FLIGHT 4633

A stream of consciousness

I never think about death on airplanes, but today I do. Every bump of turbulence dislodges the intrusive thought from the furrows of my mind, and so, I try to determine exactly which passenger I’d cling to in my final moments.

Studying the sides of faces and the tops of heads, I wonder who here, like me, really believes in God. I suppose everyone does in the end—I know I did. When I thought my life was ending a few years back—when my heart thumped one beat per hour, and my lungs were filled with briny tears that never seemed to empty—I began to believe. From the lonely straight jacket of my bedsheets, I began to imagine the ceiling above me like a priest—an expanse of waiting and listening, ready to pass my words directly to The Man Upstairs. I’m sure most people get to this place at one harrowing moment or another, crying out to their own clerical ceilings, but when the moment passes, they go right back to gazing up from their beds and exchanging those prayers for grocery lists and mental reminders to pick up their dry cleaning. But not me—I’m no fair-weather friend. I believed then, and I believe now, and I’m even grateful for the hardship that brought me here because that’s what you do when you believe.

The woman beside me wears Novella Royale pants. I recognize the brand because I wanted them so desperately when I was a seventeen-year-old boho babe working at Free People. I remember when I was photographed for the Free People blog—I thought it was the start of something—my chance to become the Black Erin Wasson. Instead, in the photos, my face was blown out and pale, my hair looked frizzy, and my body strained against the clothes. A woman commented on the photos, criticizing them as a poor answer to the customer’s request for racial diversity. I wanted to tell her my skin, especially in summer, was more of a walnut hue than a cashew, as the photos suggested, but I doubt it would’ve made much difference. I’ve been a poor answer to the customer’s request for racial diversity enough times to know better.

The turbulence returns suddenly. I ponder whether or not I ever shelled out my paltry paycheck to buy the Novella Royalle pants—I can’t remember now. There are many things I can’t remember. Many things that have slipped through the cracks of my psyche and landed somewhere out of reach. I would pay to retrieve them—to recall every youthful moment before I was hardened and sentient. I wish to God I could see those Free People photos again. Just once—before I die on this plane.

The holidays make me think of death as I grow older. I fear for my loved ones, selfishly imagining the massive hole their absence will open up within me one day. I do not fear my own death because I will be gone, and perhaps one day, God (via ceiling) will convince me of some paradise beyond this world, too. Instead, for myself, I imagine pain. I imagine the ache in my right hand progressing and rendering the appendage useless. I imagine the strange sensation in my left foot becoming a limp. I imagine my back injury curling my spine like a cooked octopus tentacle and bringing me to my knees.

On my knees again, I think of God. A child across the aisle from me repeatedly shouts out some word of performative wonderment. The kind of acting job a child does only for his father. I hope he gets the approval he craves, but at this moment, I pray to God that he will fall asleep. He gasps again and tugs at his father’s shirt. His father urges him to be quiet, and a part of the child dies. Death returns, and I pray the child will be whole forever. God returns, and he reminds me that everything dies.

Sometimes, I wonder if I’m cut off from any hope of intellectualism because of my faith. Because all faith is blind, unseeing, unproven. Can an intellectual mind believe in the unseen and untested? This question is not rhetorical—I haven’t the faintest idea. I once dated a man who told me he liked me because I wasn’t an intellectual. I would hope he meant “without pretense.” But I think I’m plenty pretentious, so, in all likelihood, he thought I was common, or “basic” as they say, in the parlance of our times. This I would not argue. Beneath the braids and rings and clothes, I am as basic as they come—a composite of Stanley cups, reality TV, Morgan Wallen songs, and Mexi-Cali tapas stacked to fill a trench coat. I consider that maybe this man, whom I have discounted for a myriad of reasons over the years, actually saw me for who I am long before I did.

I glance down at the Novella Royale pants beside me. Brown with white flowers and blue accents and green vines. My neighbor has very sharp knees—they protrude like mountain peaks through the thin fabric. I decided that she would not be my first choice—I would not fall upon those knees in prayer if these were my final moments. She raises her leg to a new position, and the joint becomes more rounded. I reconsider and steal a look at her face. Her lips protrude, smooth, and engorged with dermal filler. Her eyelashes are awnings, like the thick, feathery wings of an ostrich. Beside her left ear and along her hairline is a series of warped tattoos. I want to examine them, but I can’t risk detection. The one in bright red could possibly be a sports team—my boyfriend sometimes quizzes me, matching team names with states, but we haven’t advanced to logos just yet, so I cannot be sure. It may very well be a gang sign.

I begin to imagine her reading this by some terrible twist of synchronistic fate. I begin to imagine her finding me, beating me mercilessly for my impertinence with the help of her gang, and expediting the pain in my hand and foot and the curl of my spine like a cooked octopus tentacle. Death returns, and I begin to pray that she never reads this by some terrible synchronistic fate—that if we don’t die on this plane, she never finds me. God returns, and he reminds me that everything dies.

The Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (1963)