She’s already sitting in the isle seat as I make eye contact with the gentleman sitting behind her.
‘Please get up so I can get into my seat,’ my eyes beg.
He obliges with a smile.
I halfheartedly attempt to make smalltalk but his body language leads me to believe he isn’t interested in having a conversation with a girl 20 years his junior, and I’m fine with that. He’s bald and wearing a wedding ring to match the body he gave up on about six months after his wife had their first baby. Or so it appears.
That’s when I look up through the crack between the navy blue airplane seats in front of me and really take a good look at her.
She’s pretty.
She isn’t wearing anything but foundation and a little mascara, but she’s got a naturally pretty face. Inviting. Warm.
Her hair is professionally dyed with hard-to-detect thin streaks of blonde and gold running through the naturally dark base. It’s probably a $140 dollar hair style, including the basic cut that frames her face.
I’m a little frazzled from my long weekend away from home and I lean back, sigh, and feel inadequate as she banters with the older gentleman to her left.
He’s almost entirely bald but clearly clinging to his virility and youth through the blondish strands of hair the perch around the crown of his head.
He’s wearing a ring; I see it as he struggles to stick his leather folder – the kind that only businessmen of a certain caliber have – into the setback pocket next to Skymall and the safety information card that will most likely never be read again.
We take off.
“I mean, Jesus was real,” I hear her tell him in a sure but not aggressive tone. “He was a real human being. There’s nobody debating that.”
‘That’s a little intense for airplane conversation,’ I think. Her long eyelashes reach out to the man, caressing the air as she blinks her wide pale blue eyes at him. I think I love her.
She’s flirting but she’s not even trying. He eats it up. I see the flight attendant roll his big metal cart into the isle.
She uses the word “antithesis” a lot.
After the flight attendant asks her what she wants to drink they transition seamlessly into a conversation about good wines.
“APOTHIC DARK!” she exclaims, squealing about how the special edition blend is “only 50 cents more than Apothic Red and it’s even better!”
The flight attendant, whose sexual orientation I can’t pinpoint, clearly loves her. This makes me jealous.
The man in the seat next to her buys her wine.
I order a vodka cranberry. I banter with the flight attendant, who seems to enjoy my sense of humor. His apparent approval makes me happy and I’m not sure why.
She goes from daintily sipping her vino from the tiny plastic airline to blatantly chugging like a trucker, which makes me simultaneously hate her and lover her.
“Oh you’re that kind of man,” she tells the wine-purchasing husband.
I think I can actually hear the happiness grow from within him. In my imagination, a couple hairs grow back on his balding head, but upon realizing he’s pushing age 55, laugh at his futile efforts to bag the girl and fall out again.
The guy next to me is named Dick. I know his last name too. He works in human resources, and I know this not because we have spoken any more, but because I’m a creep. Because he’s doing work on his computer and composing a bunch of emails, actually. I wonder what he thinks my profession is, as I’m reading a memoir with a tiny stuffed mouse on the front.
I mean, like, a stuffed and mounted mouse. Taxidermy.
She keeps saying “I try to be respectful” and I can’t hear the context of the conversation, which is annoying. I with I had another drink, but I’m even more upset that they raised drink prices from $7 to $8 at some point in the last two months.
I put in headphones when she loses her mind because she “KNOWS geography!” I don’t think I’m in love with her anymore. The first song keyed up when I hit ‘play’ on my iPod is “we’re going to die, it’s just a matter of time,” which is not something encouraging to hear on a plane.
I go to move stuff around on my tray and spill the three ice cubes left in my cup. Ok, four ice cubes. Actually, a handful of ice cubes and a couple teaspoons of water. There is water a lll over my leg but Dick – HR Guy – doesn’t notice because he works in HR. As he clicks through a spreadsheet on his laptop I wipe a little off the tray with my sleve, which some people might think is gross.
I’m trapped. I can’t put up my tray because there’s a half cup of water floating around on top of it like Flubber. I hate airplanes.
Wow. Dick is actually looking at some heavy stuff. There are about a dozen people who have 0 under the “net outstanding” category, which is highlighted in yellow on his Excel spreadsheet. I suppose it’s either a really good or really bad thing, as in “you’ve done zero things!” or “you have an outstanding debt of zero!” – the latter of which would be better.
Nope. “Outstanding” is bad. Dick is emailing somebody about “Brian” and how he still has zero outstanding…things. POCs actually, but I don’t know what that stands for.
Come on Brian, get your shit together.
I see her lips moving but can’t hear what she’s saying because I haven’t taken my earbuds out.
I think I probably shouldn’t be memorizing what HR guy is looking at on his laptop but I have nothing else to look at. Besides, if it’s confidential, you probably shouldn’t look at it on a commercial airliner packed with people.
As we start to descend I keep trying to figure out who is using hand sanitizer or has a secret stash of vodka, because I totally want in on any vodka situation.
What is that smell?
Ah.
My crotch smells like vodka from my spilled drink, which is just now being taken by the disapproving flight attendant.
At least this should make it easy to make friends on my three-hour layover in Minneapolis.
Frozen In The Forks 