:: No man is an aisle ::

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

I booked a flight to LA today, for "the holidays". Whenever I know I'm going to fly home anytime soon, I always start harboring far-fetched fantasies about befriending the people next to me.

I know I'm not alone in this respect. When you spend several hours sitting next to someone, especially en route to a mutual destination, your mind inevitably wanders to the details of the strangers' life. It's not unlike being held hostage together, bound and gagged, in a little cave without anything else to focus on - except with peanuts and orange juice. Decorum dictates that one should not say anything unless absolutely necessary, but that doesn't keep me from fantasizing about some iconoclastic row-mate throwing the rules out the (pressurized) window and reaching for a little human contact. Especially with these trips home: they're five and a half hours long. That's just enough time for something to develop.

There's really no limitations on these scenarios - it doesn't have to be some supermodel or famous Nobel laureate, just someone engaging in a little mutual information flow between iterant souls at forty thousand feet above sea level. Perhaps it's some oil-baron billionare willing to invest in one of my hairbrained schemes ("Sir, I know you're a busy man, but get this: people throw around the metaphor 'building a bridge to our future' all the time, but I've got the technology to make it literally work!"), a cute college co-ed who thinks she's the next messiah and forces me to prove my devotion to her by eating coral until I can't distinguish the porous fragments in my mouth from the shards of tooth enamel they've chipped off, or even just a washed-up ex-con with a score to settle.

It's totally unreasonable. I'm apt to be a wretched conversationalist, even with people I know well, and keeping my mouth shut doesn't make me look any prettier.

But maybe those boundaries aren't meant to be traversed, like with familiar strangers. Unlike familiar strangers though, who repeatedly share public space with us, we only see these travel companions once, but for such a duration and in such close quarters that we achieve a comparable level of exposure ("single-instance extended time-frame proximal strangers"?). We witness a great deal of their mannerisms, behavior, and, provided they read anything or listen to some music, even their interests. Maybe it would be a transgression against social governing dynamics by attempting anything more intimate, like interlocution.

In any case, I'm making sure to bring plenty of coral.

Posted by morland @ 06:59 PM

:: Comments ::

Good luck with that. On my last flight back from LA, I sat next to a woman who assumed that my residence must be in Chinatown. God forbid I live in Lincoln Park where English is spoken. Behind me sat a screaming child who repeatedly kicked my seat. To my front was another kid who kept popping up and scaring the shit out of me. In short, you've got about as good of a chance as scoring a hot chick next to you (who will then actually want to talk to you and then of course give you head in the bathroom) as I have of graduating any college in four years.

Posted by: karen on December 12, 2003 02:26 AM

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