Definitive Brooklyn: The Extended Family

I am pretty fucked up right now. DC Conspiracy get-together a which I finally drank enough to get fucked up – woo-hoo! I think I talked shit about every comic company in existence and every creator that I secretly don’t like. In essence, I became my own Here’ the Thing… column with one simple premise – don’t drink too much.

I will say that I read the first trade of Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitian for the first time and fucking loved it. I would say more but it’s taking me about five minutes per sentence, here.

Fuck it, story time…

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People who were born and raised in Brooklyn have the biggest fucking families you’ve ever seen. And whereas I’m sure you all know cousins and maybe second and potentially third cousins, the difference between you and everyone I grew up with is the fact that we hung out with our second and third and fourth cousins on a regular basis. We know our extended family tree by heart – blood relatives and relatives that married-in along with their relatives.

When Robin comes with me on my trips back to Brooklyn she’s amazed. I’ve talked about my father’s family and my mother’s family in depth already. My dad had six brothers and sisters and my mom had four. Of those ten siblings only my Titi Lisa still lives in Brooklyn and yet I walk down the street in my old neighborhood and almost everyone I see is “family”. Cousins, great aunts, fucking uncles three times removed. My neighborhood up until recently was very insular – sort of a born in Red Hook stay in Red Hook kind of thing and as a result you end-up becoming somehow related to half of the damn neighborhood. It might be five or six chains down but it’s a known, established relationship.

RJ posts on this site and he’s a great example. His father and my father are cousins so what does that make us, third cousins? Every goddamn Friday we used to get together and watch movies at my place. RJ, my cousin Luis and I. That was our Friday night – that’s it.

What Robin finds funny is the concept of a “fake relative”. Now, I don’t like calling them that, but she has a point. For instance, my mom’s best friend is this woman Monin – she was our neighbor when we first moved into the apartment. There is no blood relationship there what-so-ever but I still call her Titi Monin. Her son Steven is my cousin. And all of his cousins who lived in my neighborhood – I called them cousin as well. And it’s not just calling them that either, it becomes an established relationship.

For instance, one of Steven’s cousins was this girl named Mita. Mita was by far the hottest girl in the neighborhood. I had a huge crush on her and someone told that to my mom one day and she told me, and I’ll never forget this, “You can’t date Mita. She’s your cousin.” No blood relation. The cousin of my fake cousin is now taboo because she’s my cousin as well. It’s kind of fucked up, I know.

My upstairs neighbors became Grandma Fran and Grandpa John. They’re my mom’s sister’s husband’s parents. No relation there but when I was a kid, my Nanny (mom’s mom) lived upstate and eventually Florida (my Poppy was dead) and my Grandma and Grandpa (dad’s parents) were on the outs with my family – it was one of our many blow-ups. I was a kid – five maybe – no grandparents around - when my Grandma Fran and Grandpa John told me that I can call them Grandma and Grandpa and I did my whole life.

And the thing was – they took on the roll of grandparents, not just the name. They spoiled me, stuck up for me when my parents were mad. They’d sneak me money and go to school functions. That’s why I don’t like calling them “fake relatives”. We didn’t call people cousin or grandma or aunt because we thought it was fun – we called them that because, despite having no blood relation, they acted the way a cousin, aunt or grandparent should act. It was a sign of respect. These friends and neighbors were often better at being a relative than our real relatives were.

Everyone I grew up with had this sort of extended family thing going on. One of the funnier stories I have is when Robin met my Aunt Connie. Aunt Connie is a sweet as hell woman, just great to have around – fun to talk to. After meeting her Robin asked me if she was a “fake aunt” or a “real aunt”. I told her that she was a fake aunt and my mom chimes in and informs me (and Robin) that Connie’s actually my real cousin. She goes through the lineage that connects my Aunt Connie and I and it turns out we’re actually blood cousins. So my Aunt Connie is my fake aunt but my real cousin – but since she plays the roll of an aunt I call her that out of respect.

And that, my friends, is Definitive Brooklyn.

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