Now, my family has got to be one of the strangest families on the planet. Lots of people say this, but not many people truly understand the insanity that is my family. When I was a kid, I knew that something was weird. Most parents take their kids to Disney World to meet Mickey Mouse- my mother took me to a car show to meet a famous porn star. Ron Jeremy, to be exact. My brother is a bipolar alcoholic who lives in the middle of voodoo land, my mother is an overweight southern woman who studies “sex and old people” and who, in my fondest memories, gardened in her string bikini. My father is a raging homosexual who refuses to come out of the closet and gets off beating his children. My stepmother is an OCD hoarder with a house full of cats. And my stepdad? Well, he’s probably one of the most sane in the entire family- which, is really saying something.
My mom told me the other day that my grandfather, an older Southern gentleman who runs his own glass company and refuses to retire because then he would actually have to give the company over to his pot head son, told her that he only asks for three things from his family: beauty, brains, and thinness. My mom fits into one of those categories. My grandmother only fit into two when she was younger, and let me tell you it wasn’t the first two. But, of course, this runs in that side of the family. As my grandfather said one day “Riley Anne [my oldest cousin on that side, who is three years younger than I am] is not concerned with academics.” When they went to New Orleans, she bought postcards to send to the family. She wrote them, that wasn’t the problem, the problem was that she took the postcard and wrote all the way across the back.
My father. Oh, my father. What could I say about him? Well, how many people have ever seen videos of Freddie Mercury and screamed “GAY!!!!!” at the TV set? That would describe my father very well. When I was younger, I thought that it was funny that he got a leather jacket and leather chaps when he bought a motorcycle. I even thought that it was hilarious when he did the YMCA dance in the middle of a very crowded Cracker Barrel. Now, the thought of it both makes me cringe and makes me wonder how in the hell I didn’t see that he was a raging homosexual before. The man played the bagpipes for God sake! What else could be more gay? You’re blowing into a penis while you pump something, wearing a skirt and a big fluffy hat! He was also obsessed with Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. I remember that one of his favorite shows when I was growing up was Batman. Again, two men, who live alone in their mansion, and run around wearing spandex. It’s like pro-wrestling- you don’t wonder if they are gay, you just wonder when they’re coming out of the closet. Another of his favorites was the TV show iCarly, which, in case you’re a normal adult and have never heard of it- is a TV show about a preteen girl who lives in an apartment building with her older brother and two best friends, who she records a web show with. The two girls are skinny and run around in short shorts and short dresses with what are commonly referred to as hooker boots.
My brother is a true Irish man: he loves his alcohol but can’t handle it for shit. There are only three types of drunks in the world: there are the happy drunks (who keep falling all over everybody in the bar and slurring out “I love you, mans”); the funny drunks (who end up giving you good pictures to show them while they’re hung over the next morning and hold over their head for blackmail); then there are the mean drunks (the ones that sit at the kitchen table with a phonebook and a bottle of whisky and call up every person- both real and imagined- that has ever done them wrong.) My brother was the latter two. When he gets drunk, he gets crazy and belligerent and you can be assured of three things that will happen before the night is over: he will get somebody pissed off; he will be picked up by the cops; and he will either have a new piercing or a new tattoo. He’s one of the only people I’ve ever heard of that should have been going to AA meetings at five. When he was four he started drinking, walking around the empty tables at a Mardi Gras ball to drink out of everybody’s glasses. He’s also one of those raging gays that will never come out of the closet. For goodness’ sake, the boy is still in denial that Elton John and George Michaels are gay, he’s staying tucked in the closet with his day-glo tights and wigs, his strap-ons and hooker heels for the rest of his life. (In fact, my mother and I called him on National Coming Out Day and asked him if he had anything to share with us. He answered, and I quote “No, I like it here in the closet with my dayglo tights and Member’s Only jacket.) And he’ll be happy there since it’s a big closet, and there’s enough room for all of his friends who refuse to admit that they’re gay as well, to sit around, get high and experiment, then tell themselves the next day that it was just something that they did while they were stoned out of their minds and didn’t have any control over themselves.
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