#airplane problems

Me: 21A.

Jade: I’m sure someone will switch us..

Pushing aside all the obvious technical complications — a large rump spread about on a woefully tiny seat, a rectum that feels like it has something to prove, an environment that rocks with so much turbulence you're convinced that your flyover is testing out its flak cannons — the most uncomfortable moments occur when the lavatory is occupied.

I stand in the aisle, a six-foot-five man in a five-foot-nine world, hunching over and pretending that I'm not watching a girl play Pokemon on her DS. I totally am. Her Blaziken is named Dad, and I spend a little while spinning tragic narratives as to why.

I have to pretend I'm doing something else. I check my watch eight times, because it's professional, because it's OK. Because, if my body language were to suggest in any way that I'm watching this girl play Pokemon, I'm either immature or a pedophile, probably both, whatever. If I were a woman in this same position, I could safely level with her as I want to. I want to ask her about her team, about her gym badges. I want to make this kid, any kid, smile. Any of these actions, though, would have me cast off the ivory tower of societally-defined manhood and get me hung by my thumbs.

————

A few moments pass, and a middle-aged woman exits the restroom. She looks worried, almost scared. I take a few steps back and lean on a vacant seat. I toss out a perfunctory, “Sorry, excuse me!” and offer a polite smile, making as much space for her as is physically possible. She stares at the ground and walks by, glancing her terrified eyes at me for an impossibly short, acidic second before continuing down the aisle. My face drains with color, and I scurry into the lavatory, locking it behind me and preparing to count all my sins on the can.

————

On the flight, I finished Imogen Binnie's Nevada.

Books that butcher the patriarchy are necessary. I love them, love reading them, and love internally cheering Yeah, dude, say it like it is! Bring this whole misogynistic fucking thing down on its stupid fucking face!

Reading them, though, instills me with some deep sense of guilt. I feel bad for being a cis male. I feel bad for being tall and broad-shouldered. I feel bad for being born into the life I was born into. In short, I feel like I am the problem. The logical, quiet part of my brain knows I’m not. It knows I’ve never raped anyone, hurt anyone, and it knows that I’m doing pretty well on the sliding scale of social awareness. The louder part of my brain is an auditorium: a massive, emotional stew of an audience. It jeers, it cries, it laughs. In the back, some psychoanalyst takes judicious notes, pondering what my guilt by association really means. What sort of innermost male desire it obviously represents. In the front row, a gathering crowd starts to raise pitchforks, encouraging my guilt, and preparing for me a litany that would gather all of my male sins.

In my mind, I am the sole enemy of societal progress. Yeah dude, bring me down. Bring me down on my stupid fucking face.

————

She probably wasn’t scared of me. I probably wasn’t her reason for being royally uncomfortable. More likely than not, she’s just shit on an airplane and that fucking sucks. And, I mean, hey, I’m about to shit on an airplane, but that’s not exactly a point I can leverage for some redemption in her eyes. My logic centers continue to pump out data, unaware and likely uncaring of the realistically uneventful interaction that has come and gone. Suddenly, the doors to Brain HQ shudder and crack, wood splinters flying into the room — the mob has just found a battering ram.

Now, I know that my brain isn’t a bad Psychonauts level, but in that moment it certainly felt like one. This tiny, inconsequential interaction has validated every single concern building in my head. What if I’m the reason she’s uncomfortable? What if it’s me, this big and unwieldy male, that’s making her feel unsafe? Oh fuck, what if I’m making everyone around me uncomfortable? Fuck, fuck fuck I must be. I wish I could become smaller. Ant-Man’s coming out soon, I need one of those suits. But then what if people think I’m creeping on them by being so small. Fuck, there’s no right answer here, is there?

I suffer my way through an uncomfortable self-pitying plane poop and return to my seat with a look of determination — hellbent of subjecting my internal mechanisms to some sort of undeserved societal self-flagellation which will clearly solve the matter at hand.

Then I made a flight attendant laugh and she and I had a conversation about food and stuff and I calmed down and smiled, whatever.

————

Maybe she’s writing a blog post somewhere about how she made some random kid uncomfortable after she shit on an airplane.

Maybe we made each other uncomfortable in that moment.

Maybe airplane bathrooms have a strange way of bringing out this societal-existential distress.

There will be cute guys on the airplane. and I will end up sitting nowhere near them.