The Shit Sibling
An essay about how someone has to be it, and maybe realising that it is you...
I was thinkin of coming 4 a visit.
I stared at the Facebook message from my brother, Kevin (both a name and a diagnosis). A full sentence—odd. On the rare occasions he contacted me, it was normally to forward a video of someone falling off something, being hit by something, or being hit by something with such velocity that they fell off something.
Was this a question? A request? A statement? He'd never visited me before. In fact, in the six years I'd called Berlin home, he'd never shown the slightest interest in what that home looked like.
Questions weren't his thing. Curiosity wasn't his thing. I wasn't his thing.
And my girlfriend at that time, A, was least his thing of all. My brother is a person who derives enormous delight from winding people up. He is a feather ruffler. A button pusher. A relationship arsonist.
A is a natural born protagonist. Always the central figure in an epic, noble battle to prove the world wrong and herself right. She is loud, opinionated, expressive, and unapologetically herself, no matter where you put her. Igniting her outrage is trivial. Kevin did it gladly. The family worked to keep them apart; they were both fine with this.
"Do you think there's any way we could say no?" I asked her, over dinner.
"If there was, I would tell you."
Okay, I wrote him back. Send me the dates.
Those dates coincided with my sixth anniversary in Berlin. I was proud of this milestone. That somehow—more through luck than understanding, as Germans liked to say—I'd escaped the small British town of my birth, and its similarly sized mentality. Each day here I walked the wide, proud streets of a place that had mattered before, mattered still, and would matter again. As I walked, the city's ghosts whispered to me in raspy voices. "If you're here with us, you must matter too."
To fit in here, I'd had to change everything about myself to become like every other expat Berliner: a Guardian reading, spluffin eating, probiotic shake drinking, extravagantly bearded, polyamorous marxist knitter. All things my brother had either never heard of, or hated. But this visit was my chance to pull him free from the mud of his provincial ignorance. Here I could make him clean and new and worldly and, perhaps even, woke. In the process, we might become something we'd not been since I was ten and he was seven: friends.
I leaned against the pillar in the arrivals area of Schönefeld Airport, pretending there was calm where there was only slow bubbling apprehension. I searched—while looking like I was not searching—for a head like mine, just made larger through the enthusiastic consumption of The Colonel's Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The first thing I actually noticed were his shoes: enormous, laced, silver canoes excessively branded by the Nike corporation. My eyes moved up to the baggy black tracksuit bottoms, the dark green, similarly oversized hoodie. He looked like he was trying to both hide his body and make it take up the maximum space possible. On his head was a chunky pair of red Beats headphones. It was a rag-tag ensemble that threatened sport, that threatened rap, that threatened alleyway muggery.
"Alwight," he said. I leaned in for a hug and he swerved as if it were a falling piano. "Easy now, Dildo Baggins."
A first sharp shock of irritation hit me. I stared into his enormous bucket, chestnut-brown eyes—my eyes—and was reminded that there is no head, on any shoulders, anywhere on earth that irks me like his. Perhaps because it's so similar to mine.
"How was your flight?"
He shrugged. "I could bloody murder a hot dog."
We got him a hot dog. Then we sat in the rattling, boxy train car that shunted us towards the city.
"'Ow long you stayin' for then?" I said, noticing I'd already slipped back into my local dialect—that of a toothless, 1950s, cockney, window-cleaning pickpocket.
"Free nights," he replied, meaning three nights. Neither of us had ever mastered our language's TH. He gazed out the window. "Why is everything, like … so dirty?"
"What do you mean? Dirty?"
"You know, with like … all this scribbling and stuff?"
"Graffiti?"
"Yeeeeah."
Here was my first chance to educate him. I sat up straight. "Because of rampant gentrification in the inner city, communities are being ripped apart, and the underprivileged marginalised. Rather than seeing graffiti as a public nuisance, I think it's more accurate to see it as a cry for help from those losing out in a multicultural society."
He pulled his phone out and checked if he had any messages.
"Graffiti is a way for the poor to reclaim, in some small way, the public spaces late-stage capitalism denies them."
It had been a magnificent speech.
"Yeeeeeeah, Imeanlike welll." He had very interesting diction. He gripped his words by the neck and twisted them, then released them dazed and dizzy, only to lunge for them once again as they ran from his lips. "I guess that's sort of one way of looking at it. BUT. I mean. Right. Onthatlastwall … it said fuck balls so, you know, what do you thinkkkk the underprivileged and marginalised are trying to say with that?"
