I’m at the gate waiting for my flight to board. They lost the plane but then they found the plane and that’s why the flight was delayed. Whenever the gate agent announces that the flight is delayed 20 minutes I always remember the time my flight was delayed 20 mins and then 20 mins again and again and again until it became 6 hours later. I think airports are a special kind of purgatory- a liminal space where the WiFi network is called “Boingo” and the only things to eat are orbit spearmint gum, harvest cheddar sun chips, and a bagel that was made from Hudson River water.
I’m going to Seattle because I’ve never been there before. The only people I expect to meet in Seattle are neurosurgeons, vampires, and kinky billionaires. Everything on the internet tells me to go to the first starbucks ever, but I have no interest in that because I don’t drink coffee, even if it is from the first coffee shop ever from the guys who invented coffee.
I would like to go back to my childhood Starbucks where I first ordered a tall iced caramel macchiato, drank it in the back of my friends car on the way to sketch comedy group rehearsals, felt grown up in a way I thought would only be possible by having sex, and then arrived at school to have immediate diarrhea. This is also the Starbucks where I met a man from the government who was interviewing me as a character witness to my friend’s pending employment at Northrop Grumman. Or maybe Lockheed Martin? Anyway we had to meet at the Starbucks because my dad said I couldn’t “tell a strange man” where I lived because it was unsafe. I quickly reminded him that his man probably works for the FBI and knows not only where I live, but also my blood type and my deepest fears. I met the man in the Starbucks and he asked if I thought my friend harbored “anti American sentiments” and I said no. Which I think is true. Then he asked me if she ever smoked weed and I said no. Which, anyway.
There’s a cute guy sitting behind me at the gate. He’s alone and seems around my age so I have to do my usual pre flight ritual of assessing who would play what role in our new island society if our flight crashes into a Lost situation. He’d play the role of my husband I guess.
It’s 7pm now, and we’re supposed to board soon. I’m going to be in Seattle for 5 days to see if it changes anything about me fundamentally, or maybe I’ll eat some salmon and move on with my life. Either way, I’ll have left my house, which is huge.
I laugh out loud each paragraph