Arriving in St Louise

Arriving in St Louis

When you fly into St Louis from the east, after you cross the river, you'll see a series of small white buildings. At first it appears to be a convention of tool sheds, a joining together of homes for John Deere escapees, but as the plane descends it's apparent that they're mausoleums, and you're crossing a cemetery. I can't speak for you, but my Catholic upbringing taught me never to cross a gravestone, so this realization is particularly hard as we cruise overhead. But a more urgent thought may cross your mind. As the plane descends still further, individual plots become visible, and the juxtaposition of the sprawling city and the compact cemetery is particularly vivid. Why do all those horizontal dead bodies require so little room, when the vertical live ones require so much? The Jesuits and Benedictines never addressed that point when insisting that I steer clear of the marble headstones.

On this trip I arrived in daylight. I suppose if it had been night, the metaphysical issue of gravestone crossing would never have crossed my mind. I was returning to Las Vegas after a week of travail on the east coast, and had found a cheap flight on TWA, soon to be AA, which routed through the city. The plane was full, which surprised me, with the usual detritus of commercial travelers, pedaling their services across the continent to earn a living. Every one on the plane looked tired, worn down, beaten by the work of the week, and the need to endure the suffering of airplane travel to return to the haven of their homes. I supposed most of them considered them selves unlucky - the hard toil and the onerous travel made for an unpleasant life style. They should have pondered the sad souls interred below while they soared overhead on short final; maybe then they'd consider their luck better. Still, they would have had more room below.

I had, as always, a window seat. This has ever been my preference: providing a bulkhead to rest my head against for sleep. I'd learnt early in my traveling career that few strangers appreciated my snuggling down on their shoulder as the aircraft roared along the runway. The side of the plane had never been so particular, and I valued its reticence much more than the softness of the varied shoulders. I'd also always pretended to myself that I had no inhibitions about disturbing the row to visit the bathroom; an aisle seat would have left me at the mercy of my traveling companions' bladders; as I believed that airplanes were intended to allow me catch up on sleep as well as getting somewhere, I planned not to be subject to the vagaries of others fluid balances. But I wasn't always honest about my willingness to disturb my companions, and on more than a few trips, I decided to hang on till the landing, rather than disturbing them. On occasions, this plan had proved perilous, particularly when the plane had entered a holding pattern short of the airport, and the seat belt signs were firmly illuminated.

Today, I'd boarded the flight after more than a few coffees, and the need was clear soon after departure. Thirty minutes into the flight, I recognized the inevitable and started the ritual notification of 'need to go to the bathroom', well known to all frequent flyers. For some reason, we don't say to our neighbor that we need to get out. Instead we perform an exaggerated clearing of the decks - removing the book from the tray table, stuffing the plastic cup into the seat pocket in front, raising and securing the table, performing the human origami to retrieve our shoes. At some point in this ritual, it's expected that the person in the seat next door will turn and murmur 'Do you need ....' , to which we reply "Ah.., yes, hmm, please, sorry, yes, excuse me...' and subsequently all in the row clamber into the aisle and you spring to the bathroom. On return the whole messy process is reversed.

The man sitting next to me was huge. They'd brought him one of those seat belt extensions that are designed for the horizontally challenged. His tray table stopped on his stomach at an angle of only 30 degrees off the vertical. When he sat, parts of his body overflowed his seat in to mine, and that of the lady in the aisle seat. Some parts flowed over the arm rests and some crept under. He wasn't particularly tall; maybe if he had been the distribution of extra mass would have tended more to the vertical than the horizontal. I supposed he couldn't help his shape, but he did present to me a greater than usual psychological challenge when the coffee started to make its diuretic impact felt.

I've always found it puzzling that the airlines are so insistent on stuffing bags under the seat in front, or placing them in the overhead to ensure that escape routes are clear, but they seem not to consider overlarge passengers as a risk to others on the flight. Compressed between the window and my companion's fatty deposits, as the plane finished boarding I'd pondered escape routes in the event of need. Clearly my neighbor was going nowhere; I would need to climb over him. The shortest route to the summit was via the belly. If I pulled myself up out of my seat, and stood on it, a well-placed foot on the top of the belly, a balancing hand on the head, and the aisle could be reached in seconds. The risk would be smoke; ascending so high to effect escape would risk inhaling more smoke - all the literature I had read recommended staying low to avoid inhalation. The only alternatives required going over the seat in front, or the one behind. Each would be difficult, and if the occupants were slow to move, would present even greater obstacles than the human mountain next to me. I'd decided the belly route would be the first choice, noted the number of rows to the emergency exits, and snuggled up to the window frame.

