29th
Update: T County, OH
I forgot how many terrible hicks and meth-heads live in Tuscarawas County, OH. (We have one of the nations busiest Walmarts). They wear Carharts and climb out of Diesal pick-up trucks looking sour and surly, sporting shit-kicking scowls and strutting like badasses. They would just as soon beat me to a pulp as look at me, but I’d probably beat me up too if I were a badass.
But, home has been good. I hung out with my folks and family, my beautiful nieces, but mostly my little brother for the past few days. We shot pool and drank Budweiser and drove around the backroads.
Killing a few hours between family events, Brother perched on the arm of the couch in his apartment above the hair salon and strummed his guitar as I paced the hardwood floor. He sang me a Christmas song he wrote. As I stared out the window listening, a curious lump formed in my chest. Next I knew I’d been laughing and crying for 5 whole minutes, overcome by an odd cocktail of emotion — two parts joy, one part grief. Brother gets me like that.
On Christmas night the old gang gathered once more in a tiny apartment above a garage in the woods, as we have the past 5 Christmas’, to “fight the post-holiday blah’s,” as Dave says. Fight them we did, with wine and merriment.
On Friday, Brother flew off to Germany to backpack around Europe, leaving me with the remnant eating egg sandwiches in our booth at Michael’s diner, as we did most mornings while Dave and I were attending community college for a few semesters, back when we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We still don’t know what to do with ourselves back here in Ohio, and I suspect not many do. Maybe that’s why they’re strutting about looking for fights. Maybe that’s why that girl was a bitch at the bar — people hate it when you aren’t as sad as them.
I have moved into Brother’s apartment for the duration of my stay in Ohio and I’ll be hanging out with all his friends, probably shooting pool and drinking Budweiser and ducking cocksure hillybilly’s. I believe today I’ll drive slow on backroads to nowhere in particular.
