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I was 30,000 feet in the air, and the sky always looked the same, as if the plane hadn’t been moving. I was surrounded by the beasts. Half man, half child, ninth graders at oldest. San Francisco schoolchildren on a class trip. There were 50 of them, drooling and shouting at the top of their lungs like wild beasts. The savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round me. Imagine my growing regrets, my longing to escape, my powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate. One comes to hate savages, hate them to the death.The vile little bastards jabbered on endlessly, speaking of Lana Del Rey and Gossip Girl characters and futile high school athletic competitions, torturing me merely for attempting to listen. It was maddening talk, gibberish. Real sentences, but with incoherent words. Bobby was stoked on Sara and sometimes Mara but hella HELLA stoked on Beth, who lived in B-town and was “rolling that push-up bra.” Their words had with them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, and phrases spoken in nightmares. And for a moment it seemed to me as if I also was buried in a grave full of unspeakable secrets.Jet Blue was normally an adequate courier, offering us food and water as if we were actual people, and free satellite TV so none of us would talk to each other. Yet the TVs were broken that flight, and every moment without them seemed to lead me further into the heart of an immense darkness. The horror! THE HORROR! I don’t abide conversation. I prefer to ride airplanes with my eyes closed, pretending Benjamin Franklin is sitting next to me and I’m introducing him to the majesty of flight. He would gift me a glass harmonica that he himself had invented, and I would gift him a semi-nude photo of Katy Perry to show him how far society had improved since his time. “She walks around like that all day, every day,” I’d say to him, his eyes lighting up with jealousy. The rest of our conversation would go something like this:
Ben Franklin: What’s happening? The vessel is shaking!
Paul: That’s the plane’s engines starting up. Soon we’ll travel at a great speed and lift into the air!
Ben Franklin: Like kings of the sky! This is magical!
Paul: I invented flight, you know.
Ben Franklin: You magnificent bastard!
Paul: I’m one of those two things, yes.
Ben Franklin: We’re doing it! We’re flying! You’re a genius, Paul Ryan!
Paul: Thank you, Ben Franklin! I AM a genius!
Ben Franklin: When I get back to whatever time period I’m from, I’m going to tell everyone how splendid you are! We will declare a holiday in your name, when the bars and brothels shall be free for you and your kin!
Paul: *fist pump, freeze frame, cool Paul Ryan theme music plays*
Alas, this vivid fantasy was constantly interrupted by shouting, unintentional elbow jabs, and occasional requests for chewing gum, the currency of the prison from which these savages came. “Leave me alone!” I thundered back at the small child next to me. “I’m unemployed and a miserable failure at life! Leave me to my Skydreams, where Ben Franklin and I are the bestest of friends!”A few moments later, I was interrupted again as the child beside me asked who Ben Franklin was. The word “hella” rang in the air, was whispered again and again, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all. By jove! I’ve never heard anything so unreal in my life. These small bastards struck me as something terrible yet invincible, like evil or truth, and I patiently prayed for the passing of their fantastic invasion.Feeling bold, I attempted to make polite conversation with the unbearable child next to me. “Ever any madness in your family?” I asked him. “You can tell me. I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples.”The child looked at me curiously and replied, “What?”The boy tried to receive further clarification, but my soul had descended into madness. Being alone on this plane, with such loud and useless children, I had looked within myself, and by heavens, I tell you I had gone mad. This plane had become one of the dark places of the Earth.I let the boy ramble on, this paper-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my fore-finger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. Yes, he was loud and stupid—as are all children—but if you were man enough, you would admit to yourself that there was in you just the faintest trace of a response to their terrible noise. A dim suspicion of there being a meaning which you could comprehend from their bizarre interests and opinions.”Do you watch ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’?” he asked. “I like Charlie, and all of them except Mac. Mac is weird.””Yes,” I said, smiling, realizing we had just connected and understood one another for the first time, we of such differing ages. “Mac is everyone’s least favorite character. He is unsettling and creepy. Now shut up, kid. I don’t want to talk to you.”