I Know What I'm Doing (25 page)

He breathlessly started, “I hate to bother you. I’m so anxious. I haven’t flown in twenty years. I got a tech job in Los Angeles designing videogame software. I was content doing that. I was happy just sitting at my desk, on the ground, not having to go anywhere, until the company became wildly successful in the past year and now part of my job requires me to travel internationally. My friend is on this flight but he’s on the other side of the plane and he’s already asleep. He can sleep anywhere. So, I’m just here alone with my thoughts. All night.”

A flight attendant gently took his suitcase from him to give him more legroom. He grabbed her arm and begged, “Can I please get a drink?” Another flight attendant came down the aisle with a tray of sparkling wine. “Oh my god!” he said. “It’s a sign!” I said to him, “It’s just a sign that you’re in Premium Economy. They always do this.” Normally I don’t drink on planes—it’s too dehydrating—but he pleaded, “Have one with me? As a good-luck thing?” I took one. Who was I to buck the classic good-luck tradition of having sparkling wine out of a plastic cup with a stranger on a flight from Los Angeles to Australia?

Compared to this guy, I was an anxiety expert, a veteran. Having someone who is more frightened than you is the greatest gift to someone who is a little bit frightened. It gives the less frightened person the chance to help soothe someone else—which in turn self-soothes. I get to go into big sister mode, which helps take the focus off of how Madonna and I are feeling.

I know what you’re thinking. Could there have been a love connection between my seatmate and me? Nope. First of all, he politely told me that he had a girlfriend and was not trying to pick me up. And he wasn’t my type. Trust me, if he’d looked like Brad Pitt circa
Thelma & Louise
I would have tried to get the party started under the blanket once the lights went out, convincing him that his girlfriend sucked and this was obviously our destiny. Although if he were Brad Pitt today, I would respectfully keep my distance for fear of the wrath of Angelina—and I don’t want to be a stepmom to
one
kid, forget six.

Jason was my seat buddy’s name—or should I say,
is
his name. I’m sure he’s still alive somewhere. Jason was overly enthused about the bar on the plane. I explained to him that drinking actually makes one more anxious because of all the sugar.

“But, Jen, if I don’t drink I think I’ll have a nervous breakdown.”

“Okay, well, have a drink then.” I would be a terrible sober coach.

Jason and I had different ideas about how to handle takeoff. I wanted to be asleep before it happened. I’m not a fan of the “I can’t control anything anymore—we’re leaving the ground!” style of coping. I didn’t want to be there for that moment. Jason, however, needed to be awake during takeoff so that he could help fly the plane with his mind.

The man I’d known for all of fifteen minutes pleaded with me to stay awake and talk him through this.

“Okay,” I said. “But I am not good with takeoff on long flights, so I can’t really just talk. I have to do my plan B.”

“Let’s do it. What’s your plan B?”

As the plane started to make insanely loud “I’m a giant machine” noises, and the taxiing began, I explained to Jason that plan B consists of me looking at a fashion magazine because pictures of clothing soothe me.

He was so nervous that he was fine with that.

I opened up the latest issue of
Lucky
magazine.

Jason politely tried to play along and said, “From a graphic design perspective this magazine is laid out really nicely.”

“My ex-husband hated when I made him play this game,” I said.

“That’s because he was your husband. It’s much easier to go along with crazy things a woman is saying if you’re not dating her.”

“Way to put it in perspective, Jason.”

Jason’s hand started to tremble and he said, “WHAT? ARE PURSES REALLY FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS? DOES MY GIRLFRIEND SPEND THAT MUCH ON PURSES?”

“No! Jason! Purses are
not
that much money in real life!” I yelled over the sound of the engine roaring into the sky. “That’s just the runway price!”

“Oh, so department stores do, like, cheaper knockoff versions?”

“Exactly, Jason.”

“So do you think my girlfriend pays, like . . . a hundred dollars for her purse?”

“Probably, Jason. Probably.”

“She just has a lot of debt. I mean, some of it is student loans but I want to make sure she’s not overspending.”

I was starting to panic just from the stress of Jason’s girlfriend’s debt.

