Going Toulouse
My seatmate is an elegent gentleman fast approaching centennial status. He is already asleep in the aisle seat when I find my row after boarding the plane to Tornonto en route to Toulouse, France. I lean in, gently touch his shoulder and say, Hello, Bonjour Monsieur, I’m in that middle seat next to you, may I pass? But there’s no sign of life. No rise and fall of the chest. One liver-spotted hand grips a walking stick, the other a passport. His claw-like grip could indicate vigor, but it could equally be rigor mortis already setting in. People are stacking up behind me and I try again, nudging more assertively this time. Nothing. It’s like trying to wake the Sphinx. I hate to bother him but throats are clearing impatiently, so I place a firm hand on his bony shoulder and squeeze. Eventually his eyes crack open, ever so glacially, to reveal cloudy irises.
He smiles, wanly, and rises, stiffly, using his stick and the armrest to lever himself out of the chair. I offer some ingratiating thanks and apologies in both English and French, squeeze past, and settle myself into the middle seat. I’m already dreading the moment my itty-bitty bladder forces us to repeat this painful performance en route. I sneak furtive glances to his lap- like a mathematician, though, not like a perv. Basically I’m measuring the depth and width of his lap against the flexibility of my hamstrings and length of my inseam, to estimate the possible clearance needed to pass again without disturbing his peace, should he fall back to sleep and… oh, yup, he’s out again already. He sleeps solidly during takeoff until a bout of coughing wakes him. It seems to rattle forth from the base of his spine. On the one hand, I feel really badly for the guy. He sounds incredibly unwell. On the other hand, his hacking cough turns one’s mind to Covid, and makes one wish the dear heart was wearing a mask. I just got over Covid recently, and my immune system feels extra stacked right now. So it’s not me I’m worried about, it’s all the folks around us who have understandably succumbed to mask fatigue and are blithely unmasked in this airplane cum petri dish.
But I’m worried for him most of all. He’s still hacking like he’s trying to exorcise a demon. I offer him my unopened bottle of water but he declines. He continues to scour his lungs until the offending mucus finally dislodges and something wet emerges into the tissue he holds against his mouth. I squeeze my mask a little tighter against the bridge of my nose. As a flight attendant passes, he lifts his hand and asks for more tissues, but his voice is too weak to be heard over the ambient hum of jet engines. So I intervene and communicate with the woman and he nods gratefully. He falls back asleep before the tissues even arrive, exhausted from his stand-off with the demon loogie.
A slight tangent about our flight attendant, who hands me the tissues for safe-keeping. I have to say, she is a bit of a vision. She looks like a film noir star: dark hair in a twist, shiny fringe across porcelain skin, rosebud mouth. She looks as French as a croissant, but she’s not flaky like one, oh no. She is sweet and attentive: the kind of woman who makes you feel like you’re her whole world in the 3 seconds it takes to hand you your apple juice. She is absolutely enchanting. If I’m this charmed by her, I can only imagine what it does to the old fella’ during snack time when he awakens and she leans in close, her shapely bosom brushing his shoulder. She murmurs “I know you can open this package of nuts yourself, but I am going to do it for you this time, ok?” It’s a perfectly nice way of helping an elder without infantilizing him, but it sounds 100% sexual in her melodic French accent. I’m just sayin’, some cliches exist for a reason and she is absolutely nailing it as someone’s sexy French stewardess fantasy.
Anyway, when the drinks cart putters by moments later, he asks if I will order him an orange juice and a black coffee. He drinks these in close succession and now I worry that I’ll have to accompany him to the bathroom. But he just sinks back and closes his eyes again. Since I’m clearly in the mood to fret, I start to worry about his diet. Surely orange juice and black coffee are too acidic for his system and will give him ulcers. I should have ordered an herbal tea with honey for that cough. Is anyone looking after this poor man’s nutrition? There’s a smell my sensitive shnoz is picking up even through my mask that hints at illness and putrefaction, maybe issuing from an imbalanced gut biome? It’s hard to tease out since the whole plane is permeated by an overpowering combination of stale coffee, stale farts, and the BO of 300 travel-weary passengers. It’s how long-haul flights smell; my nose knows the smell well. But maybe I’m smelling something even more subtle- the unconscious fear chemicals produced by all these humans hurtling through space across a vast distance. I mean, it’s not exactly natural, is it? The drinkies and snackies have a nice tranquilizing effect, but body chemistry doesn’t lie. God, maybe the fear of death is a smell that not even duty free designer cologne can cover. I think about this for a while, trying to distract myself from a more imminent problem brewing, the mounting pressure in my bladder.
When nature’s call becomes too loud to ignore, my neighbor is still conked out. Bolstered by the lap calculations I’d made earlier, I stand and extend one leg acrobatically across his lap and into the aisle. En route, as I’m straddling him, I pray to God or Hermes or whoever that the man doesn’t wake up in the midst of his awkward geriatric lapdance. Carefully shifting my weight, I bring the other leg up and over his crotch region- nimbly and without incident. Success! Either my calculations were sound or Hermes loaned me his ankle wings. I notice the man across the aisle watching me rather intently, but his expression is unreadable. Is he appalled? Impressed? Hard to say. Anyway, I’m liberated now, and even though it’s just a humble airplane toilet, it proves to be a fantastic pee, totally worth the risk. I repeat the acrobatics getting back into my seat, without incident, and then again a couple hours later when the young woman sitting in the window seat follows my example. I feel like an early Gold Rush miner, proudly showing a pioneer newly arrived in California how to pan for gold. It’s not a great simile, other than the possibility of golden showers- which gladly never come to pass.
