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Finding Tulsa 23

how she glossed over the facts until I burst out, loud enough for Dan to
hear upstairs, with the fact that I was gay, and there wasn’t anything they
could do about it.
All I knew was I had somehow gained power over the situation by
showing the enormity of my secrets. I would choose the discussion. I
would direct and cut the scene as I saw fit. I think that’s what gave Dan
and me the biggest thrill, making things in our way, imitative of our icons
and heroes, of course. But we got to make our childhoods.
That almost got ruined when Dan discovered me mid-carrot. Before
that, we’d always been conspirators, collaborators. That changed when we
grew apart.
Sex can do that, even when you don’t have it.

Before my brother discovered my affection for produce, and before I
fell in love with Dick Thorson and other college boys with tall bodies and
sweet smiles, things were innocent and all crammed together with giggles
and fits.
Sometimes people asked if we were non-identical twins, which is
not true, though we sometimes nodded yes in response, a private joke.
Between me and Dan, my mom had had a miscarriage. One of our sickest
jokes was picking on the imaginary in-between brother. He was a great
little buffer when we couldn’t beat up on each other once we realized we
only had each other.
Our first film was no masterpiece, nothing like our Jekyll and Hyde.
The Christmas of 1974, I was twelve and Dan was thirteen-and-a-half. We
got a GAF Super8 Movie Camera and a GAF Super8 Projector. They’re
still both up in the attic in Brookside rotting and broken, but when we got
them, it was magic. We rarely fought over who shot what. Somebody had
to shoot, and somebody had to be shot. We traded.
Christmas Day, we ran around the house shooting the Christmas tree,
the cats, and our parents smiling, the glaring movie light attached to the
tiny camera like a headlight on antlers. We kept shooting long after the
film ran out, and days later, we both raced to the Giant Store photo de-
partment to get the little reel. Home again, we carefully wove it through
the projector’s guts as if it were precious gold thread.
We laughed at our incompetence, but inside, we both knew we’d
failed. It wasn’t art. We didn’t even want to show it to our parents, but
relented. When they mentioned showing it to some of their friends, we
cringed, cashed our Christmas checks from our grandparents, and bought
four more rolls of film. Then we planned.