A Character Waiting for (and Then Onboard) an Airplane

A young girl just passed me holding a Dunkin' Donuts plastic cardboard coffee cup. She could have been eighteen if it were coffee. I think it was hot cocoa though. Fifteen, sixteen maybe? My ex-girlfriend is texting me. To be fair I texted her first out of boredom. Probably not the greatest of ideas, but loneliness is the mother of desperation. Across the bench from me is a young kid with a buzz cut. He looks like he had a rattail that was cut off at his mother's discretion (that busty bitch!) but it has started growing back (Unlike the tails of the rats that cling to the rails in the subway. How many have lost their tails via passing trains? These streets are definitely not paved with cheese, Fifel).

I was reading Franny and Zooey. Well I still am in principle, but I was actually reading it before in the terminal, before I found out my plane was delayed and waves of nausea-slash-apathy-slash-Om washed over me. There was a great quote (Salinger is my new hero for the temporary)...wait, let me find it...Oh! here it is. Actually it wasn't that great. Just something about a razor blade in a trashcan. Wow! Look at that ass. She definitely wasn't drinking hot cocoa.

I just told my ex she shouldn't move to NYC, to stay in Milwaukee instead. Haven't gotten another text back after that. Things ended poorly for her. Obladee obladah, right? Eh, I guess that's harsh but she threw her own anchor through the deck of an already sinking ship. Actually, I don't think she knows a thing about sailing. Neither do I. I was on a ship once, but that was to filter lake water for viruses and bacteria, and land was in sight the whole time and there were no actual sails, just two big motors that hummed and churned foam like electric butter-makers. The busty bitch's husband just sarcasmed all over her. This guy is a riot.

Salinger, right? I was talking about Salinger. His concept of time is impeccable. Unlike Updike who destroys it with historical context. Who gives a flying fuck about what commercial was playing on March 17^th, 1989 during Florida primetime. And who gives a flying fuck about Dennis Rodman's headliner for the same week. And who gives a flying fuck about Gorby on the news or the manatee watch warning for the week. All in the middle of dialogue. Really, John? Really? He did give mad props out to the Jews though, which I found strangely comforting. Like I'm doing something right without even really doing anything. Thanks, John. Saul Bellow made me feel guilty for being a Jew (that was a hard J), but I loved him all the more for it.

The kid with the cut-off rattail has since left. He's been replaced by a young girl. She has a very predictable face (she will be moderately good looking in ten to fifteen years) unlike the boy with the cutoff rattail. He looked like a Demien sans the omniscience. Man, I need a drink. A drink! A drink! My kingdom for a drink! Next to me across the aisle is a man in a wheelchair. Why aren't the subways wheelchair-friendly? How very inconsiderate of the Metro people. I'm not so used to being surrounded by the aging and ageless. It's a very sobering thought that I should one day be chair-bound and that I was one day a very unpredictable looking (as I picture myself being back then) adolescent and that one day I was nothing and before long I shall return. What was that in Franny and Zooey..."The Pilgram's Progress"...no that was Bunyan..."The Progress of a Pilgram"...that sounds a little better. I should start praying incessantly and thoroughly.

The airport smells are getting to me. The back of my neck is warm and my lower palms are leaving sweaty prints on my computer whenever I pause to shake out a finger or adjust my blazer. I should really start wearing Armani and Gucci more often. I've definitely gotten a lot more looks. But then again a flight attendant laughed at me as she passed. I brushed a finger under my nose but it came out clean. Maybe she was just laughing at the attendant she was walking with. But she was looking directly at me.

When the plane took off I forgot to turn off my phone and felt a little bit guilty about it. I thought maybe the plane would crash because my cell phone waves would interfere with communication with the towers even though Mythbusters said that was just a myth. If it's just a myth why would they make you do it? Maybe they're just assholes up at the top of the airline food chain. We're all whores in this world and don't forget it. I know damn well I'm a whore. And you're an outstanding shnook, I realize. But I bet you a suit of clothes you're a whore, too. Now I feel guilty for stealing a true author's work. This lumbar support is feeling great on my back. I can really feel my posture improving by the minute. Unlike those chairs at the office made up of multiple bungee cords so that you feel like you're about to be hooked up to a trailer and towed along till the pebbly pavement rips through your outer coat and works its way through your shirt and gives you raspberries, or like you're about to be tied up and thrown in the back of an overstuffed trunk. I think the new flight attendant is my age, but I can't tell.

There's an old woman (well not old, but on her way up the hill) reaching into the overhead. I bet she had her time. "There was a time" as Bruce Willis once said.

I'm definitely a fan of the two-by-two airplanes. These three-by-threes are so impersonal. In the two-by-twos you're never at risk of being a third wheel, but here there is a couple in the seats next to me and I'm too far away to risk a conversation with the airplane attendant that looks my age even though I probably wouldn't have the balls to talk to her anyways. Maybe after a Bloody Mary or two. I never used to drink on flights, but the in-air Bloody Mary became a favorite of mine since the flight back from Milwaukee last summer. Come to think of it, I didn't even like Bloody Marys (Maries?) in general until that flight. It really is the perfect brunch drink. Fuck mimosas. Yeah! Up yours mimosas! You can suck on Bloody Mary's tomato-stained celery stick!

I wonder if someone has ever chronicled the bird's eye view of trans-American flights. New York=bumblefuck of city. Michigan (I think that was Michigan we flew over)=salt dunes and suburbs. Ohio=the most boring bird's eye view state I've ever seen. Ohio looks like God took a shit on America and then drew gridlines through it to let sewage drain through evenly. Sorry Ohio. I'm pretty sure that's Lake Michigan in the background. Is Ohio even on Lake Michigan? Well then: sorry bird's-eye-view-shithole-of-a-state-that-borders-what-looks-to-be-Lake-Michigan. I really wish they let you smoke in the bathrooms onboard.

I was walking down the street last week and I heard someone sneeze in a doorway so I said "bless you" and they said "thank you" and the people I was walking with thought it was funny but I thought it was just polite.

Baby poops smell worse in confined spaces.

Complimentary Dramamine should be provided in lieu of pretzels or peanuts or chocolate chip cookies (Midwest Express I love you, but you're bringing me down). In the words of Seinfeld via my old friend John Weber: "Peanuts! What's the deal?"

Being on an airplane is a natural high.

Yesterday I was talking to my mother on the phone. She picked up and asked me how it was going and I said fine. It's going fine.