Untitled - Luke LaGraff

. . . climbing the tallest mountain in the world, George Hanover! . . . George Hanover pitched a perfect game, again . . . I don't know how he does it, but George Hanover has released eight number 1 albums in a row . . . This guy George Hanover decided to take matters into his own hands and fought back. The robber didn't have a chance . . . Science said it couldn't be done, but it hadn't met George Hanover . . .

"Wwaaahh! bllbbliittt. grrrraaaaahhhhh!!"

George had been dreaming.

"Wake up, George. Wake up," his mother said to him as she crossed his bedroom door on the way to the kitchen. It was Friday morning around 11 and it really was time for him to get out of bed. He had to walk the family dog and then pretend to look for jobs on the Internet or his mom wouldn't give him the fifty dollars he would desperately need. The reason he desperately needed it was because he had to get loaded. On what? It didn't matter. Hopefully some Xanax would be found, because that would ease the nice, gentle buzz from the 10 or 12 beers that would have already have been consumed by the time his dealer got off work. His dealer, in turn, would be able to drop off the gram of coke that George and his longtime “party” buddy would do at the shitty bar while trying to make new friends. The two never made new friends, only people who wanted to do a line of coke and jabber on for five or ten minutes until they would leave George and his one friend sitting in the darkest corner of smoke and loneliness a bar can offer.

But George wasn't fazed. Nope. He never was. He was an excellent rationalizer. And an equally great delusionist.

And later on that night, sittin' up in his corner chair, George explained his greatness, "Edmund Hillary was a great climber, but he couldn't have done three lines of coke, drank a fifth of Evan Williams and made it home in an '89 Ford Taurus with three working tires, like I did last Tuesday night. And Roy Halladay is an amazing pitcher, but could he have rollerbladed down Interstate 75 at 2am after eating 4 hits of LSD and not get run over by a semi? NO! Could Michael Jackson start a fistfight with four polite coffeehouse regulars and crawl out with only second degree burns and a broken hand? Maybe. But he wouldn't have had the balls to do it in the first place. But I did! I did it all!! I even found time to try a new drug. Roxy. It's a mixture of cocaine and OxyContin. You shoot it. Einstein couldn't have done that. He didn't even think of it first. I did!"

George slumped back over, his withered and dying body aligning itself easily with the bent and spent shape of this crusty barroom chair’s final resting place.


Luke LaGraff is a lover of sandwiches, egg nog, and one of a kind days. He used to forget them, but now has realized he shouldn't; they have more meaning than ever at this point of his life. He enjoys the sun in LA and watches hockey and funny things whenever he can. He listens to people. He's from Tennessee.