Brothers

I'm a huge fan of "A gay hockey kid's life," a blog by a kid named mikey who writes some pretty insightful posts about being a closeted athlete in highschool. Here's a link to his blog http://www.hockeykidmn.com/

Anyway, today, he wrote about coming out to his little brother. I thought I'd talk about my older brother, I'll call him Alan (doesn't really fit him, imo, but the name is stuck in my head. Alan and I have always been really close. Whenever neither of us had our friends over, we usually hung out together. I have him to blame for my love of video games lol. Thanks to him, I got into all of the classics from NES and the SNES. I cry a little inside when I hear that kids my age who call themselves gamers have never played games like contra or double dragon.

I really look up to Alan. He's 10 years older than me, so he's always seemed like a mature adult to me. He was definately my primary male role model. He was strong, a hard worker, a great handyman, but he's also mellow, down to earth, kind and caring. He was also usually the first person I came to when I needed to talk about stuff, especially when it came to stuff that I needed a guy to talk to. My dad was usually busy with work, and he's pretty closed off emotionally. Alan, though, has always felt like someone I could go to. That's why Alan was the very first person I came out to.

I don't know if he realizes this, but Alan was probably more of a father figure for me growing up than my actual father was. Don't get me wrong, my dad's alright, he just doesn't really know how to connect with people. Alan got married recently, and they've been trying to have a kid. I remember awhile ago I was in the car with my brother, and he confessed that he was afraid that he was going to be a terrible parent. Back then, I hadn't realized how much of a dad Alan was to me growing up. I wish I had, cause then I could've told him how great of a job I thought he did raising me.