Ever been to a gay bar? said the older man. He was slumped in a chair. We were in the waiting room, the aesthetician. There was a lone lobster in a fish tank beside us, bubbling. He nodded towards it. Can’t tell if you’re the type, he said. Or too much of a prude?

Before I could respond, he waved this comment away, meaty palm quartering the air. Gay bars are like lobster tanks, he said, only without the rubber bands.

How’s that?

Without the rubber bands, they cannibalize each other. Don’t you know?

I watched the lobster, a white shell spotted with purple dots, glide across pebbles, opening and closing its claws. 

Time passed in a crawl. I sank further into the armchair, waiting to have holes dug into my face—microscopic—no bigger than a grain of sand. That was why I was here. A procedure that would promote collagen growth and reduce the scarring I’d gained from a decade of grueling acne. I once thought it sprouted from my cheeks like roses, leaking pus and blood. 

I was home for two weeks for the summer. Besides the hemorrhoids I also had that sprung from my anus the day after a surprise break-up, I had little to worry about. Every other hour, I ran to the bathroom, soaked a hand towel in hot water, pressed the damp folds to my bottom, and felt the hemorrhoids pulse and shrink. I slathered on Preparation H afterwards, and I waited to repeat the process all over again. 

◆

In the kitchen, my father brewed coffee. My eyes fell to his legs, the ends puffed up into accomplished cankles. Though he wasn’t technically sick, he was often swollen—this was just how he’d been aging, a man who rarely drank water and overindulged in sweets and refused any vegetables. I turned on the faucet, filled a glass with tap. He asked me what I was doing today. Healing, I said.

From the heart? I remember my days of young love.

No, I said. From the face. I tipped my glass back and welcomed the long swallow.

Down the hall, my sister’s alarm rang. My father raised his eyebrows before looking back at his mug. It would go on for hours unless one of us did something. 

She was curled, tucked deep into her sheets when I walked in and ended the alarm. Still, she didn’t budge. I felt a familiar disappointment in seeing her resist the day. I wasn’t sure if she was precisely lazy, or if it was something else, something I couldn’t point my finger at. A snore slipped from her mouth, mammoth teeth flashing in the darkness, and I took a step back when the smell reached me: beside her stood a spill of cat shit. Splattered across the curtain too. I glared at the cat perched on the pillow next to my sister until the cat hissed. I left without trying to wake her. 

In the kitchen, my mother had joined my father. She said the aliens were at it again. Not only was my mother a conspiracy theorist, but she was also an avid alien enthusiast. Every year she’d visit Shoreline Park with her binoculars, waiting for some lights to graze the surface. Florida was known for being a hotspot of UFO sightings after all. 

There’s been another spotting? I asked. 

She hummed in confirmation. The UFO congressional hearing is starting any minute now too, she said. I’ll be watching, if you wanna join.

Maybe they’ll come here next, I said.

Knock on wood, she said, and she tapped her knuckles against the Formica countertop. I asked her if she thought my hemorrhoids could have been from an alien visiting me at night. Isn’t that how the story goes? I said.

Joshua, she said. Don’t say stuff like that. It’s vulgar.

My mother was a squat woman who still carried the burden of the boob job she got in the early 2000s—the burden of being one, or even two, cup sizes too big. The inspiration: Carmen Electra, Pamela Anderson. Women my father adored, always ogling them when they flashed on the TV screen. Scary Movie played often in my childhood.

Before, my mother wore nice things. Colorful blouses that felt like soft kisses to the touch. Pencil skirts and stylish capris. A woman with a carefully curated elegance. Now, shirts of rock bands only my father was familiar with—Blue Öyster Cult, Quiet Riot—all cut into muscle tees. They choked her body. She slashed her hair shorter and shorter, and dyed it brighter and brighter. She was still a beautiful woman, with immense opalescent eyes, full lips always swimming in gloss. But since retirement fell over the house, so had the effort to keep up appearances. She was dangerously close to looking like Billy Idol.

