Bright yellow sunlight flooded the airport terminal, leading me to curse Qantas’ modernistic architectural leanings. Glass and whiteness is all well and good, but concrete disfigurement is easier on the eyes at 6.30am.
A mixture of beleaguered businessmen and giggly women doubtlessly on their way to the Melbourne Cup wearing hats which could easily double as a handy watertrough for any barnyard animal were milling around the departure gate. Dragging my veritably sagging eyelids across the concourse, I collapsed into a plastic mould which was more of a pouting large-scale coffee mug than ergonomic furniture. I had not slept a wink that night and felt somewhat like The Bold and the Beautiful personified: dull, dreary, irritable and consistently out of focus.
An overeager Qantas staff member popped up from nowhere at the check-in point and rotated his head one hundred and eighty degrees, seamlessly broadcasting a smile around the local area that appeared it could imminently break his face in two. Corporate image solidified, he grasped a microphone and boomed his voice around the entire concourse.
‘Flight QF485 to Melbourne, now boarding,’ he shrieked. The surrounding group of travellers lined up dutifully and slowly shuffled past the Qantas man, who was feeding tickets through a greedy machine.
I performed all requirements of the boarding dance but was refused entry to the aircraft – the ticket machine choked on my boarding pass and refused to process it.
Frowning, the Qantas bloke shoved it back in forcefully, as if to say, ‘Bad dog!’. Worriedly, he looked up and broadcasted his one hundred and eighty degree smile once more, just to reassure us that there was nothing wrong, and that Qantas was still the Spirit of Australia.
Choking, the ticket machine spat my boarding pass back indignantly, as if to say, ‘Screw you! I’m going to take a dump on the carpet!’
Qantas bloke pushed the ticket back in forcefully four more times before admitting defeat. ‘Sorry,’ he shrugged at me.
‘So now what?’ I asked, becoming slightly worried – especially as I hadn’t organised the ticket personally. This trip was being paid for by Adam’s work.
‘Uhm, uhm…’ he tapped his chin. Businessmen behind me began craning their necks urgently, with their mornings now disrupted and confidence-workshop-implanted personal mantras at stake too. ‘You need to go to the desk over there. The biiig desk,’ he nodded ominously, as if I was being sent to the headmaster’s office for… well, forging a boarding pass.
Somewhat grumpily, I shuffled towards the biiig desk. Flinging my boarding pass over the counter at a disinterested woman picking her nails, I glared at her, demanding a response.
‘It won’t let me on the plane,’ I prompted. She scratched the back of her hair furiously, pressed a few keys on her keyboard, then returned it to me.
‘Should work,’ she murmured.
‘That’s it?’ I checked.
‘Mmm,’ she replied, and returned to her manicure. Reluctantly, I returned to the check-in area and re-presented my ticket to the grinning fool in front of me.
Without even looking up to look at me, he repeated the entire process we’d just been through, then told me that I needed to go to the biiig desk again.
‘I did,’ I protested, putting on a jolly good show of being really flustered and as if my backpack was weighing far more than it really did and that, as if I was one of the businessmen in the line, he was causing me an incredible amount of inconvenience from my otherwise uber-productive business day.
‘Ummm ummm ummm!’ he panicked. ‘Are you sure you bought this ticket yourself?’
‘No, it was bought for me by a friend,’ I explained.
‘Are you sure?’ he leaned back, eyes narrowing as if staring into the sun.
‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘I don’t know what the problem is, and neither does Captain Customer Service over there at the big desk. Can I get on please?’
‘I should probably check with the big desk,’ he insisted.
‘Please,’ I pleaded with tired eyes. ‘Just let me on.’
‘Ummmmmm,’ he paused, before concluding that tearing the stub from my boarding pass would suffice. I marched down the hall onto the plane as fast as the cramped space would allow, for fear of being called back for further ticket inspections.
Glancing around the seats, I noticed I was stuck up the back in the middle of the plane, in between two roly-poly men in suits. We performed the elegant display of etiquette that is shoving each other’s arses and stomachs into each other as we all shuffled around to allow everyone to be seated in their allocated locations, then we were on our way.
