Brian’s real father, Brian Michael something met his mother while home from Boot Camp for the Navy. They had a whirlwind love affair and … oops … she got pregnant. She told him after he had shipped off to Vietnam as the crew of a patrol boat on the Mekong Delta. Basically he was a crew member of a boat like John Kerry was on. She tells him she’s pregnant and he does the right thing and does just leave her. The best comparison to their affair at this point is the Dixie Chicks song “Travellin’ Soldier”, and it had the same ending. After Brian is born she tells his father and he begins writing a letter to his son just in case he never comes home.
While on a patrol their boat came under fire from a Vietcong ambush. Brian’s father manned the twin ‘50 caliber machine gun as they returned fire. The engine was damaged right off and entire boat’s crew had been injured, including him, but he continued supporting fire on the machine gun until the engine could be brought back up for them to leave. Just as the engine fired up he was hit by a round from a Nagant rifle — a Soviet-made bolt action 7.62x54mm rifle from czar times that became a sniper’s weapon before the Dragunov SVD came out (the SVDs were in Vietnam, but not in very large numbers). It clipped his aorta and he bled out before the Corpsman could even get over to him.
Brian’s mother receives the letter he was writing in a thick envelope. She never opened it and filed it away with his other letters and more or less lost track of them over the years. She marries when Brian is four and has two other children a son and a daughter. (I’ve already named Brian’s sister Tara and given her a history of abusive relationships.) Brian is raised by a terrific man who adopts him and treats him great. He’s obviously not entirely related to his siblings since he has brown eyes and they all have blue, like his mother and step-father and he hears stories about his father from his mother. (This actually comes somewhat from my half-brother Shawn except his real father was actually just slime who pretty much abandoned him after he and my mother divorced.)
Brian never makes dating a priority while he’s growing up. He has big plans with his life and doesn’t even really consider it. He asked a few girls out in high school and is turned down everytime. He gets out of high school in 1986 and goes into studying engineering or computer science or something equally complex. He can’t handle it and by 1988 his GPA is 1.9 and he drops out. He gets a menial office job and settles down. When he’s 22 his family moves across town and his mother finds the letters, including the letter to Brian. Almost as an afterthought she gives it to him and tells him that it’s from his real father and that he should probably read them.
It completely changes his life when he does. He read them in order from the oldest to the latest and began admiring the father he never knew. Then he gets to the letter addressed to himself. In the previous letter it said that he should have read it when he was 16. His father tells him as best he can in a letter how to be good man. Brian realizes that he’s pretty much failed on most of it and then he gets to where his father tells him to have a son and to name him after him;. Of everything in there, that stand out as what he can do for his father. He’s failed him in almost every way and he can do that.
But Brian is also completely inept with women. At 22 he’s still a virgin. He doesn’t like bars or really social events. He’s terrified of approaching women anyway. He’s a nice looking but gets turned down again and again when he does try to ask women out.
By 23 he’s dated a few women (as in three) but nothing’s happened besides getting sex. He doesn’t want just that. Every time he tried to get serious with someone, they break it off. Often simply by not returning his calls. This pretty much sums up his life for the next few years. He tries dating services, but only gets so far with that. It’s a chooser’s market for women and for some reason it’s never him. He begins to get the idea to take any kind of relationship that he’s offered, no matter how shallow it ends up.
He goes back to school at 25 to study journalism. Mostly it’s because he wants to get out of working at the office he’s at and do something more exciting. By this point it’s 1993 and Clinton is office and the Battle of Mogadishu has happened. He’s interested in being a war correspondent, ironic to his generally pacifist upbringing. He gets through it, still with no luck with women despite being around so many of the same ones for years.
He’s also going to a therapist and on anti-depressants because of this. His friends have all done what they can to help him, but he’s at a new low. He starts working at a paper and more than realizes that he has a career and no family. He’s decent at it, not the best writer but ambitious and willing to dig deeper for a story than what even exists.
In 1998 there’s a multiple homicide and it blows up into a media fiasco. The man is made to look like a monster, but Brian, always looking at the other side of the story, offers to his defense a chance to write a complete profile on the accused killer. His attorney, an ambitious 28-year-old public defender named Hara Thomas, agrees and for the three months of the trial he works closely with them. They lose the case, but afterward Hara asks him to dinner. He thinks it’s just her being nice, but when she get there and wear that dress he realizes that it wasn’t just to say thank you.
It turned out that she was wanting to settle down and start a family, too. She also knew she could have damn near any man she wanted, so she wanted to chose carefully. She was impressed by Brian. She called his work and got his best friend Mike and asked about him. After he was sworn to secrecy (obtained by her answering a question from him about the case as “no comment” and him declaring it reporter/source confidentiality) he spilled everything on Brian. Surprisingly, Hara wasn’t turned off.
Hara is his dream woman. He has a thing for ethnic women and she’s Indian. She’s smart, witty, creative, mentally his equal and she’s not as much more knowledgeable as she can remember things faster. Devastatingly beautiful. His ideal of beauty even.
After two years he asks her to marry him and they get married toward the end of May, 2000. A year later they decide, especially with her knowing about Brian’s father, to start a family. They run into trouble conceiving, but eventually do. And it’s a boy! Brian Michael Unis III. Despite Brian’s father having a different last name he insists on his son being the third. They have everything ready and then… Hara goes into labor at seven months. And he’s still born. They reassess their situation and Hara makes it perfectly clear, against Brian’s unvoiced objections, that they never try for children again. Brian is OK with this on the outside, but it tears his heart up. This is the beginning of the end of his marriage.
One day a few years later a college intern comes to the paper named Amanda. Brian is given responsibility over her. Late one night a few months into her six month internship she seduces him by practically taking his pants off. He does it because of how he was always looking for a relationship for so long. A few days later she wants to do it again and he does. This continues every Friday for three months. Finally he decides to do the right thing and breaks it off. Amanda is seemingly OK with it, but she’s furious. She was supposed to break up with him, not the other way around. She tells his wife in every detail she can. She then tells his boss what happened and then added that if he isn’t fired she’s firing a sexual harassment suit and finally she tells as many people at the paper as she can.
And here the story begins …