My father, meanwhile, was always working on the car he never used. He had his day-to-day car, a Ford Explorer, and then a sleeker car he’d buff and wax and never drive. This second car rarely lasted more than a year; he was often selling it for something else, something better, something more stylish, something he’d still never be seen riding down the main drag in. It was, for now, an electric blue Corvette. When he’d hobble back into the house mid-afternoons, he’d be smothered in swipes of stinking grease. More for show, I thought, than anything else.

I followed my mother into the living room, where the hearing had begun airing on the TV. A whistleblower was admitting to congress that non-human biological remains had been recovered from crashed UFOs throughout the years. My mother was on the edge of her seat. But we already knew they existed, she said.

Still—she couldn’t contain her happiness. At noon, she made us celebratory piña coladas and when my father came around coated in motor oil, we pretended they were glasses of horchata. We spent the next hours stretched across pool chairs. The gurgling water lulled us, the chlorine was extra sharp. The aesthetician had told me to keep away from the sun, and so I covered my face with a towel. My sister said she wanted to go ax throwing and so we did. She swung an ax into the bull’s eye. She had perfect aim. When I tried, the ax hit the edges of the target with a thunk before falling to the floor. The strengths I did have, I thought, had no use in Florida. She said as much herself. But when would I need to throw an ax in New York? 

My sister frowned. She scooped her ax and flung it again and again. 

My face burned the entire time.

◆

Boxes from Amazon drowned our front door. I’d gotten into the habit of scrolling through Reddit threads and purchasing every ointment celebrated for being the best hemorrhoid fix. I bought a sitz bath that I placed neatly on the toilet, filling it up with hot water and epsom salts, always the most popular brands. I’d sit on it in the mornings and evenings, and after every bowel movement. For twenty minutes, I’d scroll on my phone, ass hot, reading Reddit thread after Reddit thread, sometimes pumping the little bulb that blew bubbles to my anus. I felt my sphincter flex. Sometimes, I’d check my ex’s Twitter. He hadn’t Tweeted in so long. I checked his likes. He hadn’t been online at all. This brought no comfort—he was busy, busy with his friends, his life. I wasn’t busy at all. I squeezed the bulb again and felt heat rise up inside me. When I was done, I swiped the excess with a damp towel. Then patted it dry with another towel. After some time passed, I rubbed wipes drenched in witch hazel across my bottom and the hemorrhoids throbbed. The feeling was never unpleasant. But the hemorrhoids persisted. I tried other remedies: hydrocortisone cream bought over the counter; Anusol suppositories I’d douse in Astroglide, sliding the white pellets inside until my finger was three inches deep. One Reddit user said to shove the hemorrhoid back in. Another said to squeeze the guy until it bled. Another said to pop it with a needle.

The cream I ordered from China worked best. Mayinglong. The odor was powerful, and it followed me around like a cloud of gnats to rotting fruit. Still, I kept with its use: it shrank the beasts until hardly anything was there at all. 

I was swollen and red still in the face, small purplish splotches beneath my eyes and at the bridge of my nose. Despite this, I was lonely enough I’d downloaded Tinder for my summer break and now found myself sitting at a table, stinking of Mayinglong, waiting for a man named Damian to meet me. 

He had gingerish curls he’d arranged neatly with gel, faint freckles splattered across a soft face made of doughy cheeks and hidden bones. His eyes were large circles that turned red when he told me how his parents died in some building collapse a few years back. Nearly one hundred people had been killed.

He said they’d left him a boatload of money. That he expected even more still from the class action. Management was at fault, there was no doubt about this.

I don’t work, he said. I’m just trying to enjoy life. It’s what my parents would have wanted. He told me then that he’d just purchased a studio in Williamsburg, and was moving to New York at the end of the month.

That’ll be fun, I said. What do you do with all that free time then? 