Then the two businessmen began talking. It quickly became horribly clear that they both worked at the same company, and were on ego-inflatingly high wages.
After enduring five minutes of mind-numbing and masturbatory discussion about things like national sales projections and stock options, I offered to switch seats with one of them.
‘No, it’s fine,’ the man on my left assured me. ‘My flight experience is usually more satisfactory sitting on the aisle,’ he nodded, four chins cushioning his nodding head.
Turning to the man on my right, he was already shaking his head. I frowned and cocked my head, a little unsure at their strange behaviour – not to mention the first man’s obnoxious business-speak. Perhaps one of these two was of higher rank and afraid to sit next to the other guy or something.
‘Strange seat allocations,’ I commented. They both scowled on cue and eyed me off as if I was some sort of communicable sexual disease hovering around in the air between them. Rolling my eyes, I settled back in my chair and pretended that the in-flight magazine’s article on their in-flight duty free specials was the most enthralling discovery I’d made since low-hanging testicles.
‘The delivery model for service on this airline could easily be workshopped into a far more efficient, customer-oriented system than the shambles in front of us today,’ the man on my right burbled. Sighing, I decided to try and beat these two idiots at their own game. Wearing a faded Ministry t-shirt and grubby jeans I may have been, but this little industrial music fan has hung around far too many sales teams and can speak business development gobbledegook right up there with the most influential business powerhouses.
‘Well,’ I coughed. ‘Seat allocation really is the CRUX, the CORNERSTONE of this service.’ Settling back in my chair, I congratulated myself on using two business-porn words in the one sentence. Such terms are the only things I note down in business meetings, for later use in bitter arguments to feign superior intelligence.
The two businessmen’s eyes widened and immediately began flinging hypothesises about the state of domestic airline seat allocation, all repeatedly featuring the words ‘crux’ and ‘cornerstone’. It wasn’t until I began smugly grinning at them both that they realised their error.
To combat this, they commenced conversation on their real estate interests. The man on my left began talking at length about the studio apartment he was about to buy in Melbourne’s central business district.
‘You can call anything a studio, you know,’ I interrupted. ‘It’s just an excuse to make something shittier and charge more money for it.’
‘Whaddya mean?’ the businessman questioned, the concept of value for money a new one on him.
‘My partner and I call our bedroom a sleeping studio, our kitchen a cooking studio, our bathroom a cleaning studio and our toilet, er, the defecation studio,’ I explained. ‘You could call this plane a flying studio and Qantas would probably charge you twice as much money for the privilege.’
‘Hmmm,’ the men stroked their respective beards. I dearly hoped I hadn’t given them any business ideas.
Deciding to escape their relentless drivel, I popped on a pair of headphones and tried to pop my ears in time to the music on the obligatory yoof-radio channel. Sensing an attempt to escape, the businessmen increased the volume of their conversation. Gritting my teeth angrily, I ripped the headphones off and glared at them, but they were deeply involved in discussing their investments in sport.
‘My horses netted quite a few k last financial year,’ the man on my right gloated.
‘Yeah?’ the guy on my right nodded. ‘Actually, I got hold of some more pigeons last week, we’ve got quite a few now.’
‘You race pigeons?’ I asked incredulously.
‘No, I eat them,’ he replied, pokerfaced.
Cue awkward silence, and me looking around at them both to sense if this was a joke. The lack of vocal interruption suggested otherwise.
‘How… pleasant,’ I finally said, hoping that he couldn’t see my eyes bugging out as I masqueraded dropping something on the ground, and reaching down to retrieve it.
‘Will you be having the hot breakfast, or cereal?’ a perky flight attendant prompted from our left. We all opted for the heated meal.
‘It smells like curry,’ the man on my right complained.
‘It is curry,’ the man on my left exclaimed.
‘Pigeon curry,’ I grinned, then wondered if I’d gone too far. Considering the man on my left stared at me with laser-beam intensity and pursed his lips (which he was no doubt very good at, all that bot-bot kissing and the like), I think I may have. Both men then re-covered their meals with foil and ignored me. Rolling my eyes at their puerility, I poked carefully at my meal and observed the fellow passengers in our immediate vicinity.
