9. Hutch at Last

The anxiety associated with being the new kid on the first day of school follows us throughout our lives. Even at thirty years old, I found myself at a new job feeling very much as if I was standing alone on the playground, having just been dropped off at school, and watching all the other kids laugh and talk with each other as if I wasn’t even there. Now, however, school had been replaced by my new job at a famous restaurant in New York City. And the first day of school was actually my first night following someone else around while they did their job. And wearing the same outfit.

Graduate school had gone off without a hitch. The subsequent move to New York City and the anticipated skyrocketing career had not. But I was lucky enough to get a job at a restaurant which would allow me to make a decent living and only work about 55 hours a week.

I sat in said restaurant amidst the many other foodservice professionals, trying to look less uncomfortable than I felt. We were having our menu meeting, that warm and fuzzy time when all the staff comes together to get yelled at by the chef and be condescended to by people who have less education and career aspirations than you. Many of these folks (also called floor managers) have sold their souls to the foodservice industry to be able to wear a suit without having to go to college.

I knew that my introduction was coming. I had finished my week of training and had passed my menu test with flying colors, which may sound like an easy task. But when faced with the question “What is the essential difference between a dumpling and an egg roll?”, it gives one pause to wonder if a wrong turn may have been taken somewhere along the way.

The introduction came as expected. The stocky floor manager, who had previously been describing the specials and telling us that we were out of fatty tuna and Budweiser, finally got around to mentioning the new employee on the floor. I sat up straight, trying to convey a calm enthusiasm for my new place of work.

“Everybody,” he began, almost reluctantly, as if this were his least favorite part of these meetings, “We want to welcome our new staff member…Joe.”

“Another Joe?” came the anonymous and less-than-welcoming reply, as if I wasn’t already aware that my name was shared by three other staff members.

“I know,” said Stocky Floor Manager, “It’s going to be confusing. His last name is ‘Hutcheson’ so maybe we can call him ‘Joe H.’”

Apparently, however, there was a Joe Heche (no relation to Anne) and a Joe Andrews (who went by Joe A.), and the other Joe had already taken being just called “Joe.” As the debate over my new name heightened, I considered exploring how often we truly needed to call each other by name at work.

“We’ll just call you ‘Hutch,’” said Stocky after a few minutes, and went on with the meeting.

And for the first time in my life, I was happy at the prospect of this being my name. Though spurned by the fact that it had ended a dreadful discussion, it was truly first time I embraced the idea of being “Hutch.”

After the meeting, the General Manger approached me, a nice young woman with whom I had interviewed.

“So,” she said with a smile, squeezing my shoulder, “do you like your new nickname?”

I could tell by the look on her face that she was concerned that Stocky had not handled the situation delicately enough. But I smiled at her, knowing that here in this huge tourist trap in the middle of New York where I would be serving bastardized ethnic foods to countless European tourist, I would be Hutch, but I would be my own Hutch. I had stumbled upon the dawn of a new beginning, a new era in the endless cycle of Hutch. I could stop trying not to be Hutch, and start letting myself be him, since it was going to happen anyway.

“Yes. I really do,” I replied, punctuating it with a wink, which I immediately regretted. But I meant it. I liked being Hutch.

I'd like to say it's become habitual, that it just rolls of the tongue. As if every time someone new asks my name, I simply and casually reply, "Hutch."

But it usually goes more like this: "It's--uh. Hutch. I mean, I go by Hutch here. It's Joe, really. But my nickname is Hutcheson. With an E-S-O-N. No, not 'Hutch-in-son.' But, yeah...call me 'Hutch.'"

My father had been right. Accidentally, perhaps, but right nonetheless. People can change. Hutch can change. Hutch doesn't have to be anything he had ever been before. Hutch can be me. And I can can continue becoming Hutch.

8. Hutch and Sons

I still have no idea what my father does for a living. I don’t think it’s for lack of intelligence, since I have two college degrees and have done pretty well on a few online I.Q. tests. I think it has more to do with the fact that every time we have ever discussed it, I am overcome with a severe yet temporary case of ADD. It’s not that I don’t care. It is simply physically impossible for me to pay attention. I get the same affliction whenever anyone mentions politics or sports.

It must be a hereditary disorder as my father behaves the same way whenever I talk about my personal endeavors. I have a long and varied theatrical resume boasting roles from Shakespeare to Sondheim. I’m not bragging; if you “google” my name you will still come up with some Baseball player who is famous for some…wait, what was I talking about?

To this day, whenever my mediocre acting career comes up, my father says, “I still think my favorite was that ‘Grease’ thing.” I smile as I feel my stomach wrap around my spine. My father is referring to a summer stock production of the ridiculous 50’s musical in which I was cast (quite against type) as Danny Zuko, leader of the T-Birds. The company was short several leading men. Since I was the only male with a left and a right foot who didn’t rama-lama-ding-dong when he was supposed to chang-chang-changity-chang-shoo-bop, I was awarded the coveted role. They costumed me in an over-sized, faux-leather jacket and an equally over-sized jet-black pompadour wig. When I looked in the mirror, it seemed as if I was being devoured by two synthetic prehistoric mammals not yet identified in the fossil record. Needless to say, it was not my proudest moment. However, my father cannot name one other show I’ve ever been in besides this. I know it’s not because he doesn’t love me. He just cannot possibly care, no matter how hard he tries.

Since I have inherited this condition, the career that was passed from Grandpa Hutch to Big Hutch has consistently evaded me. I often fantasized about learning that he was a spy or a drug dealer, having learned the trade from his father, and someday taking me on a long drive out to the country to tell me the deep secrets of our family trade and initiate me with some bizarre rite of passage into the Hutcheson Legacy of Crime. But my memories of him coming home wearing a shirt that bore his first name and smelling like a gas station tell me otherwise.

I do think that my father surpassed my grandfather in his success with whatever it is. I’m fairly certain that Big Hutch no longer works at the same company and has, in fact, worked for several companies since. And he stopped smelling like a gas station years ago and got a laptop. The houses we lived in had become nicer as I grew up, but it wasn’t until I moved out that I really saw my father come into his own. Timing is everything.

Big Hutch is apparently very good at what he does and has been rewarded thusly. His company moved him and my stepmother Martha from Sacramento, California to Salt Lake City, Utah a few years after I graduated high school. The new home was a spacious split-level nestled between the Wasatch Mountains and the Salt Lake Valley.

Martha had taken quite a run at the décor in the Salt Lake City home. She has always been one for dried flower arrangements and kitchy knickknacks, such as a pig dressed as a chef holding her cooking utensils or the little ceramic tile painted with the phrase, “God Bless this Mess.” My father married her several years after divorcing my mother. Martha has always been less of a mother figure to me, and more of a bossy older sister that I never had. She is of Syrian descent and has a darker complexion, like most of the women that Hutch’s tend towards.

