how i became brannon, part I

A note about multiple entries:  I wanted to write about my life (and death and subsequent limbo status) as one final comprehensive entry.  I underestimated how long that entry would be.  I sorted my life into 5 parts so when I exceeded Open Diary’s character limit, I broke it up into 3 entries, with two parts for each entry and an added conclusion for the final entry.  They were still too long.  So then I decided to give each part of my life it’s own entry, 5 entries in total.  Still too long.  So to retain some semblance of order I had to break it up into 9 parts, which is embarrassing and ridiculous and feels completely overblown but I also didn’t want to remove anything from the text because I think everything I wrote serves a purpose and helps add definition to who I am.  But to ease your suffering, most of the space taken up was due to multiple pictures.  The entries only look intimidating until you see there isn’t as much text as you think.

A note about multiple pictures:  Because my image has been such a big issue for me all my life, I felt it was important to show myself from every stage of my life so the reader can have a bit more context when I say how fat I was or how bad my skin looked.  You can actually see what I’m talking about.  Well, mostly.  When my acne was at its worst, I hid from cameras.  I did not have my photo taken and the few pictures I do have of my acne do not show it at its most severe.  Plus, the picture quality is not the best and thus blurs out some of my imperfections, which would normally be a great thing except I want you to see how bad it was.  While you can see how big I was, you’ll have to trust me when I say my face was a mess as well.  Also, because my mother did not preserver or date the photos, quality is not great and they might not be in accurate chronological order.  I did my best.  I’ve never been good at telling someone’s age, even my own.

Photos were compiled over several weeks of going through my mother’s old photo albums that were put away in dusty storage, going through my own personal online photo albums, Facebook, and phone.  I even resurrected my old Myspace profile to grab pictures from there.  Then there was the scanning and an attempt to edit and clarify some pictures, as well as cropping, all of which did not seem to transfer when I uploaded them to this site.  Basically, it was a bitch to put together so I hope you enjoy them.

part I: an element of blank
"When I was a baby I could close the world up in fleshy pink mitts
Now the world flays the infant palms and the bones drip out in its spit…

My parents met at a movie theater in 1975.  They dated on and off for a year and married in 1976.  My dad quit school after 10th grade and took a job at a peanut processing plant.  My mother dropped out after 11th grade and took a job at a cotton mill.

My sister was born in 1977

My parents and sister.

A few years later, my mom got pregnant again and then had a miscarriage.

Then in 1985, a week before Christmas, I was born.
 

Merry Christmas! Here’s your early gift.

 

I entered the world with thick black hair and jaundice.
 

 This is me, a few days old, after getting my first tan under the bili light.

 

My dad holding me.

About a year or two ago, I asked Mom if I was an accident.  She just shrugged.  "We weren’t trying to get pregnant but we weren’t doing anything to prevent it," she said.

Some of my earliest memories include sitting on my mom’s lap while she smoked.  I also remember running my toy cars along her back and legs while she slept, using her body as a bumpy road.  I remember watching a VHS copy of Felix the Cat over and over again.  I remember the cracked leather interior of my dad’s black truck as he drove me to my baby sitter so he and Mom could go to work.  I rubbed my fingers along the splits and peered in at the spongy yellow stuffing beneath.  I remember the distant drone of honky tonk music on the radio and the sugary coffee in my faded yellow sippy cup.  I remember the cold mornings and the heater blowing against my cheeks.

I remember my sister raising me up into the air with her feet on my stomach so I could pretend I was flying.  I loved the idea of flying, the freedom, the ability to zoom off and go anywhere

at any time without a car or bicycle to hold me back.  And as my sister leg lifted me, she yelled out, "There goes Super Dork!" and I held my arms and legs out as straight as I could and I repeated the phrase because I didn’t know what dork meant and didn’t realize she was mocking me.  All I could see were the clouds in my imagination rushing past.  I remember us drawing on one of those magic drawing boards, passing messages back and forth, her writing down that I was a nerd.  I thought we were spending quality time together but I didn’t realize she was amusing herself by making fun of me right under my little nose.

 

My sister enjoying me because I was new.

My sister having second thoughts about me.

 

My sister realizing she’s over it.

 

Sister’s still pissed.  But I was pretty happy.

 

"Fake it and Mom will buy me a Barbie."

 

My sister resented me for being born.  For eight years, she had my parents all to herself and suddenly, all the attention she drank up on a daily basis was torn from her and given to me.  That kind of jealousy is normal but I’d like to think most children eventually get over it.  Not my sister.  Instead of learning to realize I wasn’t there to steal her away from our parents and that I was just a consequence of their coitus, she never got past the fact that she could no longer have them all to herself.  My bad.

She’s never liked me.  But I used to look up to her.  I thought she was amazing.  I learned how to write from copying her English homework.  I learned how to draw from pulling out her smudged charcoal sketches out from under her bed while she out with friends.  I sat on the floor with my crayons and followed the lines with my eyes and hands, learning to coordinate my eyes and fingers.  I remember her elaborate dragon designs and pencil sketches of Sebastian Bach from the band Skid Row.  I remember her room being plastered wall to wall with magazine pages of Aerosmitch and Motley Crew.  I remember using her eyeliner as a pencil one day because I saw a character do it on the show Salute Your Shorts.  My sister was not happy but I drew a nice sunset.

I developed an appreciation for hair metal bands and horror movies because that’s what she was into and I wanted to be into it as well.  Even though she hated me being around her, I absorbed everything she did and she influenced the kind of guy I eventually became.  For someone who only ever thought of me as her annoying baby brother, she shaped me more than she’ll ever know.

My babysitter was my grandmother’s neighbor and had a new grandchild of her own.  It was a girl one year younger than myself.  We grew up together and my babysitter often dressed us alike.  We looked like brother and sister and that’s how we came to think of each other.  She was my first friend.
 

Told you she dressed us alike.

 

But apparently she didn’t bother to ever brush my hair.

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Clearly I’ve always been in over my  head.

 

 

That’s more like it.

 

My cousin and me.

 

Me and my sister at the beach in Florida.

And the mullet makes its first appearance. With a Diet Coke.  Living classy.

 

My cousin and I at Orlando Studios shortly before freaking out on the King Kong ride.

My reaction after the ride.  Nauseated.

Pimpin’ from the start?

 

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Add my cousin’s mother’s wedding.

Showing off my grill.

 

I also had two cousins, a brother and sister duo, who were a few years older than me.  Their parents divorced when they were younger and every other weekend, they came to stay with their dad, who lived down the road from me.  I always enjoyed playing with them because they had a trampoline.  We played in the pasture and woods past their father’s beat up old yellow trailer.  The brother, the eldest of us three, taught me to swear and gave me coulrophobia by showing me a VHS copy of IT.  To this day, clown give me the most uneasy feeling.  He also introduced me to the Hellraiser movies and told me a lot about sex.  I looked up to him almost as much as I looked up to my sister.

I was a normal little boy.  My life was uncomplicated and filled with imagination.  I liked to play just like any other child.  I did not struggle, not realize my sister disliked me.  I was blissfully unaware of all the ills and pain the world had in store.  My parents did not hit or hurt me.  They did not take drugs and always had enough money to feed and clothe me.  I was fortunate.  I had my cousins and babysitting playmate and I had my drawing and Saturday morning cartoons and weekday evening Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers episodes and my Transformers toys and Nickelodeon.  I was content.  I was happy.

And then my parents started fighting.