This is Just Like Me
Why? Because I live at home with my father, and we watch TV together every night, even in the airless, re-run weeks of summer. Every night, Dad stumbles off the couch just before the local news, bitching about how every single show on the air is crap. And I want to smack him. But I just lie down on the couch, sprawling to fill the warm cushion he left behind, and keep watching until I pass out. Did I mention that I’m 31? That helps to know. Some other helpful background items:
The most immediate reason for Costa Rica was that my cyclical desperation peaked on the same day as Travelocity’s Latin America fare sale. The most important reason however, the reason I was going to go somewhere, eventually, was this: I’m not really the fuck-up I appear to be. If I just knew who or what I was supposed to be, I would be that, in a second. Yes, I know it’s the ultimate fuck-up thing to say, but I just needed to take some time away from this mess of a life and find myself. I wanted to tell him this. But I was afraid it would hurt his feelings. How do you say that you’re about to fly 2,000 miles away to find yourself when the person you’re saying it to is yourself? So instead, I said something dickish about taking a well-earned vacation. That’s right, I found myself: In the Hudson News between Gates 105 and 107A in Terminal C of Newark Liberty International Airport, as I waited for my flight to Costa Rica. I’d thought finding myself meant…well, alright; I had no clue what it meant. I didn’t think anyone else did either. That’s why I liked the idea so much. Apparently it’s meant to be taken literally, because there he was, leaning against the plastic wood panel wall at the end of a shelf of Dean Koontz paperbacks. (Notice I am using third-person: to avoid giving you a headache, and also because I’m no longer convinced that “he” represents the absolute last word on me. In fact, now I lean towards the possibility that there are many “me”s and “you”s out there, all different and all equally valid.) I wasn’t literally looking for him. It started because I got to the airport way too early. I had been waiting at my gate, 108B, for hours, watching through the wall-windows as the rippling hot jet exhaust cooled into the purple night. And I was falling asleep. Boarding was going to start in 20 minutes, at which point I intended to beeline it to 15F: window seat, right over the wing, and a personal feast. In the two-minute span between when the pilot gunned the engines and New Jersey was swept under the cloud cover, I was going to watch all the luxury condos, sake bars and smug yoga gyms beneath me get smaller and smaller, until they were identically dim and insignificant little Lego blocks. I had to be fully awake for it. I pulled myself up and made for the convenience store across the way for a Red Bull. The old Indian woman behind the front register gave me a look. Whatever. My mind was already charging down the runway. I didn’t even see he was there until I clipped him with my shoulder. I murmured an apology to the side of his head. And just as I was walking on, out of the corner of my eye, I caught him looking at me. He was frightened that I would say something more—which would force him to reply. He hastily dunked his gaze back in his copy of Us Weekly. I wanted to laugh: Partially because it was so absurd, partially because I would have done the exact same thing. I stopped and apologized again, just to stick it to him. He dragged his head up to take his punishment and—drum roll, please—the loser was me. The first thing you notice in this situation is that mirrors are poor exercises. You see yourself over the sink every morning, but always from the same perspective, and day after day you zoom in on the same dingy-walled alleys between your teeth, on the nose hairs you can never get. This is the only way to do it, so you know that is what you look like. I have no redeeming point here: like somehow, that if you could see your back hair the way strangers see it—like, really see it man—your mind would be blown and you’d have to rearrange the pieces in some stunningly new way. No. What I mean is that that moment is as dull as it is heavy. You have to stand up straight to see whether you’re taller or he is. Is his hair darker, or is it the light? You’re not necessarily identical either. He was definitely fatter: 10 to 15 pounds, easy, padded around his smooth biceps and drooping under his chin. You try to fit the pieces together: figure out what features are right, what’s clearly wrong—like the crown of sickly sweat beads surfacing on the crest of his forehead—and what doesn’t make any sense. What you’re really hoping is that they’ll recognize you first. “Oh. Hey,” he said as he recognized me. The muscles that had been crouched deep under his face relaxed now. He pulled a polite smile. “Hey,” I said. “Yeah,” he replied. We nodded together. He went back to reading. I stood. This made him uncomfortable. He sighed and made small talk, glancing up to ask a question when he turned a page. I could tell the question