A Pandemic Flight to Texas

A Pandemic Flight to Texas

     Let me begin by saying that, while I may have bought a house and been living my adult life fully and in earnest, I have never bought a car. I’ve only ever had the one, and it was by the good graces of my father that I ended up with it in the first place. He gave it to me after several long years of destroying it and running up an already expensive insurance premium, so to him it was probably more of an unburdening than an act of goodwill. This is all to say that at the ripe old age of 25, getting ready to buy my first car seemed like a seriously late-bloomer move to me as I sat scrolling through flights from my couch, in my house. (Funnily enough, several banks seemed to disagree with the assessment that I was “living my adult life fully and in earnest,” because paying a god damned $500 mortgage and still having the money to spend on all the bullshit I do and maintain a credit score of 730+ was not proof enough that I was worthy of a $7,000 auto loan. But I digress.)

     Everything is easy on the internet. Request paid time off, buy plane tickets, email your aunt to let her know a little more enthusiastically than is believable that arrangements have been made and to save the date, calculate gas mileage and curate an 18 hour long playlist for the drive back, drool over Google searches of the car you bought…. What isn’t easy is pulling up to an airport on a Friday before a long holiday weekend at lunch and seeing absolutely no one. No cars circling the ramps because there’s nowhere to park and someone to stop you even if you found a spot, no boarding passengers flinging bags out of trunks, no arrivals greeting or hugging or tugging at their sweats with their shoes in their hands and their sleep-masks still perched atop their heads, no jacketed or vested officials waving you by with their brightly lit traffic-wands. Nothing. Just empty lanes and one lone vehicle that doesn’t even look occupied.

     You get out, hand the keys over and hug your chauffeur, unload the single bag you packed because checking bags is for the feckless rich and you’ll be back in three days anyway, and…that’s it. Done, over, finished. Suddenly getting dropped off at the airport is easier than calling out sick from work or making a dental appointment over the phone. Easier than getting up early, doing the dishes, vacuuming, deciding on whether or not to eat now or wait until you get to where you’re going, remembering to bring spare contacts in case you lose your glasses or extra underwear in case you have a period for the first time in six years or shit yourself every day you’re away from home. The usual mania is gone and suddenly getting dropped off at the airport becomes the easiest part of your day: simple and entirely without drama.

     So why is it so hard to deal with? Why is the silence so heavy? Isn’t this what everyone wants before a long Christmas, a much-anticipated honeymoon, an only somewhat-dreaded family reunion? Or is the 28 Days Later vibe too real right now, too close to home? Whatever it is, the ease with which you exit your vehicle and approach the automatic doors is tainted by some mistrust, as if it were all a trick to get you to sit through a time-share pitch in a too-hot, badly decorated office in some strip mall that’s actually only moonlighting as an airport until their essential oils business really starts to take off (ba-dum-tss). Whatever it is, it smacks of an afterlife, the abandoned set of a film you’ve wandered onto after a late night of not checking your email. You must have missed the memo.

     Security is the same as ever. When isn’t it? A man drones instructions loudly and clearly, tossing them over the heads of you and your fellow passengers. You know him and boy, does he know you. When the instructions suddenly become more pointed and you look up to see him directing them at the bin in front of you, you are flushed with embarrassment because of course you heard him say “electronics in separate bins,” but somehow that didn’t register and now you’re holding up at least three other people who already have their shoes in their hands and who are trying not to look terribly annoyed with you. You make it through security with about as much of your pride intact as can be expected. They’ve seen others like you. They don’t care.

     You roll your bag down the cavernous and echoing corridor of the airport and wonder if there’s anything to eat or do or buy while you wait for your flight to board, but all there is is a Chick-Fil-A serving exactly three menu items, a nondescript store that seems to have an inordinate amount of sports team memorabilia to be considered an “essential business,” and the empty curves and corners of halls travelling away from your gate. Even the runway looks deserted. One sandwich later and you’re afraid to have to pee during a two-hour flight, so you get it over with and realize that most women must drag their luggage into the stall with them. How else do you keep it from getting stolen? Everyone knows that petty thieves love to stalk their way through airport security just to seek out the extra underwear you inevitably brought and the toiletries you were sure would be mistaken for drugs. Everyone knows that.

