mike

my uncle mike is a very large alcoholic man. He is a very right-wing-ed-opinionated-man. I don't hate him, but if we did not share dna, i doubt we'd have much in common.

he lived next door to us for a spell while i was growing up. i would regularly hear the screen door slamming around 8-8:30 each night ( i was in bed, but never sleeping, and it was still light out). I would run to my parents bedroom window and watch him chuck his keys into the woods. I didn't really know (until I'd eavesdropped) what he was throwing, just that there was some fanfare about it. Regularly, about an hour or two later, I'd be awakened by the door slam again. I would run again to the window and see him lumbering around with a flashlight, looking for his keys in the woods. Kind of like a really more fucked up blair witch vid. Few minutes later the trans-am was on the road.

Holidays with mike: Some holidays were at home, some were claimed. My moms parents owned Christmas Eve. Mike would always arrive earlier than everyone, and would bring his "laundry". As the night rolled on, mike would get more and more intensively republican, and increasingly louder and slurrier. Meanwhilst, my strongly democratic parents would try to pronounce that "it's christmas for fux sake". WE all tried to drop the subject, but every single trip to the laundry room made shit worse. End of sacred night? Mike, passed out in basement with bottle of jack, or whatever in hand. Nobody ever tried to carry him up, not once.