Flying Low

Once I settle in my seat I’ll take one more. Push and turn the cap and wedge it between palm and bottle, tilt the bottle and give it a jiggle until one falls out in the flat palm which tosses it into the back of my mouth where it releases its last line of defense, a bitter chalkiness, before I tip my head back and send it through the entryway into my inner digestion labyrinth.

I’m one of the last on the plane and I’m herded in at a slow shuffle like a pig headed to the slaughterhouse and the man in front of me smells like a pig headed to the slaughterhouse and is a perfect encapsulation of the type of person who gets on the plane last. I’m sure he has a McDonald’s bag tucked into his cheap faux leather duffel that he tells people he bought because real leather is inhumane when really he just can’t afford real leather.

The burger and fries ooze grease at different rates but it’s all the same and there’s probably a corner of the white bag turned dark, the purgatory between safely dry and actively leaking, and now his clothes will wreak of fast food-induced humility for months.

I can’t wait any longer and pull the bottle from the outermost pocket of my real leather briefcase which I bump the man with so he turns around to at least afford him a look at the real thing and I don’t apologize. The pill is stubborn as it goes down dry and the stewardess eyes me with suspicion and I want to say something dickish to her but I don’t because I can’t think of anything in time and instead I just look at her as I walk past and she smiles but I don’t smile back because I think she’s patronizing me.

First class teases me with the thought of sleeping on a reclined bed as the pills set in, where I’m only interrupted by the stewardess that patronized me who has to bring me flutes of champagne every time she sees an empty glass on my tray table. But onward I go through the cheap translucent curtain with the rest of the swine to be shoved into a pen and thrown slop when they remember to fatten us up.

I sit at 14A which is the aisle and tuck my briefcase under my seat like a good little boy but not before taking one more pill and checking my phone to see if anyone outside of work texted me but they didn’t so I tuck my briefcase under my seat like a good little boy.

I sink into the seat and close my eyes and toss my head back against the headrest as far as it will go and now I’m sitting at just a little bit more than a ninety-degree angle but my body itches all over and after a moment I realize it’s because of that fucking faux leather seat.

...

The young man in 12C rests his head against the wall beside the window whose shade is drawn and it bobs a little when the plane lurches when the air pressure beneath it changes or when it turns but he stays sound asleep. He dreams of work during his only escape from it and the phone rings in his ears over the blasting engines while some asshole yells at him for not doing something that another asshole had yelled at him for planning to do and the music from his Walkman infiltrates his dreams and blares a comical soundtrack to the nightmares of life’s realities.

He's always on edge, he thinks when he awakes because even in his sleep he gets no rest because work controls everything. Politics. His field. But also the hurdles he must jump through dealing with the self-righteous individuals whose hearts are set on fame and notoriety, oh, and also helping constituents or whatever. It’s like any job except worse.

...

The woman in 12B rests her head against her husband’s shoulder which keeps twitching her awake but she keeps it there anyways because they don’t touch that often anymore. She can tell he can’t escape work even in his sleep and she thinks about the day it will kill him even though she doesn’t want to but she does and she wonders if she can save him from himself or from the soul-sucking mistress named Politics who sucks him further from her with each passing day and she knows he’s busy but she still wonders if he’s not as busy as he lets on and if maybe there’s another mistress sucking something else out of him.

...

The newborn shares 19A with its mother and cries the whole time, agitating those around it but no one more so than the man by the window in 19C who wears a ring that matches the mother’s and who squeezes the pen in his hand so tightly that the ink bulges away from his fingers in both directions. The mother shushes the baby even when it becomes clear to everyone except her that this baby will not be shushed and passengers around her turn from angry to sympathetic as they watch the woman become more desperate to the point that they can’t tell who is more upset, she or the baby or the man who works.

...

The man in 1C stretches his legs out and slouches in his seat like a child until the middle of his back is where his ass should be and the balls of his feet are pressed against the bland gray wall speckled with miniscule bumps in front of him and now he has trouble swallowing the champagne that he pours into his mouth but he manages anyway and dangles the empty glass at a passing stewardess without a word and she grabs it and heads to the front to refill it and he remembers how much he loves traveling alone.

He has a row to himself and he pulls the cheap itchy blanket up under his chin and thinks about tying one off at the airport bar when they land and thinks about the stewardess who grabbed his glass and her tight ass and maybe she will join him and they’ll go back to her place after or a hotel if she doesn’t live in Phoenix.

...

The girl decked out in all pink who just turned seven and whose sneakers lit up with each step she took down the aisle now scribbles in a coloring book on her lap while sitting crisscross applesauce next to her mom in 36E. She used to get excited to see Grandma but now it feels like she’s always going to Grandma’s and sometimes she stays there for a long time and doesn’t know when she’s going to go home and she doesn’t like it as much anymore because her little brother gets all the attention from Grandma and Mom and she just gets a fucking coloring book.

...

The woman in 27D moves to 27E to separate her children who punch and claw and scratch and kick at one another and the people in 26E and 26F catch the strays on the backs of their seats while the people in 28E and 28F laugh at the spastic movements of the chairs in front of them. The girl is 11 but she’s small for her age and the boy is 7 but he’s big for his age and it’s an even fight but the mother puts a stop to it and tells them they need to behave themselves since these are just the first hours of a week-long vacation where mom and dad just want to relax and not have to play peacekeeper between two warring children.

...

The teen sits in 15C which is an exit row and he’s relieved he can stretch his legs out and slouch in his seat because his wiry frame usually makes planes uncomfortable but now he’s uncomfortable because his dad who is in 15B and has been talking to the woman in 15A just touched the woman’s leg. Now she’s writing something on a napkin and folding it and slipping it to him and he’s putting it in his pocket and he notices his dad doesn’t have his wedding ring on and he puts his earphones in and pumps the volume of his iPod to near capacity and leans his head against the window and pretends to be asleep while he wonders if he should tell mom this time.

...

The woman in 8F presses her head against the window and tries to cover her eyes with the sleeve of her coat to make it look like she can’t sleep because it’s too bright and she’s trying to keep it together but a couple tears spill down her cheek and she feels her daughter’s hand on hers and she grabs it and squeezes which feels weird without a ring but pretends to be asleep when her son in 8D asks her for the sandwich she packed him even though she feels bad because it's not his fault.

...

I wake up to a bony finger tapping my collarbone and I freak out a little because I’m sweating so much that my shirt is wet and there are three stewardesses around me and they all keep saying Sir and people in 13A and 12A and 12C and 12D and 11D and I don’t know how many other rows in front of them or behind me are all turned around and looking at me.

I sit up straight and something clatters off my tray table onto my lap and it startles me but it’s probably just an empty nip of Jack Daniels and I brush it off onto the ground like it’s a bug. Sir Sir Sir Are you ok Can you hear me Don’t worry You’re going to be ok Is anyone on the plane a doctor You dropped this.

I reach out my hand to accept what the stewardess who judged me for taking my pill is giving to me and I try my best to get my eyes to focus and when they do I see it’s my wedding ring and I feel embarrassed, then she looks at me and says You don’t want to lose this and I feel like she’s patronizing me but I say I already did.