True Stories: Meeting on a Jet Plane

Post-breakup, I doubted I could ever make a connection.

by Lauren Quinn

I watched him walk down the airplane aisle — squeeze, really — bashing a bulging Amoeba Records bag against the shoulders of passengers already seated. "Excuse me, pardon, sorry bout that."

I smiled. I'd seen him earlier, cruising through security while I was having my purse disemboweled in search of non-existent weaponry. He had on cowboy boots and a flannel shirt, a scruffy beard, and a swagger that definitely wasn't American Macho. In short, he was cute. Now he was on my plane. From my seat in the last row — next to the funk of the lavatories, of course — I could see him fumble with his boarding pass and check seat numbers. He kept walking, walking, until eventually he stood at the open seat beside me. Our eyes met. He smiled. And sat down.

It's like the beginning of a bad porno, right? Or a Lifetime movie (which is basically porno for housewives). Or that Gabriel Garcia Marquez story about a dude creeping on an Ambien-coma-ed hot girl beside him. But it couldn't be real life. At least not my real life. I'd traveled enough to know this wasn't my luck — which is why I'd taken my contacts out and washed my face, and was sitting, blotchy-skinned, wearing eight-year-old frames with my hoodie already pulled tight against the assault of air-conditioning. No need for pretense on a cross-coastal red-eye.

I also knew it wasn't my life, because I'd just been dumped, by someone who was by all definitions not supposed to dump me. Mike was twenty-two, a barista, living on his friends' sofa. I was... older, a writer, about to travel to Southern Italy to cover a street-art festival for a hip magazine. When, a few weeks earlier, Mike had left the country with nothing more than a text message at five a.m., it'd been a low blow. I'd looked at myself in the mirror — the map of encroaching wrinkles, the tits that weren't so perky anymore — and thought, "So it's come to this."

And now Indie Rocker Nationality-Ambiguous Dude had been seated beside me, where he'd remain for the next 3,000 miles. "There is a God," I thought. "And clearly, He's fucking with me."

I could feel my cheeks already beginning to turn red, as the guy settled into his seat beside me. From the corner of my eye, I could see him tuck his records bag under the seat and find a little wedge of space for his feet. I stole a quick glance at him. "Hello," he smiled. He'd caught me.

"Hi." I snatched my eyes away and looked down. The safety announcement started. We sat in awkwardness as potent as the lavatory odors. This was ridiculous; I was ridiculous. I turned to him, and nodded at the bag of records, "Go shopping, did you?"

He grinned. "Yeah, well, this was the thing, the one thing I told myself I could really go crazy on: records. What you can find in the States, there's nothing like it. Even if I could find this stuff in Europe, it'd be so expensive." He leaned forward, lowered his voice. "Actually," he raised his eyebrow and a few wrinkles creased across his forehead, "I've already shipped a full crate back to Zurich."

I smiled. I liked him.

Sebastian was a music geek with a vinyl fetish, and he'd finally made it to the U.S., after years of fantasizing and saving. He'd spent five weeks, mostly in New York, New Orleans, and California. (I assured him he hadn't missed much.) He was now headed home, after spending his last week in San Francisco.

"I saw some great shows — some fucking great shows — here."

"Like?"

"The other night, this band Ty Segall."

I blinked. "On Wednesday? At the Rickshaw Shop?"

He nodded.

I laughed, "I was totally at that show!" The plane angled sharply as we rose in the sky, the blinking lights of everything I called my life disappearing beneath the fog.

It turned out we both had a ten-hour-layover in New York, before heading off to our respective European destinations. "What were you going to do?" Sebastian asked me.

I shrugged. "I dunno, but sitting at JFK sounded pretty lame. Thought maybe I'd cruise into town, get some food, chill."

He nodded and smiled, and the skin around his eyes crinkled. "That was my plan too." He had on a necklace. It was hidden beneath his shirt, and I could see only the black string of it, roped around the back of his neck. It made me want to touch it, pull it out, feel the cord in my fingers and see what all hung on it. But I didn't. We chatted a bit more, then pulled our thin blue blankets up to our chins and fell into our separate, neck-jerking sleeps.