Straight No Chaser

Mates

i'm going to feel so cool on the plane, with my new hoodie and my little ipod nano. i haven't had headphones the last six times i've flown, and so have felt compelled to make conversation with my seatmates, which seems to delight or annoy them, unpredictably.

when i flew to shreveport over the summer, i sat next to a jittery little woman in her eighties. she was going to see her son, i think, and the smallness of the plane had her even more freaked out than i was, and she chatted nervously with me the entire time, occasionally gripping my wrist when we went through turbulence. she told me everything she could think of about both her sons, including how one of them used to gorge himself on buttermilk when he was a baby, which had to have been fifty years ago, and when she took her fifteen-minute nap--which was quickly interrupted by still more turbulence--she laid her fluffy white head on my shoulder and slept with her mouth completely open. i guess i thought it was sort of cute, and also i was pleased at having made her feel that comfortable, so it didn't really bother me that her chattiness prevented me from reading my magazines and taking a nap of my own. (afterward, awkwardly enough, when we stepped off the plane together, she took a squinty look at me in the airport's light and said, with great amazement, "i didn't realize you were colored." colored, she said. she kept holding onto my arm, though, until we found her son. so maybe she meant colored in the good way.)

then, when i flew home for christmas last year, i sat beside a cute georgia tech student, and the first thing he said was, "we've got two hours, tell me all about yourself in two hours." big cheesy i'm-hitting-on-you smile. i didn't tell him anything. well. i told him one thing: "i just finished four straight days of exams and i need to take a nap before i pass out." then, sleep. i didn't wake till after we'd landed, and he was already up getting his bags.

missed opportunity. i'd give anything for a seatmate like that this time. someone anonymous, a curious stranger, to whom i can tell everything about this past couple of weeks. not because i need advice, and not because talking about things like that is even particularly helpful, for me, but because the words sound funny together, and random, and i think i'd get a kick out of it. that guy's name was daniel, and there's almost no chance he'll be on this plane, because i'm flying home smack in the middle of the week this time, instead of on a weekend, when all the other college kids take to the skies. most likely it'll be a middle-aged suit on a business trip, and he'll be totally uninterested in how much i miss marcus right now. how frustrated i am that he hasn't called, at all, since early saturday morning, not even to reassure me that he made it to the district safely. not that he's obligated, but, you know. i want to know.

and i guess i wouldn't blame him. it's not a very interesting story, and it has no satisfactory conclusion, except that i'm just going to keep missing him till sunday, or until he calls. the "kissing injury" referenced in the last entry title was not a kissing injury at all, but rather a euphemistic cover for another sort of injury, one i could only have suffered with him, which is a kind of perversely pleasing thought. that somewhere, out there, among all these men and boys i can't touch for reasons of personal preference and appropriateness, there is one that i can, who won't protest or wonder why. (i'd say that, and the businessman, who'd be midway through his second bitter divorce and have long since fallen out of love with love, would smirk, and that would be it.)

i'd refuse to say anything at all about sean. there's nothing to say, anyway.

well, no, i would say one thing: that i'll never look at beauty the same way again, that it'll always seem a bit acidic. he'd roll his eyes and turn the pages of his newspaper.