On a side note, the fact that both my father and uncle married women of a complexion similar to my grandmother forces me to contemplate the Freudian assertion that men look for women who remind them of their mother. And then, I am compelled to take this a step further and wonder: if heterosexual men are attracted to women who remind them of their mothers, do homosexual men seek other homosexual men who remind them—and then my mind shuts down completely.

I visited the Salt Lake City home the spring after I had been accepted to graduate school in Florida. I was still living in California and was eager to finally live in another part of the country. And nothing was further away than Florida.

I was standing in the kitchen, fingering a salt-and-pepper set shaped like a pair of shoes (for no apparent reason), when my father announced from the sofa that he was going to take us all to Florida for a few days to celebrate my success with graduate school.

“My buddy from work’s got a condo in Cocoa Beach, down by Melbourne. He said we could use it whenever we wanted.”

Just as my father’s homes had improved with his career, so had his work buddies.

The condo was more than I had ever dreamed. A spacious 2 bedroom/2 bathroom palace with a huge balcony, a private beach, a sunken Jacuzzi bathtub, and every cable channel anyone could imagine. My father and Martha took the master bedroom, of course; Josh, whom my father had also flown out from California, and I shared the second bedroom. There was only one bed, but the room also held a sofa, which Josh volunteered to sleep on. I let him, since the trip was in my honor.

I found myself floating in the tepid waters of the Atlantic for the first time in my life. Martha, my stepmother, was a few yards away, splashing her legs gently in the waves as she held a kick board. The sun beat down on us, but the light wind cooled the wet parts of us that were above the water. Josh and my father were up on the beach, sitting on the beach chairs that we had lugged down from the balcony. They looked very alike from that distance, two large men with tattoos wearing baseball caps and denim shorts. My father’s cap said “Dallas Cowboys” and Josh’s said “Rage Against the Machine,” but beyond that they seemed to be two versions of the same person at different stages of life, a life of which I represented no stage, or, at the very best, that experimental college stage which one tries to forget but eventually has to explain to their wife.

Big Hutch and Tiny Hutch settled into their chairs. Josh opened a beer, and my father opened a diet soda.

“They look serious,” I said, trying not to sound nosy.

“Yeah,” said Martha absently, more focused on getting a light cardio workout. “He’s just worried about him.”

I didn’t know who was worried about whom, but felt it should have been obvious by the simplicity with which Martha put it. I decided that she meant that my father was worried about my brother. Josh had been bouncing from job to job and living from paycheck to paycheck since splitting with Adam’s mother. My father was concerned that Josh wasn’t thinking about the larger picture; or, more specifically, being a father.

“He just doesn’t want Josh to look back and have any regrets.”

I looked at Martha, waiting for her to go on, to be more specific about the regrets to which my father may be referring. This information suggested that my father may have, must have regrets of his own. But Martha just kicked in the water, watching a few seagulls that had gathered at the break of the waves.

I found my father on the balcony that evening, sipping a diet soda and staring down into the Atlantic. The sound of the ocean and the wind drown everything else out, so there was an odd moment when I could see my father’s face, but he didn’t know I had come outside.

The look on his face was one I had never seen before. Or perhaps it was one I had seen but not thought much about. It made my father look deeper than I had ever given him credit for being. His frown lines had deepened, his hair had gone thin and grey, but somehow his eyes had brightened. He looked out over the balcony, over the Atlantic, and into the windy night as if he was contemplating the deepest, most well-kept secrets of the universe.

“Hey, Son,” he said, noticing me standing in the doorway.

“Hey, Dad,” I replied. I looked out over the sea. “Martha wants to know if you want to cook the fish on the barbecue.”

“Too windy,” said my father, glancing at the fancy barbecue in the corner.

“Yeah,” I said as if I had already known that. I started to go in, but stopped as my father called after me.

“I’m so proud of you, Son,” he said simply, as if it was part of the conversation about the fish.

“Thanks, Dad,” I said, wishing I had something more to offer besides my awkward smile, which he gladly accepted.

He stood and stretched, yawning in a huge gulp of clean sea air. He put his arm around my shoulders as we walked into the condo, letting the entire weight of it lay across my shoulders like some yolk. He used to do this when I was a kid, and I always thought I would collapse under the weight of his arm, knees buckling under me and falling to the ground in a girly little mess. But for the first time, I found I felt strong enough to take it, maybe even strong enough to hold up the weight of Hutch.

7. Grandpa Hutch

The first memory I have of my grandfather is when he almost died.  He suffered the first of several heart attacks when I was about seven, just before the divorce.  My mother had made Polish sausage sandwiches on rye for my brother and me.  The three of us sat around the table, picking absently at the pale, boiled sausages and sauerkraut and waiting for the telephone to ring.  It was at this moment that my mother made the following announcement:

“Now, you know, guys, it is possible that your grandpa might die.”

I must have been old enough to understand what that meant (but not old enough to understand that this is pretty much always the case for any of us) because I lost it.  I mean, tears, sobs, snot in the sauerkraut, all of it.  To this day, I cannot look at a Polish sausage sandwich without tearing up a little.

In all fairness to my mother, she has since apologized for this and admitted that she probably used the incident to try to get us to pray again. 

But Grandpa Hutch did not die that night.  A few months later he was back home, restricted to the couch and the bed.  I remember being so happy to see him, and that he looked the same as he had before, except that beside the gold medallion necklace he always wore ran a big, angry pink scar.  He also showed me the scars down the inside of his legs.

“You have to help me with something, Joseph,” he said in hushed tones, as if only he and I and his doctor were privy to this information.  “The doctor says I’m not supposed to cross my legs.  It’s bad for my heart.  So, if you ever see me with my legs crossed, you have to remind me.”

I was ready for the task.  As the oldest of his grandkids, it made perfect sense that the responsibility would fall on me.  And I took it very seriously.  On a typical visit to Grandpa and Grandma Hutch's house, my mother would remind me sometime during the car ride over about the task I had promised to fulfill, the task of not letting my grandfather die.  After we received our hugs, kisses, and money from Grandpa’s wallet and were bragged about by Big Hutch for my scholastic accomplishments and Josh not being sent to the principal’s office for a whole week, I would divide my attention between playing with Josh and watching out for any leg crossing by Grandpa.  I was certain that if one ankle crossed the other, it would be over.

“Grandpa!” I would have to call from the dining room (also known as the other side of the living room), one hand on a cocked hip, an affectation I had stolen from my teacher Mrs. Jacobs when she would catch one of us trying to feed paper shreds to the class hamster or making farting noises with our armpits.  These may not seem as harsh of infractions as cutting of the circulation to your ailing heart, but by the look on her face, the potential consequences felt equal.  Grandpa would look surprised, probably at both the harshness of my admonition and the grade-school-teaching-matron-looking-over-her-glasses bitchiness with equal parts.  And then he would chuckle and uncross his ankles. 

In memory, I treasure these moments of my young transparent sexual preference for two reasons.  First, I remember being to young to know any better or even care at all.  And second, because there is a slim to moderate chance that before Grandpa Hutch passed on, he might have known the truth about Little Hutch.

