The Portal

I just got off the phone with my eldest brother Vince. He and I engage in a twice annual phone call which lasts anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour in length. He is eight years older than I. He has 3 near and at college age children and has only had one wife, whom he's still married to.

Vince used to ride me to school on his bicycle's handbars.
Vince used to threaten to beat up anybody who caused me trouble. Though trouble was had, Vince was never enlisted.
As a child Vince was a troublemaker, a goof, a clown.
As he got older Vince became very, very serious.
Every Christmas Vince used to give me pencil sharpeners. The last one was automatic.
Vince was the only one home the day I inhaled my first cigarette and was about to hurl. Looking into my fully dilated eyes he said, "I can tell when people do drugs, you know!"
Vince was the first one to leave home to go to university.

The first one free.

In the beginning of our adult conversations he'd been stultified and rather stilted in his ability to communicate with me. Secretly I wanted to keep him on the phone as long as possible, remembering all the big brother things he was to me. I'd talk about everything and anything. Mostly they were things that mattered. They were things that only we understood.

The zoo that was our ancestral home.
The animals that inhabited this zoo.
Feeding and cleaning times, as appointed by the zookeepers.
The psychological beatings into submission.
The science experiments.
The careful removal of any spark that was naturally inherent in each of us. Each of them placed in a simple, non-descript Mason jar with the slightest etching in HB pencil.

I talked to Mom late last night. She's still going on about how chickens have difficulty talking to ducks. Sometimes we break into Chinglish, a language which is in part Chinese, in part English. I generally speak English to her, whereas she predominantly speaks Chinese. Chickens speaking to ducks. Beaks flap, sounds are heard, some things make sense, but the whole is lost. Last night I made a proclamation that stuck: I don't want to play the game anymore. I'm not going to pretend that everything is fine anymore.

My father's 70th birthday is coming up this year. A date has been tenatively set. I will attend. It will be the last time I attend a party in his honour. I will not make a scene, nor will I make any overtures of a gratuitous manner. I will not be a demoralising Eddie Haskal. I will not present excessively well balanced and exceedingly happy. I will not make a speech. I will simply attend. After dinner, I will make my escape. One final engagement. One night only.

Tilt.
Game Over.

Just recently I found a portal. There was another world beyond. A world of pasts and futures.

Tenses.
Future tense.
Past imperfect.
Perfect.
Prefect.
Narc. I'll never be.

Confusedly staggering through trapezoidal labyrinths, nestled into a cobwebbed niche, draped in barbed wire, protected by barred gates, I found that jar with the Comrade's name on it. It had all the electrical work still blasting and pulsating inside. All the thunder was locked inside too. Armed, squeezing into the portal, I shot the lock off the barred gates and lunged at the Mason jar. Gingerly examining it, I noticed the label had yellowed. The fine etching barely discernable. Biting, clawing and crying I released the contents, pouring it all over me, inside me. Thunder roared in my ears. Lightning singed my hair. With what looked like a budding fruit tree branch growing out of my navel, covered in ozone placenta, the Comrade was reborn.