10
The Astronaut of the Year is unhappy. We do not know why. He has just received a national award, and still he wears the foggy space helmet and is all knotted-white eyebrows and gritted teeth, and for some reason he is shouting. In the back of the complimentary shuttle car, he demands that we immediately take him to a bar where there will be many young women. These are his words exactly. Many. Young. Women. We do not expect him to say words like that because he is wearing a space helmet and has wrinkly hands and a big gold medal pinned to his chest. To us, he looks precisely like a grandfather who has come back from the dead. He looks proud and taciturn and sad, and like an angel in his silver Mylar military uniform, out of place in our world entirely. Above the pressed collar, and beneath the glass helmet, he is all chin. His skin has bright liver spots and acres of wrinkles. He is in the backseat of the Celebration Corporation's biggest and best shuttle car, a mondo-sized silver Cadillac Deville, also available for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and corporate events, and his arms are bitterly folded over the aforementioned big gold medal. He announces he will jump out of the car if we do not obey his wishes this very instant. We speak up and say we know a few places. We say we can try to help him meet a few ladies.

9
The Astronaut of the Year does have a first name and a last name. Together, they are Mr. Chet Aston. They are on the yellow paperwork of the shuttle car order, Celebration Corporation Celebrity Escort #212, sitting silently beside us on the front passenger seat. We do not dare speak to the Astronaut using either name. It is because we recognize his face from history books, newspapers, films, posters, placemats, coffee cups, T-shirts, buttons, baseball hats, ceramic garlic holders, welcome mats, and the man's features tell us all about humanity's conquest of the vast expanse of outer space, our need to explore and accept the dark, un-shiny, and very lonely voids within ourselves. We remember wondering what he must have felt like up there, alone, quiet, floating. We remember wondering what he could have been thinking. We realize he has been to a place we will never, could never even begin to understand. In this, he is almost like a victim, but turned celebrity. We decide to simply refer to him as "sir" when we ask him if he is sure he does not want to go on to the reception as planned. "People are expecting you there, probably, sir," we say.

The Astronaut of the Year says, "I've been into space thirteen times." Then he adds, very angrily, "You. You are all like very little ants to me."

8
The Astronaut of the Year does not seem to notice we do not usually do well with angry people. We are slightly self-medicated and trying not to enter a reactionary shame spiral of violence. God knows, we are trying. We are really only me, just me, the driver, up front, alone. My name? Brian, but we have been trained to always refer to ourselves as we, in deference to the "we" collective of the Celebration Corporation, as a sign of our sense of corporate oneness and cohesion, and also as a psychological device to keep ourselves as drivers from feeling isolated and lonely, as best judged in the following important, customer-based interactions: "We at Celebration Corporation want to thank you for riding with us today, sir," or "We at Celebration Corporation had a lovely time serving you today, sir," or "We at Celebration Corporation would appreciate it if you waited until your next stop to partake of illegal substances, sir."

We are also me, Brian, and the photograph of my ex-girlfriend, Jean, which I have been carrying everywhere recently. It is the only photo I have of a girl who was a catalog model for petite and height-challenged women's clothing, and it is not even actually a photo but a picture torn from one of her ads, in which Jean is modeling a lovely miniature wedding dress, standing beside a miniature brown pony. In the ad, there are tiny stars in her eyes and her brown hair is threaded with small white flowers and she is feeding the little pony a sugar cube with the palm of her hand and laughing the way I had imagined her laughing when we actually got married. But like the miniature pony, she has moved on to greener pastures now, getting the role of a lifetime on a syndicated television series, playing the title character in, World's Tallest Man Marries World's Shortest Woman, which critics and audiences alike have been thoroughly enjoying. In the end, the "we," the torn catalog picture of Jean and me, have still been getting along OK, and enjoying each other's company; working together, driving the shuttle car, which the real Jean was never interested in doing, and also going to the park, restaurants, and movies, which Jean was always loathe to do because of her very obvious and diminutive size. We miss the real Jean but not her constant complaining about "heightists" and a culture obsessed with celebrity perfection, which strangely enough, she is now somehow part of, we guess. We miss the real Jean, but not the way she could make us feel worse than when we were lonely. We remember today is our eleven-month anniversary, but forget if it is the anniversary of the paper Jean or the real Jean. We do not really care. To us, eleven months either way is still an accomplishment. It is still something.