Over the years, Grandpa stopped crossing his legs without me having to remind him.  And eating kielbasa.  But he did not stop giving us money when we’d come over, or telling me about Donald Trump’s new book even though I was (and still am) too young to understand it.  He didn’t stop being appropriately excited and enthusiastic about my life or anything else going on in the world.  But he also did not stop having heart attacks.

I was only exposed once to the man my father knew as Big Hutch.  After my grandfather’s funeral, the Cowboys played the Giants on television, and everyone went back to Grandma Hutch’s house to watch the game.  I had no interest in the game, but I decided the family needed me.

The Cowboys won, which made the occasion a bit less sad.  Sometime in the middle of the game, I heard my Grandma yell, “That’s right, boys!  We got someone on our side up there, now!”  A sad chuckle went around the family, but it carried the silent acknowledgement that Grandma Hutch would be okay.   

After the game, the television was turned off, and we all gathered around the old stereo.  My father produced a cassette tape of a recording that Grandpa Hutch had made after his first heart attack, around the time I had been appointed the leg-crossing monitor.  The sound was bad, and there was a dull hiss as we listened to my grandfather fumble with the microphone.  His voice crackled through the old speakers like a ghost, but the sound of his voice in that house was familiar to everyone.   

“This’s Dad.  If you’re listenin’ to this, well, then…I guess the bypass didn’t work.”

Everyone chuckled again.  The bypass had worked, actually.  It was the sixth one that hadn’t taken.

Grandpa Hutch went on to say how much he loved all of us, at least those of us who had been born when the recording was made.  I had been very young and Josh had still been a baby, but none of the other grandkids were around yet.  Uncle Dave had just married Aunt Miranda/Genny, and Aunt Cindy had just become pregnant with the twins. 

Just as Grandpa Hutch was getting to his individual messages to each of the kids, starting with my father, the sound of an engine roaring to life filled the room.

“Hang on!” came my grandfather’s voice from beyond.  “The old fart in the back just fired up the Chevy.”

His messages to each of his children were simple and devoid of sentimentality.  It was mostly business, but so much so that the underlying sorrow came through more clearly than his voice. 

That sorrow planted seeds of curiosity within me.  The voice on the recording was quite unlike that of the man I had known.  The simplistic instruction regarding mortgages and bank account seemed little impetus for such a recording.  I realized that there must have been another man my father had grown up with, another Hutch that I had never known.

It was hard to approach my father about anything emotionally important or even deeply sentimental.  It wasn’t his aversion to these things I feared, but my aversion to sharing them with him. I suppose, looking back, it was because when sharing those things with someone, anyone, it promotes a deeper connection, which may be accidentally mistaken as love, something I was very careful about expressing directly to Big Hutch.

I have to mention, in all fairness to Big Hutch, that my father has never been responsible for any difficulty I’ve ever had with talking to him about anything.  When I was at the ripe old age of nineteen, I decided to come out to my parents.  I wasn’t seeing anyone.  There was no occasion warranting my confession.  I just hadn’t had enough validating family attention since moving out of my father’s house. 

I had done a test run on my mother first, having a pretty good idea where she stood on the issue.  A phone call was as personal as I could get.  The best I could have hoped for in response was silence, rather than a torrent of nonsensical blabber known to those of her faith as “speaking in tongues.”  I was pleasantly surprised when she only cried and hung up.  I then dialed Big Hutch and offered to take him out to dinner and let him pay.

He chose to let me take him/take me to a place called Fresh Choice, which catered to the trend of the sprawling soup/salad/pasta bar restaurants which plagued us on the West Coast in the nineties.  Big Hutch had taken to it like wicker and brass from Cost Plus.  And it showed.  He had consistently trimmed down since the divorce, and since losing the 165 lbs. of slacker/sexually-ambiguous/acne-farm of an oldest son, he was clearly enjoying the new lifestyle.

“So…as you know, I’ve always sort of struggled with my…sexuality…” I recited.  My mother had interjected a stream of denial and shock here, which was not in the script.  But Big Hutch just nodded and ate salad.  “And…I’ve come to terms with the fact…that I’m…gay,” I barely whispered, making sure no one seated nearby could hear.

Big Hutch took another bite of Low-cal Oriental Chicken Salad, never breaking eye contact with me.  He smiled as he chewed. 

“Son,” he said after swallowing, “I love you, and I’ve always wondered.  I thought there might have been something with you and that friend Rick of yours.”

He was referring to a complicated situation in which I had been tutoring some boy (actually named Ryan) who didn’t always want to hug goodnight and talk about how meaningful our friendship was to him.  He stopped showing up for my free tutoring sessions.  I had taken it hard.  And not in the way I had wanted to.

“Anyway,” I continued before he could ask any questions. “Mom didn’t take it very well.”  I shook my head and poked at my Ambrosia salad.  It secretly felt a little fun to share this information, as if I was doling out hard-earned “best parent” points.

He looked down into the peanuts, chicken, carrots, and cabbage swimming in a thin dressing.  “You’re gonna have to give her time.”  And he continued eating as if nothing had changed.

I realized two things in that moment.  First, my father knew both my mother and I in ways I hadn’t considered.  Second, I was the one who was weird about talking to Big Hutch, not him.  Clearly the news hadn't been a complete shock to him, but he had reacted in a more pedestrian way than anyone could expect.  It had always been my dramatic, over-saturated sense of reality that had written ridiculous scenarios, situations that could never happen, and which I would never be brave enough to act out even if they could.

The topic of who Grandpa Hutch was before he met the doctor that would make numerous attempts to save his life, didn’t have to be a deeply emotional one.  But I imagined how it could be, how the conversation could turn into something else which my twenty-year-old neurosis was not prepared to encounter.  I practiced a matter-of-fact tone several times during the few years after his death before finally broaching the subject. 

My father was leaning over the engine of the Honda, the car handed down to me when Grandpa Hutch was past being able to drive.  Big Hutch was trying to figure out why it kept overheating.  I thought it might have something to do with the fact that the only fluid I ever kept in it was gas, and that in small amounts at a time.  But I didn’t mention it. 

“So, how’s Grandma?”  My opener.  It put my father in a good mood to know that I thought about her at times other than Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

“Good, good,” he said, wiping the dipstick on his greasy shirt.  Work grease, car grease, I guess it didn’t matter much.  I still wondered what my father did for a living that got him so greasy. 

“Does she…talk about Grandpa?”

He gave me a curious look before returning the dipstick to its proper place.  I meant to check and see where that was, but I would have to wait until next time.

“Not really,” he said, moving onto some other fluid gage.

 

“What was he like? I mean, before I knew him.”  No matter how I had practiced it, it still felt like a movie of the week.

I knew some of the details already: the lower-middle class upbringing, his service in the Navy, his career at the pump manufacturing plant for which my father came to work.

“Well, Son,” Big Hutch began as he shut the hood to the car, a car that both his father and son had driven, but only one of us would eventually burn the engine out of.  I won’t say who.

