I guess you could say that, despite our vast differences, my brother and I have always been pretty close. Six years and six months my senior, Danny has been my friend, confidante, and protector. When I was about eight or nine years old, I was running through the house and slipped on the hallway’s hardwood floors, and found myself barreling face-first toward the floor’s old-fashioned heater grate. Without hesitation, Danny threw himself between my body and the grate, preventing me from a lifetime of looking like I’d fallen asleep on a tennis racket. My brother was also my adolescent torturer. One of his favorite pastimes was sitting down on top of a beanbag chair, on top of my face. I have always been petrified of enclosed spaces and suffocation, and I wonder how many times I finished his chores at the threat of the beanbag chair treatment. I got my revenge when I snapped once during my junior high days and chased him around the house like a madman, armed only with my mother’s bedroom slipper, causing him to catch his little toe on the bottom of the kitchen cabinets and break it in two places. Sibling revenge is so sweet.

As my brother and I grew older, we remained close despite our growing differences. Danny bought every album by his favorite band, The Cars, while I spent my allowance on Tina Turner tapes. My report cards boasted almost strictly "As" in advanced classes, while my brother earned "Cs" and "Ds" at a vocational high school. Danny, proudly coached by our father, was a Little League star. When Danny and Dad tried to help me follow in the same footprints, it was a miserable experience for all concerned. The two of them spent countless hours with me in the backyard, telling me, "Don’t be scared of the ball!" My brother would smack a solid pop-fly to me. I would run to get under the ball, squinting against the bright sunlight, and get my musty leather glove into perfect position. Then, just as the ball had almost completed its downward descent into the mitt, I’d run away from it, screaming like my ass was on fire. I never learned how to ride a bike, either—I was too afraid of falling. I wouldn’t let go of the sides of the swimming pool until I was probably eleven or twelve. My teenage motto was, "I’d rather be working in my flower garden." Compared to my rough-and-tumble brother, I was one nelly little kid.

Today, my brother and I still could not be more different. I am single and work an 8 to 5 office job. My brother is single now, too, but he has two daughters, and installs windows for a living. I love drag, the History Channel, good food, reading and writing, Court TV, and Al Franken. My brother loves bowling, hunting, NASCAR, classic horror movies, Red Lobster, and Rush Limbaugh. (I think you’re getting the picture.) Danny cannot figure out why I’d rather pay over a grand each month for rent, instead of buying a fixer-upper house like he did. Personally, I don’t care if I have a private yard, as long as I don’t have to fix the garbage disposal when it starts grinding like the gears on a ’79 Chevy. Danny practically begs me to attend just one NASCAR race in Dover. I assure him that I’d rather have sexual relations with Charo. Danny did come see me in a drag show several years ago, so maybe I owe him. Incidentally, he insists that my alter ego Anita needs less make-up, smaller hair, and more subdued clothes. Like most straight men, he misses the entire point of being a drag queen.

The older I get, the more amazed I become at our immense differences. Perhaps one of us was adopted, left on the doorstep one fateful morning, wrapped in swaddling clothes, along with a Hickory Farms gift basket to seal the deal. The one thing we never agree on is politics, but for some reason, whenever I see Danny, we always end up discussing current events. I should sell tickets to these heated debates. It’s like watching Beelzebub vs. Moses. You know neither person will ever give an inch, but they just keep going, and going, and going, ad nauseam. Unlike me, my brother opposes abortion rights, evolutionary theory, and soy-based meat substitutes. He favors the death penalty, Christianity in schools, the war in Iraq, and George W. Bush. The one thing my brother and I always agree on is that a robust sense of humor is not only desirable but necessary. During my brother’s visit a month ago, he laughed hysterically at Girls Will Be Girls, even as he frequently paused the DVD to inquire, "And you’re sure these are really men?" During Danny’s visit two weekends ago, I was surprised to find that Larry the Cable Guy is actually a brilliant comedian, even if he should refrain from cutting the sleeves off his flannel shirts.

I’m not sure where this leaves Danny and me in the grand scheme of things. My best friend and I have an annual December tradition of watching the film Home for the Holidays before heading to our respective homes for the holidays. When the two sisters, who live completely different lifestyles, have a vicious war of words, one declares to the other that she doesn’t understand how they got to be sisters and how, if they weren’t sisters, she wouldn’t even speak to her sibling on the street. That part of the film always makes me think about my brother, and it makes me feel a little sad. Despite the fact that my brother has a politically conservative mentality and I have a politically liberal mentality, I hope our shared history, our brotherly love, and our sense of humor will always allow us to meet somewhere in the middle.