about why I was taking the trip was going to be the last slow pitch to me. We were saved by a voice that sounded like Ricky Ricardo’s. It came from gate 108B and sliced across the gentle patter of rolling suitcase wheels and unfocused cell phone conversations idling in the terminal concourse to inform us that Continental flight 244, service to San Jose, Costa Rica, was now boarding. “What do we do now?” I asked. “What?” "What's the protocol? We meet. I'm all surprised. You go through your whole Mr. Miyagi routine," he started paying attention at The Karate Kid reference. "Okay. I get that. Now what?" “I thought you were going to Puerto Rico.” “Costa Rica. Yeah, I guess…” Well there wasn’t any point to going now, was there? I could probably still turn my ticket in for a voucher and later, he and I could use it for whatever deeply meaningful thing it was we’d be doing, now that we were together. I looked at him for a clue as to what that thing might be. His fingers were skulking at the corners of his nose, twitching for the moment that it took for his concentration to lapse, so they could break over the nostril rim and pick away. Maybe he was some kind of savant rock star. Maybe, when I had thought about taking guitar lessons, he had actually taken them. Given everything I hadn’t done, there were millions of choice permutations that could have led him to profound fulfillment. Why should I try to guess which it was? I’d know soon enough and whatever the answer was, it would instantly make sense of my life. Redemption was imminent. Next to that, my plans to twiddle my thumbs in Central America for two weeks should have paled into non-existence. They did not. Instead, the previously unconsidered possibilities of Costa Rica exploded across my frontal lobe in twinkling plumes of jungle green and yellow that fizzled down into anxious little white pops. The names I’d glanced at in the Lonely Planet guide the night before now sounded in my ears, as if Salma Hayek was reading them to a bedridden lover: Irazú. Tortuguero. Playa Coco. Palmar Sur. And an astounding itinerary inspired itself into being. I could see it: I was going to sea-kayak to Panama. Long-limbed little people in loincloths were going to teach me to hunt wild tapirs with a blowgun. I was going to learn Spanish. I was going to read Don Quixote in the original, while I rode a peasant bus to a distant beach I was in no rush to get to. I get like this sometimes. When I do, I always stop one scene before the reverie reaches climax. I stop before I get off the peasant bus and meet an old farmer who shows me his coffee plantation, whispers a lifetime of coffee growing secrets, then dies and leaves the place to me. I stop before I get started on other possibilities, like that I would get to the distant beach and go surfing, and it would turn out I was phenomenal. People would flock from around the world to take lessons from me. I’d found a commune there. They would name the beach after me. These details were absurd, but they weren’t important. When I came back from my frantic little excursion into the near future, the gate agent was calling for all coach passengers in rows six through 16. Myself was squinting at the page and half-consciously tapping it with his thumb. “Yeah, I am going to Costa Rica,” I told him. He didn’t hear me. The classy thing to do would have been to ask him what his plans were. But I was over him. This had happened in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was going his way. I was going mine. If it was meant to be, we’d cross paths when we were both in the same place (figuratively, I mean.) At the very least, if it was meant to be, he’d be able to pay attention to me for one goddamn second. I did pat him on the shoulder though, and as I passed him on my way back to the gate, wished him good luck wherever he was headed. “Wait,” he said. “Today’s Thursday, right?” It was. “Good,” he nodded. I was two or three steps behind him now and could see, over his shoulder, the page he’d been tapping. “Lindsay Lezbo?” the headline tittered. The rest of the page was dominated by a grainy photo of Linsday Lohan, her arms wrapped too easily around a blonde woman I didn’t recognize. Well well. I leaned in a bit, and I heard him murmur to himself: “CSI tonight.” “What?” “Oh. The new season of CSI starts tonight. Warrick got shot in the last season finale and—” “I know about Warrick.” I did not know why anyone would plan to watch CSI. For years the series has been flailing for marginally more interesting ways to commit murder, and while it flailed, taping desperate episodes about neo-Nazi sex club organ harvesting rings. The cast has been leaving one by one, and now, starving for new material, the producers have given in to their greedy cannibalistic instincts and are killing off the few decent characters that remain. The only legitimate reason to watch CSI these days is because you are too tired to channel surf until Cold Case. Besides, if he was about to get on a plane (and why else would he be loitering here?) how was he going to see it?
