Last
Laugh

To Capture A LOL ℅ Aaron Edwards

Illustrations: Skye Oleson-Cormack

I miss the way a friend’s laugh shifts the atmosphere of a room. With each pulse from the diaphragm, a hearty laugh is like a tiny earthquake, antithetically cocooning you in safety and what’s known. We laugh when something is funny, delightful, or when we feel the need to fill a void in conversation. We laugh to diffuse tension and to signal grace. The young laugh when they’re entertained and amused, the old laugh whenever they feel like it. Now, many of us are laughing with no audience beyond the crackled connection of a video call or a roommate you’ve heard enough from already.

It’s June, and I’m searching for ways to bring joy into my life again. It’s June, and my friends are exhausted, holding desperately onto moments where a breath isn’t conscientious labor. It’s June and we’re still sending digital messages-in-a-bottle, trying not to drift too far from shore.

To Capture A Laugh

One day recently in quarantine, I felt compelled to send a friend a voice memo of my laugh in response to a joke over text. I could send a "lololol" but that wouldn't cut it. I decided to redo the laugh and fire up the iMessage recording feature. I hit send on my first and only take.

My friends have started to do this with me. It's become an anticipated dialogue. There you are, sitting on your couch, re-enacting or rushing to capture a laugh so that your friend can hear it — and only it. I've been leaning on these exchanges. They live somewhere in the ether, at the intersection of a phone conversation, a voicemail, and a DM. They're low lift, but they telegraph an investment in the moment. To practice repeating a laugh is to enshrine the fact that it ever existed.

My Laugh Is Like

In high school, I was known for singing too many showtunes in the hallways (as if there is such a thing). If Aaron was happy, he was singing. And if Aaron was singing, he would not soon stop. I recently asked some of my friends how they’d describe my laugh.

“Melodious, grand,” one told me.

“Inviting and warm. It makes me feel like you’re encouraging me to laugh with you,” another said.

“Ummmm. Hmmm. Like Geppetto absolutely set Pinocchio up,” said a third.

As I grew up, my laugh evolved from a countertenor whistle into an elongated baritone smirk — somewhere between Dr. Evil regaling a master plan and Angela Bassett hearing gossip.

(Recorded) Laughs

There’s my stoned laugh, which tends to start slowly and gives me enough time to press record. It lives in my falsetto range. It starts at the base of the stomach, supported by the little core that could. It’s deceptively silent at first, but then out of nowhere: a hyena sputtering out staccato B Flats. Think RuPaul, slightly up the octave and minus the fracking.

There’s my auntie laugh, which I can best describe as the kind of laugh your aunt might make while observing some nonsense in the living room at Thanksgiving. She takes a sip of her rum-spiked sorrel, nods to herself, and chuckles.

There’s my belly laugh, an amalgam of the two. It’s jovial, and booming. It’s the full belt during the musical showstopper. It’s the laugh that feels more like a bear hug. It’s what the nosebleed seats showed up for. It’s Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “Through Heaven’s Eyes” in The Prince of Egypt. It says “I’m here.”

Laughing Now

My friend had a drive-by birthday party a few weeks ago. She and her girlfriend drove around to people’s buildings to say hello from their car and give out cake. It was the first time I’d seen a friend since New York went under a stay-at-home order in March. We exchanged some jokes, but our laughs were muffled by a mask and the car engine. The next week we laughed over voice memos about an inside joke on Instagram. Hearing our laughter crisper and unfettered in that way, even from afar, was almost better. I’d trained myself to hear it as truth.

I’m wondering what happens next, though. Cities are reopening, but even the word “reopen” doesn’t feel like it describes what’s happening. It feels instead like a forced drumbeat into the unknown. New assaults on people who look like me have pushed some of us into the streets. Others have re-emerged out of arrogance and fear that their privilege to be “free” is under threat. I’m wondering what happens next, because I find none of it joyful.

The Saturday after George Floyd was killed, I marched up Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. At one point, I ran up to a neighbor I hadn’t seen in months as she cheered on the march from her stoop, cane in hand. We bumped elbows to say a quick hello. She pulled down her mask as I ran back to rejoin the flow of the crowd and said:

Alright now, baby! Ha-HAH! You go ahead! Wooo!

I looked back toward her as she pumped her fist to the sky, rocking side to side to some reggae coming from a parked car. I smiled and laughed with her until I was back in the river.

Aaron Edwards is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a senior producer and co-host of Pop-Up Magazine.