The Making of a Bufo

"suougibmA" Fraser's shirt reads in the bathroom mirror; open for interpretation like some word of no definition or meaning. I watched the word and the faucet spin with the rest of my drunken world, certain that I would die in that thousand-dollar sink with pictures of Kate McCafferty and floral arrangements flanking my reflective headstone. "Don't pass out, Bufo. Drink some water." He said, his hand the only thing between my weighted skull and the bathroom tiles. I sputtered back at him in a language I can't remember, unwavering in my refusal of anything liquid. In the garden beyond the venician windows came Alison Granholm's sinister laugh, and in the bathroom I ran tapwater, gulped, and vomited on her merriment.

I cheated for the first time on August 30th, 1985. I was not to be trusted. My mother still wears the scars of my competitive streak, the left side of her mouth forever frozen with Belle's palsy from the subsequent tangle of baby feet we created in the birth canal. Fraser, the healthier of two unborn twins, would later resent the fact that my desperation to be first-born brought a personal victory by cesarean. We were divided then by a tire swing, dressed in coloured suspenders, in adolescence by the hormonal butting of heads, and now by a long stretch of highway that taxes either of us expensively in gasoline.

On Fridays I climb the steps into my brother's yard, invite myself into his livingroom with its modern arrangement of leather couches and black cabinetry, and wonder what glorious things I could buy if I had joined him in his electrical apprenticeship.
"Whats up, bufo?" I ask when he arrives in the kitchen. There is a familiar distance between us that lacks any handshake or embrace.
"Not much." he says, pressing two folded twenty dollar bills into my hand; this conversation enough to keep our identical minds from insanity.