Jesus may be your Homeboy, but he's my bro

For those of you who have known me for a while, you know that my brother played football for Texas A&M as a walk on. This is extraordinary for several reasons: one he's not much taller or bigger than I am, and he also did this while being homeless. It's not that he didn't have options, but for whatever reason he has this Thoreausian ideal about living off the land, and he turned this particular time at school into his own Walden Pond. This baffles me for several reasons. First of all seriously, you're going to be homeless on a major college campus? Then I don't understand how my brother could identify with the 19th century author who had become so dis-illusioned with his modern world that he spent a year away from society. In my book not only does that makes him crazy, but it also makes him weak. That is not a trait you would expect from A&M's version of Rudy or really from any one with our last name.

On the face of things my brother and I are night and day. He's darker and bigger, and always has been. I'm blond hair and have light eyes. He inherited the Native American characteristics from my father, whereas I take after the maternal side of the family. He's always been athletic and played team sports and I've just recently become an athlete for myself, somewhat sissy-fied to most and certainly softer around the edges than men in Texas are expected to be. Once we both talk tho we're not so different. We are both serious, hard-working, and has a complete inability to bullshit. And we're both tough, all three of my parents children are tough. It's the kind of tough you get raised with in a strict house. The tough that comes from having to be perfect, from striving to be the best. The kind of tough that comes from learning not to cry, not to complain and not to talk back.

I should also mention that Ben looks like Jesus. No really, the classic Northern European version of Jesus. Beard, long hair and all. In fact I used to think it was funny to introduce him this way, until that's what folks started calling him on the team. Then it just became supremely awesome. My other favorite joke was that it didn't matter that I was gay because Jesus was my brother.

The favorite question I get asked usually runs along the lines of: Can Baby Jesus kick your ass? Did you ever beat up Baby Jesus? How the fuck can the two of you be related (you giant homo)? But what they're really asking is, Your brother must be way tougher than you, right? No doubt, my brother is a BAMF, but I'd never tell him that to his face because that can be interpreted as "I love you" and "I'm proud of you" which we are just too closed off to do. Male affection wasn't a huge part of our up-bringing. In any case my brother is pretty tough, we both had to survive the same house and he is basically Rudy. But what he didn't have to do was grow up as a sissy in Texas. I spent years of my childhood running from that name, while never really ever being able to deny it. My parents taught us to be ourselves, and I always was. I'm pretty sure Ben and Erin were too. That's all well and good until being a sissy and hanging with lots of girls at recess begins to evolve into other names, darker, more sinister and more full of shame than you ever thought you ever thought could have a name. Word like fag, and queer and cocksucker. So you learn to be tough, so that your legs and your soul don't buckle under the cruelty of all that. You learn to be tough when people's glances change from curiosity, to surprise and finally into the mocking Cheshire grin that comes when they think they understand what you are. Never who you are, since in Texas and most of the South being gay makes you a what, an object that is easily scorned and tossed aside. An object that it can become easy to abuse and then leave for dead, if not literally than well enough in practice.

What you should understand is this; he never had to be that tough, not only in the world outside the walls of our family, but also along with them, somewhere on the periphery hoping never to be found out, exposed and ostracized. Can my brother beat me up, probably, but I'd put up a pretty good fight. But he not my protector, because I can stare Death in the face and not blink. My soul has been crushed, ripped, smelted and put back together so that it is now not entirely humane, but rather a scrap-metal ship that keeps me afloat and can stand up to heavy assault. Ben still has a softness, and therefore a bit of a weakness, the kind that makes him always be vulnerable and soft deep down inside. The humanity that let's me know in the end I'll still end up being the big brother who wants to face down whatever demons come our way, so that he wont have to. Who's tougher, well that I guess is a matter of opinion, but sissy doesn't exactly mean what it used to.