My father reached for me as if to give me a friendly, end-of-the-conversation hug.  I gave in, turning my head to the side before he smothered me into his chest with his strong arms, a reflex I had developed over the years.  Big Hutch had never known his own strength.  Normally I would be the one to pull away, before I started to black out or hear a rib crack.  But something made me hold on for another moment, to risk fading away.  I felt a strange shudder from Big Hutch.  He was weeping softly.

"I just miss him so much—" came the words in a whisper.  Little earthquakes rattled through him.  And then it was over.  He released me, wiped at his eyes, and sniffed. 

“I just think people can change.  I don’t think that you have to stay the same,” he said as if nothing had happened. 

This wasn’t the answer I was looking for.  It revealed nothing about the man that first drove this car.  But as I followed my father toward the house, his words played over in my head.  People can change, of course.  The man who preceded me up the front walk was not the heavy man I remember sleeping on the couch over a decade ago.  Besides being much thinner and having gone a bit grey, there was something else different, something that made me wonder about the lasting essence of Hutch.  What remained the same about being Hutch while everything else changed?

6. Gene Hutch?

I came the closest to accepting my fate in High School.  Much like with sports, I did make a few last ditch efforts at heterosexuality.  Which, ironically, led me into the world of theatre.

I tried out for the school play to impress Sonja Marquez, a beautiful and popular Hispanic girl.  I suppose I was taking a bit after my Uncle Dave after all.  She was a very ambitious young lady; not only was she auditioning for the class play, but she was also running for class president.  I wanted to find some common ground with her.  Since I wasn’t interested in politics, I thought I would try out as well. 

The show was Funny Girl.  I went to the audition, not really caring if I was cast or not.  But I was.  Sonja wasn’t.  And she didn’t win the election. We didn’t really talk much after that.

I had a small part with a few lines and a solo.  It wasn’t much, but it sparked something in me.  I found myself looking forward to going to rehearsal, cherishing the moments I had on stage, and leaving the high school cafeteria at the end of the night feeling incredibly light and happy.  And there was no running, throwing, catching, or spitting.

Our director was a man with a lisp named Mr. Catinari.  He looked like pictures I had seen of an older Truman Capote.  He told stories of working at the Follies Bergere in Las Vegas and always brought what he could of the glitz and glamour to our cafeteria stage.  Funny Girl was the perfect choice for this, full of showgirls in flashy costumes and headpieces.  However, Mr. Catinari did not have the budget to which he was accustomed.  He was always grumbling to us about how the principal wouldn’t give him any more money or let him charge more for the tickets.  Mr. Catinari had to make some compromises; most of the budget went towards feathers and sequins, and the girls would have to wear bathing suits or cheap lingerie. 

“Again, kids!  Again!  That wasn’t sexy…” Mr. Catinari would yell up at us from a cafeteria bench, as he sipped Diet Coke and bourbon from a sports bottle.  He would gauge the success of our shows by how many parents called and complained about the inappropriate nature of our productions for high school students. 

“Wait ‘til they see Marat/Sade next year,” he would say.  I had never heard of it, but I couldn’t wait. 

I began to realize that I was pretty good at this theatre thing, at least by high school standards.  I had a pretty loud voice, and I knew my line from the first day of rehearsal.  I could follow the choreography, which mostly consisted of grinding my hips and looking lasciviously at the girls.  This also proved that I was a pretty good actor, since I could see nothing sexy about the girl I sat behind in English wearing a bikini with a bunch of feathers and sequins hot-glued to it.  One day during rehearsal, Mr. Catinari was thrilled with something I had done and made an example out of me in front of the entire cast.

“Everyone, look at John over here,” he said, standing and pointing in my general direction.

“It’s Joe!” I piped up, with a smile.

“What?”

“Joe…Joseph.”

He was still confused. 

“Hutcheson,” I said meekly, certain that my praise would now turn into a verbal thrashing. 

“Joseph Hutcheson?” he finally said, after a long moment of silence.  “That’s no stage name!” he declared, turning on us and returning to his seat on the bench.  He took a long draw off of the sports bottle. 

“Hutch!” he screamed, as if it came as an epiphany.  “Hutch!” 

Everyone laughed and called me Hutch for the rest of the night.  It was either the thinness of the smile masking my shame or the fact that it just didn’t stick that made this the only night I was ever called “Hutch.”  But the encounter left me feeling unprepared for the world of show business.  I had no stage name.

I wanted to embrace my own name, against what my instincts told me.  I tried shortening both: Joe Hutch.  Not bad.  But not good.  It was too close, as if “Joe” was merely the article to “Hutch”, or an adjective describing what kind of “Hutch” I was, sort of a latent Indian name.  I considered “Joseph Hutch.”  It still incorporated the “Hutch”, but “Joseph” sounded much less like an adjective to me.  But it did sound more like a regular person's name than a star of screen and stage, which is what I was certain to become.

I explored possibilities using my middle name Gene, which I had never really cared for either.  Perhaps it was my newfound interest in old movie musicals, primarily those involving the dashing Gene Kelly, which opened me to other possibilities: Joe Gene, Gene Hutch, Gene Hutcheson, and even Joseph Geneson. 

I had pretty much decided on Gene Hutch, though changing my first name entirely did seem a risky move.  How would my fans be able to follow my career from its humble beginning?  One afternoon, however, as I was channel surfing, I stopped on a championship billiards match.  It wasn’t the sport that caught my eye, for I knew less about billiards than I did about football.  And it wasn’t the large, hairy man wearing a flannel shirt and a cowboy hat, his lower lip bulging with tobacco as he leaned across the table and steadied his cue stick.  It was the shiny silver belt buckle that lingered just beside the corner pocket.  In gold-plated calligraphy, punctuated with a few strategically placed stars, the buckle boasted one word: Gene.

I refused to choose a stage name derived from two belt buckles.  So, rather than coming to terms with my own personal Hutch and finding a happy compromise, I took another enormous step away from accepting my destiny and decided a stage name wasn’t that important after all.

5. The Other Hutch

My father had a Tiny Hutch of his own, my Uncle Dave. They are close in age, like Josh and I. Uncle Dave has darker features than my father, having taken more after my Grandmother, while my father favored Grandpa Hutch. Coincidentally (or not), Josh takes more after my mother, and I after my father.

Uncle Dave and my father share an older sister, my Aunt Cindy. Aunt Cindy and my father were the two oldest, sharing the burden of “hero child”, a burden that I resentfully bore alone. There is a picture of my Aunt Cindy holding me when I was a newborn. She looks stunning in the photo, the feminine ideal of the Hutcheson features, all cleavage and feathered hair with a soft, sensual smile on her lips. I remember looking at that picture as a very young boy and thinking, “That is what a woman looks like.” As we all grew older, the smile has turned less sensual and much wiser, and her cleavage is on display much less often.