Everyone seemed to be catching up on lost sleep, giggling in anticipation of the Melbourne Cup, or groggily watching the news broadcast now being shown on the TV’s hanging from the roof. The only people making any real noise were a mother and her child, probably around five years old. Apparently, it was junior’s first plane ride and she had many questions.
‘How do the wings keep us up, mum?’ she demanded. Mother obviously had a degree in aerodynamic science.
‘It’s all the air currents, and stuff,’ the lady attempted.
‘What if we fall and die?’ the child continued. A few heads turned around at the mentioning of this taboo topic.
Sensing she should probably cut the conversation short, the mother replied, ‘We won’t.’
‘Will God save us if we die?’ the child demanded.
‘God is everywhere, darling,’ the mother assured her, and commenced shovelling egg and bacon into her mouth as a pacifier.
If God is everywhere, then God must be a Melbournian, I reasoned. Melbourne people are abso-fucking-lutely everywhere. I was in obscure side streets of Tokyo five years ago and was still bumping into people from Melbourne.
Depressing a button on my armrest, I tilted my seat back for a little comfort. In the process, I accidentally knocked the knee of the suit on my left.
‘Oh, really,’ he complained. ‘Do you MIND.’
Pressing my lips together, I attempted to control my anger and frustration at these two fuckwits’ arrogance. Exploding up from my seat, I marched up the aisle to the teeny-tiny toilet cubicle and locked myself inside. Not really need a wee so much as a moment away from BRW-style updates every five minutes, I leaked a few drops of urine out regardless and swore under my breath at the idiots.
But after feeling a bit of anger, I decided that I didn’t have anything to prove to them. I didn’t want to be a part of their little high-flyer’s club. Surely I could find a role in life far more purposeful than that? Suddenly I began feeling far more inspired, revived, dynamic!
Unfortunately, I was feeling all of these things inside a tiny locked toilet cubicle, so I zipped up and marched triumphantly back to my seat. The two men greeted my return with facial expressions that suggested they’d recently consumed a cup of cold sick.
‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ I muttered. I wondered if they’d heard about what Courtney Love did last time she flew Qantas. I could do that, and better.
Our designated flight hostess shortly returned to retrieve our breakfast leftovers and garbage. As she reached over to take my tray, she frowned then squinted at a glinting object in the seat in front of me.
‘Did you put that there?’ she asked me, pointing to a Qantas brooch stuck to the seat. I hadn’t noticed it until she pointed it out.
‘No..?’ I replied carefully. Studying it, it appeared that it could actually be a pin more than a brooch. I began praying it was a brooch – what with the current security measures in place, this could prove almost fatal.
‘Stay right here,’ the hostess ordered. The two businessmen glared purposefully at me, and I considered telling them that I couldn’t make a getaway anyway because of their boulder-like builds.
Past episodes of the BBC television series Airport began running through my mind. People who made terrorist or weapon jokes always got in serious trouble on planes. Although I usually attempt to make light of a situation, I decided now was definitely not the time for terrorism quips.
The flight attendant returned with another woman, and resumed her interrogation. ‘Has this been here the whole time you’ve been on this flight?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, but I only just noticed it. I didn’t put it there, I swear,’ I assured her. The businessman on my left smirked at me. I glared at him in return. No terrorism jokes, no terrorism jokes, I repeated to myself.
One of the ladies grabbed the pin and pulled it out of the chair. To everyone’s horror, the pin was – I kid you not – six inches long.
‘It’s probably got ANTHRAX all over it!’ the man on my left exploded in laughter.
I quickly tried to explain myself, but the only words coming to mind were ‘fuck fuck shit crap titty shit fuck bum cunting fuck titty knob’.
Then began an interrogation which made my malfunctioning boarding pass questioning look like a golden age of harmony. Sighing, I realised it would be a long flight, and kicked both of the men’s feet forcefully in anger.
Comments on this entry are closed.