7
The Astronaut of the Year spits at us suddenly as we are considering the real Jean. We decide maybe it is best if the Astronaut does not go on to the reception at all. We cruise around for a while, hoping again that maybe he will change his mind. But he does not. He curses the people who are smiling at him as we drive past. He calls us a ninny. He threatens us with bodily harm. We take deep breaths and try to forget how easy it would be to smash an old man's windpipe. We remember, after all, who the old man is. We stare at the clipping of Jean sitting in our lap and try to be happy, peaceful, calm, understanding. We circle through the city slowly, slowly, creating great, invisible figure eights until the Astronaut of the Year is asleep in the backseat. We turn on the radio and sing a love song to the photo of Jean, remembering kissing on the beach at dawn, though we had never ever been to the beach. We check the paperwork and see what time the Astronaut is to be dropped off at his hotel. We calculate how many more figure eights we will need to do and the number is alarming. We stare at the clipping of Jean once more. We wonder where she is right now. We wonder if there are new ways of kissing that, without us, she is now learning.

The Astronaut of the Year wakes up violently, shouting random, crazy things. He then yawns and rubs his eyes like a baby and says, "If I am not sitting beside a young woman in ten seconds, I am going to murder you, you coward!" We have had enough. We pull over as quickly as we can in front of a bar with a picture of two big peaches side by side, lit up on a white sign. On the sign, the peaches are dripping wet with cartoon water. The bar is called Hotsies. It is a bar we know well. Inside, lovely waitresses serve fried chicken wings in hot orange shorts and white T-shirts that are constantly being soaked with water. They are in a perpetual wet-T-shirt contest and the customers pick the winners by giving lavish tips, which are counted at the end of their shifts. The winner is given all of the other girls' tips, which is unfair, but works in the customers' favor, because the waitresses have to be very, very friendly. We park and go around to help the Astronaut out of the car but he pushes our hands away. He tells us we are the most useless human he has ever met. Because we are as pitiful as we are, we are happy to have made some kind, any kind of impression on him. At a table, inside the fake cigarette-and-sawdust-aroma bar, the Astronaut announces he wants a drink. He pounds the table. He whistles at the girls, girls who are not even as old as his dentures. We feel embarrassed for him. He notices. He digs into the pocket of his silver military space outfit. He takes out a shiny silver quarter and holds it up. "This has been to space," the Astronaut says, holding the quarter under our nose. "This is the only thing at the table beside me that even counts." At that moment, we decide there is a reason the Astronaut of the Year is so lonely maybe. We do our best to ignore him. We secretly unfold the clipping of Jean and place it in our lap to help maintain our nonphysical, nonviolent, self-affirming composure. We watch in horror as the Astronaut of the Year grabs the clipping of Jean, stares at it, regards our face, and asks, "Did she leave you?"

We say Yes, very recently.

The Astronaut says, "In the vast configuration of things, one man's heartbreak doesn't amount to a hill of beans. I know. I've been up there. I've seen what's important and what isn't. One man and one woman don't count for much." We ask for the clipping back and he obliges, mocking and sneering. We fold it back up and apologize to ourselves, to the paper Jean, for being so spineless, so small, so weak.

6
The Astronaut of the Year has to always have a countdown before he does anything, or so we discover, ungratefully. Before he takes a sip of his lime gimlet he has ordered, he shouts, "10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1," and takes a gulp that drains the green glass in an instant. He spots a tall, lovely waitress in a see-through white top, slick and playful as a cartoon seal, and he waves her over. As she struts, pouting her lips, he counts down her approach. "10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1." At the end of an hour in the bar, when the Astronaut of the Year is very drunk, befuddled, sad as a painting of an old, silver clown, he lowers his head and counts, "10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1," before he begins crying. We decide the hotel is the best place for him now and try to lead him to the car. He is stiff in our arms. He is like a statue of himself, but mysteriously weeping. We walk him outside, and he begins humming the National Anthem. He salutes a torn red, white, and blue awning, which he confuses for a flag, before blacking out in the backseat.

The countdown proceeds to liftoff, of course. To order ALL HANDS ON follow the link below:

Joe Meno's latest novel, Hairstyles of the Damned, is out now via Punk Planet/Akashic.

KNUT HAMSUN, OL' DIRTY BASTARD, A TEENAGE GIRL
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Mickey Hess