Requiem [COMPLETED]

My Brother Should Not be Trusted with my Safety

Six months after I started at the restaurant, Sven was rarely lighthearted anymore. His tempestuous reactions to his and Charlie's fights flared and then simmered as he tried to pretend that nothing was bothering him. At times querulous and remote, he rejected much of the closeness that I sought from him though he never waivered in supplying a stable home life in terms of paying bills. I was never hungry, nor cold, nor going without the basics—except for overt affection. All his acts of love were obtuse, practical, unemotional expressions like restocking the fridge at our apartment, actions that didn't necessitate him having to say words like 'love' or get touchy-feely with hugs. During our bickering—mostly instigated by me, accusing him of pushing me away, or shutting me out—he inspired a lot more frustration and self-pity, more than I feel comfortable admitting to.

He showed a lot of fraternal protectiveness of me with his calculated carefulness towards my identity being discovered when I had a year left as a minor, but seemed determined that in all other aspects I should 'make my own way.' He was Sven from childhood in many ways. Here was the old cleverness; he was never without an angle. The strange thing was, I couldn't figure out what the angle was half the time. Most people would look out for themselves; some of what Sven did seemed so counterproductive.

At 20 he was moderately handsome in an unconventional way, frighteningly intelligent, and maddeningly withholding. Thinly veiled incredulous hostility towards any person stupid enough to cross him on his bad days was his default reaction. In the acquaintances he'd made since moving to Fargo, he seemed largely incurious about anyone's character or motives and did not welcome their inquisitiveness about our lives. The general getting-to-know-you aspect of friendship he utterly rejected. The people who hung out with him were the ones that generally eschewed curiosity, or friends of Chuck's that assumed his behavior was just an extreme case of Scandinavian standoff-ish-ness. The core group consisted of Charlie and Sven, naturally; Stan Vasquez-Martinez, an Italian-Mexican-Catholic hybrid from, of all places, the depths of the cosmopolitan Twin Cities who somehow (accidently I assume) found himself in this middle-of-nowhere mini-twin cities pursuing a teaching degree in music; and Matt Bently, a rail-thin boy of Irish heritage who could out-gay the gays, an accounting major minoring in history who had classes with Charlie. Seamus had dropped out of school but still worked at the restaurant; John was contemplating taking a year off to do a missions trip, which Seamus couldn't seem to comprehend. I rarely saw the latter two, since Sven hung out with them separately from me.

Stan at least got on with Sven, since he was into sports as well (he'd grown up playing hockey and football), while Matt and Sven eyed each other skeptically and said snide things towards each other at opportune moments when Charlie wasn't looking. Sven had other social groups—friends from work and straight guys he played beer pong and watched football with at house parties—but the three main groups never comingled. I don't think even Charlie or I knew half the names of people in the other circles; Sven had military discipline about his "need to know" policy—which was basically that we didn't need to know. Ever. And Sven's idea of friends seemed to be very, very loose. Like being in the same room, or liking the same sports team.

Slowly the gulf between us had shrunken during those first few months of independence, but then further progress had stagnated. In that time though we had at least discovered in each other a similar sense of humor and angled to make each other laugh when we were getting along. It was times like that that I enjoyed being teased, didn't mind the attention in front of other people. I felt 'in' on his life, however temporarily—and in those moments he made sure I knew all the inside references, reinforcing the warm fuzzy feeling of togetherness. He was always good at humor.

He could bring me to tears and then get me laughing right out of it. He was starting to regain at times his disarming mix of eloquence, cussing and wit, though he was still easily overwhelmed by his own emotional reactions. At such times he'd loose his elevated speech and talk like a normal teenager but it wasn't very comforting since the words were so angry. Most of the time he kept composed though and kept his sense of humor like a wall between him and other people. No wonder I loved him, even when I almost hated him.