Bruh

Emily O'Rourke

As he strolled into my room with a bag of lime Tostitos chips, ready to distract me from my essay, I asked him,“What should I write about for my English paper?”

“Write about me.”

“What would I say about you?”

“Raymond, what is there to say about him? I basically just want to be him. There is pretty much no way he can improve because is already perfect.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll write that.”

His name is Raymond John O’Rourke III, but I call him Ray Ray. He is 5’4”, the same height as me, not a millimeter taller. When he wears his basketball shoes he is taller than me, but really he isn’t. He has the same blue eyes as me; we get them from our mom. He has a buzz cut, but if he would let it grow out he would have brown curly hair like mine. His teeth are worse than mine so he will have his braces on longer. I tell him he is fat constantly. He wears a size small in everything, but I still call him fat.

He is our mother’s favorite because he is the baby of the family and he doesn't fight with her as much. She often says to me in a concerned voice, “Emily, go upstairs and see how your brother is doing. Make sure he’s okay.” So I go up and say to Ray Ray, “So mom is worried about you. She wants to make sure you are okay. I don’t actually care about your problems, but she wanted me to ask you about them.”

“Why does she always do that?”

“I don't know. I mean are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

Then I just watch him play video games and talk to him about sports to make sure he really is okay.

Our father goes back and forth with which child he likes better. It depends on the day. However, like a reflex, whenever Ray Ray and I are fighting and he hears us, he yells, “Emily, stop bothering Raymond!” Ray Ray has dragged me down the stairs and this was still Dad's first response. My parents have given up on stopping our fights. They say, “Stop fighting. You’ll hurt yourselves,” like a daily chore they need to check off the list, but don't really care about.

Ray Ray is not the obviously supportive type.When I told Ray Ray my ACT score he said, “Well, you have no one to blame, but yourself,” and walked away. While he doesn’t like talking about test scores or me going to college, I can tell he likes talking about our schools days now. When I come home from school every day he holds out his hand and says, “dap me up, bruh,” while he reads the Vineyard Vines 2014 Gift Guide, “I have to tell you the funniest story about that weird kid I told you about yesterday.”

His go to insult is, “Jesus Emily, why are you so fat?” It’s not clever or funny anymore, it never was, but it’s his way of starting a conversation with me. He knows it’s not true. If he buys me clothes as a gift they are always in the correct size small, but he still jokes that he bought it in the plus-size section. He told me he was going to give me diet pills for Christmas this year. He thought that was hilarious. My way of starting a conversation with Ray Ray is by hitting him, mostly on his back or upper arm. Maybe that is why my father assumes I always start our fights.

We don’t actually fight. I get annoyed with him and he with me. This is usually resolved by one of us hitting the other. It will then escalate into a full-blown boxing match. Throughout the entire fight, we are laughing hysterically. It will entertain us for about twenty minutes. Eventually, we’ll get tired and find another way to annoy each other. When we were younger, I could easily tackle him to the ground or push him to the side, but now he is pushing back harder. As a freshman in high school, he is getting stronger and taller, even though he is not taller than me. Within a span of about two weeks, he may shove and hit harder than me. Now my harmless slap on his leg, once met with a laughable attempt at reprisal, faces a stronger counterattack. He doesn’t know he is stronger or that he can actually hurt me now. I will never admit that to him. However, I consistently remind him, “I won the last arm wrestle we had; therefore, I am stronger. It’s science.”

“Well then let’s have a rematch.”

“No, that’s not necessary. I don’t want to embarrass you again.”

Maybe my favorite and least favorite part about Ray Ray is his humor. I don't think he is annoying annoying. He is the funny annoying that you try not to laugh at because you are supposed to be mad. When I sit on the corner of the couch, he always thinks it is a good idea to squeeze in between me and the arm of the couch. Then he yells, “Emily, stop crowding me! I was here first!” It is incredibly frustrating, but it always makes me die laughing. Maybe it is how his serious tone contrasts his ridiculous actions. He is like a really politically incorrect joke, many of which he actually makes. He makes me burst out laughing, but also surprised and embarrassed that I did.

He quotes Michael Scott from The Office and Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation daily. He wants Will Ferrel to come to his funeral and sing “Por Ti Volare" with John C. Riley playing the drums. He looks up to Lebron James— he wants to skip college and go straight to the NBA. So far, it’s not looking too good for him.

He isn't funny, he uses other people’s jokes; his timing is what makes him seem funny. One night I came downstairs to tell him something that I thought was really exciting. While I was talking he started vigorously flipping through the pages of the magazine he had been reading. I got fed up with his lack of attention on me and asked, “What are you doing?” His response: “Oh, I am just looking for a fuck to give.” He must have been waiting to use that joke for weeks.