     Then comes the boarding. There are hardly any people at the terminal and social distancing is still in effect, so you think that this will probably make for a pretty comfortable flight. The rich are seated first, as is their God-given right, and as more and more people file through the accordioned tunnel you begin to realize that everyone this side of security is getting on this plane. Your plane, which is now apparently almost full as you are the 2^nd to last to board. A flight attendant tries to take your bag, but you assure her that your bag meets the airline’s specific space and size regulations and that it will definitely fit in the overhead bin because you are definitely not letting her take it and yes, you do hit every single person in aisle seats on either side as you make your way to the 3^rd row from the ass of the plane where there are two seats available (you didn’t spend the extra $70 to reserve seats for you and your partner because reserved seats, too, are for the wealthy, which you are not).

     The two seats you are presented with are both aisle seats, one in front of the other, with no discernable difference except for who occupies the respective window seat of each row. You begin to panic as you realize that you’ve been assigned the seat farthest back next to the redheaded teen boy whose headphones are already in and who is already looking rather annoyed at your very presence. You attempt to stuff your perfectly-sized suitcase into the crowded overheard bin next to your partner’s humiliatingly small duffel bag only to have a flight attendant recommend you find an empty space above another passenger further up toward the nose of the plane. Your partner, gallant as ever, volunteers to handle your bag as you take the preferred seat next to a girl whose carry-on seems to be barking, and once everything and everyone is finally settled and in-place, you take out the first mini bottle.

     As small as this plane is, it is filled to the brim with people and you have forgotten how ungraciously cramped it always is, so now you’re sitting as still as possible to avoid rustling the seats or bumping into the poor girl next to you who is apparently storing a dachshund under the seat in front of her. The enormous water bottle perched on your lap threatens to fall to the floor with a crash and roll into the cockpit, and your purse (which is bursting with mini vodka bottles) is shoved into your armpit to keep it out of the fourteen inch wide walkway, but the flight attendant seated dead-center of the ass-most row is slowly bumping her wide hips into every armrest, hand, elbow, head, and purse in sight, so you resign yourself to this constant contact with every other passenger. What a luxury it is to fly.

     I do not fly often. In fact, I have not flown in ten years, but I remember the rush of ascent being one I enjoyed; there was nothing like suddenly defying the limited laws of physics you were used to adhering to, only to choose entirely new ones to follow more ardently than ever. But my insular primate brain still balks against this defiance and grips the armrest, knowing that no amount of strain on this small rod of metal and plastic will alleviate the anxiety of feeling the empty space between my body and the ground stretch like a rubber band about to snap. I do not fear heights, but the sudden loss of altitude. Fortunately, the White Knuckle Express only runs for about four full minutes. Two hours and approximately four and a half shots later and its back on the ground for twenty minutes of taxiing in the heat of a Texan sun, several degrees away from baking like a can of sardines on a sidewalk but not entirely unlike that, either.

     You patiently wait for every other row above you to seesaw their passengers into the aisle and out the door, grabbing the small duffel and leaving your standard, regulation sized bag for your partner to find. As you fall out of the row and into the aisle, you wish the girl next to you good luck even though the wish is meant more for her anxious dachshund who’d had a whiny and decidedly stressful flight and, with the duffel held in front of you as if it were sprouting from your belly, you take your eager leave of this hollow pipe that is the cabin. Emerging from the floating tunnel feels like resurfacing in a pool of murky water, the cold blast of Airport freezing the mist of sweat on the nape of your neck as you gaze through crowds. Crowds?

     Suddenly there is no longer a cold breeze but an exhale, someone’s wet mouth opening for you to step inside and you realize that there are a hell of a lot more people here than you’d expected considering the travel restrictions and deaths and general pandemonium. But what’s a little infection? After all, aren’t you here, too? With your mask and your sanitizer and your good intentions, you who just flew hundreds of miles practically in a stranger’s lap to gawk into a mirror. You aren’t proud, but you probably aren’t as ashamed as you ought to be, either.

     You float across what seems to be the flattest floor you’ve ever felt and glide your not-too-big, not-too-small suitcase beside you, feeling as though you’ve never in your life properly rolled a suitcase before now. You told your aunt you’d meet at baggage claim, but you have nothing to claim and all the time in the world to just stand around hoping to be able to recognize her in the veins of faces pumping and circulating through the chest of this building. There are several people in masks, perhaps even many, but hers is obvious and she waves to you and your partner, all probably smiling but none able to tell and certainly not daring to hug just yet, and as you exit the vast and seemingly endless building, you think to yourself that the luxury of flight is one that you may well do without for the foreseeable future. But someone shoves past you and you finally look to the door where the second easiest part of your day await you: a car and the warm idea of an embrace, glowing under the metal awnings like a distant lighthouse in fog.