"Livin' La Vida Loca" • Ricky Martin (by Alex Miller)

One summer when Shane and I were home from college we borrowed our folk’s minivan to go to the video store on the edge of town. It was good seeing my little brother again after so much time apart. He gunned the Plymouth Voyager’s engine, hurling us down narrow country roads. We rolled down the windows because the van had no AC, hadn’t since the late 1980s. As the breeze tousled Shane’s honey blond hair, he asked what music I was into. I told him about “Sleep Now in the Fire,” the new Rage Against the Machine. It wasn’t as good as their old stuff, but still it was interesting, and anyway they were an important band, what with the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle.

“Huh,” said Shane.

I told him I was excited for “Flame,” by Sebadoh. At first I thought it was about drugs, but now people were saying it was about sex and submission. I told him I’d first heard Sebadoh on the soundtrack to the movie Kids. The frontman’s side project, The Folk Implosion, was also featured on the soundtrack. “Natural One” was an all-timer. 

“Yeah wow,” said Shane. “Yeah, that all sounds like good music.”

When I asked what he’d been listening to, he hesitated, spoke haltingly and slow. He admitted his favorite song was Livin’ la Vida Loca.

“Oh,” I said. 

“Yeah,” he said.

“By that guy from Menudo?”

My brother was embarrassed. Keeping one hand on the wheel, he gestured erratically with the other while explaining what he loved about the song. I didn’t totally follow. He told me about a nightclub, a girl he’d met, a steamy night on the dancefloor. 

Though Shane was a year younger than me, he was taller and ripped from the weightroom. In high school he played football and any other sport he could make time for. I wasn’t much of an athlete, but senior year I walked onto the soccer team, and Shane was the only one of us who was any good. My brother was smart and funny, and his easy confidence won him friends. Now he was nervous with me. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him nervous.

“There’s nothing wrong with Livin’ la Vida Loca,” I said. “Everyone loves it. Livin’ la Vida Loca is the biggest song in the world.”

By the time we parked at the video store, Shane was back to his old self.

“Livin’ la Vida Loca pumps me up,” he said, raising his arms and shimmying. The lights of the store bejeweled him in red and purple. “I got an idea.” He thrust his hips like he was doing the Humpty Dance. “Fuck this video store nonsense. Let’s go to a club.”

Our hometown had only one nightclub. Rumors was a reliable spot for meeting drunks and skanks. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but I could see that my brother was. So agile, so jacked—a body designed for motion, like those Michelangelo statues I learned about in art class.

“You and me, brother,” he said, rolling his shoulders, dipping and weaving in the seat. “Just watch me work. Girls will come snapping.”

Instead of hitting the club, we rented The Thin Red Line and drove home. I enjoyed the movie, but Shane fell asleep halfway through. When I think back about that night, I wish we’d gone to the club. Sometimes I imagine myself watching from the bar as Livin’ la Vida Loca blasts from the speakers and Shane swaggers onto the dance floor. I imagine him locking eyes with a woman, dancing with her, dancing close.

Growing up, Shane and I were tight, and I guess I thought we’d go on like that forever. But the years, to paraphrase a legendary band, started coming and didn’t stop coming. After college he moved halfway across the country to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he married a lovely woman and fathered a troop of beautiful, blond children. He started spending holidays with his wife’s family in the Minneapolis suburbs. 

I don’t see Shane much anymore. When I do, he seems unlike the kid brother I remember. He has a job I don’t understand, a family I hardly know. 

I miss Shane a lot. My Shane. The Shane I knew when we were boys. 

Maybe next summer I’ll take a few days off work for a visit. 

Maybe this time we’ll go to a club.

Alex Miller is the author of the story collection Field Guide to Mediocre Men (Unsolicited Press, forthcoming in 2028) and novel White People on Vacation (Malarkey Books). His fiction has appeared in Flyway, Pithead Chapel, and Colorado Review. He lives in Denver.