12-2-01

I had to go into work today for about 4 hours. That just about sucked the life out of me. Is my life supposed to be in an office? I'm going to live a corporate life. It's evil. I need to figure out how to get out of it. The problem, of course, is will-power. The money sucks you in, and once you have a certain standard of living it's hard to go back. I need my health-insurance. I need to be able to pay my rent. I have hopes to buy a condo. Shit. Of course, I also know many people who work crappy low-wage jobs that also have to work too many hours just to make ends meet. So I can't complain too much. Where's the balance?

So I was trying to become somewhat friend with my brother. He stopped by Chicago with two friends of his, and they slept in the living room of an old apartment of mine. He and I still didn't relate very well, but I guess he came away with the impression that I didn't want to spend any time with him. I was under the impression that he wanted to go out with his friends and was more interested in going to Roscoe's than in talking with me. After he returned to Pennsylvania, we had an argument because he accused me of ignoring him. In this same conversation he said that [please note, that it is sometimes hard for me to recall the order of all these events, but this is how it fits together in my mind] he thinks our father may have molested him when he was a kid.

Now, I probably should have thoroughly questioned him at this point, but A. we were having a fight already, B. he said "I think" or "maybe" as if he wasn't sure, and C. this was a statement that was so shocking it was hard for me to know how to deal with it. I don't recall exactly how I replied in this conversation, but I probably let it drop.

The next conversation we had, he told me that he was moving to Seattle, dropping out of college at UPenn (by this point he only had one or maybe two classes left, and both were independent study; at the time, he claimed he would finish them up when he was in Seattle, but I'm pretty sure he never graduated), and that I shouldn't tell our parents what he was doing. He said he'd contact me when he got there. I told him, okay, I wouldn't tell them. Apparently, he wanted to distance himself a lot from the family. Moving to the opposite end of the country (we grew up in Connecticut). Very symbolic.

At this point, there wasn't any mention I can recall of the supposed molestation. All I remember is that he did send some kind of angry letter to my parents with a PO Box address and no actually residence. In this letter, he told them that he didn't want any contact with them, but that they could keep paying his health insurance "if you don't want me to die," but otherwise they were to leave him alone. He also sent me a short letter with only his PO Box address. I could understand that he might be angry at Dad for some shitty times, but then he also gives me only a PO Box address with no phone number or real address? I guess he felt he couldn't trust me or else that I was also an enemy. Perhaps I represented part of the beougouis "heterosexual" suburban childhood he was trying to leave behind as much as possible. Regardless, I was pissed again.

I wrote a letter to his PO box. I said something angry to the effect that I was sorry my attempts to make friends with him didn't show up on his Richter Scale of relationship testing, but I had been making every attempt to get to know him better, and that it wasn't easy considering how distant he is. In that sense he reminds me of our father. In that same letter, I told him that if he wanted to talk more about what he thinks happened with our father, I'm willing to hear him out. (Although I was very skeptical that it could be the truth.) I don't know how he could expect anything more than that I would listen to what he had to say on the subject. Perhaps I wasn't as diplomatic as I could be, but fuck-it he was acting like a dick-head.

I got no response. To be continued.