“Jason, we need to focus here. I need to take my mind off of the fact that we’re only one minute into this flight. I have to take this game to the next level.”

I explained to Jason that the next level is that I find a page with a few outfits and we play the game, “Which Outfit Would I Buy, Which Outfit Would Look Best On Me, and Which Outfit Do I Wish I Could Pull Off?” It’s a complex game full of choices and possibilities. I decided that since Jason didn’t know me, we would play it with his girlfriend in mind. My ex-husband hated this game. I think mostly he resented that I got to take Klonopin
and
get special treatment—one was supposed to outdo the other. It never dawned on me to ask Matt, “Okay, so what do
you
like to do during takeoff?” Then again, he didn’t have a fear of flying. As I thought about Matt, I felt a bubble of what I call “plane emotion.” It’s the kind of emotion that creeps up, and while it may produce a salient thought—the reaction to it can be extreme. Like . . . crying over the Kate Hudson movie where she falls in love but then dies of colon cancer. (Yes, that’s a movie.)

“Jason, I think I was a shitty wife. I’m glad I’m not married anymore but I still wish I could look back on some things and say, ‘I was always selfless.’ I wasn’t.”

“Relationships are hard. I mean, that’s what everyone says. Mine isn’t hard. But maybe it will be and I’m just in the unreality phase.”

“But why is the good stuff considered unreal and the bad stuff considered reality?”

“I think things were easier in my grandfather’s day.”

“I don’t. I just found out that my jolly old grandfather was having an affair for most of his life and my grandmother took a job as a waitress just to be passive-aggressive to him about not cooking dinner.”

“My grandfather was an alcoholic.”

With no sense of irony or self-awareness, Jason then asked the flight attendant when the bar would be open. Drinks could be served anytime but Jason had a fixation with standing at the bar and making himself a cocktail.

We passed the time before he could start shaking martinis by discussing which movies have held up since the nineties. We decided that
Good Will Hunting
was a yes.
Singles
a no. I gave him the extra meat that came with my vegetarian meal (fucking Australians) and he gave me his roll.

At hour three, while Jason finally made himself a cocktail I took to stretching to keep the blood flowing even though I was wearing circulation socks. Jason came back and continued talking about his grandfather. He feared that alcoholism could run in the family and although he doesn’t drink daily, he drinks when he’s stressed—like on a sixteen-hour flight. I told Jason that I couldn’t diagnose him or enable him. I could only listen. But maybe he should find a therapist when he’s back in America. I should have charged him by the hour. I would have had a cool two thousand dollars in my pocket upon landing.

I was getting tired. It was time for me to recline my seat three inches and call it a night. Jason decided to stay up a little later to watch a movie—he was feeling more confident about being the only person awake on the plane and not panicking. I told him that he could always wake me up if he needed me. An hour passed and I woke up—the smell of Jason’s wine breath was floating out of his open mouth like the humidity off of a sewer grate. I could see the molecules of stale grape floating my way and invading my nose.

“Jason. Wake up. You have to brush your teeth and really gargle with mouthwash.”

Within six hours Jason and I had become an old married couple. Now we were both awake and decided to tackle the subject of death. What happens when we die? Jason and I shared the same fear that if we write a Last Will and Testament then we are somehow inviting death into our lives. Besides, since we both believe that when you die it’s just lights-out—who cares if your wishes to be cremated were honored? But something deep inside both of us questioned WHAT IF? What if somehow, somewhere, some
way
your dead self knows that it ended up buried in the same small town that its living self worked so hard to get out of? And what if that translated into your legacy becoming just . . . sad trapped energy? We kept asking questions like a couple of three-year-olds. Why do we think aliens come from outer space? What if they come from underneath the ocean? Jason fell asleep in the middle of his thought about how even though going to Australia scares him he thinks he could handle going up in a space shuttle.

