Traveling can be a lonely endeavor. I do my best when I’m on the road to cram my schedule as full as possible, to avoid that sad feeling and keep myself occupied. There’s nothing worse than ending a day in the late afternoon, and having no one to go to the local brewery with and talk about anything but work. Most of the time my hectic scheduling prevents that. If I find myself alone, it’s usually at 10 p.m., I’ve just checked into a hotel and can’t wait to get some shut-eye. Other times not so much. But I am, typically, fortunate enough to be in a city with lots of interesting things I’ve never seen before. So, in those rare times with nowhere to be, I can often go for a hike, or wander through a museum, or find a beer I’ve never had before. Still, it’s not as fun by yourself.
Opportunities to distract oneself from loneliness while traversing the country are not limited to “things to do.” There are people, too. I’ve met many unusual folks. Struck up random, fascinating conversations. Part of it is that my trade is having conversations for a living. I collect stories the way some lonely housewives collect Precious Moments figurines. Except my tiny statues would be people performing ghastly, unsightly acts. Nothing like the big-eyed innocence of prayers before bedtime.
Inevitably, there are stories that I can’t stand. Some folks just can’t stand the absence of human touch. I’ve heard many tales, first, second, or third-hand, about road warriors who sleep with anyone they can find in a hotel bar. These stories are more often than not, quite embellished. Like songs sung in Viking halls. I know, because I travel, and I’ve been to a lot of hotel bars. Do you know who hangs out in hotel bars? Old, fat, white, businessmen. They all look the same, they all think they drink the best booze, all believe they are still eighteen and in a fraternity, and they all try to hit on the cute bartender. Frankly, those guys annoy the shit out of me.
It bothers me because while I understand that bartending is a profession chosen by said cute girl, it has to get pretty old to be drooled over by guys who talk to a woman as if she is obligated to take their sexual harassment. It’s gross and it gives the rest of us a bad name. Nevertheless, tales persist that some dumbass got lucky one time and happened to find the one girl with no self esteem who loved the idea of having a one-nighter with a drunk, sad, lonely man. All of a sudden, he’s crowned some sort of champion. A king among peasants. It is a bragging right I choose not to pursue.
That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the company of a female. Let’s be real. I’m human, and I, like everyone else, can get lonely. Because I’m not going to compete with the nostalgic, wanna-be frat boys, it’s rare that I find myself having a normal conversation with anyone, let alone a woman. In fact, it never really happens at all.
You would think that airplanes might present a different opportunity. Once belted into a seat, your neighbor is a captive audience, even if it’s only for an hour. And for normal people, you’d probably be correct. But, because I was born to be abnormally tall, I have to sit in an exit row when I fly. There’s just no choice in the matter. And do you know who sits in the exit row? Old, fat, white, businessmen who can afford the extra $40 upgrade, but are too cheap to spring for first class. It’s something I’ve just gotten used to. While this is the case for me ninety-nine percent of the time, there is still one more percent. Tat small figure represents exactly three instances when I have found myself sitting next to an attractive, intelligent woman.
This is the story of the first.
On a particular flight to Indianapolis from Denver I happened to be flying on an airline that does not assign seats by ticket. There is a boarding order, and as you board you’re allowed to choose wherever you like to sit. This trip had not been a great one. It was short - over three days - and crossed three time zones. I was exhausted and my bad luck continued when I discovered that for some reason, despite my frequent flyer status with the airline, I was seventy-fourth in line to board rather than in my usual top fifteen.
This boarding status was detrimental to my mood. I knew that I would not be able to make it to an exit row before all the seats were claimed. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I would end up with bruised knees. In these instances I do everything I can to make the best of the situation and sit by a window so I can at least lean my head on the wall or stare mindlessly out a window and contemplate my untimely demise by plummeting 30,000 feet to my doom. I prepared myself to be paired with an old woman going to visit her grandchildren that would likely talk the entire trip. Or, maybe, a teenager in sweatpants that hadn’t showered for a month, rocking out to “music” that resembled something akin to sheet metal being dragged across a pile of gravel that was so loud it spilled out of their headphones. Two and a half hours of torture and discomfort awaited me.
Slowly but surely we moved along like cattle into a stockade. As I stepped onto the plane the attendant looked at me, down the aisle to the exit rows, then back to me. Her lower lip stuck out and her eyes were sad. I gave a regretful smirk and nodded to let her know that, yes, I was tall and that, no, I would not be sitting in an exit row. Both of us were helpless to save me from my awaiting agony.
I chose an empty row toward the front of the plane. Casually I tossed my carry-on into the overhead bin, ducked to climb under the bulkhead and over the other two seats to fold myself into my chair next to the window. After I pulled a book from my backpack, I stuffed it under the seat in front of me and assumed the posture-perfect position I would need to maintain for the entire flight home.
