guess who is coming to dinner: cougar style

What do you do when your brother tells you, he is dating someone closer to your age, someone closer to the age of your stepmother, and also your father? You have two choices after the surprise falls out of you again, to either, 1) throw judgment out the window or 2) judge, judge, and judge some more. Well I wish I could say I did one, but that just isn’t part of my older sister makeup. I still want to protect my brother even if he doesn’t think he needs it. Like my parents still try to tell me things as I walk out the door, don’t forget your coat it’s raining. So I opted for two, plus some lectures later, and to get through some herbal sedatives, lots of herbal sedatives. If I knew what I had in store, I would have gone to the doctor and begged for some prescription freedom. Lesson learned.

All I see is 3 to 4 inch heels, well manicured feet, jeans with sequins on the bottom and little on the rear just to make sure you are paying attention, they glisten in the light of the hotel bar against our overpriced champagne. Then the boobs, huge obtrusive boobs, cleavage that makes Pamela Anderson stalkers even swoon. No it keeps going when I see her face. Her face is covered in makeup, makeup like you used to wear when you couldn’t be comfortable in your own skin. That was when I was 15. She is 42. Very tan skin, almost too tan, and hair her hair is perfectly done, almost bleached but still shockingly pretty. Not one knot, not one hair out of place. The OC embodied in one woman is sitting next to me, next to me as my brother introduces her to me and introduces me to her. My younger brother, my brother is 20 years her junior. She tells me as she speaks with her half-British half-Laguna Hills dialect about her surgeries, I have had two boob jobs, my ears pinned back, a nose job. Holy fuck, I just met you 5 minutes ago I think. If I had all that work done, I hope I would be hotter. More unique. Less Barbie, more exotic. Later she worked up to the important things when we had known each other a little longer like 24 hours or something. Have you had your boobs done? They are very nice. Excuse me. No they are real. Well I’m thinking of getting mine done again, she says. Shoot me. Please take me to my dead place. Whatever I did universe, God, in my former life please, please forgive me. I will do whatever penance required, live more simply, be kinder to my neighbor, get rid of material possessions-just make this lady go away. I say, if you make them any bigger, you are going to fall the fuck over. She laughed her uncomfortable laugh.

In the car when I was stuck with the two, the longest ride as of yet, they would googly eye each other in the rear view mirror. I love you, no I love you more. Then argue. Then talk about marriage. All the while my brother lecturing me about my love life. I either need to get a therapist for the ride next time or some serious medication. She wore a nighty around my uncles and parent’s homes, homes against their own judgment they welcomed her in, and she didn’t pause for one moment to evaluate the appropriateness of it all. This lady is making me seem conservative.At my parent’s home, she and my brother cuddle like teenagers so much my parents had to intervene. As she wears her juicy couture suit when our family goes on a hike, still showing too much, that zipper too low. It is her standard look. The cleavage. I am much younger than her telling her she should cover up to meet my parents, my family. This is a joke of the worst kind. She tells us how she renamed herself. Renamed herself? Because too many women in the salon, too many women in the salon had her name. Is anything about this woman real? Anything at all? What does my brother see in her but her boobs her huge boobs, maybe, I’m not sure. It’s hard to concentrate on anything else.

No one tells you how to deal with this, no one writes books about what happens when your brother or son brings home a cougar, or any of my brother's antics for that matter. Maybe I should write one. It would include the following topics in the series: How to deal with your brother when he brings home a cougar, or becomes part of the conservative movement and is on the O’Reilly Factor before he can drive or gets departed from Africa? So next year, next Thanksgiving, I’m going to my local coffee shop or nursing home or senior center and finding my own boyfriend to borrow, to rent, to fall in love with and to take home. He might be 70-but it’s my turn to be the talk of my family.