good luck, whore

So I got a text yesterday from my sister Joni the Whore: “I’m home.”

Now, that may not seem like a big deal to most, but for her, it means that she’s arrived at her new home in Miami … which, if you know anything about geography, is about 1,300 miles away from Connecticut where we grew up together and where she has lived until yesterday. My older sister (at her advanced age, she’s starting to lose it a bit and insists that I’m the older one—just smile and nod when she brings it up) has decided to make this Big Life Change for a number of good and logical reasons, and as her favorite brother, I fully support her decision and want her to be happy. Also as her favorite brother, I can say that I’m going to miss her tremendously.

I’m fortunate in that I’ve always had great relationships with both of my sisters; I’ll write about my sister Christine another time (you escape for now, Little Muskrat!). Joni and I are very close, and share the same dark, twisted sense of humor—for example, “whore” is a term of endearment between the two of us. We also both accept that in The End it’ll be the two of us playing cards in Hell with Satan and Hitler, and we’re good with that.

Of course, like many siblings, we certainly had our share of fights—although not nearly as many as my sisters had with each other simply because I was bigger and stronger and could easily thrash her at any moment (Mom smoked while pregnant with Joni, and that *clearly* did a lot of damage, both physically and mentally). We also shared other experiences, like discovering the folly of hiding the wooden spoon from Mom and then, after successfully antagonizing her, realizing that a metal spatula was a more painful substitute.

Speaking of sharing, she’s terrible at sharing secrets. Early on, when we were in college, she used to work at Planned Parenthood. Occasionally, she’d come home from work and be like, “Hey, guess who came into the clinic today?” And I’d be like, “Who?!” Then she’d be like, “Oh  … um … I can’t tell you. Client-privacy rules.” To this day, she’s never told me anyone she saw.

Bitch.

Two “contests” we engaged in over the years: 1. Trying to make each other laugh during church (which might figure into some of my general disrespect for things religious), and 2. Trying to make each other choke on dinner. I once made her snarf spaghetti through her nose; she returned the favor, making me snarf chocolate ice cream out of my nose. Nasty.

Despite how we’ve tried to injure each other, Joni is still an incredibly intelligent person, you know, aside from the smoking and tanning. Here’s a picture of her from next week:

Yeah, it’s good that she has goals.

I know whatever she does in Miami, she’ll be successful. Like we like to say, she’s a good egg—a little scrambled, but good nonetheless.

I would also like to tell her that if she thinks that simply moving across the country will somehow better endear herself to me (absence making the heart grow fonder), or if she’s under the illusion that the distance will create some sort of safety zone that protects her from being tortured by her loving brother, she’s utterly mistaken.

To wit: Time to share this family classic that she has *demanded* that I tell at her funeral, which hopefully won’t be for another 160 years or so. For those of you who have heard it, sit back and enjoy it again.

It started like any other summer morning around the house, no particular rush to get ready or go anywhere. At that point in our childhood—before happy pills—Joni was renowned for her ill-tempered morning routine. In fact, I can’t recall a day between first grade and when I moved out at 25 that she didn’t have some sort of curse-filled, obscenity-laced meltdown. Really. People never believed us that Joni went absolutely bonkers every single day because she was generally a quiet person otherwise. Senior Smoke insisted that I was nuts for a decade until he finally witnessed a midday meltdown/tirade, after which he told me that I was underexaggerating the severity of her tantrums and apologized.

On this particular morning Joni and I were tweens and Christine was about 8 or 9. Joni was downstairs, so I turned to Christine and said, “Hey, let’s hide all of her underwear!” Even now, it seemed like an innocent, goofy joke, and I swear, that’s all it was supposed to be. We both figured she’d turn to us, say something like, “Real funny guys,” and we’d give it back. So I cleaned out the drawer and hid it all under a pillow on her bed.

Well, when she went to get ready for a shower, Joni came into the room, opened her drawer, noticed the underwear was missing and . . . . went absolutely ballistic, a top-level banshee breakdown, screaming and spewing cusses that’d make a merchant marine blush! Christine and I were stunned—I mean it was so obvious that we took everything out of the drawer—but before we could step in, the future whore bolted out of the room screaming, “MOOOOOM!”

I quickly turned to Christine and said, “Hey, let’s put it all back.” It’d be funny, right? She agreed, so I went and got all the underwear, stuffed them back in the drawer and scurried down the hall. Just as I was ducking into my room, Joni stormed past with my mother—looking very annoyed (uh oh?)—in tow.

Okay, since I was out of the room now, all I got was the audio portion of events; Christine filled in the visuals later.

Joni [standing in front of her dresser, very angry]: “I’m telling you, I don’t have any underwear in here, not one!”

Mom [even angrier]: “And I’m telling you if there’s even *one* pair in there, you’re in trouble!”

Joni [jerks open drawer]: “See, not a . .. . .” [looks down, mouth drops open] “How did—”

*SMACK! SMACK!*

Joni: “No! *SMACK!* They weren’t *SMACK! SMACK!* there a *SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!* minute ago *SMACK! SMACK!* I swear *SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!* No! *SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!* Nooooooo!!! *SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!*

—and so on as Joni literally got the beating of a lifetime!

Oh, it was glorious to have set up a sibling to get whipped so! Especially a sibling that you think had it coming for years of tirades and meltdowns—apparently a feeling shared by my mother as she completely uncorked like I’d never seen. I’ll always remember that I was literally on the floor of my room (I can still see the red-white-and-blue looped carpet—hey, it was the late 70s), writhing in hysterics, crying from laughing so hard that my sister was getting all but murdered (from the sounds of it), and it was ALL MY FAULT! A perfect sibling moment.

Christine said she had her face in her pillow because she was laughing so hard. It was a truly beautiful moment in life, like having a chocolate sundae while watching the sun set, or when Inigo Montoya catches up with the six-fingered man at the end of The Princess Bride. Ah, you can’t make these moments up, just relish them. I do.

Eventually, my mom wore her hand out on Joni’s skinny butt and left her in a battered, crying, red pile of tears. Christine and I were in tears, too—from laughter! Being the caring siblings we were, we waited a week to confess.

Joni was a little upset about it, but curiously, my mom laughed. I guess Joni did have it coming after all …

Anyway, love—and already miss—ya’ whore! Here’s hoping you’ve got lots of underwear in your new home!