More cattle shuffled onto the plane. I did my best not to look up, I didn’t want to see my horror coming at me. Te least I could do was make it a game and be surprised by whatever monster decided I would be its next victim. Person after person walked by, and still, no one sat in my row. I admit, I was a little insulted. I’m no Bradley Cooper, but I’m not Alice Cooper either. Frustrated now that no one wanted to sit with me, I glanced up from the pages of my sci-fi adventure to see what options were left.
I expected a hideous old troll of a man with both belt and suspenders who carried leftover sandwich bits in his untamed gray beard. Instead, to my dismay, I immediately locked eyes with a drop-dead gorgeous, tall, brunette. I felt my face flush when she didn’t look away. Ten I realized there were ten or so people between us. And my anticipation of the possibility that she would sit next to me began to fade. I also remembered my shitty day, and quickly brushed the entire thought aside because the universe hated me and would never think to apologize to me for my crappy trip by rewarding me with pleasant company.
She smiled at me as she continued walking down the aisle of the aircraft.
Meh, I thought. It was nice while it lasted. I turned my attention back to the book I was holding and waited for fate to do its thing. I was just getting to the part where the captain of the space cruiser was getting ready to assassinate the alien overlord who’d murdered his family when a purse landed in the aisle seat of my row. I looked over to see my slim, brown-haired beauty lifting a roller bag into the storage above. Evidently I had transformed into a teenage boy at the peak of puberty, because some sort of squeak escaped my throat. She glanced down at me, but I turned my head to my book and pretended I hadn’t looked up at all. Silently I prayed to the gods of the airlines that she hadn’t heard me.
She moved her purse and sat down. In the aisle seat. The rollercoaster of emotion I’d been subjected to over five minutes time was too much. Hope, despair, hope, despair. I sighed to myself and tried to focus on the alien assassination at hand.
Not seconds later another passenger stopped and asked if the middle seat was taken. My heart sank when I looked up to discover I’d won the wrong lottery, and a very large woman thought she was going to squeeze—yes, squeeze—into the middle seat.
Why? I silently cried out. Why, great airways spirit, are you torturing me like this? Not only was I myself literally folded into an uncomfortable seat, but the one saving grace of a person I had, chose to sit just one seat away. And now, now I was going to be confined to the 24 inches between the exterior of the plane and Jabba the Hutt’s older cousin. The thought of her spilling over onto me made me shudder.
“Why don’t I just scooch over,” the brunette said. She looked at me, flashed a smile, then moved over to the middle seat. My heart couldn’t take the stress. I was full of anxiety and hope and defeat and then victory. Quickly I mentally apologized to the flying omnipotent ones. It could not have been any sweeter, because the hot chick sitting next to me had an Australian accent.
When the attendants began to tell us how not to die in the event the plane crashed, I fnally turned to my new neighbor, and like a teenager with a permanent hardon asked, “Australia?”
She smirked, probably because she thought I was adorable. “Yes,” she said.
“Why on Earth are you flying to Indianapolis?”
“I had a friend move ‘ere over the summa and I promised I’d visit.” I did my best to contain my excitement at the way she pronounced “summer” but was quickly distracted by a bright flash.
The reflection of light coming off the enormous diamond in her wedding band caught the sun coming through the window and nearly scorched my retinas. I found myself blinking rapidly while my left hand swatted at the shade, trying to close it so I could at least retain partial vision. The wheels of the 737 were just off the ground before the spots cleared. Once I was satisfied I was not in fact going blind, I released the death grip on the book I was still holding.
It had not occurred to me just how desperately I wanted this trip to end on a good note. All I needed was a regular, adult conversation to convince me the world was not a terrible place. If that dialogue happened to be with a beautiful woman, who was I to argue. No way was I going to let some dried up old sentiment about speaking to a married woman get in my way.
I composed myself and attempted a second contact. “Ever been to the States before?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to it, but not sure how right it will go.”
“Too bad you couldn’t spend more time in Denver. Beautiful city.”
“Yeah, I’m not much of a skier though.” Then she sniffed, and wiped her nose with a tissue.
It was unintentional, but I know I scrunched up my face a little because snot is gross. I’ve gotten sick a day or two after long trips on planes because someone coughed the entire time. Filters in the air systems on airplanes don’t do much. But, she was cute, so I choked down my germaphobia and tried to be polite.
“Sorry,” she started. “My allergies are terrible, and they’ve only gotten worse since I got to the U.S.”
“That’s too bad,” I empathized. Internally, I was starting to panic. I don’t get sick. At least, I didn’t used to get sick. The more I travel, though, the more often my nose begins to run and the more clogged my ears seem to feel. I’ve been sick more often in the last five years of heavy travel than I have been my whole life. My nervousness must have shown.
“It’s just allergies,” the Australian beauty reassured me.
“I get it,” I replied. “I have some extra tissues in my backpack.” I leaned down to pull my pack from underneath the seat in front of me. It was true, too. I always carried tissues, pain reliever, etcetera, just in case. It’s smart traveling.