"Fuck balls?"
"Yeah. Fuck balls."
He observed me, his head slightly askance, as if I were a bug he was considering squashing. "I guess… I'm not sure what the underprivileged and marginalised are trying to say with that."
I wasn’t either. I pulled a piece of paper from my back pocket. "I made a list of things we could do. There's loads of culture here.” I began reading the names of the museums, exhibitions, and landmarks we could visit.
He reached over and snatched the list from my hand. He crumpled it in his giant bear mitts as he read. "Yeah, well … we could do this stuff, I guess, but it would be, like, a waste of both your time and mine."
This sentence knocked me deeper into my seat. How often are we in the company of such unabashed honesty? "Well, what do you want to do then?"
He pushed out his lips. "How about we go play pool?"
"But you can do that anywhere."
"So?"
In our apartment’s courtyard, he made his acquaintance with the beautiful Dutch bicycle I'd rented for him. "What am I supposed to do with that then?"
"I thought you'd try riding it?"
He sat on it and rang its bell. "Blimey. Not sure I remember how."
"Sure you do. It's like riding a bike."
He began a short, wobbly lap of the courtyard. Short because a wall came out of nowhere and surprised him and he ended up in a heap on the floor. He jumped up in a rage and kicked the saddle. "Shit off."
I laughed so much I winded myself.
We biked across the river and just about made it to a pool place near Warschauer Straße station. As we entered it, his shoulders dropped, and the swagger returned to his steps. He nodded at the people on the next table. They nodded back.
"Let’s bet,” he said, as he racked.
"Fine. Loser pays?"
He nodded. "Get a round in then as well, aye? Jägers as well, as a cheeky chaser."
"It's 5pm?"
"I'm on holiday."
Balls (unfucked) disappeared swiftly into holes. "Remember that Le Tissier free-kick goal against Wimbledon?" he asked, as he potted a tricky black to take a 3–1 lead. "Where he flicked it and then BAM?"
I walked down a long corridor, opened a fire door, ducked under some piping, walked down two flights of stairs and stopped before a large mental cupboard marked THE 1990s. As kids, we had season tickets for Chelsea Football Club, and our father would take us down to London every other Saturday on the train. Our first taste of a big city. Of a place that had mattered before, mattered still, and would matter again. It came with this novel feeling I didn't have the word for yet: anonymity.
It thrilled me.
That season ticket was the last time we had shared a hobby. The last time we were close. "I remember," I said. "Hell of a strike that."
"The one against Manchester United was even better, maybe. Where he chipped Schmeichel."
"Good shout, that."
We drank our beers, downed our Jägers, and sank our balls. I tried to keep up with him, pretending I still regularly drank alcohol.
"You remember Rob Quinn?" he asked.
"No," I said. But I did. My brother liked to wind me up too, and he knew the thing I liked least was my past. I treated it like people treat the dentist—a place you go because something hurts, but where you find the root of the problem, then get out as quickly as possible.
"Sure you do. Beat you up that one time in middle school. Got four kids now. Says Hi."
“Hmm.”
He beat me 14–12 and took great delight in this. The whole evening seemed to delight him: getting drunk with his big brother in a pool hall. It was happening in Berlin, but it could have been happening anywhere. The where wasn't important to him. Maybe it shouldn't have been to me, either.
A pretended to be asleep when we got home.
The next morning I found him at the stove, frying steak. He was in his boxer shorts, which were as loose as everything else he owned. The elastic had given way and the back hung halfway down his ass cheeks.
"Pull your pants up. And what are you doing?"
"Making breakfast."
"Steak?"
"Breakfast of champions."
"Morning." A entered the room, saw what my brother was wearing—or failing to wear—and froze like a startled deer.
"Alwight, darling," he said without turning around, half his ass still hanging free in the breeze.
"What you two doing today?" A asked, still hovering in the door-frame.
"I thought me and you might spend some time together?" he said, then laughed. "I can remind you of how you picked the worse brother."
Terror flooded her face. "He's joking, right? Anyway, I'm busy."
"Doing what then?" He asked.
Her eyes looped. I have never met a worse liar. "Things?"
"Wound pretty tight, ain't she?" he said, as she disappeared from view.
