Alan Disaster is the excitement and boredom and embarrassment of youth. He’s you when you cry at a movie and shovel Sour Patch Kids into your mouth, a thin line of sugary drool dangling from your lip.

Alan Disaster is the thin layer of sweat on your skin and the taste of latex as your dentist pries into your mouth to scratch at your teeth. He’s a waning migraine, once an ocean wave, massive and looming, now the sea at the shore, shallow and barely able to reach the tip of your toes.

He’s your undeserved sense of pride, the sharp taste of ash the first time you smoke a cigarette, the misery of poverty, the misery of want, the misery of need; you see him, but there’s nothing you can do.

Alan Disaster is the nausea of depression, the grit of cheese cracker crumbs in the crevice of your couch, the noise of a television when you sit at home and try not to be lonely, the sensation of insects crawling on you, burrowing under your skin and walking along your nerves. He was me when I took a whole thing of Dramamine, a girl I knew in high school talked at me with three heads, a stop sign said my name and I threw up in the gutter.

Alan Disaster is the stench of sweat and cum you’ve grown to love as it lies beside you in bed. He’s a serious opinion you hold about who should win The Voice.

Alan Disaster is the fragmented sidewalk, the state of your soul, a bulb burnt out in heaven, the blood between your teeth. He’s a man with bones, with muscle, and an eyeball that gazes into the mirror of humanity, and looking, sees what?