The cat came back

Yesterday afternoon, I texted clintswan (as I generally do several times a day) to tell him "In other news, my nemesis is back." Bless his heart, he responded without missing a beat "which one?" By coincidence, before that day was up, I'd had a run-in with a particularly nasty character from last year, but I at the time who I meant was BB.

I know he's back because he sent me a text: "Your boy is finally back in town". Me being me, I had a snarky reply all set to send: "same old phone, who dis?" But, me being me, I decided not to send it after all. Not because I was worried about alienating him--quite the contrary in fact. Rather because a joking reply communicated a casual intimacy I no longer felt.

Four weeks. Four solid weeks, and not a single message. Yeah, I know, he was busy travelling and spending time with his family. I know I could have texted him whenever I wanted (and I came close). And I'm fully aware that if any of my other friends had done the same--gone away for a month and texted me on their return--I would have responded warmly, asking for deets and probably suggesting we meet up.

But BB isn't like my other friends. I'm not sure he's even a friend. He doesn't seem to know how--or, worse, he does know how and doesn't see it as worth the effort. The little things you do to make it clear to others they mean something to you he doesn't bother with. He'll answer questions about his day but he won't ask about yours, he'll accept compliments--grudgingly--but he won't give them. He could have shared his adventure with me--not all of it, of course, but something--a snapshot, a kvetch, an aperçu. But he didn't. In all likelihood he didn't give me a single thought from the moment he left Pennsylvania till the moment he arrived back in Chicago.

Seeing the words, "Your boy is finally back in town", my response was: so what? I'm supposed to cheer? Rather than say anything nasty, I decided not to say anything at all. I set a waiting period: I'll finish work, eat dinner, attend my union meeting, call my SIL, then I'll text him back. After four weeks, what's seven hours?

But those seven hours passed and I realised there was nothing I wanted to say. All I could think of were prompts to get him to volunteer something he hadn't offered willingly. Once again, here I am back doing all the work in the relationship. I'm tired. I'm not interested. Let him show some interest. Let him make an effort.

This was the goal, right? This was the motive behind waiting him out and not texting until he did first: To remind myself how little he needs me and how little I need him. And how do I feel? I feel like Pepa at the end of Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios, when she saves Iván--the rat who walked out on her--from being murdered and he falls down at her feet, promising to take her back, and she tells him it's too late. She just wanted to know he was okay; now that she's seen that, she can leave.

My boy is okay. I'm sure when he decides he needs something from me, he'll let me know. And I'll doubtless respond and humour him. But until then I don't see what he has to offer me.

Near miss

So about that call to my sister-in-law...

Monday morning about 7 a.m. she texted me. The last time she texted me was last November when we were all in STL for dad's third memorial, so I knew something was up. She started with the words "Everything is going to be ok" which is one of the more alarming sentences to read out of the blue.

What was not OK was that my brother went cycling in San Diego (she's there for a conference and he decided to tag along) and got struck by a car coming back from Point Loma. He doesn't remember what happened so details are sketchy, but his helmet was split open and he still had a skull fracture, so it must have been pretty bad. By the time she gave me the news, however, he was about to have his soft collar removed. He texted a picture of himself wearing it while cracking Darth Vader jokes.

If all goes well, they'll fly back Friday. By coincidence, Friday night was when we were scheduled to get together for dinner. That only came about because of a brunch conversation with my cousins on Pride Weekend where I confessed we hadn't seen each other all year and my cousin Rich called us "pathetic". bunj had actually offered me the 8th and I turned it down for some reason (probably having to do with some dumb boy).

After talking to my SIL and getting a more-or-less complete account of everything from the police investigation to the strings she had to pull at the hospital to get him moved, I called my sister, asked her to fill in our mom, and then called my stepmom. It was only then, after I really knew how close a call it was, that it occurred to me: If things had worked out slightly differently--if he hadn't been wearing his helmet, for instance--Friday might have been my brother's funeral and he'd have died without seeing me for nearly seven months.

I confess, the implications haven't really sunk in yet. Thanks to my role as intermediary (my SIL asked me to phonetree for her yesterday), I'm still compartmentalising somewhat. It probably won't be until I see him finally that it will become real for me how close I came to going from having two brothers in 2019 to having no brothers in 2022.

Most of this year, I've had this vague feeling of having let down my family and good friends in order to go out and drink with bar buddies. My logic is that this is good time to do that, while I'm still in good health and have a sex drive, but of course the underlying assumption that whenever I get tired of this, they'll be around still ready to see me is faulty. My stepmom said at least two or three times, "I miss you". She's in her 70s and diabetic. Nuphy is almost 80 and I still keep putting off getting together with him. Time to do something about that.