The boys’ idea of domestic bliss is something like a dysfunctional couple that’s alternately fucking and fighting, the cops a regular presence at the front door. Violence is just part of life. You wrestle. You rip out a chunk of your combatant’s hair. You claw your opponent’s flesh. If things swing too far out of your favor, you scream, cry, and call the cops, aka Mommy and Daddy.
Violence isn’t the biggest part of the boys’ relationship. It’s just the most, well, violent. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say that 90% of the time they spend together, they’re the perfect couple. “Tell Mommy I’m gonna make Scotty breakfast in the morning,” Cartter told me at bedtime one night. The next morning, I found that not only had he made breakfast, he’d drawn up a menu for Scotty to select from. Scotty had checked the box next to #2, the most exotic offering: sausage tacos and pancakes, going with syrup and vitamins as his “sidekicks.” I later learned that sausage tacos are not made with the round sausages; they’re made with the hot dog sausages. I imagine it’s episodes like these that lead the battered spouse to say to the interventionist, “You just don’t understand.”
It’s what I told Matt Gruca over drinks when he asked if the boys were “pretty much a packaged deal” before telling me they’d grow out of it. “You don’t understand,” I protested. “They don’t want to. They think that when they grow up, they’re going to live together and have babies.” Frequent violent spats are no matter. Together forever; that’s the plan.
Last night at dinner, I put the boys’ commitment to lifelong dysfunctional brother marriage to the test in Scotty’s new favorite game, Would You Rather. Lots of the time, Scotty uses the game as an excuse to say the most outlandish things he can think of: “Would you rather be a giant penis or a giant butt?” Other times, he gets really morbid: “Would you rather fall from the sky and smash all your bones or get in a car crash?” His question at the dinner table was, “Would you rather have money and no food, or food and no money?” By money he meant one dollar, and by food he meant a potato. I don’t know why the underlying question with Scotty is often something like, “What would you like to cause your bones to explode?” or “How would you prefer to starve?” but whether he’s being silly, morbid, or both, he definitely hogs the airtime once he gets going. If you see an opening, and you don’t want to be smothered by giant penises, you better take it.
Last night, I seized my moment and turned the tables with this little doozy: “Would you rather marry a pretty girl or be alone forever and never see your brother again?” The boys stared at each other, each quiet and waiting on the other to speak first, knowing they’d been trapped.
Scotty smiled eyeing his brother and hesitantly offered, “Maybe a girl . . .”
Cartter was not so willing to give in, though. He deflected before recovering himself, ready to play hardball. “Would you rather have a mommy and no daddy or a daddy and no mommy?” he asked. Apparently, in Cartter-Scotty Land, as long as there’s one cop around to solve your domestic disputes, you’re good.
The Raging Elitist 