That’s my older brother, Eddie, back in his prime. The big guy with the hairy chest at the end of the drunken kick line. (That’s my right hand right next to BC’s face on the left and my left hand carefully holding the Bud just covering Joe Serrano’s right nipple – my cro-magnon brow and nose just barely visible behind Mike Collins’ hair – for the record, everyone makes their appearance in FJM).
Lots of mysterious things happened when he was around. Especially when he got drunk and channeled Billy The Kid.
Like below (and that is the outside door in the back corner leading up to Aunt Violet’s Flop House. That is, if AVFH wasn’t a totally fictional location in a totally fictional story. And those weren’t totally fictitious cows.)
During my prime, I took a number of brotherly beatings from Eddie. He was really good at it. But, when it came to protecting me, he was always there to provide beatings to others.
We had a lot of fun growing up. I included a lot of it in Finding Jimmy Moran (which, for the record, remains a work of TOTAL FICTION – I’m serious here, ask my lawyer.).
Now I have told this story in the past, but one particular time, I needed an excuse as to why I could not have been the young teen seen exiting my family basement with a beautiful, non-Irish, young woman on a St. Patty’s Day. My cover at the time was that I was “grounded” by my father, for one of my many common transgressions, so I could not possibly leave the house and be with another young neighborhood woman who I was seeing at the time.
Now whenever I got really “grounded” I usually had some obvious physical manifestations from the authority which imposed the grounding.
So, I needed a black eye.
My best friend at the time, Jack Vaughan (who appears under a pseudonym in FJM), a regular philandering co-conspirator, was there for strategic support, but surprisingly refused to provide the necessary violence.
My brother Eddie, who had been out celebrating our Celtic Patron Saint with Schwabs Delaney that afternoon, came home at just the right time. So, I asked him if he would do me the honors. He readily agreed.
We all returned to the family basement, which served as a local club house. I stood in front of Eddie, an arm’s length away, with Jack standing behind me. Jack was to catch me if I went down from the blow.
I closed my eyes and tilted my face a little to the left and upward, so my right cheekbone was extended forward. That spot had taken a lot of blows in the past so I knew it was the best place to take this one.
I waited for the impact.
Eddie whispered from the darkness, “Are your sure you want me to do this?”
There was a certain excitement in his voice.
I nodded affirmatively.
Nothing happened.
“Really, are you sure?”
I again nodded.
“Seriously, do you really want me to do this?”
Okay, at this point, I started to lose my nerve. I began to open my eyes just as this meaty fist made impact with my right orbital socket. Like a meteor impact.
My head snapped back and the world went black.
When I awoke, I was on the floor. Both my eye and the back of my skull were killing me. Jack was so astonished by seeing the impact and my head snapping back like a Pez dispenser, that he jumped backwards and allowed me to land full force on the wooden floor.
As I pulled myself into a semi sitting position on the floor, a train of little birdies circling my head, I reached up and touched the tender, already swollen closed and blackening eye, and heard my brother standing above me with a real concern in his voice.
“Are you all right?” He asked.
I nodded. There was a brief, pregnant pause.
“Do you want me to do the other one?”
That anecdote defined my relationship with my brother.
Anyway, I spent most of my life wiseassing with my Celtic black humor during any serious event that occured in Eddie’s life. He usually took the ribbing well, but occasionally gave me a well deserved beating.
So, when he was going in for multiple stents in a cardiac procedure yesterday morning, I of course left a message on his phone, wishing him nothing but success during his transition surgery and mentioning that the rest of his friends and family had started a pool to see who could guess his new name.
Well, yesterday was a long day for my brother. The operation was tricky. They went in through both his wrist and then through his groin to complete all of the stent work he needed, which led to a comment from the friends’ chorus that the pain from that combination would really impact his sex life.
But finally, Eddie the unkillable, came out of surgery and posted the following text to Ralph Droz (also a character in FJM) and myself. It read as follows:
You just can’t make this shit up.
Well, I’m glad Eddie cheated the Reaper one more time.
