Second Helpings: Twice Removed

Estrangement and Cousins, Part Two.

Age gaps in relationships are funny, aren’t they, Guido? Take Husband and me: I’m three years older than him. Our age difference is most apparent when one of us references popular culture from our youth, when the three years between us made a much bigger difference than it does now. When he was Zero and I was three, for example; or when he was ten and I was thirteen. It is obviously creepy to think of me “dating” Husband under those circumstances. Nowadays, our three-year age difference only comes up when I know all the words to Run DMC songs and he does not; or, when I’m in my fifties, and he is not.

Three years was also the age difference between you and Layla, many years ago, when the two of you were high school sweethearts. She was my best friend Kayla’s twin sister who was also my friend (I hoped.) I knew her before you two dated. She was hanging out with me when you first laid eyes on her.

You were sixteen and she was thirteen. A three-year’s difference, which didn’t seem like a big deal during the 1980s, when teens were doing so much fucked up shit it was hard to track. Our parents sure didn’t track, and there were no smart phones. Besides, you both totally turned out fine. You’re still friends!

And who cares, right, because that three-year difference between you and Layla wouldn’t be weird now, not any weirder than the three-year gap between myself and Husband. Especially since you and Serafina, the one who didn’t get away, have a fourteen-year age gap. Nobody said that they thought that that was weird. I mean, you weren’t ready to have kids before forty! What were you going to do?

Speaking of fourteen, I was turning that age the day you gave me the record Natty Dread and a big cola bud for a birthday present.

When I was fourteen, Husband was eleven. When you were fourteen, your wife was a newborn.

My daughter, Baby Tiny, will be fourteen soon. I imagine a sixteen year old boy cousin, or her twenty-year-old brother, handing weed to my kid.

I can’t imagine it, Guido.

I don’t think Serafina quite wants to imagine it, either. Given the way she looks at me, you’d think I’m the one who gave you the cannabis. She can glare well, for a doe-eyed woman.

I try to imagine someone handing weed to your daughter. You would be so pissed.

Yet, if I confronted you about how you did that to me, you would dismiss. You would blame me, say I wanted it, I mean, I was wearing hippie dresses for goodness sake!

Baby Tiny looks just like me. I think about my mom making the choice to let you “watch” me when I was a tween and “look out for me” as a teenager (which you did so lovingly and gratefully. Which would also be a brilliant cover for fucking my friends.)

I can’t imagine having a nephew, one that I trusted, ostensibly look out for her, only for him to be casually drinking my booze and giving Baby Tiny weed, not in a million fucking years.

But if I did, it would most likely be your son. Good thing you don’t have one, for that reason, and also because it means we are a step closer to ripping the California branch out of the family tree by the root.

Remember your friend James? Also a senior, got me into bed when I was drunk at my own party? I followed him like a puppy for weeks after that.

Then he slept with Kayla, flirting with us both, like it was the most Bohemian thing we could do. I was, what, fifteen by that point?

Isn’t your niece fifteen now?

I didn’t actually not consent to James, but I did not say yes. I was too impaired to set boundaries, to go more slowly, to stop at kissing, to not take off my clothes. It went too fast for me to be able to feel like I was consenting.

You were about three feet away from us as he pulled me into the bedroom. You glanced over, and then went back to mooning over Layla. You got insecure when you drank, at those parties, around Layla and all of your handsome, skinny friends.

I was surprised you weren't protective of me when your slick, player friend started hitting on me, and then Kayla, for god’s sake. Being the default scapegoat of the family, I expect my cousins to make a strong demonstration through their actions and relational gameplay that other people are more important and will always rank higher than me, deserving courtesies and affections that I do not. That would make me think that you would have been protective of Kayla since she was Layla’s twin sister.

But then again, if you were protective of me, your cousin, not to mention your girlfriend’s twin sister, you would have had to admit that I, who was the same age as Kayla and Layla, was also in potential danger, as opposed to consenting. That would have forced you think about you, the same age as James, and your own choice to hook up with Layla.

When one child is seventeen and the other fourteen; in California, it is technically within the age range of consent.

Technically.

Looking back, I lacked all of the information/education, an equitable balance of power with James, and the respect afforded to me by him that would have been necessary for me to fully consent.

My father wasn’t protective of me.

Just like your father, you weren’t protective of your sister.

When James pulled me into my bedroom at the party and you didn’t even react, I took it as a vote of confidence that you thought I could handle myself. I took it to mean that I wasn’t very sophisticated, and that you were teaching me how to chill.

Just like you did when you pulled me into my room at a different party, and gave me Natty Dread and a cola bud before we cut the cake.

Whatever your intention, however wrong the corruption was, I’m glad that this album is seared into my brain, every line, all the rhythms, and I’m glad I first heard it while high.

While I’m not sure whether you took me under your wing because you actually liked being around me, or if you wanted to be with my friends, or if it was a confused mashup of both, I’m so grateful.

You turned me on to the Dead, which led to me meeting a whole lot of people who ended up being my own friends. You were the source of my first drinks (silly) my first acid trip (amazing), my first coke trip (shitty and anxious), my only Dead tour, multiple fun parties, several gorgeous hikes, a few great camping trips, and hundreds of positively magical cooking collaboration throwdowns.

I like to think that in your misguided way, you looked out for me. You did a thing for me on my birthday that required pulling me aside and sharing a secret, which made me feel special. When most of the other family (besides your mom and mine) didn’t particularly give a shit, or came because we had family gatherings for everything, or actively thought of my birthday as a nuisance for being so close to Thanksgiving, you did a thing that took forethought, effort, and affection.

Even though there was a point where you made plans with Layla and not with me, we all hung out in a group, even though I still felt like my friends liked you more than your friends, sans player James—liked me.

We all did so much together during the high school years— and beyond—when I was still in high school and you were living in that sweet beach pad that your dad bought for you. You were my bridge between the wild, unconventional counterculture life that we shared; as well as the controlling, Italian Catholic, Mafia-adjacent family we came from. What I treasured most was that we could talk about both worlds in a way that felt safe.

Especially when it was the two of us. Even though it made me feel guilty, I was secretly happy when you and Layla broke up. You started inviting me to things and we spent one-on-one time together again, like the time we saw the Jerry Garcia Band at the Warfield and stopped at a donut shop somewhere in the city and I went to the bathroom and took a giant crap and made the toilet overflow. I came out and told you and you said “let’s go!” and we both got wide eyes and ran out of there, because we were tripping balls and there was no way I could face a nighttime donut employee and tell them I caused a flood of shit.

I thought we would grow up and break cycles together, talk about the risks we took, and do better raising our own children side by side. I thought our relationship extended far beyond the realm of being the same generation—I mean, you’re only three years older—or having some of the same friends, or even being in the same extended family.

I never thought the cycle I would be breaking would be one with you. When I look back at the messages that was our last contact, I can see you making the effort to be cordial, to express love and a willingness to talk. For a minute, I sat there confused, wondering if I had overreacted. Maybe I did. But looking back, remembering, I recall that at the time, it felt as though your words came too little, too late, and too contradicted by actions.

By that point, I neither trusted nor believed you.

Was that fair?

With time, I am realizing that it may have well been the best you could do, but that it wasn’t good enough for me.

To be Continued.