Jul
21
SIX ENCOUNTERS:
He looks like somebody’s grandfather but he’s definitely not exuding a kindly manner at the moment: a whiny toddler has been stationed nearby and is engaged in the act of kicking his seat. He shifts restlessly and issues forth a series of irritated sighs, and with each consecutive squeal and shriek coming from the child in the row behind him he gropes for his music player and adjusts the volume. Later, after we have descended and the plane is taxiing along the runway, he seems giddy with the relief of the flight drawing to an end and we strike up a brief conversation. I learn he is flying to Arizona to compete in a national senior’s softball tournament, and I can picture the devastatingly handsome young man he must have been back in his day: he is lean, athletic, his eyes are a startling shade of blue. I start to ask what position he plays and suddenly I can’t think of the right term—what, uh, you know, what do you do? In your games? What guy are you? Uh? He is patient, though. Outfield, he says.
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I ask him if he lives in San Francisco and he says he does, he was traveling to Seattle for business but now he’s on his way home. I ask what sorts of sights he’d recommend seeing in the area and something in his face says he loves answering that sort of question, he dismisses the touristy destinations with a pinched look of disgust and starts speaking to me out of the corner of his mouth, like spies might be listening. As a result I can barely hear him over the noise of the plane and his murmured, secretive instructions are largely lost on me: something about the other side of the bridge, a park? Rent a car? I nod gratefully and he sits back, satisfied, then sits back up in a rush in order to give me one last piece of advice—don’t bother with Fisherman’s Wharf. Sea lions, he says, and rolls his eyes.
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He’s talking on his cell phone and even though I’m sitting a few rows of seats away from him I can hear every word, his voice isn’t as loud as it is carrying, he’s got a specific sort of pitch to his tone that seems designed to physically push the words into nearby ears. He’s craggy and large-eared and wearing a rumpled dress shirt and slacks, he reminds me a bit of the actor who plays Monk. I hear him say, “Why are you saying HELLO? I’m RIGHT HERE,” and I feel sorry for whatever business associate is on the other line. He talks on for a while, then announces that he’s got to go, the flight is boarding soon. “Talk to you later, Mom,” he says, and I can’t help it: I grin at nothing. Surprise.
:::
She sits next to me in a rustle of bags and long hair and I am immediately assaulted by a thick floral perfume which is competing with the garlicky aroma wafting up from a plate of stir-fry she balances on her lap. She squeaks open the top of a tiny bottle of wine, takes a healthy swig, and now there’s a trifecta of scents battling for top position: cheap zinfandel, teriyaki, something she’s spritzed body-wide. Her fingernails are long and fuschia with tiny white flowers carefully painted on the tips, I glance down and see she’s got a matching pedicure. She pulls out a clunky Dell laptop and asks me about finding a network connection, when I’m unable to help she clicks around randomly for a while on her cached AOL home page then closes it again. Eventually she gathers her things and moves off, balanced on teetering heels, her gait as unsteady as a newborn fawn’s.
:::
The empty seats on either side of me are occupied with a sudden influx of noise and shifting body parts: two pre-teen brothers have descended. Their mother stands nearby and nags them gently about not digging into the carryon bag yet and don’t eat those they’re for the flight and listen kids I want you to listen to me. The younger one starts whining about how it sucks that Jason gets the laptop and his mother tells him he can sit next to him and watch a movie on it too and so he whines that yeah but then I have to watch whatever Jason watches and Jason sits on my other side smugly clutching a white iBook and their mother sighs and says, jeez, with you the glass is always half full, isn’t it? And Jason says, you mean half empty, Mom, and she says whatever and the two brothers snicker together.
