Excerpt: We Can't All Grow Up To Be Astronauts

“Anyways, I don’t suppose you have a break coming up, do you?” I asked hopefully.

“I was thinking about it. Why?”

“I want coffee. Or a sandwich. Or, if this were some magical dream land of perfection, I would be able to have both.”

“This is Harvard Square, land of dream realization and polo shirts. You can have all this and more.”

“I refuse to wear loafers.”

“You can still have a sandwich and a coffee, all under one roof. Ain’t America grand?”

“Oh, surely.” I leaned against the counter at the register, batting my eyes. “So, breaky breaky? Sammich and drugs?”

“Yeah, yeah. Let me go grab my coat.”

“Oh man up. It’s only fall! You’re a New Englander, dammit! Take it like a man!” I scolded as he headed away through the stacks.

“Shut up, tiny woman!” he hollered back as he wound out of sight.

I wandered a little bit near the front of the store, eventually wending my way over to the front door to wait for him. I rocked back and forth on my heels, my hands stuffed in the pockets of my coat, watching the world go by. Sometimes I still felt like a teenager, waiting on my friends in retail so we could go have a smoke and a coffee out back.

Oh, weren’t we just such rebels.

“So, sandwich-topia?” he asked, ushering me out the door.

“Most assuredly.”

We walked through Harvard Square in silence at first, letting the bustle of Cambridge flow around us. Cabs honked, the 1 bus appeared, and then several times over again. There was not a bus in metro Boston that actually ran on schedule. Harvard students wandered into traffic and almost died. Tourists did much of the same. Locals walked quickly, muttering into cellphones and glaring angrily at the Harvard students and tourists. The order of the world was maintained.

At the café, I pushed open the door and lead the way in.

We ordered food and sat in the back. “I can’t afford to do this so often,” I noted, poking at my sandwich with a finger. “But it’s just so delicious.”

“Just convert to hedonism. Itemize your taxes and write it off as a religious expense,” Aaron suggested.

“Can I write off alcohol too?”

“Absolutely. What’s a hedonist without an over-worked liver?”

I smirked. “I think I can get behind this idea. Truly, I have found my calling.” I leaned back in the chair—if only the universe worked like that. Confess your sins and win fabulous prizes, just like real religion! Tax incentives for confessing to exactly how often you have a nightcap—or four—to help ease your existential agony. This is America, land of the free. Free to abuse your alcohol, your lover, your self. Stand in the door and survey the limitless possibilities before you. Then, go back inside and pour yourself a drink; there is too much out there to be faced without a bit of liquid courage.

Aaron was drawing panels of a comic on a Post-It note and chewing an inordinately large bite of sandwich. It was difficult to tell whether he was working harder at manipulating the bite in his mouth or his brain.

“What are you drawing?” I asked, leaning forward.

“Boobs,” he replied, managing to avoid spitting any sandwich out.

“Oh please,” I sighed, leaning back and tossing my hands in the air. “Can anyone find their minds on anything else?”

“How’s Jack?” he asked pointedly, raising his eyebrows at me. The seriousness was somewhat undermined by the giant bulge in one of his cheeks from where he had tucked the partially masticated sandwich.

“Oh shut up.” I crossed my arms over my chest, sulking a little.

“Anyways.” He had been chewing furiously and finally swallowed, an overly dramatic gesture as he tried to finish with the last of his bite in one go. I occasionally experienced extreme concern—or irritation—over his eating habits, as he was always eating like this. Giant bites, gnawing and wrangling for minutes at a time, deeply focused on trying to win some sort of epic battle inside his mouth. I figured that if statistics could be trusted, one of these days, he was going to lose. “We’ve hit this really cool point in human history.” He ignored my arched eyebrows. “It’s come to the point where no one is phased by anything anymore. I can draw all the boobs I want. I don’t even need to justify it with some smug assertion of pseudo-art or anything like that—it’s just boobs. Boobs for boobs’ sake. I’m hoping to be on the cutting edge, when culture swings fully into the opposition. When women wearing clothing—think like turtlenecks and long pants, maybe even hats and gloves—have become something terribly shocking and even vulgar. Indecent. A clothed breast is obscene. Won’t someone think of the children.”

I shook my head. “You certainly have a point of view.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far. But if our culture is caught in an inexorable tide, a crashing wave of decline, then I’m at least going to try to surf it.”

I looked out the window, craning my head. “Those clouds are fucking terrifying.”