He told me he pulled all kinds of pranks now—to feel better, he said.

Pranks?

Prank calls, he said, smiling. Other, more devilish, things. What do you do for fun?

I told him I mostly just watched reality TV. Housewives, Vanderpump, Drag Race. It’s all I can manage these days, I said. 

I was chewing when a sharp burning came from my mouth. The metallic taste of blood and its attendant warmth. I pushed my tongue forward and out came a small piece of glass.

Damian sucked in his breath, his face grew red.

Was this you? I said.

Damian shook his head. It’s just the sight of blood, he said. I can’t handle it. He stood from his seat and thumped towards the bathroom at the back of the restaurant. The small shard was shaped like a guitar pick. I folded it into my napkin before Damian returned.

The date didn’t last much longer.

◆

My father was asleep on the La-Z-Boy in the living room. My mother stared raptly at the TV, a telenovela blasting at full volume. How was the date? she asked. He a keeper? Her eyes remained glued to the screen. I told her it wasn’t a date. Just meeting people, I said, and I sank into the seat beside her. With her gaze still fixed to the beautiful couple minutes from passionate lovemaking, my mother pitched a cushion in my direction. Your father’s old hemorrhoid pillow, she said.

I settled the donut-shaped piece beneath my bottom. Thanks, I said. On the screen, golden flesh unfurled. A woman whimpered. She moaned. Digging my hand into my pocket, I thumbed the napkin until I felt a prick, then another, then another.

◆

I watched my mother cook pancakes. Quick steam rose off the tossed butter. My sister wobbled into the kitchen. Hair arranged into a bird’s nest. She drilled her eyes into me. Who turned off my alarm? she said. I missed class. 

I’d thought of Damian when I’d done it. Snuck into her room, turned off the rows of alarms set for every five minutes. I know it was you, she said. 

How do you normally wake up for class? I asked.

The sixth alarm usually does it, she said.

My mother dug the tip of the spatula beneath a bubbling pancake, and she flipped. She’s not joking, she said. My sister slouched on the stool. Dragged her nails through her hair, giving it a good shake. Mom, why didn’t you wake me either? she said. 

My mother stacked a plate with pancakes, slid them in my direction. She examined her work quickly before saying, I’m not your personal alarm clock. 

I prized a fork with my fingers. But you are our chef, I said, and I cut into the stack—butter flowed through the layers and cracks.

◆

My bedroom ceiling was pure white, laced with the occasional cobweb. I’d been staring at it all afternoon, dreaming about a doctor simply wielding a scalpel to the hemorrhoids, lopping them off in one fell swoop, a simple squirt of blood, comfort a stitch away. I did this often, fantasized about a quick but gruesome solution. I was also thinking about Damian. I imagined him holding my hand during the procedure. Or waiting for me in the hospital hallway, fingers twisting at a bouquet of roses. 

Then my mother slipped into my bedroom, said she had something for me. A bracelet to bring you good luck, she said. To promote the healing I was in search of and which I deserved. The beads were green and carefully strung by pearlescent thread. 

Are the rocks from Area 51? I asked.

I’m serious, she said.

So am I, I said.

She took a seat beside me on the bed and stretched away the duvet’s rumples. Have you spent any time with your father? You’re only here for another week.

He’s busy with his car.

His days here on Earth are numbered, she said, and I scooted up, pushing my spine into the mahogany headboard. Is he sick? I said.

Does he look okay to you? She narrowed her eyes.

He’s never looked okay to me. 

Just go work on that car with him, she said. He’d appreciate it.

I don’t know the first thing about cars.

If you can wipe your ass, you can wipe a car.

◆

Our plates were all cleared—lobster tail for him, the shell picked apart completely; a burger for me, juice and oil still sploshed across the porcelain—when he suggested a prank. Despite how our last date ended, I’d agreed to meet Damian again after he asked me out a second time. I was lonely, and bored, and I wasn’t at all shocked when he said we should dine and dash. 

