Running With Scissors_ A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs [36]
Because he moved out of our home in Leverett when he was sixteen, my brother was never involved with any of the Finches. He had met them and considered them “freaks.” He also considered our parents “freaks” and remained as far away from them as possible. He was designing electric guitars for the rock band KISS at the time, so I viewed him with a remote sense of awe.
Once, he even let me hang out with him and the band like a groupie. They were playing the Nassau Coliseum in New York and my brother not only paid for me to fly all the way out there, but he met me at the airport in a white stretch limo.
I got to sit next to the stage and watch the band rehearse. I got to see them without makeup. I even got to watch Paul Stanley talk on a portable phone that was the size of an assault rifle.
At one point, Gene Simmons came over to me and joked, “Hey, little boy. Wanna see me without my clothes?”
I wanted to tell him, “Yes.”
He laughed and stripped off his jeans so he could put on his stage clothes.
I kept watching until he gave me a funny look and stepped behind an amp.
Sometimes my brother would drive by Sixty-seven and pick me up in his brand new Oldsmobile Toronado. I would slide onto the brown velvet corduroy seat and he would say, “This vehicle has quadraphonic sound. Do you know what that means?” When I would shake my head no, he would launch into a lengthy and highly technical explanation of the science behind quadraphonic sound and what, exactly, it meant from an audio engineering point of view. Then he would say, “Now do you understand?” When I again shook my head no, he would shrug and say, “Well, maybe you’re retarded.”
He wasn’t being mean. That’s the thing that’s important to understand. To him, I would have to be at least borderline retarded not to understand something so easily comprehensible to him.
Dr. Finch tried repeatedly to engage my brother in therapy, all to no avail. My brother would sit politely in the doctor’s inner office, his gigantic arms slung over the back of the sofa, and he would grunt, “Huh. I still don’t understand why I need to be here. I’m not the one who’s eating sand.” When Dr. Finch pointed out to my brother that conflict affects everyone in the family, my brother would grunt, “Huh. I feel okay.”
It was assumed, then, that my brother was so deeply mentally ill as to be untreatable. Possibly, he had a profound character flaw.
I knew the reality was far worse. My brother was born without taste or the desire to be professionally lit. “You can’t go out in public like that,” I would say when I saw him in his beige wool slacks riding up nearly to his nipples, his kelly-green polo shirt three sizes too small.
“Huh. What’s the matter with what I have on? These are perfectly good clothes.”
My brother was hopelessly without style or any sense of what was going on in the world, culturally. Ask him who Debra Winger was and he’d say, “Is she another one of those freakish Finches?” But ask him to explain how a particle accelerator worked and he could talk uninterrupted for hours. He could even draw you a diagram with his mechanical pencil.
It pained me.
“But highlights would bring out your eyes,” I would say. “Especially if you’d get rid of those three-inch-thick lenses on your glasses.”
“Huh. I like these glasses. I can see through them.”
My brother had very specific likes and dislikes. Basically, he liked anything until it harmed him and then he was wary. All creatures in life had an equal chance with my brother, from terrier to psychotherapist. Those that impressed him with an especially keen mental ability, an amusing trick or had a large portion of food to offer would gain his favor. If my brother could find nothing of value to the person, he would dismiss them entirely. As he did with the Finches and our parents.
I envied his lack of emotional