The Story Behind the Story: Premiere Week Ends!

Thanks for tuning in for INK ROCK'S debut of The Story Behind the Story!  We'll get back to regular programming next week with future chapters of SBS peppered in once a week, every Wednesday, until the series ends. 

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The Story Behind the Story is a regularly-run segment in memoir form telling the story of the places and experiences that inspired The Revelation Saga.  It is taken, in part, from an email journal made during the adventure.  Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
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Chapter 3

The Flight that Shagged Me

            Like anyone who has ever sat in a seat on an airplane, there comes a moment, whether it’s before take off, during flight, or just before landing, when this dark little thought creeps into your head and makes you wonder if tonight, you make the news.

            As the aircraft turns north toward the top of the world, this thought passes through my mind and yet I am confident that if the plane went down this very moment, I would die happy.  Having borrowed miles from my traveling salesman father, I’ve upgraded to Upper Class on Virgin Airlines’ flagship, the Triple Seven.  I love the name, by the way.  And like its name, I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot on a slot machine.

            All the bullshit is behind me.  The tinker toy airplanes, the horrid weather, stinky seats, bimbo co-pilots, and the herd of Joeys from Friends that tried to intentionally get me lost at JFK Airport.  All just a fading memory.

            Instead, I’m focused on the glass of champagne I’m drinking, handed to me upon boarding, which I did on time as the weather in New York had, thankfully, delayed takeoff.  1960’s décor and the cutest flight attendants wearing smiles and pink miniskirt uniforms, looking like extras from an Austin Powers movie, fill the cabin.

            Look, I’m sort of out of my element here, being a broke-ass law student and all.  I know that, but so what?  I’m going to enjoy the hell out of this while I’ve got the chance. Right?  I mean, it's obvious I'm meant to  - there’s even a bar on the plane!  A bar…on a plane. 

Across the aisle and one row up is actor Fisher Stevens.  As I’m drinking up the courage to speak to him about Angelina Jolie’s boob slip in the movie Hackers, my thoughts are interrupted by a pixie flight attendant holding a clip board.  “Pardon me, sir,” she says in a bubbly British accent. “What time would you like to schedule your MAH-sage?”

           

            “My…what?”

            “Massage, sir.  With our on-board masseuse?”

            She points with her pen to a corner of the plane that’s hiding one of those sit down, lean over things you see at the mall.  It's difficult to restrain the inner me that wants to jump up and scream, No freaking way! “After dinner service,” I say instead, like I've done it all before.

            “Very good, sir,” she says and gives me a time.

            A short while later, I’m three scotches deep and done with dinner.  I had Steak Diane, just because I was curious about what exactly made it Diane.  Still don't know.  The menu is written like something out of a Michelin Star restaurant and I can order anything, anytime.  And get this – the food is good.  I mean, it’s not going to win any James Beard Awards, but come on – we’re like thirty thousand feet over an ocean.

            The massage proves to be the last straw.  Besides, it’s late.  The experience is euphoric, but I’ve had too much to drink.  It’s possible I proposed marriage to the masseuse while her magical fingers worked out every ounce of stress from the muscles in my back.

            Afterwards, I stumble back to my chair where I discover that it reclines into a bed.  I flip through the stations of my personal video screen, but exhaustion soon takes me.  I vaguely remember having a blanket laid over me by a smiling stewardess and just before the world fades away I have a twinge of regret that I’d missed the plane’s bar.

            Not that I needed it. 

Premiere Week Continues!

The Story Behind the Story is a regularly-run segment in memoir form telling the story of the places and experiences that inspired The Revelation Saga.  It is taken, in part, from an email journal made during the adventure.  Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
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Chapter 2

How Not to Fly

            The Atlanta Airport is a kinetic mosh of chaos and disorder, a kicked anthill.  On top of that, it’s huge.  How something so big can be so packed with so many people is beyond me.  Luckily, I’m at my gate, worrying about the next part of the journey – getting to New York in the narrow window of time I have left to make the flight to London. I’m to be on the last flight out, the redeye, and missing it would cause a domino effect that I don’t want to think about.  There is a three hour layover in New York, but my plane in Atlanta is now three hours late.  Do the math.

            The good news?  My plane has arrived.  The bad news?  Where do I start?  First, the reason the plane is three hours late, I’m told, is because of a maintenance issue. Issue sounds so clinical, so clean.  Something to be solved with consideration and perhaps a philosophical conversation.  Not like a maintenance problem, which is what happens when the flux capacitor, or whatever the hell it's called, falls out of the freaking engine - something a little more serious than a busted beverage cart and requires hammers and screaming to fix.

            Please fasten your seatbelts.  The captain has informed us your confidence may experience some slight rough air. 

