'Til Marriage do we Speaketh [journal]
There was a big inner-family argument recently with Mike of course spear-heading the accusations of the persecution. Brian was the lone man on the defence and I tried to stay as Switzerland as possible. I won't go into detail since it was family stuff, but the gist of it was that Brian wasn't putting enough effort into his restaurant that is costing 200 dollars a day due to rent. The other alleged failing was keeping my parents out of the restaurant loop when they invested the money.
Late that night when the voices died down a very haggard Brian stepped out of his room and hissed my name, clandestine-like, "Joe, I need to ask you a question." I tip-toed into his room, stealthy, only once peering back to see that Mike had caught my ninja escape. "Close the door," Brian told me. So I did. "Joe, you're pretty neutral about things so I want to ask you a question and there are
only two choices. Not three or more. Only two." So in my head I was thinking Brian would say something along the lines of, "One, I get money from anywhere, bank loans, friends etc... such that I pay off mom and dad and I do this on my own without all the hassle. The second option is that I quit and I let
them run the business and see how easy it is." Well these were the two no-win options I thought he was going to give me, and I was even mentally preparing answers, so I was quite startled by his curt unpredictable scenarios: "Either I
kill Mike or I never talk to him again til -- say --- you get married.
This is when I scrunched my face pretending to weigh both choices equally. I was about to tell him my answer to his rhetorical question when he interrupted by saying, "I just can't take him anymore, and you know when I say I'll do something,
I do it." Then he referred to how
I stick to it when I say I won't talk to Mike. I was just about to go on a spiel that would shorten the never talk til marriage deal but my dad kept yelling my name like a madman.
Since then Brian hasn't talked to Mike, we'll see how long it'll be.
