Out East: Memoir of a Montauk Summer

by John Glynn

I had sobered up from the beach, and the anxiety was creeping back. I needed to get drunk again.

Amid our devious swirl of alcohol and drugs, a cake signified stability and tradition.

I was overcome with a wave of delirium. A cosmic euphoria. I’d devoted every waking thought to him. Every song lyric grafted to his existence. It was real. I wasn’t making it up. It was real.

I had envisioned this countless times, had prayed for it each morning on my walk to the subway.