I told him we weren’t children. That we—him especially—could afford it.

That’s not the point of having money, he said.

Isn’t it? To spend it? 

My parents are dead. I’m just trying to have some fun.

He was guilt-tripping me, and it worked: we bolted, the server red-faced as she ran after us and onto the restaurant’s patio. Meters away, I craned my neck back. She’d given up, her hands covering her face in the parking lot. And I thought of when she’d dropped the bill at our table, how I examined her skin, smoother than a perfect pebble.

We slowed when we neared the sandy banks of Bonita Beach. The sky was orange as papaya flesh. Kicking white shells, Damian told me we had to go back. What do you mean? I said.

We have to, he said. I mean, you have to at least.

To pay?

I swiped your credit card when you went to the bathroom. We did pay. I left it on the table. We just need to go back to pick it up.

You took my card?

The prank wasn’t on the woman. It was on you.

I told him it would be humiliating to return. That the server obviously knew we had attempted to dine and dash.

Maybe, Damian said. But also, why would we leave a card behind?

I don’t see how this is a prank, I said. At all.

If I have riled you up, then it worked. That’s the point of pranks.

Shouldn’t I feel relief?

But you don’t, he said.

I don’t.

◆

We went back to Damian’s. An apartment in a luxury high-rise. It’s just temporary, he said, leading me down a hallway. Everything was sleek and silent. And it was so cold that bumps rose from my skin and lingered there, refusing to sink away. I asked him why it was temporary and he said because everything was. It’s the one thing the whole tragedy has taught me, he said.

But you’ve signed a lease? Or do you own this too?

He laughed and ignored my question. I followed him into the final bedroom, and together we spread ourselves across his bed. He told me my skin was peeling. I said I’d had a procedure. Did you not notice how red my face was last time? I said.

Everyone’s faces are red here. Either from being alcoholics, from the rosacea of old age, or from the sun. 

I asked him if he was born and raised in Florida.

Gulf Breeze, he said. 

Oh, my mother loves visiting Shoreline. Are you an alien?

Aren’t we all? I stared at him after he said this. You’re the one shedding, he said.

Do aliens shed their skin?

How would I know?

Do aliens enjoy pulling pranks?

I’m sure they do, he said. He then brought his fingers to my face, and he began to peel at the skin. Lifting slivers until a small mound formed on his satin pillowcase. I pressed my cheek into the softness of it, a pile of petals. 

Then Damian shook his nose. It was the Mayinglong, finally making itself known. What’s that smell? he said.

I can’t have sex, I said. It would be too painful.

That doesn’t answer my question.

Take a look yourself, I said.

◆

The next morning, my mother said we should drive out to Lakeland. There’d been another UFO sighting. I sat on the stool beside the counter, watching her pull out a blender for a smoothie. What if it’s all just one big hoax? I said. 

She scowled; she hated when I said this. She plopped in slices of banana, a fistful of blueberries. Compact containers lined the freezer with frozen fruits she used only a few times a month. She danced across the kitchen floor, slinging oat milk, her feet crunching on scattered cat litter. Where were you last night? she asked.

Learning life lessons.

I didn’t raise you to make bad decisions, she said.  

What if I don’t know any better?

That goes to my parenting, she said, and she slammed the power button. The blender boomed, so loudly. It all whirled inside, melting into a soft purply liquid. She stopped and I said, Besides, I didn’t do anything bad at all.

Now I don’t believe you, she said. She removed the lid and looked. Dipped a finger and sucked. I said, We just can’t ever go to Twisted Lobster again.

She moaned in satisfaction. Too expensive to begin with, she said. I wiped the morning grit from my eyes. She said, Do you want a smoothie?

