Great Shakes

The Last Living Nikkola

This picture of my mother, Janet, Bob, and me was taken on a rare, happy day for all of us.

In 1966, in Jamesburg, New Jersey, my imagination was captured by the wild and groovy new instant milkshake you could make at home, Great Shakes. I loved the rocking jingle in the commercial. “You can have your own soda fountain, now. Just go to the store and get Great Shakes!” It’s one of those commercial jingles that has never left my consciousness, just like the “Castro Convertible” and “Kent Cigarettes” jingles. So when the Great Shakes commercial came out, I wiggled my fanny across the living room just like the girls on the TV screen did, and pestered my mother to buy me Great Shakes the next time we went grocery shopping. They didn’t taste anything like a real milkshake, but as I wiggled my fanny across the kitchen and sang the jingle making my watery and overly sweet shake more than made up for it.

In 1966, before Stan came along, my brother Bob, who was 12 years older than I and looked just like James Dean when he was younger, was the only male role model that I had. I don’t think that Bob wanted to be my role model. I think that both he and my sister Janet resented the fact that my mother put so much responsibility on them to take care of me. Most of the responsibility fell on Janet, but my mother pushed Bob to show me things a father should show his son. I never really liked manly things, like when my brother tried to teach me how to shoot a shotgun so I could go hunting with him, or when he skinned, gutted, and cleaned a rabbit right in front of me at the kitchen sink after he shot it and brought it home to be our dinner. I shrieked in horror when he cleaned the dead rabbit, and I wanted nothing to do with the shotgun. I think that’s when Bob knew that he didn’t have the kind of little brother that he could help make a man out of. Plus Bob had his own stuff to deal with, like telling my father he couldn’t come into the house when he came home drunk in the middle of the night, banging on the windows, crying to be let in. Or having to contribute money to the rent each month. Or trying to stay out of jail after he got into a drunk driving accident that killed the driver of the other car. At best, I was a minor annoyance as a little brother who preferred to watch beauty pageants on TV instead of playing sports outside with the neighborhood boys. At worst, it was horrible for him to be saddled with the responsibility of showing me how to change from a girly boy to a masculine boy, which frankly, turned into loathsomeness toward me. He wasn’t my father, he didn’t ask for the assignment, and if I wasn’t going to cooperate, he wanted as little to do with me as possible. Trust me. We were not Wally and Beaver Cleaver.

Wally and Beaver Cleaver. Pure fantasy.

Rather than being drafted to become cannon fodder in Vietnam, Bob enlisted in the Air Force and was assigned to a base somewhere in Texas. On a weekend pass, he and a carful of other enlistees drove to Mexico for partying, drinking, and Mexican women. I’m sure they had a great time, but on the way back the driver crashed the car into a ditch along a stretch of dark Texas highway, causing Bob to fly through the windshield, face first, winding up unconscious and bleeding on the hood of the car. When the phone call came in, my mother was told that he wasn’t expected to survive, but Bob is fiercely strong and he pulled through after an endless amount of stitches on his face and a little reconstructive surgery. He came out of it looking pretty good, but Bob never really looked like James Dean again after that.

After he recovered, Bob was granted a two-week leave to come home, and that’s the first time I remember him being intentionally cruel to me. Besides being a girly boy, I had become overweight and chubby as a result of a case of Scarlett Fever(just like Beth in Little Women)followed by a kidney infection. He promptly Christened me with a new nickname, “fat brat.” Every time he called me that, it tore right through me. Jo wasn’t mean to Beth after she had Scarlett Fever, so why was Bob being so mean to me?

