The Great and Odorous Voyage

I should have, by this point, explained how much I hate flying trans-continentally. Put me on a flight less than four hours and I will be dead to the world, anything longer and it is as if I came right out of an advert for Ambien. I fidget like a schoolboy on exam day.

As such, and knowing how stingy American airline companies are about drinking on planes, I made sure I was feeling pretty good when I got on the plane. Mind you, I don’t ever get plastered in airports out of a fear I will get lost and miss my plane, which happened in Frankfurt last year courtesy of friendly Lufthansa flight attendants and some Nigerian oil men. Great fun, until I realized I was lost in the airport and my aircraft had already departed the gate.

I had also just come off a weekend of fancy dress and gala events (my weekend of “Balls and Fake Blood”), so I was a little bit sleep deprived, and by that, I barely knew my own name by the time we finally were allowed on the plane.

Before I managed to fall asleep for a tiny while I had the pleasure of an airline meal and glass of wine. As I was desperately attempting to enjoy both, I noticed the woman sitting next to me. At first glance, I thought I was sitting next to a Muslim woman, who turned out to be someone desperately afraid of getting head lice whilst flying. Now I have done a bit of jet setting and can confidently say I have never had to cover my head lest I receive some nasty cranial infestation, so I began to wonder what this lady’s “deal” was.

I should preface at this point, having lived in Europe and the Middle East for the better part of seven years, I was used to the quiet, impersonal, rather mundane flying experience. Yes, flying with a Middle Eastern family is trying at best, but there is still some odd sort of personal space and decorum, where we neither touch each other nor idly chat as we fly. This is distinctly different when flying with Americans, where, to quote Edward Norton, you will inevitably gain a “single-serving friend.” I avoid this like the plague and will refuse even to make eye contact with you. I realize we are all “in this together,” but I’d rather be quietly wallow in my misery, rather than bond over it.

As she opened her prepackaged meal, she seemed horrified to discover it was the same chicken and pasta dish the rest of us swine had received, as which point, rather than pressing the call button, she shouted for the steward. Little to my surprise and much to my chagrin, she was American.

She demanded to know why she had not received a Hindu vegetarian meal, which snapped me into attention at the presumption and the arrogance (especially considering, it seems she forgot to pre-order this meal upon ticket purchase). I thought to myself, I wonder what a Hindu vegetarian meal is?, but fortunately, at a volume the whole 747 could hear, she informed us it was a gluten free veg meal, because “Hindus eat mainly rice.” Fascinating—that is for the 1% of human beings who have never eaten a curry.

I finish my meal in befuddled, semi-interested silence and somehow manage to drift into a sort of sleep-deprived, alcohol-induced coma despite the shoebox of a seat they cram us into nowadays. Weird Head Scarf-Hindu Veg Meal Lady must have supped well, because I looked over before losing consciousness and she had pulled down her oddly done-up head scarf over her face and turned it into some sort of funeral shroud or balaclava, I couldn’t decide which.

I am of the opinion that airline seats were originally designed for the Spanish Inquisition and that airlines were able to buy them at a discount when they decided to finally shut the whole Inquisition-thing down. Three days on and I was still walking like an 85-year-old woman with osteoporosis. They must have finagled some special maintenance deal where the evil Spanish Cardinals come in and periodically make the spaces smaller, because even at 5’5”, my legs were jammed into the seatback in front of me.

After the trays had been cleared away and peace and quiet reigned, despite the alarming amount of children on the plane, I was awoken by being kicked in the face by none other than Weird Head Scarf-Hindu Veg Meal Lady! Instead of doing the somewhat inconvenient, but polite thing of tapping me on the shoulder and asking me to move so that she could get out, she had performed a flying leap out of her seat like an Asian gymnast with bad aim.

It doesn’t do it justice to say I was shocked. I was downright floored, freaked and fecked off.

After being kicked in the face (without apology mind you), I decided to go stand at the back and wistfully think about smoking a cigarette once I disembarked in New York. I thought it might have been a good idea to go to the toilet since I was there and queued up, the whole time rotating my ankles like they do in the instructional videos on the plane, as the edema from the altitude made me look like I had elephantiasis. I spent a solid 20 minutes waiting for one person to come out of the toilet! As if there weren’t 4 toilets to be shared between 400 (let’s perish that disgusting algebraic equation), this random lady had chosen to stand in the cramped, cold and certainly smelly toilets for 20 minutes. God help me now. I did my stint and fled as quickly as possible, mostly out of fear I would be sucked out with the refuse and flushed into the cold dark abyss below the planes.

Those toilet joy-riders must just relish the 20 minutes in peace, sacrificing the odor of the man next to them to the squalor of the airplane toilet. Dark times we live in, truly.

As if I wasn’t homicidal enough when I finally arrived in JFK, I was informed by pass control that I needed to supply my own pen to fill out my landing card. Welcome to America. I told him I didn’t have one and that I had a right to a pen in my own country. Fortunately he laughed, because last time I was that cheeky with Homeland Security, I had a gun drawn on me. Furthermore, I come to find as I navigate my way to the exit, I come to discover I am the only native English speaker (or English speaker at all, really) of the 200 travelers, staff and security around me.

I was in no state at this point to process how this could be, so I decided instead that I had accidentally flown into Paris or Beijing or Moscow or Mumbai. I was, however, completely ok with this, as I had finally found the smokers’ corner.

** In the next installment of “Why Flying Will Destroy Global Peace” – UTAH vs the U.A.E.!!!

The beliefs and statements of all Bikya Masr blogumnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect our editorial views.

BM

Keep advertising off Bikya Masr - donate $1 to allow this to be possible