My Heart Is a Drunken Compass by Domingo Martinez Page B

while he’d left me alone in Seattle for a couple years.
    Nevertheless, there we were, two large Latin men that Friday night, sitting in midcentury recliners opposite my twenty-inch television (large enough to be allowed in Texas, but certainly not something to be proud of), looking like the very image of Edith and Archie Bunker, drinking Lone Star Beer, the National Beer of Texas.
    And because this was my place, it was my discretion as to what we’d be watching for that evening’s entertainment. After some considerable channel surfing, I had lit upon a small, independent Australian film called Flirting , by John Duigan.
    To this day, it remains one of my favorite small films, and I forced Dan to endure it with me.
    We sat, that night, watching this film on the Romance Channel, its logo popping up translucently every twenty minutes or so in the lower right-hand corner to remind us how nonmacho we were being by watching a “love movie” at 10:00 p.m. on a Friday night.
    By midnight, and the final scene when our hero finally receives a letter from his beloved, who had survived the overthrow of Idi Amin. Dan and I were sobbing, both our faces wet with tears rolling down our puffy cheeks, and saying, “He loves her so much! And she loves him, too!”
    It was one for the brotherly scrapbook, and one of my favorite memories of my brother Dan.
    The big galoot.

    Much later, there was one story that Dan liked to repeat about his drinking days with Derek, before Derek’s accident in 2007. Some friends of Dan’s from his time in Seattle had flown to San Antonio to visit him, and they spent an entire day on the River Walk, hopping bars and hotels from one end to the other and drinking, drinking, drinking.
    Dan, of course, was responsible for Derek’s tab because Derek was, as a false student, insolvent, and so when the final tally came to Dan the next day, he blearily counted up all his receipts and discovered he had spent just under $600 for a monumental drunk, worthy of a Kris Kristofferson song.
    Very little was said about most of that day, except for a particular moment witnessed at closing time, when Derek was woozily standing at the end of a bar and was unexpectedly chatted up by a San Antonio cougar: big hair, large golden chains, shining nails, and lots of makeup. Derek, unburdened by standards or morals even on his best days, allowed himself to be chatted up thoroughly, thinking he might either have sex or a few free drinks. Such were my younger brother’s priorities.
    Dan witnessed this from the bar opposite and was immediately on high alert, for some reason, and decided to interfere on the older woman’s interfering with his younger brother.
    â€œWhattaya doing to my little brother?” he said, a bit too aggressively.
    â€œNothing!” replied the older woman, making a face full of disgust. “Have at him, if you’re so damned protective.”
    Derek, at this point bewildered and confused, managed to follow Dan as Dan led him away and safely off to home.
    Now, Dan liked to tell this story. And Dan liked to increase the age of the older woman every time he told the story.
    By the time I heard it, she was in her eighties, in a wheelchair, and carried an oxygen tank while smoking a cigarette through a hole in her throat. She also said, “Dahr-wick,” instead of “Derek.” It was hysterical.
    â€œDahr-wick, come help me with my colostomy bag,” Dan said, while pretending to inhale from a hole in his neck as he was driving and telling me the story for the first time.
    â€œShut up, she wasn’t that old,” said Derek, from the backseat.
    â€œDahr-wick, can you change my oxygen tank, Dahr-wick?” said Dan.
    â€œCome on, man; stop being mean. You know she wasn’t that bad.”
    â€œDahr-wick, if you come back to my room at the home, you can meet my daughter on Sunday, when she visits. She’s old enough to be your