Bob had a loud, hyena-like laugh, which echoed through the whole apartment every time he called me “fat brat.” “Fat brat,” he would say, “why don’t you go run around the block and burn off that dinner.” Or “fat brat, leave that ice cream alone. That’s not for you. It’s only for us skinny people.” And the worst was “Fat brat, I’m gonna grease the frame of the bedroom door with Vaseline so we can push you through.” Then he would shriek like a hyena with his self-amusement, leaving me to sometimes protest, and almost always swallow hard so I wouldn’t cry. And what was worse, both my sister Janet and my mother thought what he did was funny. I think that they were both so happy that he had survived the car accident and was home, that it wouldn’t have mattered what he did. Those two weeks were all about the joy of having Bob back, so what did it matter if I got picked on a little bit? But I felt betrayed, not only by Bob’s cruelty but by my mother and sister’s reaction to it. Why didn’t anybody come to my aid and make him stop?

The last night that Bob was home, my mother made his favorite dinner of spaghetti with Italian sausage. It didn’t take long after we sat down at the dinner table. “Fat brat,” Bob said, “don’t put so much spaghetti on your plate. You eat like a pig.” I couldn’t take it anymore. I looked him right in the eye as he sat opposite me, and said “You’d better cut it out. If you call fat brat one more time, I’m going to call you something and you’ll be sorry.”

“Oh, whatcha gonna do, fat brat? Are you gonna cry like a girl now?”

I leaped to my feet and banged both of my hands on the kitchen table so hard that all of the dishes rattled. “Scarface!” I shouted. “You’re nothing but a dirty scarface! You’re ugly and you’ll always be nothing than a dirty scarface.” I can still remember the look on his face. Bob was an excellent poker player, and I never once saw him reveal his emotions. Except for that night. His whole energy changed. He said nothing, and I saw the hurt in his eyes, but I sure didn’t see any love behind the hurt. And I didn’t feel any.

My mother jumped up, grabbed me by the wrist, and hauled me into my shared bedroom with Bob, slamming the door behind us. She was livid. “How dare you say that to your brother,” she said, smacking me on the behind for emphasis. “Don’t you know your brother almost died in that car accident? You should be glad he’s alive and here with us, but instead, you behave like a spoiled brat over some good-natured teasing.” I looked down at the floor and didn’t say a word. I didn’t remind her that he had been calling me fat brat and laughing at me nonstop for the past two weeks. And I didn’t tell her I was mad at her for not defending me when he did. I didn’t tell her that she betrayed me. I just stared down at the floor in silent shame. And then her voice softened a little, as she said “Don’t you know that he wouldn’t tease you like that if he didn’t love you?” Up to that point, that was the craziest thing my mother ever said to me, and she repeated that line through the years every time I complained to her about Bob’s treatment of me. It didn’t feel like love then, and I know for sure that isn’t love now.

Then my mother said what she always said after an intense scolding. “I want you to march back into the kitchen with a smile on your face and finish your dinner. And if you ever do anything like that again, I will knock your teeth so far down your throat that you’ll be picking them out of your ass one by one.” It would be another year before she would comfort me with the words “Say three Hail Marys and everything will be all right.” For now, Mother had spoken, and that was the end of it.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As the years went on, things became worse between Bob and me. By the time my mother, Stan and I moved to California, I had gotten fatter and had a face full of pimples. I was completely inept at any kind of sports and began to experience extremely intense bullying at my new school. I did reasonably well at archery, but archery was not the kind of sport that won the admiration of the other boys. When you’re 13 years old, fat, with a face full of pimples, and can’t throw or catch a ball or climb the high rope, you certainly don’t have a winning combination.

Bob spent the last two years in the Air Force in Thailand, and upon his discharge, came to California to live with us. He didn’t waste any time with the cruelty and the bullying, and together, he and Stan made sure that I was shamed and intimidated as much as possible. My breaking point came one night when his first wife, Lori, who was somewhat of an artist, sketched my portrait in charcoal. I was so happy and proud when she showed me the finished product; she captured my smile when I didn’t feel like smiling, and it looked nice. Bob, being Bob, said “This doesn’t look like fat brat at all. Let’s make it look like him.” And he took a pencil and proceeded to draw little pimples and blackheads all over my face. I was enraged. I tried to hit him, but he simply grabbed my wrists and held me still until I gave up.

