First Airplane Ride
September 14, 2009
For context see here. The following is fiction. The first person is female.
Some people get very nervous when they get on airplanes, but most people don't appear to be. A big chunk of metal the size of a block of flats revs up, gains speed and then TAKES OFF. And all the while the majority of the people on the plane are behaving as if this is the most normal thing in the world, chatting, checking their watch, taking out their copy of the inflight magazine. Nearly million pounds of metal and passenger meat goes up into the air, and almost nobody screams "Let me out of here!"
That is how I felt when I started going out with John. He was the first guy I had ever dated. People were telling me that he liked me, that he wanted to take me out on a date, that he was a good kisser, that he would be sure to want to make out, and all that and a lot more like it was all the most normal thing in the world. People make out, start relationships all the time, and get on jumbo jets all the time, millions of them every day. But when I thought about the the possible consequences, ranging from death from AIDS to finding my partner for life, I felt inside that I wanted to scream "Let me out of here!"
Another thing I have heard about riding an airplane is that the flight attendants do a sort of mime where one of them (or perhaps a tape) narrates the procedure to be followed in the event of the accident, while the other mimes it out. I saw a comedian make a joke about it. The fact that they are miming what would, should be a really scary event with a calm smile on theif face is pretty creepy. More so is the way the smiling stewardess who is fastening her seat belt, putting on the oxygen mask, and demonstrating the brace position, is doing it all to words that are not her own.
That was the way I felt the next morning talking to my friends in the diner after my first date. I was like I just said, cruising at a thirty five thousand feet in a block of flats. I felt that the diner was up in the air. But my friends were all asking me things like "where did he take you," and "did he make a move," and "was he a good kisser," and making jokes and smiling and laughing. And I responded in the same kind of way, with a smile, and using words that weren't my own. I felt like a puppet acting out the part of the high school girl on the day after her first date as if it had not been by far the most traumatic experience of my life, smiling and miming and pretending, being forced to pretend, there is no difference between life threating disaster and ballet class.
And then
Flying on a jet airplane sounds so classy. I mean they even had a phrase "jet set" meaning people with rich and classy lives. But, I hear that on jet airplanes the the food is not all that good and the toilets are really cramped sometimes messy. Flying on an airplane is on the face of it really high class, but in the detail there are some dirty, cramped and messy parts. Dating for the first time was like that.
Dating is a guy is meant to be all romantic. I had in mind sunsets, roses, whispers, and going to special places and spending a lot of money too. Or okay I hoped that someone would be spending so money on me. I thought that dating was going to be classy. But as it turned out, it was not all as classy as all that. We did go to a fancy, for me, restaurants or two, but we also went to some other places, which were not so classy.
Love is like flying, you get a feeling like your feet are not touching the ground, like you are floating on air, shaky, and ready to right back down to earth at any moment.
Love is so powerful that it can make everything else seem small, like the view from the window of a jumbo jet, where the fields, the size of football pitches, look like the patches in a quilt.
The worst bit is the landing. Again everyone appears calm but there is a tremendous difference in height and speed, so it is not surprising that it is bumpy, there is a lot of noise, and engines spinning in reverse. Splitting up is like that.
After we split up my friend said to me, "Well, that was one hell of a roller coaster ride wasn't it?" And that is when I said I felt that I had been on a jet airplane. The ups and downs, the thrills and the emotion, were like a roller coaster. But the biggest difference was that, when you get on a roller coaster you get off at the same place. But when after only 3 weeks I stopped dating John, I felt that I had got off somewhere else. I was in the same town, going to the same school but it all looked different. It was different, and I did not have a return ticket.
Trackback address for this post:
http://www.nihonbunka.com/htsrv/trackback.php/112
Comments, Trackbacks, Pingbacks:
No Comments/Trackbacks/Pingbacks for this post yet...
Leave a comment:
