Author: Aaron Collins, Topic: Space

Outer space is really cool, my friend Marty used to say over a tall can of Milwaukee's Best Ice. He even wrote it in black sharpie accompanied by magic marker drawings of planets and stars; like a child's artwork, it was hung on the fridge with a magnet in Dan's apartment. He loved to talk about Carl Sagan and introduced me to the original Cosmos documentary series. We would sit and drink beer after beer, watching and excitedly talking about the universe. Marty would say in slurred speech: The probability of our civilization encountering another during the arch of its existence over unfathomably vast distances, is very very small.  He would then crush the empty can in his hand and place it amongst the graveyard of empties on his desk. I told him that in my last days, I wanted to be launched into space toward a black hole so that I could see if I would really be stretched out like taffy or if it would be a portal that would lead me into another world. Can you grab me another beer out of the crisper, Marty would ask. I always obliged. A quick viewing of Marty's apartment would have alarmed most sane people. There were empty cardboard boxes scattered about from his case-a-day regimen,

empty cans with cigarette ash peppered on the top, a few holes and dents in the plaster in the living room and in the bathroom, and a sink full of dishes crusted with old food, exuding a foul odor. In his freezer there were empty Sky Vodka bottles and half a box of freezer burnt chicken patties. I ignored all that as I walked to the fridge for his Milwaukee's Best Ice and whatever affordable/high alcohol craft beer I could afford. He later told me that the damage to the apartment walls were caused by him stumbling into them and in other cases punching them in some alcohol induced rage. But my own inebriated state numbed me to these facts. 

       Marty introduced me to one of my favorite bands. Their ambient drones swelled through the speakers and it felt like a benevolent universal presence had evoked its peace over the room, while also reminding you of the emptiness and overwhelming vastness of space. The sounds would slowly come into being out of a vacuum and gently fade away into nothingness, only for a new sound to emerge quietly after. They were guitars that sounded like starlight. And with his eyes tearing up he told me that the music would envelope him in a serene weightlessness and made him feel the power of the cosmos. As much as he insisted he was an atheist, I think he was actually in search of a higher being. 

       On nights like these, we would drink through the night and into the early morning. Marty liked hanging with me because I drank like he did; though I've always thought he drank more than me, got more drunk than me. He was the only person with whom I played a drinking game in which there were only two players. Sometimes while sitting on the couch in deep drunken discussions, he would put his arm around me. Not wanting to hurt his feelings I allowed it. I sensed that it was out of loneliness, that he longed for love and companionship.

      Then,  a blackout. Marty at some point was crawling to his bedroom on all fours mumbling to himself and occasionally yelling obscenities at me. I tried to help him to his bed but he shouted and slapped my arms away. His eyes were glazed over, blank, not seeing. He seemed to be somewhere between a dream and awake; like a child having night terror; I left him on the floor.

      After vomiting in the bathroom I would lay on the couch, spinning. Thinking about spiral galaxies, death, Marty's alcoholism coupled with his child-like wonder for the stars. I thought about my alcoholism and where this life would lead me. 

        Only a few months later I got thirty days of continuous sobriety together. I didn't hear from Marty for sometime until one night he called me, threatening to kill himself. The police officer at the scene told me he was okay and that they'd taken him to the hospital. They told him that he had the blood pressure of a fifty year old man with a history of heart problems. From what I hear he's been sober for some time, living under lock and key at his parents house in Dayton. I wonder if he still looks up at the sky, if he still seeks that connectedness with God, the Universe, and Man. If he still blacks out, stars around his head, spinning into a quasar, gathering pulsating energy and shrieking out through the blackness in hopes of reaching another soul, a better world.