The Button Pusher, the Best Fourth Thing

It might be sort of dated to bring up Fight Club, but even now, it seems like the only way to discuss the inimitable Brandon Blackwell.


Our senior year in high school, after four zany years of friendship, he described me in an article as "the most mysterious open book he ever met." But I think that's just as true of him as it is of me. Which is perhaps why the Fight Club comparison is always the most apt.


In high school, when I was particularly sunny (and uptight-- ask anyone, I was Biz.ness.) he used to infuriate me. He was rebellious and irreverent-- which was often hilarious and fun, but sometimes it just seemed  like a stunt. Like you needed to be suspicious because the image he was presenting wasn't all real. He made people uncomfortable. He made me squirm.


He "borrowed" my car to go on a date while I was at the movies and never came back to get me. Okay, not never... but let's just say standing in front of a movie theater with your government teacher (who you were never supposed to be at the movies with alone in the first place, but your ENTIRE class bailed, leaving just you and Fowler)  every minute waiting for your ride can feel like an eternity.

When he received two senior superlatives, Best Dressed & Best Hair, and they didn't let him pick which one he wanted, Brandon took matters into his own hands. (Can you guess which one I got??) They decided for him that he'd get to keep Best Hair (he'd have preferred best dressed) so the night before the photo shoot for the yearbook, Brandon shaved his head. Which would have been plain annoying if he'd stopped there. But Brandon's a bit more creative than that, and clearly recognized the importance of the hair to shoot, so he kept it. And came to school the next day with all the hair in a plastic ziplock bag, ready to display it in the photo. "I still HAVE the best hair..."






And even though this enraged practically every authority figure at GVHS, and they removed that superlative as well, I'd say it was worth it. It's one of the funnier things I can remember about high school.


I basically made him join journalism so we could hang out in a class I had complete control over, not quite knowing what a great writer he was. (At the time, he wanted to be a filmmaker.) His articles (when I could get him to turn them in on time) were great-- the point of view, the angle he took on everything, was just better. He was never ever lacking talent, only discipline.


At the time, my scales tipped more towards discipline.


So we used to say that Brandon was my evil twin, but that's not true. The things about him that make me squirm, his writing-- especially now-- the way he sees things.... 
When I read his writing now, it still makes me uncomfortable. Still dark, mildly cynical, violent, showing an underbelly. Even today, my first instinct is to think, "we're so different." But we're not.


Emily says it's always made her uncomfortable that Brandon is a button pusher. And I agree. Sometimes that drives me crazy about him. But I'd be a hypocrite (or extraordinarily lacking self awareness) to deny the fact that I'm a button-pusher myself. Not always, not to the extent that Brandon is (I still care too much about making everyone HAPPY). But what happens when you realize that all everyone talks about is "your energy" that "your energy" affects people, is that you have to test it out. What do I do with this "energy" power? Like the great Steve McBroom says, "sometimes you have to go too far to know how far you can go."


Another part of why Brandon's stuff has always made me uncomfortable is because it's always expressed in a more overt manner what I express in a roundabout manner. I'd probably do a little dance while I pushed your buttons. He just walks right up without apologies. I disguise mine in dreamy things. Look at Warrior Princess, for example, or Babies and James. Same stuff there.


Perhaps a more compassionate look at the dark side, but the dark side nonetheless. In a way, I feel like I have my friend Brandon to thank for ever even considering spending some time in the dark parts of my mind.


But he presents a compelling argument if you spend any time around him. When, in an existential pen-pal session with someone, he was asked to say who he'd kill if he were forced to kill someone he really cared about, he picked me! And believe me when I tell you, that it shocked me as much as you that, from the way he explained why it would be me, I was...genuinely....flattered.


Blunt stories of death and philosophy and divorce, yakuza and saving people out of helicopter crashes (then asking them out on a date!) I'll do this for you, I won't do that for you. At times, he can seem cruelly fixated on his own desires, but then...he'll show up for you in startling and amazing ways. He'll move my sets for me in the Fringe, buy my cast about a million dollars worth of booze, tell me which pants make my butt look good, he'll be an unbelievable comfort for Emily, but won't stick around when his own unstoppable wanderlust kicks in. 


He painted an entire collection of paintings from his own blood! Which, to describe, can never sound anything but morbid. But I swear, look at them. They're beautiful. They're magnetic.


He will probably always be a bit like a car wreck in that way. Violent and crazy, but you still can't take your eyes away. Or maybe that's wrong too since there's not much mystery in a car crash, no evolution either. You don't watch a car crash and think, "Oooh, I wonder what he'll pull out of his hat next..." which is always what to expect from Brandon.


I used to think the only thing you could count on him to do was the unpredictable or the shocking, anything that "normal" people wouldn't do. But then, ya know, he goes and blows that out of the water by joining the military and becoming, like, a really responsible person....like saving people in Haiti and fixing oil spills kind of responsible.

(When he told me, I said, "Brandon, you do know they expect you to respect authority in the military, right?")


Which might have been the ultimate magic trick, the ultimate way to shock everyone else.  But it didn't shock me. Only delighted me. He's what my writing professor Cronin used to call the Best 4th Thing-- "the creative method for identifying what needs to happen at a crucial moment of the story. All crucial moments have 4 possibilities-- Yes, No, Maybe and something else."Brandon is the something else. He keeps this story interesting for sure. And certainly best 4th thing in my life.