I looked out my window at the blackness, and maybe it was the altitude, the Klonopin, or the six rolls I’d had but I felt a small, deep, tranquil joy; a love for humanity that wasn’t romantic or sappy. I felt that everyone on this plane was one. And if we were one—then we were one with everyone else. If everyone on earth could take a sixteen-hour flight with a stranger and get to know them, they would actually be able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes, or at least put their shoes right next to someone else’s shoes underneath someone else’s seat. If the purpose of this trip was only to bring me to this realization—it was all worth it. If all of my shows went terribly in Australia or I got bitten by one of their many deadly poisonous spiders, it would still be worth it. People who take ayahuasca are missing out. There’s a way to reach this level of enlightenment without the next-day nausea. I vowed from now on that there would no longer be times when I get angry or annoyed at other people for no reason. We are all just love. Even Dick Cheney. Even Dick fucking Cheney is pure love.

When the sun was coming up or coming out or just coming right up to my window, Jason was already up and at ’em—stretching at the bar instead of drinking, just like I taught him. I felt proud of us. Jason’s friend, Adam, came over to our seats to visit. We told him all about our successful flight with no panic or anxiety attacks. Jason and I shared a quiet breakfast—just comfortable in our own silence as we read. I kept to myself for the final descent into Melbourne. I looked out the window welling with unnamed emotion as I saw the mass of land come into view. What a miracle that I could be brought around the world, over the ocean for hours, and land safely in this magnificent, mystifying land. The
second
the plane touched down I heard a symphony of beeps and bloops as smartphones were turned back on and the choruses of “Yeah, I just landed” began. As we maneuvered in our seats to gather our belongings and get off the plane, Jason thanked me for helping him and said, “Hey, I didn’t even ask you—what’s bringing you to Melbourne?”

“Oh, um. Nothing. Just a wedding. And work. A working wedding. Really boring.”

I’m a terrible liar but I hate telling people that I’m a comedian. It always invites the worst small talk. People usually assume there’s no way I’m a professional comedian since I’m not world-famous. Most people don’t know that you can make a living at comedy without being Jerry Seinfeld. The top five things people say to stand-up comics that we can’t stand are:

1. You should come to my office. You’ll get a lot of material for your skits there.

2. Do you make a living doing that?

3. What’s your real job?

4. I always thought I would be good at stand-up.

5. You don’t seem funny. Tell me a joke.

After my awkward lie I realized that I could probably trust Jason since we had gotten to know each other so well on the plane, and he would probably be intrigued to know what I was up to. I told him the truth about the festival and that I’m a stand-up comedian.

“And you do this for a living? You didn’t tell me one joke on the flight. You don’t seem funny at all.”

I struggled to get my suitcase to budge from the overhead bin.

“What’s your full name?”

“Jen. [
Grunting.
] Kirkman.”

“Kirkland?”

“Kirk-man.”

“I’ve never heard of you. And this is your real job?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I should try to remember you in case you make it someday!”

[
Grunting.
] [
Struggling with suitcase.
] “There are many definitions of making it, Jason.”

“Well, I hope you get into the festival.”

[
More grunting.
] [
More struggling with suitcase.
] “I
did
get into the festival. I didn’t just fly here to
try
to get into a major festival. They flew me here. Just like your job. This is my job.”

The guy in back of me who had to catch a connecting flight grew impatient. He put an end to my overhead bin struggles, grabbed my suitcase for me, and said, “Congratulations. You’re a comedian. Who cares if this guy believes it? Just get of off the plane.”

And with that I lumbered off of the plane and said good-bye to Jason, probably forever. His last words to me were, “I’ll look for your name, Jen Kirkland!”

My compassion for Jason turned immediately to disdain. He WAS an alcoholic, that loser. And I hoped his girlfriend was buying $5,000 purses on his credit card that very minute. I felt claustrophobic in the previous night’s realization that we were all one. I didn’t want to be Jason. I wanted to be me: a woman dragging her suitcase through Melbourne’s airport, heading for the duty-free perfume in lieu of a shower. I spritzed on some Chanel No. 5. “Do you want to buy that?”

“No. I have to run,” I lied. “I have to make a connection.” Thank God I had no connections to make. Connecting with humanity was exhausting enough and Jen Kirkland just wanted to nap.