My mother wasn’t home when this happened, and when I went to her in tears the next day, she told me that she had talked to Bob. She said, “Bob feels if you would wash your face and hair more, you wouldn’t have such a problem with your pimples.” So it was my fault that I had a horrendous case of pimples. There was never any talk of seeing a dermatologist, and once again, I better control my temper or I’d see my teeth on the floor behind me. I refused to speak to Bob for months until my mother told me it was time to grow up and get over it. There was no one to support me and no one who cared about what I was going through. We were living with my mother’s horrible boyfriend in a two-bedroom duplex on the wrong side of the tracks, and I was being bullied and abused both at home and at school. I never told my mother what was happening to me at school. I was too ashamed and thought the bullying was my fault, and besides, if she wasn’t going to stick up for me when Bob and Stan ganged up on me, there was no way she would help me with what was going on at school. I was sure she would blame me for it.

So things went on like that between Bob and me for the next 25 years. There were brief times when we had what I call a faulty connection, almost always when he provided me with drugs and alcohol. I wasn’t sure why he did it, but I never said no. Was this his way of making up for all of the cruelty and abuse? By this time, Bob had divorced his first wife and remarried, and our drinking and drugging were always done in secret, without the knowledge of his second wife or our mother. This made it all the more special to me, and finally, I thought, I have his approval. It didn’t occur to me there was a problem with winning someone’s approval because you get high with them. But when I stopped drinking and drugging in 1986, our faulty connection soon snapped in two. Without the alcohol and drugs, there was nothing to bring us together, so we reverted to the sissy brother who better not rock the boat and the bullying alpha dog who had to be in charge. And by this time I was actively gay, except still in the closet when it came to my family. I had heard enough mean and homophobic slurs from everyone in the family to know it would not be safe to come out to them. The only person I ever came out to was my mother, and I only did that because I had a boyfriend during Thanksgiving of 1989, and he invited me to his place for Thanksgiving Dinner. He broke up with me on New Year’s Eve, but that short and intense relationship was the beginning of limited honesty with my mother about my sexuality.

My brother Bob, my sister Janet, and me in Janet’s backyard in Dearborn, Michigan, in the summer of 1987. I’m a year off alcohol, and while not as connected to Bob as before, we are still speaking at this point.

On a Holland America cruise of the Caribbean on Christmas Day of 1996. At this time, I was once again refusing to speak to Bob but Janet insisted that we pose. We look happy. Pictures lie.

The final break came a few weeks after my mother’s funeral in 2004. I may tell the entire story another time, but for now, I’ll just say we had a serious disagreement that Bob had no interest in discussing or resolving. As the alpha dog, it was going to be his way or the highway. When I didn’t do what he wanted me to do, he said “I know what you are up to. And I never want to see your face or hear your voice again.” A few weeks later I received a letter from my sister’s attorney demanding certain things. And I didn’t comply. I got my own lawyer, who said “Don’t do anything. I’ll take care of it.” And he did. Eight months later it all went away. I stayed out of it and let events take their course. And I never saw or spoke to anyone that I am related to ever since.

When Janet died in 2018, no one from the family reached out to me. I found out through a family friend who thought I ought to know. This friend had known my mother and her brother, Uncle Dennis, since their childhood days in New York, and he told me he never knew a family as messed up as mine. Sadly, that did not comfort me. I felt responsible and like it was my fault. I wept hard at the news of Janet’s passing, with a mixture of regret for not being able to patch things up while she was still in her body on this planet, and from the hurt that I felt from being shut out like that. Yes, they were mad at me, and yes, they didn’t have any interest in forgiveness, but they could have told me, if only through an intermediary.

