brothers

i love my sisters. we know each other in that profound way that only time and blood can develop. i depend on them for it. i never resented their gender or tried to convert them into boys, but i think, as i began, early on, to have boy crushes, some of those friendships may have been predicated on my desire for a bro. i've always wanted one, or two. someone to compete against. someone older as a sign-post scout, or younger, the kid i could look after and protect. maybe i bought the idea that brothers, when young, fooled around and in sexy innocence played with each other or in front of each other and found out what that tent in your pants was all about, but it goes deeper than that. i wanted someone (dad not being the greatest in the bonding department) to lock in with, to compare notes, to challenge my manhood or dispel/forgive my weakness. if i 'made' brothers (the way they 'make' members in the Mafia) it was with my first friends. we walked the forest arm-in-arm as if blood related, brothers by proxy. we could cut a finger, share the cells and belong to a soul river that we self-created. that's how technicolor those first glorified friends translated. i have your back, you have mine. in Lonesome Dove Augustus Mcrae and Woodrow Call are equal to this archetype. neither was complete without the other as a foil, as a measure against himself and as a trustworthy, truth-telling pair of eyes. man-love without sexual rising. that's who i wanted. a Captain Call or a Gus Mcrae in the next door saddle. i guess i found them, these part-time brothers past, present and future in the long trail of best friends. they sustain the parts of myself about which i'm ok: loyalty, directness, an open heart, a crazy imagination, a symbiotic view, a foolish leap off the cliff and a willingness to look like shit on any given day.