Flight, by Jenny Bahn

I’m taking half pills of Dominican Xanax to sleep through the next seven uncomfortable hours of my life, crammed in between a plastic wall and a sea of strangers. My brain grinds to a halt while Daphne Whatever-her-name-is stares at me from the cover of Love magazine — sixteen and bleached blonde and with one lazy eye. The engines rev and the passengers take their seats and I leave my most meaningless trip to Paris behind me.

I had left the apartment that morning in a white taxicab. My driver, a big man with a large belly and a deep tan, played country music while we drove through a misty urban morning.

I think about you

When I don’t want to

Dream about your smiling face

I keep trying not to love you

But I love you anyway

French cars passed and French people passed and some honky-tonk named Don Williams sang in English about love and despair — the most irritating and trite of human conditions, and also the most relatable.

We should be together, together

Keeping each other satisfied

The buildings became nondescript and institutional — projects painted in unconvincingly appeased pastels. I am always in these cabs alone, feeling different from when I arrived. Always tired, emptied in some way, insides scooped out and in need of replenishment.

No, this trip didn’t mean much at all.

The plane ascends but I have not yet dozed off. The drugs leave me awake and hazy. I swallow more bits of blue and wait for them to kick in harder. Ten minutes after we have reached our cruising altitude, someone with a beautiful accent asks me if I want chicken and rice or spinach lasagna. Too often, my silent, inner response to these 50-50 questions is “Barf. Neither.”

“I’ll have the chicken and rice,” I say. And I smile because being a flight attendant must be the worst fucking job in the world.

One of the five Pirates of the Caribbeans is on. I don’t watch because Johnny Depp looks like he fell into the discount accessory rack at Claire’s and now he’s just brimming with wide-eyed stares and programmed twitches while coasting through scenes I remember from the first movie eight years ago.

Eight years.

I wish this plane would fly by as quickly as the years.

I close my eyes and dream that I am holding a hand, gruff like my father’s at first and then narrowing. It reaches for my hand from the inside of a black coat sleeve. The hand holds my hand, but I don’t know the face attached to it.  It’s something new. Someone new.

I thought I would see someone in Paris. Someone old. I didn’t. An invitation for drinks went unanswered, as it should have. Now, here in the discomfort of my uncomfortable chair, I am thankful. It’s disconcerting when you realize the person you wanted to give up everything for wasn’t worth anything at all. In the end, had things worked out, it would have been wrong. He would have been wrong and I would have been kidding myself and a lot of time would have been lost, very quickly.

When I wake up, some other movie is on. “What do you think? That I saw you on that train and my heart stopped?” Angelina Jolie walks away with her lie and her neck covered in diamonds, her hair like an outdated Victorian and her lips so big and full.

I remember that feeling.

The movie is bad and I listen to my music instead — short songs about puppy love, songs that make the 1950s feel like all anyone ever did was kiss politely on brocade sofas while holding hands.

I look up at the monitor that documents our progress across the world, its camel-hump sine wave designating Earth’s darkness and light, the sun glowing stupidly with its pointy flares, our plane attached to a point in France by a crooked yellow line. My life drags through time at 550 mph.

For more from Jenny, click some of the fun buttons below…

Past work on FlipCollective.com.
To follow her on Twitter.
To send her an email.