A True Status Symbol

Some people have statues of them built in conspicuous places. Some people have bridges and freeways named after them. A number of craters on the moon are named for famous explorers and fallen astronauts. I have been given an even greater honor. Behold!

Food is the legal tender of glory; it is the stuff of dreams. People in my family like food. My big brother Bryan is mighty among foodsmiths. His desserts have brought shrieks of delight from many people; he works in cheesecake as Cézanne worked in oils. He is very skilled in the kitchen as both an artist and a craftsman, and he pays special attention to presentation.

Bryan: cook, photographer, history buff, Beatles fan, shameless pesto addict. He is the next member of the litter after Scott, about whom I wrote in my previous post. He lives in Carlsbad, just north San Diego on the Left Coast. My relationship with Bryan is different from those I have with my other two siblings, Kathy and Scott. This is, I believe, because I lived with him for eight years. He and I have been through a lot together: ordeals and glories for both of us. He was a good roommate, a good coworker (we worked a couple of jobs together, including Starbucks), and a good partner in the exploration of good stuff (food, films, people, et cetera).

I was present for Bryan's rebirth, and I like to think I participated a bit. I finished college at Central Michigan University in the summer of 1995, and I didn't have the foggiest notion of what to do with my life. I didn't even bother going to my own graduation. Bryan and his wife Kristin invited me to move to San Diego and live with them. I was excited about a change.

Bryan picked me up at Lindbergh Field on a sunny afternoon. I had my duffel bag and $80. We went back to the apartment and had a couple of Sierra Nevada Pale Ales; I still remember it clearly. Time went on. Very soon after I arrived, I was working with Bryan at Pacific Horizons Balloon Company (now defunct) as ground crew. It was fun working with hot air balloons, but not much of a career. Before long, I was working at Starbucks (I had no idea I would be there for so long) also. Bryan was not satisfied by his work, and his marriage was not doing so well. He and Kristin were finding out how much they didn't have in common. Let's just say they didn't bring out the best in each other. She didn't like food (at least not food with any flavor), and she had very different priorities. They were all wrong for each other. Bryan was an unhappy man. They agreed that a divorce was what they both wanted. Since it was consensual and there were no kids in the picture, it went smoothly. Bryan got a steady job with benefits and escaped the weird world of ballooning (balloonists are not particularly good businesspeople). He worked hard to pay off debts (Kristin had an impressive ability to open charge accounts and buy unnecessary shit), and he met new people. He cooked for people who actually appreciated his craft, and he put more effort into it. He becomes frightfully good at something when he sets his mind to it. People look at his bee pie (a honey chiffon pie with a honeycomb pattern glazed on top, adorned with bees fashioned out of chocolate with almond sliver wings) and are astonished. "Where the hell did you get this?" they say, or "Who the hell are you?" Time went on.

Someone from his work took him to church, and he got saved.

This changed everything. He was a happy person. It was as if he stood upright for the first time. He had spent a lifetime being misunderstood and underappreciated, and it was a hell of a beautiful thing for me to see him come into his own.

And so we have come from a couple of beers on August 29, 1995 to him obliterating his wedding ring with a blowtorch the day Kristin left to him naming a sushi roll after me. If you want an example of how to love being alive, look no further than Bryanasaurus Rex. He was the best roommate I ever had until I fell in love with Lindsey and moved across the country (Bryan would have made the ideal wife, but he's a man, and he's my brother). He's a man who laughs, cooks, and refuses to take anything too seriously. Like Scott, he doesn't spit in public, treat others like shit to make himself feel important, or act like an angry gorilla when the Lakers lose. He doesn't even give a shit about basketball.