In point
of fact, this story properly begins a few years earlier, when H was boarding a
plane to fly out east to help an old friend drive across the country. Although,
if we’re being extremely technical, perhaps it begins at the moment of H’s
conception in a queen sized bed in an apartment in San Francisco. Though, if
you were to continue in that vein, you’re bound to wind up back in the garden
or in the Great Rift Valley, or both, depending on belief structures.
I
imagine then we’d start with the valley and the river. We’d start with flocks
of birds—pink and white—soaring across the horizon, flying towards a low slung
and heavy looking sun. We’d start with the hippos, wallowing in the mud, nostrils
exposed—waiting for the heat of another day to pass. And eventually, we’d move
away from the alluvial plains to a copse of trees where two figures would be
hunched over, looking out across that same plain wondering where to get food and
find happiness.
Airports
are dismal places. H was toting his carry on over his shoulder, he always tried
to pack light to avoid waiting in line. Most of being at an airport was waiting
in line to confirm that you hadn’t done anything wrong, put in too much
luggage, booked the wrong flight, brought too much gel or forgotten your
boarding pass. In this way airports were vaguely reminiscent of school mixed
with his idea of prison.
The
majority of the people in the airport all seem distant. It’s one of those
strange public spectacles where everyone gets together to ignore each other. If
someone bumps your bag with theirs it’s considered a violent intrusion of
personal space. By and large everyone had agreed to this arrangement, though
small children occasionally broke through this spell, ran around laughing,
smiled at strangers, or threw fits on the floor, breaking the silent code that
most of the adults have agreed to—if we all have to go through the ninth ring
of hell—let’s at least do it with some personal dignity.
Though
H tacitly agreed to the same strictures when traveling, he wasn’t entirely sure
what purpose they served. Was there anything more uniformly alienating and
ubiquitously encountered than air travel? It seemed to him that the tacit agreement
that everyone was in it all alone, or with their own particular family group
didn’t really make the situation any more hospitable. The only time you saw
people commiserating is when something had gone wrong, a flight delayed or
someone who had forgotten to take off their shoes. Then you could find some camaraderie
in bemoaning the idiots who had caused the problem.
But who
had demanded that everyone in an airport had to be unpleasant? What if airports
were like bars, places that you went to meet and to be met? What if people
smiled more frequently and didn’t only default to the glazed over look of a
person who hasn’t slept in months? H was tired though and sorry he’d agreed to
fly across the country. He’d met someone towards the end of his first semester
and college and had wound up getting invited to her house for a stay, though he’d
had to turn it down in order to help his friend, which now seemed like a stupid
idea in comparison with spending time with Nicky.
Deep
down, H was conflicted about the minor inconveniences of being in an airport. By
and large he found the bag searches, the gel restrictions, and the endless
checking and rechecking of documents and identification to be intrusive and
annoying. In some moments, he blamed the attacks of 9/11 for being the worst
thing that could have ever happened to air travel, making everyone’s life
inconvenient for time en memoriam. And yet, what was a small inconvenience when
weighed against the cost of a single human life. Who was he to complain about
his nail scissors being taken away when 3,000 people lost their lives? He would
give away everything in his bag, every time, if he could undo it. And yet, it
still irritated him, these small incursions into what felt like his private
life. And the jarring experience of being in an airport of having his underwear
sifted and sorted through by an aging woman with curled hair was a reminder of
his double anonymity. He was no one, and yet, the fact that he was no one meant
that everything he owned could be searched and seized at a moment’s notice.
Depending
on the degree to which he’d packed, one of the most annoying parts was finding
a way to reorganize and pack his bag after it had been sifted through. Because yes,
he’d brought nail scissors and now they were gone, and he had no idea how
everything had originally fit, and wouldn’t this whole process be nicer if the
TSA also provided an efficiency expert to repack your bag after the check,
maybe even providing a little extra room to assist you in stuffing it
underneath your seat once you boarded.
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