Last Sunday morning, on June 18th, I opened up Facebook and found myself looking at a post announcing that Bob had died that morning. The swirl of emotions immediately rose to the top, and I was filled with sadness, regret, and confusion. As I relived all of the cruel things Bob did to me, I tried to think of something loving. Something that he did, besides giving me drugs, that showed me that he loved me. And that’s when I remembered Great Shakes. Six months after Bob’s recovery from his car accident, he was back in Jamesburg again for a two-week emergency leave upon the death of my father. When Bob was living at home, before he enlisted in the Air Force, his job was to make my lunch when I came home from school. He hated doing that. I know, because he told me almost every day what a pain in the ass I was that he had to make my lunch. He’d make some kind of sandwich while smoking on a Marlboro, and almost always, he would blow the smoke right in my face and laugh like a hyena when I choked.

But this time, Bob did something incredible for me. When I came home from school for lunch, there were tuna fish sandwiches and potato chips ready on the table. And the potato chips were on the plate with the sandwich, just like in a restaurant. The kitchen was clean, he wasn’t smoking Marlboro’s, and it almost seemed like some stranger was inhabiting my brother’s body. I had never felt so much kindness and love from him before. It was not so much what he did or said, but it was the energy emanating from him. He was loving me. And as I sat down at the table in front of my tuna fish sandwich, he opened the freezer door and pulled out two great big glasses of something white and creamy. It was Great Shakes! He went to the store, just for me, and bought a box of the sweet sugary powder and made us both a shake for the two of us to drink together. I was amazed at how good it tasted, a million times better than the way I made it. Bob said the secret was to put the shakes into the freezer and chill them before you drink them, and that would make them taste just like a regular milkshake.

In addition to revisiting my Catholicism for the past decade or so, I’ve been studying A Course in Miracles every day for the past half dozen years. There are 365 daily lessons, that when studied with commitment, can lead to inner peace and heal old wounds. The week before Bob died, I studied Lesson #161: Give me your blessing, Holy Son of God. It’s a lengthy lesson, and the text of the Course is often thick, deep, and a little hard to understand. That’s why I study the lessons over and over again. The thrust of this lesson is to “take a stand against our anger, that our fears may disappear and offer room to love.” One of the instructions is to “select one brother, symbol of the rest, and ask salvation from him.” It goes on to tell us to “see his face, his hands, and feet, his clothing. Watch him smile, and see familiar gestures which he makes so frequently.” When we do this, the Course says that “what you are seeing now conceals from you the sight of one who can forgive you all your sins…ask this of him that he may set you free.” As I read the lesson and meditated on it, my brother Bob came to me. And I asked him for his blessing. And I sent him one back. And a week later, he left this earth.

If you are harboring bad feelings toward anyone you love, don’t wait. Fix things as best you can and as God gives you the ability. I’m sure when we have bad feelings toward loved ones, our passing from this mortal world is more difficult and makes it harder to happily enter the spirit world.

Have you heard the theory that when a butterfly flaps its wings, the wind currents on the other side of the world are altered? Well, I choose to believe that Bob felt my blessing. And if he did, maybe that made his passing just a little bit easier. I don’t know what else was on his mind when he passed, but because of the blessing I asked for and sent to him, our bad blood didn’t have to be something that troubled him. And it doesn’t have to be something that troubles me anymore, either.

One of the things that A Course in Miracles teaches is that only love is real and nothing else exists. So when people behave lovelessly, it’s a hallucination that didn’t happen. I know many people find that hard to swallow, but that makes sense to me. All of the bullying, all of the cruelty, all of the abuse, it didn’t happen. Bob wasn’t in his right mind when he did those things, just like I wasn’t in my right mind when I sought to retaliate and attack back rather than forgive.

I’m going to remember the handsome 18-year-old Bob who looked like James Dean, and the Air Force Bob who lovingly made me a tuna fish sandwich and a Great Shake for lunch. The rest of it just didn’t happen.

The handsome James Dean look-a-like in the back row, with Janet on the far left next to my father’s father and my mother and father. I am snuggling up against my mother in the front.

Take a minute and look at the Great Shakes commercial. It’s groovy!