These ponderings returned to me as I decided the need to visit the bathroom had to be attended to. I started the ritual, but he did not respond. The warm bits of him that overflowed into my space and pressed up against me gave no indication of recognizing or understanding the well-proven signals I issued. Finally, I addressed him;

"Excuse me - I need to get out"

"Are you sure?"

No I thought, I'm doing this for entertainment - I course I was sure. It wasn't my fault we were going to have to use a backhoe to prize him out of his seat!

"Yes, I'm really sorry - but I've got to go"

He reached around the belly and searched for the extended belt. I would have offered to find it for him, but already I'd spend too much time in contact with too much of him. He found the belt and released it. Clearly, even with its extension, it was struggling to restrain him; when he released it, one end flew out and struck the woman in the aisle seat on her right breast. She let out a little scream, more in surprise than pain, and rounded on the man in the middle. She must have thought he was attacking her; her look was both ferocious and scared, but she wasn't overly intimidated, although she was less than half his size, and was ready and willing to strike back. The look she gave him would have killed most men, and she started to say something, then saw the belt, and worked out what had happened. She suppressed a comment, looked around the mountain to me, and turned to unfasten her own belt.

I realized that the laws of physics implied that she was experiencing the same intimate experience of his body that I was; certainly she was enjoying it as little as me. As she exited her seat, the mountain raised the armrest on that side, and the reduction in pressure allowed more of him to flow in that direction, releasing some of the compression on my side. He sidled across her seat, and attempted to stand. To achieve this he took a firm hold of the seat in front of him, and gave a mighty heave. Designed to survive the impact of an air catastrophe, nonetheless the seat strained to handle the sudden increase in loading. It bent backward through a formidable arc; the mountain rose several inches, gave a great cry of exertion, and attempted to rise. This proved futile; he released the seat and settled back down with all the elegance of one of those hotel implosions so often seen in Las Vegas. The seat ricocheted back to the upright position, and now relatively unrestrained continue forwards through many more degrees of arc. The unfortunate occupant, happily snoozing only a few seconds before these maneuvers, snapped awake convinced the plane was crashing and let out a blood-curdling scream.

"Ah shiiiit! Oh my god!!! We're crashing, we're going to die...."

The woman who had left the aisle seat leant down to him and reassured him that we weren't. He looked around sheepishly, then realized what had happened, got annoyed then took a long look at the mountain and decided not to argue with it. The mountain muttered an apology, and explained that he had to get out so I could go to the bathroom. I smiled guiltily, and shrugged - maybe I should have waited?

The mountain made a second attempt to rise, and with the aid of the seat in front and the one behind prized his self into the aisle and cleared the way for me to exit. I slipped out quickly and rushed to the bathroom. On my return, the mountain, and the woman, had remained in the aisle. She gave me a conspiratorial look as I slid into my seat, and I grinned back, partners in adversity. The mountain wheeled around in the aisle and wedged his self back into the center seat, murmuring something about inconsiderate airline design, and Boeing's short sited propensity to build only for the average. She was smart enough to remain standing until he'd located and secured the extended seat belt - fortunately he wasn't going to wait until the sign illuminated - and then reseated herself in the aisle seat.

Here we all were again, in intimate proximity, safely secured, and heading onwards. I turned to gaze out of the window, and pondered once more my escape routes in the event of catastrophe. In time I dozed off, head firmly wedged into that awkward little curve between the window and the bulkhead, and so passed the flight. A couple of hours later the thump of the descending wheels and the roar of the airbrakes roused me. Passing below was the cemetery that began this reminiscence, the site of which gave me pause to reconsider the trip, and maybe to give thanks that yet again we were landing safely, that the experience had its humorous side, and that the weekend was coming!

Now if there's just time to visit the bathroom before my connecting flight boards....

Copyright 2004 Andrew Hartnett