There is something enchanting about being around people unafraid to be their unvarnished selves. It was a huge part of why I’d fallen in love with A. A huge part of why the two of them couldn't be anywhere near each other. Neither of them knew how to fake it.
I had no hope of making him something he was not. Which meant my only option was to try to tolerate who he was.
The days passed. He ate steak a further five times. "I'm not into that foreign rubbish," he said whenever I tried to feed him something that wasn't dead cow.
On his last night he agreed, reluctantly, to go for pizza. We biked to a small Italian restaurant near the Landwehr Canal. He insisted on ordering a Hawaiian pizza, which they didn't have on the menu because Hawaiian is pizza for people who want pizza, but who also want to humiliate it.
Eventually, the chef found some dusty tin of pineapple chunks in the back of a cupboard. As we sat at a small wooden table, I said, "Do you ever feel like you're the shit sibling?"
The words just fell out. Only after did I realise how sharp they were. He stopped shovelling pizza into his mouth. His eyes wandered away. He put the slice down and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie. "I thought you were the shit sibling?"
"What?"
"Yeah." Another chunky, shoulder-bouncing laugh. "Everyone knows that."
"But I'm …" I wanted to say successful, but knew I needed a more modest word.
"—self-involved?" he offered before I could find it.
"Independent," I corrected.
"How often do you contribute to the family WhatsApp?" he asked. "Or remember anyone's birthdays?"
"I haven't been in there in months. And I don't do birthdays, you know that."
"And Christmas?"
"Not really my thing, Christmas."
"Mother's Day?"
"It's a different date here. Hard to keep track."
"How old is Mum?"
My voice trailed off. "I don't know."
"Dad?"
"Older?"
He was enjoying himself now, a mad glint in his eye. "See? I mean, I don't wanna be like, rude about it, but what exactly does the family get from you? Gem’s the responsible one. But you?"
Our older sister, Gemma, lived down the road from our parents. When we no longer have parents, it will be her who holds the three of us together, or we will come apart.
We will come apart.
I rubbed at the creases of my forehead. "I offer a literary dynasty and fascinating anecdotes."
"Who even reads your books?"
"Mum?"
He looked doubtful. "And anyway, you got to pick first."
"What?"
"Being the brainy one."
It was my turn to laugh. "You wanted to be the brainy one?"
"Couldn't, could I. By the time I arrived, you'd taken that slot. Which is all right, I guess. Reading and stuff, not really my thing. Boring. So I took sports and being funny and, well …" he swept a hand through what remained of his lank brown hair, "being the good-looking one."
"You're not the good-looking one."
"The ladies say otherwise."
"And I'm the funny one."
"Keep telling yourself that, treacle. Maybe you'll even believe it one day."
We continued eating. In amongst the flagrant, fragrant bullshit, there was some truth to what he was saying. All siblings have to specialise, and I'd had a three-year head start choosing mine. But he was wrong: Gemma was the brainy one. I'd made the classic middle-child choice: being wayward. I’d picked not wanting anything from anyone. I’d picked moving thousands of miles away from my family to get more of that sweet, sweet anonymity I'd first tasted in London.
I saw how when I compared myself to Kev, I focused on the areas of life I cared about. Which were, unsurprisingly, the areas I was best at. I neglected to think about, or place value on, the areas of life where he was better than me: making friends, holding down jobs, drinking alcohol, playing sport, being one of the lads, learning trades, driving cars. It was not that we competed—it was that we'd found ways not to have to compete.
As we arrived at Treptower Park station, on his way back to the airport, he stopped in the middle of the platform. "It's alright," he said. "Berlin. Once you get used to the smell."
"Take it easy," I said, as I put him on the train.
He leaned in for a hug. "You too, fella."
As the train pulled away, I put on music and walked home, thankful that I got to live where I didn't belong. That I got to move through my day as an exotic, yet anonymous thing. As the middle of a story no one knew the start of. I'd failed to make him interested in Berlin's history and while you can argue that we owe the past a certain respect, I was starting to think that its opposite might also be true. That maybe the present's greatest freedom is the right to be uninterested, unperturbed, willfully ignorant of the past. To simply refuse to carry its heavy cultural bags. That it’s this disinterest that would most annoy history’s dictators, warlords, and empire builders. That it’s okay to ignore the ghosts of Berlin when they whisper.
I stopped to read the graffiti on the side of what was once a border watchtower. There it was again, in loose, curly blue script at the height of my hip, underlined twice.
Fuck balls.