Alan Hanson

In Lauren’s grandparents’ car coming back from JFK I am a zombie vibrating off of a pink football alprazolam, a pre-airport Boddingtons, an airport beer, and two free airplane whiskeys thanks to the healthily Nordic flight attendant who had a crush on me, I’m a regular Jack Shephard, and now my tingling shredded body is pretending to listen to a story about a house on the parkway and a cousin in Colorado Springs but I’m a good-with-the-family soldier and I nod with precision while noticing how much I miss trees, non-palmed, and now we’re in Huntington with curving hidden roads and large houses with even larger spaces between them. In Caruso’s we purchase an Italian feast and by the pool I fit more food into my body than I have in the last week combined and Carl tells me about the time he won a jackpot in a casino thanks to a tip from an angel, or a ghost, seriously, and I love it and he tells me more and I appreciate it wholeheartedly. I am super faux-boyfriend and I help clean a guinea pig cage and the Heineken’s start coming and suddenly my glass has half a bottle of wine in it and I’m not complaining. Lauren’s tiny sister is a born comedian and they show me a video of her making her armpits talk to each other and it’s better than most bits I’ve seen in a year. I hear a horrible story about a family member dying with a knife to her throat and the poor decision to play at the funeral a recording of her beautiful and distant voice singing The Corrs’ “Breathless” and it shakes me a bit, this really happened, and then Lauren’s mother plays me the recording and we sit there listening to a song of the dead. The insects outside whir non-stop and we can see a thousand stars and Lauren tells me a nice way to die would be to take a Virgin flight to the moon and eject yourself into expansive space and float into nothingness. I contemplate whether or not I would ride it out until I starved to death or take my helmet off and pop. A screaming comes across the sky but it’s not a V2 it’s a shooting star and I can never stop thinking about the moon, wherever I am, whenever it is. We talk about Frank O’Hara and drink too much and smoke too much and pour ourselves into bed and I fall asleep imagining Sam Spade in a smoking jacket with the buzz of a reality tv show cutting the dark bedroom. In the morning I fight a hangover with two cups of extra strength Dunkin Donuts coffee. Lauren is still sacked and her mother, her brother and I go to Bay Deli for egg sandwiches. The high school girl who hands us our food is named Kristie, according to her Huntington High School Stage Crew t-shirt with clouds of flour smeared across the black cotton, and she forces a smile to match our genuine ones. Back at the house I talk to a dog and drink an Arnold Palmer.