When I was 27 I wrote 31 hour-long TV episodes in 34 days over the course of the World Cup in Brazil. It was the most taxing thing I’ve ever done in my life. We scarfed shitty fried foods while standing, not tasting anything. Everyone lost a ton of weight and got their debit cards ripped off. By the time I landed back in Miami, I was a mess of tangled beard and antisocial behavior. It was all I could do to smile at another human, let alone hold a conversation.
When I woke up my first night back in the United States, I walked to the only barber I could find 0n Yelp that accepted credit cards, whacked off all my hair, and then packed and headed for the airport to attend my little brothers’ weddings.
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I hate the question, “What was it like growing up in Asia?” Who are you, my goddam therapist? Fuck off. That summer I very quickly learned to hate the question, “How was the World Cup? Exciting?” I had nothing left of me to give, including faking enthusiasm for family.
It was brutal. I remember watching all the tourists walk to the beach in their bikinis, while I stared at a while wall in an uncomfortable plastic chair, sweating and clanking away on my keyboard. I never finished a show with more than a few minutes to spare. We would print scripts and run through the darkening streets of Rio de Janeiro to the tiny studio we’d built along the beach, our control room underground in what used to be a public bathroom.
It’s a weird sensation to listen to waves while you’re permanently stressed out. I started smoking again.
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It was a weekend designed to inform me that I am old. Two of my brothers got married two days apart. The day in between was my birthday.
I exaggerate and fiddle with the truth a lot on this blog, but those are the God honest facts.
I missed my layover in Atlanta and was delayed getting in, so I wasn’t there for my brother’s bachelor party. They played capture the flag in some field and used flour in napkins tied off with rubber bands so that when they threw them, it would show up on their black clothes. There were no strippers. There was no booze.
My family is fervently evangelical.
I managed to smile through some polite conversation when they got back, and then collapsed in an overstuffed bed in a corner room upstairs in my aunt’s house in Indiana.
The next day was the wedding. I was in it for some reason, even though I don’t talk to my brothers. The vest I had to wear was blue. The pants were grey.
I don’t remember a whole lot. I remember it was in a megachurch in the middle of some corn fields in Indiana. I didn’t get service in half of the church. The bride’s older sister got real huffy at me when I made a joke about divorce. No one objected to the union, and it was made official.
I assume my brother had sex for the first time that night.
The next morning, my 28th birthday, I borrowed his car at 6am and drove around the tip of Lake Michigan. I parked on the side of the street a block away from the W in Chicago.
I met up with some friends, co-workers who were there to cover the Pitchfork festival. Arielle met me at the beach, and we walked inside and picked up Romi and Di Palma and headed over. They did some interviews while I walked around, and then Arielle and I head-bobbed solemnly to Slowdive together. Di Palma got too high and kept trying to run off and we had to stop her because we knew she’d get lost. She also bought me a Cloud Nothings poster I still have up in my apartment in LA. Kendrick Lamar headlined, and we all screamed “Bitch don’t kill my vibe” as some parents nearby covered their children’s ears.
At some fancy place for dinner—I don’t remember what kind of food—we ordered a bottle of sangria and I spilled some on my shirt. In the Uber back, we heard a song with a distinctive sax line, but none of us knew what it was. Arielle asked her Twitter followers, and one somehow identified it.
It’s still my ringtone. Years later, I bought Di Palma City to City on vinyl as a going away present when she moved from Miami to New York. We did molly on the beach, and she left it behind. So now I own two copies.
When we got back to the hotel, Romi showed us her worst interview ever on her phone. Di Palma and I smoked pot in the bathroom with the shower running. We all kept hum-singing Gerry Rafferty at each other.
I forgot it was my birthday and forgot to stress and worry, and just relaxed for the first time in probably six months.
In the morning I think I gave them a ride to the airport, and I drove back under Lake Michigan, to a small church in Niles my family had attended when I was in middle school. I changed into a suit in one of the back rooms, met the other groomsmen, and then walked into the sanctuary where my father married my other brother. (To his now-wife. My father did not get married to my brother.)
The reception was a potluck in the back yard. They gave everyone small bottles of maple syrup because she’s from Canada.
I don’t remember flying back. I just remember my apartment in Miami, how white and clean it was. I don’t think I left for a week. Eventually I got a new debit card and rebuilt my life and got to the point where I could talk about the World Cup or aging or my loneliness like a sane human being.
I haven’t been back to Chicago since. My last little brother gets married there this weekend.