memory fragment

I'm around 10 years old. I'm visiting some cousins for what seems like the first time. I have at least one video game magazine and am fantasizing about a new video game that will come out on the Nintendo called Low G Man. In it you control a character who fires a freeze ray at enemies so that he can get close enough to stab them with his spear. I want to say that there were pictures of multiple screenshots to show that you fight 'bosses' that are very big. It is exciting to fight someone so big even though it would probably be one of those tiresome games where you had to attack some little component in an otherwise invulnerable machine. When I was much older and hadn't played a video game in years I remember seeing an ad for a game in which you fight mythological monsters who are much bigger than you and I was very tempted to play it.

I remember my cousin being good looking: darker skin, nice complexion, thick hair and all the other signs of health. He had short hair and dressed like his mother bought him clothes in a mall; in a store where she could also buy clothes for her husband. I think he looks like my mother would prefer that I look.  However, he needs to prove too much and it makes him ugly. At some point he gets past building himself up and tries to take me down. I remember him telling me that my feet only look so big because my legs are skinny. I think now that he must have felt competitive with me because I was tall.

I'm in the basement where they have a bumper pool table. I alternate between different construals of it. It looks like a poker table with a bunch of mushrooms growing in the middle of it or it looks like a breakfast table where pinball-like lights and pop-ups register the feelings of other people in the house. I play my brother and lose. He begins to gloat. I think that's the wrong word but it's one that was passed down in my family. It was said with too much emphasis by my grandfather. Probably because it registered a secret hurt of his- someone who he wanted respected saw it as his short-coming- and he in turn hunted it out in others in order to censure them instill the same shame he felt himself. The word needed to come into existence so badly that he became a hunter who would shoot any animal and he drove the word out of its sense.

 My cousin is watching us play and so is my mother. My brother would normally be easy to ignore but, maybe not. Maybe this is the point where I no longer let myself feel competitive with him. I begin to cry. I want to say that I go over to my mother like she can protect me from my shame of crying in front of my cousin. The scene becomes a blur here. I intentionally stay away from my cousin for the rest of the trip. I want to avoid having to become aware of his avoidance of me. The video game magazine is not exciting to look at anymore and I now force myself to read pieces of information that I would normally ignore.