She flung open a cabinet and fished out a glass. The glass was from a set my ex had gifted us that he’d fashioned from old wine bottles. I thought of that one drunken night where I’d helped him make a few, how he’d used a blade to mark the rim before dousing the bottle in boiling water then cold water. The top half fell cleanly away from the bottom half. Then we sanded down the rim, his body leaning into mine, his arms guiding mine. Not that glass, I said.

My mother stared at it, then eyed me silently as she pulled out a new one and filled it to the brim. And when she turned towards the sink, I tossed my ex’s glass into the trash and clomped down the hall. My sister was nestled in bed, sheets sandwiched between pale legs marbled with blue veins. A book was propped upright on her chest. I leaned against her wall and hauled out my phone. On Twitter, I searched my ex’s name and then blocked him. 

I waited to feel buoyant, for a relief like no other to fill me up inside. But I felt exactly the same. Worse, even, after the slight. I lifted my eyes and said, Working hard or hardly working? 

I think we both know the answer to that, she said, and a phone slipped from the pages of her book. I asked her if she wanted to wax Dad’s car with me. She said no. Is Mom asking you to spend time with him? she said. Are his days on Earth numbered?

I took a long pull from my glass. Exhaled, smacked my lips. Does he have any friends here? I said. Do either of them?

They have each other.

I pushed the straw to the side of my glass, tipped it back until a large deluge filled my mouth, and I swallowed. I said, Don’t you see Mom slowly transforming into Dad? And Dad transforming into—

A balloon? 

He is very swollen.

I’m tired, she said. Go waxing without me.

I left the glass on her nightstand. 

In the driveway, my father was crouched on the ground, his finger prodding at the Corvette’s tires. Watching him, I thought about Damian’s parents. How their dual deaths were not something he could have ever expected. I wanted to know if he missed them, if he’d do anything differently, if he’d spend more time with them if he could, or if he was enjoying the fruits of their labors too much now. But I knew I could never ask this. 

Sweat purged from my face and fell in surprising squirts. The sun was high and remorseless. From my father’s wrist, I saw a bracelet catch the light. Green beads glowing in sunshine. The gift hadn’t been just for me. I wasn’t special.

Unlike Damian, I had the opportunity to spend time with my parents, and still I knew I’d do what I always did. I turned around and went inside. 

◆

I visited the aesthetician and insisted on getting the procedure again. Damian had ghosted me. I suppose that was the ultimate prank; I’d texted him and got no response. The aesthetician said I had to wait six weeks. When I demanded, she said, At least wait four weeks.

I took a breath and my eyes drifted to the aquarium in defeat. I scanned the floor for the lobster and, when I couldn’t find it, I asked the aesthetician what happened. It’s a terrible story, she said. Are you sure you want to know?

I told her yes, I did want to know. 

We bought a second lobster. We didn’t know they’d— 

My skin can look better, I said. I know it.

You’re an active wound.

You mean my skin is.

The skin is an organ. You should treat it like one.

I don’t give any of my other organs any special treatment.

Maybe you should revisit your diet.

You know what I won’t revisit? This establishment! I laughed when I said this, partly in disbelief that the words had come out of my mouth. I turned on my heel and I dashed outside. Under the sun’s scorching heat, I texted Damian again. He still didn’t respond.

I crossed the lot towards the dive bar. Inside, I saw the older man from the aesthetician’s waiting room at the counter. He nodded his head—in recognition? I wasn’t sure but I sat beside him. His face was unlined, perfect. I had no idea what had brought him to the aesthetician in the first place. Something more gruesome he kept hidden beneath his clothes? He said he planned to follow the tracks home tonight.

What tracks?

The tracks, he said again. There were no train tracks here, not that I knew of, but I asked him if that was a shortcut to his home anyway.

I’m taking the tracks, he said. Right back home.

He bobbed his head sluggishly. He was drunk.

I told him he had gorgeous skin, and I told him he had other organs to consider besides his skin, and then I left without ordering a drink.

◆

When I shared the story of Damian with my sister, she said she had a wild theory. What if he’s an alien, and it’s the Mayinglong that repels them?