I don’t know what the nature of the relationship between my father and my uncle was when they were young boys, but I’m fairly certain my father didn’t make his little brother receive drinks in the face or pretend to have impregnated him. They both grew up to be Hutch, sharing a taste for sports and cars. Both my father and Uncle Dave were on their high school wrestling and football teams, and had apparently been very good at it. In the family room of my grandparents’ home, one wall was devoted solely to awards and trophy’s their children had received. Tiny silver football players and little golden wrestlers lined up atop garish pedestals. It was intimidating, and it made my construction paper certificates for academic achievement seem far less impressive.

When I was very young, Uncle Dave married a beautiful Mexican woman named Miranda. The ceremony and reception took place in the back yard of my grandparents’ home. Uncle Dave wore a white tuxedo jacket with black pants. Aunt Miranda looked like a Mexican princess. (Though I don’t really know what a Mexican princess looks like, if I ever see one I’m sure to be disappointed.)

I was fascinated with Aunt Miranda. She was beautiful and always smiling. And darker than me, like my grandmas, which made her even more interesting. I remember hearing her speak Spanish to her own family the day of the wedding and thinking it was the most beautiful language anyone could speak, the way it clipped along, tripping out of the mouth. It must have been the first time I had heard someone speak a language other than English. Besides hearing my mother speak in tongues, of course.

I think I was about seven when I asked my father when Grandma Hutch had come to the United States from Mexico. Aunt Miranda was dark like Grandma Hutch, so it made sense that they had both come from Mexico. This was the first moment I can recall experiencing an awkward silence.

My mother finally said, “Let’s be sure not to talk about this in front of Grandma Hutch.”

My father carefully explained to me that just because people have the same skin color, doesn’t mean that they come from the same place. Grandma Hutch was Spanish, not Mexican.

“But, Aunt Miranda speaks Spanish, not Mexican,” I pointed out.

“That’s right,” said my mother, enthusiastic over this important discussion of lineage. “Because in Mexico, they speak Spanish.”

“Well,” I countered, “what do they speak in Span?”

“Spain,” my mother corrected, then frowned at the question. She looked to my Dad for help, but he had nothing. “Well,” she continued, “they speak Spanish there, too, I guess.”

“Well, what’s Grandma Betty?” I asked about my mom’s mother, who was also much darker than me, even darker than Aunt Miranda or Grandma Hutch.

“Portuguese. And they speak Portuguese,” my mother said confidently.

Well, then, what the hell am I? was the next logical question, but something stopped me from asking it.

Regardless of where anyone was from, Grandma Hutch open-heartedly welcomed Miranda the Mexican into to the Hutcheson family.

At some point, everyone started calling her Aunt Genny. At first, I thought it was just a Mexican nickname for Miranda, the way that some people don’t know that Bob is short for Robert or Jack is short for Jonathan. It wasn’t until years later that I found out she was nicknamed for her love a particular type of cheap beer, Genny Light.

When we would visit Uncle Dave, Aunt Genny (nee Aunt Miranda) would make us fresh tortillas and tamales while the men looked at whatever old car was up on blocks in my Uncle Dave’s back yard. The overwhelming enthusiasm my father and he shared for bringing dusty old wrecks back to life was further evidence that I did not belong. As I grew older, the old cars became classic cars and the blocks became hydraulics. I would try so hard to understand what they were saying about the cars, but it sounded like a strange foreign language to me. Like Spanish, but not so beautiful.

Uncle Dave embraced his Hutch with enthusiasm, even going so far as to name his dog Starsky, which made them the namesake of a very popular television series. Starsky was a Sharpei, and the most wrinkled one I had ever seen. I refused to play with him, leaving Josh to throw slobbery tennis balls over and over across the yard.

Uncle Dave and my father played softball on the weekends. This often took up a major part of our weekends with my father after the divorce, depending on the time of year. If it was a Friday night during softball season, my father would pick us up and drive us to whatever park was hosting the game that evening. This was always a crapshoot for us. Sometimes we would end up at a nice softball complex with a snack bar and a playground. And sometimes we would end up at an old, broken-down park with yellow grass and outhouses.

We were at one of the latter on a particular Friday evening. Aunt Cindy was there to watch her younger brothers play ball and had brought her twin boys, my younger cousins, Dan and Stan. They were the product of a marriage that came and went before I can even remember. We often spent time with Aunt Cindy and the twins on the weekends; my father lived with her for a bit after the divorce, before he met my stepmother.

This place was not so much a “park” as it was two dried up softball fields back to back, three smelly outhouses, and a few sets of old, splintery bleachers. Josh and the twins were taking turns jumping off the back of the bleachers, pretending to be paratroopers. I sat on the bleachers with Aunt Cindy, trying to pretend to pay attention to the game and sitting as still as possible so as not to get a splinter in my ass.

Our team was losing, apparently, though I couldn’t tell. Uncle Dave and my dad ran back from the outer part of the field past the dirt, threw down their softball mittens, and grabbed bottles of red Gatorade from the cooler Aunt Cindy had brought.

“We’re getting creamed out there. Shit!” Uncle Dave said breathlessly between gulps.

My father said nothing, seeming far less upset by the situation. He was more satisfied with the fact that softball had helped him trim down considerably since the divorce. I sipped a packet of Capri Sun as I watched my father inspect a small scrape on his knee. I caught a whiff of the faint musky smell of men coming off of them. A few years later, I would smell that on myself for the first time and burst into tears.

“You’re up, Bro!” Uncle Dave barked at my father as the other team trotted out into the field. My father swaggered over to the fence, grabbed an aluminum bat, and swung it around a few times as he headed toward the field.

“Come on, Hutch!” called Aunt Cindy after him. “You guys just need some good cheering,” she said to Uncle Dave, trying to lighten up her little brother’s mood. But he just shook his head and tossed his empty Gatorade bottle into a nearby trashcan.

My father managed to hit the ball with the bat and run to the first white thing. This was my best interpretation of what was happening. But I wasn’t paying much attention as Aunt Cindy’s comment about cheering had sparked an idea in me.

During the previous weekend we had spent with my father, we had watched a movie called Wildcats. Either to spite my mother or to expose us to the real world, my father made it a habit of renting movies my mother wouldn’t want us to see. At the beginning of the weekend, we’d pick up a sizable stack of VHS videos with titles such as Rambo, Porky’s Revenge, and Pretty in Pink. I was suddenly exposed to a new world of secular cinema, and I loved it. Josh, Dan, Stan, and I would stay up late and watch the movies over and over, falling asleep to the sound of either machine guns or pop music from the 80’s. Both have had a lasting affect on me, but I’m not sure which has been more damaging.

This particular movie Wildcats starred the lovely blonde actress Goldie Hawn, another person whom my mother had said was going to hell. In this movie, Goldie Hawn, for some reason, takes over the coaching of a high school football team. This may not seem like a movie that would have held my interest. However, there is a particular scene early in the movie in which she enters the boys’ locker room to find the entire team in helmets and football gear, but naked from the waste down. The shot is from behind, an image of a row of football helmets and jersey on top of a row of naked, firm butts. This moment in the film marks the moment in which I was the most interested I have ever been in sports. And probably shaped the future of my sexual tastes.

