The Tallent Brothers Saga

"If you don't have good dreams you have nightmares."

- Diner

"Where do words go?" A funny question when I first heard it. "They have to come from somewhere so they have to go somewhere." Innocent words of a child, wisdom lost with age. It was explained that words are like a river, always flowing, sometimes dammed but impossible to stay blocked (a lesson continually re-learned), some that rise to the light and some are perverted in the dark. The universe is infinite - it has to be to hold the billions of word streams filling it.

So I had that buzzing around in my head thinking about the Tallent brothers. In a perverted society, it is the perverted who assimilate the easiest. (Which is why the assimilated vociferously praise their society). The Tallent brothers were four guys broken by life, then driven by fear of rejection to appear respectable, to mix in with all the other broken toys of the world with mismatched parts and torn hearts. Souls like the Tallent brothers are everywhere, but their plight was more obvious to me as they hailed from my small town where it's harder to hide.

Rural Texas has a lot of strange people with lives bent on a tangent from their original courses. The commonality of it makes eccentricities almost seem normal. Truth is, you can be just about anything from a pig-fucking freak to a KKK member - just so long as you aren't liberal. That they cannot stand, a light shining on their shame for God to see. Naturally, these are the ones who praise Jesus the loudest, for that is the liberal whom they most want to betray. Deep inside we know the clock is ticking and this behavior must be wiped out for evermore.

I'm always observing like a spy. Sometimes I deliberately turn it off in order to facilitate relationships forced upon me. Thus it's those I have no relationship with - but contact with - that I espy the most. The Tallent brothers fall in that category, souls like mice in a lab for me to study and learn. To learn what? Perhaps of my own failures. Perhaps just to shine a mirror on our sorrow to God, to show what we've become - not that I don't know that nothing is so ruthless and unbending as love. It's love's way or no way at all.

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup;

They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe

- Across the universe

I've read of those who say every life is one filled with miracles, and it's whether those miracles are stillborn or allowed to flower that decides a person's life. I think about that when I see what most would describe as the most mundane and mediocre of trajectories. Are they achieving their potential, even if it's not valued by a perverted world? Or have they descended to mediocrity by virtue of wasted opportunities? Can one be a superstar cashier but a loser CEO? The metrics of the world are not defined by the Word. At least not now, anyway.

Strange as it may be, golf is a wonderful metaphor for life. That's the conclusion I reached working in the country club pro shop as a kid. I myself would putter around on the putting green and I remember when I relaxed and let go I made some amazing putts. When I tried really hard I invariably missed. I knew there was a lesson in there but never had the guts to apply it to life in general. I didn't know what would happen to me if I kept letting go. I did know what would happen to me (however unpleasant) if I did not.

But for one summer I got a steady dose of the Tallent brothers, oil beneficiaries from a departed father. They cashed checks for a living. The oldest took over the ranch on the northeast side of town. I delivered a pizza there once and it was like peeking into a permanent party. The laughing woman I ogled who answered the door clearly had no use for me. I wondered how I could have anything to offer to a goddess like her - especially if I had to compete with gods who've escaped the killing drudgery of menial jobs (and all jobs are menial). I learned more, however, later in life.

So who were these guys? Tyler, the oldest, was your original frat boy, devoid of original thought while lusting for original sin. Just listening to him in the pro shop made you want to slap him but he was too pathetic to be worth the effort. He liked having a formula for life: see what the world values then go get it. What he couldn't figure out was how to fill the gaping hole inside him for the things he valued the world did not. Weak. As a teenager, though, I never saw the side of him that suffered.

Think of what you're saying

You can get it wrong and still you think that it's alright

- We Can Work It Out

Next in line was Taylor, the brother who never measured up. He was not able to pimp himself into frat boy glory like Tyler. Only on the golf course could he outdo his older brother and thus gain a foothold of respect. It was his sole refuge. Off the course, with no skills to whore, he was left behind to dream of the wonderful mystic life of the elite frat gangs. In other words, he was illusioned. My young mind had no clue how deeply that cut him.

Terry was desperate for his own identity and had me completely fooled as a good ol' boy, tough on the outside, terrified on the inside. I marveled at the accoutrements of his act: the dually pickup, his broken-in cowboy hat, his $5,000 boots - no phony could have all that! Or so I surmised. But part of me rebelled and amused myself thinking if they passed a law forcing everyone to drive the exact same small Japanese car that Terry would be right fucked out of his identity, a drowning man. I wondered if I was being too harsh but over time Terry became a parody of himself, always repeating the same stories.

Tyler was the Married One - a task wholly expected of him as one to carry on the clan name. Taylor had not married - further proof of his failure. Terry rotated in and out of relationships, worshipping women as they arrived, cursing them after departure. Each was jealous of the other for various reasons: perceived freedom, security, or hope. Each lived in fear of having made a fatal error. It drove them together, it drove them apart. It was years later before I pieced this together. But I'm not writing this today because of those three miserable sots. I'm writing because of the youngest brother, Trevor.

Trevor was a golfing prodigy, a player who could make pro level shots that made other members look on in awe. I would hear chatter after a round was completed and even witnessed a few rounds myself. I can still remember the hissing sound of the spinning ball arriving from the sky like a guided laser, stopping exactly on the green where he wanted. Of all the brothers, I most wished Trevor to be real. He always had a hot babe on his arm and was by far the funniest and one so dearly wishes to see a person happy living the supposed good life, that there really is something to which to aspire, that he hadn't let his riches corrupt him; a true hero.

But Trevor is dead now. He died of a heart attack on the golf course - just as the Tallent brothers' father had.

Death by Honda!

Who in the hell d'you think you are?

A super star?

Well, right you are!

- Instant Karma

You see, Trevor was what they call a "practice round" golfer. In tournaments - year after year - he failed miserably once under the lights. I remember the deep frustration of his poor showings as I rooted for him, always to be disappointed. There was no doubt Trevor had talent, but on the inside he was a zero. For him to win a tournament would have been too much a lie for him to bear. Would he have been better off not being born of wealth?

Each of the brothers let their wealth define them. What kind of miracles had they buried deep inside their bank vault? The need to appear successful - a rich man can claim no excuses! - consumed them and hollowed them out. I thought to myself: how many famous talented people are born rich? Only David Crosby came to mind. I always thought the Tallent brothers were living the life. Most of us wreck the miracles in our lives, maybe it's just easier for the rich to do; fooling life, fooling the world, fooling themselves.