tw: homophobic slur

Maybe I did that once. But I am not substantial enough of a person to make an actual impact on my brother's life, except as a means of contrasting his brilliance. He is in advanced classes, and good at sports, and has plenty of friends. I can boast none of this - well, not if my intention is truth - and so the only purpose I serve to him as a model. Unlike the ideal sibling dynamic though, I am an example of what not to do, the person not to become.

We don't talk, and when we do, it's only when my parents are talking to me, and he makes a snide remark about one of my shortcomings. Sometimes, when I'm in a placating mood or just too tired to deal with him, I roll my eyes obligingly, because that's what he wants to see, but most of the time I ignore him completely, which frustrates him. He'll find some other channel to vent his frustration into (usually a friend, sometimes his father, er, our father), or he'll corner me later, sometimes days later, to make small talk riddled with barbs. He couldn't get his kicks when we had an audience, so he has to demonstrate his superiority to me on his own time. When we're alone though, I seldom tell him anything he wants to hear.

He'll ask how school's been going, and I'll tell him it's going fine, and he'll ask what my grades in Mrs. Whoever's class are, because he doesn't expect them to be high, and I'll stare at him blankly. With other people (such as Ginny) I feel the need to comply to their demands, but I've been dealing with my brother so long, and with a height advantage, that it's a lot easier to feel comfortable getting under his skin. It doesn't take much effort either, all I have to do is not perform and be my basal, stateless self. I do not have to wear an emotion to make him despise me, and this pleases me greatly, because usually the only emotion I actually feel when interacting with him is mild annoyance.

Nothing like Tsulluts's deep, world-rending hatred. I wish I could be her.

Anyway, he usually persists in his attempts to make me fess up some lingering unworthiness, and I unfortunately usually give in after a few minutes, after I get bored and tired of his presence. He'll ask where Ginny and I are going on our next date, or if I'm really too much of a faggot to ask her out, and I'll shrug and say "I still haven't worked up the courage" which is a complete lie, and vaguely alludes to my lack of courage, and he'll be able to pluck that one sentence out of my mouth and put it in the back of his head, to smirk about when he's falling into his (restful and deep) sleep. He'll grin like an idiot and look me up and down and say something stupid like "wow, I can't believe you just admitted to that!" and then run off to tell his friends about how pathetic I am, as if I cared what his friends thought.

Tsulluts is a younger sibling, and also far more powerful and successful than her older brother, insofar as her position could be called power or success. Heddeh is deafened and muted, and living a life in hiding somewhere on the same planet I regretfully inhabit (insofar as my presence could be called inhabitance). And she has a real struggle, real power and real importance. I didn't know if her parents were alive, or if they knew she was alive (ish), but I had no doubts they would love her over her older brother. I was jealous, but my jealousy was pithy and weak.

I walked around the next day on airy, hollow limbs, barely hearing or seeing anything. My thoughts were consumed by my jealousy that I could not feel her jealousy. I wondered if maybe I should be jealous of my brother instead, as he would be so much more feasible to replace. Being jealous of Ginny would be nice too, but then I would have to swap over genders, and that felt... well, I quite liked the idea, but it was impossible, so I dispelled it. I settled for being jealous of my brother, a much more reasonable goal.

I didn't know how to best go about being jealous of him, so when Ginny let me go home (we talked about Ty again, and how she continued to not flirt with him, big whoop) I sat in the living room, which I never do, and watched him. I tried to be stealthy about it, but there's only so much stealth you can have while spying on someone seven feet away. I pretended to be reading a book I had already read a million times, one that my mother owned when she was a child and might not have read. I won't tell you what book it was, but it wasn't really high literature, and thus eventually prompted a comment from my brother.

"Why are you reading that?" He said, in his voice that was deeper than mine despite being younger. I pretended not to hear him, so engrossed was I in my fake reading. Besides, that's not even the question he meant to ask. What he should have asked was "Why are you staring at me?" I don't imagine I was being subtle.

"Why are you reading that? Isn't that for girls?" He repeated, not louder, but closer to me. His shadow crossed the words I was pretending to read, and I looked up at him. I shrugged, because I knew it would annoy him.

After a few moments of him waiting for a proper answer in enraged silence, he gave up. "Whatever," he said, going back to his seat on the opposite chair, the one with the supposedly ugly blue and yellow pinstripes on it. I will leave out describing the rest of the room, because the less information you have on the situation the better, and the details of the room, while conducive to proper imagining, are not strictly necessary for your engagement with this text. I only describe that one chair as a means of insulting him. Perhaps my methods of defamation are unconventional, but you must understand: to be known is to be insulted.

Writing this is very difficult. But I don't know what else there is to do. I have written worlds and worlds of fiction over my life, but...

See that "but..." there? I adopted that habit from Tsulluts. I think it suits me. Don't you?

That was a joke. I don't care what you think. And I don't think anything suits anyone.