Today is Wednesday, the perfect Hump to lead us into the Summer Solstice and Strawberry Moon towards this week’s end. Friday I hear Pluto is transitioning on an Astrological level to Aquarius, which hasn’t happened since the French Revolution. So this is indeed a perfect week for Eddie to get those heart valves cleared, so he can be ready for all the 2024 promises to be. Fighting fit.
You fine, five readers get those skates on and attack the Hump. Wave at Friday from the peak. These are magical times.
I’m going to head out and cuddle some kitties and make my rounds.
No matter what else we get up to, we all must make sure today is a great one.
For the record, I got what I deserved that day, as the black eye didn’t work and the girl dumped me.
Feel better Eddie. Love ya.
6 Responses
I’m so happy Eddie is doing well and yet I doubt anyone will question why he suspected that you would be behind the hacking of the hospital computer. Fortunately you (I mean if it was you?) wasn’t so inclined to change the medical orders for his upcoming surgery. 🤣
Have a great day! Hopefully the mountains are protecting you from this heat wave🌞🌞🌡️
LOL! Oh man, you had me dying laughing here over that black eye story. Sure, the one time you actually WANTED Eddie to jackhammer you, and instead he decides to start a game of “20 Questions”! If I had been there, I could have made a fair day’s wage lining up paying customers all looking forward to socking you in the eye. But we both know no one could have done as fine a job as Eddie. And enjoyed his work on it on so many levels. So much so, that he offered to do the other eye as soon as you were (somewhat) conscious and (arguably) able to re-consent.
Best wishes to Eddie on his recovery!
And BC wonders why he ends up in the Chopper blades at the end of KMAG. That is one of the few interesting stories in my life that BC was not a part of, lol. However, as a bit more backstory, the beautiful, non-irish, young woman mentioned above makes her appearance in three of the novels. No names please. Now maybe you’ll read the books.
I have questions…. Chief among them is what were you guys doing …. Getting double-dumptrucked (fraternally and romantically) on Paddy’s Day in Riverdale… No wonder you have “issues?”
Good on your brother for coming through the stent stuff w both his heart and his other essential organ intact…. no thanks to brother Thomas…🙄
I believe there’s an old Irish saying that for some unknown reason never made it into any definitive book of Irish sayings. It goes like so — “One good punch in the eye deserves another (and another … and …)”
I presume that goes for punch-in-the-eye stories as well. So here’s one that’s actually a backstory for the drunken kickline photo you posted in today’s blog. That photo was taken at Eddie’s bachelor party. I remember that when I got there, you guys had already been going for a couple of hours. So I was surprised to see Eddie still standing and in compos mentis (well, somewhat at least). After all, at the bachelor parties for most mortals in our group, the honoree might be face down persona non grata by then. Or perhaps handcuffed to a pole in a subway car wearing nothing but a jockstrap. But obviously, we couldn’t do that with Eddie bcs your parents and all of us together couldn’t afford the damage that would have resulted to the subway car.
But after a number of beers, apparently I had a lapse in judgment and began to feed bad that Eddie might miss out on the kind of experiences that befell most bachelor party honorees in our group. So only in that spirit of well-wishing for Ed of course, I began to pour a full pitcher of beer over his belt and down the back of his pants. Like lightning, he whirled around and I saw this haymaker coming right toward my face. So I pulled my head back like a baseball player dodging a high and inside pitch. That, plus fortunately for me, Ed pulling his punch at the last instant meant it only took 2 people to catch me when it landed on my eye socket.
When I was done watching my life pass before my eyes, I apologized to Ed for what I assumed was my sin that incurred Ed’s wrath. Namely, wasting good beer like that. But Ed corrected me and clarified that what actually set him off was that his wallet was in his back pocket. And that’s where he kept his favorite photo of his bride-to-be. Hmmm, now that I think more about that, does that qualify this tale as a BIC love story?
It seems I may have erred in my Bowery Boys colloquial Latin when I referred to bachelor party honorees as persona non grata when seen hugging Mother Earth as the party raged on around them. It’s not that they’ve fallen from grace, so much as just fallen, and unlikely to get up of their own power (or current lack thereof).