“No, thank you,” was her response. I didn’t think too much of it because she already had a tissue in one hand and if she’d been battling a sniffle then I guessed she had more. Admittedly, I was not so enthusiastic now about my new friend. I reasoned that, yet again, the universe was playing a terrible trick on me. My sheepish, pubescent demeanor faded and my regular adult self regained control, shocked back into existence by the realization I did not want to get sick.
So as not to appear like too much of a creep, I went back to my book. I sort of forgot about all of it. I tend to get into books that way, and that’s exactly what good book should do to a reader. All of a sudden I was yanked out of my adventure back into reality with a very loud sneeze.
Aussie, I had decided to call her Aussie, was wiping her nose with the same tissue she boarded with. It dawned on me that it was entirely possible she did not have any extras with her.
“Tissue?” I offered.
Again, the response was, “No thank you.”
At this point I was a little confused. Here I was, an attractive man, offering an attractive woman some assistance, and she refused? Why wouldn’t she take the extra tissue? It’s not like I had a bottle of chloroform in my bag that I was going to dump onto the pack of tissues before handing it to her. And even if I did, it would be really dumb of me to do it right in front of her. Why the hell wouldn’t she take the tissues?
I was really frustrated. I didn’t want to get sick and this walking disease had set up shop right next to me. For some reason she leaned over, closer to me. Te bowling ball of a person to her right had moved, presumably to escape the fleeting infections of Aussie as best she could. Now her sniffling was happening just a few inches away from my face.
God dammit, I thought. What the fuck did I do to deserve this? As Aussie played a game on her smartphone I looked over to check and make sure I had not hallucinated the fact she was an attractive female. Te low cut of her shirt revealed her amazing cleavage. Te wonderful scent of her perfume filled my nostrils. I was certain, on any other day, this would have been an entirely different trip.
I know men who would take one look at Aussie and stop at nothing to get into her pants. Wouldn’t have mattered if she sniffled a little. Hell, she could’ve given them cancer and they still would have pressed on. Anything to get laid. She would be one more piece of ass they could place on their trophy wall and brag about to their friends. Fortunately, I have standards.
Continuing on in my book I chose to do my best to ignore the fact this woman was going to give me a cold. Te sneezing and guttural throat clearing continued. Te captain came over the loud speaker to announce we had thirty minutes remaining in our flight. I was elated to know that my horrible experience would soon be over.
And then it happened.
Aussie turned to me, I think, to begin to apologize again for her unpleasantness, and sneezed. She sneezed right onto my hand, and a thick, green and yellow snot rocket landed next to my thumb, sliding down the page of my book. My body jerked in disgust, but there was nowhere to go. I was trapped. Like a cat trying to climb a wall to get away from an angry dog I clung to the side of the airplane.
“Oh my god,” she said, horrified. “Oh my god I’m so, so sorry.” To compensate for her mucus rain on my person, she began to wipe my hand with her tissue. Her one tissue. Te one she’d been clinging to since she got on the damn plane. The same thin piece of paper she’d used to wipe her nose on our entire flight. I jerked my hand away from her.
“No!” I unintentionally shouted. I let my book fall to the floor and with my clean left hand scrambled to my backpack where a fresh pack of tissues was stowed. I opened the package and deftly pulled all of them out of their plastic container. Frantically I wiped my right hand off and examined the sleeve of my shirt for shrapnel. The woman at the end of the row mumbled something that sounded like Huttese, but it didn’t matter. There would be no sacrifices to Jabba on this flight. We were all going to die of infection and Aussie was patient zero.
It took all I had not to vomit. Aussie was panicking with embarrassment and produced a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer. I snatched it out of her hand, opened the bottle and dumped it all onto my palm. Slathering the alcoholic liquid all over my wrist and forearm, my eyes started to water from the scent.
“Why?” I asked aloud.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Aussie said. Te plane landed as I handed the empty bottle of sanitizer back to her. There was no point in saying anything. We were both mortified.
We sat in terrible, awkward silence as the plane approached the gate and we prepared to depart. One by one the rows in front of us emptied. My leg began to bounce with impatience. My only thought was how quickly I could get off the plane and into an emergency room. They were going to have to put me in an oxygen tent. Maybe I would be the new bubble boy. They’d have to study me and use my blood to develop new vaccines for the deadly mucus-inducing virus I’d contracted.
Aussie never looked at me when she removed her luggage from the overhead bin. The smooth skin of her partially exposed breasts did nothing to sate my panic. I waited for her to move away from the aisle, and let two other passengers go in front of me before getting up to leave, like I was following a semi truck pulling a tanker with biohazard stickers all over it.
Once in the terminal I held up my book by the front cover. Several pages clung together, soaked with gooey phlegm. I contemplated lighting it on fire, for the sake of humanity. Frowning, I tossed into a trash can, just like my hopes and dreams.