My brother did his homework, and I started actually reading, as he was becoming boring to watch. Trying to feel jealous of him grew harder and harder the less and less he did, and now he was doing something completely unpalatable. I could feel jealous of his sense of responsibility, or his intelligence, but if it only led to more work, what was the point? Besides, trying to feel jealous was like trying to imagine a color that didn't exist. I read once that, while humans only have three types of color receptor in the eye (one for red, green, and blue), mantis shrimps have sixteen, and can see well into the ultraviolet spectrum. Perhaps most people were born with sixteen "emotional receptors" and I only had three. Everything felt muted and dull. It's hard to say anything "felt" at all.

I wished my brother were Heddeh. That way, I could feel positive emotions about him. I could sit across from him as Tsulluts and feel a warm companionship, or maybe an awkward distance, due to all the time spent apart. Maybe I would feel sorrow that I had not experienced a rest in so long, or maybe I would feel comfort. Whatever I felt, I knew I'd feel it fully, and that emotion would worm its way into every nook and cranny of my being. I imagined what Heddeh might look like, ears shorn and tongue clipped. I wondered if he could still pronounce words, or if he was entirely mute as well as entirely deaf. It sounds terrible to say, but it would be interesting if my brother were like that, instead of a completely able-bodied person who used his able body to do all manner of normal things.

After far too long, my brother said "You know, there's something wrong with you. And you wanna know what it is?"

I did, but I didn't say anything. I didn't acknowledge him. I didn't know why I chose to annoy him, especially when my glimmering fault was about to be revealed.

"You don't try." He said, not expecting a response. "You don't do anything. You just sit there passively and let life take you by the reins, instead of putting effort in and getting something out."

That wasn't true. I was trying very hard to feel jealous of him. It just wasn't working. It wasn't for any lack of effort or lack of want, I was just incapable of being a human person, on some basic and inescapable level. I wondered whether I should respond to that comment. Did he want a response? Did I want to antagonize him further? Would I gain some sadistic satisfaction if he stomped off to our shared bedroom, which he supposedly divided in half but to which I contributed nothing but the bed my parents provided? Did I want to feel satisfied that I could make him angry or did I want to like him?

No. I didn't want to like him. I wanted to feel jealous of him. I had to remember my mission. I could daydream about a pleasant encounter with Heddeh, but I had retain my antagonism towards my own brother. To give up on that would be to give up on a shred of emotion, and that was unconscionable.

"I wish I could try, like you seem to." I said, keeping in line with the ideals I'd decided this morning where vital to my identity. To reaffirm this: "I am jealous of you."

He blinked. "Yeah? Well good! You should be." The way he said it implied he thought otherwise, but I already knew he was miserable in his lot as the favorite child, and didn't care. It contradicted my mission, so I ignored it, and interpreted his words as statement of fact.

I did not respond. After a moment of waiting for me to disappear, he stood up all at once, letting his pencil and papers fly unceremoniously to the floor. He stomped up to me, and loomed over me, glaring as if he was trying to discern my thoughts through the top of my skull. I looked back, suppressing all the fear and hatred I didn't have. Instead of grimacing, I kept my face placid, as I knew he'd take this as a far worse insult. He wanted to rile me up, and so I didn't let him.

"Maybe, if you want to end up like me, you should spend more time, I don't know, studying, instead of reading books for eight year old girls."

Perhaps this was one of the reasons feeling jealous of him was so hard. I understood that everyone loved him more, and that he was a lot more successful than I was, but I knew that, even if I did study, whatever was wrong with me (it wasn't lack of effort) would still be there, still festering in my non-soul. It would be a lot of effort all for nothing. Perhaps my grades would be higher, but what then? Commendations from teachers? Not even they look at me. My parents' surprised look at my report card? They don't even look at it. College? Don't make me laugh. Even if I was smart, I simply didn't have the emotional capacity to exist in human society. I couldn't be my brother, and I would have to settle for being jealous of him, but I didn't want the things he had.

Maybe.

Well.

I did want friends. Not friends like his, a wide circle of yes-men and people were smart and good-looking and athletic and funny and nice (provided you were also one of them). I wanted to have someone to validate my existence. Not someone to need me - I already had Ginny who needed me like oxygen and was suffocating as a result - but maybe someone to need, someone I could fall back on if things got rough. I wanted people who would walk through the kudzu forest with me. Or burn it down with me, and melodramatically sort through the ashes for the grief of something once living. Someone who could feel. Someone who could feel on my behalf.

I didn't think my brother felt that way about anyone, or would even think to feel that way about someone. I didn't think he had to think in order to feel. It just came naturally to him.

He turned away from me, disgusted by my lack of engagement with his riveting criticisms, and collected his pencil and paper and things from the floor. "I'm going to my room." He said, and left, to go to our room. Or at least what was ostensibly our room.

I tried to feel happy that I made him mad, or maybe even disappointed or conflicted, but neither the sadist nor heartthrob in me leapt out. I was just bored again, so I put my book away, examined the cover briefly to find out my opinions on the matter, realized I didn't know, or maybe just didn't care, and left. To go wander through the kudzu forest and examine the dead trees.

My brother's name is Johnathan, by the way. I only mention that to insult him.