I’m not one for conversations on planes. It’s nothing personal; I generally like meeting people and listening to their stories, sans the elderly with health problems (“These seats just don’t help my sciatica!”)
But on a plane, it’s different: I go into “shut-down” mode. Just give me a book, my iPod, and a seat by the window, and I’m clam-happy. Granted, I’d be a much happier clam in my own Gulfstream G650, but I’m not a corrupt financial exec who flies on the backs of thousands of foreclosed homeowners, so instead I fly Air Cattle.
That’s not to say I mind “over-hearing” conversations, though. It’s kind of fun eaves-dropping on plane-versations—it’s the verbal equivalent of a fast-food friendship. Names, jobs, town, bub-bye. I like to imagine and create stories for the lives these people lead, the nameless faces I’ll never see again. Is that businessman wearing women’s panties? Is that woman on her way to a
face-lift? Don’t judge me; you do it, too. And if you don’t, you should. It helps pass the time and makes people seem generally less annoying. And, no—I’m not on my way to plastic surgery, but thanks for not asking.
The verbal voyeurism is all fun and games, that is, until you start hearing things such as “My husband has anal fissures” or “I got crabs from furniture.” Check, please.
It was a flight from Newark to Vegas, your garden-variety, on-my-way-to-Adult-Disney crowd on board, and a palpable electricity was whispering through the recirculated air. It was the ideal recipe for something, anything, to happen. How could it not, when half the plane is about to throw their entire life savings down the crapper on a few games of Go Fish?
She, a twenty-something blonde in tight Vegas swag, was seated across the aisle from a buff, single (or at least pretending to be) Alpha male dressed in his club-shirt best. He’s eying her, she’s eying him, and finally he made 
a benign comment about the pilot that she found hilarious (read: desperate) and it was off to the races.
The woman didn’t look like an alcoholic until I heard her use the words “blackout” and “unemployed lifeguard” in the same sentence. Now, these are words that, as a woman—any woman—seated on a plane headed to Vegas, should never be uttered to a guy. Cry “fire,” for Pete’s sake, but just don’t use words related to substance abuse and government cheese. She also mentioned something about promising her BFF roommate that she’d call her every night on her trip after gambling and clubbing. “I think I scared her last time when she found me passed out on the floor in our apartment.”
I braced myself for the perfect storm that was about to occur, much like watching a cliff-hanger soap opera that you know is cheesy and banal (“Oh, Lance! How COULD you!”) but you just have to see the ending. The guy
visibly turned into a kid at Christmas—pupils dilated, frothing at the mouth, mentally scrambling on the wooden floor in his footie pajamas for the present he’s about to unwrap. He’s thinking, JACKPOT! I’m thinking, Shit, I really don’t want to witness a mile-high in the aisle, and if I have to, please make it snappy and git ‘er done before the drink cart rolls by. Nothing comes between me and my Diet Coke.
They flirted and talked the entire flight, and by the time we touched down they had exchanged all the necessary info and numbers for the impending hook-up later that night. They couldn’t get off the plane fast enough; he would have trampled his own grandmother to get a jump on the festivities. I’m sure that their evening ended with a bang. And who knows? Maybe they both found true love and were married by Elvis in a drive-thru
ceremony. I doubt it, but it was Vegas, and copious amounts of alcohol and money loss/gain are rarely a sane combination.
As for me, I’m still flying, listening to plane-versations, and taking notes. So consider yourself warned.