Even as I chuckle to myself about golden showers, I’m feeling sad for this man. I wonder why he’s traveling alone at his advanced age, when he is clearly not well or able-bodied. Thrown together by fate in row 25, I feel protective of him. It’s hard enough to bear international travel when you’re hale and hearty, but he is quite frankly dripping with decrepitness. How can we put such a venerable, vulnerable person on a plane with just his walking stick? He should have an assistant, a caregiver. But maybe he doesn’t have the money or family support for that. Maybe- and this thought depresses me deeply- maybe he’s traveling back from the funeral of his last remaining friend in the world. Maybe his friend died of Covid and now he is going to die of Covid too, alone in some bleak Toronto pensioners housing. Oh my god, brain, why so dark? I close my eyes and try to focus on the positive, feeling awash in gratitude for being currently able-bodied with a good support system. Old age and its inherent bodily decline come for us all, if we make it that far. But add to that the sheer loneliness which is an epidemic for older adults. Is he lonely? Should I wake him up for a nice little chat? He’d probably rather sleep than be harangued by some middle-aged do-gooder. Instead I close my eyes and try to sense my being and his sitting comfortably side by side. I try to keep him company energetically speaking, which is, I find, less intrusive if also less effective. I feel into my own future as a 50, 60, 70, 80, maybe even 90 year old. I hope I can be resigned to my suffering when and if I get to be his age. Possibly he’s reached a level of acceptance we young upstarts can’t fathom as we valiantly resist being swept into the current of time with our lotions and potions, our liniments and supplements, our Pickleball and Pelatons.
Most days I have a kind of low-level awareness of my body aging. Age spots smatter my hands and forearms like the first sprinkle of stars in the evening sky; face and bosom have begun their descent towards the tarmac. All perfectly natural, but the way culture glorifies youth and beauty, well frankly, it makes a girl think she ought to put her tray table up and return her seat to its upright position. But let’s face it, my aches and pains are relatively minimal. At this point it’s just general inflammation, plantar fasciitis, throwing my back out for no apparent reason while vacuuming… that sort of thing. Apparently I can still scale strangers’ laps, so I reckon I’m doing ok for now.
Eyes still closed, I start to expand my awareness to the young woman sitting to my left. For most of the flight she’s been tapping away at a spreadsheet on her laptop as she watches movie after movie. She’s in her 20s, fit and fashionable, radiating youth and beauty and vitality. Not all illness is visible, but she seems like the picture of health. Still, I am struck by the 3 of us in a row. Each inhabiting different stages of life, but each hurtling through space and time at 500 mph, headed toward our ultimate destination with no way out. Fucking hell. Now I start obsessing not just about my seat-mates but about the ultimate demise of everyone on this plane and- what the hell, why not- every human ever, past, present and future. Death is a quite terrifying prospect when you let yourself feel into it- to really imagine what it will be like in the throes of dying as you irrevocably shed the body you’ve grown so very attached to over the course of however many years you’re granted. Well, on the bright side, at least for the time being the seatbelt sign is off and we’re free to move about the cabin.
As we begin our descent into Toronto, something else begins to loom in my awareness. Because our plane was a half hour late taking off, I may not have enough time to make my connecting flights. The second the seatbelt sign turns off after landing, I spring from my seat, nerves jangling. I leap across my still slumbering neighbor’s lap- so accustomed to it now that I’m like a deer over a garden fence- and quickly retrieve my overhead bag. What I forget is that I then have to stand there contritely and wait with everyone else for the doors to open and for the ensuing traffic jam. I have too much adrenaline coursing through my veins to care too much what people think of me, but I do have the wherewithal to realize that I’m “that person.” You know, the impatient asshole. The watchful man across the aisle stares at me unnervingly and says, “got a connecting flight, huh?”
“Yup, boarding any minute. Hence the, uh… haste. Heh heh.”
He nods, his expression still maddeningly neutral. “You’ll make it,” he says. “Just relax. You’ll make it there.” I take comfort in these words. He’s right, of course. Wherever “there” is, we’ll all make it, eventually. Whether it be connecting flights from Toronto to Dublin to Toulouse, or the connecting flight between birth and death, we may as well relax on the journey. But even with this pearl gleaming bright in my mind, even as I admit that in the game of life we’re all ultimately going ‘To Lose’, there’s no way I’m not gonna at least try to make it to ‘Toulouse’ on time. I will both relax, and run like the wind once I’m birthed out the gangway into the terminal.
For now I have to content myself with breathing deeply and slowing my heartrate as I inch along with the masses. As we begin the slow surge forward, I hear a voice behind me croak, “Good luck to you on your journey.” I turn around and it’s him, finally having woken. He’s speaking to me and I take it as a benediction. Although I am tempted to stay and help him, I decide to pass the torch to someone without a connecting flight. I reply, “Thank you and likewise, Sir. All the best to you on the rest of your journey.”