to put up a fight. To this day, the first still has twenty-five pounds on the second.
One of us was named Luke, and one of us was named Finbar. It’s hard to think that my lifelong bad luck wasn’t confirmed by that name choice.
Luke was born into a world full of praise and admiration. And girls. My brother was exiled from the YMCA day camp playground eight times in one summer for being kissed by girls. It was actually unfair. My brother shouldn’t have gotten in trouble; he was the victim. He was the one attacked by girls. He still is, to this day. He was the only sophomore guy at our school who was invited to a prom. This hot Asian girl from All Saints’ Girls School asked him. And believe me, despite the school name, those girls were not all saints. My brother came home with his rented pants on backward.
The differences between us really kicked into gear when we were twelve. Luke came home from a boy-girl party with kids from our parish and announced to our parents that three girls had kissed him that night. Like, kissed him. On the mouth. My mother, who’s a die-hard romantic but also a germaphobe, was torn between horror and curiosity. She solved this dilemma by asking my brother for all the gossipy details while driving him to the doctor for a mononucleosis test.
I also wanted to know more about these kisses (had one been from that girl with the rosary beads and halter top?), but by the time I asked, Luke was distracted by a fervent hunt for Fruit Roll-Ups. Where, you may ask, had I been when all this kissing was going on in the basement of little Mary’s house? I was there. At the same party. But Luke had been in the basement, and I had been upstairs, watching Henry Kim play solitaire. P.S., the only thing more pathetic than playing solitaire at a party, even a seventh-grade party, is watching someone else play solitaire. Plus, I hadn’t even known there was kissing going on in the basement. I always missed all the kissing.
Because telling my parents that I was hanging out alone with another guy while everyone else was kissing girls might have given them the wrong impression, I just shrugged when they asked, “What about you, Finbar?”
It’s not that I’m not interested in girls. Just ask the priest who hears my confession every month. I’m very interested in girls. In fact, I’m interested in girls every morning for about six minutes in the shower. I have the sex drive of Bill Clinton. Even my obsessive love of books may stretch from my overstimulated libido. Specifically, from the children’s librarian at the Alexandria Library. This librarian had really big breasts. Actually, not big. Enormous. Each one was the size of an adult bowling ball. I swear. As a result, from my Once Upon a Potty days onward, I associated reading with all the things the female body represents: comfort, softness, sensuality, motherly bonding, nutrition, a sense of well-being… and boobs.
Because I don’t get out much, in my mind, love and sex are all tangled up in books and movies. I’ve lived vicariously through Heathcliff, Romeo, Rhett Butler, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, and James Bond. From the safety of my bedroom, it’s easy to believe I could be as gallant and brave as any of these old dudes. My mother, too, finds these things in books. Well, not sex. She’s a stringent Catholic. But she loves love stories. Like a bloodhound, she sniffed out that romantic streak I tried to hide. I became her companion, her romantic-comedy buddy, her personal Oprah’s Book Club. Let’s just say I know more about the evolution of Katherine Heigl’s hair color than any man should.
In many ways, the woman ruined me.
My mother’s romantic comedies made me believe girls want guys who are thoughtful, dependable, and romantic. Sure, when the movie starts, the girl’s dating the self-absorbed guy in the Maserati. But slowly she’s drawn to the guy who remembers her favorite flower, picks her up from the costume party where she’s the only one in a costume, and reassures her that her interesting mind makes her far more sexy than her sister, the Playboy model. The whole audience melts when this guy delivers the heartfelt speech of genuine reasons he loves her. His occasional awkwardness and fumbling only make him more dreamy. This is the guy I could be. This is