peter raze we've been friends since the second grade. allies for more than twenty years now, and we're still relatively young men. steadfast, is pete. solid. good-hearted. never anyone other than exactly who he is. in some ways we're very different, but we're the same in all the most important ways. the last time we had anything even close to a disagreement was when we were thirteen and he messed up my hair. no matter how much time passes between conversations or get-togethers, we always pick up right where we left off. we'll be friends until we die. he's getting married at the end of the year. and it strikes me that this is the first wedding i'll ever go to where i'll actually be happy to be there. finding a date is going to be another story. but i guess there's plenty of time to figure that out. 130207 ... raze he may be the only person i know who is always himself not only in the waking world, but also when he shows up in my dreams. never a villain. always an ally. he made his first appearance in a while a few nights back. we were eating dinner. our meal was a film we were watching, and there were nuances in it we'd missed when we were younger. they'd always been there, but we were noticing them now for the first time. everything seemed brand new. maybe it was his way of telling me in my sleep that leaving my twenties behind is no cause for mourning, and there's a lot left to see. or maybe we just need to grab some dinner and catch up, and this was a reminder to give him a call. who can say? 130830 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Hm. This is a name. It's either the one I loved at the dignified age of thirteen (he told me he was going to kill me and I was flattered by the attention) or the friend's brother who tried to drown me accidentally. 130903 ... raze he's getting married on the 30th. i need to put money in a card and shake his hand and drink something to make my mind a little slower and dance with the date i won't have and not almost break my foot again on phantom stairs. but first i need to call him. see how he's been. give him some late words of wisdom. as if i have any. 131118 ... raze i forgot to call. or i remembered, but time got away from me, and now it's today, and i'll have to choose a tie and a face to wear. there will be no calling now. just showing up. 131130 ... raze i think any ac/dc song i hear for the rest of my life will immediately make me think of him. 160519 ... raze there's a book of collaborative drawings we made in 1994. it turned up in the garage. i have no memory of putting this together, but here it is. the front cover makes a point of stressing the authentic nature of the drawings. you've even got a skinny-legged batman saying, "they're as authentic as me!" my characters include press-man (the front of his superhero costume says, "i'm flat!"), twin octopus, sniper ("he looks normal, but he's far from it"), dancing firebird, and ARSON the supernatural orangutang. ARSON stands for "action rampage smashing occupation destroy not for the nervous". that's some kind of acronym. there are also two guys named quarg and talleemeroose who look like something out of one of don hertzfeldt's childhood nightmares. pete lost interest in the idea before i did. he only contributed a few characters of his own, but he came up with a masterstroke in the shape of hotdog man. there he is, this smiling, crazed-looking wiener with shoes. he's got a bottle of ketchup in one hand and a bottle of mustard in the other. his catchphrase? "i'll barbecue 'em." 210824 ... kerry we just got off the phone a little while ago. he called me, and when i saw his face pop up on the screen, that tongue-out cross-eyed face he makes and i kind of want to vomit but it also makes me love him more, when he's silly like that, when we were little. in first grade his teacher, totally exasperated with him, called our mother who asked if he'd been too chatty (very possible). no, it wasn't that, he was mostly good. "but he hums, constantly. and i just--i asked him to please stop and he did but then started again and it seems to be some unconscious thing!" i imagine her throwing her skinny arms up and letting them collapse beside her, her enormous perm wilting as if to mimic her helplessness. i think mom said something like she'd do her best, and now it is a family story. i wonder if he hums now, alone at home where he can hum as long as he wants. he can't hum while brewing his coffee or tea because he doesn't drink coffee or tea. he drinks water and then some soda which i find gross but who am i to criticize. i heard him singing--really belting it out!--when we were staying at our parents' for some holiday, several years ago. it made me laugh. i bet he does that all the time. when people ask me what my brother is like i don't know what to say. i'll laugh, or pause, or go totally blank. i don't know why but for some reason the closer i am to a person the harder it is for me to describe "what they're like." so, peter is into gadgets, and always has been. he knows stuff about bitcoin and all that weird shit, doesn't use it but bought some just "to see." he also likes board games. has a scar where i (accidentally) pushed him and he cracked his head on the corner of the stairs. he was 1.5, i was 3. we were dancing. (i rarely dance now, but that's unrelated.) i'm told the first time we met i slapped him in the face. he seems to have forgiven me. wears small unrimmed glasses and pumas, reddish brown beard if unshaved always looking for answers, self-improvement. grows shrooms and uses them for transcendental experiences at home. sometimes he'll mail me some. one day last year he took something like 7 grams and laid on his bed for hours listening to music and contemplating the purpose of his life and his job and where he wanted to Go and all the people he cared about in his circle, how they had helped him, and when he was able to he wrote them letters. which was maybe a bit much for some and just great for others. he is very sincere and i have a hard time judging him. if he weren't my brother it would be easier. (example: when he was about 12, he wrote a love letter to joni mitchell.) says, "anger is ultimately unhealthy, and is a response to your expectations not being met. So you should adjust your expectations. Also, you should read Marcus Aurelius." we went from being fierce enemies to allies. we felt betrayed and confused and disregarded by our dad and some times have been harder than others. and some better than others. we grew closer when dad was diagnosed with leukemia. but it's stage 0, and we relaxed eventually. we drifted apart when he and rebecca adopted mary the sweetest puppy with black paws and snout in an effort to fix their relationship, not a good idea, didn't work. it is hard to see him sometimes because he doesn't like being alone. he didn't like playing alone when we were kids. it always annoyed me because i wanted to do things by myself. when we were getting off the phone we both say some variation of, k, well i'm glad i caught you. it was good talking to you. miss you. love you." 210824 ... kerry 1.5 looks like 15 but is actually one_and_a_half 210824 ... raze he was over at the house. we were sitting on the front porch after watching dirk diggler sing "you got the touch" in "boogie nights". pete loved that scene. he hadn't met the woman who would become his wife. that was still a few years away. we were talking about the strangeness of trying to make a relationship work. he smiled a little and said, "well, you're trying to find someone to be your family. someone who wasn't there from the beginning. maybe that's why it's so hard." 210913 what's it to you? who go blather from