If Irony Were God, a Spiritual fanfic

If Irony Were God

If irony were god, you would be an atheist. Every night you watch him move and listen to his voice soaring across the crowd in sweeping waves of power, grinding into the adults and children alike, and you wonder. Who is the angel in the black garments, brushing sweat-soaked hair away from his glimmering eyes? Not your brother, your idol. The peculiar little boy with the atrocious words and temperate hands is not embodied by this fair demeanor. Or was he inside all along, wearing a deceptive Halloween mask? No, you do not recognize this beautiful, imperfect being that stalks the stage with his microphone. He has your brother's hands and your brother's smile, but he cannot be him.

“What are you doing, Ichiro?”

A childish question, really. Simple, unobtrusive. He always answered you, just because you were Shizuko. His baby sister whom he could deny nothing. Had you been an adult or fellow child his dark eyes would have burnt you alive in resentment for interrupting his work. But you are Shizuko, the toddling little shadow, and he loves you.

“I'm drawing, Shizuko. See?” He answers matter-of-factly, holding out the pad of paper for your nearsighted eyes.

He turns the ordinary notebook toward you, revealing a sketch scrawled in pencil and red marker. You think of it as magic, this transformation of white lined paper into pictorial stories. Ichiro always draws unusual things and you cannot help but marvel at how enriched the paper looks now that it is filled with something bold and brilliant. Monsters spill from a closet that you recognize as your own, scampering over bedpost and floorboard in gleeful malevolence. In the center sits a cardboard bo, with two small heads peeking from within the dark depths. You recognize your favorite cross-hatched yakata (ridiculously over-sized) and Ichiro's pale round face. It seems that the monsters wish to climb inside the box with you both and yet they fail to reach quite far enough with stunted arms to spill over the top. The picture frightens you slightly but you take comfort in the pudgy marker-smudged hand that grasps the paper. At the age of six you do not entirely understand the symbolism, thinking these pictures are only representations of the characters that run rampant through the horror films that you watch together on so many nights.

“It's not real, Shizuko. Don't worry. I'll never let them hurt you.” Ichiro assures you, all seriousness and honesty.

“I know.” You respond, reaching to touch the drawing with hesitant fingers.

You almost expect it to bite you but it does not. It stays cold and lifeless beneath your skin imprisoned by the lines of the paper and your brother's firm marker strokes. Out of the corner of your sight you see Ichiro smiling, proud that his sister is willing to be courageous, rather than call him a freak and shove him into puddles as the other neighborhood children do.

When you were young, an odd pair you made. An inquisitive immigrant girl trailing after an ashen boy with an intense gaze and a quiet disposition. He was not liked at school nor did he have any friends aside from you. They laughed at him, looked through him as if he were made of dark air, called him bitter names. Freak, tilty-eye, pussy, dork, bitch, ugly. All were titles that he pretended to ignore until you were both in the safety of your cramped shared bedroom. Then he would lie on his bed and draw violent pictures. His force rent the fragile paper with the vigor of his strokes and impaled the figures that danced along the surface as tears fell like rain to drown his drawings. You would sit on your bed across the small sanctuary watching and feeling pain for the person that you loved most of all.

By the time he was sixteen he'd fallen to the criticism and been victimized by drug-abuse, unable to function when the only people that cared for him were his equally Japanese family. There was a girl that he had been quite infatuated with and she had publicly disgraced herself with the dirty pictures that were circulating round the high school. Hopeless, your brother felt, disappointed with the world. But you loved him anyhow. You offered him life with each glance, each delicate caress on a shoulder or cheek. When he passed out from cocaine you made certain that he was invulnerable to the cold surrounds. When he would take ill from the poison rushing through his bloodstream you held his head up as he vomited. Tenderly you whispered soothing things like your mother had used to do. Afterward, he would always begin to weep softly and his gaze would pin you like a butterfly to cork-board with its overwhelming sorrow. He would whisper ‘Daisuke desu ka, Shizuko' because it was more significant than 'thank you'. You would reply that you loved him too, and pet his sweat-soaked hair. Sometimes you would press a kiss to his forehead or cheek unheeding of the cold wetness of his skin. You wanted to care for him as he had done for you when the both of you were small.

You were the only being that knew the secret. It was yours alone and you declined to share it. Possessive, you were, of the secret knowledge. The truth that your brother was beautiful. He denied it habitually. He would glare at his reflection and voice his hatred of himself. No one could love such an ugly creature, he would say, with his small funny black eyes and frail features. No one could love a man with cerebral palsy, who spoke two languages and required braces to walk. But you would shake your head and come to stand next to him.