:::
He’s taking over the armrest and I try not to be resentful about this but why is it always me that concedes the armrest, why? The plane has concluded its business of beetling around the tarmac getting ready for liftoff and now we’re poised at the end of a runway, engines roaring to life. It’s the part of a flight that still makes me nervous and I glance over to the window to make sure nothing is bursting into flames or oscillating wildly and I notice that he’s pulling out some kind of small grey bag and hunching over it. Oh god, I think, he’s going to barf, but instead he starts breathing in rhythmic little puffs into the baglike thing and the plane gathers itself like a cat and starts rolling forward, faster and faster, the air fills with noise and everyone seems to stop talking in order to show respect for the supernatural concept of such an enormous container of metal and humans just magically lifting into the air and next to me he’s puffing away, hiss hiss hiss hiss, and I’m wondering what the hell is going on, is he controlling a panic attack or inhaling medication or what, and like that the ground drops away, I feel the sensation of invisible weight pulling me into the seat, and the man next to me gives one last hiss of air into what I now see is an inflatable pillow. He settles it behind his head, closes his eyes, and we hurtle forward through air and sunshine and clouds, all the way home.
Jul
20
Handy Tip! While sitting on your ass in an airport waiting for your delayed flight to arrive, don’t read this entry, unless you want to get all blinky-eyed and sniffly and at turns uplifted then maudlin and eventually find yourself wondering if the Unexpected Thing in YOUR future includes United Flight 820 plummeting into a mountainside on the way back to Seattle.
(Uh. If that were to happen, these would be my last words, archived forever on this page. Shit. Um, um, um, please tell my boys how very much I love them and how they have made my life more rich and joyous than I ever could have imagined and tell JB how he has been the best husband a girl could hope for even if he did just text message me an offer for a “meat burrito” when I get home and tell those rotten pets I kind of like them even though they are monstrous hairy pains in my ass and, uh, COCK-HOLSTER.)
(What? I want to be remembered for my eloquent phrasing!)
I’m glad to be on my way back home to my little family; even though it was nice to be on my own for a few days I feel something like a rubber band in my chest growing tighter and tighter and pulling me back. I miss holding Dylan, badly. I miss having weird little conversations with Riley and seeing his wide-open, smiling face. I think if BlogHer were to last one more day all the women who brought their babies with them would have take out restraining orders against me because I WANT TO TOUCH YOUR BABY RIGHT NOW NOW NOW NOW NO I DON’T CARE ABOUT GERMS OR PERSONAL SPACE YOU HAND ME THAT FUCKING BABY NOW.
I should, ha ha, clarify that I did not in fact approach any baby-toting BlogHer mamas and spray little hysterical balls of saliva-foam in their faces about how they needed to let me touch their children, just for a minute, just a TOE, give me that baby toe and let me put it in my mouth OM NOM NOM NOM. No, I did not. But it was close, on more than one occasion.
Other things I did not do: wear half the clothes I brought, take pictures of actual people, figure out a hairstyle that could survive San Francisco’s gale-force winds, hand out even 1/8 of the business cards I brought, eat at any of the nine million awesome restaurants I wanted to check out, or get Acts 2 & 3 of Dr. Horrible installed on my iPod in time for my return flight.
I did meet lots of very cool people and everyone was consistently just as awesome as they come across on their blog and even better looking in person, no lie. I didn’t love every session I went to but most were pretty good, it was mainly kind of interesting and fun to hear the conversations that would sprout up from audience questions.
BlogHer attendees tend to travel in packs and occasionally I felt dorky and weird when I was by myself; sometimes I was fairly convinced that everyone else knew everyone else and I was the only one going, who the hell are all these (fabulously coiffed) people? But whenever I forced myself to stop being flattened by self-conciousness I would inevitably strike up a conversation with a nearby friendly face, and I have to say, everyone I talked to — even if it was a five-second discussion in the elevator about the wildly fluctuating hotel temperature (it’s cold! It’s hot! Take off your sweater! Put it back on! Show us your tits!) — was nice as hell.
All in all, a good experience. I’d go next time. You should too, okay? We can travel in a pack.
PS: a few more photos — Yoga! Maniacal grinning! Random city-meandering!
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