Hey! It's Jay!

Rarely do I get the chance to be with multiple members of my family in one place at the same time. It is reserved for funerals, weddings (which are usually very soon followed by divorces), graduations (which almost never happen), and very rarely on some holidays.

This past Memorial Day was one such occurrence, bringing me together, all at once, with my father, my brother, various nieces, and a bunch of other members of the Royal Princess clan. The stories that I could write from this six-hour encounter are endless, but I want to concentrate on my half-brother's half-brother. His name is Jay.

I have memories of Jay starting when I was five years old. He worked at Disney World (still one of my favorite places). My parents used to take me there to visit him. He was about 22 and he lived in a small apartment with this 500-pound woman named Ginger. Jay had found her sleeping in the laundry room of his apartment and had taken her in to live with him.

Being five at the time, I had no idea what "gay" was or how a stereotypical homosexual man acted, but I knew that Jay was not normal. Plus I was very confused about his relationship with this Ginger, who was probably the fattest human I had ever seen at that point. Regardless, Jay was so sweet and I was very comfortable around him, so I loved the trips we would take to Disney World to see him.

In time, Jay moved back near Wisconsin where his brothers and sisters and mother lived. I next saw him when I was ten, and I knew then that he was flaming. Then I heard that Jay had HIV. This was when the news first broke about the disease AIDS, so I was devastated. I was sure he would die very quickly.

I didn't see Jay again until I was 15, and I was worried about how he would look. I was used to images of Tom Hanks covered in lesions and sad gay men crying about their emaciated AIDS-inflicted friends. But when I saw Jay, I didn't see emaciation or lesions I just saw this man--a flaming homo to be sure--but not the "typical" person with AIDS.

As a teenager, I befriended Jay all over again, as he was one of the most amusing and bizarre people I had ever met. You see, living in Florida and working at Disney World and having a quarter-ton female best friend is a pretty typical life for a male homo. I swear, it totally is. But moving up to the ass crack of rural Illinois near Wisconsin and being probably the only openly out-of-the-closet homosexual in sight is a bit weird. Especially since there is only one gay bar in a 100-mile radius.

But that's my Jay.

At our family gatherings, we are surrounded by charmers with swastika tattoos and Nascar shirts and "Git 'er Dun" hats. They are the last people on earth that anyone would think could accept homosexuality. And they don't. But they have to deal with it because Jay's whole family accepts him and the fact that not only is he homosexual, he is a flaming homosexual. He doesn't advertise the AIDS thing, but he doesn't keep it a secret either.

Jay taunts our relatives, too. He talks about how men are while in the company of burly homo-haters and never gets his ass kicked. Sure, comments are made behind his back, but this motherfucker is tough and will fight anyone. And no one wants to make Jay bleed because they're all afraid of his disease.

Not only is Jay on a heavy regimen of HIV drugs, which have intense side effects, he also regularly consumes valium, narcotics, marijuana, and booze. For some reason, everything balances everything else out and he's been fine, at least until he gets some alcohol in him. Every time I see Jay he has like six more stories for me about when he got drunk lately.

At the Memorial Day barbecue, there were hardcore Navy guys present, which prompted Jay to go on and on about how sailors parade around in drag and all buttfuck each other. I saw fire in one of the navy men's eyes--either out of anger or the fact that he wanted a taste of Jay for himself--but since Jay was surrounded by family, this man could not do anything.

Most recently Jay, who's now 43, told me that at one point he walked into a bar, started drinking, and when he came to, he was covered in water and shackled in Greyslake jail. It turns out that he got into a huge brawl, went to jail, and when they placed him in his cell he ripped out the sprinkler system for the little jail and it flooded and they had to evacuate the whole place and take all the prisoners out until they could fix the problem. And Jay didn't remember any of this.

Two weeks later, Jay was getting loaded again and called 911. He felt very bad about what he had done as far as ripping the sprinkler system out of the jail and flooding it, and even though his court date had not come up yet, he demanded to be arrested again. The cops would not take him seriously and just told him to hang up and leave them alone. After about the thirtieth time Jay telephoned the Greyslake police department demanding he be rearrested, they decided to comply and came to his house and he ended up in jail...again.

The entire police department knows who he is. I like to think of him as the gay G.G. Allin. Well, I guess G.G. Allin could be considered gay, but he was everything (like me). Either way, Jay is a genius. I wish more people recognized it. I don't know why there are so many amazing people in my family. Like I have said before, I'm pretty sure it's due to inbreeding and severe childhood abuse, but Jay is definitely one of a kind.

He was raised by a horrible, mean father. His name was Jack and he was beaten to death with a baseball bat at a bar by a bunch of Puerto Ricans to whom he owed money. Jack once locked my brother in the trunk of a car for eight hours straight on an extremely hot day and almost killed him. Jack also used to take the kids to the park and sit on a bench and shoot heroin right there in front of them all. He was a very short man, about five feet tall, and seemed to have one of the worst cases of the Napoleon complex of anyone I've ever heard of.

Thank God I never had the chance to meet Jack. He molested little girls. My dad almost killed him and eventually was responsible for throwing him in jail for a lot of years after he found out about how badly he was abusing Tommy and Patty, my brother and sister. This man was Jay's father and namesake. Jay and I were comparing our prescription drugs and I looked at the label on Jay's prescriptions and they were under the name of "Jack Thorson." When I saw this, memories of stories I had heard about this man flooded my head, and I suddenly realized that Jay was subject to all of this horrible man's abuse.

It is no surprise as to why a lot of my family members turned out the way they did. This is another reason Jay is a hero to me, growing up with that type of abuse, living through that, living through being a homosexual way before rainbow flags and pride parades, being one of the earlier people diagnosed with HIV(in the pre-Magic-Johnson years). And I love Jay's stories, and the way he floods jails and fucks the system. A lot of people feel bad for him. I look up to him. In my opinion he's one of the bravest, most humorous, and angelic people in my family.