Of Men and Monopoly

At the age of eleven, before jobs, junior high, or any kind of social pressure coalesce on you, Monopoly money has an exchange rate equivalent to actual currency. At thirteen, the idea of losing a crisp golden $500 Monopoly note can be shrugged off and forgotten in favor of a myriad of other activities. At eleven, the same loss will cause a full KGB style search, including sliced open couch cushions, torn out drawers, and destroyed closets. For a piece of real estate like Pennsylvania Avenue, a thousand children have risked their lives. The game requires serious devotion, a strict moral code, and a zero tolerance policy for bullshit. That being said, Monopoly was only ever at its best when my cousin Vince was visiting.

Vince has two distinguishing personality traits: he is a habitual liar, and has the world’s most overactive imagination. At roughly the same age as myself, he claimed to be a veteran of both the mafia and the CIA, as well being intimately acquainted with pressure points. He claimed to know a touch that would bring his opponent instant death. It was a shame that the only way to demonstrate it was to actually kill one of us. As Vince went on to explain, the ancient Chinese master who had shown him this technique, had only been able to do so because there was a death row inmate near at hand. While he would have been thrilled to share this martial secret with us, his conscience could not bear to take an innocent human life.

Of course everyone knew Vince was full of shit. Even his sister Kalyn rolled her eyes every time he started in about how their father was in the process of becoming the next Surgeon General. Although, by the way Vince made it sound, his father would be the kind of Surgeon General who actually led troops into battle. This attitude carried itself poorly into the game of Monopoly.

When Vince and Kalyn came down to visit, they stayed with my grandparents for the duration. My brother Bryan and I would go stay with them. After a few pleasantries were exchanged, the new death tally of Vince’s body count was adjusted, and Kalyn displayed whatever bruises she had received from Vince’s attempts to imitate Hulk Hogan, the sacred board was laid on the table.

Even at my adult age, closing my eyes, I can recall the entirety of the Monopoly Rainbow. Purple, Periwinkle, Maroon, Orange, Red, Gold, Green, and the ever elusive Blue. Our house rules were simple. All money paid for real-estate, Chance cards, or the Community Chest went directly to Free Parking. A single die rolled determined the order of turns, from the highest roll clockwise. And the one rule which was never to be violated: Always. Watch. Vince.

Asked to do anything constructive, Vince was all thumbs. My Grandfather had long since forbidden Vince to even enter the garage. Yet in the art of deceit, Vince had the dexterity of a street magician. Given the position of either realtor or banker, Vince could be expected to either end up with every crucial piece of property, or amass a fortune several times large than the Free Parking pot. For that reason, Vince was unable to hold any position within the management of the game, and should the game go on past bed-time, all four of us would sleep around the table until it could be resumed in the morning.

It was with such prologue, that we laid out the Monopoly board on one fateful summer camping trip. We had only newly arrived in Astoria when the game was put on the table. The motor-home had not even been leveled, before my tin car was parked at Go. Vince’s Top Hat, Bryan’s Horse, and Kalyn’s thimble soon followed. I was already warming up for the outrage Vince would later inspire.

“Vince, you can’t work for both the mafia and the FBI. The mafia is illegal. You’d be arrested.” My favorite past time as a child, was debunking Vince’s lies. The rage made me feel like an adult. Like the people on television who wore suits and shouted at one another over politics.

“All the mafia give people is protection,” Vince replied smugly.

“Nuh-uh! They make people give them money or they trash their stuff!” My mafia knowledge came from movies like Goodfellas, Casino, and the Godfather, all of which my parents had no problem with me watching.

Vince promptly stuck out his tongue and sneered, “Shows what you know.”

My Grandfather, emerging from the backroom, offhandedly slapped the back of Vince’s head, grumbled, “Don’t be a dumbass,” and left to connect the septic tank. Vince glowered at the ground, biting his lower lip.

Vince’s capacity for deceit, his general dislike of being useful, and his condescending attitude never meshed well with my grandfather’s hard-ass WWII winning pragmatism. Much in the same way sustained nuclear chain reactions don’t mesh well with cities on the coast of Japan in 1945.

Trying to work out the awkward moment, I rolled a single die, then handed its twin to Vince. Vince ignored it.

