Entries for March, 2007
He had to use the restroom. Why he always got the window seat was beyond him – the novelty of seeing the clouds and sky on plane rides had lost its novelty long ago. The middle-aged lady next to him was knocked out cold, probably from the pills she’d popped not three minutes into takeoff. Horn-rimmed glasses askew, fake fur coat wrinkled inappropriately, stiffly sprayed hair disheveled beyond repair of normal hands, the woman looked as though she’d just been plucked from the midst of a furious hurricane in the middle of a cheap hotel lobby and plunked into the cabin with the divine purpose of constructing with her possessions and large body an impenetrable fortress to corner him into submission through cruel bodily torture. Her lowered seat tray was cluttered with an impossible number of trashy paperbacks she possibly couldn’t have expected to read during the two-and-half hour flight to Southern California. He figured it rather difficult to read while unconscious. The sheer bulk of her coat and her uncomfortably splayed sleeping position served to effectively choke out any hopes of climbing over. He’d have to wait it out next to Mrs. Ritzy Fake here. He sighed. So much for the restroom.
He checked the time on his iPod as it strung out the pulsing arpeggios of a Mozart sonata. 2:12. Soon his plane would touch down in bustling Los Angeles amid stubborn traffic and the welcoming smell of smog and exhaust, and he was looking forward to the interminable drive home from the airport. After a couple months surrounded by dormant wheat fields and vineyards, the prospect of the city seemed like a haven to him. He tried to glance outside and frowned. The window seat didn’t even offer a clear view of the mountains below him. He had the luck to be seated right next to the plane’s portside engines, so all he saw and heard was the dirt-stained wing and the muted roar of thousands of steel horses furiously propelling them forward through the clouds.
He decided that window seat 17A was an imposter, conning unsuspecting travelers into empty hopes of breathtaking sky views. Thinking harder, he deduced that this was no innocent deception. His seat was in a sort of sadistic criminal ring with its neighbors 17B and 17C – whichever unlucky soul fell into their trap, the three cohorts in urinary crimes torturously broke down the victim with bladder infections and later exchanged morbid jokes about it over swigs of whiskey in the back room of a dirty bar. Somewhere in their troubled childhood this trio of 17s had taken a wrong road. What crooked lives they led!
The big, bald businessman on the other side of the woman paid no attention to the mountain of cheap velvet lightly snoring next to him. He was intently focused on what looked like a spreadsheet with two figures on it. The rest of the rows and columns were yet to be filled in; perhaps they were meant to be empty and he was pondering the reason for the hundreds of vacant cells in his quarterly report. He sat too straight in his seat, as though the numbing monotony of his thrice-pressed suit forbade him to relax his heavyset neck in any way resembling comfort. A constant tick in his left eye gave him the impression of a livid bull only constrained from a rampage by his grey corporate straitjacket. He should be weight-lifting in Florida, not crunching numbers in coach. He probably had a deadline to meet. Poor fellow.
His ears hurt. Peeking out over the wing, he briefly caught the white letters on the mountainside announcing his arrival into HOLLYWOOD. It was pretty cool to be able to see that from the air, he thought. So he was home. He had expected to feel excited, eager, even jubilant. As the captain announced their descent into Los Angeles International Airport, however, he felt something much more important, far more pressing. He wanted to get out of the plane as fast as possible. This feeling was unexpected, unforeseen, and utterly urgent.
He had to go pee.
Written by jihwan at 01:47 AM.