sardines

i don't get to fly much, at least not in the last 20 years. i liked airplanes as a kid. the undulating porpoise backs of those 4-prop TWA's obsessed my little boy brain. the Ipana stewardesses patting my head, fluffing pillows, pouring coke over ice cubes gave me the shivers. the scale of the plane when you bounded up silver stairs from the tarmac seemed like story-book magic. in the 1950's, flying from San Francisco to Connecticut with my sisters and my mom i realized something was wrong: 'hey! ma! there's smoke coming out of the engine! there's flames!' we swooped down into O'hare like a wounded gull. i wasn't afraid, after all i'd saved us by spotting the smoke. now all that's changed, all that little boy turn-on. i loathe planes. they pack you in like sheep to the slaughter, the seats can barely fit our bloated butts. the neck cramps, insidious farting and used up air is enough to make you want to murder someone. meanwhile, there's no free anything to drink or eat. ok. i admit that i like the take offs and landings. i like watching streets, cars and houses recede into monopoly pieces. i like the new stewardesses and (gay) stewards who aren't Hollywood hot anymore and have saggy old-bra breasts, age lines, thinning hair and bad makeup. but that all goes awry when i imagine crashing into shark water, or sky scrapers, when i'd be forced to make friends with the idiots on board just to survive. i wonder if i have what it takes, or if they do. or will it be war. all this amuses me quietly. i feel my brain-dead bimbo Mona Lisa smile smiling above it all, smiling at myself smiling at them. ah, the guru witness, what a joke! soon enough it all unravels and it's torture time. the tin can trap becomes a nightmare. i try not to touch the fatty on my left or work up a conversation with the good looking kid who by chance takes the seat next to mine, baseball hat backwards, ear buds fending off inquiry. i try to sleep. i read until my eyes ache. i hold off a piss. after a century of fetal cramps and window squinting the squawk box announces descent. down, down, down as cotton wisps slither across the wings and tiny house dots enlarge. the sun sparkles off man-made lakes. the shadow jet hurtles across the relief map below like a jack rabbit. the flaps rise, the wheels lower and we're down, landed, safe, nudging up through the uncircumcised cock tube as we hurry through, like sperm to the airport egg. that's when it happens. that's when all hell breaks loose as we wait for the sheep to yank out their bags from the over head and get the fuck off the fucking plane. when i stand up, the curved ceiling crooks my neck like a hanged man. it's then that i hear it, the scream, the silent Edvard Munch scream that sucks up the stale space in the cabin like a cyclone. we all hear it, seething silently. the level of impatience is at code red. sweaty necks, clenched jaws and beady eyes turn us into cattle just prior to execution. that's when we're all alike. that's when we cumulatively despise the out-to-sea asshole who can't locate his carry-on, staring up at the stow-away like a stoner, oblivious to the rage of the angry rats behind him who would strangle him given half a chance. now i understand how frightening the group impulse of a crowd in panic can be. i understand why innocents get trampled to death. i would be first among them, even as i smile my stewardess smile of phony acceptance.