My name is Ben and none of this matters.

Glass

It was fall, Marching Band Season. I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my math homework, trying not to “turn” gay, my brothers (one older, one younger) are in the kitchen getting into some highly competitive shenanigans. You know, guy stuff. At some point I hear this shattering of glass. Like as if Stone Cold Steve Austin had corporeally materialized himself into our lease-breaking, dog hair riddled, Craigslist furnished, dejected, sewage dump, scene of domestic violence, too small, having to use closets as bedrooms, downstairs of drug dealing neighbors, rundown apartment double; only shittier.

I look over and Chris, the younger of my brothers, is rolling around on the ground holding his face. You see, Chris has this defense mechanism where he just slowly rolls into a ball on the ground, not like me where “defense mechanism” is just a personality type. What ended up happening is that Jake, the eldest brother, got frustrated with this back and forth, machismo, false-aggression laden drivel-fest and just started punching Chris. Chris starts slowly curling into his safety ball and as he slid into his security-haven Jake just kept punching straight on and eventually his fist met Chris’ face; right in his glasses, causing them to explode into his eye.

I look over because this is way more exciting than Chi Square Correlation Tests or some other equivalent knowledge dump that fits the age range of something I could have been working on at the time (I DON’T REMEMBER!). Now, at this time our family only had one car and my mom was the only one who worked so my step-dad, being the wealth of responsibility that he is, called her up at work.

“Chris’ glasses exploded into his eye and when you get off work we should take him to the hospital.” he said. To which my mother responded with what I could only assume was an “okay, deal!” or a “you betcha” all pre-Sarah Palin style Sarah Palin-ing it or even an “Okay, I’ll do it just don’t bring up bible verses about how I, as a woman, am supposed to be subservient to her husband even though you’re a “Buddhist/deist” who doesn’t really understand how his purported belief system works but just claims it as his own and uses the belief system of a loved one to guilt them into domestic servitude because why not? After all, bullshit does beget wisdom.” Keep in mind these are all conjecture as I am not actually my mother.

Chris is sitting on the couch crying a little bit, which is understandable for a 15 year old who just had his glasses explode into his eye. You know, that delicate organ that grants you vision. As my brother quietly sobs, my step-dad recognizes that this is one of those moments where he as a prominent male role model in the lives of these 3 young, developing boys has to step up and speak. He should say something. He has to say something. Something that’ll show us children that he’s a kind, adult, father-figure who’s nurturing, and emotionally mature, and capable of love, compassion, and empathy in dire situations and these are the words that his mouth pushes out of his teeth-hole: Suck it up, pussy. Suck it up, pussy! What a crowning achievement in parenting! You’ve firmly established yourself as the alpha-male! That’s still an important thing to establish when establishing your list of things to establish! So, kudos on your magnificent 21^st century achievement!

My mom got home about 20 minutes later and took him to the hospital. He ended up being perfectly fine, glass in eye wise. Jake and I had to go to practice. We were instructed to tell our directors that he “fell down the stairs.” Firstly, we didn’t have any stairs for him to fall down. And secondly, why did we have to lie about it? I’m no counselor or anything but I don’t think it’s a good idea to make your children lie about an incident using the ole domestic violence “go to.” Years later, my mother divorced him and the last time I saw him he called both my mom and I “cunts” but not before breaking up another family. And everyone lived happily ever after. Well, not happily ever after. Most parties involved are pretty broken. They lived after. After the ending of this story. Nothing too pleasing. Just living. The end.

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