel is living with me and my dad, and brings home a boy named Josh.
My first impression is that he’s retarded, and that Rachel drunkenly proclaiming that she’s going upstairs to have sex with him as she drags him through the house may not be strictly legal and that perhaps I should call the police.
The mentally handicapped, after all, cannot give consent.
He also has vampire blue eyes. That’s my second more profound impression. I imagine driving a stake through his heart and watching him puff into a cloud of smoke. I imagine him tilting back his head and exposing fangs.
I hate vampires, but I decide I should not hold this against him.
I later find out that Josh isn’t a fan of sucking blood. He’s a fan of getting women pregnant and not supporting his children. This, I decide to hold against him.
Josh is 24 years old. He has two children, one of whom is five. No one knew any of this until the day of their marriage three weeks after the night she first dragged him home.
I pleaded with anyone who would listen that the marriage should not take place. That someone should put a stop to this madness. I tried to pin my dad down.
“You can’t let them do this. Maybe this would be fine if it were just the two of them, but what happens when she gets pregnant? How fun is that going to be?” I plead. I see a child’s life, ruined, before it ever leaves the womb.
“I don’t care about that. This should be the happiest day of her life.” Goddamn Gary. Buries his head in the sand the second he sees something on the horizon he doesn’t like.
“This is going to be the end of everyone’s life if you don’t tell her you’re going to disown her if she does this.” I should know better than to argue.
Princess always gets her way.
So I sit down with my computer during the wedding and give the proceedings the respect they deserve. Fucking Rachel. Fucking goddamn bitch Rachel, who fucks up so much and so badly that there’s not enough correctness in the universe to make up for it.
When Rachel decides to fuck up your life, you may as well just give up and brace yourself. There’s no protecting yourself once you’ve let her in. It’s like trying to save yourself with a toy boat when someone’s just dropped a nuke on the Hoover dam. She’s super AIDS and cancer all rolled into one.
“People don’t change.” I say after they marry.
“People can change.” My dad says.
“Can and don’t aren’t the same thing.”
So Rachel gets pregnant by the guy who’s so dumb he can’t even talk. By the guy who didn’t step up to the plate for his first two children. You think he’s going to step up for number three? What are you? Some kind of moron?
“People don’t change.” I repeat.
“People can change any time they want to.”
“But they don’t!”
So everyone’s life is fucked up. Princess is pregnant. It’s a royal birth!
And some time goes by. Everyone is bleeding to death in the gutter. Wondering why no one else can see the wisdom in their blood as it flows down the gutter into the sewer.
A week before the wedding I get into the truck to drive up to Sean’s house. He is doing a podcast and wants me to come on as a guest. Rachel throws a fit.
“You’re my brother!”
“Not by choice.”
“How can you do this to me?”
Get fucking real.
So I drive away, and leave that screaming witch to her own misery.
If I have to make a choice between my sister and Sean?
Sean wins.
I don’t care if it’s over who gets my spare paper clip or my spare kidney. Sean wins.
Author’s Note: This had a much much more depressing ending, which I changed in hopes that not having written about it will allow the involved parties to do the right thing. Look in the mirror, assess where you are, and do the right thing.
