After the match on 8/22, my brother and I walked to the metro station. The whole weekend had been a series of misadventures and groan inducing strangeness, and my normal habit of leaving somewhere just before it goes to hell was in full swing. We were fairly quiet on the ride back to his apartment - The Union had lost to D.C. United, and I wasn't really looking forward to the multiple state drive home. But it was a pleasant weekend all the same, as most of our meetings have been recently.At some point, I guess, every set of siblings goes through the shift - the dislike of youth gives way to amiable companionship of adulthood or vice-versa. Yeah, there are still the moments when we look at each other and wonder how in the hell we could be related - but those are only during moments when...well, when I don't know. I know he wonders at it whenever I let some of my demons out and let the reigns the modern world slip off a little. For me, it's every time I look at him.
I am short where he is tall, slight where he is broad, and steam like where he is a rock. I have few friends, he has various groups of drinking buddies, gym spotters, and roommates he gets along with and watches shows in the company of. I don't think I'm funny or smart - he thinks he's hilarious and knows that more often than not he's the smartest one in the room (and failing that, he can fake it). He's Catholic, I'm...who the hell even knows anymore? He remembers me as the weird kid. I remember one time when he ended a brawl by sitting on my head and farting.
In our youth we fought to the point of putting hole in walls, broke furniture, and one of us threw the other off of a eleven foot gravel mound behind a neighbor's garage. We also sang together, tossed pop-culture references, and went to Phillies games. We watched each other's backs during legal and mental troubles. And we've both given up things for the sake of the other that they'll never know about.
I've accepted all of those things, and consider it all as needing not to be spoken between the two of us.
Which is why I was shocked all to hell when Rick said that it's nice being able to hang out. This was on 9/4, at the match between the Union and the K.C. Wizards, as we walked across PPL's parking lot to where the Sons of Ben were holding the tailgate. "It's cool, you know? We never got to do it before."
I said "yes" like I always do when someone's right. "You mean the first twenty years of your life." A cruel thing to say, I know, but go back and read the part about him farting on my head - some things leave scars. But, yes, it is quite nice, entering a stadium shoulder to shoulder with my brother, and standing in River End with him and chanting for ninety minutes along with the rest of the SOBs in the Snake Pit. There's a lot we don't say. Family, you know. It's complicated. But then, there we were, making Son's of Ben history by chanting "99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer! Peter Vermes, give us your keys! 98 bottles of beer on the wall!" all the way down to "No more bottles of beer on the wall".
During the next game we'll be wherever we are - he in D.C., myself here. We'll trade texts about the game, and the Phillies games, and the Eagles once they start back up. And then, at some later point, one of us will take a trip, and we'll end up talking about comic books, movies, and then chanting at the River End.