“What are you doing?” I asked. He cocked his head. “I mean, what are you doing here, in this airport?” “I work here,” he said. “You’re a pilot?” He shook his head. “I work here,” he repeated. He turned and shouted “Neela!” The shrunken Indian woman at the register smiled and raised her arm to wave. She saw us, standing one next to the other. Her arm toppled. “Neela’s a great boss,” he nodded. It sounded like he was bragging. He explained: The job was just cutting open cartons of Sudoku books in back, and mopping. He could be making a buck more an hour doing the same thing at the Barnes & Noble in Hackensack. But the airport was better. The customers were different. The retired couples who walked cautiously, the kids who wore their heroically overpacked backpacks like clever tattoos, even the bedraggled business types who came in, dragging their sore eyeballs, parched skin and impeccably black rolling suitcases: They all knew where they were going and knew that if they could just kill a few more minutes, they’d be as good as there. This simple fact contained all the glamour he had ever needed. He came in at seven a.m. and slowly, steadily throttled up all day. Just being around these people as they came briskly in and out, impulse buying and forgetting to take their one-item receipts, he felt like he was about to get on his own flight, to some distant place that was expecting him. By three o’clock, he felt like he was about to take off. And the best part was: When everyone whose simplified sense of destiny he’d sponged off that day was miles up in the cramped tropospheric blankness, staring out the window, trying not to acknowledge the fact that wherever they were going was going to be just as pointless as where they had just left; wishing that they did not wish they were just home already—at that point, he was home already, and psyching himself up for the next day. It was honestly the most bizarre and pathetic thing I’d ever heard. The thought crossed my mind that he might have a learning disability or mild Down Syndrome, yet that didn’t make me any more sympathetic. He worked at the Hudson News in the airport. That wasn’t anything I would ever do. Explaining this Zen secret of his had overstimulated him. He was bent forward slightly, wheezing and grinning, when Ricky Ricardo announced the final boarding call for flight 244. When I told him I wanted to stay here, that I needed to stay, just to see what he was talking about, he bought it. I gave him my boarding pass, my cash, luggage, credit cards, reservations, everything. I told him I’d fill in for him here, just for a couple weeks. If he didn’t end up founding a surf commune with some Salma Hayek look alike, I joked, he’d come back in two weeks and we’d switcheroo back to our lives. He thanked me once and as he slid my wallet in his back pocket, said that he thought life was all about just saying yes to whatever the Universe offered you. I balled my fists. Myself was the last person on line to board. He strolled down the jetway without looking back. I killed a half hour pacing the terminal, to make sure his plane didn’t return to the gate. Then I went back to the store. Neela was re-arranging travel mugs and scratching the back of her neck vigorously. I told her I quit. I whipped my balls out and shook them at her accusingly, just for good measure. It wasn’t until later that night that I had any feeling I could name. I was at home, down in my room, on the cordless phone, on hold, waiting to cancel my last credit card—when I heard the TV dad was watching upstairs. It must have been on for hours, but I only heard it just then. It was playing the theme song for Cold Case and I wanted to go and watch.
Louis Wittig is a writer and editor in New York. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Concho River Review, The Subway Chronicles and Alligator Juniper. His short stories have appeared online at Storyglossia.com and DarkSkyMagazine.com. © 2008 prickofthespindle.com |
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