“Come on, Vince,” I pleaded. I wanted to turn away from his sudden expression of serious adult anger, and go back to the inconsequential arguments about fake real estate. “We’ve got to figure out who goes first.”

Vince looked at the die, still chewing on his lower lip, and announced in a loud clear voice. “I don’t know why Grandpa thinks he’s so great.” I pushed away from the table, closing my eyes, and feeling nauseous.

“Vince, please don’t.”

“He doesn’t know anything! He’s just a big stupid jerk!”

“Vince, please, for all our sakes, stop,” I whispered hoarsely.

“No, this is bull crap! Grandpa’s dumb! I’m the smartest, and the strongest! I can say whatever I want!” Vince reached over and grabbed a bread roll with a pocket of air trapped at its top. It looked exactly like an female adult breast. “Nipple!” Vince hollered. “Nipple! Nipple! Niiiple!”

Bryan, Kalyn, and I began to laugh in stunned terror, as Vince continued to shout “nipple!” at the top of his lungs. I felt like I was in a party of knights, in the depths of a dragon’s lair, and one of my comrades had gone mad with a hunting horn. “Nipple!”

“Vi-vince,” Bryan said between giggles. He pointed at the open window next to the table. My Grandfather’s face was pressed right against it. He had heard everything. We laughed louder, knowing there was no where to run. We shook and laughed, and the color drained out of Vince’s face, his mouth crumpled as though to hold in vomit. I looked at the Monopoly board regretfully. We could have chosen to be childish, fun, and care free, but Vince had chosen another path for us. He had built a bridge from our small world, and taken us into the world of adults. The angry, hateful, serious world of adults.

For twenty seconds the three of us laughed, as Vince turned into a corpse before our eyes. “You fool!” our eyes shouted, “You damned fool! When you lie to adults it’s not fun anymore! When you lie to adults they pick up their feet and stomp on you!” As my Grandfather’s feet mounted the steps to the motor-home, Vince winced with each thud, as if the feet had landed directly on his heart.

My Grandfather swung the door open, and his voice was like the boom of a ship’s guns. “Vincent!” I remembered then what my grandfather had done in the Navy, and what a Master Chief really does for a living. A Master Chief yells at people until they fell apart. Then the Master Chief picks up the pieces and builds whatever he damn well pleases, for the purpose of war and death. Professionally. Paired against that tradition, was my eleven year old cousin Vince, who liked to pretend he knew a single pressure point that would kill a man.

“Now listen here you little son of a bitch!” My Grandfather took Vince by his arm and pulled him up close to his face. “I don’t know who you think made you king, but so far as I can tell the only throne your fat ass ever sits on is the god damn toilet! Do you hear me numb skull?” My cousin Vince cried as he tried to say “yes.”

“Cat got your tongue, chuckle head? I swear to God if that lyin’ little brain of yours was good for a god damn thing, you’d have it out in your hands playing with it!” As the tirade went on, I had the feeling that I was watching Satan perform a full body autopsy. Vince’s chest was ripped open. His organs were collected, dissected, and inspected. When they were placed on the scale, each was discarded and found to be wanting. My Grandfather mixed the attributes he insulted together like a composer. Small ticks, then large character flaws, then bad habits, all jumbled together into something that made perfect logical sense and for which there was no rebuke.

When my Grandmother came back from the general store ten minutes later, she bowed her head, and played Solitaire, knowing better than to disrupt the artist when he was at work.

Vince was like a specimen in an astronomy course. First he felt only small in relation to the objects surrounding him. Then he was put into ever increasing perspectives, until his size was held up in relation to the whole chaotic universe, and he was held naked in an infinite black vacuum his tears could never fill.

Before it was done, Vince admitted yes, he was full of shit. Yes, he was sorry. Please leave me alone, I’m so sorry. And finally, I promise I’ll be good. But my Grandfather was not done. Like a cattle driver proud of his livestock, he would not be finished until Vince had a mark on his soul so deep that it would be branded there for all time.

When it was finished, no one could say anything for some time. For as surely as we had watched Satan pull a body apart, we had also seen God come put it back together and give it new life. We simple children, with our golden $500 bills, and our cardboard property deeds had nothing to offer up in the face of either the horror or the miracle. So we sat, and we waited, and when we felt we could stop being adults we destroyed the bridge that had taken us out of childhood, and rolled some dice.