The Porkasaurus On The Plane

As I came around the corner into the gate for the flight to Boston, I would hear a cigarette, raspy voice whining on a cell phone about something or other. The owner of said voice was a rotund woman with spandex pants and black nail polish. As the only seats available were next to her, we sat down to await our turn to be called into the steerage class Delta Airlines calls “zone four.”
“If there is a God,” I thought, “She will not sit near me.” And the odds were she wouldn’t. As I was trundling my bag down the aisle looking for Row 14, I would see ahead of me, this same personage splayed out across three seats in one aisle, close, I determined to row 14.
I almost screamed when I saw, that it was indeed Row 14. Her body and possessions occupied not only her assigned seats, but Susan’s and mine as well. She turned around and asked if I was sitting there, and not wishing to appear friendly, I curtly replied, “Yes.”
So she squeezed herself into her seat and half of mine and retrieved her Sudoku book and a “what’s happening in Hollywood” magazine. Her 40lb love handles spread across the seat arm and down into my space. For all I knew she could have had 40lbs of C-4 strapped to her arms. I sat down and wiggled myself into place. I thought, “My God, she makes Jabba the Hut look svelte.” With Susan in place on the other side I had the choice of having my arms crushed so tightly against my ribs that I would need a CPAP to get enough air to last the trip or spend the time leaned over at a 45 degree angle. I know on the afternoon, “you are all beautiful, empowered victims” talk shows we learn that fat people have rights, but what about mine?” I didn’t Twinkie myself into invading someone else’s personal space.
Anyway. The plane took off using a whole lot of runway. The personage next to me fell asleep, and immediately began to exude odors most foul. Susan looked at me, but she could tell from years of marriage that had it been me, she would have detected a look of either triumph, ecstasy, or a smirk. She saw neither, and I meanwhile was drifting back to the captain’s discussion of how the cruise ship we had returned from dealt with black water, cleansing it, and pumping it overboard where it would be sucked up, desalinated and become our drinking water.
For two hours, we sat, thigh pressed to thigh, but it was not like any of my teenage fantasies, I can tell you. When the stewardesses brought around pretzels and peanuts, I wondered if rubbing the salt on this slug person would cause her to shrivel and give me Lebensraum. She snarfed down a bag of pretzels.
Eventually we landed safely in Boston, caught the Concord bus and arrived back to find the house had maintained a 49 degree temperature, so the pipes weren’t frozen and the electricity was on. That made it a good trip.