Shaved Meats, Piled High: April 2018
The Girl on the Plane
Since SUNBURN went on sale on Feb. 20, I have taken 15 flights in less than seven weeks, ranging from quickies of less than an hour to one transcontinental flight that took almost eight hours. (Fog meant almost two hours on the ground, inching toward the only working runway at JFK.) I have been privileged to travel in first class and been wedged into middle seats. I have had to scramble to re-arrange flights when weather forced last-minute cancellations. Overall, my travel karma has been pretty good, knock wood. (I have at least four more flights through June, then an overseas flight in July.)
But the single stand-out moment, bar none, was the incident of The Girl on the Plane.
OK, first of all, she was a woman, but a young one, so permit me that poetic license. I noticed her in the gate area where we were both charging equipment and she seemed to be with a group of other young women.
The plane was bound for Minneapolis-St. Paul. The gate agent then made that most wonderful of wonderful announcements: The flight was going to be half-empty and some people would even have their own row. No one would have to sit in a middle seat.
I was one of the first to board and I chose a window seat in the second row. I confidently stowed my bag beneath the middle seat, as I was sure no one would be sitting there. A bit piggish of me, I'll admit. Then, about midway through boarding, the young woman I had seen in the boarding area chose the middle seat next to me. I was surprised, but figured she was traveling with someone who was boarding after her. Sheepishly, I moved my bag.
Boarding finished and no one had come to claim that aisle seat. Weird, I thought. Why would anyone choose to sit as close as possible to a stranger when we had been assured we had room to spread out?
As an experienced traveler, I can tell pretty easily when someone is not in airports much. (Yeah, I’m looking at you, lady in the Atlanta-Hartsfield Starbucks who decided that was the day she needed to find out the difference between a latte and a cappuccino and could someone please explain the different roasts to her?) My sister, who travels rarely, once said “experienced traveler” is a euphemism for asshole, so I try to be empathetic about people overwhelmed by the rituals I could do while sleepwalking. I sensed a tentativeness in this young woman, a fear of being wrong, which could have been shyness or confusion. It seemed obvious to me that she either hadn’t heard or didn’t understand what the gate agent had told us. But as someone who has mild issues with crowds and strangers, I really didn’t want someone pressed up against me when it wasn’t necessary.
So, does one say something or not?
And how does that change if you know that I’m Caucasian and the young woman next to me is African-American?
My genuine fear was that if I pointed out to her that she could move to the vacant seat, she would infer that I was a racist. And who wants to be thought a racist? Even most racists hate being thought of as racists.
As a creative writing teacher, I like to tell my students about the time that a woman in a Long Island gym berated me for sweating and told me I was disgusting. The woman had chosen the elliptical machine next to mine and was working at a rate that allowed her to speak nonstop to one of the attendants. She could have used a little more sweat in her life, in my opinion. When I tell the story, she sounds awful. “Now,” I tell my students, “imagine the story as she told it.”
I imagined the story the young woman might tell if I asked her to move. Would I be a weirdo or, worse, an asshole? Would I seem unkind?
In raising a small child, I have taken the rather unusual position that we have good manners because it's the right thing to do, not because I care what people think. Caring what strangers think is a losing proposition in my opinion. (If you really care what people think, then know that some people think you’re an idiot and a patsy for following rules: I’m looking at you, guy at TSA Pre-check in Hartsfield who refused to listen to the TSA agent and then said blithely: “I never do what they say.”)
And yet — I wasn’t sure if I should ask the young woman to move.
But — it was a two-hour flight and I wanted some space.
So before the fight attendants closed the door, I suggested: “You know, it looks as if they’ve finished boarding. If you want to move to the aisle seat, we would have extra space between us. If you want.”
She seemed a little startled by my request, but moved over, leaving her bag beneath the middle seat. Fair enough.
We live in a time when a lot of people complain about political correctness. But it seems to me that what some people think of as PC is simply taking the time to consider others' feelings. How would I feel if someone asked me to move? What's it like to see one's ethnicity reduced to food metaphors? (All those coffee shades I see, usually in books by men, usually describing young women of color. Helpful tip: The drink is a mocha; the barista is not.) I hope I didn't give offense that day. If I did, I have to live with it.
Later, when I told the story to my husband, he was surprised that I spoke up, but he also had a pretty good insight into why she chose that middle seat. “Could she have been boarding high up in the B group?" he asked. "Maybe she thought that her seat was B4 — the second row, four over -- not just her position in the boarding line.”
Bingo. He's a smart fella, my husband. Maybe he should try writing crime stories.
READ/READING: Give Me Your Hand, Megan Abbott (out in July, don't miss it); The Real Lolita, Sarah Weinman (out in September, don't miss it); You Play the Girl, Carina Chocano; Stealing the Show, Joy Press; Just the Funny Parts, Nell Scovell; Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff, Sean Penn.
REREADING: Shock Value, John Waters, primarily for its depictions of Baltimore in the 1960s.
ME, ME, ME: Let's just leave this one blank this month. Book tour makes one a little sick of one's self.
Laura Lippman
April 2018