Escaping Culture by Wilson Frederico;

Author:Wilson, Frederico;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62652-697-6
Publisher: Publish Green

More Than Nothing

Think Aja by Steely Dan: classic-rock fusion; cultured; rock with harmony; driven yet laid back; half-time percussion with subtle high-hat nuance, funky guitar and distinctive keyboard and saxophone riffs with intermittent double-time back beats thrown in for good measure. A seamless fusion of rock and jazz; a composition living between genres: old school and new wave. That’s my brother, Ric.

He’s a layered composition: armored brass on the outside, sensitive lyrical libretto inside. He’s an interpretive work, an acquired taste: innovative, complicated and conflicted. He’s invariably been ahead of the curve. He always was and forever will be.

That’s both his transgression and reward in life. If you’re hip, you’ll get him. If you’re not, you never will. Don’t bother trying; you’ll just go batshit crazy trying to peel the onion. We can only try to keep up with what he’s brewing.

There’s no disagreement between siblings that Ric’s a momma’s boy. It’s not his doing. Mom naturally turned her attention to him, given that in early childhood, the old man chose to crow more on the exploits of his older son, his namesake. (Unfortunately, that would be me.)

It’s not that our father actually favored one over the other; he simply lived vicariously through the more grown-up accomplishments of his older children.

Not fair, I grant you. But the old man’s attention was compensatory; it served to offset his own personal disappointments in life, evident to anyone seeking truth, not excuses or pretext for self-pity. Not pretty, but there it is.

So, being five years older and now a teenager, I increasingly spent most of my time with kids my own age and less with little brother. I was, as all teenagers were and are, self-absorbed, oblivious to anything and anyone outside my circle. I regret it to this day.

But that didn’t stop Ric from trying to be part of the group. Sure, age was a barrier, but he found a way to compensate - to gain entry, however temporarily, into the group – by being funny, a characteristic later refined into razor-sharp wit and charm, interpreted as charisma by others, a key to accessing doors locked to him.

I accepted his hanging around until my peers and I began driving. “Go play with kids your own age,” I’d say. But he wasn’t having any of it. He wanted in and made himself a pest. “Look, you can’t go with us, you’re too young.” He’d sulk, look up at me with big sad eyes, drop his head as if in prayer, roll his shoulders forward, and complete the charade by sobbing, ever so softly. It was performance art. He had it down. Worked every time on Mom, but I wasn’t having any of it. I can’t cruise with little brother in tow.

In hindsight, leaving him behind one too many times may be the reason there exists distance, a chasm between us, to this day.

I try not to overanalyze sibling relationships, given their structure has more to do with things outside my

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