Everybody's Got One

When I was a kid, my brother Ralph* would sing songs that made prominently use of the word "love" replacing that word with the word "drugs."  For example, he would sing the song "All You Need Is Love" as "All You Need Is Drugs."  I suppose he thought that was clever.

He was at the time a big proponent of drugs, most specifically marijuana.  When I was in high school, I was adamantly against all drugs, for many reasons, among them how dopey it made my big brothers when they were high**.  I'm not sure what he thought he was doing trying to convince a fifteen-year-old boy to find marijuana & smoke it, but I'm certain my own inexperience - I was probably quoting him dubious facts & figures I had learned in a health textbook - was just as weird & annoying.

At the time we talked - & I remember this for some reason as clear as day, I remember him being in my bedroom, & the two of us looking out the window, & him bringing up drugs for no reason at all.  & specifically I remember him mention, because he knew I was a big fan of the Beatles, that John Lennon says at the end of the song "I Am The Walrus," "Everybody smoke pot."

"That's not what he's saying," I said.  "He's saying, 'Everybody's got one.'"

My brother said, "What the hell does that mean?"

I told him I had recently read*** John Lennon's last interview in Playboy where he talked about the songs & he said it meant a penis, a vagina, whatever - everybody's got one.

My brother scoffed.  "Of course he would say that," he said.  "He has to."

There was a moment there when I wondered if my brother knew anything about John Lennon.  I said, "He's very forthcoming in that interview about drug use, like his heroin addiction, & the fact that he & Yoko smoke pot.  Why would he choose to lie about it at this point, especially when he's devastatingly honest about all the rest of the songs they ask him about?"

My brother didn't have a response to that, but he stubbornly insisted, as is the way of my family, that he was right & the person who wrote the song was wrong.

This was part of a revelation that continued the process of my alienation from my family - both in my desire not to interact with them because of their defensiveness & in their reaction not to interact with me because of my tendency to shoot down, with facts & evidence, their generally wrong assertions.  The revelation was this: my family in general often doesn't know what they're talking about.  My brother had been a Beatles fan before I was born & still thought he knew better than John Lennon.  Could understand the motivations better than the man himself.  Would rather believe what he thought was true than accept what the person himself said was true.  This would happen again & again in my teen years, whether it was about music or politics or history.

It occurs to me that this story is completely without a good ending, & there isn't one - not that I remember - but if I am allowed to make up an ending, which I think I should be able to, it would go like this:

My brother just sort of shook his head at me, giving me a look of disgust & almost muttering "fucking know-it-all" under his breath.  Then he paused & said, "So do you wanna buy some pot?"

Really, I wish it ended that way.  & maybe one day I'll believe it did.

* Yes, I have a brother named Ralph.
** I have three big brothers, but I am referring here to the younger two.  My oldest big brother is quite the square, & has probably never tried pot.
*** I had at that time consumed as much information about the Beatles as I could, including several biographies.