J-Rad does NY

I stood at the airport arrivals holding up a makeshift sign with my little brother, J-Rad’s name on it. It read “Loser.” And for once, I spelt it right! He was only slightly amused by this. My humor is like a bad dad-joke compared to his crazy-f*edup mind.

J-Rad and I never say “I love you.” We don’t have to. It runs deeply and loyally through our veins.


This means no matter how irritated we get with each other, we are bonded together by something much stronger than our love / hate of one another, and that’s our love / hate for our parents and extended family. (But more on that some other time.)

J-Rad and I have spent the past 11 days: eating and touring New York on an epic scale. If blisters on feet, dark circles under eyes, and protruding gunts don’t convince you, here are some photos:







A typical conversation during our trip went as follows:

J-Rad: "Stop fucking apologizing to people, when they are the ones running into you."
Ally: "Stop being such a cunt."
(silence)
J-Rad: "Man, how weird were our parents when we were young."
Ally: "At least they didn’t beat us."
J-Rad: "I could go some food. Buffalo wings?"
Ally: "Yeah, and some mozzarella sticks."
(We also have food in common.)



Travelling around with a sibling of the opposite sex can be a problem. Everyone assumes you are a couple. At bars, we planned to be each other’s ‘wing-men’, but ended up cock / box blocking each other instead. People would say incredibly inappropriate things, like: “You two on your honeymoon?”

This would cause us to pause, and choke on the vomits in our mouths.



One guy on the street said “you never know, she [pointing to me] might get pregnant, you’ll have a family to look after” as he thrust a designer furniture catalogue in J-Rad’s hand. We kept walking past him…
J-Rad: "WTF! Why would he say that to anyone?"
Ally: "You should have yelled 'she’s my sister you sick-fuck!' ”
J-Rad: "Yeah…. 'We use protection!' "
Ally/J-rad: "Ewwe! Fucking wrong."
J-Rad: "I’m hungry. Turkey burger?"
Ally: "Yep."



The thing you have to love about J-Rad, is he loves to cross the line of human decency. Especially around family. What comes out of his mouth could send him to jail / hell / a mental institute, yet to friends and family it is highly amusing. This is precisely why we went and saw Bruno together, and laughed so hard, we nearly puked up our milkshakes, when recalling it on the subway home.

He also knows I’m a feminist, and prays on it every chance he gets. “I’d smash her,” he’ll say, pointing to every girl we pass. I point out guys I’d smash, but it just never sounds as wrong.

Speaking of wrong, on J-Rad’s first night, he ditched my comedy plans for a hostel piss-up, where along with a random Sweed and a Belgian backpacker, committed to a house party the next night. I went because I was dead certain the address didn’t exist and I wanted to prove my NY street-smarts. Astonishingly, we found the party.

It was a small flat, with disco lights, and a host in the middle of the room playing DJ on his macbook. Passing the kitchen, we saw a girl throwing up in the sink. Then two people passed out in the living room.

This seemed to amuse J-Rad no end. He came back from the flat tour exclaiming – “There are four people passed out in the bedroom.” As he said this, the girl who had been spewing in kitchen, crawled underneath a large table at the entrance, and passed out on a pile of shoes.



As it was only 10pm, I came to the conclusion that
1. These guys have had their drinks spiked with date-rape drugs, or;
2. Even worse, they were all teenagers, unable to gauge their body tolerance to alcohol.

The later was confirmed when a cute young guy started chatting to me. After a while, I asking what he was doing in NY.

“Oh, I’m still in high-school,” he said, then “Why? How old are you?”

I looked at his baby little face and thought about how gross it would be, to be honest at a time like this. The thought of being at a party with people over a decade younger than me, made me feel alarmingly aware that I needed to leave.

However, my weakness for watching uncomfortable situations, plus my inability lie to someone’s face, took over.

“I’m 28.” I said.
“Oh.” He said. Silence.

I quickly swapped my [root] beer for a Budweiser, and proceeded to join in a game of Kings. We left shortly after, mainly because everyone else had also passed out.

I ended up getting J-Rad back, by taking him shopping in the gay district, where he got hit on by an endless stream of male store assistants. For some reason, they must have known I was his sister. Yay!