I sit next to a beautiful man on a long flight
I take my seat on a long flight and am filled with terror when a beautiful man takes the seat next to me. I am too nervous to speak to him, and even to turn to him, or to have my shoulder or knee accidentally bump against his. When he drops his phone and reaches to my feet to pick it up, my heart stops at the thought that his hand will accidentally brush my leg. When the attendant passes by to ask if we want headphones, I let him answer first, closing tight my eyes and commanding myself to be silent until I am sure that he has finished speaking. For long hours as the flight goes on, I keep perfectly still, petrified at the thought of disturbing this man, of entering his field of perception in any way. More than anything else I've ever wanted, I want for him to turn and say something to me. He might say: I just dozed off – has the attendant been past with food yet? He might ask: excuse me, do you know what the time difference is when we land? But what if he asks something like: hey, how are you? What if he asks: is this your final destination or are you headed off to somewhere else? What if he asks: are you returning home or visiting somewhere new? What if after listening to me speak he smiles and tells me that he likes my look and the way I talk? What if he says that I'm just the sort of person he'd like to get to know? What about, just throwing it out there, if I don't have plans after we land, do I feel like meeting up and getting a drink, at a place he knows that he thinks I might like? What if he says, because actually he already knows that he's really attracted to me, that when we meet up later we are probably going to have sex? In fact, he says we're going to have sex every day from now on, because I'm the most beautiful person he's ever met and he wants to hold me and kiss me and fuck me as much as he can. He might tell me that he can tell I go to the gym and that's cool, but if I wanted to stop going I could, because I would be so beautiful to him either way, any way at all. He might tell me that he can tell I work really hard, and care a lot about where my career is heading, but I shouldn't let it bother me too much, because when he and I get married, he's going to make sure I'm taken care of for the rest of my life. He lets me know that if I don't feel like going to work anymore, that would be fine, in fact it would be better if I just took more time to relax. He knows that I read the news every day but that I shouldn't feel the need to do that, not every day, or even at all, because it's too much of a burden for me to try to think about. He knows that there are a lot of things I worry about, not just about my work and my body and what I'm doing with my life, why I get up every day, what I do when I come home at night. He knows I worry about the state of the world and where everything is headed, about how nothing makes sense, about how as time goes on it makes even less sense. He knows that I have upsetting visions every night, of being a speck of ocean spray in a thrashing, vast, undifferentiated brine of humanity, a gasp of vapour, always on the verge of being nothing. He reassures me that it's time to leave all of that behind, once and for all. All that matters, all I need to know, is that the decisions I have taken until now have led to this moment, right now, and from this moment on, everything is going to be OK. He promises me that soon there will be a great rest, so pleasant and so deep a rest, a moment when all effort and strife will be unnecessary, when all pain and burden and displeasure will be finally and forever forgotten. He gives this promise with full guarantee, his hands holding mine and his face smiling at mine, assuring me that I can rely on him absolutely and know with full certainty that what he tells me is true. He tells me he is so glad he has finally found me, that he and I have so much to look forward to. For now, he says, let's just go to sleep, enjoy the flight and wait for the rest to follow, and he takes my hand and we do.