The Day I Watched My Brother Drown

I was watching him, and at first it didn’t look like there was anything wrong. Then I saw something. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( The Day I Watched My Brother Drown It’s still very hard for me to picture certain parts of that day. But one thing I’ll always remember is the look on their faces. Panic. It was horrifying. They were so close to me, and there was nothing I could do to help them. It would have been horrible losing just one of them, but all four—I just can’t comprehend it sometimes. I always tried to be protective of Dave. As a kid, I let him bunk with me because he was scared of the dark. When he got his driver’s license and would be out after curfew, I would tell him, “Just be careful. Just drive the speed limit so you don’t get pulled over.” And at camp when he went out, I’d nag him about having a designated driver. He was always like, “I’ve got it under control, Ben.” I’m a Baco boy. So were my brother and his friends. Camp Baco is a summer camp in upstate New York. Most of the kids are from Long Island, but you get a couple, like us, from Philly. My brother and I had been going since we were little. Dave, who was eighteen, had been a counselor the past two years, and I came back last year, at twenty-two, to be the head hiking counselor. Outside of my parents, Camp Baco is probably the most important thing to me. A lot of those first things you do in life, you do them at camp. You kiss a girl, you drink your first beer, just those adolescent things. It’s a very tight-knit place. Everyone at the camp seems to enjoy the same kinds of things—sports, music, stuff like that. I don’t know if anyone could tell you why the bond is so strong, but I can see it with my friends, with Dave’s friends. Those are the people you always seem to turn to in crisis. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( The Fantasy Football Kingpin I didn't expect the first text from Sam. It came on a wholly unremarkable night. 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The Kurds are among Iran’s religious minorities, too, and all of this has led to a belief among supporters of the protest movement that Amini’s treatment, the ease with which violence was visited upon her, cannot be separated from who she was: a young, female ethnic and religious minority with no ties to the ruling classes. [Read the Full Story]( Being Aegon Targaryen Nearly 200 years before Danearys Targaryen swooped in on her dragon and laid siege to King’s Landing, her forebears were similarly engaged in battles over succession, tending to their dragons, slicing each other up with swords forged of Valyrian steel, and marrying their siblings. This is the period that House of the Dragon deals with, specifically the nearly 30-year reign of King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine), Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, and its immediate aftermath. 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[Read the Full Story]( The Militiamen, The Governor, and the Kidnapping That Wasn't In these fragile and fractured times, terrible people seek to do terrible things. We reel from one assault to the next, facing down a relentless barrage of devilry and depravity. But—give thanks—sometimes, just in time, the forces of good catch a break. Sometimes those we rely upon to protect us do manage to intervene. Sometimes the terrible people’s most terrible deeds are prevented from ever happening. That, in general terms, was pretty much the story unveiled on October 8, 2020, when Andrew Birge, U. S. attorney for the Western District of Michigan, revealed how a group of men aligned with various militias planned to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. [Read the Full Story]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice/Notice at Collection]( esquire.com ©2022 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019