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Ben is the two time consecutive mayor of Eagle's Ravine, the man at the center of everything in the one horse town he grew up in. He loves to be at the center of attention and has a blunt, earthy sense of humor. At times he has to temper this for the sake of his stiffer constituents and allies, but Ben still maintains his integrity, having zero tolerance for bullshit. He is strongly attached to reality and the present moment making him very perceptive to physical changes, noticing even the slightest shift in facial expression, and if he feels like someone is not being on the up and up with him he will call them out on it, or just find out what it is they're hiding. While his candor and uncomplicated way of communicating is generally refreshing for a politician, sometimes a little finesse in his wording might get him a little further.

Interestingly though Ben is quite hypocritical when it comes to privacy. While he poses as an open book with nothing to hide, he is actually very very protective of his own private life, especially when it comes to his nieces. If the topic of family ever arises he is quick to change the subject or shut down altogether, only tolerating the basic questions such as, "how are the girls?" Mostly he is tight-lipped though because he is wary of those who are just curious as opposed to genuinely concerned for them.

Ben has a strained relationship with his nieces who he has legal guardianship over, honestly having been a better uncle than he has been a dad. Not that Ben is contemptuous, but he just never expected to be a parent (a single one at that) and finds it hard to be patient with them, especially when being a guardian gets in the way of business. He takes care of them in the only way he knows how a man takes care of his family and that is to provide a roof over their head, food, and making sure they are physically safe. He has a hard time understanding their emotional needs though, having trouble acknowledging or expressing his own emotions as well.

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I'm not a very introspective or spiritual guy, but lately the same question has been bugging me over and over again in the back of my mind. How did I get here? Like a deep here? It's the sort of question my twin sister Maggie would pose when we were teenagers and we would spend hours deconstructing its meaning together. She was always good at figuring that kind of stuff out, I would mostly just sit and listen while we watched the stars. Whenever I get philosophical I try too hard, like I'm viciously paddling to stay above the depths of meaning instead of floating on top of it peacefully.

To clarify, here is not a good place. Here is where I never expected to be, my twin gone completely insane and taking care of her abandoned children. You wouldn't have expected we'd be here from where we started at least. We grew up in Eagle's Ravine, our dad was a union lumber worker and our mom stayed at home. There wasn't a picket fence or anything, but our childhood wasn't anything abnormal from the standard around here. I remember more good than bad. I'm not so sure about Mags, she was more prone to analyzing things and would probably tell you that our happy little family was just a facade. Then again we had slightly different experiences despite being twins. First I guess I was lucky because I was born a boy and being raised in a traditional home boys tend to get special treatment over girls. She pointed this out to me many times how I could get away with murder while she couldn't get away with even being a little late for curfew.

It also didn't help that she had what many people called a "nice personality", code for "not that good looking". She was in fact nice, smart, and ambitious, (not to mention chubby) yet I never saw her good qualities as she was trying to compensate for anything, she was just a good person. It wasn't until high school that I knew she was even insecure about her appearance. I felt bad because it wasn't something that I could relate to, like being a girl, and it just seemed like when I tried to help it was like rubbing salt in the wound. "What do you know?" she would ask rhetorically. That question should be the inspiration to the title of my nonexistent memoir. What do I fucking know?

Fast forward past high school, I stayed in Eagle's Ravine and got a job in the lumber yard, and Mags went to college across the country to study pre-law, ends up getting hitched with Mr. Fancy Lawyer Pants and settles down. I didn't like the guy she decided to marry, I could tell he was a grade-A douchebag all the way from his shiny black shoes to his cleft chin (perhaps it takes one to know one you might counter). Plus he was one of her college professors which was sketchy.. But as long as Mags was happy I was too so I kept my mouth shut. Then he left her while she was pregnant with her second kid for another student. Big fucking surprise there. I offered for her to come back home but she refused of course, said she would never go back to that ass backwards town of ours (which was bound to become even more out of touch if I became mayor she teased since I had recently expressed my political ambitions to her). She seemed fine, but again, maybe I had missed something, maybe I just didn't understand.

Then, one day months later, out of the blue she asked if I could buy her a plane ticket home. I knew she had to be desperate to come back so I did. She had definitely changed, so much so that I didn't recognize her when I went to pick her up at the airport. It was only when Claire came running up to me that I placed her as my sister. I'll just fucking say it, she had become hott - sleep deprived, slightly twitchy - but she had lost tons of weight and looked like a model. Rosie too, the ugliest baby I'd ever seen (that I loved all the more because of it) had turned into a cherub. It was bizarre, and things only got weirder when we got home. I moved her and the girls into our childhood home that our parents had left to us and she became a shut in. Wouldn't come out of the house for anything, peaked through the blinds when anyone knocked on the door and sent Claire out to the corner store for groceries.

I visited as much as I possibly could between work and mounting a meager political campaign. I would bring groceries, make sure the house was clean, although Claire did a good job with the upkeep (too good for a girl her age, just like her mom), and spend time with the girls playing. Maggie seemed better at these times when I was around. But sometimes when I was not there, I would get calls from little Claire (Claire Bear, I used to called her, sometimes still do) telling me her mother had locked herself inside a room with Rosie, or that she was screaming at nothing again and I would have to get over there before the neighbors called the police to talk her down. Then one time, just once, when I was in the middle of talking with one of my campaign contributors, I didn't answer the phone, and I didn't get there in time, and she had tried to explode the house by leaving the gas stove on.

How do you explain to a child their mother's gone mad and that she tried to kill herself and you or your little sister? I don't know. I never had the right words to say. That's what I had Maggie for before she went crazy. She always knew just what to say to make someone feel better, or make them at least feel validated, and any words of wisdom I've ever spoken have been some parody of what she's said. I think I ended up telling the girls some bullshit like mommy was just having a bad day and had gone to a hospital where they fix minds. I don't know, something soft and schmucky that I thought a six and ten year old might be able to handle. Claire looked at me as if I had insulted her intelligence. "You mean she was locked away in a psychiatric ward." I remember her correcting me adult-like. Rosie just stared glassy eyed into space, a face I've rarely seen changed since.

Maggie was transferred to the state psychiatric hospital in the capitol a few hours away. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia (Which is hereditary). I went to visit her a few times before she managed to somehow escape the hospital and disappear. Completely. And I guess in a chronological explanation this is how we end up here. Me, a surrogate dad to two girls. I'll admit it, I had no idea what I was fucking doing as a parent most of the time, still don't. Claire seemed to turn out okay, she's rational and responsible, though I don't think I can take any credit for it, she just seemed born that way. She's helped a lot with her younger sister, Rosalie, who I don't even know what to do with half the time. I don't know if she was born the way she is or if what happened to her changed her development. She's just different. Odd. The square peg in the round hole. She just doesn't fit in around here. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope for the best with that one.

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