Somebody Up There Hates You Read Online Free PDF

balls always get squinched into one of the idiotically placed drainage-hole perforation things. It’s pathetically comic, for sure, but it gets a bit old as a daily event. What’s important is that, while I’m in there, hunched on that silly stool, shampoo on my fuzzed-over (grown back from bald, like, three times now) head, with Edward scrubbing my back (the dude wisely ignores all the dangling-down parts), I hear a loud voice in the hall. It’s yelling, “Hey, where’s King Richard the First, goddamn it? Somebody tell him his old uncle’s here to visit, will you? Tell him it’s time for trick or treat.”
    And my whole day changes. Because I’d know that voice anywhere. That’s my Uncle Phil, my mom’s no-good, black-sheep, crazy-ass baby brother. And, all of a sudden, this particular Halloween brightens right up.

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    I YELL OUT, RIGHT from the shower room, “Hey, Uncle Phil, in here.” And Edward just has time to throw a washcloth over my crotch, and then the whole steamy little room is full of Phil, who smells like bacon and marijuana smoke and outdoors air—sort of like my idea of paradise, in other words. I try to sit up tall in my chair and I try, I don’t know exactly, to puff up, make myself look bigger and stronger, and I know I have a big old grin on my face when Phil first catches a glimpse of me.
    Phil’s sneakers slide right out from under him, and he ends up sitting on his ass on the wet floor. For a second or so, the man puts his face into his hands and slumps there, still as a statue. That’s when I get a real-life view of my hero: he’s a couple years younger than Mom, so that makes him just over thirty. But he looks middle-aged, sitting there with his head bowed. He’s got a perfectly round bald spot on the back of his head, like some alien-created crop circle lurking in his mess of brown curls. And he’s—well, I got to say it, he’s dumpy. He’s got a round pot of belly plopping over the fancy silver buckle of his cowboy belt. But the guy’s got spirit, you know? Because after giving in to just that tiny bit of wimpiness, he rallies. Phil looks up and he’s got even a bigger smile than I have, even if his eyes are all teary. And he flips onto his knees and does this little knightly bow in front of my chair, swinging an imaginary hat off his head and bowing at the waist. “Your humble servant, King Richard,” he says. “Kneeling at your royal feet.”
    That’s Uncle Phil, all over. Always has some game going on. I mean, I think that’s him. I don’t really know a whole lot about him. Mom kept him at arm’s length—or more like five arms’ length—for most of my life. I’d just hear the stories she’d pick up over the phone from her mom in Jersey, where Phil moved back in with Grandma, right after I was born. Over the years, they piled up, those phone-call tales: Phil lost his license again; Phil called from the city lockup; Phil got some girl pregnant; the girl went and got an abortion; Phil went and sat outside the clinic, crying like a lost dog; Phil dropped out of community college, three credits short of a degree; Phil got married; Phil got divorced; Phil got fired; Phil got sued; Phil got in a bar fight; Phil got thirty-one stitches; Phil this; Phil that. When I was little, I just heard his name churning through those late-night phone calls. I’d lie there in my bed in the dark and listen to my mom’s reactions. She was always half laughing, half crying. She’d keep saying things like, “Oh no. Not again. Un believable. Is he crazy ?” And on and on it would go, until it all kind of meshed in with my dreams. I secretly thought my uncle Phil must be the coolest guy ever.
    I finally met him a couple of times when I was older, around thirteen or so. Bang, one day he just showed up at the New York City hospital where I was an inmate,