Sure, it may sound like a great idea to sit at BAR:120 at the airport1 at the slick, too high, too far away, red bar on a slick2, wobbly white chair—spindly-legged, stream-lined, multi-descriptored, multiply hyphened—eating a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos, staining my left forefinger and thumb a perfect, noxious orange, and sipping, through an incredibly wide-bored black straw, a magnificently pale rum 'n' coke while hockeycentral3 plays silently, subtitlelessly, on two flat-screen Toshibas above the bar and planes and luggage carts are visibly puttering about, framed by bottles of Beefeater and Bombay Sapphire, Grey Goose and Smiroff, Glenfiddich and Jack Daniel's4 and various jazz standards5 and classical and opera and Elton John6 flow from the speakers7 of some complex system which involves a screen with white scrolling text on a deepish blue8 background and periodically there's a deep, unsettling, thrumming vibrating going on, when I finally notice the three light fixtures shaped like airplanes—two jets9 flanking an old prop job.
But do you know what's an even better idea? A second double rum 'n' coke10.
And that's how my airport adventure begins11.
Coming soon: the Flight. Or, rather, me in relation to the flight. You see, I'm one of those people who hates flying, who starts shaking and sweating and imagining all sorts of violent and fanciful things happening12.
"Final boarding call for flight number OH MY FUCK WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING, bound for lying curled on the floor in a fetal position, streaming copious quantities of tears and streaming snot; mouth open; face contorted."
And Christ, my wrist is sore who even uses pencils and papers any more and I'll see you again soon, when I start documenting my reactions on the actual plane. Expect: Daniel represented by: Puddle.
Will I loose these two double rum 'n' cokes13 into the motion sickness bag, or will my ginger pills14 save me? Stay tuned to find out!
Oh shit—finally! I think the magic potion's starting to wear off, though15.
Oh god. I think Air Canada spelled flotation incorrectly16.
The lead-up to getting on the plane17 involved much pacing and excessive peeing18, so I'm actually glad to finally get on the plane and get this ordeal started so it can get finished.
I like that we get told to turn off our iPods these days19.
Like drinking the rum 'n' cokes, writing this is an experiment20. You see, I thought that maybe if I was focussed on something other than OH HOLY SHIT THIS IS UNNATURAL21 I'd be able to handle that whole being where no human has any right being thing.
I open my little air spray nozzle guy full-bore and, for some reason, there's an absolutely lovely, frigid draught blowing at my ankles22.
Don't get me wrong, though23: as much as the entire experience terrifies me, I love take-off. It's such a gigantic push, thrust, surge, force; it's positively awesome24; it's monolithic; it's hungry; it's angry; it's impassioned; it's damn near as sexual as a huge phallic machine can get. It's good. Until that sinking hits my guts and that damn primal terror hits and I feel that panicked rush of holy moly where's the ground are we allowed to be doing this why didn't I just walk and there's the sweat and I almost dropped my pencil25 from my instantly too-slick fingers.
Why can't we just fly along at around 100ft above the ground? Is 33 000 all that necessary?
Looking out the window26 is humbling27. And, at the same time, impressive. I feel a surge of misguided pride at the folly of humanity and our "development" fetish, our "development" idolatry. Damn, we mucked shit up, huh? But everything looks so SimCitily neat! Neat as in swell and as in tidy; all the grossness of humanity's tenure is all glossed over up here28.
But back to the simple idea of flying; I get this Ikarian29 thrill while my heart rate increases, while my breathing gets shallower and shallower.
I'll be back shortly before the descent for landing happens!
Changed my mind!—I came back early. Just to keep this YawnFest rolling30. I just wanted to talk about getting... actually, nevermind: I got bored just thinking about writing it31. So, landing time it is, then.
Oh shit. I bet Ikarus didn't have to deal with turbulence32. I'm shaking like madness. We hit a big patch and the bottom dropped out of everything for a terrifying two seconds that lasted at least several hours. My fortunately empty Coke can went flying. As did my pencil. Through those fear-sweat slickened fingers again. I managed to find it, though, with the help of the kind woman33 sitting in the aisle seat beside me and held my book, journal and loose sheets of paper for me while I used my iPod as a flashlight to hunt down my hiding pencil. I found it jammed under my seat and hurry up and land safely you damn34 flying contraption.
I'm doing that scared breathing thing I do where I breathe in really shallowly through my nose and then let it out through my nose like it's a fucking tonne of bricks.
And oh damn I have to do all of this again on Monday. Why did I agree to this? I am some kind of fool. I really need to pee. But there's no chance that I'm getting out of this seat 'til we're on the ground.
There's the perceptible declension, felt long before it's seen; the increased drag on the plane: we're starting in on the final approach and it's time to stop writing before I vomit out my panic on the ceiling. More from the ground.
My guts are incredibly perceptive; every bank, every rise, every fall: they know about it before I fully register that some change in motion is happening. Upon landing, that primal, instinctual terror that's been percolating takes hold35 and it's all I can do to not scramble over the seats, pushing people out of my damn way before the plane decides to eat me.
And it takes my more feral, instinctual aspects a good long while to calm down.
The couple Dad-styled double36 rum 'n' cokes waiting for me certainly helped with the calming.
I can't wait to go through all of this again tomorrow37.
