Family, Continued

            Bubba has close to seventy years; black, yellow and missing teeth; shirts with spots of piss; his own short-hand, with which he’s written at least one novel.

My plan for when he dies is to attend the post-death house cleaning and investigate his computer, library and folders in order to find his writings. Luckily I believe I am the only person in the family who has the slightest interest, but really I can’t wait to know. 

A brief history of Bubba: Born 1946, the first of five, unplanned, the reason his father did not finish college after war. As an adolescent fairly social, had girlfriends, idolized Roy Orbison, too smart for his own good, agoraphobia. So I’m told. He never moved out and lived with his parents until their deaths in 1992, mother, and 2008, father.  He occupied the role of uncle in a dutiful though idiosyncratic way. The movies he put on for us were 1960s romances with protagonists who had fetishes for exotic women and the orient. He made us macaroni and cheese, and then bathed us and gave us shaving cream in bowls to play with. He owned a computer before that was in any way common. I remember its black screen and green type. On his hallway he had constructed a collage, at least two feet by four. Most of the images are amorphous and dark in my memory, but one stands out and always did. Centered in the pictures was one cutout of a pouty sci-fi babe, with full and sharp breasts, an eighties physique and tan, her space suit a metallic interpretation of the Baywatch uniform. I want to say that somewhere in this picture’s vicinity was a similarly buff and bronzed muscleman.