We had watched this movie several times over the weekend. Every time our make-believe games would grow boring, I would suggest we watch a movie.

“How about Wildcats?” I would say. Josh and the twins would groan. But I was the oldest and pretty good about getting my way. “What? You don’t like football?”

Having watched the movie several times, I couldn’t help but memorize one of the cheers called out by the rugged squad of black girls on the sidelines. (It was the 80’s, so it was okay to say “black.”)

The cheer went like this:

You ugly! You ugly!

Yo’ mamma says you ugly!

You're U-G-L-Y

And you ain’t got no alibi!

You ugly! You ugly! You UGLY!

It was so simple that one couldn’t help but memorize it. And the message was so clear.

I jumped off the bleachers, tossing my empty Capri Sun packet into the trashcan, missing it completely. Uncle Dave glanced in my direction. I hoped the look of disdain on his face was over the game.

“Hey, guys!” I called to Josh, Dan, and Stan. “Come here!”

I walked them away from the bleachers so the adults couldn’t hear, and we held a quick huddle. I told them my plan, as they shot each other puzzled looks of doubt. I felt just like Goldie Hawn, trying to inspire a bunch of boys to follow me to victory.

We returned to the bleachers a few minutes later. I shoved the others into a quick formation. No one noticed us standing in a sloppy diamond shape near the dugout, me in front with my hands on my hips, my brother and cousins behind me, looking far less enthusiastic.

“All right! One, two, three!” I yelled. And we began:

You ugly! You ugly!

Yo’ mamma said you ugly—

And this was as far as we got.

“Joseph Gene!” barked Uncle Dave. I froze, both hands cupped to my mouth, shocked at the use of my first and middle name. Many of the men from the opposing team were looking in our direction, which was the point, really. I thought perhaps instead of yelling at me, Uncle Dave should be trying to figure out to how to take advantage of the distraction.

Aunt Cindy intervened.

“Why don’t you guys do your cheers over there?” she said, pointing off toward the direction of the stinky outhouses. “That way you don’t distract your dad and uncle.”

Needless to say, we gave up the cheering altogether. The boys went back to jumping off the back of the bleachers. I resumed my seat on the splintery board, even less enthusiastic about the game than before.

This was the only time I can remember Uncle Dave speaking to me harshly, and I blame it on the circumstances. It’s bad enough to be losing, but to be losing and cheered on by your fey little nephew with a chant he learned from some black girls in a movie is more than anyone can be expected to endure. I looked up to Uncle Dave, and found his particular Hutch-ness fascinating. I wanted to impress him as much, if not more than I wanted to impress Big Hutch.

Sometime after the cheerleading incident, I made one last ditch effort at sports. I tried out for the Sacramento Dolphins peewee football league. And I made it! I was put on the team. I was so proud, mostly because I didn’t realize that anyone could be on the team who met the requirements listed on the flyer: “Boys, 10-12 years old. Must be able to run. $100 fee.” Big Hutch had enthusiastically pitched in the $100.

One Saturday afternoon shortly thereafter, we stopped by Uncle Dave and Aunt Miranda/Genny’s house for a visit, as we did often on our weekends with my father. Aunt Genny made us eggs with tamales, and Uncle Dave took us out to the garage to show us the car he was renovating.

“Once I get the fuel pump replaced, I’m gonna change out the plugs and see if that does the trick.”

I’m not sure if this is exactly what he said, but, again, it sounded like a foreign language to me. After a bit of this kind of talk, my father eagerly announced the news of my recent athletic success to Uncle Dave.

“Joseph!” my father began, “Why don’t you tell your Uncle Dave about the football team?”

I like to think that my Uncle Dave’s expression reflected an unexpected pride, but I think it was more of a cautious doubt. He may have thought we were trying to play some sort of joke on him.

But we weren’t. I proudly told of how well I had done during the “try-outs” and of my subsequent acceptance onto the team. As I spoke, Uncle Dave looked back and forth between my father and I, possibly to see who would give up the joke and start laughing first.

Having now been versed in the concept of an awkward silence, I recognized that this was what I was experiencing. My father and I both looked expectantly at Uncle Dave.

“Congratulations!” he finally said, grabbing me in a huge bear hug. My father laughed and clapped. It was such a proud moment for us all.

"What position?" he asked, smiling at my father, doing his best to share in Big Hutch's optimistic pride.

I wasn't sure exactly what he meant by that, but suddenly realized that I should.

“Oh, well, you know…” I said dismissively, “Whatever…whatever the team needs.”

He tried to maintain his enthusiasm. I made a mental note that I should inquire about the position to which I would be assigned. I hoped it was something that didn’t involved too much tackling, throwing, catching, or spitting. Running would be fine, as I was actually a pretty good runner.

I cherished this moment in which I was the focus of family pride. That having been fulfilled, however, I quickly lost interest in football. I went to practice, but I soon realized that football was far too confusing and complicated a sport for me to follow. I would spend much of the practice looking across the field at the peewee cheerleader league, learning their cheers and formations.

One…two…three-four-five

We’re the Dolphins and we say “Hi!”

Six…seven…eight-nine-ten

Count it off and do it again.

Even at eleven, I couldn’t help but be critical of the rhyme scheme and content of their chant. I wondered if they would benefit from learning my “You Ugly!” cheer.

A rumor went around the team that too many boys had qualified that year and that the coach would have to make cuts to the team. I saw this as a golden opportunity. I could get out of this nonsense without having to actually quit the team and disappoint my father and Uncle Dave.

Ironically, this attempt to get out of sports helped foster a love for performance. I was forced to hone my acting skills to execute my plan. I began to purposely perform worse at practice: missing the ball, running the wrong direction on the play (not entirely accidental), tackling the wrong handsome young man (two birds, one stone.) But my acting skills were most challenged when I began to fake the asthma attacks.

Two boys on the team were known asthmatics. After our long warm-up runs, which these two concluded by coughing and hacking across the finish line several minutes after the rest of us, the coach had taken to jotting down their names on his clipboard. I assumed this clipboard must hold a list of potential cuts to the team. So, I began to try to blend in with these boys, fall behind after the first lap, starting to hack and cough during the second, and affecting a convincing dry heave by the time we ended the third, resorting to walking by the fourth. The coach seemed puzzled when he first took down my name, but I doubted he remembered how many asthmatics there had been to begin with.

“That’s ‘E-S-O-N’,” I said, clarifying the spelling of my last name before falling into a convincing attack. I didn’t want there to be any confusion when they made the cuts. Then one of the boys would bring me water, and I’d be allowed to sit on the bench for the next twenty minutes or so.

The day of the cuts came. There was no official announcement, but we were told to leave our gear on the sideline and to come and sit in the middle of the field. I said a silent farewell to the sweaty, heavy shoulder pads and other nonsense I hated lugging to practice every day, knowing I may never have to see them again, and took a seat between the two asthmatics.

