You close your laptop, wishing you had something real to write about. The first three pieces about wacky additions to the DSM-5 didn’t go too hot—when you’re not writing from the heart, it shows. You take a drive to clear your head and don’t think about crashing the car once. 

You call your parents. Both alive. Darn. Before they hang up, they say “I love you.” Double darn, you think staring at the sunset outside your window. You appreciate its beauty, but you wish you didn’t. 

You stay in your bed for weeks, cursing whatever God made it so you’d have a sort of weird brain, but not weird in a way that you can write funny jokes about. You wonder if this counts as a traumatic experience. Then you think about what your average firefighter or veteran goes through and realize you don’t have shit. 

You turn to smoking and drinking, neither in excess. Finally, an act of desperation. You limp to your computer and, with the last percent of its dying battery, you start to type:

_______________________________________________

Mile High Club

This is it. The day I finally fuck a plane.|

_______________________________________________

The cigarette falls from your mouth as you stare in reverence.