on moving my lil brother

So I'm out helping my younger brother downsize from a house to a condo. Watching the stuff go into the apartment I was convinced he'd dramatically over-estimated the cubic capacity of the new place but now, a day into re-assembling everything and putting stuff away, he's proven sharper at visualizing than I thought.

I'll skip the whiny narrative about helping someone move at my age, the moans about the aching back, and so on. Suffice it to say that I popped Alleve and downed 1/3 of an $82 bottle of Lagavulin single-malt Scotch at the end of the move, a decision I'm paying for today in both visual unfocusing and multiple naps, but I survived. No, what's incenting me to comment is the concept of moving back into apartments. It works for me. He had a wonderfully charming house up in the foothills of the Wasatch range, and now he's on the 12th floor of a 1960's building, with the plain floorplan one associates with 1960's highrises. Yet, it works. And the compression of possessions, the weeding of stuff, that works for me too.

Brother's girlfriend drops a cheap mirror and breaks it. And while it did hang in my parent's house it was not, as I told her, the only rememberence any of us had left of our grandparents. The move over, we drink heavily with his Indian co-worker and her husband, also a co-worker. I find a great little iPhone language translation application and start channeling emails to her from her mother. "You should be giving me grandchildren, not drinking expensive whiskeys with older, blonde men." That sort of thing.

The next day, suffering from altitude adjustment, move trauma and a kick-ass hangover, we slouch and put stuff away. Little of substance gets done. And yet, by evening, we're zooming up to Park City to see an old school friend that I at least, haven't visited with in 12 years. And I'm in rare form, forgetting that I'd also met his wife at that time. Now at about 7500 feet, the two micro-brews quickly do their magic. Those of you from the greater Harrisburg area won't understand this, because everytime I go out with someone in Harrisburg, we inevitably run into half of their graduating class, but I've seen only this person and one other in the 30-odd years since I graduated from school, and as I said, less than once a decade. And so it is somewhat disconcerting to see an old friend aged, and he much more healthy than am I. It makes me realize just how old I myself must look if only the mirror wouldn't lie to me. The old friend asks where my blog went? I promise to send him the new, anonymous blog link and explain the financial reasons I went undercover.

The next morning I wake everyone up at 4am, my body unable to let go of the 6am EST religion. His girlfriend says nothing to me as she heads off to work a couple of hours later. My brother heads out on errands and I walk the mile down the hill to the nearest Starbucks. Life is good again, but by 9am I'm ready for a nap. Alas, my work doesn't have the concept of a true vacation, and I spend a couple of hours over a VPN connection. Finally a nap begins about 3pm, and soon it's time to go drinking for the final time in SLC. I should note that there are a lot of protests around the country about the LDS church (Mormons) and their financial aid for proposition 8, including calls for economic boycott. For my part, I didn't drink in a single Mormon bar. I did flirt with the cute waitress at the Lebanese restaurant that night, and she with me, until I got just a little too aggressive and she shot me down with a "fiance" reference.

This morning, the last morning, we dress and decide to go to the gun shop, as brother is considering trading for a small, concealable handgun. But first, we do laundry. And while downstairs waiting for the dryer to finish, he recalls that maintenance will be coming by that morning and he's left his big, current handgun on the table. Hmm. We go upstairs and sure enough, there's a "Maintenance Man Inside" sticker on the door. He's a little old guy, probably almost 80, and he's really nice to me. Except that about 5 minutes into the light conversation, I realize he thinks I'm my brother's gay lover, no doubt a militant one at that, and possibly in SLC to shoot Mormons for their role in proposition 8. My brother picks up on this fact and sets him straight (no pun intended). It was a great trip. Now, off to the airport to buzz down to Vegas.