[04/10/26][FICTION]Another Voyage to the Volcano
by Alex Watt
If you take the Long Island Rail Road to the end, you can catch a bus that brings you down to the ferry. The bus is on the south side of the station, so if you see the tattoo shop with the BORIS IS HERE NOW sign, you’ve gone the wrong way. And if you can’t see where the ferry is once the bus drops you by the water, I don’t know what to tell you. Most people take the ferry to get to Fire Island, but if you stay on board long enough, you’ll eventually arrive at the volcano. Out-of-towners tend to think Fire Island is the name of the volcano, but that would make too much sense. We just call the volcano “the volcano,” and people in the Tri-State Area seem to know what we’re talking about.
We don’t have the best reputation locally, thanks to our toxic emissions and a wheezing
micro-economy built on crafting mini-recreations of New York City landmarks out of lava and selling them to tourists. That being said, it wasn’t always so rough. When 9/11 rocked the World Trade Center, we actually made out like bandits, but, much like our population, the sales collapsed like steel beams in extreme heat. My friends from the mainland, which begins on Long Island for us, are always asking me if it really gets that hot on the volcano, and I tell them of course it’s hot. It’s a volcano. Even when it’s not erupting, it’s burping blistering gas. Yes, blistering gas. We’ve heard all the jokes and aren’t afraid to throw down. So proceed with caution, especially if you come visit. There are no laws here, just a smattering of retired cops and what’s left of the miniature makers, merely a few members of my family.
My Grandpa Larry moved to the volcano from Queens. That’s where a lot of that generation came from, the outer boroughs, shortly after an eruption. They had to wear special boots 24/7 for those first few years because the ground was still too hot, and you never knew when you might step on a weathervane or a TV antenna poking through cracks in the rock. Remnants from the previous inhabitants of a community we jokingly refer to as Pompeii II. You kinda have to laugh, since you know you could be Pompeii III at any moment. It was worth it, though, for my grandparents to have a place to call their own. Grandma Jo loved living on the volcano because it never took too long for the laundry to dry, but, sadly, died of a lung thing—young, too. Or a bit too close to my own age for comfort.
Besides being lifted up on stilts into the cooler air, the houses were pretty normal, with vinyl siding that, no matter the original color, turned gray from the ash. So in a way, it wasn’t that big of an adjustment for the settlers who said see ya to the heavily polluted, and increasingly Polish, old neighborhoods behind. Needing a job and not having enough time to wait around for another tragedy to strike the city, I had no choice but to move closer to Astoria, my ancestral home, where I at least had a snowball’s chance at employment. My boy Boris hooked me up with a lead on an apartment there. Somehow, probably from his time tattooing on the mainland, he had met this girl, Nicole, who was looking for a roommate. Then it became a lot more than that, a whole thing, but unlike the faded butterfly on her lower back, that’s not Boris’s fault. And if it is, I’ll get over it. Boris is my boy.
Growing up on the volcano, Boris and I would build bunkers out of all the soda bottles that washed up on the shore. Together, we’d marvel at the many iterations of the Sprite logo. He was more into the design, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what it all meant, where it came from. I couldn’t help but feel connected to a lost history when I discovered a brand I’d never heard of, like Tab. When fresh bottles of Dr. Pepper arrived on the volcano, bursting with all 23 of its famous flavors, Boris and I tried to identify each individual taste as it tickled our tongues like sugar-high sommeliers. He’s a big wine guy now, too. Been out to the vineyards on the North Fork, and all that. Next year, maybe Napa.
Even though I was depressed as hell about leaving home, Nicole and I hit it off immediately. We used to joke that we were both from places that no one believed existed, me from the volcano off the south shore of Long Island and her from Central New Jersey. On days like this, I wish they didn’t. There’s this thing that happens when you’re in love. It’s like love, but the opposite, which sorta explains why the Yin-Yang symbol is so popular. That was my first tattoo from Boris, inked when I visited him and his family’s new digs after his dad inherited an RV on the mainland. It came out looking like a winky face with a black eye, like an unstoppable pervert, but Nicole didn’t hate it, and if she has one thing, it’s taste. And an appetite for busting my chops.
Especially when it comes to visiting the volcano, which I’m doing today, to help my Mother clean out Grandpa Larry’s old workshop. I know I’m biased, but I swear he was the best miniature maker on the whole volcano, which isn’t that big, but you get the point. Grandpa Larry was a real visionary, selling not just the Twin Towers, the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty, but also the Javits Center. Before they started with all the construction around the convention center, he had a primo spot for his cart right outside it. By the end of their time in town for Textiles Fest or whatever the dorky lanyards they hung over their short-sleeve button-ups were for, most of the businessmen were desperate to bribe their wives into not asking too many questions about their trip with a nice souvenir. Grandpa Larry made good money, and the commute wasn’t too bad, either. Technically, he died of a lung thing, but my theory is that not having somewhere to go broke his heart.
All in all, the volcano is about three hours from midtown Manhattan, which might sound like a trek, but think about how long it would take to fly to Hawaii, Alaska, or even the Pacific Northwest. And the trip’s way closer to two and a half hours if you can catch an express train, which I missed, barely, because I had to go back to my apartment to make sure I turned the stove off. When you grow up on a volcano, you become very aware of how quickly life can go up in flames, though maybe that’s a thing people know everywhere. That could be a good ice breaker the next time I get invited to a party, are you absolutely sure your stove isn’t on?
My stove was off, but instead of relief, I got burned by a note from Nicole. She wrote that I was already suffering from the fat face I feared my future held. Nicole was no prize either, but I can admit that the pounds we packed on as a pair looked a lot better on her. That doesn’t turn every trip with a view of the ocean into a bikini contest, though. I mean, c’mon, for the love of God, does my grieving Mother really need to see my girl in a thong? It’s bad enough Nicole let it slip that we don’t have any plans to move back to the volcano. The least I could do was let my Mother die, probably of a lung thing, with a glimmer of hope.
It took me long enough, but I finally got my fat face on an eastbound train. Before we left the station, this one guy blew his top because the lady he asked to watch his unassigned seat while he was in the bathroom didn’t stop another guy from sitting in it. Despite being furious, he fell asleep a few minutes after finding a seat—next to me, no less. There’s something incredibly calming about the rickety old trains they run out there during the off-peak hours when it would be less disastrous to derail or, by the looks of some cars, disintegrate. Sure, you feel every click and clack of the track, but the swaying mixed with the lights cutting out made the screeching wheels sound like a lullaby. Even though the guy was snoring, I found myself nodding off too, exhausted from last night’s long conversation with Nicole. My one shot at love knocked out by a two-piece.
On the back of my eyelids, Boris tattooed RIP GRANDPA LARRY. I could tell it was a dream because nothing made sense. Boris kept turning into the very thing he inked on my arm years ago, a flaming seagull. An inside joke from when we used to throw French fries into the volcano, hoping a hungry bird would swoop in without thinking and fly away with its feathers ablaze. I got it done after the first time Nicole and I broke up. It was supposed to symbolize a new beginning after doing a dumbass thing.