“Ichiro, that isn't true. You're very beautiful.”

He would glance at you in skepticism, yet there was a softness there for the words of unconditional affection. Gentle as the whisper of fabric across skin, you would take his round face in your hands and look directly into his eyes. With your fingers you would map the underlying beauty, tracing his delicate nezumi eyes and petite perfect nose with all the delicacy of touching glass. You'd run your fingertips across the playful curves of his soft lips, and the long sable eyelashes that tickled your skin as he blinked.

“You're beautiful, but I'm glad no one else can see it.” You would say, lovingly brushing your fingers feather-light against the twin arched hollows that appeared at the corners of Ichiro's mouth when he smiled. “I like being the only one who knows. If everyone could see under the extra layers that hide it people would fall at your feet all the time.”

He would laugh then, never believing.

You loved his laugh above all else because it was not perfect. Pretty, but not perfect, just like him.

Now your secret is uncovered. Everyone knows how beautiful your brother is. He speaks only English and draws dragons curling round his eyes and just as you predicted on many occasions: they love him. The unattractive skin of childhood has fallen away and left a certain loveliness in its place. You despise it. Do not authorize the way that the girls gaze at your sibling. You want to scowl at their painted features, to pull Ichiro close and beg him to be your brother again, the one that you recall. You do not like the lack of strain that it takes to see the beauty. You once had to concentrate, to strip away the outer with your eyes and find the shine beneath, mirrored in his eyes and his grin. Now you need but glance and there it is.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. You never meant it to… but how silly it was to dupe yourself into assuming that you had the upper hand. Fate has a humor more sour and ironic than Ichiro’s had ever been. Of course you remember when the second person looked beneath and found the buried treasure. His name was Teetonka and he was a friend of yours that was introduced by a mutual friend’s acquaintance. He was of no use to you as a friend for he was strange and passionate in a manner that you found appallingly fascinating but somewhat intimidating. Yet you presented him to your brother anyhow. Ichiro had been changing all the time, growing less the ugly duckling and more the swan. You felt a slight safety yet, but you hadn't expected Teetonka to be the kind of person who knew how to look at someone just as you do. Teetonka was an earthen, uncultivated sort of beautiful that knew what it was to be ethnically alienated. You could not miss how they looked at one another, Ichiro and Tee. Could not dismiss the shy glances that pretended not to be staring and failed to look away agilely enough to pass unnoticed. The way Ichiro would laugh nervously and just as awkward as an adolescent. They found something in one another that they enjoyed and it drew them close like the positive ends of two magnets. Jealous, confused, but accepting you were. Ichiro couldn't belong to you for much longer. You were adults now and it was not fair to act as if you held some particular claim. He was your brother, that was all.

The night that it happened is embedded in your mind like a hole burnt in the smooth wooden surface of a table by carelessly dropped cigarettes. The tour bus for the Goth-Punk regional sensations was still and your drunken legs thanked it for the lack of motion. You were lying on the floor gazing up at the ceiling as Paul asked you ridiculous questions that you never truly contemplated. As guitarist, you were of greater rank than the replaceable Korean-American drummer. Tee was cuddling with your brother on the sofa (less drunk than yourself but still imbibed with alcohol) like two kittens tossed into a leopard-print basket. The world seemed strange and pale and you wondered in the whirling turnstile of your mind why you felt a sense of gnawing dread. Ichiro was exhausted by the previous show and no doubt numbed by drink. You found him so beautiful that you suspected you might be choked or crushed, his cheeks flamed subtle pink and his posture laxly peaceful. Tee was the envy of the moment, his fingers threading through Ichiro's soft sweat-soaked hair as the latter's head fell onto the younger roadie’s shoulder. You watched in fascination as a transformation took place.

A murmur from Tee and Ichiro lifted his head with eyes half-lidded and glassy. Ichiro responded in a hushed tone and you cursed the buzz in your ears for making it difficult to hear. What did they say? Had they said anything at all? Difficult to determine. Your eyelids drooped despite how you fought against Endymion's curse and in that moment the distance between your brother and Tee closed. As you forced your sleepy eyes to widen the sight that met your eyes was like the crucifying nails being driven through your wrists. Their first kiss was not the drunken, sloppy one that you wished it was. No, it was deep and meaningful just as you had always wanted for yourself. Just as you had imagined, though in your mind it had been you in Tee's place.