“I’ll be calling out a few names,” the coach began, “and those players need to stay on the field. The rest of you get to runnin’!”

First he called out the two asthmatics. The other boys whispered and poked each other, knowing what was happening.

“And…Hutchensen!” he called, looking right at me.

“Here!” I called, just to make sure we were on the same page.

He called another name, one of the cute boys that I had “accidentally” tackled. I couldn’t imagine why this kids name had been called.

The other boys trotted off, looking back at us sitting in a little pathetic clump on the field, the cute boy a few feet off from the rest of us. I think one of the asthmatics started to cry, but it was hard to tell with the perpetual wheezing and coughing.

“Okay, guys…this is tough,” the coach began. I wasn’t listening. I was planning the rest of my summer.

After the coach finished with his speech, he handed us each a refund check for the $100 our parents had spent. He handed the cute boy his last.

“You know,” he said, “this has nothing to do with your performance.” I wondered if he knew the rest of us could still hear him. “You never got a physical. We can’t have you play on the team if you don’t get a physical.”

It made sense. The cute boy had been one of the best players, always catching the ball, running in the right direction, spitting at the right time. There had to be a valid reason he was being cut from the team. The coach went on to explain that if he got a physical and wanted to play next year, he would definitely be on the team. Needless to say, he didn’t offer the same consolation to the rest of us.

As we walked off the field toward our bikes, the cute boy lagged behind us. I glanced back, and thought I saw tears in his eyes.

“It’s okay,” wheezed one of the asthmatics, trying to put a comforting hand on my shoulder. I shrugged him off. I realized suddenly that I was very jealous of the cute boy. First, that he actually had wanted to be on the team. And second, that he would have made a perfect Hutch.

The only performance rivaling mine was given by my Uncle Dave when I broke the news to him that I’d been cut from the team. I did notice the glance he exchanged with my father, but was successfully distracted by the bear hug.

“It’s okay, Bud,” he said reassuringly. My father looked on. And they immediately started talking about the car again. I went in to see if Aunt Genny had made any tamales.

4. Tiny Hutch

Much like with Big Hutch, I was completely unaware of my love for Tiny Hutch when we were young. As the older brother who always got good grades, did my chores right the first time, rarely got into trouble, and performed generally better at everything, I privately resented the consistency with which my little brother Josh got himself into some kind of trouble or another, detracting from my personal successes.

Looking back, however, I realize that my little brother was an incredibly good sport. And by sport, I’m not referring to an athletic game. Quite the opposite, actually. For the most part, Josh respected my role as the older brother, the one who is in charge and generally leads the way. Although he did not follow my lead in school and in the behavior department, he generally did whatever I asked. And if he didn’t do it the first time, he allowed himself to be bullied into it.

The best example of this I can remember occurred while my parents were still married. I was about eight years old, so Josh would have been about six. I had managed to catch a bit of a late night soap opera, one of those programs that cluttered the primetime lineup during the 1980’s about some large, rich family who constantly endured power struggles and scandal. Many of my friends at school were allowed to stay up and watch these shows. My mother, however, did not approve of such programs.

“All these people ever do is drink, fight, and fornicate,” she would say before switching the television to the news and sending us to bed.

One particular evening, I seized an opportunity to catch one of these programs. I was dying to find out what everyone at school was talking about, and what “fornicating” was. My mother was out late attending a weekly women’s Bible study, and my father had fallen asleep on the couch. Josh had been sent to bed early; he had spent the afternoon in the principal’s office after spitting his chocolate milk on some kid in the cafeteria. I was appalled. No matter what the kid had done to him, it made no sense to me. We only got chocolate milk once a week. It seemed like such a waste.

I carefully turned the volume down on the television so the noise wouldn’t arouse Big Hutch, then I clicked the dial on the TV until I found one of these programs. I sat close to the television, closer than either of my parents would have allowed, and watched intently as these beautiful people on the screen acted out their dramatic scenarios. I was particularly intrigued by one woman with a very large hairdo, shiny red lips, and more diamonds than I had ever seen on one person. She was holding a drink in a short glass.

I don’t remember the exact exchange, but she was in some sort of argument with a man in a suit. She suggested very calmly that he walk away before she forgot she was a lady and threw her drink in his face. I cherished the very thought of it, something so dramatic as tossing a drink right into someone’s face. I suddenly had some insight into my brother’s motivation with the chocolate milk. The drama, the extremity of taking a beverage that you are enjoying and turning it into a weapon of humiliation was fascinating to me.

And then she did it! She threw the drink right into his face! My fascination turned to obsession as I watched the man react, closing his eyes as the liquid dripped down onto his suit, trying to maintain his dignity as he reached for his handkerchief—and I suddenly heard the familiar rattle of my mother’s car coming up the driveway.

I ran down the hall to my room without turning off the television, knowing my mother would assume my father had simply fallen asleep to it. I climbed the creaky ladder to the top bunk as quietly as possible and scrambled to get under the covers just as I heard my mother come through the front door.

As I drifted off to sleep, I could think of nothing but that beautiful woman with the big hair and red lips throwing a drink in someone’s face.

It was the beginning of summer, a year or so before the divorce. That Saturday, Josh and I spent the morning watching cartoons while our parents slept late. My mother woke up, fed us breakfast, and sent us outside to play. Since it was early in the summer, my father had yet to clean out the above-ground swimming pool; so instead, we were allowed to jump through the sprinkler. But I had something else in mind.

“Let’s do something else,” I said as Josh headed to retrieve the sprinkler head. He looked puzzled as he walked toward me. I turned on the hose and produced an orange plastic cup I had grabbed from the breakfast table. Josh still looked confused.

For the next half-hour or so, Josh was forced to stand before me while I continually filled the plastic cup with water from the hose and said the following line:

“You’d better walk away before I forget I’m a lady and throw my drink in your face.”

And before Josh could say anything, I would do just that. Throw my drink in his face.

The first few times he just laughed, which infuriated me. Then he started asking me when it would be his turn to throw the water.

“In a minute,” I kept saying. “Just stop laughing!” But I had no intention of trading places with him.

Either out of frustration with the game or sheer boredom, after a few dozen takes, he finally stopped laughing. And it was perfect. I said my line, placed a hand squarely on my hip for effect, and tossed the water at him. The look of embarrassment and shock on his face was perfect. I felt as fabulous and powerful as the lady with the big hair and red lips.

“What in the world are you two doing?” came the voice of my father behind me, which explained the real reason behind Josh’s expression.

As I turned, I suddenly viewed the scene from my father’s vantage point: my little brother and I standing there in our swimsuits, the hose on the ground pouring water onto the lawn; I, completely dry, holding an orange plastic cup in one hand and the other hand perched on my hip, and Josh drenched from head to toe with a sheepish look of guilt on his face.

