“I don’t get it. Why are the statues so mysterious?” Bryan and I were bent over his junior high geography textbook, reading small chunks of text. We had been at it for half an hour.Mike peered at us from the kitchen. Per usual, he was clad only in a pair of tight white briefs, and was stomping around the house like a malevolent swami.
“What statues?” Mike asked loudly, simultaneously announcing his presence with a loud cough.
“We’re talking about Easter Island, Mike. Go back to the kitchen.” Bryan had recruited me to help him with the report he had due the following day.
“Easter Island? Ha! That’s a place for losers. Ponape is the most freaking primo island ever. Do your research report on Ponape.” Mike has the ability to relate even the most inane things to himself.
“That’s why you’ve been passed from conqueror to conqueror ever since people decided to start chopping down trees for wood.” I only barely knew that was true. At that age I had yet to do any real research on Mike’s childhood “paradise.”
“No way! We totally fought off everyone who ever attacked us, man!”
“I don’t care, Mike. He doesn’t even get to choose what to do the report on. Just go back to the kitchen and chew on some more bones.”
“You Americans are so freaking wasteful, man.” To illustrate his point, Mike stuck a steak bone in his mouth and proceeded to suck out the marrow. The meat from the bone was red and still bleeding when Mike sunk his teeth into it. He insisted that the entire family eat meat this way. In the seventh grade, I became a vegetarian as an act of protest.
“Fucking caveman,” Bryan muttered, sneering at Mike and his bone.
“What did he say?” Mike’s eyes were wide with shock.
“Nothing. Just leave us alone, Mike.” I knew it was my responsibility to ask. I also knew that Mike would never be content to leave anyone alone. Ever. His compulsion to bother people was the same compulsion as the one that drove him to sing Elvis songs at karaoke bars every weekend. He needed to be seen and heard. At that point in my life, I would often stop in the middle of simple daily tasks, and laugh at the great cosmic joke that were it not for karaoke I might very well come from a happy home.
“You know, you guys, I don’t have to take this kind of disrespeck.” As always, Mike found it impossible to make a hard “t” sound at the end of his words. I wondered if Mike thought standing in the kitchen in a pair of tighty-whiteys, sucking the marrow out of a bone made him look “respeckable.” “What the hell do you two think of me anyway?”
“You know that shell you’re always carrying around? The one from Ponape?” I asked.
“What about it?” Mike put his hands on his hips and thrust his chest out boldly. I could see the outline of his nut-sack straining against the thin fabric of his underwear, like two chestnuts pressed against a thin plastic bag.
“Put your ear up against it and listen to the sound of the empty space rolling around in the shell. Listen to the sound of nothing. That’s what I think of you.” Mike threw his bone at me in a sudden rage.
“Maybe one day you’ll be evolved enough to make a spear,” Bryan snickered. The bone bounced off of my chest, and landed on the open pages of his textbook.
“You guys are raciss.” Again, no “t” sounds.
“I prefer to think I just learn from my experiences.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean, BC?”
“I’ll put it to you this way, what does ‘massaypoonan’ mean?”
“It’s the Ponapeian word for the shit you get in your eyes when you wake up.”
“Okay, Mike. Now what’s the Ponapeian word for ‘love?’”
“Fuck you, Brandon.” I had lured him into a trap. There is no word in Ponapeian for love.
“I win.”
“No you don’t.”
“Admit it. Admit you come from a culture that gives a higher precedence for the crap you get in your eyes when you wake up, than to love. Admit it!”
Mike coughed loudly, and began to prepare a marinade from copious amounts of soy sauce and onion. This was the only way he would have ever admitted defeat, but I could not accept it. I had to make him acknowledge it. It had passed a point with me. I was tired of waking up to find naked body parts drawn on the backs of my homework assignments. I was tired of the constant yelling. I was tired of having things thrown at me, and being made to listen to his rants about Pantera. Just this once, I was going to win.
I ran into the kitchen. “Admit it, Mike! Admit it! Say that I’m right and that you’re wrong!” I was shouting. I was almost hysterical.
My jungle-man stepfather hummed as he continued to make his marinade. He ignored me for a full minute as I circled around him, shouting.
“Okay, Brandon.” He suddenly turned to me, crossing his arms under his droopy jungle-man boobs. “I admit it. You’re right and I’m wrong.”
“Ha! I knew it! I knew it! I win! You lose.” I jumped up and threw my arms in the air, letting the sweetness of victory saturate my body.
“Just know this… tonight, while you sleep, I’m going to fart in your face.”
I paused, halfway into a victory jump. Stuck in a position of fear. “What did you say?”
“Tonight, while you sleep, I’m going to fart in your face.”
“Fuck you, Mike.”
Laughing like a hyena Mike turned to me. “I win. Admit it.”
“I’d rather you fart in my face.”
I would have… and he did.