But now Ichiro was lost to you, and somehow... you were relieved. Because you never could have given him what he deserved. You would have brought ruin to one another. Consequently, you didn't hate Tee for it. It was impossible to hate Teetonka Greygrass, with his sweetness and enthusiastic nature. He did not know what he had done. Neither did your brother, apparently, because their kiss continued until they were forced to part for breath. Did they realize your eyes were locked upon them, on the postures that belayed their unwillingness to be more than an inch from touching? Studying the gazes that seemed to be welded onto one another? Their world had shrunk to the size of one another for the moment and you were the intruder. And then they were again tasting one another's dreams.

You did not sleep that night, instead listening to the shy murmurs and the sliding of skin over skin. Woe to the one who gave woman hearing. You hated the short distance of your bunks now, cursing your dysfunctional foresight. How you wept with bitter loss into the forgiving softness of your pillow, wanting to suffocate your senses and never have heard the cry of Teetonka's name in that fragile moment of ecstasy. And as the gray dawn bled into the black sky like your brother's clumsy attempts as Kanji you rose to paced the bus in agitation. Curtains were drawn round the bunk behind yours and you could not ascertain whether or not you should peek into the private world of your older brother and brand the truth to your mind. When sunlight shone into the windows you felt a hand on your shoulder and though you could not see him with your glasses discarded you knew who touched you. No other had the same delicacy of hand that your brother did.

“Are you okay, Shizuko?” He asked you, and the lingering spur of girlhood demanded that you tell him precisely how you felt.

But as you left off turning your glasses between your hands and placed them in their home atop your features you found you had not the heart to break this inquisitive creature before you. Beneath the concern in his eyes leapt an emotion that had been too scarce a visitor to your sibling's heart. In truth, you loved him too much to crumple his happiness. You would like to think that you are selfish, but (as it is often with two siblings) that is not honest. He would have done anything to make you happy and in turn you would impale yourself before laying a tear in his soul.

“No. Just restless.” You answered, lying smoothly and without guilt.

He laughed, black eyes sparkling with a light that never seemed to dance there when you were children.

“You mean that you've been scarred for life. I imagine it is no fun to listen to your brother being fucked five feet from your head.”

You wince at his crude wording, disagreeing despite yourself. It was not so ugly as that, you think. Sex becomes making love when two persons care for one another as Ichiro and Tee do. He thinks that you are disgusted and you let him take this illusion to his consciousness.

They are still shy as children playing games of kiss and run on dusty playgrounds, your brother and Tee. For the media they are wild and brash but when you all fall back to reality they remain sweet in a way that you cannot fathom. You suppose that they truly love one another, to be so innocent about it. Ichiro knows, you suspect, that it hurts you. He will not understand your reasons for the pain but in his perceptive manner he finds your loneliness and works to soothe it. You smother the longing that rebels against your calm demeanor when they sit so near and whole. And your brother spots it every time, motioning for you to come and sit with them. He will pull you into his lap at times perching his chin on your fragile shoulder as his arms wind you in their sincere embrace. Tee will smile and lean his head against your arm as if you were all divisions of one whole. In these moments you feel accepted and you may forget for a precious instant that you can never have the only thing you truly want.

A fine line it is between the love of family and the care for a lover, in some cases forsaken or melded into an oval. Your mother once showed you the word in an American dictionary. You are certain that Teetonka must have an accommodating name for such a blasphemy, for he has given bright words to temper his homosexuality and your transsexual bassist, Koniko. Your heart does no wrong, you think, in committing the taboo sin of incest. There are precarious instances when you and Ichiro are too close or too friendly or his gaze rests too long on the fullness of your mouth. But these are never spoken of and in the safe eclipse of night when you feel secure enough to indulge any thought that surfaces, you wonder if he even knows that they exist.

If irony were god you would be an atheist. If your brother was an angel you would urge him to the skies. If the devil was Teetonka Greygrass, you might say he was not real. And if you weren't Itatomi Shizuko, you would be miserable. But you are not deadened by sorrow. Because even when you feel apart you have but to hold out your hands. Ichiro will take one and Tee the other with a strength they can only produce because they have joined inside. Quite abruptly, their happiness together is more than enough for your satisfaction. Even when you ache for those lost things and drown in the pain of the new there are some things that never change, and others that transform for the better. Nothing can stay forever. In truth would you want it to?

No, you would not. Because in recovering that which you miss, you lose all that was gained in the days between. Isn't that ironic?

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