            Secondly, if my first plane was overkill, this one is its Danny DeVito-in-Twins brother.  I can see it parked on the tarmac, not even connected to a gate, waiting on me to board.  The damn thing actually looks sad. The wings seem to droop, and the nose graphics and cockpit windows somehow together look like a crying clown.  Perfect.  An emotionally compromised airplane.  And here I forgot my tissues. 

Walking up the pull-away steps in the Georgian summer heat, the piercing squeal of the engine’s turbine promises to have my ears ringing for hours.  I’m empty handed, as I’ve had to check my carry-on backpack, and I can see why.   

            Your mobile phones and other electronic devices that might be useful in an emergency situation should be turned off during takeoff.

            I’m so worried I’ve made an error in boarding the wrong plane that I check with the elderly flight attendant, but she confirms the plane does indeed fly to New York City.  When I ask if we’ll be dusting crops on our way, her patronizing smile suggests she intends to spit in my drink later.

            If you are seated at an emergency exit, please review the responsibilities on the back of the safety information card found in the seat pocket.  It is highly likely these instructions will become useful during flight.

            My seat is at the front of the plane, in clear view of the open cockpit.  The old stewardess makes three unsuccessful attempts to close the outside door as the steps are pulled away from the plane.  The look on her face makes me wonder if she got it on her last try.  She then takes a moment to run through her safety speech.  The words ‘sudden’ and ‘decompression’ stick in my mind. 

            There’s activity in the cockpit as the plane taxis out to the runway.  Our captain looks like he moonlights as a lounge singer and the co-pilot is a daffy-looking, blond-haired woman, her face thick with bright make-up.  From my vantage point I can see her scratch her head constantly as she looks at the instrument panel.  I pray she has lice.

            Should your confidence experience an unlikely water landing, your seat may be used as a defecation device. 

            Eventually the plane rattles its way into the sky.  I look to my watch, doing the math in my head.  This is going to be close.

The Story Behind the Story

Premiere Week!  The Story Behind the Story is a regularly-run segment in memoir form telling the story of the places and experiences that inspired The Revelation Saga.  It is taken, in part, from an email journal made during the adventure.  Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
_______________________

Chapter 1
Turbulence

The flight from Birmingham to Atlanta?  Seems simple.  Easy.  A softball on the Final Exam of How to be a Pilot.  Ah, but add an outlying element.  Say, a thunderstorm.  Make that a Capital-T Thunderstorm.  Now the scenario changes.  Evolves.  Becomes something entirely different.  What was once elementary is now String Theory Physics.

            The thing about this short, pit-stop of a flight is that it is too short.  Not even worthy of offering a bag of peanuts.  Apparently, and I’m not a pilot so I make no warranty to the accuracy of this, but apparently BHM to ATL is not enough of a distance to gather altitude and fly around, or over, anything.  By the time the plane has a chance to reach cruising altitude, it’s already making preparations for decent and landing.

            I’ll say this – it’s difficult to keep perspective on the hopeful things to come – things like moving to England for a semester and girls with sexy accents, when things are, if you’ll pardon the expression, going south on a plane.  My seat smells like B.O., which I’m pretty sure isn’t mine, and the constant flash of lightning outside leaves me less than confident about my future.  Images of John Lithgow’s scene in The Twilight Zone Movie come to mind.  Again, I check the wing for homicidal gremlins. 

            The plane seems like overkill for a thirty minute flight.  It’s one of the bigger ones.  Don’t know the make or model, if that's even the right way to refer to a plane, though I’m sure this is some sort of D-C3PO something or other.  The aisles are mostly empty, which is fortunate.  No babies, either, thank god.  Just business types, doing their best to keep their dignity as the plane shakes us all like James Bond's favorite martini.

  

            We hit an air pocket and the plane drops what feels like a mile.  The whole fuselage shakes like hell.  An overhead compartment bursts open and a blue blanket falls on my head. 

My death shroud, no doubt.

Someone groans behind me.  It’s a horrible sound to hear on a plane, much crueler than a scream.  A scream can mean many things and we’re accustomed to hearing them made in surprise, fright, or when seeing Justin Timberlake.  With so many meanings, we’ve become sort of numb to their sound.  Basically, they’re the human equivalent to car alarms.  But a groan – that guttural, almost involuntary sound made in futility, when the inevitable is upon someone.  A lovely soundtrack to the situation, to be sure.

The plane steadies and a short while later we’re in Atlanta, no worse for wear.  Ever seen a grandparent after they've been talked into riding a roller coster by their grandchild?  That's the look on everyone's face as they deboard.  I run through the airport, ride the airport subway, and eventually arrive at my gate to descover that the plane is late. Wonderful.  In New York, there is a plane waiting to take me to London.  I have a layover there built into my itenerary to ensure I make the flight, but if this delay in Atlanta lasts too long, my careful plans will fall apart.  So I sit and wait.  Time ticks away on my wrist watch.

“Whatever you do,” my dad had said at the airport just before I left, “make sure you never miss your flight.”