My cousin Louis was mentally handicapped. Since I normally use “retarded” as an insult I’m not going to call him that. Because I thought he was an awesome guy.

He was a creepy looking dude, dressed all in black with a black trench coat and had long messy stringy greasy hair and a scraggly beard and watched Startrek and was just gross and weird and awesome. He looked like one of those guys that would listen to Nine Inch Nails or Type O or whatever, only I don’t think he listened to much music. I think he was just creepy looking.

He claimed he couldn’t read but I’m not so sure. How else could he have learned CB radio lingo, and given directions for a whole convoy of truckers to encircle my block by offering them cut-rate pep pills and blowjobs? Hell… How’d he find a hand-held CB radio anyway?

He couldn’t find his way around his neighborhood in Queens, yet he figured out how to escape from the institute (can I just say “asylum”?) by breaking into the HVAC ducts and shimmying his way out. He then walks up to his house and sits down at the kitchen table like nothing out of the ordinary’s going on.

Then there was the time that he went to Puerto Rico.

This was back in the days before 9/11 and everything so you could just… yaknow… get on a plane and fly. SOMEhow he gets to JFK airport and starts talking to the girl at the ticket sales counter: “Hey… I’ve heard Puerto Rico’s really nice… how much is it to go there?”; hands her all his money; gets on the plane and flies down there like you or I would get on the bus and go to the mall.

A day or two later his mom (my aunt) gets a call from a woman who says that Louis is sitting on their porch, in Puerto Rico, with no money to get home. The dude was sitting on the beach, in a black trench coat and hat, all dazed and confused (because of the heatstroke) and this woman took him in. My aunt thinks it’s a hoax, but then realizes that her son is weird enough to do shit like that.