Thread by @GeePawHill

Man, on *that* topic, I been butt-cheek on phalanges for the last thirty hours, and I'm gonna remain so for at least the next thirty, but I gotta say, in my heart there's a substantial amount of "You best step off, child, cuz you about to be playin' out of your league."

It's not a part of myself I'm proud of, this longing to go the fuck off. I'm a little brother, tho, and when you're a little brother, there's no room for decency or kindness. We don't shoot to wound, cuz wounded big brothers are *dangerous*. :)

I once hit my big brother with a lamp, and it took 14 stitches to fix him up. Sure I felt bad, but not as bad as if he'd gotten ahold of me.

(I can assure you that my mother did not see it that way. Oddly, tho, my brother was cool about it. Desperate times, desperate measures.)

Odd strange unity between brothers. One time, we were playing Houdini, as one does, and he hogtied me, as one does, but crouched, and attached to a doorknob.

As part of my famous escape routine, I fell over, and nearly choked to death, which was cool, but after the rescue I had this incredible rope burn from one ear to the other.

Mom was, well, curious about this.

We had one of those deks that has a sort of curved wood trim from the top to the face. I told her I tripped, and struck it just so, and *slid* down the curve, and that's how I got the burn mark around my neck.

She balked.

But I swore to it. And my brother swore he saw it happen.

She asked me pretty much every three years until she died, when I was about thirty-five, what really happened.

"Mom," I said, "I fell and slid down the curve of the desk."

"You did fucking not. You know you did not. What happened? Not like I'm gonna do anything about it now."

"Mom, I fell and slid down the curve of the desk."

The world is a very complicated place. My brother and I were long estranged. I believe he was a molestor, and I believe I was one of his first molestees. But that had nothing to do with us playing Houdini and having it go wrong. Houdini rope burns happen. Wasn't his fault.

There is an honor among siblings.

That thread didn't end up how it started, eh?

Whatever.

I'm tempted to try to bring it back around. I can kinda sorta imagine a way to pull that off.

But nawww. I'll let it stand as it is.

Weird. Complicated. Ambiguous. Incomplete.

IMPORTANT: The comment "There is honor among siblings," was not in any way to suggest some blanket rule of not calling out one's siblings in public for bad behavior, up to and including outright evil. I'm sorry if my word-ordering and my weird revelation made it seem tht way.

When one live-tweets, one sometimes puts things in a way that suggests things one doesn't believe.

Had I understood the import at the time of the creepy aspect of my relationship with my brother, I certainly would have called it out. As I say, life is complicated, and I did not know what I knew. To be perfectly frank, I *still* don't know for sure what I know.

IJSFG. :)