My Best Sister
In my family of
six children, I have two sisters, Kelly (the first
child) and Lucy (the third). I am the fifth.
I've written
about Lucy before. I love
both of my sisters equally. But just for intrigue,
I decided to hold a reality TV-style competition in my head where
Lucy and Kelly would compete for the title of My Best
Sister.
I put them
through many imaginary paces, and in the final episode,
Lucy and Kelly enter an entirely fictitious room
filled with candles and lined in white fabric. In
my arms, I hold the taxidermied corpses of their
childhood cats, Mitten and Biscuit. Whoever's cat
I stroke will signify the winner of My Best Sister.
For background:
Mitten was Kelly's cat, and a holy terror. A
complete villainess -- the feline version of Maleficent
from the Disney cartoon. I remember Mitten chasing the
neighborhood dogs, perhaps only for spite. My
younger brother Brian recalls how in her old age Mitten
would laze on top of the barbecue. When any person
or animal came within a few feet of her, she'd
idly reach a claw out in the offhand hope of injuring
them. For no reason at all. Mitten was
awesome.
I don't recall
that Biscuit had much of a personality at all beyond his
additional toes, which don't count as "personality" so
much as "abnormality."
Kelly won the
imagined episode of My Best Sister involving Best Pets, though Lucy came
very close in the judges' hearts with Pluva the Guinea
Pig. Industrious Pluva famously harvested the tiny metal balls
from our family
Pachinko machine and hid them in my parents'
bedroom closet, two stories up. My parents had no
idea why they were always finding pachinko balls there. A spy finally
caught Pluva in the act, revealing that Pluva used the
metal balls stored in her cheeks as ballast to climb
each step, hurling her head over the stair and pulling
her body up.
But such sweetness is easily crushed
by the pure black-hearted evil of a Mitten.
Anyway, so
imagine: I hold the taxidermied cats in my arms.
Lucy and Kelly wait, suspensefully, holding hands.
Dramatic music plays.
"Lucy and
Kelly," I intone. "Both of you have come a long
way in this competition. Now it's down to two.
Lucy, your corrupt behavior when leaving your Rax Roast
Beef job in 1982 almost lost you this competition.
Kelly, you also took a hit when, during a 1992 phone
call with me, you mentioned a certain vulgar Christmas
gift when our grandfather, Beepa, was listening quietly
on another line. But now here you are, the two
finalists. But there can be only one My Best
Sister. And the time to reveal her is now.
So My Best Sister is ..."
Cut to Lucy,
biting her lip. Cut to Kelly, shaking slightly.
Cut back to me. Dramatic music out. Silence.
I pet the
taxidermied corpse of Mitten! KELLY WHITTY IS MY
BEST SISTER!
Both weep, and
hug, and Kelly steps forward to take her honorary crown,
bejeweled in dozens of genuine Swarovski Crystals.
Meanwhile, the reanimated corpse of Mitten leaps from
her tufted-velvet box, sinks her fangs into my jugular
vein, and laps delicately at the delicious blood that
gushes out.
Kelly is awesome. A
signifier of her nature was my marathon
coming-out-of-the-closet process, which is exhausting
when you've got five siblings and two parents.
"George, I'm gay." "Lucy, I'm gay." "Kelly,
I'm gay." "Kevin, I'm gay." "Brian,
I'm gay." "Mom and Dad, I'm gay."
When I came out to Kelly, she
took a breath, paused another moment for effect, and
said, "Jeff, I've known you were gay since you were
three years old."
Turns out, some people's
gaydar is learned, but Kelly got some recessive gene
that made it completely native. Though the
revealing moment was due to my fascination with our
babysitter Bea's lipstick -- I can't imagine WHY that was
revealing of
ANYTHING about me -- she was right on. I
imagine Kelly as a high school
girl, rehearsing in the mirror:
"'Jeff, I've known YOU were
gay since you were THREE YEARS OLD.' No, that's not
right. Maybe, 'Jeff, I'VE known you were GAY since
you were three YEARS old.' Nope, not right either.
'JEFF, I've KNOWN you WERE gay ...' Damn!"
Anyway, Kelly was just
thrilled that I came out, and it meant a tremendous
amount to my newly-minted out gay self. Everyone
in my family was fine with it, but Kelly was beyond
accepting -- she was delighted! And I'll
admit: in the years since, Kelly has done way more to
further gay rights than me. She's always on top of
the Oregon right wing's eternal ballot measures designed
to make gay people feel bad, canvassing and marching in
parades and attending fundraisers ...
Kelly, left, at a fundraiser
with friends Missy and Poison Waters.
This brings me to another
thing I love about Kelly: she's an enthusiast.
Recently, Basic Rights Oregon (the organization that
fights the eternal ballot measures designed to make gay
people feel bad) held a fundraiser at which the
invitation said, "Black Tie or Theme Attire." The
theme was "Metamorphosis."
Kelly went straight to "Theme
Attire" and spent much time and care and enthusiasm
making her costume, which came out as a fabulous Greek
Goddess as seen through the eyes of Ken Kesey.
Here's a photo of the dinner:
You can see Kelly fifth from
the right in the sparkly yellow hat and green tunic.
Kelly wrote on her FaceBook page, "Not sure why I was
the only person out of 1,000-plus who did full-on
costume..." Well, Kelly, it's because you rule!
I suspect that Kelly loves my
BF Steve because he gives her a third gay brother.
See? This is the sign
Kelly made for a "No on Prop 8" protest in Portland.
Steve's depicted with my two adorable nieces, Alicia at
left, and Kelly's daughter Phaedra at right. I'm
pretty sure that this sign, disseminated widely, would
just shut the Christianist nutbags right up.
|
Kelly and Steve hunt for a cache. |
Kelly's also very into "geocaching,"
a subculture of people who visit hidden containers
locatable only by GPS devices. Steve, Kelly,
Phaedra and I have spent enjoyable hours crashing
through forests and looking in innocuous guard rails for
secret packages. It's maybe the closest this
world will come to a Narnia-like hidden portal.
That you might find a swizzle stick instead of a White
Queen bearing Turkish Delight doesn't really matter.
But don't get me wrong: Kelly
isn't perfect. She's a master Boggle player, and
gets a very shrewd, merciless glint in her eye as she
plays. Anyone foolish enough to play against her
is inevitably crushed. "NPZAK is a word!" she'll
cry. "Look it up!" And she's always right.
One thing about Kelly: she's
single. She's got a heart as big as the Kansas
prairie, and this just ain't right. I've
encouraged her for years now to become a Lesbian, but
she has chosen her straight lifestyle and I have to
respect that. Or "tolerate" it, anyway.
She's beautiful, Bohemian at heart, funny as hell,
sensitive, and has a great kid who showed impressive
bravery when confronting entirely imagined crawdads in
Scary Bug River, which runs in front of the house Steve
and I have upstate.
So straight fellas in the
Portland metropolitan area, get yourselves together!
Anyway, in sum, I do believe
that it's a world of Kellys that will make the world a
better place. Unfortunately, we don't live in a
world of Kellys.
"You mess with my brother, you
mess with me," Kelly's thinking.
I'm now imagining the hue and
cry that will come from Lucy about all of this.
She's also been very supportive of her brother Jeff over
the years. The judging was very close. So
I'll reveal this: My Best Sister was such an imaginary
ratings hit, there's much talk at the network about a
second season. Casting for contestants will begin
soon, so start buttering up the producers now. |