Technically, we were not doing anything wrong. We were allowed to play in the water. And we were allowed to have plastic cups outside. But something about my father’s tone made me feel incredibly guilty. I started to respond, but found myself at a loss for a reasonable explanation.

My father simply shook his head and smiled under a furrowed brow. I realized that he probably preferred not to hear the explanation anyway.

“Don’t forget to turn off the hose when you’re done. You’ll flood the neighbors.” And with that, he went back into the house. Big Hutch was an incredibly good sport, too.

Though my father tried to maintain a healthy distance from my strange antics, he was not always quite so understanding. One evening a few months later, my father announced that we would all go furniture shopping. I hated furniture shopping.

“But, Mom, it’s so boooooring!” I pleaded, extending the word “boring” for emphasis, as if the longer I made the word, the clearer my anguish would be.

“Well, why don’t you make a game out of it?” was her pat response. This was usually her solution to things that I didn’t want to do. The unpleasantness of homework, housework, or busywork could each be cured my making a game out of them.

At first, I pouted. Josh had silently accepted the evening’s inevitable activity and was quietly playing with his Hot Wheels. I remembered the furniture store from the last time we had visited, when we had come home with the orange couch. My brother and I had spent most of the time in the kids furnishing section, looking at the racecar beds and elaborate toy chests that we would never own. I had spent some time looking over the nursery furnishing; the cribs, changing tables, and playpens had intrigued me. I had found a big rocking chair, similar to one I had seen my aunt nurse my baby cousin in. I had rocked gently back and forth for a moment, wondering if someday I would have a child of my own.

The memory of that sparked an idea. I turned to Josh suddenly.

“I know what we can play.”

As I explained the game to Josh, he seemed dubious. But I was the older brother who clearly knew best, and I promised him it would be fun. Reluctantly, he complied with my wishes.

Neither of my parents had noticed the strange way we had climbed into the back of the Blazer, Josh opening the door for me and offering me his arm, me using it for support, gently holding the rolled up sweatshirt I had tucked up under my T-shirt. Nor had they noticed how I had then gently reclined over Josh’s lap, breathing gently as I clutched the sweatshirt with both hands. Josh had obediently complied every step of the way, though I could tell he was not completely comfortable with the game.

“I think I feel it kick,” I said gently, trying to draw him in. Something about this statement caught my father’s attention, and we met eyes in the rearview mirror.

“What in the world are you guys doing?!” he bellowed. This time the question was not rhetorical.

“It’s a boy!” I said, rubbing the sweatshirt, hoping the announcement would ease my father’s reaction. Instead, he almost drove the car off the road.

I didn’t fully understand my father’s reaction. Sure, he had caught me twice in the recent past pretending I was a woman in two completely different dramatic circumstances, but how was that any different than us getting together with several dozen other men and boys and pretending we were Native Americans?

My mother put a calming hand on my father’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you pretend instead that you are both men who have pregnant wives at home who are in labor?” she offered as an alternative.

So many questions shot through my head as I sat up and removed the sweatshirt from under my T-shirt, a strange miscarriage of my carefully crafted game. If a man’s wife were in labor, why would he be out shopping for furniture with another man? Fortunately, I had yet to learn the definitive answer to this question, which would have made the fact that the other man was my brother not only deeply disturbing, but possibly emotionally damaging.

“Maybe you guys could pray together that they will be safe!” my mother added.

This was the point in my life that I started to adopt the full-headed eye-roll as one of my signature expressions. I was so irritated and confused at this point. Pretending to pray did not sound fun. It’s really just bowing your head and closing your eyes, which sounded like another tricky way to get kids to take a nap. Maybe you could move your lips a little. But if you pretend to pray, does God pretend to listen?

My father, once again trying to be a good sport, let the incident go.

“Joseph, put on your seatbelt,” he said sternly. No one spoke until we got to the furniture store.

This, incidentally, was somewhat typical of our family dynamic during my parents marriage: my father trying desperately to understand the strange inclinations of his oldest son; my mother trying to solve things with prayer; Josh being innocently drawn into the fray; and I being totally irritated by all of it.

I should also point out that I did not grow up to be a transgender woman.

Whether the recipient of an imaginary highball in the face or the father of my imaginary unborn child, Josh’s place in a legacy of Hutch’s was far more evident than mine as we grew up. Besides me, the Hutcheson men gravitated towards sports and cars, and Josh followed suit. Though he did his best to play his part in my little games and scenarios, he really preferred to create massive freeway pileups with his Hotwheels or melt his action figures on the stove when my mother wasn’t looking. But it wasn’t until we were adults that I saw his Hutch-ness come shining through.

After high school, Josh and I drifted apart. It was hard for me to see him as a teenager, entering manhood, just a few years after I had done the same. He had shot up taller than me during my last summer at home and could now easily take me in a physical confrontation. His rebellious, adolescent lack of respect for anything resembling authority and my incessant need to be the boss of him did not provide a relationship worth fostering.

It wasn’t until the death of my grandfather that we had our first conversation as young men. The Honda Accord that Grandpa Hutch had stopped being able to drive months ago had been handed down to me; Josh rode beside me in the passenger seat on the way home from the hospital. It was quiet in the car, and I wondered if we would even speak at all. I didn’t know how to reach out to this stranger beside me who looked vaguely like the boy I use to boss around.

“I’m worried about him,” he said out of the silence, referring to Big Hutch. We had left my father in the hospital waiting room, trying to hold it together for the rest of the family. He had hugged us both for a long time and told us to go home.

“Me, too,” I replied. But I wasn’t. I knew that my father would be fine. He would be there for everyone in the family as he always had, and he would find peace in acting out that role. I began to understand that this was the essence of the man, Big Hutch; straightforward, unassuming, and there.

After that day, the distance between my brother and I held some deeper understanding. It was several years later that I called him, hoping to leave a message about my Christmas visit, and heard the outgoing message on his voicemail:

“Hey. This’s Hutch. Leave a message.”

His voice was deep and gruff, his words brief and to the point. He had become Hutch. I didn’t leave a message.

We got together before seeing the rest of the family. He left my nephew Adam with his mother, my ex-sister-in-law, and we took a drive through some of our old neighborhoods in his truck. We sipped coffee from 7-11 out of Styrofoam cups. His toolbox sat between us on the seats, huge, metal, and imposing. Our old street looked the same, the old park looked the same, and the new high school looked the same as the old one. It was as if nothing had changed. Except one of us had become Hutch.

“I’m worried about him,” he said, sending me reeling back over a decade.

“Who?” I said, choking a bit on the bitter coffee.

“Adam,” he replied. He went on to tell me about how his son had been spending a fair amount of time in the principal’s office. I wondered if I should remind Josh that Adam was simply taking after his father.

Josh’s cell phone rang.

“It’s work,” he said, checking the caller ID. As he did so, my nephew’s future shone before me. Just as the metamorphosis of my brother had become near complete, Adam’s distant future was sealed.

“This’s Hutch,” my little brother grunted into the phone. And I knew he was right. No Tiny here. Just Hutch.