Scott Sloan. The very name gives me shivers, I can’t stand the sound of it. So who is it? you  wonder. Is this Scott Sloan a serial killer, a Russian Dictator? A catty and fearsome night burglar? An annoying telemarketer? Gasp! Or one of those crazy Jehovah’s Witnesses who bang on your front door at 6am to give you a bible and tell you you’re going to hell?!? 

It’s worse! It’s my scummy brother! 

Before we get started, let’s take a few moments to trip down memory lane: 

If you went to Mandarin High, you may remember him~ tall, wigger kid with a painfully limited vocabulary who wore gold teeth and an earring, who sagged his Sean Johns to his knees and wore so many tacky, bargain basement pimp chains that it hurt your eyes to look at him. He hardly ever came to class and if he did, he certainly didn’t do the work. He dropped out before he was old enough to drive and spent the rest of his teenage years stealing my grandparents’ car every night and sneaking it back before dawn! Stealing money from family members and sucking my grandfathers’ retirement up his nose!

Was there any discipline? Were there any consequences? No, of course not! The jerk had never ending car privileges and then when he wanted money, all he had to do was ask for it! He would always get it too, usually more than he asked for; still that didn’t stop him from creeping in and looting Grandpa’s wallet while he slept, now did it? He stole from every person in our household, he broke into an aunt’s safe and took her to the cleaners as well~ he dicked over our father, our cousins, people we didn’t even know. 

Even me. ME! He took my money, my movies, my cds! The ratbag actually sold my computer and said he “lost” it! AHEM!!!! He supposedly “lost” everything I had ever written, every single word! Every thought, every article, every book report, every original story; there was nothing left. He evaporated hundreds of thousands of words, ten years of perfect punctuation and whispers of a lucrative writing career! With a slash-and-burn flick of his wrist, he annihilated a poet! Obliterated her entire repertoire! 

Oh, he said he was “sorry”! To prove he was sorry, he bought me a new journal! A dumb little spiral notebook with a tasteless black velveteen cover! Cost him a whopping $8.95! Entire steam clouds full of asterisks and exclamation points were flying out of my ears!!!! I didn’t know whether to cry or kill!

Strangely there were no ramifications for the great SCOTT SLOAN, there never were. No one thought it was a big deal when clearly I could write “newer and better” things in the future, things I could actually sell and make money from.

(OMIGAWD!!! Are you freaking kidding me?!?!?)

Eventually my mother and pseudo father promised they would get me a new computer, but by then I knew better than to swallow their hollow fairy dust! Immediately (and boy, do I mean immediately!)  I started working to buy my own because I knew it was the only way I would ever get a new one  . . . except that it wasn’t; the more my brother effed up, the more I had to pay. Entire Burger King checks were confiscated,  my mother blew through that money before I even knew what had hit me! She went in my room and found my checks, cashed them without my knowledge or consent! I was never paid back and I even had to give up my senior trip to Europe! I didn’t go to grad night! The only good thing was that he kept moving out and by the time I graduated from high school, he had already been evicted from three or four apartments! 

[as a MINOR, by the way!!! Where the EFF were his parents!?!]

I didn’t know why any of this was going on (nor did I know why *I* had to follow an entirely different set of rules), but the one thing I did know was that everyone was happier when he wasn’t in the house. So when he came to me (ME!!!!),  bawling and wheezing and hiccuping because he was going to be evicted, I eagerly handed over every single penny I had received for my graduation! I thought that him moving back into our house was the worst thing that could happen, but I was wrong:

The worst thing was definitely him making off with my money, getting evicted anyway, moving back in . . . and never paying me back!!!! 

***

To this day, I swear to you, I have no idea what kind of drugs, hookers and cheap motel rooms he spent my money on; I probably don’t need to know.

Yet even then, no one held him accountable. He was not scolded, he was not reprimanded, he was not given so much as a slap on the wrist. Oh, no, definitely not! On the contrary, *I* was yelled at, *I* was given stern talkings to; but WHY? Because I was being “demanding”, I wasn’t having “faith” in my little brother!!!! I wasn’t giving him “time enough” to pay me back!!! “He’s a waiter, his money has to build!” I had to lay off, I just had to.

It’s 2019, kitties, this was around the turn of the century! He’s had plenty of time and I’ve still never seen a fraction of a cent! Not a farthing!

Out of everything my brother has done to me, every one of his messes I had to clean up, that is the ONE thing that still bothers me, the one thing that really hurts. Because he did it so easily, so callously! It meant nothing to him, he’s probably not thought about it since and why would he? Direct SCOTT SLOAN quote: “Brianne, I’ve got my own life, I can’t waste my time worrying about other people! What will that get me?”

Um. Integrity? Virtue? Moral fiber?

 Moral f***king fiber!!!!

***

I think you get the picture, but it didn’t stop there: this sort of behavior went on for more than a decade! He had us drop him off at Roadhouse Grill for work, then when we came back at lunch to surprise him, we were told he hadn’t worked there in six months! He hounded my father/ dad person to give him money to buy a “wicked sick” Del Sol, then he flipped it within two weeks~ into a lake, into a street light, something. I don’t know, I never got the full story!!! 

He lived with my mother until he was 32 and during his stint as the Chili Head of the Month, he pawned every piece of jewelry she owned! Lost it all! He took thousands and thousands [and thousands] from my her and I just want to scream!!! What kind of dope would STILL be giving him money? And how retarded would that dope have to be?!?!?

Well, certainly not more retarded than ME. Because guess who had to mop up that shit show?!

***

Now that I’ve said all this, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking I’m bitter and angry and that bitterness is like drinking poison and waiting for someone else to drop dead and BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!!! Oh, how I wish it were that simple!

I am only bringing it all up to preface a rant I will be writing in the next few days, an expose on the last six months of my life and how I’d rather have spent it in a homeless shelter or lost in the Serengeti! It was the first time in his life that my baby brother had a steady job and his own place and didn’t have to go crawling back to Mommy, the first time in his life that he had ceased being a colossal f**k-up . . . or at least had learned to shave down his f**k-ups and save them for nights and weekends!

And then there was me. Someone who through zero fault of her own had ended up shit creek, not a paddle in sight! No oar, no rower, no sculler, nothing! Nothing to do but sit there and take it, quietly imagining ways I’d make him pay for the indignity later. 

Now if I could do everything right my whole life and still end up living with my loser brother, being treated the way he treated me, I have to reevaluate everything I know about karma and kismet and all the sad, unfair ways the keebler crumbles!

I suppose the best way for me to think of it is to tell myself that Scott Sloan did not invent the hatred of sisters, just as Adolf Hitler did not invent the hatred of the Jews.

But my goodness! They both had their fun, now didn’t they?!?!?

[I think this may make one mega delightful podcast, I speak much faster than I type! STAY TUNED!]