Hottest midwest hobbies: cigarettes and roller skating
Article by Emma Langas Art by Jennifer Martinez
It only takes my mom one glance at my swollen lymph nodes to declare I have mono. Two months earlier I hooked up with an English major boy and I’ve paid for it in full. I haven’t felt fully rested in a month and my sinuses are so swollen, breathing, and swallowing have become a chore. I vow to be celibate, or at least ensure all future hookups don’t listen to Elliot Smith. My liver aches and so does my Midwestern heart when I realize I can’t participate in Blackout Wednesday, the alcohol-filled tradition the day before Thanksgiving. The best way to celebrate corn and potatoes is to drink its distilled version and barf in the bathroom while your uncle spouts Republican rhetoric a room away. With a viral infection and, perhaps worse, a body full of shame, I am stuck watching Sing 2 in the basement, waiting to pick up my drunk siblings from the only bar in our suburban town, contemplating the benefits of becoming a born-again virgin.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been assigned the pitiful role of designated driver for my siblings. Whenever I am home for a break, I spend most of my gas mileage toting around my sister and brother as a glorified Uber, with no pay and no appreciation. Sometimes even my parents force me in the driver’s seat. However, no one abuses my generosity more than my older brother, Will. Two years my senior and yet he has the tremendous power of making me feel infinitely small, a feat only an older brother can achieve. In high school, Will was the epitome of a golden boy. He was a white man in STEM who planned his daily schedules in his countless moleskine notebooks and always had a tall leggy blonde girlfriend on the dance team, a habit that eventually caused fighting among the team. His first girlfriend was a Mormon with eight siblings who got caught posting topless on Snapchat with a bottle of Svedka between her boobs, but by the time they made things official, she was in her redemption era, ala Taylor from Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. She returned to regularly attending church and hopefully drinking better brands of alcohol, but thankfully because I did not have my license yet, I was spared from being their chauffeur.
Miss Mormon and Will had a messy breakup the following summer, ending in her dropping all his borrowed clothes on our front steps. Inexplicably, she also had some unkind words to say about me, an innocent bystander in their sinful love affair. Truthfully, I had no business being near my brother at all in high school. I had never had a semblance of a relationship, besides my Snapchat military boyfriend in 8th grade. I was in Model UN and choir, and my only experience partying was at the cast parties after school musicals. Will would often let me tag along with him and hang out with his friends, but I always felt I was a dorky sidekick he couldn’t shake loose. We got along, mostly, until I would ask him for a ride. Despite my older siblings driving him everywhere, and despite the fact my parent’s sole reason for giving him a car was so they wouldn’t have to drive me everywhere, every time I would ask for a favor I was met with passive-aggressive grunts and an interrogation on if I had exhausted all my options. He couldn’t seem to understand that I did not have friends with licenses like he did at my age, or that I didn’t have his breadth of friends in general.
Bono as a frighteningly sexy lion fades to black and the credits roll. This is my fourth time watching the movie and still, I wipe away tears. I can’t quite explain the deeply emotional effect Bono-Lion’s dead wife has on me as Scarlett Johanssen-Porcupine belts out U2. My phone rings – it’s my sister telling me to pick her up, a surprising ask considering it’s only midnight. Whatever, now that the movie is over, I have nothing else to stay home for. My long-time crush was watching with me but was too high to have a comprehensible conversation, and it was becoming increasingly clear he would be getting back together with his ex soon. Not that I could instigate anything with my lymph node necklace. I pack up, say my goodbyes, and leave for the two-minute drive, trying my hand at parallel parking. My sister and my brother come out with six friends, and I sigh at the impending drive. As I prepare myself for the daunting task of talking to drunk people sober, I spot a silver lining approaching the car: my brother’s best friend, Mark.
By the time Will’s second girlfriend came around (on the same dance team), he was in college and I had my license. I liked her much better. She was a year in between us and helped me escape my Model UN bubble. She introduced me to cigarettes and roller skating, arguably the two hottest hobbies. The only reason this era in my life is stained is not because of her at all, but because of my brother deciding that I owed him two years worth of rides. I would have provided them without complaint if he didn’t ask me at the most inconvenient times. Despite my integration into parties with alcohol present (although some of these were still theater cast parties), I hadn’t yet progressed to staying out past curfew. And I definitely hadn’t progressed to sneaking out at three a.m., which often became an issue when I refused to drive him home after his call woke me up. Will and I got along better when he went to college. Him, his girlfriend, and I would often get drunk in our basement together and gossip. Still, moments like these had their limits. To quell his growing resentment, I picked them up from his friend’s house every time they wanted a ride before curfew, which often got me in trouble with my mom when she would find water bottles full of Svedka in my backseat. Some things never change.
My siblings and their gaggle of friends pile into my car, packed like sardines. There are a variety of characters stuffing themselves into my Hyundai, but my eyes stay locked on the 6’4’’ boy finagling his long legs into my trunk. Mark is quiet, and I don’t know much about him besides the fact his parents are insane, but he is so beautiful nothing else matters. I have had a crush on him for forever and the fact he plays D1 volleyball only intensified the appeal. My sister thanks me for driving, my brother couldn’t care less, as if this was expected, and then the crew starts to debate the best deep-dish pizza. I don’t care; I tune them out and look in the rearview mirror for far longer than I need to. My parallel parking attempt was shotty, but I try to sexily pull out in one motion anyways. God, maybe I do like driving my siblings around. If Mark joined every single time, I wouldn’t complain.
The past summer, Will was freshly single and living in California for the summer, and I enjoyed my newfound freedom with my car. My sister Mary became my passenger, and the difference was astounding. Rides were short, at a reasonable hour, and especially exciting when she was drunk. There was no significant other to leave behind a mess or gossip behind my back. Instead, we talked about coworker drama and listened to One Direction. It was enlightening to see how much less stifling a car could be when I was actually part of a conversation, and there was no built-up animosity. In the same way Will can make me feel small, Mary has always made me feel larger than life. In my long line of service as a sibling chauffeur, it was only in these car rides with my sister where I felt my generosity came with no strings attached. Truthfully, I felt lucky just to spend time with her.
I drop them off at home, sneakily watching them (Mark) out the window as they yammer in the backyard. For the first time in a month, I feel energized. My nose cleared, the aches in my neck long forgotten. I’ve held so much resentment over the years for being forced into the front seat, but at the same time, I’d never tried to reap the benefits. Admittedly, there are far worse fights to have with siblings than driving. And I know logically that this divide and anger I feel towards Will is mostly internal, a manifestation of years of insecurity that will one day burst like an airbag. Until that day occurs, why can I not seize every opportunity to make this situation good for me? The following summer, when Will asked me if I could drive him and Mark home, I didn’t complain once. In fact, I offered to do it as many times as he needed.