Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Amazing grace

Pair at the airport: fastidious, effeminate white man, all the blood civilized right out of this one, beside him a woman - maybe Filipina - perfectly beautiful. Perfectly coiffed, perfectly attired, perfectly bored. She lounges with perfect grace, perfect disdain, moving with a strange, slow languor, as though suspended by invisible wires.

They're on my flight, across the aisle from each other a few rows ahead of me. I can only see him, as he fishes wetnaps out of his jacket pocket and businesslike wipes down his seat, the armrests, headrest, breaks out a fresh one and sets to work on the tray table, bottom and top, including the latch. Now he offers an array of wetnaps to his invisible companion across the aisle, sorts through them, apparently to choose the correct variety, opens it and pulls out a wetnap, crumples it precisely before handing it across the aisle to her.

Late in the flight I head to the toilet, and she emerges, posing for a moment, narrow hips cocked, before delicately holding open the door for me, a wetnap protecting her oddly large but elegantly placed hand from door microbes. I enter, and the seat is up. Oh. Huh.

Oo-oo-oh.

4 comments:

Daniel Heath said...

airports and planes are always full of the most fascinating and depressing people...

you have to hand it to a man who requires TWO wetnaps to sanitize his seating area. kinda makes you want to go up to him and lick him. except then you'd have to lick him. actually it's more like it makes you want to mind control someone else who will then go up to him and lick him.

Chemical Billy said...

monkey 0, stop with the mind control, already, yeesh! I hate the taste of wetnaps.

AFM said...

but just think of his reaction to being licked by a stranger


priceless

Geo said...

A first-rate "oo-oo-oh" moment. The kind of wierd revelation I sometimes long for..