Uncle Charlie

A Letter to My Father

I’ve been thinking about Uncle Charlie.

The smell of albondigas filling his apartment in Los Feliz. His Thanksgiving feasts in West Hollywood. His annoying pet birds.

Seriously, why the damn birds?

Then I remembered the little café across the street from his apartment on Los Feliz Blvd. The waitresses would fawn all over him. One—I think her name was Teri—went so far as to tell him she thought he was beautiful. He was, but it was the first time I ever saw women swoon.

I remember asking him after breakfast if he found women attractive, and he admitted that he did sometimes. He said he loved dark-skinned Black women. When I was in Senegal last year, I thought a lot about Uncle Charlie. It’s entirely possible that Senegal has the most beautiful people in the world.

You two didn’t always get along. You never really explained why to me. But then, you weren’t the talker. And yet, you always trusted him with me. You knew he loved me as if I were his own. More than that, you knew he could reach me where no one else could.

When I went to live with him for a time, I was sure you and I would never recover. I wanted to hate you, but that fucking voice in my head would scream at me about all the little things I wanted to pretend didn’t matter. And then Uncle Charlie would sit with me at dinner and talk to me in a way nobody else ever could.

He was the one who told me about your dad making you two sleep in the car in the driveway. He told me about the abuse you both endured. He was the one who pointed out all the times you showed up for all of my stupid shit. Yeah, the plays, the sports, but even the silly dreams. I wanted to be on TV, so you took me to meet a director you were sure I was making up. You took me to my tapings. When I was convinced I was going to be the biggest rock star on the planet, you bought me my first electric guitar, and then my first bass.

Even when I was in trouble (fucking always), you made it a point to leave me my music.

“Tell your guitar what you can’t put into words,” you said.

Uncle Charlie reminded me of all of this.

“You have a dad that shows up. You have a dad who comes home every night. You have a dad who puts you first every single day.”

“I thought you were supposed to be on my side.”

“I am on your side, mijo. So is he.”

That time with Uncle Charlie almost broke me. Not because he did anything wrong. He put a mirror in front of my face and forced me to own my own bullshit. I was not ready for that.

I remember wanting the Uncle Charlie who was my buddy—the guy who took me to concerts and drove me around in his ’49 Ford. I didn’t like this asshole who was gently calling me on my shit in a way that forced me to actually deal with it.

He was already sick by then. If I had paid better attention, I would have recognized it. But it wasn’t bad enough for my adolescent ass (assolescent?) to notice.

Not yet, anyway.

By the time he got really sick, you and I had reconciled. Uncle Charlie sat us down and forced us to shut the fuck up while the other of us talked. Each of us—you and I—wanted to murder him at different times that night. That amused him.

You agreed to let me change schools. I agreed to grow up and do the work.

He got sicker.

I begged him to forgive me for anything I ever did. He cracked a smile and told me not to be silly.

I sat with him and was hit by the smell. That blend of medicinal and decay. This beautiful creature was reduced to thin skin loosely draped over bone, covered in lesions. At least he was home and not in some fucking hospital.

He died in your arms. You didn’t care that he’d bled on you. You didn’t want to let your brother go. You wept.

I have often thought that a part of you didn’t just die that day—but that a part of you is frozen in that room at that moment. Two brothers holding onto one another, holding onto the only constant either had ever truly known.