I think hemorrhoids can do that on their own, I said. We were on her bed, the light filtering in through the bare windows—she’d taken down the soiled curtains and tossed them into the trash. I thought this was secretly a last-ditch effort to wake up on time too. 

Or it was your shit personality that repelled him.

Or it was my skin.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

You’re my sister, you’re supposed to say that.

The cat slinked from one end of my sister’s dresser to the other. The tail’s body erect, the tip all limp. Sometimes, the cat would stop, and it would leer at us with those giant eyes. Minutes would pass of the cat doing nothing but staring. I’m failing all my classes, my sister said. 

Is it really so hard to wake up in the mornings?

I think I’m depressed, she said, her hands laced and resting over her belly. A blob of sunlight fell over her face. I felt sorry for her then, and also guilty for having held onto some form of judgment over her oversleeping. My eyes drifted across her room. I could hear cars speeding down the drag at the end of our block, past the Wal-Mart and Costco. Outside her window, the neighbor’s enclosed pool. They were an obese couple, always tottering in the yard with crusty-eyed dogs. My mother went about calling them the Wiggles when they first moved in and now none of us could remember their actual last name. The final hurricane of the season had stripped away their shingles and now they were roofing. Tools and detritus strewn across their driveway. My mother had said that when the FEMA volunteers swarmed the neighborhood with their blue tarps in the days after the hurricane, one had fallen through the Wiggles’ skylight. Brushed away the glass from his hair then bolted. Just another one of the state’s many casualties. I said, You need to leave Florida.

I love Florida.

Nobody loves Florida.

She turned to her side. She said, The aliens would disagree.

◆

The sun sank past the empty hedges that ran down our block, the sky a pink cone. We were stretched across pool chairs when my mother said, It’s your last night here. Did you learn any new life lessons?

I thumbed at the glass scrap from my first date with Damian. Brought it up to my eye until it framed the sun. From somewhere below, the indeterminate throbbing I’d grown accustomed to, Mayinglong scent in the air. My mother stared but didn’t prod about what I flipped between my fingers. Instead, she said I hadn’t mentioned my ex once during my vacation. I’m so proud of you for getting over him so easily, she said. Others aren’t so lucky.

I don’t think it was easy, I said. I don’t think it was easy at all.

Her head was still tilted in my direction, eyes blocked by bulky sunglasses. Her hair fell down her shoulders in wet strips. I never liked him anyway, she said. 

Then: Where did the bracelet go? she said. The one I gave you. Her mouth was a line. 

I told her it was on my nightstand. That I didn’t want to leave it behind in the pool. She nodded, pleased by this explanation, and she craned her neck up and away. Anywho, she said, want to do anything special for your last day?

My sister was dozing beside us. I thought about what she’d said, about being depressed, and I let her sleep. To my mother I said, Let’s go to Lakeland. See if we run into any UFOs. She looked at me and said, Are you being serious? This isn’t one of your jokes?

I had no real desire to visit Lakeland, but a part of me suddenly wanted to see my mother happy. One of us deserved to be. I’ll drive, I said.

My mother was beaming. She jumped from her pool chair and together we hopped into the car, leaving my sleeping sister behind. The hood glinted with sunshine, the heat rising from the pavement in blurring wisps. We were already on the highway when the tires burst. The car careened, the steering wheel juddering beneath my grip. I slowed onto the highway’s lip. 

My mother had her palm to her chest. She was afraid. I told her to stay inside while I checked the tires. They’d been mangled. Flaps of rubber hanging alongside jutting nails.

It was Damian, I was sure of it. 

I laughed as cars tore past.

He got us, Mom, I said. He got us good.

Who got us? she said. Who? She leapt out to inspect the wheels herself. She said, But weren’t the Wiggles roofing? 

I kept laughing until the tow came. I laughed until it felt false. I looked up and the sky was blue. There was nothing special to see.