__________________________________________________
1 Ol' Pearson International.↑
2 not as in slippery, but as in cool, hep, et cetera. The red bar, however, hits on both points.↑
3 showing three men in front of an unknown—to me—statue which is wearing a Chicago Blackhawks jersey
(red) and a helmet (white), leading me to reminisce about the days when I cared
enough about hockey to choose the Blackhawks as my favourite team.↑
4 as well as, for completion's sake—as I feel troubled at not including them; feel a pang—Dewar's, Kahlúa,
Grand Marnier, Bacardi, Canadian Club, Crown Royal, Rémy Martin, Tanqueray, Hennessy and
Courvoisier.↑
5 "Mack the Knife," anyone?↑
6 "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." Who doesn't love butterflies, right?↑
7 beside the Dewar's and Grand Marnier at opposite ends of the bar.↑
8 cerulean, maybe?↑
9 which look more like wingèd: rockets, ballistic missiles, unidentified translucent and glowing space
sausages than they do like jets.↑
10 which is, if possible, even more magnificently (or, as I prefer, magnificentlier) pale than the first.↑
11 other than the transitting there and the post-TTC trekking across (and up) vast expanses from the TTC
drop-off point.↑
12 overpasses crumbling under the bus; lightning striking the plane and somehow making it explode;
the plane somehow imploding, me getting to feel the compaction and then, again somehow—demigodly,
I guess (because I don't even understand how I'd otherwise make it this far in some sort of state of
sensation)—experiencing my own implosion within the plane: a microcosmic repetition; or, simply,
running out of air, feeling my lungs fail with each attempt and, painfully obviously, just
crashing. Which is, of course—even in its unlikeliness—the likeliest disaster I dream up.↑
13 which were totally drunk as an experiment in fear-subdual.↑
14 organic Gravol is kind of a stunning thing. (Mostly the) Same stomach-calming skills without the sleep
for weeks side-effects.↑
15 lesson learned: don't ingest the fear-subdual potions too far in advance of the need of fearlessness.↑
16 I just used our old friend dictionary.com to discover that floatation, AC's idea of the word, is an
acceptable variant. This is unjustifiably, unreasonably, comforting.↑
17 that'd be the waiting, of course.↑
18 which, I'm sure, can mostly be attributed to the two double rum 'n' cokes but, also, whenever I'm
nervous, my urine tends to generate exponentially more quickly.↑
19 when I went to Iceland in 2005, I turned off NOTHING! That's right: I didn't have an iPod. I was listening
to mix tapes I'd made. Yeah. Mix tapes. On one of those good ol' yellow Sony Walkmans. The
kind with that handy little flip-lock thing that closed over the buttons.↑
20 why did I wait 'til now to tell you this? 'Cause this is where we start to find out if it worked.↑
21 speaking of, have you seen the X-Files episode "The Unnatural"? It's probably one of my favourite TV
things. And do you know why? Baseball, inexplicably. I've discovered that, in an interest that
can be traced back to Field of Dreams, I have a keen passion for things that romanticise and
mythologise baseball. Why is that, exactly? I have no idea. I find the game dull, boring, and an
absolute pleasure to watch. Wait. What? How does that even work? I can't explain it. All I can say
is that it does. Work, that is. I thrill to the idea of baseball. I yawn to the practice of
baseball. But I can't stay away. I think, though, on the most basic of levels, that my interest
in it comes from the investiture of emotion in its mythologisation; the characters in these things
love baseball as though it's the only thing they've ever encountered that's worth loving. And
feeling that passionate about something is something I can support, understand and feel. Recently,
in contrition for not having bought Kinsella's Shoeless Joe that time I saw it for under $10
and felt a skip in my heart beat's pattern and then somehow talked myself out of buying it, I bought
Malamud's The Natural. I look forward to reading it and going to more Jays' games. I'll let
you know how that works out for me.↑
22 I need as much cold as possible in this flying situation; I sweat like mad. And, usually, end up
ridiculously stinky: the sweat of fear has such an awful, acrid stench. Or is that just
something my olfactory factory cooks up? It's true for my mind and its close friends,
though, so whatever. My sweat after a hard day's work at Vesey's—as a for instance—always
smelled so—not good—but wholesome, pure, deserved. My plane sweat just smells like
excreted fear.↑
23 and here's the snag.↑
24 in the traditional sense of the word.↑
25 even with its rubberised little grip.↑
26 when I can stomach it.↑
27 I always seem to get the window seat. Is it punishment for something I don't know about? But I love it,
god damn it. Being the masochist I am.↑
28 apparently, fearing, from the very depths of my guts (which seem to extend pretty deeply), for my life,
turns me into a philosopher whose profundity rivals that of your profoundest university freshman
smoking pot for the first time.↑
29 as in, "of (or like, really) Ikarus," obviously.↑
30 and to keep my mind occupied, of course.↑
31 in all seriousness, I was going to talk about getting a can of Coke. Yeah. See what I do when I'm reaching
for something? Clutching at straws? Except the can only comes with a plastic cup. No straws.↑
32 apparently having your wings' glue melt and subsequently plummeting to your death in the sea is better
than being bounced around a little bit. Oh, Deimos and Phobos.↑
33 who's reading Alice Munro's Runaway and seems to like doing this about as much as I do and who
screamed out "Jesus Christ" and "Oh holy God" when we hit the large pocket of turbulence.↑
34 and by that I mean absolutely wonderful please don't hurt me.↑
35 even though I by now recognise that I'm on the ground and that the plane won't win this time (the battle,
certainly, but not the war).↑
36 equivalent to a more than generous triple or a stingy quadruple from less discerning tenders of bar.↑
37 added by the calmed representation of your humble writer while transcribing his scribbles to electronic
posterity.↑
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